David has already mentioned Today’s guest editor, P.J Harvey….an undoubtedly highly political one at that, but the final flourish from her, her choice of her (non religious) ‘Thought for the day‘ was shot through with irony when you consider the BBC’s own control of information, its attempts to close down debate…want to make a critical comment about climate change…you’re a ‘denier’, want to critique Islam…you’re an Islamophobe or even a far right extremist no better than the Islamist terrorists themselves, want to talk about immigration you’re labelled a racist little Englander, want to talk about Labour’s economic glory days and the phones go dead.
But here at 2 hours 54 mins we have Julian Assange’s words telling us of the importance of information and knowledge (just why did the BBC spend £300,000 hiding the Balen Report?)…
Harvey starts it off:
For many Julian Assange is a person of great courage who has opened a door to a freedom that ought to be the essence of democracy…
The Assange begins…here abridged…..
‘To act and think about the world is wrapped up in our ability to know it…the wise are mightier than the strong…knowledge is power…to keep a person ignorant is to place them in a cage…knowledge does not flow down to the serfs and slaves…the powerful hide their actions behind official secrecy…you must drag the machinations of the powerful into the daylight…proclaim it from the rooftops!’
A curiously ironic cherry on top of the left wing cupcake served up by Harvey the rest of the programme…a poem for Shaker Aamer included….the BBC’s lack of transparency and accountability are famous…..as is its manipulation of the news….wonder if they got the message?
PJ Harvey seems to be quite a favourite of the BBC political class…here on Andrew Marr’s show…though she claims here that her songs aren’t political
PJ Harvey performed her new song ‘Let England Shake’ in front of the UK’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday (April 18).
Harvey played the track on BBC1‘s Andrew Marr Show (2010), which featured Brown as a guest.
Harvey also gave her views on politics, although she admitted she’s not into using the subject in her songwriting.
“I don’t feel qualified to sing from a political standpoint because I feel like unless I knew every single aspect of what’s going on I can’t speak about it,” she said, before adding: “I’m very interested in politics and follow it avidly, but I don’t feel that it’s my place as a songwriter to bring politics into my songs.”
That’s curious because she described the same album, ‘Let England Shake’, in a completely different way in another interview:
She couldn’t stay out of politics, though, when she was singing about a current conflict or a historical conflict with modern resonance. Singing about them and talking about them is in itself taking a political stance. “I would agree with you entirely. I think you could call it a political album.
Just why does the BBC love her and her ilk so much?
“I hope that the programme you hear, is the programme I wanted you to hear – I have come to realize that a great deal of its content is about censorship in one way or another… As ideas for titles and topics to be discussed took shape, many poems and songs came into my mind. For me, music and poetry can be as persuasive and as powerful as a fine speaker and a fine speech. You will hear songs and poems supporting and highlighting the content of this programme.”
Back to being ‘political’ again then?
Wonder when someone as ‘political’ from the ‘Right’ will get a show….Tommy Robinson for instance?
The full running order for PJ Harvey’s Today programme, airing tomorrow January 2nd from 6am
The full running order for PJ Harvey’s Today programme, airing tomorrow January 2nd from 6am to 9am GMT on BBC Radio 4 is as follows:
PJ Harvey spoken piece explaining her choice of contributors to the programme.
Mark Curtis: ‘Arming Repression’, followed by ‘Ladies of the World’ song recording by Flight of the Conchords.
Denis Halliday: ‘The U.N. Security Council – Dump The Wolves’.
Clive Stafford Smith: ‘Is the N.H.S. the best thing about Britain?’
Bruce Springsteen ’57 Channels And Nothin’ On’.
John Pilger: ‘Is the media now just another word for control?’
Dr. Rowan Williams: ‘Thought for the Day’ in the form of one of his poems.
Charles Simic poem, ‘Austerities’ read by Ralph Fiennes.
Giles Duley: ‘Behind The Faces Of War: the realities for injured servicemen’, followed by Joan Baez, ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya’.
Phil Shiner and Ian Cobain: ‘How Britain taught the world to torture’, followed by ‘They Fight For Peace’, a poem by Shaker Aamer, read by Ralph Fiennes.
Julian Assange’s ‘Thought for the Day’ followed by Woody Guthrie song lyric ‘Ticky Tock’ read by Ralph Fiennes.
Weather/Business/Sport Sections
Weather Section – Tom Waits ‘Strange Weather’ acoustic demo version.
Business Section – John Rees: ‘How the city of London rules the world’, followed by the poem ‘London’ by William Blake, read by Ralph Fiennes.
Sport Section – Dave Zirin: ‘The effects of money and vested interests on sport’.
‘‘Is the media now just another word for control?’
Yes, and no.
In as much as yes to ‘the media’ and no if somehow the BBC finds itself caught up in in its own self-detonation zone, BBC sources clai…er… say, um.. confirm, scientifically.
As the ever irony-free Nick ‘Only Tory In The Village, People’ Robinson declaims:
‘Surely, John, those are what we call opinions not facts?’
Only some opinions become facts if uttered by those whose views are not those of the BBC who employs them, at least on twitter. Except when the mic is live.
I looked this Miss Harvey up. Just another middleclass girl rebelling against the culture that nurtured her.
Pilger is another one.
I would rather take Solzenitsyn as a guide.
“Let the lie come into the world but not through me”
Something the left has never understood and never will.
Communism, facism and all the other isms are built on lies. The lies are the control mechanisms.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who had no idea who she was having never heard of her. I did a search to see what she does and, on discovering she is a singer decided to find and listen to some of her songs. I really wish I hadn’t bothered both the whining and the content I found truly pathetic.
I am still trying to work out just why the BBC thought she was of such importance that she should be given the job of editing the Today programme or anything else for that matter.
When it comes to her qualifications for editing Today the BBC would probably have been better off, and the public better served, by getting the first person they found walking down the street outside their studios to do the job.
There are so many obvious ironies in her line-up there is no point in trying to satirise it.
The BBC has become a parody of itself.
lets not mince words here, because i am getting sick of this behavior at the bbc,the today programme on radio 4 was no more or no less a party politacal broadcaste on behalf on the socalist workers party,the communist party of great britian and old labour ralph milliband style,pj harvey and co was carefully selected by the radio 4 producers to edit the today programme for one reason and one reason only,they all have a shared politacaly ideology,yes a shared politacal ideology,thats that.
Good point, Alan. She doesn’t feel qualified to sing about politics, but has no problem making an extremist, politicized Today edition. I remember a young Roger Waters making a similar statement about how nobody should listen to some dopey musician. And look how that worked out. The Today geniuses probably drooled over the prospect of speaking “truth” to the public at last. They probably feel quite liberated. Imagine being able to hand over the mic to St. Julian without fear of repercussions from upstairs. They’ve probably been dying to do this for ages.
There’s a reason the BBC is considered by many to be a real-life Ministry of Truth. From the tag on the sidebar, “BBC Censorship”:
What You Won’t Be Told About The US Budget Deal
The BBC’s Censoring Of New On Gulf Oil Spill
The BBC’s Censoring Of New On Gulf Oil Spill – Part 2
WikiHacks
Twisted BBC Priorites: Cuba Edition
BBC Changes Story From Wisconsin, But Censors Even More
Tea Party Movement Anniversary: Two Years of the BBC Getting It Wrong
Tea Party News The BBC Refuses To Report
US News The BBC Thinks You Don’t Need To Know
Blame The Republicans Only
More US News The BBC Thinks You Don’t Need To Know
An Alternative Perspective Not Heard On The BBC, And Context For The Debate
Whither Canada?
BBC Censorship And The Economic Delusions of Mark Mardell
ATF Scandal and Gun Control
The BBC Continues To Lie About History And Censor Calls For Ethnic Cleansing
Katty Kay’s Nice Anti-Semite
Occupier Ugliness
#OccupyFail
Billions Down The Green Toilet
ObamaCare Fail (This is from March 2012, btw. We all knew this was going to happen.)
Trayvon Martin
Occupiers Arrested In Plot To Blow Up Bridge
Muslim Brotherhood and the Destruction of Israel
Cory Booker
Spot Another Missing Book Report
US Gun Laws, Gun Crime, And Reality
Where Ignorance Is Bliss
Benghazi
Censoring The Gaffe-O-Matic (The Obamessiah’s numerous gaffes)
Muslim Brotherhood Calls For Violence
Holocaust-Denial At UN-Funded Schools Is A Non-Story
The List Just Keeps Growing Edition
US Ideological Violence Edition
And that’s just the tip of a very large iceberg. There’s also the IRS scandal, all the warnings about the real problems coming from ObamaCare the BBC refused admit, and on and on and on.
We know they make deliberate decisions to censor and ignore. For example, the BBC’s North America editor, Mark Mardell, admitted that he and they decided you didn’t need to know about concerns over Benghazi because the wrong sort of people were talking about it. Additionally, DB coaxed this admission out of veteran BBC journalist, Hugh Sykes:
You can bet PJ Harvey and her fellow travelers feel so very brave for speaking truth to power about censorship today. Unfortunately, the BBC engages in deliberate censorship every day, for purely ideological reasons.
I know my list above is nearly all about US issues, but think about it: if they’re so dishonest about this stuff, why should you trust the BBC on anything else? Because they occasionally air their own dirty laundry when one of their own scandals makes the news? Because polls tell them the BBC is still the most-trusted media organization ever?
There are three primary reasons people trust the BBC:
1. They’re still caught up in the historical legacy of trust and that deep cultural connection – spanning generations – which the BBC has been privileged enough to enjoy without challenge for a very long time. It’s very difficult for people to remove that kind of wool from their eyes.
2. They agree with the BBC perspective on most issues. In other words, the BBC tells them what they want to hear, and either attacks alternative views or simply doesn’t allow them through.
2. Because they actually don’t know what’s been hidden from them.
If you`re wealthy enough not to have to worry what the beige vanilla civilians (who drive white vans and read the Sun) think…where else would you find that “solidarity” and empathetic “feeling of consciences without any real cost or pain to yourself” …than the BBC and its Twin Towers of horseshit that are the Guardian and the Independent.
The likes of Polly and Yasmin would be very sad if their lifes work was simply being BBC runners and having to defend their unearned privileges due to daddys books or colour of parents.
Note that there`s an auction in the Indie to win lunch with Owen Jones!….a talking turkey who missed the halal butchers for another year.
What a Ship of Fools there in Liberal land…and no chance of the icebucket giving them any problems for the moment.
Won`t be long though…there`s only one Ariel the BBC don`t like by way of false Gods…let`s pray for him eh?
PJ is right up the Beeb’s street. A posh, white, middle class girl with radical views. Who could tell the difference between her and the usual bunch there.
BBC – Just. Plain. Crap.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2532552/Radio-4-Today-programme-guest-editor-PJ-Harvey-praises-courageous-WikiLeaks-fugitive-Julian-Assange-reads-Thought-Day-Ecuador-Embassy-bolt-hole.html
I think this is good as it actually shows the true face of the bbc.
A left wing anti English, anti Christian, anti west , anti military, anti white organisation.
Today had the rebuttal to Pilger’s bilge from yesterday. Montague made it very clear that it was only Pilger’s claim, and this was meant to balance that out or correct it. @ around 54 minutes in.
The international expert giving the rebuttal said that, for example, last year nearly all the deaths were due to Mohammedans slaughtering each other, and not killed by Bush/Blair. Montague tried to robustly challenge his statement that it wasn’t possible to know a real total of people killed since 2003, and anyway that wasn’t the point. He wanted to separate those killed by US/UK troops and those killed by their own co-religionists. Montague was clearly unwilling to accept that distinction. Those like Pilger who push that particular Body Count Narrative don’t want to make that distinction because it detracts from the agenda. Montague tried and failed to get the expert to bite.
So much for impartiality. But at least things are back to normal and it wasn’t just free air time for a polemic.
The BBC has form on supporting Body Count Narratives, of course. For a very long time we’ve complained that they fail to make the distinction between Palestinians killed in various conflicts with Israel who were armed or involved in so-called militant activity and how many were innocent civilians killed by Israel, and especially how many of those were children and women deliberately placed in harm’s way by cuddly Hamas. Except for very rare instances, the BBC doesn’t make that distinction for Palestinians, and presents casualties as one lump sum, while always making a clear demarcation between Israeli military killed and civilians. It’s an editorial policy, like the “although Israel disputes this” boilerplate.