The corporate mass media are well aware what side of the class war their bread is buttered. Their reporting of the events in Venezuela is a case in point. “Venezuela Leaps Towards Dictatorship” said The Economist. “Venezuela Flirts With Outright Dictatorship”, exclaimed The Independent. The New York Times headlined with “Venezuela’s Descent Into Dictatorship”, while The Guardian’s “Let’s Call Venezuela What it is under Maduro: a Dictatorship”, was […]
One of the key signs of a healthy democracy is the extent to which state and corporate media encourage genuine diversity of opinions and the ability for alternative narratives to flourish. On both counts, the mass Western media failed in relation to their coverage of the Syrian conflict. The inability to report objectively on Syria is indicative of a structural and systematic bias that permeates […]
Pictures that emerged last week from the Royal Blackburn hospital that showed mothers and babies being held in corridors for 13 hours and 89 year old Iris Sibley spending more than six months in a hospital bed because a care home place could not be found for her, are the kinds of incidences that are now becoming the norm in […]
Thirteen months ago, I highlighted how, after the chaos of Iraq and Libya, the mass media began softening the public up for another illegal military intervention in another sovereign state – this time in Syria. Rupert Murdoch, who has a direct financial interest in regime change in Syria (see Israel & energy independence below) oversaw some of the more overt forms of anti-Syrian […]
Essentially, housing associations behave like private companies. This process is being accelerated as a result of the Housing and Planning Act which forces local authorities to sell off council housing. The proceeds are then used to encourage housing associations to extend Right to Buy which will reduce the amount of affordable housing stock even further.
The mismanagement of the UK economy by both the New Labour and Tory governments’ that followed the global crash of 2008 led to the poorest and weakest in society disproportionately picking up the pieces by way of savage cuts and austerity resulting from this incompetency.
The last couple of weekends have been good for burying bad news. On July 15, Murtaza Hussain revealed the release of previously suppressed documents contained within a 2002 congressional report that emphasized possible links between high-ranking members of the Saudi royal family and the 9/11 hijackers. This weekend, the attempt to bury more bad news also involves Saudi Arabia. On this […]
By cultivating the notion that the unemployed and disabled are somehow ‘undeserving’ is to implant within the wider public consciousness the notion that some human beings are not a legitimate part of society and are therefore ‘sub-human’.
Over recent weeks, instances of alleged antisemitism by a handful of marginal ‘leftists’ such as the principled Jewish socialist, Tony Greenstein and the eccentric Gerry Downing, have been brought into the public domain mainly by the Jewish press as well as leading labour figures within the PLP, many of whom are clearly intent on exaggerating this metaphorical ‘storm in a teacup’ by suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn is somehow tolerant of antisemitism within his party. This is the ugliest form of political opportunism possible, the intention of which is to undermine Corbyn’s leadership in order that the narrow political ambitions of those smearing him will be the first in line to argue for his ousting.
Did the corporate media vilify David Cameron for some serious high-ranking connections to this mother of all leaks? No, it did not. Did the same media publish any damning report that featured Cameron airbrushed alongside global ‘baddies,’ like former Iranian leader Ahmadinejad? No. But it seems as far as Putin and Russia is concerned, anything the media dishes out is regarded by the elites as fair game.
The downing by NATO member, Turkey, of a Russian aircraft on the Syrian-Turkish border in November 2015 – the first of its kind since 1952 – brought into sharp focus the complex patchwork of contending geopolitical and strategic allegiances against what is ostensibly a unified military response to ISIS. Turkey’s role in supporting the Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Al Nusra Front, starkly emphasises […]
Much has been made about how the U.S wants to “cooperate” with China and to maintain friendly relations. But at the same time, President Obama proposes to undermine bi-lateral relations in the region while China wants to enhance them on an individual basis in much the same way that it would with any other country outside the region.
