Who pulls the Strings at the BBC?

We are kept informed by the BBC of developments in Libya, in Iran and now in Syria, with the purpose of preparation for war.

Posted on February 11, 2012
by Pam Field at the NEW LEFT
BIAS AND THE BBC

The BBC should be an important voice, not least because we, the people own it- and its users, ( so that’s us again) – fund it. We would hope to be able to trust it to provide quality educational material and to keep us informed about what is happening in the world, and honest and accurate reporting.

Today, rather than report on Ed Miliband’s letter to the House of Lords about the Health Bill, the BBC bombards us with articles about the Falklands, Syria and disgruntled Christians.

So what is happening at the BBC? We are kept well informed about the goings-on in the Falkland Islands. Is that a co-incidence in that as I remember it was the flag-waving and cheering of the departing ships, which led to a recovery for Margaret Thatcher in 1982 when the public-service cuts were hitting hard?

The BBC inform us of the coming-and-goings of managers of football clubs, and then about complaints from Christians about being marginalised. I am unsure as to why the BBC should be a voice for religious groups – isn’t that what churches are for?

While all this is going on, the most unpopular policies in recent years go unreported by the BBC, and by much of the Press.

HEALTH AND WELFARE

The Health Service Reform Bill amounts to privatisation of the National Health Service as the most unpopular policy in sixty years. It is the duty of the BBC to keep us informed, and News is being stifled. Why?

Neither of the Coalition parties have an overall majority, and, despite campaigning to protect the NHS, the Tory-led Coalition are railroading through privatisation of the health service at great cost to the British people, in terms of health, loss of assets and skills. Both Coalition parties must be held responsible for the destruction of the NHS.

While the Independent reports the cost of 600 million pounds, as a result of the redundancies from NHS cuts, the BBC do not. While the Guardian and the Scottish Herald briefly reported of The Spartacus Report and Disability Living Allowance and Welfare “Reform”, the BBC did not. While Sky News reports that Ed Miliband, Leader of the Labour Party, has written to the House of Lords asking it to drop the Health Bill, the BBC do not. It is the responsibility of the BBC to report and represent the Leader of the Opposition, the Government ensures its activities are reported as they wish them to be.

THE GLOBAL ISSUE

We are kept informed by the BBC of developments in Libya, in Iran and now in Syria, with the purpose of preparation for war. On Think Left CJ Stone writes of Manufacturing Consent for the Invasion of Iran. The media consensus is to ensure that the US and its allies can depend of governments of the world to open up markets to foreign investment – in other words to multinationals and through the global market ensure that the very rich remain rich and powerful, no matter how much poverty and starvation there is, or no matter what permanent damage to the planet results. Dr Tristan Learoyd’s (Think Left) article on the aftermath of the war in Libya questions whether the Libyan people face really freedoms or that of another tyrant, global unbridled capitalism.

The BBC are consistently failing to report accurately, if at all. They are failing to inform and to educate. Lies and propaganda cloak the facts.

The lack of BBC’s challenging reporting questioning the government’s viewpoint can be shown in their reporting of George Osborne’s agreement with the Swiss banks. The type of language used and the tone of delivery invited certainty in the desirability of this decision. The only caveat referred to was that because the agreement did not come into force until 2013, there was still plenty of time for the secret bank holdings to be moved to somewhere where no tax would be liable!

There was absolutely no recognition, acknowledgement or questioning of the Coalition government’s thinking or motivation in making this settlement. Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK makes clear why the ramifications of this deal should have been discussed:

To say that this is a quite extraordinary act by the UK government massively understates the irresponsibility of what they have agreed.

The UK is apparently going to accept settlement for past tax at around 30% of the assets held in a Swiss account. That might be reasonable if the funds placed in Switzerland had been taxed in the UK before being deposited in Switzerland and it was only the income on those funds that had been evaded since then. But what we know for sure is that most money held in Switzerland got their illicitly – it was not taxed before its arrival in the Alps. It’s tax evaded money.

As a result we would now expect 40% tax (at least) on the capital in all these accounts in Switzerland as a matter of course plus a 100% penalty that might reasonably be charged in a case of deliberate tax evasion (meaning in total 80% of the capital balance should be paid to settle the tax originally evaded) and then there is of course interest due on the late payment plus tax due on the income earned since. Nothing less than 100% is due on these balances – wiping them out of course – and anything else is a scandalous underpayment.

But George Osborne is not going to demand that sum. He’s instead going to accept a tiny part of what is owing. Richard Murphy(Tax Research UK)

In spite of these charges, there was no counterbalance on the BBC, to George Osborne’s extraordinary claim to be ‘cracking down on tax cheats’. But then again there all too rarely seems to be any serious attempt to question government explanation.

The importance of the Swiss settlement is that it is a significant part of a larger process, the ‘shadow economy’ of tax havens which has been so meticulously exposed by Nick Shaxton in his book “Treasure islands: Tax havens and the men who stole the world.’ However, as Nick Shaxton himself described with surprise, in May 2011, ‘the BBC, the heart of British media, doesn’t seem interested.’

‘The argument at the heart of Treasure Islands is about as big as it gets. This really is the hitherto untold story of globalisation. This really is the dark heart of the global economy.’

‘With trillions of dollars – literally trillions – being cycled through this libertarian, anti-democratic system, stripping away taxation, financial regulation, criminal laws, and so on, bending and distorting markets and global capital flows in powerful ways that no economist could ever explain using current models. With Britain, as I mentioned, slap bang in the middle of it all.’

‘Nobody has said, … that there isn’t a gigantic global network of British tax havens quietly hoovering up trillions and funnelling them to the City of London. Nobody has said the City Corporation isn’t this utterly bizarre, ancient and massively powerful organisation at the heart of Britain and the British establishment. Nobody has accused me of making gross factual mistakes, distorting the historical or statistical record, or anything like that. The FT, for instance calls it “meticulously researched.’

‘…. the BBC is shirking on its responsibility to inform and to educate.’

THE DANGER IS LOSS OF FREEDOM

John Christensen was so disturbed by his interview with Evan Davis on the Today program that he wrote an open letter asking why

The frustration of Shaxton and Christensen with the BBC is increasingly being voiced on comment threads. For example:

“Richard, might I ask an unrelated question?

What do you think of the BBC’s current financial coverage? Do you think it is extensive, honesty, penetrating? Is it reflective of the real turmoil and double-dealing taking place in the City of London, or is it supine and obfuscatory? I was stunned to find that the BBC had dedicated part of its website to asking which ‘cuts’ people felt the government should make; and this in spite of the fact that the banks had been handed trillions of pounds of taxpayers money? No mention was made of the fact that the private debt of the the banking sector was transferred to the public’s balance sheet – nor was there any mention that this private debt crisis, because it was shirted onto the public balance sheet, helped to trigger a fiscal and thence sovereign debt crisis! Do you think we are seeing honest reporting of events? If not, how do you think we can go about solving this problem?

Thanks,

Jonah.”

‘The price of freedom is eternal vigilance’ which means democracy requires us having access to information which we’re not getting from the BBC.

Inventing Reality : Michael Parenti

“Even if the [media] does not mold our every opinion, it does mold our opinion visibility; it can frame the perceptual limits around which our opinions take shape. Here may lie the most important effect of the news media: they set the agenda for the rest of us, choosing what to emphasize and what to ignore or suppress, in effect, organizing much of our political world for us. The media may not always be able to tell us what to think, but they are strikingly successful in telling us what to think about … the media teach us tunnel vision conditioning us to perceive the problems of society as isolated particulars, thereby stunting our critical vision. Larger casualties are reduced to immediately distinct events, while the linkages of wealth, power and policy go unreported or are buried under a congestion of surface impressions and personalities.

In sum, the media set the limits on public discourse.

They may not always mold opinion, but they do not always have to. It is enough that they create opinion visibility, giving legitimacy to certain views and illegitimacy to others … This power to determine the issue agenda, the information flow, and the parameters of political debate so that it extends from ultra-right to no further than moderate center is, if not total, still totally awesome.”

And so, eventually we know and believe only that which what we are permitted, because that is what suits the powers that be. In generations to come, history can be rewritten if it is allowed to be. Eventually we become nothing but zombies walking around with a false reality.

Gaddafi: The murderous western touch

Thursday, 27 October 2011
Herald SA


So now Muammar Gaddafi has died; apparently after being incapacitated by the fire power of US drones and French gunship bombers, and left to face a very primitively ruthless death at the hands of the NATO led rebels.

Jurist Special Guest Columnist and international lawyer Curtis Doebbler has indicated that the killing of Gaddafi was a violation of The Third Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, was a crime of aggression and also constituted the use of excessive force; in as much as it was a clear violation to the right to life, besides being in violation of Resolution 1973 which sought to protect civilians; not to bomb fleeing people as what happened to Gaddafi's convoy.

To some Barack Obama has emerged as the number one champion of the West's anti-terrorism war. Ironically Obama has teamed up with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda to take over Libya, leading to his drones incapacitating Gaddafi from the air so that his Al-Qaeda allies could summarily execute the defenceless and unarmed Gaddafi and his son, among others.
Obama now commands a remarkably bloody record - killing thousands of civilians in Afghanistan, killing Arch Terrorist Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, arming and backing Al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan rebels all the way from Benghazi to Sirte, via Tripoli; killing over 50 000 Libyan civilians in the process, grazing down Sirte and Bani Walid so they submit to the Al-Qaeda thugs calling themselves the National Transitional

Council; and subsequently getting himself the trophy of Gaddafi's battered body.
Now the global witch-hunt for terrorists has reached remarkably impressive levels, with Gaddafi's death eliciting cheers for Obama and his sidekicks from brainwashed and hapless global citizens. It is somehow hard not to cheer the smart and fast speaking Obama even when he is announcing a murder act under his command. The man comes across like a genius.
The brainwashing of the global masses is so deep that a heartless and hell-hailing monster like France's Nicolas Sarkozy can also boast of admirers. This writer treats the barbaric murder of Gaddafi and all other callous and murderous Western schemes as purely satanic; apparently exposing the maggoty and inherently evil forces behind Western imperialism and white supremacy. No apologies.

The manhunt for Gaddafi was clearly not part of effecting a no fly zone, the pretext by which Western powers entered Libya, ostensibly to protect civilians they baselessly said were about to be wiped out by Gaddafi. The manhunt was undoubtedly orchestrated by the same people who founded and executed slavery on us Africans, the very people who occupied our continent by the power of colonial conquest, the people who brought to humanity two world wars, the people who helped create a murderous Zionist Israel, and the very people who today preside over a predatory imperialistic system.
The whole NATO operation in Libya cannot be separated from the work of those who founded the American constitution, and the so-called American exceptionalism. This is why Hillary Clinton brazenly bragged about her role in ordering the murdering of Gaddafi, declaring with a cruel laugh "We came, we saw, and he died."

The she-devil could have aptly put it like "We came, we bombed, and he died." Dear reader, you have to understand the language of this piece in the context of the invasion of a sovereign country that has suffered so much loss of civilian lives at the hands of foreigner aggressors reputed with a murderous history based on racial supremacy.
There are a number of reasons that makes it impossible for this writer to join the celebration over the death of Col Gaddafi, and supporting the man himself is not one of them. Col Gaddafi courted Westerners in the last years of his reign, and the revolution of Zimbabwe was not served well by this rather treacherous behaviour. In fact Gaddafi had as many admirable traits as he had deplorable ones, like supporting liberation movements, while trying the Arabisation scheme in Sudan, or supporting the British-sponsored Idi Amin in Uganda, even when the dictator was waging a war against Tanzania.

He is the same Gaddafi who helped train our own freedom fighters during Zimbabwe's war for independence, and the same Gaddafi who turned Libya into one of the richest countries on this planet from the second poorest country when he took over power. Talk of 42 years of massive economic progression and tightly controlled political monopoly of power.

The first reason I cannot and will not celebrate the death of Gaddafi is perhaps the fact that I am a cynic and somewhat a political pessimist by nature. Secondly, I hail from an international relations training background, and also from a media background. As such I am what you would charitably call an expert in the knowledge of how brainwashed this world is.

It is not easy to make someone like this writer an easy target of mass deception tactics; often sugar coated in humanitarianism; the rhetoric on democracy, liberties and freedoms; or any of the hoopla around which rivals and enemies of Western politicians are derided and denounced. This writer is a discerner and not only a listener to Western political voices. The third reason is I am an ideological creation that is allergic to imperialistic values and whatever they are meant to stand for. No sane person from the African continent can admire imperialism. Simply put, I believe monopoly capitalism practised at the expense of weaker nations is a program designed from the depths of hell, and by its very nature it is the number one crime against humanity. It is imperialism that breeds devil incarnates like Nicolas Sarkozy, and it is imperialism that deceives humanity to the point of elevating such a heartless murderer to the level of a liberator. Dear reader, if your idea of democracy has got anything to do with the actions of NATO in Libya over the last eight months, then this writer has got bad news for you. You are simply confusing sugar-coated imperialistic aggression for democracy and such an error is fatalistic by definition.

If your source of information over Libya has been the BBC "world service" or any of the mainstream Western media, again this writer has bad news for you. You have been lied to, misled, deceived, manipulated, cheated, brainwashed; and you have to work extremely hard to sieve the information so as to differentiate grain from chaff.

As a matter of principle and by the definition of personality this writer did not cheer American forces when they announced they had killed Osama bin Laden, and neither does he cheer them for ending the life of Muammar Gaddafi.
This writer does not count Obama a hero of whatever magnitude, just like it is increasingly becoming hard to keep counting Nicolas Sarkozy among humans.

The man is proving to be simply a heartless beast walking on two legs. His British sidekick David Cameron comes along as a beautiful looking angel from the Devil's kingdom. Libyan atrocities committed by NATO and its Al-Qaeda allies stink to high heavens, and they speak strongly on the characters of Sarkozy and Cameron. Displaying dead bodies in a shopping centre is something that infuriates the Devil himself, yet these

Allah preaching goons reckon its laudable conduct.
These views are figurative descriptions purely based on intellectual opinion from an angered writer. Let us start with Barack Obama, a man fitting so well into Malcolm X's "house nigger" description, dutifully doing

Uncle Sam's dirty work at home and abroad.

It is a fact that Obama has not used his eloquence and oratory skills to say anything tangible about racism in the United States, or about the deplorable conditions of the African American. Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

The BBC: NATO’s media partner-in-crime

25 October 2011
By William Bowles

Well they’ve finally silenced Muammar Gaddafi, the man the BBC calls “an oddball until the end”. The manner of his capture and death seems not to bother the BBC but then who cares about ‘oddballs’?

The video, with commentary by the BBC’s chief foreign correspondent propagandist for NATO John Simpson,

“looks back at the life of a man who “remained a one-off, an oddball right until the end”. — BBC News, 20 October 2011

Attacked by NATO jets, then tortured and shot in cold blood in front of jubilant ‘rebels’, all Simpson has to offer is the perpetuation of racist Western myths about the Arabs, about the ‘other’. Disgusting stuff but totally in tune with BBC’s role as NATO’s media partner.

Other commentators however, had a somewhat different take on events, for example:

“The faces of the leaders of ‘world democracies’ are so happy, as if they remembered how they hanged stray cats in basements in their childhoods,’ Russian envoy to NATO and the leader of the Congress of Russian Communities, Dmitry Rogozin, described how the West treated the cold-blooded murder of Moammur Gaddafi.” — ‘Envoy slams ‘sadistic’ triumphalism‘, RT, 22 October 2011

Hence the BBC’s focus on Gaddafi the ‘oddball’ and the ‘last of the buffoon dictators’, anything to dehumanize the man, all the better to justify his murder.

Meanwhile, back in TV-land the BBC’s ‘coverage’ of Gaddafi’s death veered wildly, first in one direction and then in another as it attempted to adjust its wobbly spin on things. Strikingly, not a single story questions the nature of his capture and subsequent murder, and the role NATO played in Gaddafi’s murder is hinted at in only two pieces on the 20 October (see below).

(Earliest to latest)

20 October 2011
Fallen hero of Libya’s final battle (obviously not about Gaddafi but about the ‘heroic’ rebels focusing on a Brit who had joined the ‘rebels’, got shot and died)

VIDEO: Libyan forces ‘capture Gaddafi’ (12:37pm replete with talk that most were glad that “the hated dictator” had been caught and according to the text, “Deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been captured and wounded in both legs, the National Transitional Council has said” though it’s not stated in the video).

VIDEO: Libyan TV announces Gaddafi ‘capture’ (13:01) (NTC TV announcement of Gaddafi’s capture “Libyan TV’s news presenter thanked God as he announced the reports that Col Muammar Gaddafi had been captured by rebels in Sirte.”)

Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi ‘killed’ (22:01) This is the most disingenuous of the BBC’s propaganda blitz on behalf of NATO replete with the allegation that Gaddafi had a “golden gun” when he was captured, an allegation that disappeared almost immediately just like the ‘African mercenaries’ and ‘bombing of civilians’ disinfo that acted as the justification for unleashing the Dogs of War on defenceless Libya.

This is one of only two references to a NATO attack on Gaddafi’s convoy and it’s pretty much a NATO press release rehashed:

“Nato, which has been running a bombing campaign in Libya for months, said it had carried out an air strike earlier on Thursday.

“French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said French jets had fired warning shots to halt a convoy carrying Col Gaddafi as it tried to flee Sirte.

“He said Libyan fighters had then descended and taken the colonel.”

It then quotes Mr Jibril (ex)leader of the NTC who alleged that,

“When the car [with Gaddafi onboard and already wounded] was moving it was caught in crossfire between the revolutionaries and Gaddafi forces in which he was hit by a bullet in the head,” said Mr Jibril, quoting from the report.

Not content with presenting this allegation as news, the piece presents us with some of the other allegations doing the rounds, though the piece opened with the ‘crossfire’ version of Gaddafi’s murder, obviously the preferred one coming as it did from the NTC itself.

“Acting Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril announced the death, and later said the colonel had been killed in a crossfire between Gaddafi loyalists and fighters from the transitional authorities.”

But just to be on the safe side, the BBC gives us some alternate endings to choose from later in the piece:

“Earlier, some NTC fighters gave a different account of the colonel’s death, saying he had been shot when he tried to escape.

“One NTC fighter told the BBC that he found Col Gaddafi hiding in a hole, and the former leader had begged him not to shoot.

“The fighter showed reporters a golden pistol he said he had taken from Col Gaddafi.

“Arabic TV channels showed images of troops surrounding two large drainage pipes where the reporters said Col Gaddafi was found.

None of which were true but the last fabrication about Gaddafi being found in a drain with its echoes of the image of Saddam Hussein down a hole made the headlines first, such is the power of the BBC to shape our take on events. The BBC even ran the footage as ‘news’.

Later on the same day, another BBC correspondent propagandist for NATO, Jeremy Bowen allegedly explains in‘How Gaddafi’s power collapsed‘ that the rebels, “helped” by NATO bombing overthrew Gaddafi.

Finally at 11pm, almost eleven hours after its first report, the BBC ran this story on its main news titled ‘Gaddafi’s demise: End of a dictator‘ which opens,”[Gaddafi] was found cowering in a storm drain after his convoy was attacked by NATO jets” though the voiceover tells us that he was found in a ditch and once more repeats the fabrication of (ex)-Acting Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril that “the colonel had been killed in a crossfire between Gaddafi loyalists and fighters from the transitional authorities.”

Amazingly, the fact that the cellphone video shows Gaddafi, covered in blood and alive in the back of a pickup truck being kicked around and struggling, seems not to bother the BBC, allegedly anal about attention to detail. But who cares, what dramatic footage even if it’s only 2 megapixels-worth?

Three days later (23/10/11) the BBC ran a story titled, ‘Does new video provide clues as to who killed Gaddafi?‘ In it we are shown a Libyan ‘rebel’ surrounded by his mates who announce that this is the man who shot Gaddafi through the head, waving the pistol around. But the BBC, now in a bind over its punting of the “crossfire” story from day one leaves the last word to (ex) Acting Prime Minister Jibril who states once again that Gaddafi was “killed in crossfire”.

Thus the much-vaunted BBC, famed for its ‘impartiality’ is now quite happy to run barely legible footage shot on a cellphone, throw in a quote from the (ex) acting-prime minister and call it the truth.

American media and the Libyan Lie.

The New York Times has a fluff piece entitled Sleeping in Gaddafi's Bedroom.

The 'reporter' describes as "a friend" a Libyan air force deserter "who used to be one of Gaddafi's Colonels in the Libyan Air force before fleeing." Apparently the 'reporter's' mother likes plunder too: "My mum would love a set of Gaddafi's tea cups," the 'reporter' tells us.

Hidden in the article is the fact that the villa was in fact rarely used by Gaddafi and is in fact not too luxurious, with fake leather sofas and a "tacky chandelier" and a lawn with sprinklers.

"I slept like a self-assured dictator" in Gaddafi's bed, this reporter tells us in closing.


Not to be outdone the Washington post has this ridiculous headline: Libyan women savor new freedoms after revolution.

In reality, sharia is being imposed, polygamy is being reinstated, the veil is becoming mandatory.

Meanwhile other media are more honest:

Residents said brigades from faraway Misrata had appeared at their doorstep a week ago, breaking into people's homes and looking for Gaddafi loyalists.

Dozens of young men have disappeared and four have been killed in detention, said Al Koni Salem Mohammad, the uncle of one of those killed.

Speaking at a mourning ceremony on the edge of town, he shook with grief as he showed the death certificate listing "electric shocks" as a cause of death. He said the body had been dumped outside the detention centre with its tongue and genitals cut off.

"After all this, our children and the children of our children will never be with this revolution," he said, bursting into tears and shaking his fist, as other men in traditional dress sat in the shade of a tent set up for the mourning period.

"If this does not stop there will be a reaction. Any build-up of pressure leads to an explosion ... There is a lot of anger. Doesn't the government have an army to handle this?"

Or this from the Australian.

"Mafia," says the member of the family who fought as a rebel, describing the behaviour of the militias. "This is just like the mafia in Colombia or Russia," he says. "Gaddafi was horrible, but I never knew of him capturing the relative of somebody if they could not find the person they wanted. They would have just kept looking. And I never heard of them threatening to take children."

..

The man who escaped from the rebels has returned home but fears they will return. He says he knows of one case where a man was taken away on suspicion he had been a Gaddafi supporter and was then beaten to death. The rebels telephoned his parents the next day to say the man had become ill in custody and died.

..

At present, however, revenge clearly prevails over rehabilitation. There is a growing list of human rights abuses by the Misratah brigades.

The latest atrocity linked to the rebels is the discovery of 53 bodies of Gaddafi fighters on the lawns of a hotel in Sirte, Gaddafi's home town and the place where he was captured. The bodies were found with their hands tied and gunshots to the head.

In one case the rebels beat to death a mentally ill man because he would not - or could not - give them the password of a walkie-talkie he was carrying. In another case, an African man was whipped as he was forced to run around a courtyard, then told to climb a pole while shouting, "Monkey needs a banana".

..

One pregnant woman who went for a check-up was told at the government-run hospital: "We don't treat Tawerghans here."

-------------------

Meanwhile the darlings of NATO are shooting up hospitals.