Mr. North, the "expert"

On "Liars!", Mr. North writes (bold mine):
In normal times I am uneasy about making such a direct accusations, but the quality of my own work, my own motivation and my good faith has been questioned, and even mocked by that patronising little slime Shane Richmond while his employers in The Daily Hezbollagraph have studiously avoided reporting on the Reuters photographs withdrawal. Meanwhile, the bulk of the US and UK media has gone into denial mode, hoping the issue will go away.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/liars.html

That's the problem of Mr. North. The quality is raw, the motivation questionable and the good faith mischievious. IMHO Mr. North is playing the very same game he accuses other people of. He also manipulates arbitrarly photos, creates his own interpretations and pushes his position to the verge. The only good thing on Mr. North is that events correlate with his story. Nothing else!

Could it be that Mr. North knew from the very start that "Green Helmet" was staging a dirty show for the press. Well, Mr. North is no little person. And, sincerly there's no need to be a big person. A phone call from a friend, the "I heard that...", and here you go. You have something on the sleeve.

Is that a good reason to start a campaign the way Mr. North may have done? A propaganda campaign so that things will be pushed to the verge and we all get the real facts? No, because the real story will be mixed with fantasy, with the speculations and the misconceptions. Besides, Mr. North's "good faith" is uberbiased and his "story" turns everyone into one side, his side of things. Which may not be even the side of his partners, partisans and supporters, considering the overdrive he did. And we get no "real story" at all. We get a mix between facts and fiction, seen over one side of the mirror. Which may have very serious repercussions for the future.

Some people may consider that the propaganda game, if it happened, had its results and "no one judges the winner". I heard such thigs before: "All means are good just if you get what you need". Or nearly all means for the politically correct. Yes, propaganda plays always dirty because, from the very start, it is dirty by its nature. And there's no way to change it and everyone of us, in one way or the other, conciously or not, have played it. But there should be limits. Or else everything becomes just words and nothing else. And there could be a moment when someone would wish that his words would not be taken as "just words". Even Mr. North. As such overdrives may bring us to the moment when "On this game the rules are that there are no rules at all".

My work, my motive and my good faith? My work is security expert, my motive... I saw how "experts" blew up a whole conflict out of nothing, much the same way Mr. North is overpushing things.

It happened quite long ago, however I discovered the real fact quite later. There was an accident. A small stupid and, by all levels, a terrible stupid accident. There were no guns, bombs knifes or even matches on it. Just a stupid crash. I was there so I know every detail of it. And I know that the accident didn't have anything related to any of the problems that were going back then. But the accident happened in the wrong place, the wrong time and with the wrong people. Things were already quite on the verge. And one stupid overpositioned expert, not knowing anything about it except the damage cried "terrorist act!". And he went even further by inventing the terrorists, the bomb and even the how much explosive it carried. Next day all the media was hysterical. It was an overdrive of extreme proportions. But that was the least of the worst. The worst was that other "experts" in some lost island, saw the overdrive, picked their own "story" and pushed it into some pitty politicians. In the end, the other side of the conflict got the money it wanted so much to push the conflict overboard.

Lots of people died on that conflict. Quite a lot. All because the Mr. Norths of that time were so prolific to draw a story based only on their pure fantasy and managed to push it to the media and politicians. Only several years later I discovered it because the one of the leaders of the enemy faction told in his memories that "there was a diversion, back then, and we got the money for it. However we really didn't know who really did it".

Someone may ask why people didn't stop it, if it was a simple and stupid accident. Well, try to stop the media when it goes overdrive. It's unstoppable. That was not the only case I saw, when the media blows a crisis out of nothing. In my life I had a few cases, truly, not related to armed conflicts, whatsoever, but quite serious btw.

The new war at Lebanon seems to have started also on overdrive. According to one intelligence think tank - Stratfor, it was not Hezbollah itself that picked the two israeli soldiers. It were some hot head hezbollites that decided to act by themselves. However things went nuts quite fast. Israel pushed things to the verge and Hezbollah leadership reacted by picking the blame for itself. Those guys are like that: "who doesn't love a good fight?". And we saw the start of the war.

And it seems that the whole war is about this: overdrive. Sides have been overdriving things overboard. And the media, the experts, Mr. North specially and his "alter-ego" Green Helmet are delivering everything overboard. Up to the point the masses are uberhysterical. A look at Internet is enough to see it.

Up to what point? When Syria, Iraq and Turkey will be on the mess? When Jordan and Egypt can not stay away out of the conflict? When Iran finally gets a reason to mess things up to a all-scale war? When any words will be "just words, nothing more?" When the only rules is no rules whatsoever?

My good faith? Well I am a Russian. Several years ago we had a damn Cold War going on. We sent spies to the US, lots of them. And the US tried to pick up the spies, lots of them. And we keep sending and they keep catching them. It was a conflict and everyone had its right to fight it. But, does that mean that Senator McCarthy had the right to do what he did, the way he did it?