Monthly Archives: October 2013

Nicky Campbell is having a phone-in about the Daily Mail article that stated the Marxist Ralph Miliband ‘hated Britain’.  (just an aside…Ed Miliband wants to give 16 year olds the vote…and yet he says we must dismiss the youthful, 17 year old, writings of his father in his diary as the foolishness of that youthfulness!)

The same Ralph Miliband who wouldn’t support Labour Party because he thought that Labour would always betray the working class…guess he was right there.

Campbell raises the fact that the Mail in the 1930’s had given Hitler and Mosley’s Blackshirts some support.

Ironic that the Left attack the Mail for denouncing Miliband’s politics….by themselves denouncing Mosley’s politics…doesn’t Mosley have relatives who would be ‘hurt and offended’ by such outrageous ‘smears’?

The BBC itself was more than ready to appease Hitler  and look the other way as he rampaged across Europe.

The BBC went so far as to bar Churchill, ‘The Voice in the Wilderness’, from the airwaves in case he upset Herr Hitler.

Churchill said that the war was the easiest war to have avoided if the Allies had stood up to Hitler’s earliest manoeuvres.

In other words the likes of the BBC ensured that a devastating world war happened.

Lloyd George appeased Hitler…wanting to sign a peace with him…so much so that the Sunday Pictorial, then a mass circulation paper, ran a headline:

‘We Accuse Lloyd George!’

And who can forget the highly influential book ‘The Guilty Men’, published in 1940, which attacked British politicians for their appeasement of Hitler…destroying the reputations of Chamberlain and Baldwin….one of the authors of the book….Labour’s Michael Foot.

And of course there’s Labour’s Oswald Mosley…the leader of the Fascist Blackshirts in Britain….could the Daily Mail criticise his politics now?

And just as the BBC appeased Hitler it now appeases Muslim terrorists…or militants as it likes to call them.

Remember this:

The making of the terror myth

Since September 11 Britain has been warned of the ‘inevitability’ of catastrophic terrorist attack. But has the danger been exaggerated? A major new TV documentary claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven fantasy – and al-Qaida a dark illusion.  (From the Guardian…in 2004)

The faces of that ‘Dark Illusion’ one year later 7/7/2005:

The Guardian was talking about this BBC programme which was a highly political attack on the ‘Neo-Cons'(ironically originally Marxists) and the War on Terror…it tells us that Al Qaeda doesn’t exist:

The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear

‘The nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organisation waiting to strike our societies is an illusion….Wherever one looks for this al-Qaeda organisation the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy.’　

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.

The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists.

Together they created today’s nightmare vision of an organised terror network.

The Power of Nightmares, broadcast at prime time, which sought to prove that, in the words of its producer, the threat of global terrorism, “is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media”.

Adam Curtis, the film maker was desperate for it to be true, that Al Qaeda didn’t exist..so much so that he would deny it even if a bomb went off…as of course many did, and are doing now:

“If a bomb goes off, the fear I have is that everyone will say, ‘You’re completely wrong,’ even if the incident doesn’t touch my argument. This shows the way we have all become trapped, the way even I have become trapped by a fear that is completely irrational.”

Great that the BBC should think that it can, rather than report the news, seek to alter the news, to make the news itself, by interfering in the political process and to change the course of history by broadcasting its own propaganda.

The Daily Mail prints what is essentially a credible assessment of the effects of Ralph Milibands political beliefs and all hell breaks loose…the BBC broadcasts a highly political intervention in an attempt to actually change events by falsifying facts in the hope that they can the Public’s perceptions who will then pressurise governments to change course.

Nicky Campbell this morning was castigating William Hague for possibly supporting Al Qaeda, that non existent organisation…he asked…

‘Do you acknowledge the strength and danger of the extremist groups?‘

Funny how times change…now the BBC is attacking the politicians for possibly lending support to Al Qaeda rather than for attacking it.

But of course Al Qaeda doesn’t exist…so no problem..how do I know..because the BBC told me it doesn’t…it’s a myth, a phantom, a fantasy, an irrational fear.

 Just like Marxism it seems.

Hi Folks! Here’s a brand new shiny Open Thread for you. It’s the day of Cameron’s big speech at #CPC13, wonder how the comrades will cover that one? And what about the partial close down of the American Government – I believe the Panda cams are off in Washington zoo, that is how serious it has become and how reckless those evil GOP politicians are. Then we have Netanyahu daring to cast doubt on the intent of Rouhani. I am sure the BBC will cover these, and other issues, with their usual neutrality. Enjoy.

As far as I can tell, and I’ve heard quite a lot from the BBC today on the subject, Ed Miliband has been given an uncritical platform to ‘defend’ his father and to present himself in a manner designed to garner as much sympathy…and very cynically, votes…as possible.  

Miliband’s own article in the Mail was not purely a defence of his Father but a subtle distancing of his own politics from that of his father…somewhat ironic in the circumstances….he complains that the Mail is traducing his father’s beliefs…and then disowns them himself:

‘My father’s strongly Left-wing views are well known, as is the fact that I have pursued a different path and I have a different vision.’

A case of Miliband junior not coming to praise his father but to bury him and his Marxist ‘vision’?

What was the other hypocrisy of Miliband junior?

He claims that…The Daily Mail sometimes claims it stands for the best of British values of decency. But something has really gone wrong when it attacks the family of a politician — any politician — in this way.

But the Mail article was an attack on his politics not ‘the family’, and  Miliband himself cynically brought his father into the politics in his own speeches…

If Ed Miliband wanted his father to be off limits, he should have kept quiet about him

…and his wife into the frame with those photos of the couple kissing for the cameras.

Not only that but he had nothing to say when the BBC et al ran stories investigating his father’s politics when he was running for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2010. Here is the BBC Newsnight programme, dodging Marxism, but giving Ralph a nice little puff. 

He had nothing to say because it was a puff piece moving swiftly over his father’s ‘Marxism’…telling us that it wasn’t really the ‘Bad’ sort.

It is curious that Ed Miliband should be so furious about the Daily Mail article on his father’s beliefs which was headlined:

 The man who hated Britain: Red Ed’s pledge to bring back socialism is a homage to his Marxist father. So what did Miliband Snr really believe in? The answer should disturb everyone who loves this country

Miliband claims that ‘there is no credible argument in the article or evidence from his life which can remotely justify the lurid headline and its accompanying claim that it would ‘disturb everyone who loves this country….build an entire case about him hating our country on an adolescent diary entry is, of course, absurd.’

No ‘credible evidence’? Apart from the fact he was a hardcore Marxist.

Miliband claimed the case is based solely on one diary entry….but of course it isn’t…as said it was based on the well known beliefs and values of his Marxist father.

Miliband’s father may well have appreciated the safety, security, job opportunities and comforts of Britain but he was working to dismantle that and replace it with Communism.

 All in all Miliband’s response was a highly political and manipulative piece that far from defending his father seemed more intent on winning votes.

But let’s have a look at what the BBC doesn’t like to dwell on…probably because much of Marxism actually finds favour in the corridors of the BBC…read on and tell me you disagree.

So what does Marx tell us about his aims and beliefs?　

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

Family, religion, morality, nation states, nationality…all to be abolished with the aid of violent revolution by the armed Proletariat.

Would such beliefs and intent  ‘disturb everyone who loves this country’?

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.　

That the development of the proletariat in nearly all civilized countries has been violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working toward a revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now defend them with words.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

Marxism is the basis for everything that many in the BBC hold dear as more from the Communist Manifesto makes clear:

Multiculturalism:  The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.

Anti-religious:  But communism is the stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance.

The idea that the West is too dominant:  Just as it [Bourgeoisie] has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The horror of the Nation State:   The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

The radical Marxist agenda behind the Green movement:  The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

Ralph Miliband always claimed to oppose Stalin’s methods but dodged a close analysis of them….‘he insisted that, whereas the controversy over the nature of the Soviet regime was “obviously of some importance…no conclusive answer to the question has ever been returned, or can be”’

He also dodged the real meaning of Marxism, usng the same trick that Muslims do to avoid the truth about Islam and the meaning of the Quran…claiming:

‘The very term Marxist was a contested category, with no universally accepted criteria by which a Marxist could be defined.’

Interesting though that despite being a Marxist and apparently believing in the Dictatorship of the Proletariat he actually wanted the Dictatorship of the Intellectual:

‘…in his analysis of the role of intellectuals within the Marxist movement, he claimed that the “Leninist” injunction that intellectuals should “serve the people” was, in one sense, unproblematic. However, he argued that within the Marxist movement after Lenin’s death the interpretation of how the people were to be served had been increasingly redefined such that only the party leader, specifically Stalin or Mao, could decide what it actually entailed. The differences between Lenin’s party and those of Stalin or Mao were accordingly ones of degree rather than of quality: “Leninism was a political style adapted … to a particular strategy … Stalinism … made a frightful caricature of the style, and made of the strategy what it willed”.’

Guess old Orwell was right…Four legs bad, two legs good.

Had to smile at the way in which the BBC has contrived to eclipse today’s Conservative Party conference headlines by painting Red Ed as the victim of the evil Daily Mail. It appears that whilst Miliband is allowed to bring his father into the  political world, none may comment negatively on that renowned Marxist. The 5pm news ran it for 10 minutes – making sure we all view Ed with deep sensitivity. I mean, how DARE anyone suggest that someone who hated the Monarchy, property rights, our form of Parliament and our defence of the Falklands be considered bad for Britain when such views are virtually de rigeur in BBC circles? Your views on this manipulation today?

One of the BBC journalists covering the government shutdown in Washington last night was Marc Georges:

Well that was an eventful late shift at the beeb with @katywatson @PaulNBlake @voiceofharold + @JonnyDymond.

— Marc Georges (@marcgeorges) October 1, 2013

Before he joined the BBC Georges used to make lame nerdy “comedy” videos attacking Republicans. Here are some examples:

So he’s gone from making tedious anti-Republican propaganda to a job at the BBC. No change there then. A natural fit for the BBC Washington bureau.

(See also my comment on the open thread yesterday about another BBC newbie, economics and political journalist Lewis Goodall – formerly of lefty think tank IPPR and prior to that an Oxford University Labour Party activist.)

I listened to half an hour of the Today programme this morning…it did nothing to dispel the view that the BBC approaches News from a certain viewpoint.

Starting at around 08:00 we had the US government closedown…The BBC gave us Obama’s self serving speech whilst then doing an interview which poured the blame onto the Republicans….no similar questioning of a Democrat…just the Obama theatrics, and more in the following Mardell report..

Then we got onto an interview with David Cameron in which Sarah Montague continually interrupted.

One highlight was when Cameron said the government was putting an extra £27 bn or so into the NHS…Montague interjected with the claim that because of the massive upheavals due to reforms it would feel like a cut.

Well only if people listen to the BBC where we hear day in day out, from presenters as well as guests, that the NHS budget is being cut…..when it is in fact being targeted at priority treatments….with the same or bigger overall budget.

Then we got onto Cameron’s ‘leadership’, called into question, Montague tells us,  because of the vote in Syria…well perhaps only in the BBC’s mind…as far as I can see everything is carrying on as normal with no one calling for Cameron’s head.

No such questions about Miliband’s leadership after the Unions forced him to back down on Falkirk, after his Party forced him to back down on Syria and when his flagship policies on apprenticeships and nationalising the energy companies were torn to shreds…though not by the BBC.

Then onto the Daily Mail’s running of a story about Miliband’s father ‘hating’ Britain…well of course he did.. He was a Marxist.

Perhaps the BBC felt that was too close to home when many people doubt the BBC’s ‘love’ of Britain, the Left in generals ‘Love’ of Britain.　

The default BBC position is that the Mail story is below the belt and wrong.

Orwell, that Fascist, would beg to say different:

George Orwell

The general weakening of the whole British morale that took place during the nineteen-thirties, was the work mostly of the left-wing intelligentsia.

The mentality of the left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who live in a world of ideas and never expect to be in a position of power. Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality. The really important fact about so many of the English intelligentsia is their severance from the common culture of the country.

In the general patriotism of the country they form a little island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. …it is their duty to snigger at every English institution.

All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British…if the fascist nations judged we were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible.

It is clear that the special position of intellectuals in society as purely negative creatures came about because society could not use them, they were useless to a productive nation, and they had not got it in them to see that devotion to one’s country implies ‘for better, for worse’.

A modern nation cannot afford to have a separation of intelligence and patriotism, they will have to come together because it is a fact that we are fighting a war, and a very peculiar kind of war that may make this possible.

All left-wing parties in the highly industrialised countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have international aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free, but our standard of living, and hence our ‘enlightenment’, demands that the robbery shall continue. A humanitarian is always a hypocrite.

The Labour Party has been packing BBC call-ins with its activists judging by some of the very articulate and well rehearsed rhetoric some callers have demonstrated….listen to Michael Thompson from Sale on 5Live Drive at 18:16 and especially at 18:20 when he gets into his stride telling us….’… the IMF advised George Osborne that the austerity measures aren’t working, you see the more people who are unemployed the less they spend on goods and services which leads to more job cuts, especially as we’re a service based economy, something the Tories don’t understand that simple fact.  I mean it’s the consumer who creates the demand for jobs, if less tax for big businesses means, you know, more jobs then we’d be swimming in jobs, the last thing a venture capitalist wants to do is give you a job, and at the end of the day it’s the unemployed who are the forgotten victims and who seem to be blamed and demonised within the wider media when the real causes are a lack of labour demand in a flatlining economy, Britain’s serious lack of labour intensive industries which were sold off in the ’80’s under Thatcher…’

Randomly plucked off the streets by the BBC? Don’t think so.

However that doesn’t seem to be enough for Labour and they are now using groups that claim to be independent but are in fact nothing but Labour Party ‘Fronts’.

Which might or might not be expected but what you wouldn’t expect is for the BBC to present them as honest and independent groups with no political affiliations when they have hard core links to Labour.

The BBC can’t say they didn’t know…if they are going to give this group such a high profile they should have checked it out. 

Trouble is they probably did.

From the Daily Mail:

BBC gives Left the freedom of the airwaves: Radio 4 and 5 Live give pressure group with links to Labour’s radical wing extraordinary on-air platform

No mention was made of any political affiliations, but a cursory look at the group’s directors reveals deep ties to the Labour Party – so much so that a Conservative MP questioned if the group was merely a Labour ‘front’.

Miss Marriott, its campaign director, is a professional Left-wing campaigner and a Labour Party member with links to the radical wing of the party.

Part of the Labour Uncut blogging team, she is also involved with Pragmatic Radicalism, the self-proclaimed ‘New Forum for Labour Ideas’ and reportedly handles Government relations for the Press regulation lobby group Hacked Off.

Another director, Josie Cluer, describes herself as a ‘public sector reformer with fingers in many pies’, including the Labour Women’s Network which exists to get more Labour women elected to public office.

And according to Labour MP Chuka Umunna, the campaign was launched by Matthew McGregor, the man hailed as Barack Obama’s ‘digital attack dog’ in last year’s US presidential election – who has just been recruited for Labour’s 2015 General Election campaign.

The website is very slick and remarkably anonymous, almost as if they didn’t want you to know anything about the group behind it.