Ongelofelijk: WDR 5 berichtte in het nieuws van 16.00 u. vanmiddag over de ‘Antisemitische top tien 2018‘, en meldde dat op nummer 7 de German Bank for Social Economy staat. Dit omdat de bank steun verleende aan de pro-BDS groep ‘Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East’, wier zusterorganisatie in de VS ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ (JVP), de veroordeelde ‘arabische terrorist’ Rasmea Odeh verwelkomde op één van haar conferenties. (Odeh vermoordde in 1969 twee studenten van de Hebreeuwse universiteit in Jeruzalem)…….
Blijkbaar mogen alleen Joden ongestraft moorden, zoals we al van voor de stichting van de staat Israël zagen en wat na die stichting onofficieel als Joods recht werd geïntroduceerd……. Sinds maart dit jaar schieten Israëlische scherpschutters ongewapende demonstranten dood, waaronder kinderen, invaliden, medisch hulpverleners en journalisten…… Overal waar dit zou gebeuren op de wereld, zou dit leiden tot grote verontwaardiging, echter als je verontwaardigd bent over wat er in Israël gebeurt, wordt je weggezet als antisemiet…….
Het Simon Wiesentahl Centrum werd opgericht om nazi-moordenaars op te kunnen pakken, echter men heeft blijkbaar het doel van de stichting verlegd naar het verdedigen van de fascistische apartheidsterreur in Israël en een ieder die daar tegen is, af te schilderen als antisemitisch….. Sinds maart dit jaar, de aanvang van The Great Return March, heeft Israël al 240 ongewapende Palestijnse mensen vermoord (waaronder de eerder genoemde groepen, dus kinderen invaliden enz…) en dat ook nog eens over de grens heen op het grondgebied ‘van de Palestijnen’ (getto Gazastrook)……
Ongelofelijk dat het Wiesentahl Centrum wel twee Joodse groepen in het buitenland noemt, maar hen niet direct als antisemitisch neerzet…. Tja, dat zou ook behoorlijk vreemd zijn, Joden afschilderen als antisemieten, hoewel een arabier eigenlijk ook niet als antisemiet kan worden neergezet, daar ook zij tot de semieten behoren…..
Schande dat het Wiesenthal Centrum met de vinger durft te wijzen naar Jeremy Corbyn, NB een vriend van Hajo Meijer, een Joodse overlever van de nazi-doodskampen en jarenlang het gezicht van ‘Een ander Joods Geluid……’ En dat alleen omdat Corbyn Israël de les durft te lezen, de les dat je niet zo als Israël met mensen als de Palestijnen om kan gaan…….
Het Wiesenthal Centrum is zo gestoord bezig, dat zelfs het ontkennen van de staat Israël als antisemitisch wordt gezien, terwijl een fanatiek Joodse groep stelt dat Joden niets meer te zoeken hebben in Israël, daarnaast: vergeet niet dat de staat Israël illegaal is gesticht en dat met enorm bloedvergieten waarbij het grootste deel van de Palestijnen werd verjaagd…… Zelfs de beslissing van Airbnb niet langer huizen van Joden te vermelden die in de illegaal bezette Palestijnse gebieden staan, NB zelfs illegale nederzettingen, werd door het Wiesenthal Centrum beoordeeld als antisemitisch…….
Tot slot vond het Wiesenthal Centrum het nodig Roger Waters van Pink Floyd op de antisemitische lijst te zetten, daar hij het opneemt voor het verdrukte Palestijnse volk…… Dat laatste zou nu precies de taak van het Simon Wiesenthal Centrum moeten zijn, gezien de eerdere verdrukking van het Joodse volk!!
Hier een paar punten van de lijst die het Wiesenthal Centrum publiceerde:
At number 4 was UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. “Allegations of anti-Semitism on the part of key members and officials of the UK’s Labour Party officials have piled up in recent years, injecting the world’s oldest hatred into the mainstream of society. Party leader Jeremy Corbyn stands directly responsible,” the report said, pointing to an article published by leading British Jewish newspapers which called a Corbyn-led UK government “an existential threat” to Jews.
Number 6 went to travel lodge company Airbnb for its decision to delist houses owned by Jews in Judea and Samaria. “There is no indication that Airbnb, who claim to oppose BDS, is extending its interventionist diplomacy to Cyprus or the scores of other disputed territories around the world,” Wiesenthal noted.
The number 7 spot was given to German Bank for Social Economy over its support for the pro-BDS group “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East,” whose US-based sister group “Jewish Voice for Peace” welcomed convicted Arab terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who murdered 2 Hebrew University students in a 1969 Jerusalem bomb attack, at one of its conferences.
Closing the list was performer Roger Waters of the band Pink Floyd, whom the report called a “leading BDS cheerleader” and “an anti-Semite who wants to tell Jews what anti-Semitism is.”
Caitlin
Johnstone heeft zich over de berichtgeving van de massamedia gebogen
en zet een aantal feiten wat betreft de reguliere (massa-) media op
een rij, waarbij ze tot verrassende inzichten komt.
Als
eerste buigt Johnstone zich over de vraag waarom journalisten van de
reguliere media in ‘vrije democratieën’ (‘een beetje dubbelop’) zich gedragen als hun collega’s van staatsmedia
propagandisten. Waarom gedragen ze zich als betrouwbare
vertegenwoordigers van de gevestigde orde en waarom wordt elk idee
gemarginaliseerd dat niet past in wat op een bepaald moment als een
correcte gedachte wordt gezien? (en dat kan op zeer grove manier
gebeuren, zie de smerige en uiterst valse berichtgeving over de Britse Labour leider Jeremy Corbyn door de reguliere
media waar ook de BBC deel van uitmaakt, al kan je die
‘onafhankelijke zendgemachtigde’ als staatsomroep onder een dictatuur zien)
Waarom worden
mensen die de gevestigde orde bekritiseren altijd door de
media veroordeeld? Waarom worden ‘fouten’ in een land dat
buiten de invloedssfeer en de macht van de gecentraliseerde VS-alliantie valt, zo kritisch
becommentarieerd door de reguliere (westerse) media, terwijl fouten binnen die alliantie worden vergeven, of veelal zelfs niet worden genoemd?
Volgens
Johnstone zijn er maar twee verklaringen voor die unanieme instemming
van de reguliere media op die onderwerpen:
Die
instemming bestaat omdat die media altijd de waarheid zouden vertellen, of
die instemming bestaat omdat er een systeem is ontstaan, waarin de
journalisten van de reguliere media ons voorliegen en een vals beeld
schetsen van wat er gebeurt in de wereld.
Volgens
Johnstone zijn dit de enige mogelijkheden, waarbij ze de eerste
uiteraard afwijst, immers als deze media altijd de
waarheid vertellen, zouden deze media niet de leugens herhalen over bijvoorbeeld de oorlogen in Vietnam en Irak, ofwel dan zou het afslachten van
miljoenen op grond van leugens niet zijn verdedigd in die media………
Eén en ander betekent overigens niet dat de grote reguliere media alleen maar liegen, immers dan zou men de klanten snel verliezen, nee men brengt natuurlijk ook echt nieuws, naast halve waarheden, verdraaide feiten en de al genoemde leugens.
Lees het
artikel van Johnstone, zij legt deze zaak duidelijk uit, waarna de
conclusie wordt getrokken dat de media inderdaad aan de leiband lopen
van plutocraten of fondsen van aandeelhouders (oké dat was al
bekend, maar Johnstone geeft het geheel handen en voeten). Voorts meldt Johnstone ten overvloede nog eens dat de CIA al sinds de 50er jaren van de vorige eeuw bemoeienis heeft met de reguliere (massa-) media in de VS…….
How
Plutocratic Media Keeps Staff Aligned With Establishment Agendas
Why
do mainstream media reporters within ostensibly free democracies act
just like state media propagandists? Why are they so reliably
pro-establishment, all throughout every mainstream outlet? Why do
they so consistently marginalize any idea that doesn’t fit within
the extremely narrow Overton window of acceptable opinion? Why does
anyone who inconveniences western establishment power always find
themselves on the losing end of a trial by media? Why are they so
dependably adversarial toward anything that could be perceived as a
flaw in any nation outside the US-centralized power alliance, and so
dependably forgiving of the flaws of the nations within it?
The
way I see it there are only two possible explanations for the
unanimous consensus in mass media on these issues:
Explanation
1: The
consensus exists because the mass media reporters are all telling the
truth all the time.
OR
Explanation
2: The
consensus exists because there is some kind of system in place which
keeps all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false
picture about what’s going on in the world.
Those
are the only two possibilities, and only one can be true, since any
mixture of the two would result in the loss of consensus.
Most
mainstream westerners harbor an unquestioned assumption that
Explanation 1 is the only possibility. The things they see on CNN,
the BBC and the ABC are all accurate descriptions of what’s really
going on in the world, and the consensus in their descriptions exists
because they’re all describing the same objective reality.
But
what would that mean exactly? Well, for starters if the mainstream
media reporters are telling us the truth all the time it would mean
that the same power institutions which slaughtered millions in
Vietnam and Iraq for no good reason are actually virtuous and honest.
It would mean the positive, uncritical picture that is consistently
painted of those same institutions which wage
nonstop campaigns of bloodshed and
oppression to ensure the profit of economic manipulators and war
profiteers is due to those institutions possessing merits which are
overall so positive that no criticism of them is needed. It would
mean that the status quo of climate destruction, steadily growing
wealth inequality, an increasingly Orwellian surveillance system, an
increasingly militarized police force, increasing internet
censorship, and crushing neoliberal austerity measures are all things
people voted for using the excellent democratic political system the
mainstream media defends, based on the accurate information the
mainstream media gave them about what’s in their best interests.
Explanation
1 sounds improbable in that light. We know that the system is
spectacularly screwed up, and we know that the political
establishment which these mainstream outlets always defend does
unforgivably evil things, so we should expect to see a lot more
critical reporting and a lot less protecting of the status quo. But
we don’t. We see war crimes ignored, oppression justified, the
two-headed one-party system normalized, dissident narratives smeared
as fake news conspiracy theories, and unproven assertions by
government agencies with a known history of lying reported as
unquestionable fact.
But
that leaves only Explanation 2. How could that be right?
This
partof
a 1996
interviewbetween
Noam Chomsky and the BBC’s Andrew Marr describes a foundational
element of Explanation 2: that there is a system in place which
ensures that all the reporters in positions of influence are there
not to report factually on the news of the day, but to sell a
particular narrative that is friendly to the state and the status
quo. Chomsky describes a “filtering system” which ensures
that only those loyal to power rise to the top within the
plutocrat-owned media, to which Marr objects and insists that his
peers are brave truth-tellers who hold power to account.
Subsequently, the following exchange takes place:
”Chomsky:
Well, I know some of the best, and best known investigative reporters
in the United States, I won’t mention names, whose attitude towards
the media is much more cynical than mine. In fact, they regard the
media as a sham. And they know, and they consciously talk about how
they try to play it like a violin. If they see a little opening,
they’ll try to squeeze something in that ordinarily wouldn’t make
it through. And it’s perfectly true that the majority – I’m
sure you’re speaking for the majority of journalists who are
trained, have it driven into their heads, that this is a crusading
profession, adversarial, we stand up against power. A very
self-serving view. On the other hand, in my opinion, I hate to make a
value judgement but, the better journalists and in fact the ones who
are often regarded as the best journalists have quite a different
picture. And I think a very realistic one.
Marr:
How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that
journalists are..
Chomsky:
I’m not saying your self censoring. I’m sure you believe
everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you
believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re
sitting”.
“If
you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where
you’re sitting.”
It
is an obvious fact that mainstream media outlets are
owned by the extremely wealthy,
as has been the case for a very long time. Owning media is in and of
itself a profitable investment, “like having a license to print
your own money” as Canadian television magnate Roy Thomson once
put it.
So when it comes to the news media outlets which form people’s
perceptions of the world, what incentive would a powerful plutocrat
have to platform anti-establishment voices on those outlets and help
sow ideas which upset the status quo upon which said plutocrat has
built his empire? It certainly wouldn’t make him any more money,
and if anti-establishment ideas like socialism, anarchism,
non-interventionism or skepticism of government agencies gained
popular footing in public consciousness, it could upset the
foundation of the plutocrat’s dynasty and cause him to lose
everything.
Plutocrats
have put a lot of energy into influencing government policy in order
to create legislation which ensures the continued growth of their
wealth and power. A whole lot of maneuvering has had to happen over
the course of many years to create a political system wherein
government bribery is legal in the form of campaign finance and
corporate lobbying, wherein deregulation of corporations is the norm,
wherein tax loopholes are abundant and tax burdens are shifted to the
middle class, wherein money hemorrhages upward to the wealthiest of
the wealthy while ordinary people grow poorer and poorer. What
incentive would these powerful oligarchs have to risk upsetting that
delicate balancing act by helping to circulate ideas which challenge
the very governmental system they’ve worked so hard to manipulate
to their extreme advantage? And how many incentives would they have
to keep everyone supporting the status quo?
How
hard would it be to simply decline to give anti-establishment voices
a platform, and platform establishment loyalists instead? How easy
would it be for a wealthy media owner or influential investor to
ensure that only establishment loyalists are given the job of hiring
and promoting editors and reporters in a mainstream media outlet?
Every blue-checkmark MSM journo on Twitter is auditioning for a job. All they’re actually tweeting is “Look at me, current or future employer! I will smear Julian Assange! I will help sell the Russia narrative! I’ll say Corbyn is an antisemite!” And the MSM bosses pay attention.
If
you’ve ever wondered what motivates all those blue-checkmarked
corporate media journalists to spend so much time on Twitter
defending the powerful and attacking the disempowered, this is your
answer. They spend their own free time smearing Jill Stein, calling
Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite, attacking Julian Assange, supporting
longtime neoconservative war agendas against Russia, Syria and Iran
and uncritically reporting intelligence agency assertions as fact not
because there’s a CIA officer hovering over their shoulder at all
times telling them exactly what to tweet, but because they’re
auditioning for a job. They’re creating a public record of their
establishment loyalism which current and future employers will look
at when weighing hiring and promotion decisions, which is why both
journalism schools and journalism employers now
encourage journalists to cultivate a social media presence to
“build their brand”, i.e. their public resume.
So
it’s very easy to fill mass media jobs with minds which are not
predisposed toward rocking the boat. A pro-establishment consensus is
artificially built, and now you’ve got an environment where someone
who stands up and says “Uh, hey, so we still haven’t seen any
actual hard evidence that Russia interfered in the US election in any
meaningful way” or whatever is instantly greeted by a wall of
shunning and shaming (observe Aaron
Maté‘s
interactions with other journalists on social media for a good
example of this), which can be psychologically difficult to deal
with.
Every blue-checkmark MSM journo on Twitter is auditioning for a job. All they’re actually tweeting is “Look at me, current or future employer! I will smear Julian Assange! I will help sell the Russia narrative! I’ll say Corbyn is an antisemite!” And the MSM bosses pay attention.
Anyone
who’s ever gone to high school can understand how powerful the
social pressures to seek peer approval and fit in can be, and anyone
who’s ever worked a normal job anywhere can understand the natural
incentives that are in place to behave in a way that is pleasing to
one’s bosses. In any job with any kind of hierarchy, you quickly
learn the written rules, and you pay close attention to social cues
to learn the unwritten ones as well. You do this in order to learn
how to avoid getting in trouble and how to win the approval of your
superiors, to learn which sorts of behaviors can lead to raises and
promotions, and which behaviors will lead to a career dead-end. You
learn what will earn you a pat on the back from a leader, which can
be extremely egoically gratifying and incentivizing in and of itself.
It
works exactly the same way in news media. Reporters might not always
be consciously aware of all the pro-establishment guidelines they’re
expected to follow in order to advance their careers, but they know
how the reporters who’ve ascended to the top of the media ladder
conduct themselves, and they see how the journalists who win the
accolades behave. With the help of editors and peers you quickly
learn where all the third rails and sacred cows are, and when to shut
your mouth about the elephant in the room. And for those rare times
that all these filtration devices fail to adequately filter out
dissident ideas, you see the example that gets made of those few who
slip between the cracks, like CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill for
his defense
of Palestinian human rights or
Phil Donahue for his opposition
to the Iraq invasion.
Last week, CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill delivered a speech at the United Nations in support of Palestinian self-determination and equal rights. Less than 24 hours later, CNN was done with him. http://bit.ly/2RTa4La
The six words that got Marc Lamont Hill fired from CNN
Hill’s dismissal highlights how pro-Israel lobbying groups control the US discourse on Palestine and Israel
mg.co.za
So
plutocrats own the mass media and platform status quo-friendly
voices, which creates an environment full of peer pressure to conform
and workplace pressure to advance establishment-friendly narratives.
Add to this the phenomenon of access
journalism,
wherein journalists are incentivized to cozy up to power and pitch
softball questions to officials in order to gain access to them, and
things get even more slanted. It’s easy to understand how all this
can create an environment of consensus which has nothing to do with
facts or reality, but rather with what narratives favor the
US-centralized empire and the plutocrats who control it. But all
those dynamics aren’t the only factors going into making sure a
consensus worldview is maintained. Remember that hypothetical CIA
officer I mentioned earlier who isn’t actively leaning over every
journalist’s shoulder and dictating what they tweet? Well, just
because he’s not dictating every word produced by the mass media
machine doesn’t mean he’s not involved.
Secretive
and unaccountable government agencies have an extensive and
well-documented record of involving themselves with news media
outlets. It is a known and undisputed fact that the Central
Intelligence Agency has been intimately
involved in America’s news media since the 1950s,
and it remains so to this day. In 2014 it was a scandal when reporter
Ken Dilanian was caught collaborating
with the CIA in
his publications, but now veterans of the US intelligence community
like John Brennan and James Clapper openly
fill out the line-up of
talking heads on MSNBC and CNN. Just recently the Guardian published
a lie-filled smear piece on Julian Assange which was
almost certainly the resultof
the outlet’s collaboration with one or more intelligence and/or
defense agencies, and when that article caused an outcry it was
defended as the likely result of Russian disinformation in an
evidence-free article by a CIA veteran who was permitted to publish
anonymously in Politico.
The Washington
Post is
solely owned by Jeff Bezos, who
is a CIA contractor,
and who we may be certain did not purchase the Post under the
illusion that newspapers were about to make a lucrative comeback.
Secretive government agencies are deeply involved in the workings of
western news media, in many ways we know about, and in far more ways
we don’t know about.
Taking
all of these factors into consideration and revisiting Explanation 1
and Explanation 2 from the beginning of this article, it should be
obvious to you that the most logical explanation for the uniform
consensus of support for pro-establishment narratives in the mass
media exists because there is indeed a system in place which keeps
all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false picture
about what’s going on in the world.
This
doesn’t mean that these news media outlets lie about everything all
the time, it means they mostly provide half-truths, distortions and
lies by omission whenever it benefits the agendas of the powerful,
which is functionally the same as lying all the time. I sometimes get
people telling me “Caitlin! The MSM lies all
the time,
and they say global warming is real! That means it’s false!” But
it doesn’t work that way; if the TV tells you a celebrity has died
then it’s probably true, and if they say it’s about to rain you
should probably roll up your car windows. If they lied about
everything all the time they would instantly lose all credibility,
and their ability to propagandize effectively would be lost. Instead,
they advance evidence-free narratives asserted by opaque government
agencies, they avoid highlighting inconvenient truths, they ignore
third parties and dissident ideas except to dismiss them, they
harshly criticize the misdeeds of governments which oppose the
US-centralized empire while sweeping the misdeeds of imperial members
under the rug, and when there’s an opportunity to sabotage peace or
support war, they seize it. They distort only when they have to, and
only as much as they need to.
In
this way the powerful have succeeded in controlling the people’s
narratives about what’s happening in their country and their world.
This is the system of narrative manipulation we are up against when
we try to sow dissident ideas into public consciousness, and as the
old adage goes, it is easier to fool people than to convince them
that they have been fooled.
And
yet we are gaining ground. The manipulators have been losing control
of the narrative, which is why the mass media have been acting
so weird and desperate since 2016.
The unelected power establishment failed to manufacture support for
its would-be Syria invasion, it failed
to get the publicto
buy into the Russia hysteria, trust in the mass media is at
an all-time
low,
and it’s continuing
to plummet.
More and more people are waking up to the fact that they are being
lied to, which is good, because the only thing keeping them from
pushing for real change is the fact that there are all these screens
in everyone’s lives telling them that real change isn’t needed.
The
liars are against the ropes, and they’re starting to look winded.
A populist
information revolutionis
looking more winnable than ever.
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In het hieronder opgenomen artikel van UK Column aandacht voor BBC ‘goede doelen’ organisatie, genaamd BBC Media Action. Volgens deze organisatie is het doel mensen over de wereld te informeren, te verbinden en sterker te maken. Mooie woorden van een organisatie doe wordt gesteund door de BBC, de Britse overheid, de EU, het ministerie van buitenlandse zaken van de VS (ofwel het ministerie van terreuruitoefening), de VN en de Nederlandse overheid……
De schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, Brian Gerrish vraagt zich af of BBC Media Action onze steun en geld verdient, of dat het een gevaarlijke, subversieve organisatie is. Hij stelt dat het laatste het geval is.
BBC Media Action liegt om te beginnen met de stelling dat het onafhankelijk is, terwijl het is opgezet door de BBC, is gehuisvest in een BBC kantoor, mede is betaald met een fikse BBC subsidie, worden BBC pensioengelden gebruikt voor haar werk, de leden van de organisatie zijn door de BBC geselecteerd….. Het hoofd van de BBC World Service Group, Peter Horrocks, is voorzitter van de raad van bestuur…..
Zoals de regelmatige bezoeker van dit en vele andere blogs of/en van alternatieve nieuwspagina’s op de sociale media weten, is dat de BBC allesbehalve als onafhankelijk kan worden aangeduid, het laat de oren hangen naar de zittende regering, niet zo vreemd als je ziet dat ze voor het jaarlijkse budget afhankelijk zijn van die regering…… Bovendien laten de andere financiers geen twijfel over: BBC Media Action is allesbehalve onafhankelijk…….
Erger nog: BBC Media Action voedt onrust met haar programma’s en dat in een groot aantal landen, uiteraard onrust veelal gebaseerd op leugens en halve waarheden…… Het is duidelijk dat men de westerse samenleving als ‘mooi voorbeeld’ neerzet, zonder over alle negatieve ellende te spreken, die de BBC bijvoorbeeld in GB verzwijgt dan wel toeschrijft aan mensen als Jeremy Corbyn….. Mensen als Labour voorzitter Corbyn tegen wie de BBC een hele campagne heeft gevoerd, daar zowel de Tories als de top van Labour niets met hem te maken willen hebben en als de dood waren dat hij de laatst gehouden landelijke verkiezingen zou winnen……..
Over die manipulatie van verkiezingen is met géén woord van kritiek gesproken door de Britse reguliere (massa-) media, terwijl deze media dag in dag uit negatief nieuws over Corbyn brachten (tja, je gaat je eigen valse berichtgeving natuurlijk niet bekritiseren….)
Met de programma’s van Media Action wil men de bevolking in arme landen leren hoe te reageren op corruptie van politici en ambtenaren, dezelfde BBC die niet kan onderzoeken hoe het zit met pedofiele presentatoren als Jimmy Saville en financiële fraude binnen de eigen organisatie……..
Kortom, de BBC brengt onversneden propaganda tegen regimes als dat in Syrië en Kenia, waar uiteraard niet het welbevinden van bewoners wordt gepromoot, maar verandering van regering wordt gepropageerd….. En dat door een zogenaamde onafhankelijke zendgemachtigde, die de illegale oorlogen als die tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië van A tot Z steunde en nog steunt……
Zelfs over de genocide in Jemen wordt keihard gelogen, zoals ik vanmorgen weer hoorde op BBC World Service radio, waar de presentator een New York Times correspondent wilde verleiden te zeggen dat Iran een uiterst foute rol speelt in Iran, terwijl daar zelfs niet één Iraanse militair is te vinden…… Het viel me mee dat deze correspondent daar niet één keer op reageerde (wellicht later meer daarover)
Voorts bemoeit BBC Madia Action zich met Oekraïne, waar NB bepaalde journalisten het werk onmogelijk wordt gemaakt (ook middels bedreigingen door neonazi’s) en waar zelfs mediaorganen zijn gesloten door de neonazi-junta, die de VS daar parachuteerde…… Ook de Britse regering wil dat Rusland De Krim ‘teruggeeft’ aan die junta in Kiev en ‘zich terugtrekt uit Oost-Oekraïne’, beide zaken die volkomen vals worden voorgesteld door de de Britse regering en de BBC….. Niet vreemd dus dat Media Action achter deze junta staat, sterker nog: de BBC heeft al ver voor de door de VS georganiseerde opstand in Oekraïne lopen stoken tegen de democratisch gekozen regering Janoekovytsj……
Gerrish betoogt dan ook dat BBC Media Action moet worden ontmantelt, voor het ook in Europa nog meer schade aanricht, zoals het in Oekraïne heeft gedaan!
Moet je nagaan, wij betalen via de belasting mee aan deze smerige organisatie…..
Lees het volgende artikel en verbaas je net als ik deed over deze uitermate smerige propaganda organisatie met de naam BBC Media Action:
BBC
Media Action: Subversion From Broadcasting House To Kazakhstan
by
BRIAN
GERRISH
|
Tuesday, 1st July 2014
”Our
mission is to inform, connect and empower people around the world.”
These are mighty words from BBC Media Action, a charitable offshoot
of the BBC funded to £29.5m in 2012 – most of it from the British
Government, EU, US State Department, UN and Dutch government. Most of
the British public and indeed most of the BBC’s licence payers will
have never heard of BBC Media Action let alone understand what this
BBC charity really is.
An
innocent BBC charity deserving our support and money, or a dangerous
subversive organisation? We overwhelmingly think the latter.
The
Media Action mission statement says much and nothing at the same
time. Much in that they are to inform, connect and empower people
worldwide, nothing in that the precise meaning of these words is
unclear. Just what is BBC Media Action really doing and why?
BBC
Media Action funding.
BBC
Media Action Lies From The Start
As
with the political charity Common Purpose, BBC Media Action quickly
seeks to justify its actions as benevolent – we are a charity and
therefore we must be good. Let’s look at the lies. Claiming to be
legally, financially and operationally independent of the BBC, Media
Action was actually funded by the BBC to the tune of £840,000 in
2012, and uses BBC pension funds and BBC Office space. The majority
of the 15 BBC Media Action Board Members are nominated by the BBC,
and Peter Horrocks Director of the BBC World Service Group, is Chair
of Trustees. He is independent of course, as he directs 2,500
journalists and support staff embedded in 113 countries. A vast
propaganda machine and some.
Media
Action builds on the ‘fundamental’ values of the BBC and claims
that accuracy, trust and reliability are amongst these – the 500
victims of BBC paedophile Jimmy Savile suggest otherwise. A cheap
shot? Stay with us as we unpick this pernicious subversive BBC
organisation.
According
to Media Action they operate 100 researchers providing data,
evaluation and insight in 24 countries. They ’surveyed’ 60,000
people in 11 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East to ‘inform
our health, governance and resilience projects.’ The immediate
question is what projects and what are they for? At this point we
highlight that Media Action boasts its part in projects funded by the
Department for International Development. So is this the BBC or the
government at work?
Consider
then that BBC Media Action is also funded by the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office as part of the Arab Partnership Peace Fund (APPF) formed
as a result of the Arab Spring unrest. Media Action is used here to
improve ‘opportunities for political, social and economic
participation.’ We ask again – a charity or the British government
at work?
Media
Action’s self praise continues – “Our work is valued by the
development community and by media organisations contributing to
development and better standards of governance in developing
countries.” So the BBC which specialises in politically biased
news, dark drama, foul language, violence, pro EU reporting, skewed
docudramas and explicit sex, is supposedly the appropriate source
vehicle to tell other societies how to govern themselves. The
arrogance might be amusing if it were not for much deeper and dirtier
layers of their work.
‘Governance
and Rights’ BBC Media Action Style
At
this stage we will say it is just a coincidence that BBC Media Action
is active in unstable countries worldwide. Media Action
specialises in ‘governance and rights’ and operates in the Middle
East, former Soviet Union and Europe. It sustained and expanded Radio
Al Mirbad’s programming in Iraq funded by the US Department of
State. Not bad for a charity.
In
Afghanistan they established an ‘independent’ Afghan organisation
staffed by former BBC Media Action employees. In Asia and Cambodia
Media Action has pumped out Loy9 videos and boasts of capturing
100,000 views in 8 weeks in a country of under 15 million people.
Significant views in poor countries unable to defend against western
politically correct culture and BBC ‘propaganda’. Unfair? Then
let’s ask why Media Action is integrating with BBC World Service
and BBC Global News. Is the BBC’s own brand of news essential for
nations to govern themselves. How did Asia manage without the BBC
over the last thousand years?
Following
the money quickly reveals more of BBC Media Action’s real identity.
Enter two subsidiary companies – The Marshall Plan of the Mind Trust
(not trading) and BBC World Service Trust. We will focus on the
Marshal Plan of the Mind later, but before doing so, let’s take a
look at BBC Media Action’s staff. CEO Caroline Nursey is an ex
Director Oxfam and former teacher.
Communications and branding
Director Kirsty Cockburn is ex BBC, Sightsavers and the Overseas
Development Institute (SODI), where she learned that compelling
story-telling is at the heart of the complex world of international
development. James Dean is Director of Policy and Learning, having
spent 20 years at Panos, Earthscan and International Institute for
Environment and Development. The pattern is clear – charity academics
and quasi government organisations, with no practical life
experience, but a supreme confidence they can change the world using
media and education. Media and education with the BBC’s own values
and agendas of course.
Take
Kenya. Sema Kenya is a BBC Media Action and TV programme which
provides a ‘constructive’ platform for Kenyans to challenge their
politicians and public officials. Yes, the BBC which cannot properly
investigate paedophiles or financial fraud in its own organisation is
helping Kenyans learn how to challenge the corrupt political elite.
Yes really.
New
BBC Mindsets For Kenya
The
plot thickens when we examine Sema Kenya and BBC Media Action’s
role around the Kenyan Westgate shopping Mall massacre. Semya Kenya
programmers report they were uncertain as to how to report events
around the Mall massacre. They state “our outgoing Country Director
Judy Houstan, her replacement Andrew Ilves who has recently joined
from the BBC Somali Service and Africa Editor Solomon Mugera coolly
steered the [Sema Kenya] team towards a new mindset.” Mr Ilves was
head of BBC World Service responsible for radio and online output in
Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikstan and the border areas of Pakistan. He is
also Head of Development for BBC Global News – the private BBC
company with £90million in sales. BBC Media Action is independent of
course.
It
could not be clearer that the BBC is directing the mindset of Kenyan
reporting. To what aim?
In
Serbia BBC Media Action has been funded by the EU to oversee the EU
Media Fund and has been working with local film makers on docudramas
to tackle human trafficking. At first glance this sounds benign, but
lets consider what is being produced is not truth and fact, but
‘docudrama’ to drive Serbian mindsets where the BBC thinks they
should go. As in UK the BBC’s truth is usually contaminated with
misleading fiction.
In
Palestine, according to BBC Media Action, the multiplatform debate
show ‘Aswat Min Filesteen’ (Voices from Palestine), meets a
growing need in the Palestinian Territories for trustworthy
programming covering local issues. The quarterly TV show is
produced by BBC Media Action in partnership with Palestinian Public
Broadcasting Corporation and is co-hosted by BBC Arabic’s Nur
Zorgui and PBC’s Huda Kadoumi. Aside from the oxymoron of the BBC
and ‘trustworthy’ programming, how many people in UK realise that
the BBC is creating its own news in Palestine.
BBC
Destabilising Syria
BBC
Media Action has also been meddling in Syria. Cruising on the post
Arab Spring climate in Syria Media Action has been at work to
undermine the authority and control of the Assad government,
assisting people in Syria and those dispersed overseas to challenge
their national government and stating that “given the sensitive and
restrictive media environment, much of the work that is carried out
is either under the radar or focused on less contentious development
themes..” This devious action must surely be considered subversion
within a Nation State. BBC Media Action admit that both the UN and
the EU have been funding ‘fifth column’ media activities in
Syria.
BBC
Media Action is so arrogant and sure of itself that they even tell us
what they are doing. Juliette Harkin, former BBC Media Action Project
Manager and an expert on Syria states..”we [BBC Media Action]
worked in 2004 with individuals within the [Syrian] ministry who
wanted change and tried to get them to be the drivers of that. All
media development work that has been done within Syria has, in my
opinion, been predicated upon this idea that there can be change from
within – you have an authoritarian regime and you find who the
reformers are within that [regime] and work with them”
In
their own words Media Action is a trojan horse which works against
governments of independent nation states – who are they to decide
which regimes are acceptable and which not? Did the BBC create
chemical weapons reports to suit UK, US and EU political agendas to
oust President Assad? Many think so.
BBC
fingers in the Ukrainian pie
As
we have watched the tragedy of the unfolding violence and
destabilisation in Ukraine, we should not be surprised to see BBC
Media Action at work. In 2003 BBC Media Action set up Top Media in
Odessa – a media support project to offer legal advice and training.
Tony Hewson Senior Trainer BBC Media Action is married to a Ukrainian
wife. He publicly states that he has watched Ukrainian TV channels to
see how some of the journalists he had worked with were coping. Did
he help train these ‘independent’ reporters? Hewson boasts …”Back
in the current crisis, Andriy Kulykov, another trainer we worked
with, a former BBC journalist and now one of Ukraine’s leading
talk-show presenters, has also been at the heart of events. He took a
brave step of broadcasting his programme Svoboda Slova (Freedom of
Speech) not in Ukrainian, but in Russian – an attempt to reach out
to all sides. He has also used his BBC journalism training and
experience as a trainer with Media Action, to maintain balance during
his on air interviewing..” BBC balance? Does that mean challenging
and undermining the established government? Did Freedom of Speech
pacify a volatile Ukrainian society or inflame it?
A
‘David’ posted a comment on Mr Hewson’s section of the BBC
Media Action website on 19th March 2014 – 10:44. He remarked…“The
next question is how free are journalists in the Ukraine now. Is the
‘new government’ of Kiev oligarchs allowing press freedom and
non-partisan reports? The BBC could certainly do with some lessons on
the ‘non-partisan’ bit. The reports on the Ukraine and Crimea are
extremely unbalanced!” David seems to also sense a BBC rat.
BBC
Marshall Plan of the Mind
If
we are lifting numerous BBC Media Action lids at this stage, how can
we really show the dangerous power of BBC subversive propaganda? We
return to the BBC ‘charity’ Marshall Plan of the Mind Trust, also
known as BBC MPM. Incorporated 11 September 1992 (removed 29 April
2002), the Trust alleged it was for education, training, the general
public, mankind and providing services. Kari Blackburn, Director of
International Operations for the BBC World Service Trust was
appointed editor of the MPM in 1992. The establishment claimed she
committed suicide by drowning in 1997.
Currently
serving BBC Media Action trustee Michael C McCulloch formerly worked
with the UK Delegation to UNESCO in the 1970s attempting to
‘discourage the Soviet Union from restricting press freedom.’ He
also acted as Private Secretary to Tim Raison the then Minister for
Overseas Development, and much later he served on the Board of the
European Board of Reconstruction and Development. He drew on this
UNESCO experience when appointed to launch the Know How Fund for the
Soviet Union..the British Government’s programme of support for
economic and political reform. McCulloch states..”one of my first
tasks was to expand funding for the BBC Marshall Plan of the Mind
(MPM), devised by former BBC World Service Director John Tusa with
support from Baroness Chalker. MPM focused on the twin tracks of
helping to develop independent media and of using media to help
people in the region understand and make choices about the changes
suddenly unleashed all around them. Creative, exciting, fast-moving
and fun—working with MPM was all of these—who had heard of an aid
programme supporting soap operas before that?!”
This
was no joke by McCulloch. By 1995 BBC MPM was facilitating a
‘British-style social realist soap opera’, Crossroads to
Kazakhstan. According to Ruth Mandel who critically analysed this
initiative, the “making of Crossroads was informed by the
assumption that the medium of television is an appropriate tool to
further the logical and inevitable transition to a capitalist
free-market economy, transforming the national imagination in the
process.” Mandel further indicated…”Cross roads was
conceived as an elaboration of a BBC MPM Radio soap opera in Russia
based on an Archers format, and was funded through Know How Funds,
supported by the government’s Overseas Development Administration
and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It was produced by the
private London based production company Portobello Media.”
BBC
Media Action British Government’s Know How Fund Propaganda Machine
Mandel’s
excellent analysis ultimately lays the British government’s BBC
propaganda machine bare. “In discussion, one Know How Fund official
admitted that the assistance came loaded with “”unashamedly
political objectives.”” He described the project to support
changes we want; the transition to a market economy will be better
for them, and for us, for politics trade etc. There are real
political objectives rather than simply humanitarian assistance.”
Against this background, the work of BBC Media Action in Kazakhstan,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Serbia, Palestine, Kenya, Syria, Ukraine
and elsewhere becomes crystal clear. Political manoeuvering and
propaganda disguised as ‘media assistance.’
‘
Mandel
states..”Crossroads mentally ‘reframed’ Kazakhstan with
issues such as privatisation, banking, entrepreneurship, marketing
reform…and ideological messages , issues of ethnic pluralism and
technology transfer…and British American Tobacco (BAT), Wrigley’s gum
and Smirnoff Vodka all benefited from product placement.”
John
Tusa Chairman BBC MPM stated June 14 1996…”BBC MPM is an
educational, charitable trust…to transfer skills and knowledge of
democratic principles and market economies via national radio and
television to assist the transition process. It is the most
significant project dedicated to mass knowledge transfer within the
former Soviet Union.”
In
typical BBC style John Tulsa spun the true subversive political
objectives as ‘assistance in transition i.e. help for vulnerable
people.” The reality is that the BBC Marshall Plan of the Mind was
the opposite. A vast, dangerous and subversive media propaganda
exercise to break up and reframe nation states into a new British and
BBC designed model, whether they wanted it or not. BBC Media Action
is the spawn of that BBC MPM. Masquerading as a charity, BBC Media
Action is nothing of the sort. It is a hard at work reframing and
destabilising the national mind of vulnerable nation states. BBC
Media Action should be exposed and disbanded as soon as possible.
Left at work, it is capable of inflaming major conflict in Europe –
just observe the fruits of BBC Media Action in Ukraine.
=========================================
Zie wat betreft de anti-Corbyn campagne die wordt geleid door de BCC ook:
Onlangs
kwam The Guardian met het verhaal dat Paul Manafort contact zou
hebben gehad met Julian Assange in de Ecuadoraanse ambassade in
Londen. Een verhaal dat als onzin werd doorgeprikt met aantoonbare
leugens in The Guardian. Zelfs reguliere mediaorganen twijfelden aan
het artikel.
Blijkbaar
vond The Guardian het gebrachte artikel daarna zelf ook dubieus, daar
men de tekst heeft aangepast, zonder daar echter melding van te
maken. In de aangepaste tekst wordt nu gesproken over anonieme, niet
te controleren bronnen……. De schrijver van het Guardian
propagandistische artikel, Luke Harding, stelde in het artikel dat
Manafort meermaals werd gezien in de Ecuadoraanse ambassade en dat
één keer ‘zelfs met 2 Russen….’
Met het
Guardian artikel toonde Harding zogenaamd aan dat Assange contacten
had met de Russen en dat die na het hacken van de DNC server, de emails van Hillary Clinton zouden
hebben doen toekomen aan WikiLeaks, ofwel één van ‘de
smoking guns’ in het Russiagate sprookje….. Kortom de Russen en
Assange zouden hebben samengespannen om Clinton haar presidentschap
door de neus te boren…..
Uiteraard
gebruiken ook de democraten in de VS het fantasie verhaal van Harding om te
stellen dat Assange en Rusland de presidentsverkiezingen van hen
hebben gestolen, terwijl echte deskundigen en ingewijden uitvoerig
stellen, dat de emails werden gelekt vanuit het campagneteam van
Clinton, waar de naam Seth Rich telkens weer opduikt……
Seth Rich
was medewerker van het campagneteam, hij was zwaar gefrustreerd over
de smerige spelletjes van Clinton en de top van haar campagneteam, om de voorverkiezing in 2016 van Bernie Sanders te stelen…….. Sanders was
de tweede belangrijke democratische kandidaat voor het presidentschap
in de VS. Zelfs Obama gaf toe dat e.e.a door het campagneteam werd gelekt naar WikiLeaks….*
Rich
werd vermoord, kort nadat de mails waren gelekt naar WikiLeaks, volgens de politie ging het om een roofmoord, waarbij Rich vreemd genoeg niet werd beroofd
en zelfs dure sieraden niet werden gestolen…….. De poging om Sanders buiten
spel te zetten is gelukt, zoals we al en paar jaar weten.
Manafort
heeft ontkent dat hij zelfs maar één keer met Assange heeft
gesproken en Assange heeft The Guardian gedreigd met een proces
wegens laster…… De bedoeling in het hele Russiagate verhaal is
dan ook Assange als spion neer te zetten, ofwel hij heeft geen recht op bescherming zoals dit het geval zou moeten zijn met (onderzoeks-) journalisten, waarbij WikiLeaks wordt weggezet als een staatsvijandig
vehikel van de Russen…… Waarmee de democraten dan de schuld van het
verlies van de verkiezingen in de schoenen schuiven van WikiLeaks,
haar oprichter Assange en uiteraard de Russen…..**
Met
artikelen als die van Harding in The Guardian moet de publieke opinie
voorbereid worden op het uit de Ecuadoraanse ambassade zetten van
Assange en de arrestatie van deze journalist, die zich met niets anders dan
zijn werk bezighield, dit in sterke tegenstelling tot het overgrote deel van de
journalisten, die voor de reguliere westerse (massa-) media
werken…….
Deze
media hebben i.p.v. Assange te steunen, een taak van onafhankelijke mediaorganen en hun journalisten, hem zwart gemaakt in de publieke opinie,
waarbij zelfs werd gesteld dat Assange alleen de Ecuadoraanse
ambassade in vluchtte, om publiciteit te genereren…. Gelukkig voor
Assange werd ook die belachelijke claim doorgeprikt, toen per
ongeluk stukken werden gepubliceerd waaruit bleek dat de VS een
aanklacht heeft opgesteld voor Assange en op grond waarvan Assange
een lange gevangenisstraf te wachten staat…….
The
Guardian ging zelfs zover dat het een VN panel met experts
belachelijk probeerde te maken, die stelden dat het totaal
onwettelijk was dat Assange niet zonder gearresteerd te worden de
ambassade zou kunnen verlaten…..
De
schrijver van het artikel hieronder, Jonathan Cook, haalt ook Glenn
Greenwald aan, waar het om de claim gaat dat Manafort Assange zou
hebben bezocht. Deze stelt dat het onmogelijk is om ongezien de
Ecuadoraanse ambassade binnen te komen, daar Londen propvol camera’s
hangt en de Ecuadoraanse ambassade, sinds Assange daar binnen
vluchtte, van alle kanten in de gaten werd en wordt gehouden, niet alleen
door camera’s, de politie, maar ook door journalisten……
Als
Manafort inderdaad in de ambassade zou zijn geweest, volgens The
Guardian 3 keer, in 2013, 2015 en 2016, zouden daar zeker bewijzen
voor zijn…….
Intussen is The Guardian gekomen met een volgens deze fake news brenger nog betere fundering van de (ongefundeerde) beschuldigingen aan het adres van Assange (en WikiLeaks) en zijn zogenaamde verbintenis met Rusland, ook nu weer geen enkel bewijs……. Assange zal en moet hangen en in dit geval door een mediaorgaan dat stelt onafhankelijk te zijn en haar berichtgeving dubbel zou checken….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Lees het
artikel van Cook, eerder gepubliceerd op Creative Commons en door mij
overgenomen van Anti-Media, waarin Cook verder nog aandacht besteedt aan het nep-journalistenforum Bellincat (daaronder nog een kort artikel en video van een interview van Aby Martin met Randy Credico aangaande de zaak Assange):
The
Guardian Continues to Escalate Its Vilification of Julian Assange
The
Guardian did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a shred
of evidence. It did what it is designed to do.***
(CD) — It
is welcome that finally there has been a little pushback, including
from leading journalists, to the Guardian’s long-running
vilification of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks.
Reporter
Luke Harding’s latest article, claiming that
Donald Trump’s disgraced former campaign manager Paul Manafort
secretly visited Assange in Ecuador’s embassy in London on three
occasions, is so full of holes that even hardened opponents of
Assange in the corporate media are struggling to stand by it.
Faced
with the backlash, the Guardian quickly – and very quietly – rowed
back its
initial certainty that its story was based on verified facts.
Instead, it amended the text, without acknowledging it had done so,
to attribute the claims to unnamed, and uncheckable, “sources”.
The
propaganda function of the piece is patent. It is intended to provide
evidence for long-standing allegations that Assange conspired with
Trump, and Trump’s supposed backers in the Kremlin, to damage
Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.
The
Guardian’s latest story provides a supposedly stronger foundation
for an existing narrative: that Assange and Wikileaks knowingly
published emails hacked by Russia from the Democratic party’s
servers. In truth, there is no
public evidence that
the emails were hacked, or that Russia was involved. Central actors
have suggested instead that the emails were leaked from within the
Democratic party.
Nonetheless,
this unverified allegation has been aggressively exploited by the
Democratic leadership because it shifts attention away both from its
failure to mount an effective electoral challenge to Trump and from
the damaging contents of the emails. These show that party
bureaucrats sought to rig
the primaries to
make sure Clinton’s challenger for the Democratic nomination,
Bernie Sanders, lost.
To
underscore the intended effect of the Guardian’s new claims,
Harding even throws in a casual and unsubstantiated reference to
“Russians” joining Manafort in supposedly meeting Assange.
Manafort
has denied the
Guardian’s claims, while Assange has threatened to sue the
Guardian for libel.
‘Responsible
for Trump’
The
emotional impact of the Guardian story is to suggest that Assange is
responsible for four years or more of Trump rule. But more
significantly, it bolsters the otherwise risible
claim that
Assange is not a publisher – and thereby entitled to the
protections of a free press, as enjoyed by the Guardian or the New
York Times – but the head of an organisation engaged in espionage
for a foreign power.
The
intention is to deeply discredit Assange, and by extension the
Wikileaks organisation, in the eyes of right-thinking liberals. That,
in turn, will make it much easier to silence Assange and the vital
cause he represents: the use of new media to hold to account the old,
corporate media and political elites through the imposition of far
greater transparency.
The
Guardian story will prepare public opinion for the moment when
Ecuador’s rightwing government under President Lenin Moreno forces
Assange out of the embassy, having already withdrawn most of his
rights to use digital media.
It
will soften opposition when the UK moves to arrest Assange
on self-serving
bail violation charges and
extradites him to the US. And it will pave the way for the US legal
system to lock Assange up for a very long time.
For
the best part of a decade, any claims by Assange’s supporters that
avoiding this fate was the reason Assange originally sought asylum in
the embassy was ridiculed by corporate journalists, not least at the
Guardian.
Even
when a United Nations panel of experts in international law ruled in
2016 that Assange was being arbitrarily – and unlawfully –
detained by the UK, Guardian writers led efforts to discredit the UN
report. See here and here.
Now
Assange and his supporters have been proved right once again. An
administrative error this month revealed that the US justice
department had secretly
filed criminal charges against
Assange.
Heavy
surveillance
The
problem for the Guardian, which should have been obvious to its
editors from the outset, is that any visits by Manafort would be
easily verifiable without relying on unnamed “sources”.
Glenn
Greenwald is far from alone in noting that
London is possibly the most surveilled city in the world, with CCTV
cameras everywhere. The environs of the Ecuadorian embassy are
monitored especially heavily, with continuous filming by the UK and
Ecuadorian authorities and most likely by the US and other actors
with an interest in Assange’s fate.
The
idea that Manafort or “Russians” could have wandered into the
embassy to meet Assange even once without their trail, entry and
meeting being intimately scrutinised and recorded is simply
preposterous.
According
to Greenwald: “If Paul Manafort … visited Assange at the Embassy,
there would be ample amounts of video and other photographic proof
demonstrating that this happened. The Guardian provides none of
that.”
Former
British ambassador Craig Murray also points
out the
extensive security checks insisted on by the embassy to which any
visitor to Assange must submit. Any visits by Manafort would have
been logged.
In
fact, the Guardian obtained the
embassy’s logs in May, and has never made any mention of either
Manafort or “Russians” being identified in them. It did not refer
to the logs in its latest story.
Murray:
The
problem with this latest fabrication is that [Ecuador’s President]
Moreno had already released the visitor logs to the Mueller inquiry.
Neither Manafort nor these ‘Russians’ are in the visitor logs …
What possible motive would the Ecuadorean government have for
facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort?Furthermore
it is impossible that the intelligence agency – who were in charge
of the security – would not know the identity of these alleged
‘Russians’.
No
fact-checking
It
is worth noting it should be vitally important for a serious
publication like the Guardian to ensure its claims are unassailably
true – both because Assange’s personal fate rests on their
veracity, and because, even more importantly, a fundamental right,
the freedom of the press, is at stake.
Given
this, one would have expected the Guardian’s editors to have
insisted on the most stringent checks imaginable before going to
press with Harding’s story. At a very minimum, they should have
sought out a response from Assange and Manafort before publication.
Neither precaution was taken.
I
worked for the Guardian for a number of years, and know well the
layers of checks that any highly sensitive story has to go through
before publication. In that lengthy process, a variety of
commissioning editors, lawyers, backbench editors and the editor
herself, Kath Viner, would normally insist on cuts to anything that
could not be rigorously defended and corroborated.
And
yet this piece seems to have been casually waved through, given a
green light even though its profound shortcomings were evident to a
range of well-placed analysts and journalists from the outset.
That
at the very least hints that the Guardian thought they had
“insurance” on this story. And the only people who could have
promised that kind of insurance are the security and intelligence
services – presumably of Britain, the United States and / or
Ecuador.
It
appears the Guardian has simply taken this story, provided by spooks,
at face value. Even if it later turns out that Manafort did visit
Assange, the Guardian clearly had no compelling evidence for its
claims when it published them. That is profoundly irresponsible
journalism – fake news – that should be of the gravest concern to
readers.
A
pattern, not an aberration
Despite
all this, even analysts critical of the Guardian’s behaviour have
shown a glaring failure to understand that its latest coverage
represents not an aberration by the paper but decisively fits with a
pattern.
Glenn
Greenwald, who once had an influential column in the Guardian until
an apparent, though unacknowledged, falling out with his employer
over the Edward Snowden revelations, wrote a series of baffling
observations about the Guardian’s latest story.
First,
he suggested it
was simply evidence of the Guardian’s long-standing (and
well-documented) hostility towards Assange.
“The
Guardian, an otherwise solid and reliable paper, has such a pervasive
and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has
frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards in order to
malign him.”
It
was also apparently evidence of the paper’s clickbait tendencies:
“They
[Guardian editors] knew that publishing this story would cause
partisan warriors to excitedly spread the story, and that cable news
outlets would hyperventilate over it, and that they’d reap the
rewards regardless of whether the story turned out to be true or
false.”
And
finally, in a bizarre tweet, Greenwald opined, “I hope the story
[maligning Assange] turns out true” – apparently because
maintenance of the Guardian’s reputation is more important than
Assange’s fate and the right of journalists to dig up embarrassing
secrets without fear of being imprisoned.
The reason it will be so devastating to the Guardian if this story turns out false is because the Guardian has an institutional hatred for Assange. They’ve proven they’ll dispense with journalistic standards for it. And factions within Ecuador’s government know they can use them.
What
this misses is that the Guardian’s attacks on Assange are not
exceptional or motivated solely by personal animosity. They are
entirely predictable and systematic. Rather than being the reason for
the Guardian violating basic journalistic standards and ethics, the
paper’s hatred of Assange is a symptom of a deeper malaise in the
Guardian and the wider corporate media.
Even
aside from its decade-long campaign against Assange, the Guardian is
far from “solid and reliable”, as Greenwald claims. It has been
at the forefront of the relentless, and unhinged, attacks on Labour
leader Jeremy Corbyn for prioritising the rights of Palestinians over
Israel’s right to continue its belligerent occupation. Over the
past three years, the Guardian has injected credibility into the
Israel lobby’s desperate efforts to tar Corbyn as an anti-semite.
See here, here and here.
Similarly,
the Guardian worked tirelessly to promote Clinton and undermine
Sanders in the 2016 Democratic nomination process – another reason
the paper has been so assiduous in promoting the idea that Assange,
aided by Russia, was determined to promote Trump over Clinton for the
presidency.
The
Guardian’s coverage of Latin America, especially of populist
leftwing governments that have rebelled against traditional and
oppressive US hegemony in the region, has long grated with analysts
and experts. Its especial venom has been reserved for leftwing
figures like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, democratically elected but
official enemies of the US, rather than the region’s rightwing
authoritarians beloved of Washington.
The
Guardian has been vocal in the so-called “fake news” hysteria,
decrying the influence of social media, the only place where leftwing
dissidents have managed to find a small foothold to promote their
politics and counter the corporate media narrative.
The
Guardian has painted social media chiefly as a platform overrun by
Russian trolls, arguing that this should justify ever-tighter
restrictions that have so far curbed critical voices of the dissident
left more than the right.
Heroes
of the neoliberal order
Equally,
the Guardian has made clear who its true heroes are. Certainly not
Corbyn or Assange, who threaten to disrupt the entrenched neoliberal
order that is hurtling us towards climate breakdown and economic
collapse.
Its
pages, however, are readily available to the latest effort to prop up
the status quo from Tony Blair, the man who led Britain, on false
pretences, into the largest crime against humanity in living memory –
the attack on Iraq.
That
“humanitarian intervention” cost the lives of many hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis and created a vacuum that destabilised much of
the Middle East, sucked in Islamic jihadists like al-Qaeda and ISIS,
and contributed to the migrant crisis in Europe that has fuelled the
resurgence of the far-right. None of that is discussed in the
Guardian or considered grounds for disqualifying Blair as an arbiter
of what is good for Britain and the world’s future.
The
Guardian also has an especial soft spot for blogger Elliot Higgins,
who, aided by the Guardian, has shot to unlikely prominence as a
self-styled “weapons expert”. Like Luke Harding, Higgins
invariably seems ready to echo whatever the British and American
security services need verifying “independently”.
Higgins
and his well-staffed website Bellingcat have taken on for themselves
the role of arbiters of truth on many foreign affairs issues, taking
a prominent role in advocating for narratives that promote US and
NATO hegemony while demonising Russia, especially in highly contested
arenas such as Syria.
That
clear partisanship should be no surprise, given that Higgins now
enjoys an “academic” position at, and funding from, the Atlantic
Council, a high-level, Washington-based think-tank founded to drum up
support for NATO and justify its imperialist agenda.
Improbably,
the Guardian has adopted Higgins as the poster-boy for a supposed
citizen journalism it has sought to undermine as “fake news”
whenever it occurs on social media without the endorsement of
state-backed organisations.
The
truth is that the Guardian has not erred in this latest story
attacking Assange, or in its much longer-running campaign to vilify
him. With this story, it has done what it regularly does when
supposedly vital western foreign policy interests are at stake – it
simply regurgitates an elite-serving, western narrative.
Its
job is to shore up a consensus on the left for attacks on leading
threats to the existing, neoliberal order: whether they are a
platform like Wikileaks promoting whistle-blowing against a corrupt
western elite; or a politician like Jeremy Corbyn seeking to break
apart the status quo on the rapacious financial industries or
Israel-Palestine; or a radical leader like Hugo Chavez who threatened
to overturn a damaging and exploitative US dominance of “America’s
backyard”; or social media dissidents who have started to chip away
at the elite-friendly narratives of corporate media, including the
Guardian.
The
Guardian did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a shred
of evidence. It did what it is designed to do.
Zie ook het volgende artikel plus begeleidende video, waarin ook al onterecht beschuldigingen over contacten met Assange en de aanklachten tegen het Trump team, WikiLeaks en Rusland aangaande ‘Russiagate’, een beschuldiging die speciaal aanklager Mueller nooit rond gaat krijgen.
Het gaat hier om Randy
Credico (politiek- en mensenrechtenactivist, programmamaker en komiek), hij wordt door Mueller beschuldigd van banden met WikiLeaks….. (zien beste bezoeker!)
In
this exclusive interview, Abby Martin speaks with Randy Credico
on his role in the Russia investigation, his upcoming interview with
Robert Mueller, and his relationship with Trump campaign advisor
Roger Stone.
With
never before revealed details about Stone and the Mueller
investigation, Credico details his long-standing ties to the
political operative and answers the hard questions about his alleged
coordination with Wikileaks.
The
interview highlights the larger context of the multi-front assault on
Julian Assange, Wikileaks and the future of press freedom.
**
Vergeet niet dat de Obama administratie al lang bezig was om de
Russen te demoniseren, dit onder andere t.b.v. het militair-industrieel complex en waarmee de VS en haar oorlogshond de NAVO ook in Oekraïne aan de grens met Rusland zou komen te staan……..
Zo hebben Hillary Clinton en de CIA de opstand in Oekraïne op poten
gezet, een opstand waarvan de opzet was een staatsgreep te ontketenen
tegen de democratisch gekozen regering Janoekovytsj…… Deze ‘grap’
(een specialiteit van de VS) heeft de VS maar ‘liefst’ 4 miljard
dollar gekost…….
*** Deze toegevoegde tekst later overgenomen van Common Dreams, daar deze niet op Anti-Media werd genoemd en de extra vermelding terecht is (m.i.).
PS: geeft door mensen, er kan niet genoeg feiten worden weergegeven tegenover de enorme berg leugens (met heel veel ‘fake news, of anders gezegd: ‘nepnieuws’) waaruit het kwaadaardige sprookje Russiagate bestaat.
Zie wat betreft het Steele dossier, een spil in de leugens die men ‘Russiagate’ is gaan noemen, de volgende berichten:
‘Campagne Clinton, smeriger dan gedacht…………‘ (met daarin daarin opgenomen de volgende twee artikelen: ‘Donna Brazile Bombshell: ‘Proof’ Hillary ‘Rigged’ Primary Against Bernie‘ en ‘Democrats in Denial After Donna Brazile Says Primary Was Rigged for Hillary‘)
THE
ELECTRONIC INTIFADA (EI) heeft de 4 delen van ‘The Lobby – USA’ op
haar site gezet. In de film is te zien hoe sterk de Israël lobby is in de VS en hoe ongelofelijk smerig dit geteisem handelt. Middels lastercampagnes, spionage en intimidatie van burgers die zich voor Palestijnse rechten uitspreken
en die Israël vanwege haar ongebreidelde terreur bekritiseren, probeert men hen de mond te snoeren door hen af te schilderen als antisemieten…….
Ofwel op grond van kritiek op de fascistische apartheidsstaat Israël, wil men critici afschilderen als antisemieten, lullig genoeg lukt dit in de meeste gevallen, al is het met behulp van de westerse reguliere media en het grootste deel van de westerse politici…… Let wel: dat hele label ‘antisemitisch’ is vooral belachelijk als men dit Palestijnen en andere arabieren aanwrijft, daar ook zij semieten zijn!!
Een ‘mooi
voorbeeld’ van een lastercampagne is die tegen Jeremy Corbyn de Labour leider, hij wordt al anderhalf jaar lang
voor antisemiet uitgemaakt, met hulp van o.a. ‘onafhankelijk
zendgemachtigde’ BBC, dit ondanks de band die Corbyn heeft met Joden die kritisch zijn op Israël, zoals de band met onze inmiddels overleden Hajo Meijer, NB een Holocaust overlever, die werkte voor Een Ander Joods Geluid……. In de Britse dagbladen is eveneens amper of geen weerwoord te vinden, Corbyn moet en zal de volgende verkiezingen
verliezen, daar zetten zich zelfs collega’s van Corbyn voor in,
verraders als opperschoft Tony Blair………
Ook in ons land zijn pro-Israëlische zionisten fanatiek bezig tegen mensen die kritiek hebben op het moorddadige beleid van Israël, o.a. Stan van Houcke is sinds kort het doelwit van zionisten ofwel fascisten als Leon de Winter…….
Voor het artikel van Durden heb
ik zelf de video’s overgenomen van YouTube (die van het originele artikel kan ik niet overnemen), ik geef ze i.t.t. tot het artikel op Zero Hedge wel alle 4 weer,
plus nog een video, met de titel: ‘Evidence
the Israel Lobby Control the US Government’. Mensen lees en
verwonder je hoe machtig de pro-Israël lobby in feite is, verwondering ook hoe men dergelijke haatcampagnes kan voeren en het gore lef heeft mensen die opkomen voor de rechten van Palestijnen, als antisemitisch weg te zetten……
Lees,
zie en geeft het door, tijd dat de ogen van de wereldbevolking
opengaan en dat Israël wordt aangepakt voor de vreselijke terreur die
het in haar illegaal gestichte staat en op de West Bank en de
Gazastrook uitoefent, inclusief een enorm aantal massamoorden, niet alleen vlak
voor en na de illegale stichting van Israël, maar tot op de dag van vandaag…
Israëlische
leiders als Netanyahu en Lieberman hadden in Scheveningen al jaren hun levenslange gevangenisstraf moeten uitzitten, en dat beste
bezoeker, heeft totaal niets met antisemitisme te maken, maar alles
met gerechtigheid voor de gepleegde oorlogsmisdaden als massamoord en bijvoorbeeld het opsluiten en martelen van Palestijnse mensen en zelfs
hun kinderen…….
Voorts zouden deze leiders terecht moeten staan voor zaken als het onthouden van water aan de Palestijnen, dit door vernieling van de bronnen (in de Gazastrook) en afdammingen in de Jordaan, t.b.v. de illegale Israëlische nederzettingen op de West Bank, waar Israël zich overigens totaal illegaal als bezettingsmacht bevindt, zoals nazi-Duitsland zich illegaal in ons land ophield van mei 1940 tot mei 1945
De 4 docu-films in het artikel hieronder werden door Al Jazeera gemaakt, echter deze mochten niet worden uitgezonden van Qatar, dit onder druk van Israël, Saoedi-Arabië en de VS……. De feiten in de documentaire werden o.a. verkregen door infiltratie >> een journalist gaf zich uit als een pro-Israëlische vrijwilliger in Washington.
Over censuur gesproken: ook Facebook doet mee aan pro-Israëlische lobby en het platform heeft al honderden accounts van Palestijnen verwijderd…….
En je weet het: als men een documentaire wil verbieden wil men zaken verborgen houden, ofwel Israël geeft in feite toe dat het een barbaars, inhumaan beleid voert t.a.v. de Palestijnen……. Dit alles (met nog een herhaling: het kan niet genoeg gezegd worden) in een illegaal gestichte staat op het grondgebied van die Palestijnen, dat te boek zou moeten staan als Palestina en niet als Israël!
Watch
the film the Israel lobby didn’t want you to see
Update: On
6 November, The Electronic Intifada published the final two episodes
of The
Lobby – USA. You
can watch
episodes three and four here.
The
Electronic Intifada has obtained a complete copy of The
Lobby – USA,
a four-part undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into Israel’s
covert influence campaign in the United States.
We
are releasing the leaked film simultaneously with
France’s Orient XXI and
Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar,
which have respectively subtitled the episodes in French and Arabic.
The
film was made by Al Jazeera during 2016 and was completed in
October 2017.
But
it was censored after
Qatar, the gas-rich Gulf emirate that funds Al Jazeera, came under
intense Israel
lobby pressure not
to air the film.
Although
Al Jazeera’s director-general claimed last month that there were
outstanding legal issues with the film, his assertions have
been flatly
contradicted by his own journalists.
In
March, The Electronic Intifada was the first
to report on
any of the film’s specific content. We followed
this in August by
publishing the first extract of the film, and shortly
after Max
Blumenthal at the Grayzone
Projectreleased others.
Since
then, The Electronic Intifada has released three
other extracts,
and several other journalists have watched the entire film and
written about it – including Alain
Gresh and Antony
Loewenstein.
Now
The Electronic Intifada can reveal for the first time that it has
obtained all four parts of the film.
You
can watch the first two parts in the video embeds above and below. (deel 3 en 4 onder dit artikel van EI)
To
get unprecedented access to the Israel lobby’s inner workings,
undercover reporter “Tony” posed as a pro-Israel volunteer
in Washington.
The
resulting film exposes the efforts of Israel and its lobbyists to spy
on, smear and intimidate US citizens who support
Palestinian human rights, especially BDS – the boycott,
divestment and sanctions movement.
It
shows that Israel’s semi-covert black-ops government
agency, the Ministry
of Strategic Affairs,
is operating this effort in collusion with an extensive network
of US-based organizations.
The
film was suppressed after the government of Qatar came under intense
pressure not to release it – ironically from the very same lobby
whose influence and antics the film exposes.
Clayton
Swisher, Al Jazeera’s head of investigations, revealed in
an article for The
Forward in
March that Al Jazeera had sent more than 70 letters to individuals
and organizations who appear in or are discussed in the film,
providing them with an opportunity to respond.
Only
three did so. Instead, pro-Israel groups have endeavored to suppress
the film that exposes the lobby’s activities.
In
April, Al Jazeera’s management was forced
to deny a claim by
the hard-right Zionist Organization of America that the film had been
canceled altogether.
In
June, The Electronic Intifada learned
that a high level source in
Doha had said the film’s indefinite delay was due to “national
security” concerns of the Qatari government.
Reifkind
– then an Israeli embassy employee – describing her typical work
day as “mainly gathering intel, reporting back to Israel … to
report back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of
Strategic Affairs.”
She
discusses the Israeli government “giving our support” to front
groups “in that behind-the-scenes way.”
Reifkind
also admits to using fake Facebook profiles to infiltrate the circles
of Palestine solidarity activists on campus.
The
film also reveals that US-based groups coordinate their efforts
directly with the Israeli government, particularly its Ministry
of Strategic Affairs.
The
film shows footage of the very same ex-military intelligence
officer, Sima
Vaknin-Gil,
claiming to have mapped Palestinian rights activism “globally. Not
just the United States, not just campuses, but campuses and
intersectionality and labor unions and churches.”
She
promises to use this data for “offense activity” against
Palestine activists.
Jacob
Baime, executive director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, claims
in the undercover footage that his organization uses “corporate
level, enterprise-grade social media intelligence software” to
gather lists of Palestine-related student events on campus,
“generally within about 30 seconds or less” of them being
posted online.
Baime
also admits on hidden camera that his group “coordinates” with
the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs.
Baime
states that his researchers “issue early warning alerts to our
partners” – including Israeli ministries.
Baime’s
colleague Ian Hersh admits in the film to adding Israel’s “Ministry
of Strategic Affairs to our operations and intelligence brief.”
“Psychological warfare”
Baime
describes how his group has used anonymous websites to
target activists.
“With
the anti-Israel people, what’s most effective, what we’ve found
at least in the last year, is you do the opposition research, put up
some anonymous website, and then put up targeted Facebook ads,”
Baime explains in part
three of the film.
“Canary
Mission is a good example,” he states. “It’s
psychological warfare.”
The
film names, for the first time, convicted
tax evaderAdam
Milstein as
the multimillionaire funder and mastermind of Canary Mission – an
anonymous smear site targeting student activists.
Eric
Gallagher, then fundraising director for The Israel Project, is seen
in the undercover footage admitting that “Adam Milstein, he’s the
guy who funds” Canary Mission.
Milstein
also funds The Israel Project, Gallagher states.
Gallagher
says that when he was working for AIPAC,
Washington’s most powerful Israel lobby group, “I was literally
emailing back and forth with [Adam Milstein] while he was in jail.”
Despite
not replying to Al Jazeera’s request for comment,
Milstein denied that
he and his family foundation “are funders of Canary Mission” on
the same day The Electronic Intifada published the clip.
In
March, The Electronic Intifada published the
first details of what is in the film.
We
reported that it showed Sima Vaknin-Gil claiming to have leading
neoconservative think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
working for her ministry.
The
undercover footage shows Vaknin-Gil claiming that “We have FDD.
We have others working on” projects including “data gathering,
information analysis, working on activist organizations, money trail.
This is something that only a country, with its resources, can do
the best.”
As
noted in part one of the documentary, the existence of the film and
the identity of the undercover reporter became known after footage he
had shot for it was used in Al Jazeera’s The
Lobby –
about Israel’s covert influence campaign in the UK –
aired in early 2017.
Since
then, Israel lobbyists have heavily pressured Qatar to prevent
the US film from airing.
“Foreign agent”
Clayton
Swisher, Al Jazeera’s head of investigations, first
confirmed in October 2017 that
the network had run an undercover reporter in the US Israel
lobby at the same time as in the UK.
Swisher
promised the film would be released “very soon,” but it never
came out.
Multiple
Israel lobby sources told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper
in February that they had received assurances from Qatari leaders
late last year that the documentary would not be aired.
Qatar denied
this,
but the paper stood by its story.
Swisher’s
op-ed in The
Forward was
his first public comment on the matter since he had announced
the documentary.
In
it, he refutes Israel lobby allegations about the film and expresses
frustration that Al Jazeera had not aired it, apparently due to
outside pressure.
They
have included some of the most right-wing and extreme figures among
Israel’s defenders in the US, such
as Harvard
law professor Alan Dershowitz and Morton Klein, the head of the
Zionist Organization of America.
Swisher
wrote in The
Forward that
he ran into Dershowitz at a Doha restaurant during one of these
visits, and invited the professor to a private viewing of the film.
“I
have no problem with any of the secret filming,” Swisher says
Dershowitz told him afterwards.
“And
I can even see this being broadcast on PBS” –
the US public broadcaster.
Yet
it appears that Israel lobby efforts to quash the film were
successful – until now.
Ongelofelijk maar waar: de Britse justitie gaat ‘hate crimes’ van de Labour partij onderzoeken (hate crimes >> misdaden met een racistisch of in dit geval antisemitisch motief), zo meldde BBC World Service in haar radionieuws van 12.00 u. (CET)…..
Je snapt het al: men stelt dus dat uitlatingen gedaan door bijvoorbeeld Jeremy Corbyn met kritiek op de illegale staat Israël, als een misdaad moeten worden gezien, waarbij Corbyn wordt beschuldigd van antisemitisme……..
Israël is zoals gezegd illegaal gesticht en heeft sinds die tijd (1948) een enorm aantal massamoorden begaan onder de Palestijnen (die overigens ook semieten zijn…), dat mag je tegenwoordig niet meer zeggen want dan ben je een antisemiet…….
Het is al zo zot dat Israël zelfs slachtoffers van de holocaust beschuldigt van antisemitisme, dat overkwam ook de intussen overleden Hajo Meijer, lid van ‘Een ander Joods Geluid…..’ Op basis van die meer dan belachelijke beschuldiging werd Corbyn door de neoliberale schoften (van de Tories, als ook de neoliberale tegenstanders uit de eigen partij) in eigen land als antisemiet neergezet…… De reden? Corbyn was het met Hajo Meijer eens was wat betreft diens kritiek op de fascistische apartheidsstaat Israël…..
Alsof de zionistische fascisten in Israël alles kunnen flikken wat ‘god verboden heeft’ en het recht hebben om de Palestijnen uit te moorden……. Waarnaast Israël ook belangrijke critici (meestal Palestijnen) van haar barbaarse en bloedige beleid t.a.v. de Palestijnen in het buitenland vermoordt…….
Het is meer dan duidelijk dat de Britse justitie wordt aangestuurd door de Tories en Labour tegenstanders van Jeremy Corbyn, zij willen hem demoniseren, daar Corbyn als er nu verkiezingen zouden worden gehouden, deze zal winnen……..
Kijk dat
Blair, de voormalige Labour Partry premier van GB een schoft is, wisten we
al lang, maar blijkbaar was dat niet genoeg voor Blair, die ondanks
de genocide van Saoedi-Arabië op de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen,
een contract sloot met Mohammad bij Salman, ofwel MBS, de kroonprins van
Saoedi-Arabië, voor modernisering van de Saoedische
maatschappij……
Modernisering
waarmee MBS de wereld zand in de ogen strooit, zodat hij ‘zonder
gezien te worden’, zijn vreselijke terreur laat neerdalen op
velen…… Niet alleen is MBS verantwoordelijk voor de genocide in
buurland Jemen, maar ook voor de financiering van terreurgroepen in
Syrië en Irak, plus uiteraard de levering van wapens en training aan
dat geteisem……
Nadat
veel landen de betrekkingen met Saoedi-Arabië
in de koelkast hebben gezet na de moord op Khashoggi en Duitsland zelfs besloot een pas
getekend contract voor wapens en militaire hardware op te zeggen,
besloot de ‘sociaaldemocraat’ Blair dat hij het contract voor 12
miljoen dollar niet wenste te schrappen vanwege die moord……. Overigens weer niet zo vreemd als je ziet dat een genocide uitvoeren al geen reden voor Blair was een contract niet te tekenen, dit geldt trouwens ook voor Duitsland, Frankrijk en Groot-Brittannië, die tijdens de gaande zijnde genocide in Jemen (die begon in 2015), wapencontracten sloten met de reli-fascistische terreurstaat Saoedi-Arabië; gelukkig dat Duitsland na de moord op Khashoggi wel stappen ondernam.
Met zijn uiterst onbeschofte en immorele manier van handelen treedt Blair overigens in de voetsporen van opperhufter Macron, de neoliberale schoft die godbetert president van Frankrijk is en die uitermate agressief liet weten er niet aan te denken
te luisteren naar wat andere regeringsleiders zeggen en hij derhalve de oproep
van de Duitse minister van buitenlandse zaken, net als Duitsland gesloten
wapencontracten met S-A op te zeggen, naast zich neerlegde…….*
Trouwens
de hoogste tijd dat Blair door het Internationaal
Strafhof (ICC) wordt aangeklaagd voor massamoord en andere
oorlogsmisdaden!! (al was het alleen om zijn aandeel aan de enorme massamoord in Irak, begaan door VS en Britse troepen in de illegale oorlog die zij in 2003 tegen dat land begonnen, overigens met hulp van meer NAVO-terreur-lidstaten, zoals Nederland….)
Tony
Blair Refuses to Cancel Lucrative Deal With Saudi Arabia
Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the UK addresses the World Travel & Tourism Council Asia Summit on 10 September 2013 [World Travel & Tourism Council/Flickr]
(MEMO) — Tony
Blair has resisted calls to end his multi-million dollar deal with
Saudi Arabia despite allegations that the killing of journalist Jamal
Khashoggi may have been authorised by the Crown Prince Mohamed Bin
Salman.
Accounts
published last month by
the Tony Blair Institute confirmed that Blair had received donations
of up to $12 million from the kingdom for a deal with the Crown
Prince to support his modernisation programme for the kingdom.
The
agreement was said to be the first major deal to have emerged
involving the Tony Blair Institute, which Blair established in 2016
after winding down his commercial operations.
While
there had calls for Blair to end his arrangement with Mohammed Bin
Salman over the ongoing war in Yemen, the killing of the
Washington Post journalist
earlier this month in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, has put
further pressure on the former prime minister to cut all ties with
Riyadh.
Blair’s
insistence on maintaining his financial ties to the Saudi government
makes him “complicit” in crimes committed by the Saudi
government, Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, Lloyd Russell
Moyle, told Business Insider. Moyle was responding
to Blair’s refusal earlier in the month to terminate his business
relations with the Saudis saying that the kingdom had “issued a
very strong denial” of their responsibility.
The
issue over whether Blair would continue to work with the Saudi regime
following the Kingdoms admission that Khashoggi had been killed by
agents thought to be close to MBS, was raised once again. A
spokesperson for the Blair institute told Business Insider:
“We have nothing further to add to what Mr Blair has said
previously”.
Blair
had expressed
concern over
Khashoggi when news of his disappearance broke earlier this month. He
said to Reuters “this
issue [the killing of Khashoggi] has to be resolved because otherwise
it runs completely contrary to that process of modernisation”.
A
source close to Tony Blair is said to be “following events closely”
in the country.
In
contrast to Blair, the current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called
for Western leaders to cut ties with Saudi Arabia in response to
Khashoggi’s killing.
“The
issues that have come to light of the death in Istanbul of a Saudi
national who was visiting the embassy call into question the close
relationship with Saudi Arabia of so many Western countries,”
Corbyn told CNN.
Despite
being members of the same party, Corbyn and Blair are bitter rivals.
The current leader has expressed his desire to put Blair on trial for
the mistakes he had made over the war in Iraq.
On
the issue of his ongoing deal with the Saudis one of Corbyn’s
allies described Blair’s reluctance to cut his ties to the regime
as “absolutely immoral” and made him “complicit in war crimes”
committed by the Saudis in Yemen.
“If
Mr Blair doesn’t see the light and continues to accept money from
the Saudis then I think his moral integrity is in ruins,” Lloyd
Russell Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, told BI.
WikiLeaks, deze maand 12 jaar oud, wordt door overheden en door steeds meer journalisten belasterd voor
haar openbaringen, inclusief het openbaar maken van de speciale relatie tussen de VS en
Groot-Brittannië in het voeren van een gezamenlijke
buitenlandpolitiek van geweld en bedrog, een beleid in het belang van
de machthebbers in Washington en Londen (Whitehall)…….
Mark
Curtis publiceerde op Middle East Eye een artikel over deze zaak en
toont aan middels meerdere voorbeelden die op WikiLeaks zijn te vinden (officiële documenten en
berichten) hoe smerig overheidshandelen in elkaar steekt. Zoals GB
dat in geheime onderhandelingen met Saoedi-Arabië over stemming in de VN, ervoor zorgde dat zowel
GB als S-A werden verkozen in de VN
Mensenrechtenraad (UNHRC), zo bleek uit een officieel bericht
uit 2013……
Uit een
ander bericht blijkt dat William Hague in 2008, toen hij
schaduwminister van buitenlandse zaken was voor de conservatieven, de
VS ambassade in Londen liet weten dat de Britten een VS vriendelijk
regime wensen, ‘we hebben een pro-VS regering nodig, de wereld heeft het nodig’, aldus plork Hague……..
De
speciale relatie tussen de VS en GB wordt door Whitehall op alle
mogelijke manieren beschermd tegen openbaarmakingen, zo bleek uit een
officieel bericht van Whitehall aan Washington, dit bericht werd
gestuurd n.a.v. het Chilcot onderzoek naar de oorlog tegen Irak,
waarbij Whitehall Washington verzekerde dat er maatregelen waren
genomen die de belangen van de VS zouden beschermen……
Wat die
bescherming precies inhoudt is niet bekend, echter wel dat er nooit
ook maar één VS beambte werd gevraagd te getuigen voor de Chilcot
commissie, voorts was het de commissie verboden een briefwisseling in
te zien tussen Tony Blair, destijds de premier-oplichter voor GB en George W.
Bush, destijds de president-idioot van de VS……..
Berichten (‘cables’) op WikiLeaks uit 2016 tonen verder aan dat in
tegenstelling tot de leugens van GB in aanloop van de illegale
bombardementen op Libië (in maart 2011), dat het niet de opzet was
Khadaffi af te zetten, maar te voorkomen dat de bevolking werd
aangevallen…….. Dit terwijl niet alleen die bevolking wel met bombardementen
werd aangevallen (door o.a. GB en de VS) en het wel degelijk de opzet
was Khadaffi af te zetten, zo blijkt uit documenten van Hillary
Clinton uit het Wikileaks archief…..
In het artikel ook aandacht voor een smerig spel met clusterbommen, GB mocht deze niet meer op haar bodem hebben, maar via een omweg via de militaire VS bases bleef dit moorddadig tuig toch in GB…… Uit andere berichten bleek al dat via deze VS bases clusterbommen werden geleverd aan Saoedi-Arabië, die ze inzet in Jemen, waar deze reli-fascistische terreurstaat een genocide uitvoert….
Dan nog de zaak van Diego Garcia, dit grootste eiland van de Chagosarchipel (Indische Oceaan), waar de bevolking door de Britten werd verjaagd in de 60er jaren, dit t.b.v. de VS die een grote basis heeft ingericht op dat eiland, een basis die een grote rol speelt in de illegale oorlogen die de VS en haar bondgenoten in het Midden-Oosten uitvechten tegen landen als Syrië, Irak en Afghanistan (en als ‘het meezit’ straks tegen Iran, wat ‘god’ verhoedde……)
De Britten hebben alles op alles gezet om de terugkeer van de bevolking van Diego Garcia tegen te gaan, o.a. door het zeegebied rond het eiland tot zeereservaat te verklaren…… In een bericht van een hooggeplaatste Britse ambtenaar aan de VS staat te lezen dat GB met het verklaren van een zeereservaat, de bewoners wil frustreren terug te keren naar hun geboortegrond, of de grond van hun ouders/voorouders……
Nogmaals
wordt in dit artikel gewezen op de bewezen feiten van VS spionage, waar zelfs haar trouwste partner GB werd bespioneerd (zoals eerder ook de Duitse regering overkwam, zelfs de telefoon van Merkel werd gehackt door de VS…)…. Je weet wel, een zaak waar de VS
zonder ophouden Rusland en andere haar niet welgevallige landen van beschuldigt, neem de hele Russiagate hysterie, waar nog steeds niet
een flinter aan bewijs voor werd geleverd, terwijl er meer dan
voldoende bewijzen zijn dat dit niet is gebeurt……
Gezien
het voorgaande is het dan ook uitermate smerig om te lezen hoe men
stelt dat voorkomen moet worden dat onderzoeksjournalisten, hackers en
‘buitenlandse spionnen’ zaken naar het publiek kunnen lekken (hoeveel
bewijs wil je nog hebben voor het uitvoeren van smerige zaken door de
VS en GB??) Onderzoeksjournalisten worden zelfs als bedreiging neergezet en vergeleken met terroristen……
ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Ik lach wel, maar intussen slaat de censuur toe op het internet, censuur die juist de krachten treffen die terecht grote kritiek hebben op oorlogsvoering en het organiseren van opstanden in landen waar de VS noch de rest van het westen wat te zoeken hebben……. Of wat dacht je van alle in het hieronder opgenomen bericht genoemde zaken, die niet uit mochten lekken……
Wat betreft de reguliere media is het wel duidelijk dat de regeringen van de VS en GB deze al lang in de zak hebben… En dan durft men in
die media nog te spreken over ‘fake news en manipulatie….’ (hetzelfde geldt voor het grootste deel van de westerse politici, ook in ons land, neem wat betreft hare D66 leeghoofdigheid Ollongren en haar gezwatel over Russische inmenging, waarvoor ze niet één bewijs heeft geleverd)
Aan het
eind van het hieronder opgenomen artikel van Mark Curtis, schrijft hij nog over Julian Assange en hoe GB Assange zal oppakken en
uitleveren aan de VS, zo gauw hij de ambassade van Ecuador zal
verlaten…… (toevallig hoorde ik vanmorgen dat Assange door een
rechter in Ecuador via Skype wordt gehoord, het gaat hier m.n. om het feit dat
Assange geen contact mag hebben met de buitenwereld, al zou de ambassade dit ‘regime’ t.a.v. Assange wat versoepeld hebben >> de rechter
wilde een nieuwe vertaler die Australisch sprak….. Dit daar
de gebruikte vertaler het Engels slecht beheerste…. ha! ha! ha! ha!)
WikiLeaks
is vilified by governments (and increasingly by journalists) for its
exposures, including of the U.S.-UK “special relationship” in
running a joint foreign policy of deception and violence that serves
London and Washington’s elite interests, says Mark Curtis.
By
Mark CurtisMiddle
East Eye
Twelve
years ago this month, WikiLeaks began publishing government
secrets that the world public might otherwise never have known. What
it has revealed about state duplicity, human rights abuses and
corruption goes beyond anything published in the world’s
“mainstream” media.
After
over six months of being cut off from outside world, on 14 October 14
Ecuador has partly restored Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s
communications with the outside world from its London embassy where
the founder has been living for over six years. (Assange,
however, later rejected Ecuador’s
restrictions imposed on him.)
The
treatment – real and threatened – meted out to Assange by the
U.S. and UK governments contrasts sharply with the service Wikileaks
has done their publics in revealing the nature of elite power, as
shown in the following snapshot of Wikileaks’ revelations about
British foreign policy in the Middle East.
Conniving
with the Saudis
Whitehall’s
special relationship with Riyadh is exposed in an extraordinary cable
from 2013 highlighting
how Britain conducted secret vote-trading deals with Saudi
Arabia to ensure both states were elected to the UN human rights
council. Britain initiated the secret negotiations by asking Saudi
Arabia for its support.
The
Wikileaks releases also shed details on Whitehall’s fawning
relationship with Washington. A 2008 cable,
for example, shows then shadow foreign secretary William Hague
telling the U.S. embassy that the British “want a pro-American
regime. We need it. The world needs it.”
Hague:
‘World needs pro-American regime’ in Britain.(Chatham
House)
A
cable the following year shows the lengths to which Whitehall goes to
defend the special relationship from public scrutiny. Just as the
Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War was beginning in 2009, Whitehall promised
Washington that
it had “put measures in place to protect your interests”.
American
Influence
It
is not known what this protection amounted to, but no U.S. officials
were called to give evidence to Chilcot in public. The inquiry was
also refused
permission to
publish letters between former U.S. President George W. Bush and
former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair written in the run-up to the
war.
Also
in 2009, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised the prospect of
reducing the
number
of British nuclear-armed Trident submarines from four to three, a
policy opposed in Washington. However, Julian Miller, an official in
the UK’s Cabinet Office, privately assured
U.S. officials that
his government “would consult with the U.S. regarding future
developments concerning the Trident deterrent to assure there would
be ‘no daylight’ between the U.S. and UK.” The idea that
British decision-making on Trident is truly independent of the U.S.
is undermined by this cable.
The
Wikileaks cables are rife with examples of British government
duplicity of the kind I’ve extensively come across in my
own research on
UK declassified files. In advance of the British-NATO bombing
campaign in Libya in March 2011, for example, the British
government pretended that
its aim was to prevent Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s attacks on
civilians and not to overthrow him.
However,
Wikileaks files released in 2016 as part of its Hillary Clinton
archive show William Burns, then the U.S. deputy secretary of state,
having talked with now Foreign Secretary Hague about a “post-Qaddafi”
Libya.
This was more than three weeks before military operations began. The
intention was clearly to overthrow Gaddafi, and the UN resolution
about protecting civilians was simply window dressing.
Another
case of British duplicity concerns Diego Garcia, the largest island
in the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which is now a major
U.S. base for intervention in the Middle East. The UK
has long fought to
prevent Chagos islanders from returning to their homeland after
forcibly removing them in the 1960s.
A
secret 2009 cable shows that a particular ruse concocted by Whitehall
to promote this was the establishment of a “marine
reserve”
around the islands. A senior Foreign Office official told the US that
the “former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible,
to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire
Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.”
A
week before the “marine reserve” proposal was made to the U.S. in
May 2009, then UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband was also conniving
with the U.S., apparently to deceive the public. A cable
reveals Miliband
helping the U.S. to sidestep a ban on cluster bombs and keep the
weapons at U.S. bases on UK soil, despite Britain signing the
international treaty banning the weapons the previous year.
A
B-1B Lancer unleashes cluster munitions. The B-1B uses radar and
inertial navigation equipment enabling aircrews to operate without
the need for ground-based navigation aids. (U.S.
Air Force photo)
Miliband approved
a loophole created
by diplomats to allow U.S. cluster bombs to remain on UK soil and was
part of discussions on how the loophole would help avert a debate in
Parliament that could have “complicated or muddied” the issue.
Critically, the same cable also revealed that
the U.S. was storing cluster munitions on ships based at Diego
Garcia.
Spying
on the UK
Cables
show the US spying on the Foreign Office and collecting information
on British ministers. Soon after the appointment of Ivan Lewis as a
junior foreign minister in 2009, U.S. officials were briefing the
office of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about rumors that
he was depressed and had a reputation as a bully, and on “the
state of his marriage.”
Washington
was also shown to
have been spying on the UK mission to the UN, along with other
members of the Security Council and the UN Secretary General.
In
addition, Wikileaks cables reveal that journalists and the public are
considered legitimate targets of UK intelligence operations. In
October 2009, Joint
Services Publication 440,
a 2,400-page restricted document written in 2001 by the Ministry
of Defence, was leaked. Somewhat ironically, it contained
instructions for the security services on to avid leaks of
information by hackers,
journalists and foreign spies.
The
document refers to investigative journalists as “threats”
alongside subversive and terrorist organizations, noting that “the
‘enemy’ is unwelcome publicity of any kind, and through any
medium.”
Britain’s
GCHQ* is also revealed to have spied on Wikileaks itself – and its
readers. One classified
GCHQ document from
2012 shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly collect
the IP addresses of visitors to the Wikileaks site in real time, as
well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from
search engines such as Google.
Championing
Free Nedua
The
British government is punishing Assange for the service that
Wikileaks has performed. It is ignoring a UN ruling that he is being
held in “arbitrary
detention”
at the Ecuadorian embassy, while failing, illegally, to ensure his
health needs are met. Whitehall is also refusing to offer diplomatic
assurances that Assange will not be extradited to the US – the only
reason he remains in the embassy.
Millions
worldwide are demanding the release of Wikileaks founder Assange
after six years of what the UN calls “arbitrary detention.” (New
Media Days / Peter Erichsen)
Smear
campaigns have portrayed Assange as a sexual predator or a Russian
agent, often in the same media that have benefitted from covering
Wikileaks’ releases.
Many
journalists and activists who are perfectly aware of the fake news in
some Western media outlets, and of the
smear campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn,
are ignoring or even colluding in the more vicious smearing of
Assange.
More
journalists need to champion the service Wikileaks performs and argue
for what is at stake for a free media in the right to expose state
secrets.
This article originally
appeared on Middle East Eye.
Mark
Curtis is an historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and
international development and the author of six books, the latest
being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion
with Radical Islam.
Na de smerige beschuldigingen dat Labour Partijleider Jeremy Corbyn een antisemitische Jodenhater is, waaraan de BBC een fikse steen heeft bijgedragen, laat BBC Midden-Oosten correspondent Bowen weten dat Iran inderdaad terreur exporteert……. (als je tegenwoordig kritiek hebt op de fascistische terreurstaat Israël, ben je meteen een antisemiet en Jodenhater, dat overkomt zelfs Joden die kritiek hebben op hun eigen overheid, of Joden die vanuit het buitenland in feite hetzelfde stellen, zoals Hajo Meijer, NB een overlevende van de nazi-Duitse vernietigingskampen, de heer Meijer is in 2014 overleden en is een voormalig medewerker van ‘Een ander Joods geluid’. …..
Schoft Bowen was afgelopen zaterdag te horen op BBC World Service radio, waar hem werd gevraagd of Iran terreur exporteert, zoals de VS en Israël beweren. Volgens Bowen klopt dat als je kijkt naar de steun van Iran voor Hamas en Hezbollah, waaraan hij voor het gemak ook nog even de steun van Iran voor de Houthi’s in Jemen toevoegde, terwijl die steun bestaat uit de levering van niets anders dan humanitaire hulpgoederen voor een volk waarop de Saoedische terreurcoalitie, met hulp van de VS en GB, een genocide uitvoeren…….
Nooit zijn de beschuldigingen bewezen dat Iran wapens levert aan de Houthi’s of dat Iraanse militairen vechten in Jemen, toch blijft deze leugen gehandhaafd, niet alleen door westerse politici, maar ook door de reguliere (massa-) media, zoals de BBC World Service radio, een zogenaamde onafhankelijke zendgemachtigde, met de grootste luisterdichtheid op onze kleine aarde voor haar ‘nieuws’ (veelal ‘fake news’ of zoals wij dat zouden moeten noemen: ‘nepnieuws’) en actualiteiten….. Zoals je ook hier weer kan lezen: Bowen werkt daar aan mee…..
Jeremy Bowen embedded ‘aan het werk’
Dan Hamas en Hezbollah, beiden organisaties die zich inzetten voor hun bevolking en ja daar hoort ook het bevechten van onrecht en terreur bij. Het onrecht dat de Palestijnen al ondervinden vanaf de illegale stichting van de staat Israël en daarmee de uiterst gewelddadige verdrijving van Palestijnen uit gebieden, waar zij al honderden jaren woonden en werkten…… Het onrecht van openluchtgevangenis Gazastrook, waar het de Palestijnse mensen aan alles ontbreekt……
BBC zou een onafhankelijk radiostation zijn, echter daar is al heel lang niets meer van te merken, sterker nog, de BBC bedient haar overheid als een trouwe lakei, amper of geen commentaar op de enorme wapenleveringen van Groot-Brittannië aan Saoedi-Arabië, dat zoals gezegd godbetert met de hulp van Groot-Brittannië en de VS, een genocide uitvoert in Jemen….. Daarvoor levert GB wapens, munitie, rollend, varend en vliegend oorlogstuig, verder zorgt GB voor militaire training van Saoedische militairen…….. zoals bekend steunde en steunt GB ook de illegale oorlogen van de VS tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië…… Wie is de grootste terreurstaat in het Midden-Oosten: Israël, Saoedi-Arabië, de VS en Groot-Brittannië, of Iran????
De BBC onafhankelijk…… ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Vond op deze BBC site een kort praatje van Bowen over het ‘conflict’ tussen Israël en de Palestijnen (‘conflict’ lees: een oorlog van Israël tegen de Palestijnen, een oorlog die niets anders is dan een langzame en gewelddadige etnische zuivering…) Bowen stelt dat zolang Joden en Palestijnen niet kunnen samenleven in Israël, het lijden zal blijven bestaan, waarmee Bowen duidelijk aangeeft dat de zionistische Joden ook lijden…….. Zionisten of beter nog: fascisten die Israël willen zuiveren van Palestijnen uit de gebieden waar zij nog wonen, ofwel hen gewelddadig willen deporteren uit de door deze zionisten en hun illegale staat volkomen ten onrechte geannexeerde Palestijnse gebieden….. ‘Verjagen’ met ongebreideld geweld zoals Israël dat in 1948 en 1967 heeft gedaan, ofwel over de lijken van Palestijnen en hun kinderen…….
Tony
Blair, oplichter en voormalig premier van GB heeft toegegeven dat
zijn Tony Blair Institute 12 miljoen dollar heeft ontvangen van
Saoedi-Arabië……
Blair
heeft al jaren een goede relatie met Saoedi-Arabië en dan m.n. met de
psychopathische massamoordenaar Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), vandaar
ook deze gift.
Blair
onderhoudt ook al jaren een goede relatie met de fascistische
apartheidsstaat Israël en is één van de schoften die het gore lef
heeft Jeremy Corbyn te betichten van antisemitisme….. Alsof kritiek
op de uiterst gewelddadige en fascistische apartheidsstaat Israël (NB onlangs in wetgeving vastgelegd) hetzelfde is als antisemitisme…….
Ongelofelijk
dat Blair als één van de hoofdverantwoordelijken voor de enorme
massamoord in Irak (intussen meer dan 1,5 miljoen doden), die begon
met de oorlog tegen dat land in 2003, door de VN werd
aangesteld als ‘vredesambassadeur’ voor het Midden-Oosten…… Om nog maar te zwijgen over de in feite illegale oorlog van de VS, GB en anderen tegen Afghanistan…… Wat
mij betreft was dit wel het zoveelste en laatste bewijs dat de VN een
waardeloze organisatie is, die vooral ten dienste staat van de VS en haar hielenlikkers……..
Nu
heeft massamoordenaar Blair dus 12 miljoen dollar ontvangen van een
andere massamoordenaar, de reli-fascistische dictatuur in Saoedi-Arabië, momenteel bezig met een genocide in Jemen…..
Blair?
Hij maakt zich ten overvloede nog eens totaal belachelijk en laat
idem zien dat hij schijt heeft aan mensenrechten en vrede….. Blair zou al lang veroordeeld moeten zijn door het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC) in Den Haag en levenslang gevangen moeten zitten in Scheveningen!!
Tony
Blair Confirms Receiving $12 Million Dollars From Saudi Arabia
(MEMO) — Tony
Blair’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has come under scrutiny
following the revelation that the non-government organisation set up
under his name has received millions of pounds from Riyadh.
Accounts
published yesterday by the Tony Blair Institute confirmed earlier
reports that Blair had received donations of up to $12 million from
the Kingdom.
The
Saudi donation, according to the Financial Times, comes
from an organisation called Media Investment Limited (MIL), which is
a subsidiary of Saudi Research & Marketing Group, registered in
Guernsey*.
Publication
of the accounts confirmed July reports that Tony Blair Institute had
made an agreement with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, effective
ruler of Saudi Arabia, earlier this year to help with a programme of
modernisation for the Kingdom.
The
agreement was said to be the first major deal to have emerged
involving the Tony Blair Institute, which Blair established in 2016
after winding down his commercial operations.
The
report in the Telegraph prompted the institute to
defend its dealing with the Saudi Kingdom saying that the former
prime minister did not receive any payment from Riyadh and profits
are not generated from its consultancy work. They insisted that their
mission was to promote stability and reform in the Middle East –
with staff based in the UAE**, a key ally of Saudi Arabia.
Following
the revelation, questions were raised over some of the institute’s
decision, including Blair himself, who supported UK intervention in
Syria; a policy that would have primarily benefited the Saudi-backed
opposition groups.
Blair’s
institute also wrote flattering articles about Bin Salman during the
crown prince’s visit
to the UK early
year. “Britain should learn from Saudi Arabia and how it has
demonstrated a clear commitment to tackling the politicisation of
Islam to inform policymaking,” one article read.
It
also endorsed Bin Salman’s vision. “As part of his broad,
sweeping and ambitious plans to revolutionise Saudi Arabia,
economically, socially and religiously, the crown prince has
demonstrated a level of conviction, clarity and coherence in
identifying and understanding the nature of Islamist extremism that
Western policymakers should seek to learn from.”
Despite
the glowing endorsement, a key plank of Bin Salman’s vision has
come off the rail. In August King
Salman stepped
in and shelved his son’s plans to float a five per cent stake in
the country’s national oil company. Furthermore Riyadh has seen
some of the wort repression in the country under the current ruler,
as progressive
imams and female
campaigners face
capital punishment for their criticism of the ruling monarchy.
![Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the UK addresses the World Travel & Tourism Council Asia Summit on 10 September 2013 [World Travel & Tourism Council/Flickr]](https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2013_9-10-Tony-Blair9716502108_9f4d293f00_o.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
