Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts

Wednesday, 2 December 2015

Facts on bombing Syria:
David Cameron is now a threat to our national security

So you've decided to bomb Syria

The UK has aimed its sights at what 'intelligence' says is ISIS / Daesh HQ in Raqqa, a Syrian town of 150k. This is despite every Paris attacker being an EU national based in France/Belgium - and not immigrants as many media outlets propagated. This raises the first suspicions that the decision is poll boosting economic imperialism rather than any long-term strategy for peace. Even David Cameron's tories admit these airstrikes will not defeat ISIS, especially as they are decentralised global entity using social media to interact and organise.



ISIS/Daesh need to be wiped-out but instead of empty war grandstanding for  furthering western interests, the solution should target the economic roots. A multilateral approach should stop their oil being exported through Turkey. This gets sold to the usual array of mercenaries and opportunists as well those resisting the cult who have no choice. All this enabled by the money transfer system of global finance which has only been addressed recently. Follow the money. These internal financial and external smuggling networks maintain the ISIS infrastructure. It is rarely understood that the proposed caliphate has fostered welfare and school systems, this doesn't happen without the involvement of western finance. So ISIS spawned from the Iraq blundering of neo-cons, is now exploited by their neo-liberal accomplices.


Selling arms to unstable regions or regions that trade arms to them is all part of the short-term profit making for the complicit west. Cash from chaos. Meanwhile Labour's Jeremy Corbyn highlighted these issues and how they could be alternatives in the fight.



What are the UK providing?

Since French and US allies have been bombing Syria precipitating the Paris attacks, not much is being offered. The UK is already bombing ISIS in Iraq but with permission. Of course we can't get it from Syrian despot Assad, who met the Queen once - see below.

A meagre force of 10-14 Tornado jets equipped with Brimstone missiles. Again war hawks confess there will still be civilian casualties with this latest technology because nothing that powerful can be 100% accurate 100% of the time - also if intelligence is flawed (hello WMDs) the missile is irrelevant. And Raqqa is densely populated and doesn't contain 150k of mostly innocents Syrians. There will be horrific collateral damage just as there has been with 28 Mosul school children killed and the Afghan Doctors Without Borders hospital deaths

What is the effect of civilian casualties?

General stoking up of the false clash of civilsations narrative between the imperialist  west and fascist pretend-muslims with their Wahhabi brainwashed followers. Ideology is how militarism is sold on both sides. The Nazis used the Reich propaganda of the master race. We let Saudis spread extremism because they have oil and it makes powerful western lobbyists money in the military-industrial complex.

Potential allies on the ground?

Obviously we can't bomb democracy into people so we need to influence those on the ground.
This chart is complicated enough to digest let alone work with in the chaos of war.
And factor in that they are unlikely to be "moderates" or sympathetic of the west.

Is there an exit plan?

Errr see above?

The complexities are obvious to anyone enquiring mind but government warmongers and their media enablers deceive for their usual purposes. Here is an example. 



David Cameron and the Queen are now a threat to our national security.


Despite the propaganda BBC Newsnight ran a debate broadcasting free un-spun opinions from both sides and several walks of life concluding in undecideds choosing not to bomb. Some polls back this up.


Does anyone without a vested interest in bombing for peace believe this will make the world a safer place?


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Thursday, 15 October 2015

The establishment groupthink at the heart of the BBC



Print journalism was famously called 'the Fourth Estate', a remark attributed to MP Edmund Burke at the 1787 introduction of press reporting in parliament. He was emphasising the importance of holding government to account with complete independence - unlike the 3 other estates of the time (the Commons and two Lords).


The following highlights the conflict of interests within the supposedly culturally diverse BBC undermining Edmund' Burke's tenet of democracy in the contemporary media landscape. 

James Harding, Head of BBC News

  • Went to same independent school as George Osborne.
  • Went to Cambridge.
  • Worked as a financial journalist.
  • Worked at The Times owned by Rupert Murdoch.
  • During his time at the paper he had to apologise for withholding information to the High Court during the Leveson inquiry.

Laura Kuenssberg BBC political editor


  • From a well-connected family. Relatives include the last Governor-General of colonial Nigeria, a High Court Judge and the founder/president of the Royal College of GPs.
  • Worked at ITV

James Landale, BBC News Deputy Political Editor

James Landale in David Cameron's kitchen
  • Went to Eton with David Cameron.
  • Worked at The Times.

Andrew Neil, presenter on the BBC Daily Politics

David Cameron and Andrew Neil
 Andrew Neil with David Cameron, Grant Shapps and Spectator editor Fraser Nelson
  • Tutored by Vince Cable during his University of Glasgow days, who he would later interview many times.
  • During university was a member of the Conservative Club.
  • Worked for Rupert Murdoch as Sky's chief mover in the early days.
  • Worked at the right-wing free market Economist and right-wing Sunday Times.

Andrew Marr BBC Marr Show presenter and ex-Political Editor
  • Married to Jackie Ashley from another mostly establishment media org The Guardian and daughter of a Labour life peer. Life peers are a thing that exists in 21st century Britain
  • Made use of a High Court super-injunction to prevent the media reporting the truth, nevertheless he continues to be regarded highly as a journalist in mainstream circles.
  • In April 2003 made the report below celebrating  Blair's illegal Iraq invasion.


Allegra Stratton, BBC Newsnight reporter
  • Cambridge alumnus
  • Married to James Forsyth political editor of the right-wing The Spectator magazine owned by tax exiles the Barclays Brothers, who also own the right-wing Daily Telegraph

Nick Robinson ex-Political Editor 2005-2015, now at BBC Radio 4 Today show
  • Founder member of Macclesfield Young Conservatives
  • ex-Cheshire Young Conservative Chairman
  • Former Young Conservative National Advisory Committee member
  • As a student he was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association

The BBC Board of Trustees

Rona Fairhead, Chairman of Trust

Rona Fairhead being questioned about financial irregularities
  • Cambridge alumnus
  • Also works for HSBC and PepsiCo
  • Declines to answer questions about Swiss banking irregularities.
  • Admitted failings when her bank received a fine for money-laundering 
  • Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for 'services to industry'

Roger Carr, Vice Chair

  • Worked in the City
  • Business background at Thames Water, arms company BAE systems & energy giant Centrica
  • Knighted

What does this mean for any public interest issue that challenges the weaknesses in their inevitable consensus. It doesn't have to be conspiracy for decision-making to be influenced by mostly privileged backgrounds. All homogeneity by definition has blind-spots.

Would James Harding ever take aim at his powerful old boss about his bigotry or non-dom status?
Would Allegra Stratton ever scrutinise on the financial matters of the Barclays Brothers?
Would Rona Fairhead ever green-light an investigative series on the workings of HSBC, a bank that has already proven to be corrupt and a major part of our economy?

The names are inter-changeable, the outcomes similar.

Below is some background to journalists at The Times I published previously here

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Monday, 14 September 2015

Corbyn won by a landslide. The propaganda intensifies

It's been a summer of the refugee crisis and Labour leadership saga but it's now that time of year when shirking careerist elitist MPs are declared fit to work and will emerge from their expenses paid houses to swamp parliament.

http://politicalscrapbook.net/2015/09/mp-expense-overclaims/
Last week Tory-run BBC news had Daily Politics back on air with the usual cast of establishment careerists (mostly men) like Andrew 'plebgate' Mitchell and Tristram Hunt who was parachuted into a safe Labour seat because he was on the telly. Having put up the pretence of showing heart over the refugee crisis the war-machine quickly moved to make the case for more self-serving western imperialism. This was the trend of the week seen in The S*n and PMQs both used as platforms to push for a war. Would any of the establishment volunteer themselves of their loved ones to go fight? And who would really benefit from war? Perhaps this massive arms fair in London might hold some clues.


Later they had Waylon Smithers brown-noser, Toby Young smearing Labour which was mirrored on Newsnight. Just to be sure a Panorama hatchet job by 'journalist' John Ware was broadcast, in which 'experts' questioned Corbyn's electability while showing pictures of his rallies being attended by large crowds. They also smeared Corbyn's diplomacy fro including enemies, conveniently forgetting UK ties to despotic regimes around the world like wealthy Saudi Arabian fundamentalists - who by the way are not at all concerned about their fellow Muslims seeking asylum.


Talking of foreign policy, Israeli PM Netanyahu met David Cameron because presumably it's OK to call apartheid tyrants 'friends' if they are our apartheid tyrant. Israel is what S. Africa was before the 90s but with a greater death toll. This undermines so-called 'British values' our PM continually pushes and u;ltimately leaves us with no real diplomatic legitimacy in the Middle East even with moderates.

Then Corbyn won by a landslide - the largest mandate of any leader ever. After his victory he chose not to appear on Andrew Marr's BBC weekend politics show because he was fulfilling a promise to visit a mental hospital in his constituency.

The Times, as a paper full of tory elitists (If you don't want to visit the UKIP link then see image below) who trade on being progressive metropolitans went into full demonisation mode.





There were accusations from the usual voices who never before cared for women's representation or having quotas that his cabinet was sexist, even though there were more female members than the tories have, in fact more than ever. Sky news wannabe journalist Dermot Murnaghan even pontificated about whether Corbyn's casual dress sense could get him elected.

If you want to know what a proper mainstream media journalist looks like then watch this. It created the usual social media outcry, a measure of how low our standards and expectations have fallen.

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