BBC
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: THE ART OF LOOKING PRIME MINISTERIAL – THE 2010 UK GENERAL ELECTION
On April 15, news media broadcast the first of three live, 90-minute “prime ministerial debates” between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, the leaders, respectively, of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. By the end of the second debate on April 22, the word ‘Iraq’ had been mentioned a total of five times… Continue reading
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Beautiful mind, fucked up planet By William Bowles
Lovelock’s contention is simple, in fact so obvious it hardly needs debating: Life, the oceans, the atmosphere/climate and the land are all part of a single self-regulating system that Lovelock calls Gaia after the ancient Egyptian goddess of life. Life maintains the right balance through regulating the type and proportion of gases in our atmosphere,… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: WHEN FACTS AND PROPAGANDA COLLIDE – THE BBC BENDS OVER BACKWARDS TO ACCOMMODATE ISRAELI CLAIMS
When a Thai kibbutz worker was killed in Israel by a rocket launched from Gaza last week, BBC News online gave the incident headline coverage flagged up on its home page. By contrast, the killing of two Palestinian teenagers, Mohammad Qadus and Osaid Qadus, by Israeli soldiers on Saturday was buried at the end of… Continue reading
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Depleted Uranium: A War Crime Within a War Crime By William Bowles
As if destroying a country and its culture ain’t bad enough, how about destroying its future, its children? I want to scream it from the rooftops! We are complicit in crimes of such enormity that I find it difficult to find the words to describe how I feel about this crime committed in my name!… Continue reading
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Capitalism cut adrift – Part 2: Looking Sideways By William Bowles
Television has become the major propaganda weapon of capital, serving not only to ‘entertain’ but to transform our understanding of where we came from and crucially, how we got here. Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: WAR AS PR – OPERATION MOSHTARAK, MEANING “TOGETHER”
Idiocy is one thing, but the BBC’s idiocy all went one way – no journalist swooned with comparable helplessness at the feet of experts excoriating US-UK propaganda. As news of Sambrook’s move arrived, his former colleagues at the BBC were once again deferring to the “intelligent”, “thoughtful”, “sceptical” American and British politicians hawking the public… Continue reading
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Capitalism cut adrift By William Bowles
There has been much talk expended over the years on the degree to which the media—and hence culture—is central to maintaining the capitalist system. Leading the charge have been Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, so much so that they now more resemble sainted objects than social/political analysts, but then this is nothing new for the… Continue reading
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Why is the BBC’s Haiti coverage so appalling? By William Bowles
I’ve been scanning through the BBC News website almost every day to see what our ‘impartial’ and ‘objective’ state-controlled news organization has to say on the subject. So first I searched through my BBC RSS feed from the 15 January to today, 25 January, using Haiti as the keyword. Only one out of twenty-six stories… Continue reading
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Securing Disaster in Haiti By Peter Hallward
Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010, it’s now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island’s recent history. It has adopted military priorities and strategies. It has sidelined Haiti’s… Continue reading
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What say you, BBC?
It has been a year since Israel’s savage assault on Gaza that killed more than 1400 civilians. For the duration of the attack the BBC did not have a single man or a woman inside Gaza to cover it. This would be understandable if there weren’t any means available to get a journalist into Gaza.… Continue reading
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BBC Climbs Down over Zionist ‘anti-Semitism’ Lies at SOAS Meeting
It was a simple and terrible accusation. The co-Chair of the Zionist Federation, Jonathan Hoffman, had got up to ask a question at a Bricup meeting, and he was subject to a shout of ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish’ as well as being heckled because he was Jewish (not because of his views of course!). There was… Continue reading
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The Chilcot ‘Inquiry’: A Theatre of the Absurd By William Bowles
Why does the extermination of an entire culture cause not a ripple in our public discourse? The answer is obvious: we don’t have any kind of discourse with those who wield power. Continue reading
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Media Lens Alert: Chilcot Inquiry – the establishment goes to work – part 2
The Iraqi “threat” was a fantasy invented by the immensely powerful, nuclear-armed bullies of the West. This is why former British ambassador to Washington, Christopher Meyer, was able to observe last month that prior to the attacks on September 11, 2001, Iraq was merely “a grumbling appendix”. Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: THE SILENCE OF THE BBC 100 – BBC TRUST CHAIRMAN RESPONDS TO ‘NEWSPEAK’
One of our readers recently took us to task for a serious omission in our new book, ‘Newspeak in the 21st Century’ (Pluto Press, 2009). He asked how we could possibly have failed to include the BBC’s Newsnight presenter, Emily Maitlis. In August 2008, Maitlis opened Newsnight with these words about the conflict between Russia… Continue reading
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Zionist Control of Britain’s Government: 1940-2009 By William A. Cook
Now perhaps we can answer the question, ‘How many years has the British government been under the control of the Zionist influence?’ Three score and ten, the biblical age. Perhaps it’s time that Britain is reborn, free from the shackles that bind it to this corrupt power that flouts international law, wantonly commits crimes against… Continue reading
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Channel 4 Dispatches investigates The pro-Israel lobby in Britain
Dispatches investigates the pro-Israel lobby in Britain which is working in support of the interests of the State of Israel. We have obtained a full copy of this by Peter Oborne and James Jones. Continue reading
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The BNP and bridging the gulf of disbelief By William Bowles
18 November, 2009 By now it must surely be obvious to everyone that a vast gulf exists between the rulers and the ruled, so much so that the ruled have all but given up listening. The ruling elite are now so desperate that hardly a day goes by without some political dinosaur telling us that Continue reading
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About Patria, Pageants and Poppies By William Bowles
17 November, 2009 “Britain’s last surviving World War I veteran shunned Remembrance Day commemorations Wednesday because he was against the glorification of war” — ‘Britain’s last WWI veteran shuns Remembrance Day’ After eight years and tens of thousands of Afghan casualties, the occupiers are settling down to a war of unknown duration. And contrary to Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS: THE BBC’S JEREMY PAXMAN ON IRAQ – “WE WERE HOODWINKED”
Does not government submission of evidence mark the point where serious journalism +begins+ rather than ends? What is the reason for journalism at all, if the responsibility is simply to accept what a US Secretary of Defence says because we “know” he “is an intelligent, thoughtful man, and a sceptical man”? Continue reading
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Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires or just a graveyard with a pipeline running through it? By William Bowles
Come on folks, it’s just good sense, there is no way the Empire can actually win the war in Afghanistan. As I have stated before it’s about being there, not ‘winning’. Afghanistan is basically a stepping stone on the way to some place else and leaving an oil pipeline behind with a friendly government in… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 