By  Finian Cunningham

 

To many Brits, the state-owned BBC is a household institution, a national treasure of presumed noble British values. The media outlet even claims to be “the world’s most trusted news source”. 

For others, however, the “Beeb”, as the organization is innocently referred to, has a much more sinister role in serving British imperial interests, or what is euphemistically called “soft power”.

Established in 1927 by order of the British monarchy, the BBC is funded out of the pockets of taxpayers – by law. Failure by any household to buy an annual “TV license” to support the corporation can result in a jail sentence.

If that sounds slightly Orwellian, then what about more ignoble episodes in the BBC’s history when it functioned as a conduit for British military intelligence? Such as its role in facilitating the 1953 coup in Iran where it played a crucial part in disseminating MI6 and CIA disinformation, as documented by historian Mark Curtis.

 

Today, a similar role appears to be played by the BBC in destabilizing China. The Beijing government has lambasted the British outlet for a series of reports which it condemned as “fake news”. The news organization’s correspondent in China, John Sudworth, this week fled to the breakaway island territory of Taiwan. He claims to have escaped scrutiny by state security services. But the Chinese authorities say the BBC man has evaded complaints from citizens who claim to have been slandered in his reports.

By its own admission, the BBC reporting on alleged human rights abuses in China’s northwest region of Xinjiang has relied on the “research” of the German academic, Adrian Zenz. It turns out that Zenz is more of an anti-communist ideologue than bona fide academic. His purported research claiming genocide against Uyghur people in Xinjiang has been discredited as fabrication and distortion. But, as China’s foreign ministry has pointed out, the BBC and its correspondent indulged in their own distortions about what is happening in that nation.

Videos of vocational training centers and factories are edited in such a way as to portray the locations as detention centers or “concentration camps”. Darkening video filters are used to give images a sinister aspect. Grim music accompanies images as sound track to convey to the viewer the perception of something pernicious.

Other editing tricks include showing an anti-terror drill by security forces as if it is repression against civilians.

In another “report”, the BBC set up an executive of the German carmaker Volkswagen which has an assembly plant in Xinjiang. The reporter snidely refers to the company’s past involvement in slave labor in Nazi Germany, inferring without evidence that similar practices are happening in China today.

The BBC along with American media are pushing a narrative alleging “genocide” against Uyghur muslims in Xinjiang, even though the population is growing robustly and prospering. Based on these “reports”, the United States, Canada, Britain and European Union are invoking condemnations and sanctions against China for its supposed human rights violations.

China has rejected these claims, saying they are purposed to give Western states a pretext to smear and undermine a geopolitical rival. The same toxic technique of propaganda followed by punitive attacks is used against Russia and other Western-designated enemies.

The British Bombast Corporation has dubious expertise in the black arts. For some reason, the BBC like much of the British establishment has the knack of presenting itself as a paragon of virtue, reason and civility. That patina of British genteelness gives the corporation an advantage in information warfare. “Oh my dear boy, what, us in engage in lies and falsehoods? That’s preposterous!”

 

Oh yeah, who is being preposterous? Two episodes during the war in Syria revealed the reprehensible ability of the BBC. In a documentary entitled Saving Syria’s Children, the corporation was later exposed for fabricating an airstrike with napalm in Aleppo in 2013 which it blamed on the Syrian government forces. Independent journalists Jonathan Cook and Robert Stuart separately debunked the BBC’s Ian Pannell as a fabricator. There was no such attack with napalm as alleged.

In a second flagrant fabrication, the BBC’s own producer in Syria Riam Dalati disclosed that its reporting on chemical weapons allegedly used by Syrian government forces in Douma in 2018 was also a fake.

This kind of disinformation and propaganda has been cited by Washington, London and the European Union to impose crippling sanctions on Syria even as that nation struggles to recover from 10 years of war, a war that NATO powers covertly instigated for regime change using terrorist proxies from all over the world. Among those terrorist proxies in Syria were thousands of Uyghur jihadists from China’s Xinjiang.

There’s wheels within wheels, and the BBC is an important cog in the Western imperialist machine. Instead of the world’s most trusted news source, perhaps its motto should be “the world’s most busted news source”.

 

Read more:

 

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/202104021082522369-bbc--british-black-ops-corp/

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!

 

By Caitlin Johnstone, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter caitoz

 

The Western world has a very high opinion of itself and its supposed values, and its treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange makes a lie of it all. 

Truth. Justice. Freedom. Democracy. We are taught from an early age that these are the sacred values our society upholds with the utmost reverence, and that we are very fortunate to have been born in a part of the world which holds such virtue.

You see this haughty self-righteousness pop up on a daily basis in the most influential circles on earth, from the way US presidents are still to this day referred to as the “leader of the free world”, to US Secretary of State Tony Blinken recently babbling about the “shared values” of the “free and open rules-based order”, to Magnitsky Act manipulator Bill Browder recently referring to the US-centralized power alliance as “the civilized world” in a bid to get Australia up to pace with the rest of the empire’s China hawkishness.

 

Australia is under pressure to pass its own version of a Magnitsky Act after it failed to join the civilized world in sanctioning Chinese officials over the Uyghur concentration camps https://t.co/H0c7J4En4b

— Bill Browder (Billbrowder) April 3, 2021

 

All of this is nonsense. All of this is fake. Everything the Western world believes about itself and its values is invalidated by its treatment of Julian Assange.

 

The Western world does not value truth.

If the Western world valued truth, there wouldn’t be a journalist languishing in Belmarsh Prison for publishing it.

 

11 years ago today WikiLeaks published Collateral Murder. It was a defining moment in our understanding of the Iraq war. The publisher, Julian Assange, faces a 175 year sentence for publishing evidence of such crimes, government abuses & corruption https://t.co/7ZquWpnImmpic.twitter.com/cgXkjouO02

— WikiLeaks (wikileaks) April 5, 2021

 

Julian Assange is in prison entirely because of his authentic publications of the 2010 Manning leaks. He remains locked up for no other reason than the Biden administration’s efforts to appeal a British court’s rejection of its extradition request to try him in the United States for those entirely truthful publications.

If the Western world valued truth, Julian Assange would be free. He never would have been imprisoned in the first place. He would be a celebrated hero.

 The Western world does not value justice.

 

Join our Protests 11th April 2021 Marking two years of #Assange in HMP Belmarsh https://t.co/kY0t22k4aQ via greekemmy

— Rotkehlchen (Buche1789) April 5, 2021

 

If the Western world valued justice, Julian Assange would not have been forced into arbitrary detention for years trying to avoid a known (and since proven) campaign to extradite him to the United States. He would not have been dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy by force, and he would not have then been imprisoned for a further two years and counting. He would not have endured a Kafkaesque show trial culminating in the judge proclaiming him mentally unfit but still keeping him locked up in Belmarsh anyway pending a US extradition to a nation in which he stands no chance at a fair trial and would be completely silenced and disappeared under US Special Administration Measures.

 The Western world does not value freedom.

 

This former NSA lawyer thinks journalists should be prosecuted for receiving classified info. Cites Assange as precedent. That'd send a couple dozen natsec reporters to jail on day one. https://t.co/LG4sEdXYQj

— Jacob Silverman (SilvermanJacob) April 2, 2021

 

If the Western world valued freedom it would not be gravely imperilling press freedoms around the world by making a public example of what happens to an award-winning journalist who reveals inconvenient truths about the empire, and working to strengthen a legal precedent which some imperialists argue has already been set for the future persecution of disobedient press.

 The Western world does not value democracy.

 

Humanity Is Making A Very Important Decision When It Comes To Assange"We are collectively being asked a question here, and our answer to that question will determine the entire course we will take as a species."https://t.co/KHlcCOLr5w

— Caitlin Johnstone  (caitoz) March 1, 2020

 

If the Western world valued democracy, it would not be persecuting a journalist for trying to create a more informed voting populace. Without an informed populace, democracy has no real existence. As long as public perception is being manipulated and obscured by government secrecy and propaganda, then people aren’t casting their votes based on a clear and educated perception of reality but voting based on the convenience of the powerful.

Democracy’s reliance on an informed voting populace is the only reason the press are the only explicitly named profession protected in the US Constitution, yet a member of the press is being persecuted for trying to do exactly that.

 

The Western world does not oppose the tyrannical oppression of political dissidents. Two related bombshell revelations following today's hearing: 1) US prosecutors are arguing the 1st amendment doesn't apply to foreign journalists;2) #JulianAssange will be under Special Administrative Measures if extradited. @JohnWRees, @DEAcampaign, reacts to both: pic.twitter.com/m6WBoaaNqo— Mohamed Elmaazi (MElmaazi) January 23, 2020

 

If the Western world opposed the tyrannical suppression of political dissidents it wouldn’t be punishing a journalist for embarrassing the most powerful government on Earth.

 

The Western world does not oppose the torture of political dissidents.

How Julian #Assange was stitched up by the corrupt Swedish state, Britain and the US. Read this interview with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer. It's a lesson for every journalist who challenges power and why #Assange must be freed.https://t.co/KWTFILoHKV

— John Pilger (johnpilger) February 1, 2021

 

If the Western world opposed the torture of political dissidents, UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer wouldn’t have found Assange showing signs of psychological torture, and they wouldn’t be working to send him into a torturous prison system.

Melzer reports: “The case falls into my mandate in three different ways: First, Assange published proof of systematic torture. But instead of those responsible for the torture, it is Assange who is being persecuted. Second, he himself has been ill-treated to the point that he is now exhibiting symptoms of psychological torture. And third, he is to be extradited to a country that holds people like him in prison conditions that Amnesty International has described as torture. In summary: Julian Assange uncovered torture, has been tortured himself and could be tortured to death in the United States.”

The Western world purports to value truth, justice and freedom and to oppose tyranny and oppression, but if you look at how that same Western world has been treating a journalist whose only proven “crime” is publishing inconvenient truths about the powerful, you see this is a lie.

We believe our society upholds noble values because that’s what we’ve been trained to believe by our schooling systems and by our media, but those same information systems have also trained us to accept a ruling model wherein a journalist is being punished for telling the truth.

We’ve been lied to.

We’ve been duped.

 

Assange has proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt. With his publications, yes, but first and foremost with the brutish and tyrannical response to those publications.

We all owe him a great debt for exposing the lie of the Western world.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/520280-west-values-invalidate-assange-treatment/

 

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assange

 

73% of the 180 countries assessed by a Reporters Without Borders study have "very serious", "difficult" or "problematic" shortcomings in terms of press freedom.

The exercise of journalism, "the main vaccine" against disinformation in the midst of a pandemic, is "totally or partially blocked" in more than 130 countries, warns Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which published on Tuesday the 2021 edition of its global ranking of freedom of press.

In total, 73% of the 180 countries assessed by the NGO are characterized by situations deemed "very serious", "difficult" or "problematic" for journalists, and are thus classified as black, red or orange on the world map. freedom of the press.

If this proportion remains stable over one year, only 12 countries out of 180, or 7%, against 8% last year, show a "good situation". This "white zone" has "never" been "so small since 2013", according to RSF.

 

Read more:

https://www.sudouest.fr/culture/medias/liberte-de-la-presse-le-journalisme-bloque-dans-plus-de-130-pays-selon-rsf-2208558.php

 

Translation by Jules Letambour.

 

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The USA should be last, until Julian Assange is freed. 

 

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