"The Crowning Attainment of Historical Study" - David Aaronovitch on the Death of Osama bin Laden

THE TIMES | Tuesday May 10 2011

Times Modern, pp4-5

Bin Laden dead? Only in theory

With the death of Osama bin Laden, the conspiracy theorists have mined a rich vein of incredulity. Yet, asks David Aaronovitch, are the internet and 24-hour   news channels making us all susceptible to exotic disbelief

What Americans now "needed" to do, the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner told Radio 5 listeners on Saturday night, was to match the newly released video of a blanketed Osama bin Laden watching TV with the rooms in the house where he was killed. And to do it so that we could all see. That was what was required.

But, the sceptical soul demands, why would President Obama and company "need" to do any such odd thing? Might such "proof" be of assistance to the US in fighting the remnants of al-Qaeda? Hard to see how. Or could it help to reassure the world community — some of whom seem to believe that bin Laden should have been taken as though he were a local villain being apprehended by the parish plod — that the killing was justified? Nope.

Sceptical? What is the scepticism about here? Sceptical about what Obama "needs" to do? That's a funny kind of thing to claim scepticism about; more a practical matter than one of belief. Or is the scepticism about there being any necessity to provide evidence? Again, that's a funny thing to be sceptical about. It's almost a one-liner: You say we should not believe things without evidence, but I'm sceptical. (You can have that one for your next dinner party.)

I think it's really a matter of the 'sceptical soul' - that is the person who is by nature a sceptic - and I think Aaronovitch is suggesting that scepticism is relevant here because - you guessed it - he's about to go off on another sneering binge, in which he and the rest of the quietists are, despite appearances, sceptical by nature, while the rest of us are flaky weirdos with fixed ideas.

Gardner's concern was not, in fact, connected with the practicalities or ethics of what we may not any longer call the War on Terror. His advice was aimed at quieting the idea that it wasn't bin Laden who was shot that night in Abbottabad, or that if it was bin Laden he was already dead, or any of the other exotic conspiracy theories that started almost the instant the news broke.

The fact that Aaronovitch has chosen Frank Gardner, of all people, to upbraid for conceding too much to the shabby basement-dwellers illustrates just how implacable his demand for orthodoxy is. And see how the sceptical stance 'account of covert op not to be trusted' has been transformed into a positive thesis - that what actually happened was one of (x,y,z...), that is, anything incompatible with the official account, including its bare denial. In other words, the rejection of a claim has been presented as a family of positive assertions, the only common component of which is of course the rejection of the claim. Thus scepticism becomes credulity, credulity scepticism. Voodoo Bollocks!

Read more »

These Are Secrecy, Not Privacy Laws.(+ Aaronovitch on sexual frugality)

The big problem with recent developments in common law 'privacy' protection is that they are happening under the rubric of the tort of breach of confidence. They are thus highly likely to be used by corporations to press even further the absurd degree of 'commercial confidentiality' and even 'taxpayer confidentiality' that they already enjoy, and which helps to obscure the workings of what is now in effect the ruling class.

Once precedents and principles have been set by personal privacy cases, they are likely to be used by corporate lawyers. Given the huge resources at the disposal of big corporations, they can afford to wait for favourable cases, then press their advantage to the full. An example of one such principle is the idea that confidentiality can be owed to someone you've never had anything to do with before, rather than resting on a duty that emerges from some particular relationship.

Talking of 'privacy' law as protecting corporations and other impersonal entities is of course quite out of place. Describing laws about what may be published, however the information was obtained, as being about privacy rather than secrecy is somewhat strained too. I tend to think of privacy as being concerned with such issues as freedom from intrusive surveillance, spying and indeed phone hacking, which is a criminal matter apart from anything else. I'm not sure I've made out an utterly clear distinction here, but I think there is one to be made which is of some importance.

The recent civil actions that have carved out the new doctrines have tended to rely not solely on the tort of confidentiality as extended in reponse to the HRA and Convention, but also on such actual invasions of privacy. This tends to muddy the waters, since the 'anti-invasive' conception of privacy undoubtedly has an influence on what is seen by the judge as the desirable outcome, but given the prior state of the common law and an incremental approach to developing it, the legal doctrines enunciated in their decisions tend to fall on the secrecy/confidentiality side of the distinction.

Read more »

Aaronovitch, Lies - a retraction

In my last post, David Aaronovitch: expert on lies, I stated that Aaronovitch's 2005 article we weren't lied to was "bollocks". It has come to my attention that this is a misleading statement.

Andrew Watt, of the voluminous and absorbing Chilcot's Cheating Us blog has pointed out that in fact the article is Voodoo Bollocks.

I acknowledge that while I did not intend to mislead, this was a half-truth which might have given an inaccurate impression, and that Dr Watt is entirely correct in his observations.

I am therefore glad to accord this correction prominence commensurate with that of the original statement.

I had considered merely appending a little footnote somewhere unobtrusive, perhaps even including a dismissive remark instructing the reader to conclude that it doesn't affect my main argument. I might even have adopted the common technique of silently editing the post, or the less common one of just deleting the original while avoiding embarrassing 'page not found' errors by substituting a blank page. However, not being a paid journalist, I can afford some professional ethics.

Apologies to both of my readers. I should have been more careful.

UPDATE 29 May 2011:

via Jay Rosen, via Crooked Timber: the most spurious and creepy retraction I've come across yet.

As reported by the Washington Times
:
John DiIulio, the former director of the White House faith-based initiative office, yesterday apologized for saying that President Bush's domestic priorities are determined exclusively by political considerations.

Using words uttered hours earlier by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who called Mr. DiIulio's remarks in the January edition of Esquire magazine "baseless and groundless," the first high-ranking Bush official to leave the administration asked for forgiveness and vowed never to speak or write again about his short White House stint.

"My criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. I sincerely apologize and I am deeply remorseful," Mr. DiIulio said in a statement.

David Aaronovitch: expert on lies

Accountability depends on long memories. Alistair Campbell's performance over the Iraq war was transparently mendacious to rather a lot of us, but it's apparently only now, at a comfortable temporal distance, after he has 'moved on' and nothing is likely to be done about it, that his lies on behalf of the Blair government are being nailed down.

Major-General Michael Laurie, a former intelligence official involved in the dossier that's not already known as 'dodgy' and which was defended so passionately by 'tears on tap' Campbell has recently given evidence to the Chilcot inquiry:

In written evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Maj-Gen Laurie rejected Mr Campbell's claim that the dossier was not intended to make the case for war: "This was exactly its purpose and these very words were used."

Among former and current members of the BBC news department, the comments were received yesterday with mixed feelings that combined a sense of vindication with anger at the way the organisation's journalism has been treated. Mr Marsh said he was unhappy with the implications by Lord Hutton in his 2004 report that the staff on Today had shown a lack of professionalism. "This vindicates our position and shows Hutton was wrong in criticising Andrew, criticising me and criticising the Today team," he said. "Just flat wrong." Rod Liddle, a former Today editor who hired Mr Gilligan, said: "These comments tell us what we knew already – that the BBC told the truth, Gilligan told the truth and Alastair Campbell's outrage was confected and it was a lie."

While we're revisiting old lies, it's worth having a quick shufti at what David Aaronovitch had to say about the dossier and the wider case (such as it was) for war. After all, Aaronovitch certainly seems to consider himself an authority on who is or isn't lying, as the ex cathedra pronouncements throughout his voodoo theories book bear witness.

So his expert opinion on this little matter? We weren't lied to.

That's bollocks of course, but perhaps Aaronovitch suffered from the same problem that, if he is to be believed, afflicted the Blair government: The government didn't deceive anybody over Iraq and WMD, but was misled itself. I couldn't possibly comment - let the reader be the judge.

Read more »

Hysteria for Women, or: What has Julian Assange got that David Aaronovitch hasn't?

So did Wikileaks really help spark the Tunisian revolt? Probably. I think commenter 'eleny' on some messageboard I was looking at had it right:

"Maybe people believed that there was corruption. But when they had concrete examples in the words of their leaders it infuriated the citizenry."

Believing is one thing but knowing is all important. And facts appear to be what WikiLeaks provides.

Secrecy, its degrees and varieties and its penumbra of deniability and doubt, is a favourite topic in these my sporadic and desultory remarks. I haven't attempted anything approaching thorough investigation or analysis of the situation in Tunisia, but the idea that a credible source certifying previously penumbral factoids can catalyse latent resentment seems fairly plausible to me. (One aspect is the idea that publicity provides a standard around which previously private opinion can rally, as in the Emperor's New Clothes parable.)

But letting that issue dangle unargued, I'll turn instead to the burning question of the moment: what would Serious Political Analyst and unwonted but determined Radio 4 colonist David Aaronovitch have to say about this? I don't know the answer to that either, which is probably good for the old equanimity. I imagine he subscribes to one of the 'power to the people as long as they do what we want' arguments that have emerged among the neocons and all the usual suspects, but again, I don't actually know, and don't intend coughing up whatever it costs to find out.

What I do know, though, thanks to a recent foraging expedition among some old chip wrappers, is what Aaronovitch was writing about Wikileaks in his Times column a few months ago. And in light of some evidence that Wikileaks is capable of having a role in some pretty spectacular and broadly welcome events, it seems worth looking at what he was saying then in some detail.

The Times, Thursday December 9 2010, Opinion, p33

This is no Robin Hood. They were our secrets

The Assangeists don't trust the State to run foreign or defence policy. So why do they trust it to run everything else?

David Aaronovitch

I had the same conversation half a dozen times yesterday in different forms and on different media. Wasn't there something strangely "convenient" about the legal process under way to investigate sexual allegations against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks? What this must mean, if anything, is this: is there some kind of plot whereby Mr Assange's enemies have somehow procured these charges to silence him? In other words the Yanks have secretly (ha!) leant on the Swedes, the Swedes have silently manipulated two women, and there we are, halfway to the fourth Stieg Larsson novel, The Girl with the Badly Constructed Condom.

Aaronovitch has approximated accuracy here: what people were saying - huge numbers of people who are not normally interested in observing conspiratorial behaviour - is that Mr Assange's enemies have had a hand in these charges. But not necessarily to silence him - perhaps to spoil his attempt to gain permanent residence in Sweden, perhaps to taint his reputation, perhaps to hobble, disrupt or undermine the work of Wikileaks, and perhaps of course - watch this space - in order to get him into custody while they decide on the best way to inveigle him into the US penal system or its Kafkaesque shadowland. The latest development in the extradition proceedings against Assange have an irrelevant magistrate giving his decision (against Assange), in the certain knowledge that appeal proceedings will begin with his words still hanging in the air. [Edit: since that was written, a District Judge has taken the appeals procedure another unedifying step closer to exhaustion.]

Anyone who is interested in the motivation and merits of the action taken against Assange by Swedish prosecutors can find plenty of material on the web; I'm not going to analyse it in detail here. One can certainly say, though, that these suspicions are not exactly tinfoil-hat territory - the US is indisputably out to get Assange, the charges are incredibly dubious on a large number of counts, and the announcement that Assange had surrendered to custody was followed with amazing swiftness by an announcement from the US state department that they 'may' seek to extradite Mr Assange - out of the Anglo-Swedish frying pan and directly into the inferno, Stateside.

Aaronovitch does his best to isolate a weak and paranoid-sounding strand from the web of evidence: so his chosen quote is "convenient" ( not that he is necessarily quoting any actual words he has actually heard, of course). "Isn't this a bit convenient?", as in 'isn't it convenient for the international Jewish Illuminati that this earthquake should keep the West Kettering UFO Working Group's inaugural conference and buffet off the front pages?'. The idea is to suggest a very weak circumstantial case, one so weak that it can only be hinted at. But Aaronovitch is really pushing it here - not many are going to fall for his Emperor's New Clothes schtick this time. Avert your eyes, gentle reader, for the Grand Panjandrum Aaronovitch stands before us, naked and quivering with indignation. (My concern is not of course to spare his ample blushes, but to save you from a disturbing and, I fear, indelible image.)

Read more »

The Week in Tinfoil : Conspiracy Theory News in the UK, Aug 22-29 2010

...being a rundown of recent news stories involving allegations of conspiratorial behaviour, and of 'conspiracy theorising'. Maybe not the best day to do it, since I haven't had a chance to check all the Sunday papers, but still. I'm thinking Faraday Sunday might become a regular feature.

I'm hoping commenters can point out any errors or omissions; if so, I'll update appropriately.

Read more »

Spurious Retraction Syndrome (or: do you really want to say it's straight out of a textbook?): Dr Hunt on Dr Kelly

There have been a few remarks about recent statements in the press by one of the pathologists in the Kelly case, Nicholas Hunt. Unfortunately Hunt chose the Sunday Times to speak to, so the first edit of his interview is behind the Murdoch paywall. angrysoba provided this excerpt from the Mail:

Dr Hunt says he found up to a dozen cuts on Dr Kelly's wrist, each around 2in to 3in long, one of which opened the ulnar artery. 'Some cuts were very shallow, some were deeper and deeper, which is typical of someone feeling their way. You have a knife, apply light pressure and realise that it actually takes a bit more effort and you get more bold as your resolve increases. It's one of the classic features of self-inflicted injury.' He adds that there was clear evidence Dr Kelly repeatedly dislodged clots or scabs to ensure he continued bleeding. 'His wrist was red so he must have been doing this for some time.'

which is notable for the fact that Hunt says some cuts were shallow, others 'deeper and deeper', thus implying what appears pretty implausible: that he was able to observe the order in which the cuts were made. Of course, the multiple cuts tend to indicate a suicide and progressively deeper cuts - but it's just a small example of the importation of conclusions into descriptions of data (see 'read-ahead', below).

A few other points:

Read more »

Piss, Wind and Twittery: Aaronovitch lashes out

More Twittering from Aaronovitch in the last hour or so, in reply to an interlocutor called Bensix. (I've removed all the twittery bits, placed 'tweets' in order, and joined them where they are clearly intended to be continuous):

BENSIX: Tim Wilkinson vs. @DAaronovitch...http://tinyurl.com/37vbrkn

DA: Yes, I particularly like the bit where Wilkinson suggests that Tom Mangold is a security service agent. Thanks for the spot.

Read more »

Aaronovitch twitters, the world titters: more on David Kelly

Aaronovitch twitters:

Have just noticed that the police off. whose 'revelations' on Kelly were written up as new in Mail, had said it all in testimony to Hutton.

DC Coe's Evidence is easy to check- it takes just over 4 pages of the 112 generated by a 2¾-hour session, which I calculate to represent about five or six minutes.

Read more »

Piss and Wind: David Aaronovitch on the death of David Kelly

…in Saturday’s Times (August 14, 2010)

There is no mystery over David Kelly's death proclaims the headline. Well, in one sense you might say that: no mystery, no esoteric ineffables, no transcendent unknown. Of course that is not the sense in which the headline is supposed to be taken – not officially – but it sounds a lot more plausible than ‘no room for doubt’, ‘no stone left unturned’ or ‘no unresolved issues’.

Because whether or not the uncritical reader might assent to the absence of ‘mystery’, there remains the small matter of a suspicious death and a flagrant failure to investigate it. There’s a stiltedness about ‘no mystery over’, too, perhaps suggesting that ‘mystery’ might have been substituted for some other word – but it's a bit early for idle speculation.

The lead line summarises Aaronovitch’s argument admirably:

A body, a knife, pills, a cut wrist - conspiracy theorists and campaigning doctors must accept the truth

Simple, hardheaded and tinfoil-free. No brains falling out of too-open minds here. Simple, like a stick figure.

A principle of simplicity in explanation is all very well as a tie-breaker between otherwise equivalent propositions, though its status is as much a matter of convenience as anything, and it is in practice irrelevant outside philosophical ontology and the most abstract reaches of theoretical science. Aaronovitch’s approach is more radical – simplicity of explanation actually justifies ending empirical inquiry, even dismissing great swathes of information. The difficult and complex data - the shading and sketchmarks that crowd Aaronovitch's stick figure - are banished, wiped away by a powerful new implement - Occam’s Eraser.

Every six months or so since 2004, a group of doctors or "medical experts" has written to the newspapers calling, in effect, for a new inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, who died seven years ago this summer. Yesterday's letter in The Times, which received significant coverage, was different in so far as the names were mostly new, and the qualifications were more relevant. The content, however, was much the same.

Aaronovitch must get a really good discount on scare-quotes. I haven't been following the letters pages, but I doubt very much that Aaronovitch can produce an instance of a false claim to medical expertise. On the contrary, all those I've heard expressing doubt of the official narrative on medical grounds have been careful not to misrepresent their expertise, for example the first paramedics on the scene: "we're not medical experts. All we commented on was the amount of blood…"

Note "calling, in effect [i.e. not actually] for a new inquest": there was no inquest. By a peculiar and highly irregular process, the original inquest was adjourned since it was to await the outcome of the Hutton inquiry. This was odd since the relevant provision (the Coroners Act 1988 s17A(1)) was intended for mass deaths, and previous invocations had always been accompanied by a proper statutory public inquiry, not some half-baked setup like the Hutton job. In fact the coroner initially expressed what appeared to be disquiet at the informal nature of the proposed inquiry, in particular the lack of essential subpoena powers. Further, Hutton's terms of reference (‘circumstances surrounding the death’) seemed designed to look at anything but the matter in hand, which is indeed what it did, being largely a vehicle for Alistair Campbell to fuck (as he would say) the BBC.

But the key to the Hutton stitch-up was a really flagrant move: the inquest, having been adjourned pending the outcome of the inquiry, was reopened and the coroner leant on to perform the most cursory - token – inquiry, which was for all practical purposes conducted in secrecy. It was from this hurried and clearly inadequate source that a final death certificate emanated, which was then treated by Hutton as establishing suicide.

Read more »