Tag: mark curtis

‘CIA Sidekick’ NED Gives £2.6M to UK Media Groups

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Thursday, 20 January 2022 — Consortium News

A U.S. government-funded agency that claims to promote democracy but which helps undermine governments independent of Washington has moved decisively into Britain’s media space since 2016.

  • National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has funded groups such as Bellingcat, Index on Censorship, Article 19, Finance Uncovered, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation
  • Former C.I.A. officer tells Declassified the NED is a “vehicle” for U.S. government “propaganda”

By Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis
Declassified UK

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Britain and the Iranian Revolution: Arms & Secret Deals By Mark Curtis

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8 February 2019 — Consortium News

Mark Curtis reviews the expediency that for many decades has marked U.K. policy toward Iran.

British Foreign Policy Declassified

Forty years ago, the Iranian revolution sent a shockwave through the Middle East, overthrowing the Western client, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and bringing to power the Islamic regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

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Britain’s Scramble For Africa: The New Colonialism By Colin Todhunter

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28 July 2016 — Colin Todhunter

Africa is facing a new and devastating colonial invasion driven by a determination to plunder the natural resources of the continent, especially its strategic energy and mineral resources. That’s the message from a damning new report from War On Want ‘The New Colonialism: Britain’sscramble for Africa’s energy and mineral resources’ that highlights the role of the British government in aiding and abetting the process. 

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The accessories to war crimes are those paid to keep the record straight By John Pilger

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8 February 2014 — John Pilger

The BBC’s Today programme is enjoying high ratings, and the Mail and the Telegraph are, as usual, attacking the corporation as left-wing. Last month, a single edition of Today was edited by the artist and musician P.J. Harvey. What happened was illuminating.

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Media Lens: Why Are We The Good Guys? By David Cromwell

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18 September, 2012 — Media Lens

Reclaiming Your Mind From The Delusions of Propaganda By David Cromwell

One of the unspoken assumptions of the Western world is that ‘we’ are great defenders of human rights, a free press and the benefits of market economics. Mistakes might be made along the way, perhaps even tragic errors of judgement such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the prevailing view is that ‘the West’ is essentially a force for good in the wider world. Why Are We The Good Guys? is a provocative challenge to this false ideology. The book digs beneath standard accounts of crucial issues such as foreign policy, climate change and the constant struggle between state-corporate power and genuine democracy.

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Media Lens: Yemen’s Useful Tyranny – The Forgotten History of Britain’s ‘Dirty War’: Part 2

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4 April, 2011 — Media Lens – Part 1

Using declassified government files, historian Mark Curtis has exposed Britain‘s ‘dirty war’ in Yemen in the 1960s, which he describes as one of the ‘least known aspects of recent British history’. The war lasted almost a decade under both Tory and Labour governments, and cost around 200,000 lives.

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Book Review: Britain’s dangerous double games By Tapani Lausti

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4 January, 2011 — Tapani Lausti

Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam. Serpent’s Tail 2010.

WikiLeaks has made many people wonder what governments really are up to behind their façade of respectability. The leaked diplomatic cables reveal that the fine words about democracy and human rights are meant to deceive the public. The real world is all about naked national self-interest which is promoted by means beyond any decency or honesty. Lying about national motives comes naturally to politicians and diplomats.

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Media Lens: Alert: The Guff of Tonkin Incident – Silence, Secrecy and Book Reviews

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6 March 2006 — Media Lens

MEDIA ALERT: THE GUFF OF TONKIN INCIDENT – Silence, Secrecy and Book Reviews

Body Shop founder, Anita Roddick, describes the view from the inside:

“The language of business is not the language of the soul or the language of humanity. It’s a language of indifference; it’s a language of separation, of secrecy, of hierarchy.” (Quoted, Bakan, The Corporation, Constable, 2004, pp.55-56)

Secrecy is a key aspect of corporate media control. It is a secrecy protected by walls of silence.

Consider, for example, the issue of book reviews. What could be a less threatening or problematic area for the media? Surely it is inconceivable that literary editors would bother to suppress reviews of books written from ‘controversial’ perspectives.

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Book Review: UK-the real outlaw state By William Bowles

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4 August 2003

‘Web of Deceit. Britain’s real role in the world’ by Mark Curtis (2003, Vintage Original)

“The reality is that the Blair government is seriously out of control – an outlaw state, undertaking its foreign policy in open contempt for international ethical standards, including riding roughshod over the United Nations. As one of the dominating facts of New Labour’s foreign policy, this is hard to miss, but it has been obscured by a web of government propaganda and media and parliament’s failure to disclose the reality of state policy.” – Web of Deceit

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