Lies, Truth, and Propaganda

"I loove history feelm. Gladiator, Braveheart (you know, with Mel Jeebson?), Troy. You like history feelm Jeems?"

"Yes, I like history films too. Have you seen "Munich"?

"No, what ees thees feelm?"

I proceed to explain the plot of Steven Spielberg's Hollywood epic to my 24 year old Syrian Arabic conversation partner: the kidnapping and subsequent massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian Black September group, the resultant Mossad death squad that hunted down and executed the perpetrators, the growing sense of unease and regret among the Israelis, the parallels with the modern "War On Terror".

"Why? Why they make up such oreeble storee? Why they say thees bad thing about Filistinian? Israel always keeling people, not Filistinian, they never keel people."

"This isn't a story, it really happened. More or less at least."

"No, thees never happen. It ees lie."

Somewhat fittingly, this surreal and somewhat sinister conversation took place on October 6th, a national holiday here in Syria, commemorating the famous "victory" in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. A rough equivalent in Europe would be Germany celebrating their famous victory in World War II in 1940, or Bayern Munich celebrating their famous victory in the 87th minute of the 1999 Champions League Final against Manchester United. But just as many of the Syrian populace seem unaware of the reprehensible actions of their Palestinian brethren in Munich in 1972, they are also, rather conveniently, apparently not informed of the successful Israeli counter-attack in the October War a year later.

Like many Arabs, my Syrian friend (who shall remain nameless for his own safety - discussing politics with foreigners can be a tricky occupation here) also holds forthright views on a number of truths, apparently self-evident to us in the West. The Israelis were behind September 11th - a cunning ruse to draw the Americans (and their humble servants in Britain) into a global war against Islam. This I've heard before of course, and while clearly absurd, it at least has the benefit of plausible motive, unlike the claim that the same Zionist government was also responsible for the assassinations of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed. My source doesn't elaborate on the logic of this assertion; I can only speculate it's part of a fiendish plot concoted between the late Robert Maxwell and his comatose friend Ariel Sharon to boost the sales of the Daily Express, a publication which seemingly exists solely to print outlandish theories on the demise of "The People's Princess".

Encountering the products of brainwashing is a frustrating experience. It's virtually impossible to explain to someone that something they've heard a thousand times is patently false, or that some major event they're totally unaware of actually happened, particularly when that event might pose some uncomfortable questions about their worldview. Yet meeting the brainwashed can also be enlightening and thought-provoking. Who is brainwashing who? Who has been lied to and who knows the truth? Is it possible that I am the one who has been misled?

As I read Robert Fisk's epic history of the Middle East, The Great War For Civilisation, told through the quite staggering scope of his own experience as foreign correspondent in the region for The Times and The Independent, I am reminded of the extent to which we in the West are lied to just as much as - perhaps even more than - the Syrians whose naivete I gently mock here.

How many Americans still believe Saddam was behind the atrocities of September 11th? How many Brits still believe Libya was behind the Lockerbie bombing? How many remember the US Navy shooting down Iran Air flight 655, with the loss of all 290 passengers and crew, in July 1988? (An action Margaret Thatcher described, incidentally, as "totally understandable". She seemed less understanding five months later when the Iranians and the Palestinian Abu Nidal - not the Libyans by the way - returned the favour by blowing Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky over Scotland, with 270 deaths.)

Whose government speaks the truth and whose government tells lies?

How many in the West are aware of the "First Holocaust", the Turkish genocide of 1915-1920 in which 1.5 million Armenian Christians were systematically annihilated. A genocide which, incidentally, was keenly observed by the Turks' German allies (among them a young Rudolf Hoess, later Kommandant of Auschwitz) who learned such innovative techniques as the use of cattle trains and gas chambers from their Ottoman compatriots. Yet despite the parallels, indeed the direct causal linkages between the two genocides, denying the Jewish Holocaust is a crime, while denying the Armenian Holocaust is official government policy in many countries, including Britain.

Who is brainwashing who?

My young Syrian friend and I also debate the indiscriminate use of the word "terrorist" - irhabi in Arabic - and its slippery definition. It's a well-known truism that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter": such now-revered figures of the Twentieth Century as Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa, and David Ben-Gurion were all "terrorists" at one time or another. Nevertheless, most in the West would baulk at ascribing the label of "freedom-fighter" to everyone's favourite Pakistani cave-dwelling bearded Saudi, yet here in the Middle East it's a sobriquet by which Osama bin Laden is widely-known, even by many liberal Muslims. What is the difference, they ask, between the Allied slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and Al Qaeda attacks on Western cities?

The issue of "terrorist" versus "freedom fighter" was brought home to me with particular resonance this weekend, as I visited the picturesque Syrian town of Hama. In 1982 the peaceful sound of the gently spinning water wheels on the Orontes River was shattered when Syrian army and intelligence forces converged on the town to crush a putative uprising against then President Hafez al-Assad by the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Estimates of fatalities vary between 10,000 and 40,000; the centre of the town was razed to the ground by artillery fire and hundreds of political prisoners disappeared. Today the peace is restored and a pretty park and elegant new apartment blocks stand where once fire rained from the skies.

Hama is no stranger to violence. Its environs boast two of Syria's greatest tourist attractions, the last stronghold of the Crusaders at Crac de Chevaliers and the castle of the legendary Assassins, a mysterious Ishmaili Islamic sect famed for their unparalleled efficiency at executing the leaders of any enemy. (From their name, derived from the Arabic word for the marijuana they smoked in copious quantities, hashish, we get the English word "assassin".) These sights provide a picturesque reminder that the clash between East and West, Christianity and Islam, predates Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush by some thousand years. (The Saudi construction magnate might play up his similarities with Salah ad-Din; I can barely bring myself to mention Richard the Lionheart and George the Buffoon in the same sentence.) Yet the events of 9-11 colour our relationship with the Middle East, our relationship with Islam, perhaps even our relationship with truth itself, to an enormous extent.

In 1982 the West condemned the atrocities in Hama as gross breaches of human rights against a legitimate political opposition movement. Today the Muslim Brotherhood and many of its offshoots - among them Hamas, Jammat al-Islamiya, and various Mujahideen groups in Afghanistan - are proscribed in many Western and Western-allied Arab countries as dangerous extremists. Freedom fighters to terrorists in 20 years.

I'll let my anonymous Syrian friend have the last word, however. Totally unaware (of course) of the Hama massacre he brushed it off with the observation that:

"in Amreeka and Britaan there have two parties which both same, and many people not like. Thees is not democrace. In Syria we have real democrace. I love my President, I love my government, so do all Syrians. Thees is democracy."

Tony Blair and George Bush might well agree.

The Starbucks Express

The small bus stopped suddenly. My heart froze. Half or dozen or so men in exceedingly dirty clothes and muddy wellington boots, carrying foot-long machetes, were boarding. The first one, his face moustachioed and weather-beaten, and his hands calloused from heavy labour (burying bodies? I mused to myself), paused slightly when he saw me. Then a smile lit up his face as he greeted me: "Buenas tardes señor, ¿como está?".

Someone in Bogota told me that the way to spot FARC members is their penchant for wearing wellies at all times, even in towns on sunny days. If this is correct, Colombia's woes are much greater than I realised, for in the coffee region everyone wears wellies. I only hope the army can hold out against the rampant hordes of welly-wearing Marxists until the weekend when I say "adios" to Colombia. Happily for my bus journey, I think this means of identifying the rebels may lack something in the way of accuracy, as these particular rubber boot aficionados seemed to be employed by the coffee industry rather than the militant revolutionary forces of the international proletariat. Coffee is big business here, and it's taken very seriously indeed by the Colombians, nowhere more so than at the Parque Nacional de Cafe, Colombia's answer to Disneyland. Actually, that's not quite true; no-one could really describe a theme park devoted to coffee beans as serious. Regardless of the tone, it's a very informative place, which teaches the visitor all he or she might want to know (and a good deal more besides) about the whole bean to cup process.

Yet aside from the coffee itself, the main reason to visit the so-called "Zona Cafeteria" is the scenery. Set in lush mountains to the west of Bogotá, quaint little towns and spectacular fincas dot the verdant hillsides. I spent the Independence Day weekend in one such pueblo, Salento, hiking in the countryside during the day and joining in the local July 20th festivities by night. These festivities mostly seemed to consist of eating trout (a local delicacy), drinking aguardiente, and high speed synchronised dancing. One fellow traveller (from Belfast I believe, though I didn't meet him myself) apparently over-indulged in the local culture to such an extent that he was taken into protective custody by the police, who feared the consequences of the local menfolk catching up with the paralytic Ulsterman who had been touching their women. After a 1am call from the cops, the owner of the local traveller's hostal, an affable British chap called Tim, headed down to the station to interpret. After much violence and swearing, it was decided to allow the Irish miscreant to remain in a cell for the rest of the evening; upon his release the next morning, the police insisted he sign a statement affirming he had not been mistreated. Something tells me a Colombian in a similar position in UK might not have been granted such hospitality. What's the Spanish for "fell down the stairs"?

Unlike the unfortunate Ulsterman, however, I managed to restrain myself for once, having to rise early for a trek. Six hours of hiking through a nature reserve in the cloud forest certainly seemed preferrable to a hangover and a story about a Colombian police cell, especially when it afforded the opportunity to see the unique wax palm trees that dot the area. Though certainly aesthetically-pleasing, the wax palm (see photos below) is seemingly a particularly pointless species, growing a ludicrously long thin trunk before sprouting normal palm leaves about 60 feet up in the air. Any time you meet an evangelical Christians who attempts to debunk the theory of evolution with reference to so-called "intelligent design", please direct him to the Valle de Cocora in central Colombia, where a cursory inspection of the Peter Crouch of palm trees will provide him with ample evidence that "intelligent design" is a totally fallacious concept. But more about God later.

After beginning my weekend with a flight to Cali, I planned to return to Bogotá via road, both on grounds of expense (because of the distances involved internal flights in Colombia are not overly cheap) and because I dimly recalled reading some strikingly congratulatory comments about the spectacular scenery on that road in Paul Theroux's "The Old Patagonian Express". Indeed, after travelling by train and bus from Boston to Bogotá, Theroux was keen to suggest this particular road passed through some of the most spectacular scenery in the whole of the Americas. Of course when reading such glowing tributes from the comfort of one's armchair, sipping a mug of cocoa, the true implications of words such as "spectacular" are often hidden. Five years ago I crossed the Andes on a bus, in Peru, and after a 20 hour journey so nerve-shatteringly awful I almost turned to religion, I vowed never to do it again. 18 hours of figuratively shitting myself as we barely negotiated hairpin bends on narrow pot-holed roads with vertiginous drops just inches from the outside wheels of the bus were followed by two hours of actually shitting myself after consuming some toxic corn-based snack at a roadside truck stop. "NEVER AGAIN" I promised myself.

In light of this experience, quite how I found myself sitting in the front seat ("for best views" the driver told me in Spanish, without a trace of irony) of a 17 seater minibus snaking its way at high speed around cliff top roads in thick cloud and pouring rain, I'm not sure. Unlike Peruvians, however, Colombians seem to take a slightly more positive view of the concept of road safety, and do therefore have such measures as seatbelts and paved highways in place. Not that a seatbelt would be a great deal of use were the bus to plunge 7,000 feet over the side of a cliff, but I guess it's the thought that counts. In fact, so seriously do the bus companies take the issue of safety, that each of their ticket booths features a highly tasteful scorecard of crashes, injuries and deaths on each route in the last 6 months. I didn't enquire about the stats for a longer timescale; some things are better left unsaid.

In addition to all these admirable measures, it seems Colombian buses are also equipped with a giant digital speedometer, allowing everyone on board to monitor velocity at all times. Should the driver get a little too carried away and exceed the 80km per hour legal limit for his rattling jalopy, a noxious alarm sounds until the speed is reduced. While surely well-intentioned, I found this invention to be totally and utterly terrifying. Who really needs to know that the bus is approaching a 90 degree switchback on the wrong side of the road at 72kph? If you ask me it merely panders to the vanity of the driver's constant Juan Pablo Montoya impressions. And while we're on the subject of Colombia's number one racing driver, I don't ever recall him finding himself confronted with a 15 ton articulated lorry as he takes the racing line through the apex of a blind bend, as happened to our noble chauffeur innumerable times on Sunday. Nor does Señor Montoya have to juggle mobile phones, two-way radios, gear sticks, steering wheels and cholesterol-rich snacks as he tears around the streets of The Principality in his state of the art racing machine.

Yet in truth, none of this really mattered, for we had God on our side all along. As we pulled out of the Terminal de Autobuses in Armenia, just before donning his imaginary flame retardant suit, leather driving gloves and crash helmet, our intrepid driver solemnly crossed himself and offered a couple of silent prayers to the big man upstairs. Many of the passengers followed suit. An hour later, as we deftly avoided the still-smoking scene of a (very) recent head-on collision between a Renault Twingo and a twenty ton truck by sneering at the oncoming traffic and veering casually into the opposite lane at 63kph, I too was on my knees, offering myself in supplication to God, Jahweh, Allah, Buddha, Robbie Fowler, and any other deity I could think of.

Still, on the plus side, our journey to Ibagué was completed in half the official four hour allotment; not an outcome that would be repeated on the second leg of the trip back to Bogotá. In fact, at times on that hellish six hour drive, I was almost overcome with nostalgia for the suicidal tendencies of the earlier driver, particularly when the giant neon speedo dipped below 10kph for the umpteenth time. Night buses in Colombia hold their own particular terrors; Lonely Planet is particularly vehement in its advice to avoid them, and legion are the tales of unwary travellers who lose all their belongings when a nice man with a gun flags down and boards their bus at 2am. Yet such were the crowds of revellers heading home after the Independence Day weekend that waiting for a journey in darkness was the only option. "Still, at least you can't see the cliffs at night", I thought to myself as we waited to depart; fervently hoping for a driver without the quivering moustache and devilish glint in the eye that so often signifies lunacy in South America. I needn't have worried; regardless of the psychiatric state of the driver, our bus' engine was so weak that speed was an impossible dream, and the Colombian army had so many units on highway security patrol over the weekend it was difficult to go 50 yards without seeing a listless pimply youth with a machine gun. What good these soldiers of boredom would actually be in the event of an actual firefight with the FARC or some would-be bandits I'm not sure, but I suppose they act as a deterrent.

Yet there were other horrors to contend with, not least the driver's grim obsession with the spirit-crushingly irritating Vallenato music omnipresent in much of Colombia. There are many ways to kill a man with his own accordion, and I thought of them all as the terrible folk tunes played grimly on and on. At one stage the radio station was briefly changed; my relief was short-lived, however, as a Spanish language version of Robbie Williams cigarette-lighters-in-the-air anthem "Angels" replaced the incessant whining of the accordions. "Angeles" (sample lyric: "voy a amar a los ángeles...") was even more awful in reality than you could ever possibly imagine, and was very nearly the final straw. Yet somehow I survived, finally rolling into Bogotá at 2am, over twelve hours after leaving Salento. For what it's worth, the scenery on the road WAS incredible, at least the small sections I could see through my fingers, and unlike in Peru I managed not to soil myself at any point of the journey, which was a distinct bonus as I'm sure my fellow passengers would agree.

One more week of class in Bogotá, then it's off to the Amazon on Saturday. Sadly I won't be taking the bus - being 500 miles from the nearest road, Leticia is inaccessible by any means except boat or plane - though a couple of weeks from now I will be facing the delightful prospect of a 16 hour journey on Brazil's Trans-Amazonian highway. While there are no mountains to contend with there, I'm sure ample excitement will be provided by the unavoidable traverse of the Yanomami Indigenous Reserve. In case you're not aware, many anthropologists regard the Yanomami as the most violent people on the planet (yes, they're even more violent than Glaswegians). When the road was built in the early 90s, the Brazilian army had to massacre hundreds of Yanomamis irate at the intrusion of the white (well, light brown) man into their territory. Armed only with poison arrows and blow darts, the locals stood little chance of victory, though they did cause a substantial number of deaths. In the circumstances it's probably best not to run into them on the road; to be on the safe side the highway is closed between dusk and dawn and all stoppages are expressly prohibited. I'm not sure what happens in the event of a breakdown...

A rare Colombian Wax Palm Tree

Liverpool and England striker Peter Crouch

Ludicrously tall Wax Palms in the Valle de Cocora

Hummingbird silhouetted against the cloud forest

Hummingbird on a sugar feeder. Mmmm....sugar...

Coffee!

While I understood most of the coffee-making process, I still can't work out where these peanuts come into the equation. What's that? They're beans? What kind of beans?

In Latin America this sign means "don't catch the birds". In Spain, however, it's a more serious offence. Quite how you'd fuck a parrot I don't know...