All posts tagged: bbc

Saving Syria’s Children Documentary Announced

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Robert Stuart, who has done great work analysing the BBC’s Panorama: Saving Syria’s Children, is working on a documentary on this subject. Working with producer Victor Lewis-Smith and actor/director Keith Allen (Unlawful Killing), the hope is to raise enough money to deliver the completed film for April next year. From their fundraising page: Overview Did BBC Panorama collude with ISIS and other jihadist groups in Syria to stage an atrocity? Are the alleged “napalm” injuries real? Why was the first report broadcast as parliament was voting on bombing Damascus? Is the UK charity featured linked to terrorism? Has a key witness been identified and will she go on record to blow the whistle? What are the consequences for the BBC’s global reputation? Is This Scene Real? The above sequence was broadcast on the BBC1 Ten O’clock News on Thursday 29th August 2013, just as parliament was voting on whether to bomb Syria. A month later BBC Panorama broadcast Saving Syria’s Children which featured more footage (from 30:38) of these alleged victims of an incendiary attack …

All Major Candidates in Israel’s Presidential Election Are Far-Right

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Eric Zuesse If “far-right” or “nazi” refers to proponents of racism, capitalism, and dictatorship, then all of Israel’s Presidential candidates are nazis — not German ones, of course, not members of Hitler’s German (the original) Nazi Party and a dictatorship of and by Aryans against Jews, but instead Jewish nazis and a dictatorship of and by Jews against Palestinians. On April 6th, Joel Greenberg, of BBC Monitoring, headlined “Israel election: Who are the key candidates?” and he described each of the seven, and the proposals from each. Here are highlights from his descriptions: Benjamin Netanyahu is the only one who needs no introduction to foreign audiences: He is well-known to be a racist against Palestinians, and he is a strong supporter of corporate Israel, and of apartheid in which Palestinians are legally discriminated-against and in which Jews have the right to take Palestinian land and used it for new settlements by Jews. “During the election campaign, he has warned that his challengers would allow the creation of a Palestinian state, calling it a mortal threat …

The real enemy of the people

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We are all familiar with the terms ‘conspiracy theorist’ and ‘apologist’ used by the establishment and media to smear independent journalists, experts and other commentators. For some time this has been particularly evident in the debates we see over the Middle East wars and Russia. It’s common knowledge that people who use these terms can’t argue rationally so resort to smears.

Buzzfeed, Question Time & the purpose of Fake News

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in the last two months both Buzzfeed and The Guardian have issued “BREAKING NEWS” stories that were based on anonymous sources….both these stories were shown to be untrue in less than 24 hours.The important question is: Why does the media tell lies, if they know they will be revealed as such?

Armistice Day & the Resurrection of the Old Lie

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In a profoundly dishonest society, the shared grief of World War I is one of the few things we all know the truth of. One of the few things we are all honest about. Because it’s important. Because it’s a wound too deep to ignore, a betrayal too lasting to be forgiven.

The Great War was sold to the British public as a just war. Men were sent over to France and Belgium to curb “German aggression and Imperial ambitions”. Every generation since has known that to be an absurd lie.

That lesson could be vital to our survival.

BBC Documentary – “A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad”

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David Carlson I rarely watch anything on the BBC now and this first part in a three part character assassination of Bashar Assad is a testament as to why watching anything the BBC produces is as near perverse as some of their DJ’s. “Nick Greene”, the Grun states ” forensic excision of the tumour at the heart of Syria,” is about as sick as gaggle of Bishops at a Jimmy Saville party. The sickly female voice over 20 years ago would only be found on a childrens program explainingg basics of a subject to ten year olds but now, it seems, is standard fare for adults happy to accept such condescension. To start with the ommision of how Hafez Assad rescued Syria from American and French colonial interference that by policy was designed to keep Syria a fractured state of warring tribes is as I expected a deafening silence. That he came from a peasant family with nothing to be President that united his nation in a secular peace and a growing prosperity for all …

Chemical weapons in Syria? BBC Panorama relies on questionable evidence

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A joint investigation by BBC Panorama and BBC Arabic claimed to show how chemical weapons have been used by the Syrian Government as part of a deliberate military strategy. Yet there are serious concerns over the investigation’s reliance on ‘broadly impartial’ sources — who are not named — and consequently the reliability of the report’s findings.

The Parallel Universe of BBC Panorama

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The folks at Panorama LOVE Putin, or at least love to hate him. In the last two years there have been no less than five (five!) episodes devoted to the man, and indeed the myth. The most recent Putin-hit piece aired just last week – in the run up to the World Cup – its rather more mundane title simply: “Putin’s Russia with David Dimbleby”. The documentary, for want of a better word, opens on David Dimbleby wandering through a Moscow market looking at *sigh* Russian nesting dolls, and it doesn’t get less predictable from there on in.

January 2016 brought us “Putin’s Secret Riches”, January 2017 “Trump: The Kremlin Candidate”, March of this year brought us two inside a week, “Putin: The New Tsar” and “Taking On Putin!”. As the titles suggest, none of them were especially objective or open-minded. That’s not in the BBC’s remit.

WATCH: “Russia with Simon Reeve” – BBC Propaganda vs Reality

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Independent filmmaker Graham Phillips takes a close look at the BBC program “Russia with Simon Reeve”, revealing the degree of bias – and worse – beneath its benignly smiling exterior. Notes and references can be seen on the original Youtube channel. You can support Graham’s work through his Paypal https://www.paypal.me/grahamwphillips.

Exclusive: The Complete Moral Collapse of Labour Friends of Israel

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It is hard to imagine anything so nauseating as a group of affluent liberals defending the mass murder of poor colonized people in the name of democracy and security. Though a species of moral turpitude associated with 19th century colonial tropes, in 2018 it remains very much alive under the banner of the UK Labour Friends of Israel (LFI).

Watch: Norman Finkelstein on Israel as a dangerous and suicidal state

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Interviewed by the BBC in 2012, Jewish intellectual Norman Finkelstein exposes the media lie about Israel as a victim of aggression by its neighbors, despite the best efforts of the – clearly out of her depth – anchor woman to keep him on message yesterday the BBC wrote: "Iran has repeatedly called for an end to the existence of the Jewish state." Norman Finkelstein explains how this is pure ideology and the exact opposite is actually true: Israel has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran pic.twitter.com/epJMsVXgmB — ☀️👀 (@zei_nabq) May 11, 2018

Video: BBC Interview with MP for Aleppo, Syria

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The recent US-led missile strikes on several military installations in Syria changed precious little in the country’s horrific civil war. On the ground, the bloodshed, displacement and suffering continue. Regional and global divisions over Syria are as deep as ever. HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to a Syrian politician close to the Assad regime. Fares Shehabi is a powerful Aleppo business leader and self-styled ‘independent’ MP. Is Syria as we knew it broken beyond repair?  

Why did UK court say “limited evidence” Skripals have relatives while cousin interviewed in UK media?

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Why did the UK Home Office make no attempt to contact the Skripals’ relatives in Russia? Why does High Court judgment imply they may not even exist when they have appeared on UK TV? More bizarreness in this already very bizarre case

Sneer & Smear: a close look at the gentle craft of media manipulation

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by Mark Doran As an arm of the corporate state — yes, it pretends not to be; but we know better, don’t we? — the BBC is naturally charged with certain vital propaganda tasks in the service of Western elite power. For example, there is the need for that Western elite power to seem at all times legitimate, accountable and well-intentioned: the sanctifying, magical word used for this purpose is ‘democratic’; and once it is deployed, no fundamental disagreement is possible. Then there is the need for that Western elite’s murderous military violence to seem necessary, just and proportionate — allowing the expropriation of foreign wealth and the progress of elite careers to continue apace without any kind of revolt from the mere taxpayer. To achieve the kind of make-over miracle by which aggression is painted as a combination of victimhood and altruism, a whole battery of beautifying propaganda terms is required, including ‘defence’, ‘response’, ‘intervention’, ‘human rights’, and ‘international law’. Even with these rousing words conveniently to hand, however, our state broadcaster might still …

Five days after Putin’s warning about the dangers of western warmongering & this is where we are

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Less than 24 hours after Sergei Skripal and his daughter, have allegedly been found in a collapsed state on a park bench in Salisbury, with no official claims of foul play and no announcement of likely cause, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is already announcing what he plans to do “If things turn out to be, as many members on both sides of the House suspect they are.”

What to Expect From BBC Panorama and Guardian’s Whitewash of UK Gov’t Funding Terrorists in Syria

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by Vanessa Beeley on 21st Century Wire The BBC will be carrying out a controlled journalistic “explosion” on their Panorama programme, airing tonight in the UK. Their report, dramatically titled, “Jihadis You Pay For” is about to expose UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) for the funding of extremist and terrorist groups in Syria via their “Free Syrian Police” project set-up in ‘rebel-held’ areas of Syria since 2014. To referee this virtual clash of the titans, The Guardian has been drafted-in to do the honours. The report, Jihadis You Pay For, will claim that Foreign Office money paid to the FSP reached people with links to the extremist group al-Nusra Front. The Guardian Mike Raddie of BSNEWS commented: Is the Guardian’s Daniel Boffey attempting to whitewash the massive scandals of FCO and BBC funding and working with extremist groups in Syria? Why did he not ask Vanessa Beeley or Robert Stuart to explain how these UK institutions are working alongside al Qaeda / ISIS linked groups inside Syria? Is it any wonder the Guardian has …

The Killing of History

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One of the most hyped “events” of American television, The Vietnam War, has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films, “They will inspire our country to begin to talk and think about the Vietnam war in an entirely new way”.

Our media are not fit for purpose

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by Philip Roddis This morning, just after eight, BBC Radio 4’s John Humphrys interviewed an American ‘expert’ – didn’t catch the name – on the first meeting, today, of Trump and Putin. In the time between my reaching for the bread bin, and two slices of the moderately browned popping from the toaster, said expert had presented as incontestable truth – no need to back up such a claim – Russia’s ‘aggression’ as against America’s ‘caution’. People buy this crap, you know, if only subliminally. Why? Because the west, anglo saxon west in particular, long ago traded independence of foreign policy for favoured status in Washington, so framing the boundaries for mainstream discourse on global affairs. And because, thanks to English as world lingua franca, most of us grew up on a cultural diet of the US as force for good: the orientalist corollary being the inscrutable asiatic; untrustworthy and capable of unspeakable acts. (Nowadays no one says such things out loud of course. An age that’s given rise to so many new and useful …

BBC goes full Big Brother in recent announcement

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Brought to our attention by Mark Doran, a new BBC document dated May 2017 contains this bizarre threat to its licence-payers: 9. Offensive or inappropriate content on BBC websites If you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to BBC websites or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on any BBC service, the BBC may use your personal information to stop such behaviour.  Where the BBC reasonably believes that you are or may be in breach of any applicable laws (e.g. because content you have posted may be defamatory), the BBC may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, school email/internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour. Here’s Mark’s screen cap of the doc: Not only is this freakishly (yes, there’s no other word) Orwellian, it’s completely vague. Are the words “objectionable” and “disruptive” going to be employed like the words “hate” (currently being used to shut down discourse on social media), and “fascist” (currently being used by (often …

Why did the American Military take precautions to prevent “fanciful” impossibilities?

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by Kit Late last night, The Pentagon stated that their attack on the Syrian Government air-base near Homs was not targeting the regime’s supposed chemical weapon stocks. Despite “all the signs” pointing to Assad’s guilt, and it being “very likely” that this base is where the gas attack originated…no efforts were made to destroy any chemical weapons. At all. The Pentagon’s official statement says: The strike was a proportional response to Assad’s heinous act. Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4. And that the attack… …was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again.” But the targets were limited to: …aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars. So they “know” where the chemical weapons are. And they “know” Assad used them on civilians and (for all they know) may well do so again. So why not target and destroy these weapons? Wouldn’t …