Man muß von vorn anfangen

– nicht auf diesen lächerlichen Stalin hören, der seine Leute verrät, so schön, wie es sonst nur der Papst vermag.

Kurt Tucholsky an Arnold Zweig, Zürich, 15.Dezember 1935

Comment is free, but facts are sacred

by Charles Prestwich Scott (1921)

To celebrate the centenary of the Guardian and his 50th anniversary as editor, C. P. Scott wrote 'A Hundred Years' in 1921. The essay's famous sentence 'Comment is free, but facts are sacred' has endured as the ultimate statement of values for a free press. Source: guardian.co.uk
A hundred years is a long time; it is a long time even in the life of a newspaper, and to look back on it is to take in not only a vast development in the thing itself, but a great slice in the life of the nation, in the progress and adjustment of the world. In the general development the newspaper, as an institution, has played its part, and no small part, and the particular newspaper with which I personally am concerned has also played its part, it is to be hoped, not without some usefulness. I have had my share in it for a little more than 50 years; I have been its responsible editor for only a few months short of its last half-century; I remember vividly its 50th birthday; I now have the happiness to share in the celebration of its 100th. I can therefore speak of it with a certain intimacy of acquaintance. I have myself been part of it and entered into its inner courts. That is perhaps a reason why, on this occasion, I should write in my own name, as in some sort a spectator, rather than in the name of the paper as a member of its working staff.

In all living things there must be a certain unity, a principle of vitality and growth. It is so with a newspaper, and the more complete and clear this unity the more vigorous and fruitful the growth. I ask myself what the paper stood for when first I knew it, what it has stood for since and stands for now. A newspaper has two sides to it. It is a business, like any other, and has to pay in the material sense in order to live. But it is much more than a business; it is an institution; it reflects and it influences the life of a whole community; it may affect even wider destinies. It is, in its way, an instrument of government. It plays on the minds and consciences of men. It may educate, stimulate, assist, or it may do the opposite. It has, therefore, a moral as well as a material existence, and its character and influence are in the main determined by the balance of these two forces. It may make profit or power its first object, or it may conceive itself as fulfilling a higher and more exacting function.

C. P. Scott, 1920. Photograph by F. W. Schmidt

I think I may honestly say that, from the day of its foundation, there has not been much doubt as to which way the balance tipped as far as regards the conduct of the paper whose fine tradition I inherited and which I have had the honour to serve through all my working life. Had it not been so, personally, I could not have served it. Character is a subtle affair, and has many shades and sides to it. It is not a thing to be much talked about, but rather to be felt. It is the slow deposit of past actions and ideals. It is for each man his most precious possession, and so it is for that latest growth of time, the newspaper. Fundamentally it implies honesty, cleanness, courage, fairness, a sense of duty to the reader and the community. A newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred. "Propaganda", so called, by this means is hateful. The voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard. Comment also is justly subject to a self-imposed restraint. It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair. This is an ideal. Achievement in such matters is hardly given to man. We can but try, ask pardon for shortcomings, and there leave the matter.

But, granted a sufficiency of grace, to what further conquests may we look, what purpose serve, what task envisage? It is a large question, and cannot be fully answered. We are faced with a new and enormous power and a growing one. Whither is the young giant tending? What gifts does he bring? How will he exercise his privilege and powers? What influence will he exercise on the minds of men and on our public life? It cannot be pretended that an assured and entirely satisfactory answer can be given to such questions. Experience is in some respects disquieting. The development has not been all in the direction which we should most desire. One of the virtues, perhaps almost the chief virtue, of a newspaper is its independence. Whatever its position or character, at least it should have a soul of its own. But the tendency of newspapers, as of other businesses, in these days is towards amalgamation. In proportion, as the function of a newspaper has developed and its organisation expanded, so have its costs increased. The smaller newspapers have had a hard struggle; many of them have disappeared. In their place we have great organisations controlling a whole series of publications of various kinds and even of differing or opposing politics. The process may be inevitable, but clearly there are drawbacks. As organisation grows personality may tend to disappear. It is much to control one newspaper well; it is perhaps beyond the reach of any man, or any body of men, to control half a dozen with equal success. It is possible to exaggerate the danger, for the public is not undiscerning. It recognises the authentic voices of conscience and conviction when it finds them, and it has a shrewd intuition of what to accept and what to discount.

This is a matter which in the end must settle itself, and those who cherish the older ideal of a newspaper need not be dismayed. They have only to make their papers good enough in order to win, as well as to merit, success, and the resources of a newspaper are not wholly measured in pounds, shillings, and pence. Of course the thing can only be done by competence all round, and by that spirit of co-operation right through the working staff which only a common ideal can inspire.

There are people who think you can run a newspaper about as easily as you can poke a fire, and that knowledge, training, and aptitude are superfluous endowments. There have even been experiments on this assumption, and they have not met with success. There must be competence, to start with, on the business side, just as there must be in any large undertaking, but it is a mistake to suppose that the business side of a paper should dominate, as sometimes happens, not without distressing consequences. A newspaper, to be of value, should be a unity, and every part of it should equally understand and respond to the purposes and ideals which animate it. Between its two sides there should be a happy marriage, and editor and business manager should march hand in hand, the first, be it well understood, just an inch or two in advance. Of the staff, much the same thing may be said. They should be a friendly company. They need not, of course, agree on every point, but they should share in the general purpose and inheritance. A paper is built up upon their common and successive labours, and their work should never be task work, never merely dictated. They should be like a racing boat's crew, pulling well together, each man doing his best because he likes it, and with a common and glorious goal.

That is the path of self-respect and pleasure; it is also the path of success. And what a work it is! How multiform, how responsive to every need and every incident of life! What illimitable possibilities of achievement and of excellence! People talk of "journalese" as though a journalist were of necessity a pretentious and sloppy writer; he may be, on the contrary, and very often is, one of the best in the world. At least he should not be content to be much less. And then the developments. Every year, almost every day, may see growth and fresh accomplishments, and with a paper that is really alive, it not only may, but does. Let anyone take a file of this paper, or for that matter any one of half a dozen other papers, and compare its whole make-up and leading features today with what they were five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and he will realise how large has been the growth, how considerable the achievement. And this is what makes the work of a newspaper worthy and interesting. It has so many sides, it touches life at so many points, at every one there is such possibility on improvement and excellence. To the man, whatever his place on the paper, whether on the editorial or business, or even what may be regarded as the mechanical side - this also vitally important in its place - nothing should satisfy short of the best, and the best must always seem a little ahead of the actual. It is here that ability counts and that character counts, and it is on these that a newspaper, like every great undertaking, if it is to be worthy of its power and duty, must rely.

Kapuscinskis Kamera

Eine Auswahl von Fotos des polnischen Reporters und Schriftstellers Ryszard Kapuscinski, http://www.greengallery.pl/page14/page14.html

U.S. Tanks Will Roll out of Iraq on a Road Paved with Excuses

by Robert Fisk, Beirut

Published on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Washington)

"Great news from America!" the cashier at my local Beirut bookshop shouted at me the other morning, raising her thumbs in the air. "Things will be better after these elections?" Alas, I said. Alas, no. Things are going to get worse in the Middle East even if, in two years' time, the U.S. is blessed with a Democrat (and democratic) president.

For the disastrous philosophers behind the bloodbath in Iraq are now washing their hands of the whole mess and crying "Not Us!" with the same enthusiasm as the Lebanese lady in my book shop, while the "experts" on the mainstream U.S. East Coast press are preparing the ground for our Iraqi retreat -- by blaming it all on those greedy, blood-lusting, anarchic, depraved, uncompromising Iraqis.

I must say Richard Perle's version of a mea culpa did take my breath away. Here was the ex-chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee -- he who once said, "Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform" -- admitting he "underestimated the depravity" in Iraq. He holds the president responsible, of course, acknowledging only that -- and here, dear reader, swallow hard -- "I think if I had been Delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said: 'Should we go into Iraq?' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies ... ' "

Maybe I find this self-righteous, odious mea culpa all the more objectionable because the same miserable man was shouting abuse down a radio line to me in Baghdad a couple of years ago, condemning me for claiming that the U.S. was losing its war in Iraq and claiming that I was "a supporter of the maintenance of the Baathist regime." That lie, I might add, was particularly malicious as I was reporting Saddam's mass rapes and mass hangings at Abu Ghraib prison when Perle and his cohorts were silent about Saddam's wickedness and when their chum Donald Rumsfeld was cheerfully shaking the monster's hand in Baghdad in an attempt to reopen the U.S. embassy there.

Not that Perle isn't in good company. Kenneth Adelman, the Pentagon neocon who also beat the drums for war, has been telling Vanity Fair that "the idea of using our power for moral good in the world" is dead. As for Adelman's mate David Frumm, well he's decided that President Bush just "did not absorb the ideas" behind the speeches Frumm wrote for him. But this, I'm afraid, is not the worst to come from those who encouraged us to invade Iraq and start a war that has cost the lives of 600,000 civilians.

For a new phenomenon is creeping into the pages of The New York Times and those other great organs of state in the U.S. For those journalists who supported the war, it's not enough to bash Bush. No, they've got a new flag to fly: The Iraqis don't deserve us. David Brooks -- he who once told us that neocons such as Perle had nothing to do with the president's decision to invade Iraq -- has been ransacking his way through Elie Kedourie's 1970 essay on the British occupation of Mesopotamia in the 1920s. And what has he discovered? That "the British tried to encourage responsible leadership to no avail," quoting a British officer at the time as concluding that Iraqi Shiites "have no motive for refraining from sacrificing the interests of Iraq to those which they conceive to be their own."

But the Brooks article in The New York Times was also frightening. Iraq, he now informs us, is suffering "a complete social integration" and "American blunders" were exacerbated "by the same old Iraqi demons: greed, blood lust and a mind-boggling unwillingness to compromise, even in the face of self-immolation." Iraq, Brooks has decided, is "teetering on the edge of futility" and if U.S. troops cannot restore order, "it will be time to effectively end Iraq," diffusing authority down to "the clan, the tribe or sect" which -- wait for it -- are "the only communities which are viable."

Nor should you believe that the Brooks article represents a lone voice.

Here is Ralph Peters, a USA Today writer and retired U.S. Army officer. He had supported the invasion because, he says, he was "convinced that the Middle East was so politically, socially, morally and intellectually stagnant that we (sic) had to risk intervention -- or face generations of terrorism and tumult." For all Washington's errors, Peters boasts, "we did give the Iraqis a unique chance to build a rule-of-law democracy."

But those pesky Iraqis, it now seems, "preferred to indulge in old hatreds, confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and a culture of corruption." Peters' conclusion? "Arab societies can't support democracy as we know it." As a result, "it's their tragedy, not ours. Iraq was the Arab world's last chance to board the train to modernity, to give the region a future ..." Incredibly, Peters finishes by believing that "if the Arab world and Iran embark on an orgy of bloodshed, the harsh truth is that we may be the beneficiaries" because Iraq will have "consumed" "terrorists" and the United States will "still be the greatest power on Earth."

It's not the shamefulness of all this -- do none of these men have any shame? -- but the racist assumption that the hecatomb in Iraq is all the fault of the Iraqis, that their intrinsic backwardness, their viciousness, their failure to appreciate the fruits of our civilization make them unworthy of our further attention. At no point does anyone question whether the fact that the U.S. is "the greatest power on Earth" might not be part of the problem. Nor that Iraqis who endured among their worst years of dictatorship when Saddam was supported by the United States, who were sanctioned by the United Nations at a cost of a half a million children's lives and who were then brutally invaded by our armies, might not actually be terribly keen on all the good things we wished to offer them.

Many Arabs, as I've written before, would like some of our democracy, but they would also like another kind of freedom -- freedom from us.

But you get the point. We are preparing our get-out excuses. The Iraqis don't deserve us. Screw them. That's the grit we're laying down on the desert floor to help our tanks out of Iraq.


Robert Fisk writes from the Middle East for The Independent of Britain.

© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Das 9/11-Paradox

Unmittelbar nach den Anschlägen vom 11. September 2001 standen nicht nur die US-Amerikaner, sondern die gesamte "freie Welt" weitgehend hinter diesem obskuren Präsidenten, über den ich seinerzeit (am 16.09.01) notierte: "Gestern noch ein Wahlbetrüger - ein Sohnemann ohne Charisma - heute turnt er mit Bomberjacke und Megaphon auf dem großen Trümmerhaufen. Sieht aus, als hätten sie das Ding extra für ihn gesprengt. Plötzlich ist er der Führer der freien Welt."

Bush visits Ground Zero 2001/09/14

In der Tat waren Bush, seine Neocons sowie Sharon und die israelische Rechte die großen 9/11-Gewinnler - ganz im Gegensatz zu Bin Laden und Al-Qaida. Damals - als man gar nichts anderes tun wie spekulieren konnte - hätte sich die Frage, ob diese offenkundigen Nutznießer nicht auch irgendeine Aktie an der Sache haben könnten, geradezu aufgedrängt. Sei es vielleicht nicht unbedingt, daß sie den Coup bewusst organisiert hatten, wohl auch nicht genau wussten, was da auf sie zukäme ... - aber denkbar war, daß die Dienste durchaus Informationen hatten, dass Al-Qaida ein größeres Ding plante, und man die Sache - in Unkenntnis des Ausmaßes, aber auch in der Erwartung, daß es sich in der damaligen politischen Lage nicht schlecht machen würde - einfach laufen ließ. Obwohl diese Fragen damals naheliegend waren, wurden sie kaum gestellt.

Fünf Jahre nach den Terroranschlägen auf das World Trade Center vom 11. September 2001 glauben laut einer Umfrage (Mai 2006) 42 Prozent der US-Amerikaner, dass die Bush-Regierung und die 9/11-Kommission Dinge im Zusammenhang mit den Anschlägen verbergen. Nach einer Studie der Ohio-Universität gehen außerdem knapp 36 Prozent der US-Bevölkerung davon aus, dass Regierungsstellen den Terroristen halfen oder zumindest nichts unternahmen, um sie zu stoppen. (Quelle: Spiegel Online)

Was auf den ersten Blick aussieht wie ein Aufschwung kritischen Denkens, stellt sich bei genauerem Hinsehen nur als eine weitere Stufe seines Niedergangs dar.

Der Großteil jener, die die offizielle Story nicht mehr glauben, scheinen nun stattdessen bereit, alles mögliche zu glauben. Sie glauben Bush nicht mehr - aber nicht weil sie eine andere plausible Version der Story haben oder seine Politik durchschaut haben - sondern schlicht, weil er ein Loser ist.

Bush after congressional elections 2006/11/15

Bush hat verloren. Wenn die Dinge im Irak und in Afghanistan besser laufen würden, gäbe es erheblich weniger "9/11-Truther".

Der Markt der Verschwörungstheorien boomt. Bemerkenswert ist das infantile Niveau, auf dem hier wichtig getan wird. In Deutschland sind es vor allem drei Autoren, die dieses Geschäftsfeld beackern: Mathias Bröckers, Andreas von Bülow und Gerhard Wisnewski.

Alle drei sind klassische Verschwörungstheoretiker, obgleich sie sich selbst natürlich als investigative Journalisten sehen. Doch dazu fehlen ihnen die grundlegendsten Fertigkeiten; alle drei beweisen schlichtweg schlechtes Handwerk und der Aufklärung der Geschehnisse um den 11. September einen schlechten Dienst, indem sie immer mehr und mehr Schichten unschlüssiger Hypothesen, schlecht belegter Behauptungen und dilettantisch recherchierter "Fakten" anhäufen, eine gewaltige Halde widersprüchlicher Belanglosigkeiten, durch die sich der Historiker - wie durch den Wust der amtlichen Propaganda - hindurchwühlen muss, wenn er zum Kern der Dinge durchstoßen will.

Hingegen ist es eine offenkundige, unbestreitbare Tatsache,

daß ohne freie, ungehemmte Presse, ohne ungehindertes Vereins- und Versammlungsleben gerade die Herrschaft breiter Volksmassen völlig undenkbar ist.

Rosa Luxemburg, Die russische Revolution

Quelle: Politische Schriften, Band 3, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt a. Main, 1968, Seite 106- 141

Steiermark (Styria), westlicher Balkan. Oktober 2006

Anfang Oktober flogen wir nach Wien, aber das war nicht das eigentliche Ziel unserer Reise, vielmehr ging es in die tiefste Steiermark, einen Landstrich, der geographisch wie kulturell irgendwo zwischen Slowenien und Niederbayern liegt.

Anlaß der Reise war eine Familienfeier in Trog-Viertelfeistritz (sic!) bei Anger im Regierungsbezirk Weiz vierzig Kilometer nördlich von Graz. Auf die näheren Umstände des Zustandekommens dieser Festivität kann ich an dieser Stelle aus verschiedenen, darunter Platzgründen nicht eingehen, nur soviel: Soweit uns bekannt ist, haben wir keinerlei Verwandtschaft in dieser Weltgegend.

Jedenfalls entschieden wir uns, nun, da wir schon mal auf dem Balkan waren, noch ein paar Tage ranzuhängen. Wie sich zeigte, war das die richtige Entscheidung.


Ich bin ja ohnehin ein großer Freund von Expeditionen in die Provinz, und wir hatten ein einfaches, aber sehr angenehmes Quartier in einem Nebengebäude auf dem Hof vom Bergbauern Karli bezogen ...

 
... zwischen zwei Steyr (!)-Traktoren-Hangars, Futtersilos, Kuhstall und einem lebensgroßen Herrn Jesus am Kreuz, den unser Sohn ziemlich scharfsinnig (wohl wegen der rotgepinselten Speerwunde am Thorax) auf den Namen "Mann Aua" taufte.

Faszinierend fand ich, daß in dieser sehr netten Familie drei bzw. zwei Generationen konsequent Karl und Rosi hießen: Opa, Vater und Sohn sowie Mutter und Großmutter. Hier ein Foto von Opa Karl und Oma Rosi beim täglichen Vormittagsspaziergang.

Die ersten dreivier Tage unserer Reise waren ein bißchen hektisch. Nach der, recht urigen, Feier fuhren wir Brittas Eltern nach Wien zum Bahnhof und übernachteten bei ihrer Jugo-Verwandschaft, Cousine Rada und Ehemann Doca, im 20. Bezirk, Webergasse Ecke Wallensteinstraße, gleich am Donaukanal. "Ähnlich Kreuzberg", meinte T. O.

Die Serbenmischpoke war lustig, aber auch etwas anstrengend. Absinth zum Frühstück, abends um zehn Kaffee. Am nächsten Tag gegen Mittag leiteten wir den Rücksturz nach Süden ein. Allerdings klaute ich Brittas entferntem Schwager - der mich mit seinen politischen Theorien ein bißchen genervt hatte (die Serben hatten in Jugoslawien nie was zu melden gehabt, Tito war Kroate, Milosevics Vater oder Großvater kam wahrscheinlich aus Montenegro ... Das hatte ich alles schon mal in Rumänien gehört: Ceaucescu war nämlich in Wirklichkeit Zigeuner)- seinen ÖVP-Kugelschreiber.

Obwohl es ein bißchen schade war, nicht mehr von Wien zu sehen, waren wir doch ganz froh, drei Stunden später wieder in der steirischen Provinz einzutrudeln. Die Sonne schien, tagsüber konnte man sich noch einen Sonnenbrand holen, während es nachts schon unter Null fiel. Aber allabendlich zwischen sechs und sieben schüttete Bauer Karli Briketts auf, und die Zentralheizung verströmte wohlige Wärme.

Jetzt hatten wir viel Platz und Ruhe, außerdem einen kleinen angemieteten Nissan Micra, mit dem wir das Gelände erkunden konnten. Das ist zwar nicht herausragend, aber doch beachtlich. Das Leben spielt sich zwischen 600 und 1800 Metern über Seehöhe ab. Fährst Du zwanzig Kilometer nach Nordwesten wird's alpin ...

... fährst Du zehn Kilometer nach Südosten, kommst Du in ein Weinbaugebiet wie auf der Schwäbischen Alb mit lustigen "Buschenschänken", wo Du für kleines Geld deftig essen und trinken und nebenbei die Aussicht genießen kannst.

Überhaupt kann ich die Agrarprodukte der näheren Umgebung nur empfehlen. Alle möglichen geräucherten, oder wie sie hier sagen: "geselchten", Schweinereien, oder - um bei den vegetarischen zu bleiben ...

... und natürlich Kürbiskernöl. Außerdem wissen sie, wie man Brot bäckt.

Naja, so sind wir ein bißchen umhergestreift und haben's uns gut gehen lassen.

Alles in allem habe ich meine Vorurteile ein bißchen korrigieren müssen. Ich dachte ja bislang, die Bergrepublik wäre - zwar nicht politisch aber doch mental - mehr oder weniger ein Überbleibsel von Adolfs Gröfaz' drittem Reich. Aber seit ich den Wahlkampfslogan der FPÖ: "Daham statt Islam" gehört habe, finde ich die Ösis doch sehr putzig.