text:
Category: corruption
Saving Syria's Children: How the BBC are embedding their journalists with Jihadist groups in Syria
March 13, 2018 · 2 Comments ·
In Saving Syria's Children the logo of Salafist terror group, Ahrar al-Sham, is visible on the front of one the vehicles in Pannell and Conway's security convoy (Source: Robert Stuart).
For many years I have been following Robert Stuart's exhaustive and detailed exposition of the BBC Panorama documentary Saving Syria's Children that highlighted the aftermath of an alleged incendiary bomb attack on the playground of the Urm al-Kubra school near Aleppo in Syria.
The BBC team comprising reporter, Ian Pannell and cameraman, Darren Conway (who coincidentally were inside Syria when the alleged attack happened), reported on, and filmed, the incoming casualties arriving at the Atareb hospital on 26 August 2013. The footage formed the basis of the documentary.
Stuart contends that the filmed sequences were largely, if not entirely, staged. Scenes from the documentary were shown as part of a brief BBC News at Ten broadcast report by Pannell and Conway which contained harrowing scenes of teenage boys and young men, their skin apparently in tatters, racing into what the report describes as "a basic hospital funded by handouts" to be treated for burns.
In one particularly disturbing scene a tableau of young men writhe, drool and groan, seemingly in great distress. What is particularly striking about the scene, are the actions of the central figure, Mohammed Asi, who looks directly into the camera for several moments before raising his arm, at which point the group around him instantly became animated before moaning in unison.
Other anomalies include:
Conflicting and contradictory claims.
A "victim" who appeared to be grinning.
Implausible demeanours of alleged victims.
Questionable authenticity of the alleged burns to victims by experienced doctors.
Apparent choreographed behaviour.
Unconvincing injuries.
Testimonies that challenge the BBC version of events.
All of the anomalies and contradictions highlighted call into question the authenticity of the entire alleged attack.
Doctors & weapons
Saving Syria's Children also referenced to two British female doctors, Rola Hallam a 'volunteer' executive for the 'charity' Hand-in-Hand-for Syria (recently rebranded as Hand in Hand for Aid and Development) and (former?) BBC TV presenter, Saleyha Ahsan, an ex-captain in the British Army Medical Corps. The former's father, Dr Mousa al-Kurdi, is a senior Syrian opposition member.
Atareb Hospital's self-proclaimed, Medical Director, Abdulrahman Obied, was filmed alongside Dr Rola Hallam. In a blog article, Stuart showed that Abdulrahman's younger brother, Iessa Obied, posted on Facebook numerous images of himself posing with an array of weapons.
All of this information was hidden from the public by the BBC.
More recently, Stuart has alleged, convincingly, that BBC licence fee money was used to ensure the safe passage of Pannell and Conway and that the film-makers were given protection by the ISIS-affiliated Salafist terror group, Ahrar al-Sham.
According to Stuart:
"The award-winning team of reporter Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway OBE were embedded with jihadi group Ahrar al-Sham which, according to Human Rights Watch, had three weeks earlier worked alongside Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra as one of the key fundraisers, organizers, planners, and executors of an attack in which at least 190 civilians were killed and over 200 were kidnapped."
Furthermore, in the midst of the crisis, Stuart produced evidence that "Conway filmed, at close quarters, an ambulance plainly bearing the ISIS logo, along with its militarily attired and armed occupants."
This prompted Stuart to report Pannell and Conway's flagrant abuse of their positions as professional BBC journalists to the National Counter Terrorism Security Office on the grounds that:
"the named individuals apparently established a business relationship with members of a jihadi group with links to al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria in August 2013."
In a January 2018 blog piece, Stuart mooted the possibility of a connection between the alleged incendiary attack and the then incipient White Helmets. The researcher confirmed the veracity of this assertion in a follow-up article where he demonstrated that senior White Helmets members were present at Atareb Hospital on this date.
Stuart outlined the above issues to his constituency MP, Shadow Defense Secretary, Emily Thornberry, and opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn but neither have addressed any of his legitimate concerns.
The researcher has also presented his findings in open public forums on numerous occasions and the BBC have been informed of an award-winning U.S online magazine's description of Saving Syria's Children as "a sham."
Despite this, neither Stuart nor the said U.S online magazine, have been threatened by the BBC with any injunctions which would almost certainly have been the case had the allegations or claims been false.
The controversy that surrounds Saving Syria's Children and the BBCs connections to Islamist terrorist groups, including the White Helmets, adds fuel to the fire of those independent researchers and journalists who posit that mainstream coverage of the current turmoil in Syria is emblematic of the corporate media's systematic war propaganda against the Syrian government of Bashar-al-Assad.
It is clear that the BBC not only colluded in the production of false UK government propaganda intended to influence a vote in parliament to commit British troops to Syria in yet another illegal war, but that they did so by engaging in a sophisticated and well-planned series of events. This involved the active participation, not only of Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers, but the embedding of its journalists.
As the decline in traditional forms of media begins to take hold, the notion of the documentary as a sophisticated form of war propaganda, is increasingly being sold as a the new form of communication to the public. Indeed, Saving Syria's Children must be seen in the context of the 2018 Oscar-nominated, emotionally charged propaganda documentary Last Men in Aleppo.
The willingness of the BBC to overtly fund and directly produce war propaganda would appear to be a first for the corporation. Their actions are not only inexcusable, but they have the potential to pose a serious risk to national security and to further undermine what little remains of the trust the public has in the corporation's ability to report accurately and objectively on issues of national importance.
Robert Stuart contacted Jeremy Corbyn, requesting the need for a public investigation into Saving Syria's Children. That time has now come.
Please make a small donation
Britain: the university of corruption
December 22, 2017 · 1 Comment ·
In May, 2016, Roberto Saviano, an expert on the workings of the mafia, stated that "Britain is the most corrupt country in the world." Given that the Western media tend to categorize the issue of corruption along geopolitical and racial lines, one would find it difficult to arrive at such a conclusion after having analysed a mainstream broadcaster like the BBC.
Thus, on an edition of last August's BBC HARDtalk programme, host Stephen Sackur interrogated Nigeria's Minister for Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola in a way that he wouldn't had he interviewed a UK minister. During the discussion Sackur repeatedly implied that the Nigerian government was systematically corrupt. At one point the BBC presenter related an 'off mic' incident that involved the Nigerian minister and the then UK PM David Cameron. The latter was said to have berated Nigeria after having described the country as one of the two most corrupt countries in the world.
The irony of Cameron's comment would unlikely have gone unnoticed by Fashola. In 2010 the UK government passed into law the Bribery Act. Big business in the UK have repeatedly lobbied against this legislation, thereby undermining all attempts at preventing corruption.
The potential impact of the legislation is likely to be felt primarily, but not exclusively by, businesses. Why? Because bribery and corruption is an inherent part of big business deal-making. The notion that the British establishment occupies the moral high ground on matters of corruption is laughable. Instead, viewers to the BBC were conveniently invited to vent their anger towards a black politician in a far away country.
In 2013, Cameron visited one of the most corrupt and authoritarian countries on the planet, Kazakhstan. Its leader showered him with gratitude and praise. Kazakhstan's former police chief is linked to the ownership of £147m-worth of London properties which forms part of the UKs status as a safe haven for corrupt capital.
This represents the tip of a huge ice-berg of corruption in Britain. Readers might, for example, recall the Straw and Rifkind affair, the MPs expenses fiasco, the on-going PFI saga that's crippling the NHS, the long-running HSBC scandal and establishments complicit role in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers.
In addition, the UK government is actively involved in the selling of armaments to the Saudi regime who are raining them down on the Yemeni people. A great deal of the trade in weapons of death takes place at the bi-annual international arms jamboree in London's Docklands (of which UK royalty is, historically complicit).
Simon Jenkins is one of the few mainstream commentators to have remarked on the hypocrisy of the British establishment:
"The truth is that hypocrisy is the occupational disease of British leaders. They lecture Africans and Asians on the venality of their politics, while blatantly selling seats in their own parliament for cash. I hope some insulted autocrat one day asks a British leader how much his party has garnered from auctioning honours. The government suppresses any inquiry into corrupt arms contracts to the Middle East. And when does lobbying stop and corruption start?"
The point that Jenkins makes, namely that lobbying and corruption form a seamless whole, is a very good one. The widespread perception that Britain ranks 14th among the most corrupt countries in the world, is clearly indicative of the way in which the media misinform the public by ignoring the fact that corruption is embedded in the heart of the British establishment.
In bringing together a wide range of leading commentators and campaigners, David Whyte shows that it is no longer tenable to assume that corruption is something that happens elsewhere. Indeed, as Penny Green of Queen Mary University of London, contends, "the network of egregious state and corporate corruption in Britain rivals any in the developing world".
This is no accident. The function of the state has shifted from that of 'direct provider' to 'pro-business facilitator'. The ideology that came to embody this change is neoliberalism. Rather than goods and services being administered democratically, the trend has increasingly been for the state to act as a purchaser of these services which have then been provided privately and indirectly. As each separate financial intermediary takes their slice of the financial pie, the temptation for corrupt practices becomes greater and the concentration of capital and deregulation of labour markets more acute.
With the balance of economic power tilted increasingly towards the rich who are able to buy the influence of politician's, the impact on democracy has been devastating for millions of ordinary people. A hollowed-out system is one in which the 99 per cent increasingly find it difficult to establish some personal and meaningful pattern in a social world dominated by huge and distant monoliths whose power over the livelihood of billions seems absolute.
Neoliberalism: Manipulation of The Many to Benefit The Few
October 1, 2017 October 10, 2017 · 3 Comments ·
Theresa May recently described free-market capitalism as the "greatest agent of collective human progress ever created". But progress is an ideology linked to advances in technology and science, that since the emergence of industrial capitalism in the mid-19th century, has infected much of intellectual life (see, for example, Chris Harman's 'A People's History of the World, pp. 384-86).
What the obsession with the prevailing neoliberal socioeconomic orthodoxy of successive governments over the last 40 years illustrates, is that right-wing politicians like May proselytize, not on behalf of genuine free-markets, but an extreme form of crony capitalism in which the publicly owned assets of the state are systematically asset- stripped and the spoils distributed to the elite economic and political class.
Farm subsidies, public sector retrenchment, quantitative easing, share giveaways and housing benefit subsidies, are some of the ways in which neoliberal corporate welfare continues to greatly enrich the wealthiest in society. Figures reported in the Guardian indicate that the richest one per cent in Britain have as much wealth as the poorest 57 per cent combined.
More evenly shared
The growth in inequality during the neoliberal era contrasts with the thirty year "post-war settlement" period in which the wealth created by workers was shared much more evenly. For example, data indicates that the share of income going to the top 10 per cent of the population fell over the 40 years to 1979, from 34.6 per cent in 1938 to 21 per cent in 1979, while the share going to the bottom 10 per cent rose slightly. Meanwhile, other figures indicate that economic growth in the UK, adjusted for inflation, has grown over the last 60 years from £432bn in 1955 to £1,864bn in 2016.
The Tory exchequer in 2017, therefore, has roughly four times as much money at its disposal in real terms compared to six decades ago. Moreover, the ratio of national debt to GDP was approximately three times higher in the post-war years compared to 2017. Nevertheless, the then Labour government built hundreds of thousands of "homes fit for heroes" and brought the National Health Service into being.
Many decades later, Theresa May who leads a immeasurably wealthier country than was the case during the post-war period, claimed "there is no magic money tree" to fund public services. Whereas neoliberal fundamentalists envisage the market as an ideological manifestation of a notion of scientific and technological progress, Corbyn's vision is a return to a more equal society in which improvements to the quality of life for the majority through investing in public infrastructure and social capital play a crucial role.
The evidence Jeremy Corbyn intends to break the neoliberal consensus marking a return to the kind of equitable redistribution of the spoils of growth of the post-war years, is an economic strategy that is worrying a Tory government bereft of ideas. May and her Chancellor, Hammond, continue to advance the notion that the aspirations of those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are most effectively met as a result of economic trickle-down emanating from the top – a theory that has – given the subsequent growth in inequality – been comprehensively discredited. Under neoliberalism, wealth doesn't trickle down. On the contrary, it gushes up.
Mixed economy in the right hands
Potentially, sustained economic growth that capitalism engenders can create the conditions for the mass of humanity to overcome poverty and pestilence and to meet its fundamental needs – but only in the right hands. Paradoxically, the neoliberal model is is likely to lead to the exact opposite: the extinction of our species and probably many others.
The poorest who can't afford to enjoy the benefits of capitalism are, in the short-term, the most likely to be adversely affected by the climate chaos and wars it engenders. But the rich are not insulated from the process either since the affects of nuclear fallout and global warming are not undemocratic.
Theresa May's notion that the ideology of progress, manifested in scientific and technological advancement, is indicative of the "greatest agent of collective human progress ever created", is negated by the chaos wrought by global warming, the spread of wars, the growth in relative poverty and the lack of disposable income for millions of people.
Under neoliberalism, the impoverished and war-torn are unable to engage in the kinds of commercial and cultural activities the rich disproportionately benefit from. It is therefore not "collective" human progress that May is referring to when she espoused the virtues of capitalism.
For neoliberal ideologues, progress is measured in terms of the extent to which people are able to consume what the advancements in technology the market is able to deliver. While it is true that more people than ever have access to "luxury" technologies like flat screen TVs, mobile phones and computers, it's still the case that the majority of the worlds population don't.
Moreover, it doesn't necessarily follow that those who do have access to them are not struggling to feed their families. There is no correlation between poverty and the amount of consumer goods people have access to. Poor and hungry people without money who do have access to consumer goods like mobile phones are not able to console themselves by eating them.
Absolute v relative poverty
The Prime Minister is right to infer that the historical inward tidal flow of capitalist development over time has corresponded to an overall reduction in absolute poverty. But if it were only absolute poverty that resulted in social resistance there would never have been general strikes or revolutions after the first years of industrialization. As John Rees in Imperialism and Resistance (pp. 102-3) remarked:
"Few people in modern Britain wake up in the morning to face a new day and content themselves with the thought that at least they are not living like 19th century weavers. They ask themselves different questions. Is my child's life going to be harder than mine? Are we, the people, who do the work, getting a fair share of all the wealth that we see around us in this society?"
It is therefore not capitalism's ability to reduce the level of absolute poverty, but it's socially relative poverty measured in terms of the level of income inequality that counts.
At the turn of the century, the Office of National Statistics provided a snapshot of relative poverty in Britain. In interviews with panelists selected from the General Household Survey, it drew up a list of items regarded as "necessities": a bed, heating, a damp-free house, the ability to visit family and friends in hospital, two meals a day and medical prescriptions.
The study found that four million people do not eat either two meals a day or fresh fruit and vegetables. Nearly 10 million cannot keep their homes warm, damp-free or in a decent state of decoration. Another 10 million cannot afford regular savings of £10 a month. Some 8 million cannot afford one or two essential household goods like a fridge or carpets for their main living area. And 6.5 million are so poor to afford essential clothing. Children are especially vulnerable – 17 percent go without two essential items and 34 percent go without at least one.
With the massive increase in the use of food banks, the rise in zero hours contracts and in-work poverty; the adverse affects of the bedroom tax and cuts to council tax benefit for the poorest over the last decade, these figures almost certainly understate the extent of the current problem.
Wanda Wyporska, Executive Director of The Equality Trust, said:
"The cavernous gap between the richest and the rest of us should be a real source of worry…Extreme inequality is ravaging society…While many people's incomes have barely risen since the financial crash, a tiny elite has continued to pocket billions. If politicians are serious about building a genuinely shared society, then they urgently need to address this dangerous concentration of power and wealth and tackle our extreme inequality."#
System of enslavement
A world in which the mass of humanity is getting increasingly poorer while the rich are getting richer, largely as a result of the latter's collective theft of state assets, is indicative of a form of inherent systemic corruption on a huge scale. This is reflected by the extent to which public enterprises are privatized for profit and private capital debt is socialized through subsidy by the tax-payer. This is the kind of "free-market" capitalism espoused by May – a vision of a system built on the principle of socialism for the rich and enslavement for the rest.
Although many commentators point out, correctly, that this neoliberal socioeconomic model is not working for the vast majority of people, the point is, it was never intended to be that way. The purpose of neoliberal socioeconomic policy is not to improve the living standards or protect the jobs for the many, but to defend the short-term economic interests of the few.
In Spain, the Rajoy governments use of brute force against the people of Catalonia is an illustration of the extent to which the one percent are prepared to go in order to protect their corrupt neoliberal system of wealth usurpation. In theory the EU, as an institution, can be the catalyst for raising the living standards of the poorest, but under neoliberalism, it too, has become a corrupt extension of the sovereign state.
What Theresa May really means, is not that capitalism is the "greatest agent of collective human progress ever created", but rather that neoliberalism is the best economic model through which her class is able to financially enrich themselves by manipulating the institutions of society.
The London Dockland's Arms Fair: The Royal Merchants of Death
September 4, 2017 September 13, 2017 · 1 Comment ·
If not for the protests that have been taking place over the past week at London's Docklands, what is taking place their might appear to some to be a run of the mill trade show. In fact, one of the world's greatest cities is hosting representatives of some of the most authoritarian regimes on earth such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and Azerbaijan as part of the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition that began yesterday (September 12, 2017).
This summer, Britain demonstrated its support for the Saudi government, the biggest market for UK arms companies, by delivering a consignment of 500lb Paveway IV bombs originally earmarked for the RAF. Saudi Arabia's fleet of strike aircraft includes British Tornados, Eurofighter Typhoons and US F-15s.
Michael Stephens, of the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), told the BBC:
"The UK is digging into its own weapons supplies to replenish Saudi stocks."
Many of the weapons that will be sold to the Saudi's at the arms fair will be used in airstrikes ostensibly against Houthi rebels in Yemen but in fact are being targeted against civilian infrastructure. This amounts to a violation of the laws of war. More than 1,500 companies are expected to exhibit their weapons of death wares at the event, including the US and UK giants Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and BAE Systems.
Many of the Saudi bombs raining down on Yemeni civilians are being sold to them by BAE Systems, whose chairman, Sir Roger Carr, is also vice-chair of the BBC Trust. This almost certainly explains why the BBC has been reluctant to highlight Saudi-UK links in their news coverage.
At past London arms fairs, campaigners have discovered a variety of illegal torture equipment advertised for sale, including electric shock stun guns and batons, leg-irons, and belly, body and gang-chains. There has also been a range of illegal cluster-munition weaponry advertised. Author and activist, Matt Kennard, posted a photograph on Twitter of some of the munitions on sale at the event (see below):
According to the Guardian, Amnesty said it had identified nine companies that had violated UK law at DSEI events between 2005 and 2013.
The royal connection
The British establishment and royalty know that arms are good investments especially shells, bombs and cruise missiles that are tipped with depleted uranium. Air, water and soil are contaminated when DU is used and once contaminated there is no way to de-contaminate it. To contaminate the food chain is a crime against humanity for which the Royal Family is complicit.
Their complicity (with the help of Tiny Rowland), extended to the asset stripping of Africa. Tiny Rowland, who was an unashamed member of Hitler Youth and nicknamed the "Royal Buckaneer", was chief executive of the Lonrho conglomerate from 1962 to 1994. Angus Ogilvy, the Queen's nephew, would sit on Rowland's Board with Royal approval. The Royal shares would thus finance the arming of Africa in the Lonrho resource wars. African lenders who promised Lonrho their strategic minerals were armed to the hilt by Ogilvy and Rowland.
In 1987, the Anti-Slavery Society reported that in Lonrho's shanty goldmines, 60 boys had to work almost naked in a pool of cyanide at their extractor plant in Ghana. The cyanide, in separating out the gold, enters the body as gas, liquid or acid dust. But for Lonrho and royalty such horror is overlooked if it happens to impinge on profits. With the help and advice of their pet buckaneer, the royal shareholder's had recolonized Africa by the back door and their uranium holdings are now worth more than 6 billion dollars.
But here's the catch. No amount of money can deflect from the fact that pollution is democratic. Not only can uranium winds blow back into the faces of their profiteers but thanks to uranium investors, radioactive isotopes are now found in the flesh of worms. Worms are a pillar of ecosystems in as much as they air-ate the soil and aid the nutrient uptake of plants which Prince Charles reportedly likes to talk to.
Depleted uranium that hardens the tips of shells that can pierce concrete is one of the royal ordinance star exports despite the fact that weapons which contain DU violate the Geneva Convention. The DU shell which the Sovereign has shares in, is not only illegal but it is also a highly mobile discriminate killer described as a "permanent terrain contaminant".
Unlike any hereditary monarchy, however historic, DU stains the environment forever and rewrites DNA codes. The rates of human deformation in Fallujah, the city in Iraq where the West used DU, exceed those in Hiroshima. While the UK government was undertaking its illegal war in Iraq, it increased the value of the Royal investment. The price of uranium increased 500 percent in six years.
The trading in death by royalty continues apace but has shifted from the Continent they fleeced during the Ogilvy/Rowland years to the Arabian Gulf Peninsula. Three year ago BAE systems, sold 72 Typhoon fighter jets to the Saudi Arabian dictatorship. On the eve of the day the deal was signed Prince Charles was in the Saudi capital Riyadh, dressed in traditional robes and joining the Saudi princes in a sword dance.
Andrew Smith from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade said:
"It is clear that Prince Charles has been used by the UK government and BAE Systems as an arms dealer". This was Charles' 10th visit to the Saudi regime and was made at the request of the Foreign Office. A previous investigation into UK-Saudi arms deal, Margaret Thatcher's sale of Tornado fighters in the Al Yamamah deal, was blocked by Tony Blair on "national security grounds".
Illegal arms deals involving British royalty extends further afield. In South Africa, for example, Hawk Jets are the preferred killing machines.
Former South African MP Andrew Feinstein said:
"The royal family was involved in trying to persuade South Africa to buy BAE's Hawk jets, despite the air force not wanting the planes that cost two and a half times the price of their preferred aircraft. As an ANC MP at the time, I was told that £116m in bribes had been paid to key decision-makers and the ANC itself. The royal family's attitude is part of the reason that BAE will never face justice in the UK for its corrupt practices."
It's the hereditary concentration of power and accumulation of wealth through weapons profiteering, corruption and death that, in part, is the context that lays behind Jeremy Corbyn's decision to refuse to sing the national anthem. The monarchy and notions of democracy are irreconcilable concepts.
It was on this principle that the English people fought a civil war, made a revolution and cut off their king's head in the 17th century. I'm not suggesting anything of the sort be carried out today, but the outward expression of Corbyn's republican principles, set against Monday's passing of the Brexit Bill in Westminster, highlight the contradiction at the heart of liberal democratic Britain in the 21st century.
The Naked Emperor
After ten days of Tory-DUP negotiations, Arlene Foster returned to Belfast with a £1.5bn deal in exchange for the 10 votes Theresa May will potentially need to enable her to shore up a discredited minority government. Most of what the British government campaigned for in the election has now been junked.
The Tories, whose election manifesto closely resembled that of the BNP fascists in 2005, have aligned themselves with a similarly extremist political party in the form of the DUP, many of whose senior members are avowed creationists. The party is also linked to the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church which campaigns for creationism to be taught in schools and for museums to hold exhibitions on the subject.
In addition, the DUP are officially endorsed by loyalist terrorists; they don't believe women who have been raped are entitled to abortions, are opposed to same-sex marriage and, if that wasn't enough, they employed a climate change denier as an environment minister. It is worth noting that the Tory government who are propped up by these homophobes, creationists and terrorist endorsers, smeared the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, as a terrorist sympathizer.
The Tory-DUP deal, which is clearly incompatible with the Barnett Formula, will almost certainly threaten the 1998 peace accord, the Good Friday Agreement. Contained within the text of the agreement (Article 1) – the fundamental principle that lies at its core – is the phrase "rigorous impartiality". The concept flows from the complex right of self-determination on which the current British-Irish constitutional compromise is based.
This is the notion that the future constitutional status of Northern Ireland should be decided by the people of Ireland alone; subject to the wishes of a majority of people in Northern Ireland (the consent principle). That is a choice that should be freely made and without detriment to anyone. It means that whoever exercises sovereign jurisdiction now (UK) "shall" do so on an impartial basis "on behalf of all the people" and that this:
"shall be founded on the principles of full respect for, and equality of, civil, political, social and cultural rights, of freedom from discrimination for all citizens, and of parity of esteem and of just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos and aspirations of both communities."
It's clear that maintaining any semblance of rigorous impartiality cannot be reconciled with the fact that the UK government has effectively favoured one party by giving it £1.5 billion to distribute within the province as it pleases in return for votes. Ireland's former PM, Enda Kenny, warned about the possible implications of infrastructural investment that favoured one side over the other. He reminded Theresa May about the requirement of rigorous impartiality and questioned the governments ability to adhere to such a commitment.
It would appear that Kenny's cynicism is justified. The succession of UK governments' meddling either overtly or covertly in the conflicts of the middle east – notably in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria – indicate the British establishments preference for war over peace. Thus, the Tory governments close ties with the anti-peace party, the DUP, should not come as a surprise to anybody.
Indeed, ideologically and historically the two parties are more closely aligned than is perhaps generally appreciated. Both are staunchly pro-establishment, pro-war and socially and politically regressive. Not only are the DUPs attitudes to the likes of gays and progressives retarded, but from the outset they have actively campaigned against the Good Friday Agreement.
But more than that, as far back as the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973, they have opposed all previous measures intended to promote power-sharing and peace. Their deal with the Tories gives them the justification they need to undermine the Good Friday Agreement and thereby re-assert the establishments hegemony over the province, and hence, the right-wing political status quo that underpins it.
No sooner had the ink dried on the Tory-DUP deal, lawyers in Ireland began to examine ways that it could be challenged. It's difficult to envisage a situation in which a successful legal challenge on the basis the deal undermines "rigorous impartiality" could not be made.
There appears to be no historical precedent whatsoever for a political settlement that favours one side in Northern Ireland over another based on a scenario in which money has been exchanged for votes in Westminster and whose sole intention is to prop up a minority government.
The corporate media are protecting the establishment from democracy
June 11, 2017 June 11, 2017 · 12 Comments ·
The fact that Theresa May was only able to cling on to power with the help of the knuckle-dragging DUP because of the gains the Tories made from the SNP in Scotland, is extremely frustrating. Had the SNP fought the election primarily on an independence platform, rather than pretending to be all things to all people, the party would have almost certainly maintained its level of support.
What this illustrates is that the strategy to fight elections on the enemy's chosen ground, is a flawed one. Offering the electorate competent technocratic managerialism rather than principled and ideologically-based policies, is a strategy of despair as the approach of the Blairites under Milliband aptly illustrated.
Yet, disappointingly this was precisely the retrograde step suggested by Paul Mason while arguing the case on the BBC after it became clear that Theresa May would not achieve an overall parliamentary majority. "Corbyn needs to bring Labour's 'hard-hitters' back into the political fold", argued Mason. Interestingly, the journalist and economist made his comments sitting next to former Blair spin merchant, Alastair Campbell, who was also quick to suggest that Corbyn should use his success to broaden his cabinet and his policy platform in order to bring the Blairites back onboard.
This kind of concession based on the false premise it will enable Corbyn to win power, should be avoided like the plague. The election proves that the 'unelectable' Corbyn who at 40 per cent gained a higher proportion of the vote than his predecessors (Milliband 2015, 30%, Brown 2010, 29%, Blair 2005, 35%), can win the next election on his own terms. In a rare, honest post-election commentary, Owen Jones wrote:
"Labour is now permanently transformed. Its policy programme is unchallengeable. It is now the party's consensus. It cannot and will not be taken away. Those who claimed it could not win the support of millions were simply wrong. No, Labour didn't win, but from where it started, that was never going to happen. That policy programme enabled the party to achieve one of the biggest shifts in support in British history – yes, eclipsing Tony Blair's swing in 1997…The prospect of a socialist government that can build an economy run in the interests of working people – not the cartel of vested interests who have plunged us into repeated crisis – well, that may have been a prospect many of us thought would never happen in our lifetime. It is now much closer than it has ever been."
It's astonishing to this writer that Mason and others apparently fail to recognise that the left is desperate for an alternative to neoliberalism which Corbyn's policies reflect but which Blairism helps augment. Any concessions towards those who have stabbed the Labour leader in the back over the last two years will totally undermine his alternative anti-austerity vision for the country.
Those who are genuine about the need for radical change, understand how important it is to undermine the hold the Blairites have on the party, not encourage them. The huge increase in turnout and votes of the 18-24 year old demographic up (from 58% under Milliband to 72% under Corbyn) that contributed enormously towards Labour's 30 seat gain, was predicated on a vision of the country that rejects Blairism.
Hamstrung
Had the media not been biased against Corbyn during the election campaign, had he not been hamstrung by two years of almost constant vilification from the liberal corporate media like the Guardian, and reinforced by Blairites within his own party (the kind of calculating careerist opportunists Mason alluded to), Corbyn would almost certainly have got over the finishing line.
The same media-political establishment who were relentlessly vilifying him in lock-step, now claim they all got it wrong. This is a fallback position in an attempt to obfuscate. The truth is, the media didn't think he was 'wrong', rather they opposed him. As Media Lens posited:
"They were 'wrong' about his ability to generate support. They still think they're right to oppose everything he stands for."
In other words, the corporate media's mass failure represents a structural flaw. They have virtually zero credibility. The revelation that the exit polls suggested a hung parliament, prompted Cathy Newman to tweet:
"Ok let's be honest, until the last few weeks many of us under-estimated Jeremy Corbyn."
This is disingenuous. The reality is rather different. As opposed to underestimating Corbyn, the truth is the media refused to give him a fair hearing because of what he represents to corporate hacks like Newman.
So-called corporate 'journalists' and commentators are, as comedian Dom Jolly argued,
"political PR prostitutes to a handful of billionaires with selfish agendas."
One such political PR prostitute is Dan Hodges who in July, 2016 tweeted the immortal line:
"If Corbyn beats Owen Smith I don't see how May doesn't call an election next year. And that would be political armageddon for Labour."
From the day Corbyn was elected as Labour leader, the agenda of political PR prostitutes like Hodges, Aaranovitch, Rentoul, Cohen and McTernan, has been to get rid of him. All those who are now crying wolf are doing so, not as part of a genuine principled display of collective remorse, but as a damage-limitation exercise in order to save their careers.
Ideally, they would have preferred Corbyn to have lost badly on the premise that the existence of the status quo is better than a Corbyn win which would have engendered career uncertainty. In this sense, the Westminster commentariat's criticisms of the Labour leader were intended as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A Tory landslide would have given those within the Westminster bubble like Polly Toynbee and Anne Perkins the opportunity to write their Corbyn obituaries and thus create an opening through which they would effectively have been able to take back control of the Labour party and reconfigure it in their own Blairite image.
Corbyn's sensational electoral achievement illustrates how an increasingly informed and sophisticated public are seeing through the deceptions and lies. Consequently, the attempts by the political-media establishment to exercise their dominance over them, using the Labour party as their tool with which to achieve it, back-fired spectacularly.
Social and political historians will look back at the current period in which a mass social media, controlled by the people, overcame the corporate-media propaganda power of the state, as a watershed moment. The fake apologist tones of the liberal elite who used the pulpit of their employers to try to bring Corbyn and his supporters to their knees, are now trying to persuade the public that their supposed change of heart has nothing to do with reining in their loss of control and, by extension, the reduced revenues of their employers.
We see this, for example, in relation to the Guardian's associate editor, Michael White, whose public back-tracking strategy on Corbyn days before the election that was intended to halt the decline in his papers readership, was as transparent as Claude Rains in the Invisible Man. This is also reflected in additional sympathetic and supportive Corbyn articles and tweets since it became clear that his pre-election poll ratings had dramatically began to improve.
It's precisely the kind of cynical attitudes outlined, displayed by the corporate media in general towards its target audience, that creates a space for alternative social media of the likes of the Canary to flourish. The corporate press barons are rapidly losing the public's respect in no small part due to their biased distorted reportage and crude, fake sensationalist headlines designed to demoralize and disorientate their readership. The tabloid depiction of Corbyn as a Jihadist sympathizer is an obvious case in point.
Political weapon
However, it's a mistake to think that less overt forms of media propaganda do not also function as a political weapon by the state. As Noam Chomsky put it: "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." The kinds of mutually-reinforcing propaganda in the liberal broadsheets are symptomatic of the broader decline in media performance.
Michael Savage, political editor of the Observer, for example, apparently thought nothing of tweeting the views of convicted fraudster and self-serving former MP Denis MacShane. The Blairite, MacShane and the Blairite, Savage were merely reiterating their respective anti-Corbyn views in order to implant in the public's mind the notion that Corbyn is useless. This is also true of the wider corporate commentariat who reinforce their own prejudices which become a self-fulfilling echo-chamber. Dissenters who challenge this orthodoxy are often ridiculed, smeared or abused.
The media barons will continue to invest in traditional media propaganda only if at the end of it they can be assured they get the kinds of governments they want. The opportunistic careerist politicians and corporate journalists who operate within the Westminster bubble, know which side their bread is buttered and are only too willing to adjust their views accordingly, particularly if the corporate buck is large enough and the situation demands it.
However, the rise of Corbyn, concomitant to an increasingly politically active citizenship informed by alternative social media and a sincere and incorruptible form of politics, suggests the foundations upon which corporate greed and the establishment view of the world distorts human relations, are shaking.
It's true the Tories are still the governing party. But their ability to shape domestic policy unhindered, premised on the existence of a corrupt media and democracy, has been greatly diminished. Theresa May is only able to cling to power by her fingertips because she is propped up by the DUP who have close links to loyalist terrorists who murdered 1,016 people between 1969-2001 and who shot someone dead in a car park in an internecine dispute during the election campaign.
The DUP are also climate change deniers, creationists, homophobes and anti-abortionists. There is only so much of this kind of DUP-Tory relationship the public, and even the media, will be willing to endure in the weeks and months ahead.
I rely on the generosity of my readers. I don't make any money from my work and I'm not funded. If you've enjoyed reading this or another posting, please consider making a donation, no matter how small. You can help continue my research and write independently..… Thanks
This is the main reason why you should vote Labour today
June 6, 2017 June 8, 2017 · 7 Comments ·
Jeremy Corbyn's landmark stated intention to tackle not just terrorism in isolation, but its causes, is the potential catalyst for a far wider transformation of society that is desperately needed in Britain and, indeed, the world. This is the reality a Labour victory under Corbyn could realistically usher in, in the years ahead.
In the event of a Labour win, the days in which successive UK governments – both Tory and Labour – have perpetuated endless war and counter-terrorism in order to sustain the profits of the arms and weapons companies and to ensure the privileges and concentration of power of the few at the expense of the many are maintained, will almost certainly begin to come to an end.
This is why the deep state, that includes the corporate media, under the said governments, have consistently, in the words of Media Lens, thwarted the attempt by the public "to shape a genuinely democratic choice out of the sham choices of corporate-owned politics."
The corporate media's framing of Syria is a case in point. Back in December 2015, the BBC reported on claims made by the Ministry of Defense that RAF Tornado and Typhoon warplanes had destroyed wellheads in the country…."thus cutting off the terrorists' oil revenue at the very source". The impression given to the public was that the UK government had actively engaged in degrading the infrastructural and financial capability of ISIS.
However, this was based on a deception. In reality, the target was the precise location that had been hit by Russian and US coalition forces six weeks earlier. This was confirmed by a report in the Express on October 23, 2015, that highlighted the obliteration by both Russian and US coalition forces of an ISIS oilfield and supply routes in the heart of Islamic State territory in Syria. The Express report, therefore, inadvertently contradicted the UK governments own propaganda.
The deception also underlined the subsequent revelation that ISIS had gained access to weapons exported by the UK to the Middle East in the wake of 2003 invasion of Iraq. The ability of ISIS to access weapons is only possible if they have money to purchase them. Tackling the flow and source of criminal money, is the most effective way to drain them of their ability to function. This is precisely the strategy Corbyn has proposed to undertake in order to tackle the causes of jihadist terrorism.
The reason why the establishment are opposed to the Labour leader is because they realize he cannot be bought off on their terms and hence if elected he is likely to potentially undermine their ability to be able to continue pulling the financial strings that determine the control, flow and maintaining of oil revenues.
In September, 2014, in a briefing to the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee, EU Ambassador to Iraq Jana Hybaskova, conceded that some European countries have purchased crude from ISIS from the areas in northern Iraq and Syria they have captured. Accepting that the most effective way of countering ISIS is to attack the source of their funding rather than using bombs to kill civilians, appeared to be the rationale behind the then Shadow Foreign Secretary, Hilary Benn's initial decision to oppose military intervention in Syria.
However, inexplicably, two weeks later, he voted in favour of bombing. Something happened in the two week period up to December 2, 2015, which influenced Benn's decision to change his mind. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that war is good for boosting the profits of those connected to the military-industrial complex and that he had allegedly been lobbied by BAE Systems who stood to gain financially from any change of heart.
Sure enough, the depression in their share price in late October, 2015 on the back of Benn's opposition to war, subsequently jumped after the announcement to bomb was made. Being in the pocket of the arms industry is concomitant to the notion of favouring war, which not only explains the BBCs pro-war stance (BBC Trust vice-chair, Roger Carr is chairman of UK arms manufacturer, BAE Systems), but clearly also explained Benn's careful positioning in his attempt to usurp the anti-war Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership.
The attempt failed. Corbyn went on to secure a second mandate and Benn was sacked from his post as Shadow Foreign Secretary. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, major defense contractors Raytheon, Oshkosh, and Lockheed Martin assured investors that they stood to gain from the escalating conflicts in the Middle East. Lockheed Martin Executive Vice President Bruce Tanner said his company will see "indirect benefits" from the war in Syria, citing the Turkish military's decision to shoot down a Russian warplane.
Tanner was far from being the only beneficiary of the war in Syria. A deal that authorized $607 billion in defense spending brokered by the U.S Congress, for example, was described as a "treat" for the industry. What better way to benefit from this "treat" than for the major powers to secure the "hydrocarbon potential" of Syria's offshore resources with the aim of reducing European dependence on Russian gas and boosting the potential for an energy independence.
Broader strategy
The broader strategy to dismember Syria involves the annexation of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the 1967 war. This is being aided by one of the most concerted media propaganda offensives since the Iraq debacle. The main reason the Murdoch media, in particular, is pushing for regime change in Syria, is because Israel has granted oil exploration rights to the multinational corporation, Genie Energy. Murdoch is a major shareholder in the company. In a 2010 press release, Claude Pupkin, CEO of Genie Oil and Gas stated:
"Genie's success will ultimately depend, in part, on access to the expertise of the oil and gas industry and to the financial markets. Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch are extremely well regarded by and connected to leaders in these sectors. Their guidance and participation will prove invaluable."
Pupkin continued:
"I am grateful to Howard Jonas and IDT for the opportunity to invest in this important initiative….Rupert Murdoch's extraordinary achievements speak for themselves and we are very pleased he has agreed to be our partner. Genie Energy is making good technological progress to tap the world's substantial oil shale deposits which could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world."
Other players involved in the plan to extract resources from the Golan, include the Israeli subsidiary, Afek Oil and Gas, American Shale, French Total and BP. Thus there exists a broad and powerful nexus of US, British, French and Israeli interests, encompassing defense, security, energy and media sectors, at the forefront of pushing for the break-up of Syria and the control of what is believed to be potentially vast untapped oil and gas resources in the country. The plans, if successful, will also rein-in Russian and Iranian influence in the region.
The foreign and domestic policies of successive British governments have been integral to the perpetuation of this system of cronyism, war and corruption. A class system built on inequality, injustice and deference, depends on these factors for its continued existence. The election of Corbyn as Prime Minister would potentially scupper this unethical and corrupt system which is why the deep state (that includes the BBC and the rest corporate media), have done their utmost to ensure it doesn't happen. Let's prove them wrong today by turning out in large numbers and putting our crosses next to our respective Labour candidates..
The extent to which the corruption at the heart of the British establishment, emblematic of endless war, has been allowed to continue, is reflected by the unwillingness of successive governments' to tackle the issue. This is probably best exemplified by the decision of the former business secretary, Sajid Javid, in July, 2015, to invite companies' to comment on whether the "tough anti-corruption measures" contained within the governments 2010 Bribery Act are "a problem."
Letters sent by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills invited industry leaders to comment on whether the act has had an impact on their attempts to export. Needless to say, letters inviting small businesses and employees to comment about regulations that prevent them from making more money at any cost to the environment and working conditions, were not forthcoming.
On the August 3, 2015, edition of the BBC HARDtalk programme, host Stephen Sackur interviewed Nigeria's Minister for Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola. During the interview Sackur repeatedly alluded that the Nigerian government was systematically corrupt. At one point Sackur related an 'off mic' incident in which former prime minister, David Cameron, was said to have berated Nigeria, after he described it as one of the two most corrupt countries in the world.
Apparently, it hadn't occurred to either Sackur or Cameron that big business in the UK lobbied against the Bribery Act which was intended to undermine corruption – the implication being that corporations would rather be scraping around in the sewer if there was some money to be made among the filth. As far as the British establishment are concerned, corrupt practices are something restricted to what dark skinned people in far away countries engage in. By contrast, the former thinks of itself as occupying the moral high ground, despite the fact that the UK was one of the major players heavily implicated in the Panama Papers scandal.
In 2012, Cameron visited one of the most corrupt and authoritarian countries on the planet, Kazakhstan. The leader of that country showered him with gratitude and praise. Kazakhstan's former police chief is linked to the ownership of £147m-worth of London properties which forms part of the UKs status as a safe haven for corrupt capital. Other corruption scandals to have hit the headlines around that time include the Straw and Rifkind affair, the MPs expenses scandal (ongoing) and the long-running PFI saga that's crippling the NHS.
Simon Jenkins summarized the malaise and hypocrisy at the heart of the British establishment:
"The truth is that hypocrisy is the occupational disease of British leaders. They lecture Africans and Asians on the venality of their politics, while blatantly selling seats in their own parliament for cash. I hope some insulted autocrat one day asks a British leader how much his party has garnered from auctioning honours. The government suppresses any inquiry into corrupt arms contracts to the Middle East. And when does lobbying stop and corruption start? The Cameron government is the most susceptible to lobbying of any in history."
In the nearly two years since Jenkins wrote his piece, nothing fundamentally has changed. If anything, corruption is arguably even more endemic under Theresa May than it was under Cameron. Indeed, unethical practices within the British establishment continue to be integral to the workings of the deep state. Take the ongoing seamless links between the Tory establishment, BBC, the intelligence services and HSBC as an example.
The connection between the former and latter go back a long way. David Cameron's great, great grandfather was the head of HSBC in the UK when they were established in Hong Kong. In November, 2010, a critical report from the Office for Fair Trading (OFT) insisted that the bank refrain from making illegal charges that amounted to some £200m on its customers.
After a successful 13 year-long battle to prove HSBCs guilt, anti-corruption campaigner and whistle blower, Nicholas Wilson, has finally been vindicated. The bank was found guilty and fined a relatively paltry sum of £4m. The background to the case outlined by Wilson in a video on his blog, is a revelation.
During the time of the critical OFT report, the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, decided to make the then head of the bank, Stephen Green, a Lord and to bring him into government as a trade minister. The government state broadcaster, the BBC, buried the story.
But more significantly, HSBC director, Jonathan Evans (formerly head of MI5), supplied – through his company – customer data to every major government department – MI5, MI6, GCHQ, MOD, MOJ. Cameron proceeded to appoint Evans to head the BBC Trust in 2014. He was subsequently made a Lord and, like Green, brought into the government. Another Lord, Lord Janvrin, former chair of HSBC private bank, sits on the committee that oversees the security services.
Another government connection to HSBC concerns the appointment of the head of their Audit Committee, Rhona Fairhead, to the chair of the BBC Trust. According to Wilson, since Fairhead's appointment at the BBC, there has been no reporting of HSBC criminality which continues to be numerous and has been documented by other journalists around the world as major incidents. This includes a HSBC and Russian- related drug money laundering story.
Wilson points out that journalist Peter Oborne resigned from the Telegraph over its lack of negative coverage of HSBC. In a public letter, Oborne described how the paper had spiked about six negative stories including one by its investigative team over a period of three months because HSBC are "the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend."
Wilson has had his attempts to publish his expose of HSBC in the corporate media – Private Eye, the Times, BBC Panorama, Newsnight, Channel 4 News – scuppered by editors who have spiked his version of events. Prior to Cameron's re-election in 2015, Sunday Times correspondent, Tom Harper, wrote a damning story on HSBC that implicated Cameron in his attempt to cover-up the Stephen Green scandal. But while Harper was investigating, Sunday Times editor, Camilla Cavendish, met with Cameron.
The story was subsequently spiked one day prior to its intended publication. Two months later, it was announced that Cavendish was working at Downing Street in the policy office of Cameron. When he resigned, he gave her a peerage. She is now Baroness Cavendish. That's the extent of the corruption at the heart of the British establishment. In other words, one of the biggest corporate financial institutions in the UK that illegally stole money from its customers with minimal redress, is embedded within the high echelons of the corporate media and government establishment.
Given the connections HSBC has to many of the High Street chains, the nature of government-corporate corruption is likely to be far more extensive than many people realize. Then there is the extent to which these kinds of manifestations of the deep state are played out in terms of its relationship to the initiation of wars, terrorism and the perpetuation of the arms industry. I discuss these issues (in relation to Syria) here and here.
Jeremy Corbyn's honest approach to tackling terrorism has brought the topic of corruption sharply into focus and in so doing has exposed the failed war on terror foreign policy strategy of his neoliberal opponents. The fact that Corbyn has wrong-footed the political establishment and the media that back them, is rattling both.
An increasingly sophisticated electorate are aware that foreign military interventions and the selling of arms to tyrannical regimes like Saudi Arabia, increase the terrorist threat. Craig Murray has cited polls indicating that voters understand the correlation between wars fought abroad and domestic terrorism. Given the establishment themselves admit the connections, the media can no longer smear the left with the terrorist apologist epithet.
That partly explains why the Tories have not gained ground in the polls since Corbyn made his speech. So desperate have the establishment become, that the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, who was former director of two offshore tax avoidance asset management firms in the Bahamas, resorted to censoring Nicholas Wilson at a Hastings and Rye hustings. Rudd instructed the chair to disrupt his speech. Wilson, who is standing as an independent, had his microphone removed from him, after he commented on Rudd's alleged political and financial links and actions in Saudi Arabia. The whole thing was captured on video here.
Given the inherent corrupt nature of the British state, the fact that the UK is widely perceived to be the world's 14th least corrupt country in the world is perhaps a testament to the propaganda power of the corporate media. According to journalist Roberto Saviano, who spent more than a decade exposing the criminal dealings of the Italian Mafia, Britain is the most corrupt country in the world. He told an audience at Hay-on-Wye: "If I asked you what is the most corrupt place on Earth you might tell me well it's Afghanistan, maybe Greece, Nigeria, the South of Italy and I will tell you it's the UK."
The disconnect between perception and reality is clearly indicative of the distorted way in which an organisation like the national state broadcaster under-report the subtle forms of 'hidden' systemic corruption that is embedded in the very fabric of the British state, camouflaged by legislation and cushioned by 'gentlemen's agreements'.
In bringing together a wide range of leading commentators and campaigners, David Whyte shows that it is no longer tenable to assume that corruption is something that happens elsewhere; corrupt practices are revealed across a wide range of venerated institutions, from local government to big business.
As Penny Green of Queen Mary University of London, contends, "the network of egregious state and corporate corruption in Britain rivals any in the developing world". This is one reason why the electorate throughout the country in today's contest, should consider very carefully who they give their vote to.