BBC Conspiracy Files 9/11

21 min 35 sec - 23-Apr-2007

BBC investigation into the events of September 11th 2001 points to the conclusion that there was complicity in the attacks reaching to the very highest levels of the US administration.

Us and Them

by William Bowles • Thursday, 29 March, 2007

We are so used to the ruling political class making decisions ‘for us’ that we forget that they exist and act only because we allow them to. We allow it because we think that once elected, our representatives will act in our best interests. And because ‘we elect’ them every so often—itself an illusion produced by the illusion that once elected, they ‘represent’ us—our involvement in the political process ends.

This relationship between ‘us and them’ is essentially a one-way-street with the ruling political class invariably telling us that whatever they do, they do in ‘our’ interests or the ‘interests of the state’, the assumption being that the state’s interests and our own are the same. They call it a social contract...

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BBC fights to suppress internal report into allegations of bias against Israel

Strange. The Beeb covers Israelis 5 times more than Palestinians and is generally heavily biased toward Israel. I'm reminded of the American right crying about the "left-wing" media.
We may see censorship at the BBC as it gives way to the Israelis.
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28 March 2007 06:18

By Andy McSmith

Published: 28 March 2007

The BBC was in court yesterday fighting over the public's right to know. But the Corporation was not battling to bring information into the open. Instead it has paid an estimated £200,000 in legal fees to keep the report secret.

The Corporation is trying to persuade the High Court to overrule a decision by the Information Tribunal that an internal report into the BBC's Middle East coverage should be made public.

It puts the Corporation in the awkward position of arguing that the Freedom of Information Act should not apply in this case, although their journalists have previously made free use of the Act to prise information from the Government.

The dispute is over a 20,000-page report commissioned four years ago, at a time when the Israeli government had announced that it was withdrawing all co-operation with the BBC staff stationed in the Middle East, including all the help BBC journalists could normally expect with issues such as passports and visas.

The Israelis were angered by a BBC documentary about Mordecai Vananu, who spent many years in solitary confinement for revealing to The Sunday Times that Israel was developing a nuclear weapon. It's government called the programme "Nazi propaganda". Danny Seaman, the director of the government's press office, claimed: "The innuendoes, the insinuation on the programme were to depict Israel as a police state."

The ban lasted for about three months. They were mollified when the BBC announced that it was bringing in an outside consultant, Malcolm Balen, to watch over their Middle East coverage. Mr Balen, an experienced television executive known to BBC staff as the "Middle East policeman", worked from an office 10 minutes walk away from the BBC's White City headquarters.

He ruled on tricky questions such as the word BBC correspondents should use to describe the long chain of fences and walls that the Israelis were erecting along the West Bank, to keep out suicide bombers. Palestinians call it the "apartheid wall". To the Israelis it is simply a " fence ". On Mr Balen's advice, the BBC settled on the word " barrier " .

In October 2004, as his one-year contract drew to a close, Mr Balen presented the BBC with a 20,000-page report. Those who accuse the BBC of anti-Israeli bias suspect that it supported their case but no one outside the BBC has been allowed to see it.

Mr Balen has gone on the record to say that he does not believe there is anti-Semitism in the BBC, but did imply that the Corporation had made " mistakes", which should not be seen as evidence of malice.

Steven Sugar, a commercial solicitor from Putney, west London, put in a request to the BBC to see the whole report, citing the Freedom of Information Act.

"A very large proportion of the Jewish community felt rightly or wrongly that the BBC's reporting of the second Palestinian intifada or uprising that broke out in 2000 was seriously distorted," he said. " I myself, as a member of the Jewish community, felt that and was very distressed by it.Now I don't know whether it is important to see this report or not. Instinct says that if they don't want to give it to me it may be important."

The BBC's website invites members of the public to send in requests for information, but there is also a warning that they are not necessarily going to tell you everything you might want to know. They claim that the Act does not apply to "information held for the purposes of creating the BBC's output, or information that supports and is closely associated with these activities".

The BBC argues that if its journalists are collecting information, they should not have to give it out to people who put in Freedom of Information requests until they are ready to broadcast. The Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, hadruled in favour of the BBC. He was overruled by the Information Tribunal.

Orla Guerin, the BBC's Middle East correspondent, was the next correspondent to draw the anger of the Israeli government, in March 2004, for her coverage of the arrest of Hussam Abdu, 16, a Palestinian caught with explosives strapped to his chest.

Guerin, in the eyes of the government, already had form because it had given her a document it said was found on the bomber praising the September 11 attacks. She had questioned whether it was genuine. She accused the Israelis of using the teenager for propaganda purposes, of parading the child in front of the international media" and then denying journalists the chance to ask questions. Natan Sharansky, minister for diaspora affairs, a man highly respected in Israel and the West for enduring years of persecution in communist Russia, claimed that her report showed "such a gross double standard" that "it is difficult to see Ms Guerin's report anything but anti-semitic".

Barbara Plett also drew hundreds of complaints after her report of the terminally ill Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat leaving the West Bank in October 2004. She said in From Our Own Correspondent on Radio 4, that until then it had been a "real grind" reporting on his long illness. " Yet when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound... I started to cry... without warning." In November the BBC's governors ruled that the reference to crying "unintentionally gave the impression of over-identifying with Yasser Arafat and his cause".

A BBC spokeswoman said yesterday that the Corporation was fighting the case because it needed clarity over how the Freedom of Information Act applied to it, not because of the content of the Balen report. The report was always meant to be "an internal review of programme content, to inform future output" and never intended for publication, she added. The case continues today.

So, is the BBC fair in its reports on Israel?

Lord Janner of Braunstone Former president of Board of Deputies of British Jews

"The BBC's reporting of Israel is sometimes fair and sometimes biased. On the whole, the BBC could never be accused of being pro-Israel."

Rod Liddle former editor, Today

"There is bias at the BBC... against the powerful and in favour of the powerless. In the Middle East context, this is naively characterised as Israelis vs Palestinians being the powerful against the powerless. That is why the BBC seems to be sympathetic towards the Palestinians but that the Israeli settlers, for instance, do not get a fair hearing."

George Galloway Respect MP

"To accuse the BBC of anti-Israel bias is akin to accusing Jeremy Clarkson of being a health and safety obsessive. The word incongruous does not begin to capture this."

Lorna Fitzsimons Head of Britain Israel Centre

"Over 81 per cent of the public trusts the BBC. It is imperative the BBC gets it right. Historically, there has been huge concern as to coverage but the BBC is now adhering to its policy of impartiality."

Louise Ellman Labour MP

"There has been a bias and lack of context with the BBC reporting of Israel. Problems are related to citing individual acts of Israeli aggression by failing to put them into context or explaining the reasons. It makes them look like unprovoked acts, when in fact they were reaction to a terrorist act. I would certainly like to see what's in the report."

Greg Philo Glasgow Media Group. Author of Bad News from Israel

"In March 2002, when the BBC noted Palestinians had suffered the highest number of casualties in a week since the start of the intifada, there was more coverage of Israeli deaths."

Beware the Ides of March

William Bowles • Sunday, 25 March, 2007

“Inspired” “Engineered” “Involvement” “Intelligence” “Circumstantial” “Link” — The BBC hedging its bets on alleged Iranian involvement in the ‘insurgency’ in Iraq

“There is intelligence about this [Iranian involvement], but no hard proof” BBC 6pm News, 23/3/07

Well we all know what ‘intelligence’ means but this didn’t stop the same ‘news’ broadcast leading with the misleading statement of “Iranian involvement in the insurgency”, quoting a British army officer in Basra. It went even further—but again without offering a shred of proof—that the Iranians were up to their necks in the ‘insurgency’ in Basra.

“‘Iran link’ to violence in Basra”, BBC News Website 7 March, 2007

The story leads with

“Most of the violence against UK forces in Basra is being engineered by Iranian elements, a British Army colonel based in the southern Iraqi city says.”

The story goes on to quote a certain Col Justin Masherevski who told the BBC that

“local information” indicated that “the vast majority of the violence against us is inspired from outside Iraq”.

“Inspired”? “Engineered”? “Involvement?” “Intelligence”? “Circumstantial”? “Link?”? But not one iota of actual proof. What does this mean? By any definition inspired is a loaded word, for it could apply to almost anything, including the fact that the American Constitution could have been an inspiration. Unless one carefully notes the choice of words, the impression is that the violence in Iraq has an external source (not the occupation mark you!).

But this is how sophisticated propaganda works, utilising words and phrases that are both emotive and yet vague enough not to be an outright lie. Thus Col. Masherevski’s use of the word “inspired” avoids being directly challenged, let the BBC take any heat instead as we learn that rather than being an “inspiration”, the violence is due to “Iranian involvement” and of “engineering” the violence.

What’s it to be BBC, it is after all, the most respected ‘news’ organisation on the planet? Write your letters of protest for sure, but be assured that you’ll get the usual anodyne response that says nothing of import, let alone an acknowledgement of spreading fear and loathing of all things Iranian.

“All the circumstantial evidence points to Iranian involvement in the violence here in Basra which is disrupting the city to a great extent.”

“The people here very much believe that is [sic] Iran,” [Col Justin Masherevski] said.”

Now what people believe is neither here nor there, let alone the basis for a ‘news’ story and as to the “circumstantial evidence”, well what is it based on? Nothing other than the assertion that Iraqis are incapable of building sophisticated weapons thus they must be getting ‘outside help’. Oh, and a photo of an RPG and some scraps left over after weapons have exploded. It’s all pure supposition and supposition based upon unnamed US government sources.

“The “machining” on the weapons could only have been completed in Iran.”

It’s a pity that the BBC didn’t bother to research the story for if that had been done they would have learnt that a workshop making these “sophisticated devices” was discovered very recently in Baghdad.

“Michael Knights, chief of analysis for the Olive Group, a private security consulting firm, presented evidence in Jane’s Intelligence Review that Iraqi Shiites have manufactured both the components for EFPs [explosively formed penetrators] and the complete EFPs.” Media Lens

I often wonder what goes on in the editorial offices of the BBC. How does the ‘instruction’ get delivered by the Editor to his minions, for clearly there won’t be an explicit instruction but if there were it might read something like ‘Iraq is an absolute fucking disaster so let’s make it appear to be all Iran’s fault’, but the end product is the same.

One imagines the daily editorial meeting sitting and ‘deciding’ that this week Iraq is ‘news’ as is Iran, time to haul out those well paid journos ‘embedded’ with British troops in southern Iraq, so we’ve had long, daily reports with BBC reporters positively gushing over the weapons being used against the Iraqi people.

For the past two weeks not only the BBC but also Channel 4 and ITV news programmes have been carrying endless accounts on ‘our boys over there’ and how difficult their job is in ‘reconstructing Iraq’.

And inbetween the relentless propaganda on the good job ‘our boys’ are doing in Iraq, we’ve had the relentless propaganda campaign building against Iran, softening us up for the ‘coming war’.

And as a Medialens piece reveals, the ‘coming war’ has its inevitable cheerleaders, urging on the imperium to take out the “mad Mullahs of Iran.”

“Now the mad mullahs of Iran will soon have nuclear bombs, are we all doomed?… Do something, someone! But what and who?” (Polly Toynbee, ‘No more fantasy diplomacy: cut a deal with the mullahs,’ The Guardian, February 7, 2006)

How about a selfless gesture for the Empire Polly? Perhaps a suicide mission to Tehran as you’re so gung ho on the idea of “do[ing] something”? What is really scary about people like Polly Toynbee is firstly that they get such prime coverage in the media and secondly, that her hysterical rantings reveal the fundamental racism that pervades virtually all coverage of anywhere west of Bucharest (or thereabouts). Would Ms Toynbee consider that the ‘mad managers of US capitalism’ development of so-called tactical nuclear weapons or their stated threat of actually using them is doom-laden? Do something Polly, anything!

So perhaps the alleged intrusion of 15 British navy personnel into Iranian territory is the first step in “doing something” and isn’t the timing is just ‘perfect’ coming as it did just before the UNSEC meeting on sanctions? After all, the evidence (and we’re not talking here about what people think) points to a collusion between the British and US governments prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and the need for some kind of provocation as both governments knew that Iraq didn’t possess any WMD.

“[T]he president is cited as saying he is concerned that there may not be weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, and that there must be some consideration given to finding a different basis for undertaking the action.… I’ll just read you what this memo allegedly says, according to the New York Times: ‘The memo states that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation.” — ‘Ex-national security adviser warns that Bush is seeking a pretext to attack Iran’, By Barry Grey, 2 February 2007. World Socialist WebSite

“The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” — ‘The White House memo’ By Gary Gibbon, 02/02/06, Channel 4 News

Can anyone with an ounce of good sense deny the clearly provocative nature of mainstream media coverage of the situation? And although it’s pissing in the wind, the BBC and other mainstream media outlets still need to be called to task for their central role in whipping up war hysteria around the ‘mad Mullahs’.

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BBC names Blair aides in banned funding report

Tue Mar 6, 2007 10:24 AM IST

LONDON (Reuters) - More details emerged on Monday of a "cash-for-honours" scandal that has dogged Tony Blair's last months as British prime minister when the BBC named two of his staff allegedly involved in an email exchange about it.

The British Broadcasting Corporation said the aides were connected to a story it has been banned by a court injunction from reporting about a police inquiry into a potential criminal cover-up at Blair's office.

Detectives have been investigating for the past year whether political parties nominated people for state honours in return for loans but are now also probing whether any Blair official sought to conceal evidence from police.

Blair, who is expected to step down by July after 10 years in office, has been questioned twice as a witness by police.

He has said that nobody in the Labour Party, to his knowledge, sold honours that bring with them seats in parliament's upper chamber, the House of Lords.

A court blocked the BBC late on Friday from running a report about an internal email between "two members of Blair's inner circle" that it said could prove central to the cover-up inquiry.

Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith obtained the injunction at the request of police. Officers argued information in the story could jeopardise their inquiries.

The injunction was amended on Monday, allowing the BBC to report that the email was from Ruth Turner, director of government relations in Blair's office, to Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff.

The message concerned Blair's chief fundraiser and Middle East envoy Lord Michael Levy, the BBC said. The broadcaster was still barred from revealing the contents of the email.

Blair's spokesman contested the BBC report. "This story is not accurate because we dispute this version of events," he said, declining to specify which aspect of the story he was disputing.

Levy was arrested in January on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and Turner the same month on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, but both were released without charge.

The injunction against the BBC sparked speculation among politicians and lawyers that officers were planning to bring charges against one or more people and that police could be on the verge of wrapping up their probe.

BBC tries yet again to extricate itself from the mess

Related
Cheney's Role In 9/11 Events Raises Questions, and Some Incredible Speculation
Wonkette, 9-11 and the BBC tapes
BBC, CNN Employ Magical Psychic News Announcers
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BBC tries yet again to extricate itself from the mess

Posted Mar 2, 2007 12:32 PM PST
Category: 911

This latest excuse-o-gram from Richard Porter amounts to a "they were all doing it" justification for their premature report, perhaps in the hope we mean old bloggers will go pick on someone else.

But Porter has simply reiterated what we already knew, EVERYONE got a report that the building was going to come down ahead of time. That is not the point. The point is that in a 100 year history of skyscraper construction., no steel-framed building had ever collapsed from fire prior to 9-11. So, WHO was telling the news media that the Saloman Brothers Building, aka WTC-7, was about to collapse when there was zero historical precedent for it?

I don't care what Richard Porter says to get BBC off the hook for this. What Richard Porter needs to tell us all is WHO was planting the story of the impending collapse of WTC-7 with all the media?
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Editor's note: The question remains for BBC to answer. WHO gave them the premature report.

BBC, CNN Employ Magical Psychic News Announcers

I've been holding back on this issue the last several days. I can say this is the killer piece so far. That issue? Big Media coverup of what really happened that horrible day of 9/11.

Watch all the video and read carefully. As you watch this remember that the Eisenhower building at the White House was also on fire. But that plane was diverted to the Pentagon.
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WONKETTE

The Internets are buzzing with the bizarre story of BBC News reporting the 9/11 collapse of WTC7 before the building actually collapsed — all over a live shot of Ground Zero, with the 47-story highrise clearly in view and clearly standing.

What it “proves” is anyone’s guess, but it sure makes for hilarious viewing. But BBC reporters and anchors who maybe didn’t know the Manhattan skyline so well could possibly be forgiven for reporting an erroneous story and not knowing that great big highrise was World Trade Center 7 (otherwise known as the Salomon Brothers building). So why doesn’t the BBC simply say it got a story wrong and didn’t know any better? Stranger still, why did New York-based CNN anchor Aaron Brown do the same exact thing on September 11, 2001? We’ve got all the creepy video and much more to make your head asplode, after the jump.

First, the BBC video which has been posted and then deleted by Google and then posted and then deleted by YouTube again and again this week. The great big highrise next to the lady reporter’s head is WTC7:

This apparently aired some 20 minutes before WTC7 collapsed — supposedly from damage sustained when the Twin Towers collapsed or from the jet crashes. Whatever the “timestamp,” WTC7 is standing there throughout the news report of its collapse, so at minimum it’s an inaccurate story. Such things happen. And then, presumably right before the actual WTC7 begins to collapse, the signal from New York mysteriously degrades and vanishes.

Google is quickly deleting copies of the video, although it’s unknown who or what is requesting the clips be deleted. BBC presumably owns the copyright on the footage, and it seems BBC would want to collect and examine this footage — because the BBC now claims it lost all the 9/11 video. Because who would want to save video of the biggest news event of the last 40 years?

It’s important that you not get upset! The BBC’s news chief explains: “We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording of our output, I’d love to get hold of it. We do have the tapes for our sister channel News 24, but they don’t help clear up the issue one way or another.”

And now here’s Aaron Brown at CNN, also getting word from some unnamed source that WTC7 has collapsed or possibly is currently collapsing. Once again, WTC7 just stands there, mocking us:

Other than being another set of examples of how dumb everybody is about everything, forever, it’s also a crucial thing for people convinced that 9/11 was an “inside job.”

Why? Because they’ve been suspicious of the picture-perfect implosion of WTC7 (not to mention the Twin Towers themselves) and how much it resembled the carefully orchestrated and widely televised demolitions of so many Las Vegas buildings in the 1990s. Even FEMA investigators concluded that the official reason for the collapse — the building’s steel infrastructure weakened by a fire started from debris that came from the Twin Towers — had a low probability of actually happening.

Here at Wonkette, we’re mostly suspicious of why these five-year-old video clips were suddenly dropped on Google Video and YouTube this week. Be careful, Iran! Watch out, U.S. dollar! As for you American citizens … duck!

Part of the conspiracy? [BBC News]
BBC Has Lost Tapes Of 21st Century’s Defining Moment [InfoWars]

BBC World dropped by Israeli satellite TV

Tara Conlan
Wednesday December 13, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk

BBC World has been dropped by Israel's satellite provider Yes TV in favour of the newly launched al-Jazeera English.

It is the first major distribution blow the corporation's international news channel has suffered since al-Jazeera's English-language service began broadcasting last month.

Although BBC World will still be available in Israel via cable, it will lose around 50% of its audience in the country as a result of being dropped by Yes.

Al-Jazeera English signed the carriage deal with Yes last month, but the damaging consequences for BBC World have only just emerged.

One BBC executive said: "We are disappointed but hopefully they will come back to the negotiations."

The deal with Yes takes al-Jazeera English's global reach to around 80m households.

The market for rolling international news is become increasingly crowded, with new rivals to BBC World and CNN.

In addition to the launch of al-Jazeera English, France 24 began broadcasting last week.

The BBC has had a difficult time over its coverage of Israel, with regular accusations of bias coming from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

Earlier this year an independent panel was set up by the corporation's board of governors to review its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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