Tuesday 30 January 2018

Robert Parry 1949 - 2018

The death has been announced of Robert Parry, editor and publisher
of Consortiumnews.com.

Robert Parry wrote extensively about Lockerbie and the Megrahi case.
Blogposts containing links to his contributions can be found here.
What follows is taken from an article by him published on 30 June
2011 and featured on this blog on the same date in 2016.

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The New York Times, like most US newspapers, prides itself on its “objectivity.”
The Times even boasts about printing news “without fear or favor.” But the reality
is quite different, with the Times agreeing – especially last decade – to withhold
newsworthy information that the Bush-43 administration [RB: George W Bush was
the 43rd President of the United States] considered too sensitive. (...)

The Lockerbie Bombing
Yet, to this day, The New York Times and other major US news outlets continue
to tilt their coverage of foreign policy and national security issues to fit within the
general framework laid out by Official Washington. Rarely do mainstream
journalists deviate too far.

It has been common, for instance, for the Times and other media outlets to state
as flat fact that Libyan agents, presumably on orders from Col Muammar Gaddafi,
blew Pan Am 103 out of the skies over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270
people.

However, anyone who has followed that case knows that the 2001 conviction of
Libyan operative Ali al-Megrahi by a special Scottish court was highly dubious,
more a political compromise than an act of justice. Another Libyan was found
not guilty, and one of the Scottish judges told Dartmouth government professor
Dirk Vandewalle about “enormous pressure put on the court to get a conviction.”
[RB: The High Court information officer, Elizabeth Cutting, has denied that this
ever happened.]

In 2007, after the testimony of a key witness against Megrahi was discredited,
the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission agreed to reconsider the
conviction as a grave miscarriage of justice. However, that review was proceeding
slowly in 2009 when Scottish authorities released Megrahi on humanitarian
grounds, after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.

Megrahi dropped his appeal in order to gain the early release, but that doesn’t
mean he was guilty. He has continued to assert his innocence and an objective
press corps would reflect the doubts regarding his curious conviction. [For details,
see Consortiumnews.com’s “Three Deadly War Myths.”]

After all, the Lockerbie case is not simply a historical mystery. It is one of the
central reasons why the United States and its NATO allies are insisting that
Gaddafi must be removed from power prior to any negotiated settlement of
Libya’s ongoing civil war.

In pressing this need to oust Gaddafi first, President Barack Obama made a
reference to the Lockerbie bombing at his Wednesday news conference, a
presumed “fact” that may have set the White House correspondents to nodding
their heads but may well not be true.

Which brings us to a key problem regarding American journalists siding with US
officials in presenting information to the American people: Is it really “good for
the country”?

By now, history should have taught us that it is often better for the American
people to know what their government is doing than to be left in the dark where
they can be led around by clever propagandists, aided and abetted by a complicit
news media.

Indeed, when the Times and other US news outlets act in that way, they may be
causing more harm than the propaganda organs of a repressive regime would,
since the “news” from those government mouthpieces is discounted by those who
read and see it.

1 comment:

  1. Sad to see one more friend go.
    Well written.

    "Indeed, when the Times and other US news outlets act in that way, they may be
    causing more harm than the propaganda organs of a repressive regime would,
    since the 'news' from those government mouthpieces is discounted by those who
    read and see it."

    Right. Our besung 'free press' have most people happily accepting it as some unbiased source of knowledge. I had very much that impression too when I was young.


    "...and one of the Scottish judges told Dartmouth government professor
    Dirk Vandewalle about “enormous pressure put on the court to get a conviction.”
    [RB: The High Court information officer, Elizabeth Cutting, has denied that this
    ever happened.]"

    Noble of RB to make the addition.

    Panam 103 falling down in Scotland, Scotsmen killed. Scottish/US investigations by Scottish/US police against a country that was deemed 'rogue' and had been crippled by embargo, justified by its alleged involvement in the crime.
    And 4 Scottish judges, with Scottish friends among Scottish politicians and people.
    We move it to Zeist - then it is more impartial.

    Why is it that we will never see a football referee from one of the playing countries in an important game, at some field in a third country? Why can't close family members to the accused sit in the jury, even in another city or country?

    Sorry for being trivial.

    If Lockerbie (and other Our Courts) has taught me one big lesson it is that Our Courts and Our Judicial System are no more to be trusted than Our football referees or Our family members.


    "It is one of the central reasons why the United States and its NATO allies are insisting that Gaddafi must be removed from power prior to any negotiated settlement of Libya’s ongoing civil war."

    Right. I recall a readers' discussion in a Danish newspaper about whether the war in Libya was justified. Somebody wrote "But have you forgotten what Gadaffi has done? He bombed the Lockerbie airplane..."
    The posting had 270 likes when I saw it, about 10 times more than any other.

    Attacking was is usually all about legitimizing robbery. Lockerbie was the perfect showcase, something everybody knew about. Very few ever spoke against it.

    Understandably. Speech was never free, it's that pressure thing again.

    This man admirably stood up against it.

    ReplyDelete