An article in the Australian publication New Matilda gets to the real point about last night’s attacks in Paris – one that no one wants to talk about. What westerners feel right now is a powerful and very selective outrage that identifies with the suffering of people “like us”. We mourn the deaths in Paris while not even noticing those […]
It was nothing short of a privilege to meet men and women who embody and demonstrate the kind of bravery not celebrated by our corporate media, a media that operates with a slavish adherence to an elite-friendly narrative only interested in drumming up support for more illegal and immoral military action around the globe. It’s an end arrived at only by exploiting the public’s distorted notion of patriotism, fostered on overdrive every year during Remembrance season. But how incredibly powerful it is to talk to people like members of Veterans For Peace who have had a change of mind and heart so profound that their entire worldview is shattered, only to be rebuilt on truth.
The Guardian’s “Let’s Hate Russia” crusade, like the old Windmill Theatre, never closes. It’s a 24/7 op and needs a constant supply of attack pieces to keep those fires of division and racism stoked. So it’s not surprising a lot of barrel-scraping has to be done, and in fact sometimes the results can be so unintentionally self-parodying they become almost […]
With its links to the arms trade, increasingly militarised presentation of Remembrance, and growing commercialisation and corporatisation of the poppy “brand”, it’s time to reconsider whether the Royal British Legion is still suitable to be the “national custodian of Remembrance”. My Name is Legion: The British Legion and the Control of Remembrance explores how the Royal British Legion’s status as […]
BSNews comment: this story is of interest but is somewhat ironic considering the role the BBC routinely plays in amplifying state/corporate propaganda: A BBC journalist has blasted the UK press after experiencing at first-hand the appalling way the media treats the public. In a moving blogpost, BBC Bristol presenter John Darvall blames the fact he is in the public eye and […]
There’s no evidence yet, of course, but never mind about that. David Cameron is almost definitely sure, and Obama thinks so too. Because unnamed investigators say so and there were some sort of intercepted phone calls which nearly-definitely-almost-maybe proves it was an ISIS bomb. Though of course they can’t share any of this valuable info with Russia or with anyone else. We all just have to take their word for it.
Yemen is no stranger to conflict. Under the Obama administration, the country has been subject to years of lethal drone strikes, which Washington, for the most part, claims were targeted at al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Washington regards AQAP as the most deadly branch of al-Qaeda. However, in practice, these drone strikes have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths. […]
For indeed the unwritten rule informing this type of journalism is: if you want to get close to the ‘defence’ establishment, you better be close to the ‘defence’ establishment: ideologically, sympathetically, ‘patriotically’.
A near-perfect example of this industry-wide perceptual bias has been supplied this year by BBC diplomatic editor, Mark Urban.
Can you imagine someone sitting Hermione and Bellatrix down, after Bellatrix has tortured Hermione, to talk things out? Perhaps Neville could join them, and report back to his deranged parents the success of their dialogue.
This is our second look at the work of Robert Stuart, concerning the BBC Panorama documentary Saving Syria’s Children. ( here for our first instalment). When did the alleged chemical attacks actually occur? Why do accounts of the timing differ so widely?
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted for war crimes over her admission under oath that she played a part in destroying Libya, an American political commentator and journalist says.
The General Secretary of United Nations (UN) Ban Ki-Moon collaborated in secret withIsrael and the United States to weaken the effects of a Board of Inquiry’s report accusing Israel of human rights violations in Gaza in Dec. 2008 – Jan. 2009.
