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So I get back from Faro in Portugal after two days of intensive train travelling and....I pick up my newspaper (as you do) and read about Transocean and their...um small part in the Deepwater Horizon meltdown.
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/23/deepwater-horizon-oil-rig-alarms
Then I read about folk in the Senate Foreign Relations committee trying to get a serving Scottish Minister of State to appear at one of their inquiries about Al Megrahi's release having something to do with BP lobbying, because linking the two things together is of course only natural if you don't know about Scotland having its own laws and you think that BP is an arm of the British Government.
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/24/megrahi-constitutional-illiteracy
Oops.
Now Brits get this sort of thing wrong too, as the article points out: but I wonder if, for example, a foreign (say Scottish) public committee hearing (something like the Senatorial committee) had requested a serving US Minister of State to testify about the links between the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the USS Vincennes, and the blowing up of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, what sort of response they would be given?
Sometimes I think that skillful juxtaposition is enough to convict, especially when the public is in lynching mode. After all, it's more fun than getting to the facts. Though actually, given that the Scots release of Al Megrahi was to do with Scottish Law and the Scottish Parliament, one set of links seems significantly more tenuous than the other.
But what do other folk think?
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talk_politics
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/23/deepwater-horizon-oil-rig-alarms
Then I read about folk in the Senate Foreign Relations committee trying to get a serving Scottish Minister of State to appear at one of their inquiries about Al Megrahi's release having something to do with BP lobbying, because linking the two things together is of course only natural if you don't know about Scotland having its own laws and you think that BP is an arm of the British Government.
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/24/megrahi-constitutional-illiteracy
Oops.
Now Brits get this sort of thing wrong too, as the article points out: but I wonder if, for example, a foreign (say Scottish) public committee hearing (something like the Senatorial committee) had requested a serving US Minister of State to testify about the links between the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the USS Vincennes, and the blowing up of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, what sort of response they would be given?
Sometimes I think that skillful juxtaposition is enough to convict, especially when the public is in lynching mode. After all, it's more fun than getting to the facts. Though actually, given that the Scots release of Al Megrahi was to do with Scottish Law and the Scottish Parliament, one set of links seems significantly more tenuous than the other.
But what do other folk think?
X-posted to
talk_politics 
