Once Upon A Time In Iraq

Comment Deleted by Site Moderator

comment by Cal Neva (U11544)
posted 5 minutes ago
comment by BerbaKing11 (U6256)
posted 5 minutes ago
comment by Cal Neva (U11544)
posted 11 minutes ago
Perhaps you should look at Saudi and Iran as to what's happening Yemen first.
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No. You should always look primarily at the predictable consequences of *your own actions* (or in this case, the actions of our own governments). That's just an elementary moral truism. It's also pretty much the only practical response. Small children understand this very well, so you've no excuses whatsoever.

As for Saudi Arabia, Britain are not only supplying the arms, but training the bombers, have personnel embedded within the Saudi National Guard, have personnel assisting in the operation control rooms, are supplying warplane services like maintenance, storage & so on, and we're supplying the necessary parliamentary cover and protections to ensure things carry on. Britain's relationship with Saudi Arabia - as well as many other human rights abusers - is of course an international disgrace.
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It's Saudi and Iran's proxy war. Iran are arming groups all over the ME.
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As do Britain, as do the US. What point are you trying to make here? You seem to be trying to deflect from Britain's role - a role condemned by aid agencies and the like - and I don't really understand why?

Comment Deleted by Site Moderator

comment by Cal Neva (U11544)
posted 34 seconds ago
comment by BerbaKing11 (U6256)
posted 16 seconds ago
comment by Cal Neva (U11544)
posted 5 minutes ago
comment by BerbaKing11 (U6256)
posted 5 minutes ago
comment by Cal Neva (U11544)
posted 11 minutes ago
Perhaps you should look at Saudi and Iran as to what's happening Yemen first.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

No. You should always look primarily at the predictable consequences of *your own actions* (or in this case, the actions of our own governments). That's just an elementary moral truism. It's also pretty much the only practical response. Small children understand this very well, so you've no excuses whatsoever.

As for Saudi Arabia, Britain are not only supplying the arms, but training the bombers, have personnel embedded within the Saudi National Guard, have personnel assisting in the operation control rooms, are supplying warplane services like maintenance, storage & so on, and we're supplying the necessary parliamentary cover and protections to ensure things carry on. Britain's relationship with Saudi Arabia - as well as many other human rights abusers - is of course an international disgrace.
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It's Saudi and Iran's proxy war. Iran are arming groups all over the ME.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

As do Britain, as do the US. What point are you trying to make here? You seem to be trying to deflect from Britain's role - a role condemned by aid agencies and the like - and I don't really understand why?
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The main players here are Saudi and Iran whether we supply arms to one party is not relevant . They will never be short of arms. There is a moral question and I wouldn't supply arms to either human rights abusers.
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Again, you just seem to be ignoring key bits of information. I'll spell it out one last time, as I don't see much point in proceeding beyond this point:

1. Britain is deeply, deeply involved in the Saudi bombing. It goes far beyond just arms sales. I have explained this already.
2. Aid agencies & human rights organisations have condemned the Saudi bombing as a leading driver of the crisis. Britain is directly complicit in this, under three different Prime Ministers.
3. Regardless of any other actors (real or alleged), we bear responsibility for, as Brits, for the actions of the British government, so our primary focus should be on that.

Comment Deleted by Site Moderator

comment by BerbaKing11 (U6256)
posted 1 hour, 9 minutes ago
comment by Ole-Dirty-Baztard (U19119)
posted 2 hours, 20 minutes ago
Berba- c4 are exactly who I’d expect to do a good piece on Yemen, they tend to cover the more forgotten places. The bbc are held to ransome by the govt, exactly why Boris keeps threatening a review of the licence fee. Sadly I think in the case of Yemen is that by large the british public don’t really care or want to know, so it’s not deemed that news worthy Or in the public interest, hence why we don’t see the big broadcasters (c4 aside despatches /unreported world is quite niche) doing much on Yemen, certainly not arms dealing and Britain’s role. The bbc have done quite a few pieces and docs on Yemen, but as I said when you have scuuum like Boris and Cummings in charge they have to tread carefully, for fear of getting dismantled by them. So yes funded by state, but not a state broadcaster in the essence of the term, it’s not their mission.

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Johnson (& Cummings) have been around for 5 minutes (in their respective positions).

Their alleged "ransom" doesn't hold water as an explainer to BBC news output given that major works on BBC (& other) media performance pre-dates their power positions *by several decades*. I don't dispute that government officials will want to nudge their media pals down a more subservient path. But the point is that *they don't actually need to*, because the media are already plentiful subservient to power (because the media are *themselves*, power). You can read the remarks by Lord Reith (BBC founder) in his diary: "They [the government] know they can trust us not to be really impartial."

Yemen is just one example, of course, but the reality is the British public are not given the chance to care about the fate of Yemenis. Are you seriously suggesting that daily, wall to wall coverage of the famines and humanitarian disasters in Yemen, along with highly revealing and clear coverage of the UK's leading role that enabled the public to make the connection, would not yield much public response? History isn't on your side of the argument here, by the way.

For example, you can read about the unsolicited response to Pilger's film on Cambodia, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero:_The_Silent_Death_of_Cambodia

Britain had nothing like the stake or leading involvement in Cambodia that it does in Yemen, so we can imagine that were the public to be truly and meaningfully informed about it, there'd be a serious reaction. Here's Pilger's summary of the response to his film:

"Had Year Zero simply described the monster that Pol Pot was, it would have been quickly forgotten. By reporting the collusion of "our" governments, it told a wider truth about how the world was run ... Within two days of Year Zero going to air, 40 sacks of post arrived at ATV ... in Birmingham – 26,000 first-class letters in the first post alone. The station quickly amassed £1m, almost all of it in small amounts. "This is for Cambodia," wrote a Bristol bus driver, enclosing his week's wage. Entire pensions were sent, along with entire savings. Petitions arrived at Downing Street, one after the other, for weeks. MPs received hundreds of thousands of letters, demanding that British policy change (which it did, eventually). And none of it was asked for."
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Why the likes of the bbc are important and why cummings needs booted out ASAP, he’s a real danger to Britain https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/21/dominic-cummings-thinktank-called-for-end-of-bbc-in-current-form

Like I said Baz, certain individuals will no doubt want to shape or mould media in their own ways, but it doesn't change any of the facts on the ground. I've written some fairly lengthy replies but you seem to be somewhat just glossing over everything... Why?

This isn't my opinion. There's a litany of outstanding work on British media performance that you can look at to understand how propaganda in democratic societies works and looks. Cummings has been around for 5 minutes. He's of no importance in this discussion whatsoever, frankly.

There are major [including up to date] works by James Curran, Media Lens (David Edwards & David Cromwell), the Media Reform Coalition, Glasgow Uni Media Group (Berry & Philo), various other universities have published major studies, including Loughborough, Cardiff School of Journalism and so on as well as a whole host critical examinations by distinguished journalists and academics... And that's just looking at the UK press.

Have you looked at *any* of it?

I made an error earlier in this thread by the way. I said that the BBC's anti-war reporting accounted for only 9% of it's coverage in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. I'd mis-remembered that statistic. It was actually 2%, which made it quite a lot worse in this regards to ITV, Sky, C4 and several of the major US broadcast media outlets *combined*.

Your article asserts that Cummings wants a 'Fox style' outlet, free from the (deeply flawed and politicised might I add) "impartiality rules". And yet, BBC news reporting in the build up to and beyond Iraq, shows a devotion to the establishment narrative that would make senior figures at Fox News green with envy. The article says that Cumming's views the BBC as "hostile" to the Tories, which is both hilarious and completely evidence free of course.

Cummings has been around for 5 minutes. He's of no importance in this discussion whatsoever, frankly.


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Disagree there. He’s got some very, very dangerous views, and the power and puppets to pull it off, he may be fairly new on the scene, but he engineered Brexit against the odds and advicates politically controlled news. He’s a caaant.

I don’t think we will agree on this berba, but thanks for the posts interesting stuff none the less

I don't disagree that he's a caant. He is.

But you can't seriously be trying to explain BBC performance over decades and decades, on case after case, as being explained by... Dominic Cummings?

And Cummings didn't "engineer" Brexit. This is what media talking heads like to parrot as it conveniently avoids any meaningful systemic discussion (economically/politically/socially) about the conditions that have led to the likes of Brexit, Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro and a general groundswell of right-wing populism across the globe. It's much easier to point to individuals as being some sort of God-like, string-pulling figures that explain away current events than it is to untangle the complex web of factors that inform and shape what is happening in the world. The same is true for media analysis. To read and learn about how the media works, what it's output is and how systemic bias is reporting occurs and looks more generally, requires a lot of time and a willingness to dispense with preconceptions.

If you think the BBC is generally decent (I'm talking strictly about its news, not its TV dramas, sports coverage or kids shows etc...), then you're going to be bitterly disappointed when you look at the serious work on the subject.

And again, I stress... This isn't my opinion. There's nothing to disagree with here. Just take a look at some of the work cited!

Just finished the last episode.

Sorry to say but Iraq looks cursed for the forseeable future.