Trotsky and Lenin believed that revolution in the West – in one of the key centers of capitalism – was necessary to secure the future of the international revolution. But they both also understood the importance of the revolts by those oppressed by colonialism and imperialism.
As Trotsky put it in 1919, while on the frontline with the Red Army, “The road to Paris and London lies via the towns of Afghanistan, the Punjab and Bengal”

You can add ‘Syria’ to that list now as Russia deliberately forces ever more Syrians to flee and head towards Europe in the hope that they will undermine and destabilise society there one way or another.

That Russia has been intentionally intensifying the migration crisis, ‘weaponising’ it, has been claimed for several weeks now.

The BBC ignored that except on one occasion when they acknowledged this was thought of as a problem by some (ie NATO) but NATO’s concerns were dismissed as a lot of unwarranted nervousness about the wonderful Russkies intentions.

The BBC finally caught up yesterday as they couldn’t ignore the explicit statement by a NATO general that Russia was using the migration crisis as a ‘weapon’……

Migrant crisis: Russia and Syria ‘weaponising’ migration

Russia and Syria are deliberately using migration as an aggressive strategy towards Europe, the senior Nato commander in Europe has said.

US Gen Philip Breedlove said they were “weaponising” migration to destabilise and undermine the continent.

He also suggested that criminals, extremists and fighters were hiding in the flow of migrants.

 

Blink though and its gone…nowhere in plain sight today on the website, a major story airbrushed from the news by the BBC…however they do have the entirely misleading (as you’ll see below) ‘Oh what a lovely (cold) war!’ still on its pages from several weeks ago.

The BBC do not want you to think that migration is a problem that will destroy Europe and you might just come to that conclusion, if you hadn’t already, if you understood that the Russians believed mass migration of Muslims into Europe would overwhelm and break Europe….therefore confirming your suspicions about the consequences of mass migration from Muslim countries.

When these suspicions were first raised a few weeks ago the BBC’s analysis of the situation was rather pro-Russian, or at least rather complacent as to the likelihood of the Russians posing any threat to Europe or the world…..

Oh, what a lovely (cold) war!

This is the BBC’s acknowledgement that there has been suspicions about Russia’s stealth attacks using migration and propaganda…but it is dismissed out of hand by the BBC reporter as ‘NATO getting it self in a spin’…presumably he thinks, about nothing.

Hybrid war?

Where is the threat of world war leading to nuclear annihilation?

Russia, it is said, potentially threatens the Baltic Republics. Nato has got itself in a spin over a supposedly new kind of warfare seemingly practised by the Russians – so-called hybrid war – blurring the boundaries between peace and conflict.

No Armageddon

It is true that Russia – through its satellite channels, its funding of curious political forces in the West and so on – seeks to create a counter-culture to the prevailing Western view. In this it has had modest success.

But this is a pale shadow of the propaganda activities of Soviet days, nor are there the legions of the wrong but well-meaning supporters who saw in Soviet communism the salvation of mankind.

Nothing to worry about there then.  The ‘pale shadow’ that has more spies than it had in the Cold war, that is out there annexing countries at will, that is murdering opponents on the streets of London, that silences its critics one way or another in the Motherland, that is still playing its Cold War hand as it supports all the usual suspects who oppose the West…and on top of that we have the Islamist jihad with its ‘legions of well-meaning supporters who see Islam as the salvation of mankind’.

The Guardian reported Russia’s intentions weeks ago…..

Refugees are becoming Russia’s weapon of choice in Syria

Russia’s flat denials of responsibility for the lethal bombing of hospitals and schools in Syria cut no ice in Ankara. Senior Turkish officials say Vladimir Putin and his Syrian allies are shamelessly using increased refugee outflows resulting from these and similar attacks as a weapon of war – one that is deliberately aimed at Turkey and Europe.

As did Der Spiegel….

The Hybrid War: Russia’s Propaganda Campaign Against Germany

The brief disappearance of a girl in Germany recently become an international political issue. Russia is exploiting the case for propaganda purposes as part of its strategy of a hybrid war aimed at destabilizing the West and dividing Europe.

As the saying goes, truth is the first casualty of war. This is especially true of the propaganda war Moscow has been waging against the West and its open societies since the crisis in Ukraine began.

The refugee crisis provides Moscow with an issue that is even better suited to divide German society. Russian propaganda portrays the West as having been infiltrated by too many foreigners, making it unable to guarantee the safety of its citizens. It stirs up resentment against refugees and migrants and attempts to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and the established media.

This is all part of a strategy to both discredit and weaken the West. Russia sees this as necessary to safeguard its interests.

The left-wing Der Spiegel uses this to try and close down debate about migration suggesting that it is merely Russian propaganda that stirs up anti-migration feeling and thus anyone who keeps on saying migration is a problem is doing Russia’s work for them…the BBC missed a trick there…..though it did use exactly the same ‘reasoning’ with ISIS…saying they wanted to divide us …therefore we must love migrants and embrace them in order to confound the Jihadi’s devilish plot.

The BBC decided the Russia story wasn’t newsworthy…or rather decided to bury the truth as it was a story that was yet another nail in the coffin of the BBC narrative about the wonders of immigration.

On a similar note another one of the BBC’s favourite narratives comes under attack…that of the heroic, and careful, cautious, considered and prudent leader who didn’t rush headlong into something without a great deal of thought.

Or as others see him, a ditherer who won’t commit to anything important.

In the Sunday Times at the same time those articles about Russia were appearing [just not on the BBC] Roger Boyes wrote…

The great, grey fox Zbig Brzezinski has Barack Obama dead to rights.  “He doesn’t strategise,” says Jimmy Carter’s former security guru.  “He sermonises.”  As the revolt against Bashar al-Assad enters its sixth year, the price of the president’s preference for moral imperatives over effective military action is now clear to all [Not to the BBC which likes a good sermonising and moral imperatives]: Obama has lost Syria.  He has invited presidential historians to the White House for dinner: they should tell him that the desertion of the Syrians, and not the Iranian nuclear deal [BBC cheer] or the withdrawal from Afghan battlefields [or indeed a premature withdrawal from Iraq] will go down as his legacy.

Of course it wasn’t just Obama who allowed Putin to slip into Syria….Ed Miliband was at the forefront of the betrayal that left the Syrians at Assad’s mercy.  When do you ever hear the BBC discuss that?

Here is another nail in another BBC favoured narrative…that the Iraq War gave rise to ISIS [Never mind that ISIS, under a different name, was set up before the war even began]….again, by coincidence, at the same time the reports about Russia first appeared [Just not on the BBC]…and again in this interview that suggestion arises…

Five Live broadcast an interview ( 1 hr 21 mins) with  ‘Award-winning foreign correspondent Janine di Giovanni, who writes for Newsweek and Vanity Fair, gave her insight into the war in Syria.’

In the first part of the interview di Giovanni tells us that we could have intervened very early on and stopped the war and….that Russia was deliberately causing an exodus of immigrants to provoke the region….and was deliberately targeting rescue workers….a ceasefire only allows Assad to regroup and rearm.

If we had intervened earlier we could have prevented the immigration csisis she says and we did not pay enough attention to the rise of ISIS.

Then we get the second BBC narrative…..that ISIS was created by the West’s actions in Iraq. [Once again let’s be clear…’ISIS’ was in existence pre the Iraq war, crushed by the Iraq Surge in 2007 it only resurfaced due to the Arab Spring and in particular the war in Syria….Assad himself sponsoring ISIS having released them from his prisons and refraining from attacking them as they became his de facto allies against the ‘moderates’…..a history that the BBC should know as it is well documented.]

Di Giovanni says she disagrees and if anything, the West’s inaction promoted the rise of ISIS by allowing Assad to carry on and he was then able to rebuild ISIS for his own purposes.

The BBC will of course ignore everything Di Giovanni had to say and will continue to pedal the false narrative about the Iraq war, ISIS, Obama’s brilliance and of course the ever popular one about Sykes-Picot and the British and French ‘carving up the Middle East’…thus causing all the problems today.

What did Orwell say about who owns history owns the future?  The BBC learnt that lesson well as it rewrites history to suit its own narrative.

Just listening (on Today 08:44) to yet another Frank Gardner attack on Saudi Arabia….bet the Saudis wish they had paid off Gardner with the £1 million that they said they would pay him for his injuries received in a terrorist attack.  Not saying it colours his reportage about Saudi but Frank’s a little bit bitter.

Apparently Britain and the US is responsible for the war in Yemen because we supply arms to Saudi Arabia…and of course the usual BBC narrative….this will lead to radicalisation of the ‘youth’…..regardless of whether the bombs hit targets by accident or not says Gardner. So war is bad whatever for Gardner.    Hmmm….so why is there a war in Yemen fighting and who started it?  Gardner of course doesn’t bother to give context or reasons just a condemnation of Saudi Arabia and the usual BBC pro-Jihadi narrative of angry, besieged Muslims, victims of the West.

Why doesn’t Frank mention in the same report that Iran has been supplying and encouraging the anti-government insurgency in Yemen…ie inciting the war?…

UN: Iran arming Houthi rebels in Yemen since 2009

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — Iran has been shipping weapons to Yemen’s Houthi rebels since at least 2009, according to a confidential UN report, indicating that Tehran’s support dates back to the early years of the Shiite militia’s insurgency.

From the USA Today:

Iran’s involvement in Yemen goes back years, and ranges from political and religious support for Houthi leaders to military training and active involvement in the fighting, according to media reports and Yemen analysts.

“There is a well-documented history of (Iranian) support for the Houthi, including in various State Department reports — money, weapons — support for a very long time,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters Monday.

There probably wouldn’t be a war in Yemen if it wasn’t for Iran instigating it.

Curious how the BBC totally ignored the state sponsored terror in Iran where the male population of a village was killed by the government just recently…

Iran executed all adult men in one village for drug offences, official reveals

The entire adult male population of a village in southern Iran has been executed for drug offences, according to Iran’s vice-president for women and family affairs.

Of course its not just drug dealers being killed off but gay people and very young women who don’t conform to the Islamic modesty rules.

BBC?  Not really interested…..and not really interested in the wars Iran sponsors, certainly not interested in condemning Iran in the same harsh tones it uses to malign Saudi Arabia….wars such as the genocidal one against Israel carried out by Iran’s proxies….those wars that some BBC journalists cheerlead with their support for Hamas….and of course Iran’s support for Assad in Syria.

The BBC adopts a campaigning anti-Saudi tone that it doesn’t use when reporting on Iran.  Why?  The BBC has always had a soft spot for Iran and sees it as a victim of Western aggression and believes that Iran’s own aggressive actions are merely the inevitable and justified responses to that Western interference in its affairs.

Gardner’s report didn’t seem to have a point other than to blame the UK and US for the war…he told us that the Saudis denied deliberately targeting hospitals but then he said you get a rather different view on the ground….but all we heard was that billboards all over the north of Yemen were telling the local population that it was Western bombs killing them…..who put up those billboards and why?  Gardner doesn’t think that’s important.  And of course he came up with no proof or any of those ‘facts on the ground’ that indicate the Saudis deliberately target hospitals.

Gardner amusingly told us that he was advising(unasked) the Saudi government on their war….I’m sure their really interested.

Full of his own importance….and other stuff.

I wonder if the BBC thinks that supporting the government position on the EU referendum will make the government look kindly upon the BBC when the Charter Renewal is finally decided?  Has Lord Hall Hall got an agreement with Cameron?

No, of course not, the independent and impartial BBC would never stoop so low.

The BBC may interview some who support Brexit but it is becoming more and more obvious that the weight of the BBC coverage is favouring the pro-EU side.

There is little attempt from what I have heard to balance out the debate and provide voices from both sides on certain issues.

When Gove said the ECJ could override the agreement Cameron signed up to the BBC misquoted what he said claiming that he said the agreement was not legally binding at any time….but that wasn’t what he said…this is…

“The facts are that the European court of justice is not bound by this agreement until treaties are changed and we don’t know when that will be. I do think it’s important that people also realise that the European court of justice stands above every nation state, and ultimately it will decide on the basis of the treaties and this deal is not yet in the treaties.”

Not binding until the treaties are changed to incorporate it.   And of course the ECJ is a political body that serves the European Union and makes its judgements with that in mind…in the interests of the European Union.

The BBC on the Today programme brought in Dominic Grieve to give us his legal opinon…but he is, as he admitted,  an ardent supporter of the EU and in fact was a loud voice urging Cameron to sign up to the agreement he that did.  Hardly the voice of impartiality that was needed.

Today I just heard Pienaar give us his opinion on whether the referendum debate is civil or not….apparently it is all Boris Johnson’s fault for calling the PM’s claims ‘Balderdash’…no mention of Cameron’s attacks on the Brexiteers or his rigging of the referendum by trying to gag them and with-hold information from them.

Then we had a clip of the Norwegian PM telling us how awful life was outside the EU…she really wanted to join because you know what, Norway just didn’t have any sovereignty.

The BBC is now playing that clip on the news as if it is a truthful and impartial voice in the debate.  What the BBC doesn’t tell us is that the Norwegian politicians have been constantly trying to sign up Norway to more and more EU legislation by the backdoor behind the population’s back…..do we trust Cameron and Co not to do exactly the same?

Why doesn’t the BBC quote other voices from Norway when the vast majority of the Norwegian population are against further integration?…

Trouble is we’ve been here before with the BBC and its less than honest protrayal of the Norwegian position.Let’s just remind ourselves, and the BBC, what the Norwegian position really is….it co-operates closely with the EU and has a great deal of say in its workings….

Norway and the EU

Norway and the EU enjoy good and close relations, although Norway is not a member of the European Union. The Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA) is the mainstay of our cooperation, and it ensures that Norway takes part in the EU internal market. We are also part of the Schengen Agreement and cooperate with the EU on foreign and security policy issues.

Through the EEA Agreement, the three EFTA states Norway, Iceland and Liechten-stein are equal partners in the EU internal market, on the same terms as the EU member states. Moreover, the Agreement also covers cooperation in other important areas such as research and development, education, social policy, the environment, consumer protection, tourism and culture. It also enables the three EEA EFTA states to participate in various EU programmes.  Norway also participates in the activities of a number of EU agencies through provisions in the EEA Agreement or on the basis of bilateral agreements.

Let’s look at what they have opted out of.…all the politics of the EU including the human rights…note the rules for the single market are 90% global and would be followed anyway, in or out of the EU…..

I think the BBC has given up any real pretence of impartiality and its journalists are now slipping in the pro stuff because it comes so naturally to them, they just can’t help themselves, they don’t even notice it.

When it’s not being used to spread Project Fear, BBC Radio 4 likes to relax by continually expressing its disgust at the success of Donald Trump and this morning was no exception. The BBC just cannot understand how a man like Trump – with his “awful” views – has had such a successful SuperTuesday! I can’t wait for him to become President, just as the UK exist the EU. It will bring on the collective collapse of the rancid BBC.

Here you go, a new Open Thread to welcome the middle of the week! Detail the bias here please!

Always amusing how much effort the BBC puts into avoiding mentioning or downplaying immigration and its effects.

Just why did the BBC decide to frame Macedonia’s actions in protecting itself against the attempt by mostly young, male Muslims to invade Macedonia using brute force as something Macedonia had to ‘defend’….Macedonia doesn’t have to ‘defend’ its actions, it has to defend its, and Europe’s, borders against vast numbers of people who have no intention of integrating and who will in the course of time demand that their families be let in and that they be allowed to practice their religion as they see fit.

Back in Blighty yesterday the world was looking at the shortage of school places.

The BBC’s report tells us what the problem is…

With a population bulge about to hit secondary schools, councils want powers to open new maintained schools and to compel academies to expand.  

The population bulge which has put primary schools under pressure will start hitting secondary schools this year, according to official figures.

And that’s it…no talk of immigration or anything connected to it just that euphemistic ‘population bulge’.

The BBC in a What the Papers Say article report the Sun saying…

“One in six schools are full”, is the headline in the Sun, which says the “classroom crisis” is set to worsen because of “Britain’s immigration-fuelled population boom”. In its leader column, the paper says “overcrowded classrooms and the challenges of accommodating myriad different languages will nobble attempts to drive up standards”.

And the Mail saying…

The Daily Mail agrees, saying the number of children who are “non-native speakers soared by nearly 400% from 51,955 to 190,506 in seven years, stretching teachers’ time”.

Rather selective choice of Mail quote as the Mail’s main headline was…

British children ‘neglected’ as migrant pupil numbers soar with 1.2 million children in school whose first language is not English

Then scroll down to the video of Author Matthew Green and Jenni Russell of the Times reviewing the front pages and you will get an EU love-in where they find the arguments for the EU ‘quite convincing’.

What’s also remarkable is that the BBC, other than to show the page itself, doesn’t discuss the Mail’s front page which looks at Blair and the Iraq War …a very sore subject with the BBC…we’ve mentioned this a few days ago when the Mail had Blair’s secret plot to import millions of immigrants on its front page and the BBC ignored that…..I’m guessing the BBC ignore this because it would link to the story on immigration…and then they would have to explain why they didn’t expose Blair at the time of his plot and when Andrew Neather blew the doors off it all and revealed everything….

Conman Blair’s cynical conspiracy to deceive the British people and let in 2million migrants against the rules: Explosive new biography lays ex-PM’s betrayal bare

Look at the selected quotes the BBC plucked from the Mail yesterday….

The Daily Mail agrees, saying the number of children who are “non-native speakers soared by nearly 400% from 51,955 to 190,506 in seven years, stretching teachers’ time”.

The Daily Mail says it has been a “disastrous year for some charities”, with interventions from the prime minister and a committee of MPs, the latter warning charities “are now looking at their ‘last chance’ to put their own house in order”.

The Daily Mail adds a disclaimer to what might otherwise appear to be a good-news story, that while people were “significantly happier at 69”, this was “despite most of them developing chronic diseases such as arthritis, diabetes and high blood pressure”.

Daily Mail – Back to uni on helicopters, private jets and in flash cars: Rich Kids of London show off their favourite transport as they ‘sneer at peasants outside Primark’ and clean their shoes with £50 notes

The Daily Mail reports the hedgehog population was thought to be about 36 million strong in the 1950s, but has declined to less than a million since 2003.

And what about this….

‘Eye-catching headlines’

What would be that ‘eye-catching headline’?…..one about the BBC…

Now the good news: we’re all in the BBC survivors’ club – the Daily Mail reports on how seasoned BBC hacks Frank Gardner, Andrew Marr, Nick Robinson and George Alagiah formed the Survivors’ Club, having been through serious illness or injury.

Incredible that the actual headline story plastered across the frontpage of the Mail is not even mentioned….not a peep about Iraq.     It’s almost as if the BBC doesn’t want you to read the book on Blair and his betrayal of the British people….which the BBC silently consented to.

After all the years Paul Mason worked for the BBC has the Tory Party just woken up to the fact he is somewhat left of left?  Just why did the ‘impartial’ BBC employ him when he was so obviously way off any norm?

Via Guido…

“The fact that the Labour Party is now getting its advice from Yanis Varoufakis and the revolutionary Marxist broadcaster Paul Mason does not suggest to me that they’ve got an answer to economic security. Presumably they chose those two because Chairman Mao was dead and Mickey Mouse was busy.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipLFZ41xtm8

Business Insider have unearthed a 1987 ITN clip of a dashing Paul Mason handing out the Workers’ Power newspaper and talking about “building revolutionary politics within the Labour Party”. Workers’ Power were a militant Trotskyist entryist group which infiltrated Labour in the eighties when Mason was working as a music teacher – his economics is all self-taught. The same year Mason was distributing their material, they published a pamphlet commemorating the Russian revolution and praising Lenin. It has taken nearly thirty years to achieve his entryist ambitions, now finally Labour’s Shadow Chancellor has signed him up to help with Labour’s economic policy…

It seems the BBC has shut up shop, it has burnt itself out reporting so enthusiastically about the letter (written by No10) from a group of businessmen cheerleading for the EU and another from some military types who hold the same views.

Odd, if we are supposed to vaue the opinions of such people, that the BBC ignores views from similarly statuesque figures on the Brexit side of things…such as the ex-Governor of the Bank of England whose opinion on the EU seemed to be of absolutely no interest to the BBC at all despite making the somewhat important judgement that the Eurozone is doomed.

Today we have Maj Gen Julian Thompson who expresses yet more critical thinking about the value of the EU…and again no sign of any BBC interest in his views… the one about Obama being a lameduck president no doubted grated somewhat…

Today, membership of the EU weakens our national defence in very dangerous times. Why? Clear-sighted understanding is obscured by four common myths.

Myth One is that the EU has kept the peace in Europe since 1945.

Myth Two is that the Americans want us to stay in the EU.

Myth Three is that if Britain takes back control of her own destiny it will help Putin.

Myth Four is that the EU helps us defeat Islamist terrorism.

Finally, some say: “stay in to rescue others as the EU founders.” I say we’ll do that better from a seaworthy lifeboat than shackled to a sinking deck.

I know from my lifetime’s experience in the service of my country that delusions about what actually keeps us safe, threaten us all. So let us put an end for good to these myths about the EU helping security. The facts show the very opposite.

Both Mervyn King and Julian Thompson have important things to say, things that undermine ‘Project Fear’ and give  support to Brexit…..and yet the BBC doesn’t give them the prominence it gives to the voices of Project Fear, if any coverage at all.

Here you go, a new Open Thread to start the week and end the month! BBC bias bothering you? Detail it here please.