Earlier anti-Russian propaganda
View of the world – up to end of 2022
Ukraine – what you were’nt told – 2022
Ukraine – what you’re not told – 2023
The BBC helps to mover the second hand closer to midnight
We all know that the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is impartial. Why is that? Because the BBC is always telling us that’s the case.
In Britain the BBC is constantly involved in a ‘debate’ with the two main political parties of whether it takes a ‘right-wing’ or a ‘left-wing’ stance – but that’s just smoke and mirrors. There’s little (or no) significant difference between the the British Labour and Conservative parties when it comes to domestic issues and they are totally indistinguishable when it comes to foreign matters – especially when British ‘interests’ worldwide are involved.
Unfortunately many within the British labour movement have yet to understand this. Domestic policies of the Tory (Conservative) Party which would have brought workers on to the streets in their tens of thousands in the 1970s are to the left of the policies of the present day Labour Party. And yet activists will continue to support the Labour Party in elections and expect others on the ‘left’ to do likewise.
But that’s going off the main point.
The BBC, when it comes to Britain’s imperialist ambitions/aspirations/pretensions is always fully on board and vomits out the racist, jingoistic and xenophobic rhetoric on the orders of its imperialist masters.
In recent years the BBC will ‘fact check’ certain claims – as if it is the world’s arbiter of truth. But if we go back into the past, to the likes of the Malvinas War of 1982 and the so-called ‘First Gulf War’ of 1991, we see that British Government reports are taken at face value and its only years later that the actual truth comes out.
Although the term ‘fact check’ wasn’t in vogue then the concept, when it comes to the BBC, supposedly was. However, when claims were made by US government officials at the UN that there there were ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq and when Tony Blair stated that Iraq could send those weapons over to Britain ‘within 45 minutes’ there was no ‘fact checking’ by the BBC then. No, they just trotted out whatever was written for them by the warmongers in the Ministry of Defence.
With that background it’s no surprise that the BBC, since 24th February 2022, has been publishing whatever spews out of the mouths of Ukrainian government representatives without any pretence of checking what is claimed is correct or not. Added to that the BBC is very adept at the use of words and/or English grammar. Take, for example, the different approach to the reporting of two similar incidents of Ukrainian and Russian claims on the numbers of deaths following missile strikes around 9th January this year.
There are other examples of supposed BBC ‘impartiality’ throughout 2022 and a few (of many more) examples can be seen here.
Bringing matters up to date; on 8th February 2023 the Ukrainian President Zelensky arrived in the UK begging for a greater escalation of the conflict in the Ukraine (by asking for NATO aircraft) and pushing the Doomsday Clock a few seconds closer to midnight.
Coincidently[?] there was a flurry of reports on the BBC website that day with even more negative comments on Russia. The BBC (as the rest of media in general in the UK), for just under a year, has been pushing Russophobia but on 8th February they went on overdrive.
Articles on the BBC website 8th February 2023
Notorious Russian nationalist Igor Mangushev shot dead in Ukraine.
This is quite a bizarre article in the way it reports what is, in effect, an assassination. But instead of coming to the conclusion that if someone was fighting against the Ukrainians the main ‘suspect’ of the killing would be a Ukrainian the BBC decides that it must be infighting amongst the Russians – without giving a shred of evidence.
Also, near the beginning it makes reference that Mangushev ’emerged from a neo-Nazi movement’ (again with no more details) but since 24th February 2022 any mention that groups (such as the Azov and Krakon Battalions) in the Ukraine are Nazis is never mentioned. Although the members of such groups wear Nazi inspired insignia, have Nazi -inspired Tattoos, follow a Banderista ideology and have been filmed in the past marching through the streets of Kiev with Nazi banners this is all forgotten now. They have some how ‘reformed’.
Borrowed time for Bakhmut as Russians close in.
For months the fighting in Bahkmut (and before that Soledar) where the British media have been claiming the Ukrainians are winning and the Russians are losing thousands of dead in wild frontal assaults when the Ukrainian President comes begging for more western weaponry the BBC, all of a sudden, sends a correspondent to the area (after months when very few, if no, western mainstream media reporters were anywhere near the front line) and reports that the Ukrainians are struggling.
Just what Zelensky wants. The impartial BBC to back up his arguments for modern jet fighters.
MH17: Putin probably supplied missile that downed plane – investigators
This plane was shot down in July 2014. Why does this report, or so-called investigation, appear on the 8th February 2023?
Here we have an example where the BBC’s use of words implies one thing although the rest of the article has no evidence to substantiate it. It depends on the reader making an assumption based on their own prejudices and the information (or mis-information) that has been fed to them by the ‘oh so holy than thou’ BBC.
A few paragraphs in it is stated that there is no evidence that Putin had any hand in ordering the plane be shot down but that is not the implication from the headline – and we must remember that most people these days will read the headline and then skim read the article, if that.
There is supposed to be ‘evidence’ that Putin had a hand in this event – but no reference to where such evidence can be read, no link to the report.
What we have is innuendo, quotes from ‘impartial’ Ukrainian Prosecutor and quotes from relatives of those who dies – who are obviously emotional and (I would suggest) being manipulated by all the anti-Russian elements in the EU who have now come out of the woodwork in the last eleven months. (we must remember that both Merkel and Hollande have admitted that they were not acting in good faith when it came to the Minsk Accord in 2015. They signed just to give more time for the west to provide Ukraine with armaments and time for the Ukraine to prepare its defences – hence the long drawn out battles in places such as Soledar and Bahkmut.)
SNP MP Stewart McDonald’s emails hacked by Russian group.
Another strange one, this.
I know nothing of hacking but if I were to get in such a practice I would make sure that I would hide my identity. If these hackers are so clever that they can get through sophisticated firewalls and the like why can’t they hide their location? Or are they clever when it comes to computers but stupid generally and always sign off with ‘da svidania’?
When there’s an an attack on computer system in the west then it is always either the Russian, the North Koreans or the Iranians – all depending who is the bogeyman at the time.
But obviously the ‘west’ doesn’t indulge in such techniques. So why does Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which is the size of a small town, exist?
On the following day those ‘big’ stories dropped out of sight on the BBC website. But that’s OK. Once the BBC had done its job reporting on the conflict in Ukraine went back to normal, i.e., ignoring anything that might interfere in the western narrative.
(For a discussion with Noam Chomsky about propaganda in the Ukraine war go here.)
View of the world – up to end of 2022