Saturday 26 January 2008

Pithy Summation of the BBC and its Brethren

Stupidly spending some minutes watching the BBC last night naturally did me nothing that could be described as good, and has belatedly prompted the resurrection of the following few lines:

That state propaganda machines are state propaganda machines should cease to surprise once one awakens from the somnabulent delusion of imagining that state propaganda machines are not state propaganda machines.

This naturally more true the more the state is engaged in acts of war and the centralisation of its autocratic powers, where the necessity of the disemmination of lies and the lack of outpouring of truth is of a very high level of priority.
A slight variation of the above to describe almost the global media industry, which is in ever fewer hands of ever greater power:

That the privately owned propaganda machines are privately owned propaganda machines should cease to surprise once one awakens from the somnabulent delusion of imagining the privately owned propaganda machines are not privately owned propaganda machines.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amusing, Scruton loathes the BBC too.

i haven't watched telly in about 4 years. i've seen boxsets of 24 and Battlestar Galactica, and the occasional youtube clip, and that's it. Don't miss it a bit.

Andrew said...

I suppose Scruton has some things going for him, though I wouldn't be too surprised if in his opinion the BBC is too left-wing, anti-America, etc.
And in fairness to the BBC, a couple of the sections of their recent truth revealing Conspiracy Files were very ...emm...the most obvious of worthless propaganda hit-pieces designed to satisfy the minds of the public that, no, all these conspiracy tales were the product of loony 'conspiracy theorists'.
I remember Double A Gill showing the breadth of his wisdom in being under the inane impresion that, yes, with this programme the state broadcasting network was most certainly giving an accurate reflection of the reality of 911, and how comical these conspiratorial claims were once presented fairly and accurately by the propaganda machine of the state.
The gullibility and depressingly servile nature of these people's intellectual maturity is staggering, though not until you get used to their gutless naivety/disingenuousness. The medium is the message and all that.

Good call on a life without the box.

Anonymous said...

people like double A-hole (or Gill if you prefer) and all the other whores who work in the media are playing the part they are paid to play.

Operation Mockingbird will give you some idea as to how much the media is controlled by the secret intel agencies, and the networks and newspapers are owned by the Knights of Malta, and run by Freemasons. Gordon "Bilderberg" Brown appointed the new chief at BBC, one of his cronies.

BBC 9/11 Tissue of Lies
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2007022093236996

Neil Forsyth said...

I like television. Although, I usually watch it with only one eye, and not my good eye. I've trained myself to do this. Not only that, I can also, simultaneously, read the papers, keep up a conversation with my wife, post a comment or two, plan my work schedule for the following day, eat a bowl of cornflakes and clip my toenails. Right now, I have it switched off. I'm relaxing with a couple of slices of toast and a cuppa, reading Kafka, teaching my 3-year old German (he suffers insomnia) and wallpapering.

By the way, Andrew, I Scrutonised your post and I was bowled over by it. It is a Major achievement. Well done.

Neil Forsyth said...

But seriously, I try to keep an open mind. I don't trust very much at all, least of all large corporations. Or individuals. Or dogs. But who cares whether I do or not. It really is hard to understand the rules of the game (a bit like a certain sport I won't mention), so mostly I just pretend I know what's going on, make a move, and see what happens.

Andrew said...

What sparked the post was particularly a discussion on the merits of Martin Amis, and whether essentially all Muslims could be fairly said to be fascist murderers, thus justifying the Brits & US actions, no that there was any mention that there were any actions by the Brits & US that were to be considered in the first place.

To clarify on the medium is the message- that it being unbelievable that AA Gill & the like don't apparently ask themselves who is telling me this truth version of events, & how might might the filter of their interests condition what they tell me.
John Pilger's article on the media, The Invisible Government is well worth reading. Just extracting fairly randomly the following:

Take the invasion of Iraq. There are two studies of the BBC's reporting. One shows that the BBC gave just 2 percent of its coverage of Iraq to antiwar dissent—2 percent. That is less than the antiwar coverage of ABC, NBC, and CBS. A second study by the University of Wales shows that in the buildup to the invasion, 90 percent of the BBC's references to weapons of mass destruction suggested that Saddam Hussein actually possessed them, and that by clear implication Bush and Blair were right. We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fake. But that's not the point. The point is that the work of MI-6 was unnecessary, because professional journalism on its own would have produced the same result.

Listen to the BBC's man in Washington, Matt Frei, shortly after the invasion. "There is not doubt," he told viewers in the UK and all over the world, "That the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now in the Middle East, is especially tied up with American military power." In 2005 the same reporter lauded the architect of the invasion, Paul Wolfowitz, as someone who "believes passionately in the power of democracy and grassroots development." That was before the little incident at the World Bank.

Anonymous said...

I have seen Scrutons name appear on these blogs, not sure why or in what context. Roger Scruton sold his sold to big business, he is a PR agent for whichever special interest group hires him.

If I recall correctly he is also a big fan of Aristotle. Aristotles teachings did alot of damage to humanity. Aristotle marked the end of western civilisation as a whole (broadly speaking) knowing much of the "mysteries" of the energies of the Universe. He removed God from the centre and put materialistic man in the centre and God was pushed to the side. It was the start of civilisation losing their identity with the powers of the universe (marking the drive of humanity towards materialism). And much of Aristotles teachings have been shown to be wrong.

Andrew said...

I think someone like Gill is simply a gullible believer in the way things appear to be, rather than having to be wilfully corrupt. Anyone who does spend large amounts of time watching, & writing about, television is probably simply content with that life, or mode of reality, & imagines it to be a good way to spend one's life. He also, I think last time I noticed, gets paid to write about eating good food. He's making a very comfortable living through intellectual prostitution, though I'm not using prostitution especially in the loaded way it might appear. Though naturally one wouldn't be expecting anything much of substance from someone living such a type of life.
Nietzsche's "poverty, dirt and a miserable ease" come to mind.

Andrew said...

I've used the quote before, but it sums up the mainstream media well, and in whose pockets it exists:

David Rockefeller, one of the world's key figures, founder of the Trilateral Commission & head of the Council on Foreign Affairs, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991.
"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."

Also from historian AJP Taylor:
"The Establishment draws in recruits from outside as soon as they are ready to conform to its standards and become respectable. There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment—and nothing more corrupting".

Andrew said...

Also John Swinton, editor of the New York Tribune, called by his peers, "the dean of his profession," was asked on February 26th, 1936, to give a toast before the New York Press Association. He responded with the following, fired up by the demon drink possibly:
"There is no such thing as an independent press in America, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.
"I am paid $150.00 a week for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone.
"The business of the New York journalist is to destroy truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon; to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools and vessels for rich men behind the scenes. We are intellectual prostitutes."

Andrew said...

Just did a quick google, and a pretty sickening site, here, praising Murdoch as a demi-God does include:

"Rupert Murdoch is also a man of religious ideals. He received the award of the Order of the Knights of Malta from Cardinal Roger Mahoney in Los Angeles several years ago."

How does a man like Murdoch, who has brought porn into millions of family homes through his SKY tv network, poisoning minds with worthless vile trash like various tabloids, get honoured by the Church as a noble religious man?

Anonymous said...

As a friend (whose parents are both BBC journos) put it, quoting some American magnate, "you're free to publish anything that doesn't conflict with the interests of your publisher."

Having said that the UK media seems a great deal freer than the US. i can't imagine a major broadsheet publishing Fisk or Gore Vidal's early piece on 9/11 as the Observer did.

Al Gore - whatever his odd motives - was right in his book 'The Assault on Reason' - that the internet is fast becoming an open forum for information and debate. My guess is the powers that be will try to shut it down or restrict access vastly, and soon by God.

Anonymous said...

Just on the basis of control of information, it seems unlikely that the ruling powers would have widely disseminated information to every journalist and factotum. It's a basic principle of security that those who don't need to know, don't know. You don't tell the beat cop or press agent or elevator man what's going down. You just tell the editor that any 'crazy conspiracy theory' talk will not be published, because you don't want your paper to turn into some hothouse for lunatics. The editor doesn't need to know, the writer doesn't need to know. That keeps security tight.

Andrew said...

Also, not having to deal in absolutes, there's an excellent rebuttal here of Martin Amis' vile ramblings regarding Islam today in The Sunday Times by William Dalrymple. Whether that would have got published in the US I don't know enough about US newspaper industry to know, but perhaps doubtful.
I'm not being flippant, but every photo I see lately of Amis gives off a very obnoxious vibe.

Anonymous said...

The media is ALOT more controlled than you guys realise. Robert Fisk is another stooge playing his role, these guys will tell you some truth, but they will never identify the real criminals in control and will never give you the bigger picture. People like Fisk are "controlled oppostion", or someone once coined the phrase "oppo-same". Here is what Fisk says about 9/11

I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Anyone who does even the most minor amount of research into 9/11 knows it had to be an inside job. You can be certain Fisk knows alot of the details of 9/11. And he will also know alot of details regarding the running of the Middle-East that he doesn't make public. He will know all about the Knights of Malta, Freemasonry (or Shriners in the mid-east), he will know that the middle-east is controlled by Roman Catholic Knight of Malta Juan Carlos (otherwise known as the King of Spain), he will know that the Bush's are Knights of Malta, working for the Vatican, but none of this will ever be revealed.

The British media is equally corrupted as the US media. You think it is more free merely because you live in Britian, you will find americans think their media is more free. You also need to understand that the destruction of USA is planned for the not-too-distant future, and blaiming the US admin for 9/11 will aid that destruction when the times comes, and they plan for it to push USA closer to a one-world-government, the same as WWII pushed europe closer to a one-euro-government (EU).

The powers that control society want the public to imagine they are free with a free society, which is why people like Fisk and Palast get published. But they know alot more than they will make public. You will find the editors of the newspapers know more than you expect also. The Freemasonic network is very powerful and its pyramid system aids their control over society right down through all levels. Of course they work on a "need-to-know" basis, but you can be certain Fisk knows all about 9/11, just as doubleA-hole does.

Anonymous said...

having read that piece by Dalrymple I would say his article is very, very weak at best. He mentions Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, The House of Saud, but his article offers no meaningful explanation of those groups whatsoever, he mentions the London Bombings without giving the truth of the event any mention at all. He is very clearly another oppo-same. How could you imagine his article means that Britain has more freedom in their media??? That Dalrymple article is as worthless as the book he is reviewing.

Andrew said...

He is critiquing Amis' book which is armoury for the kind of neo-con imperialising anti-Muslim warcries. And he describes Amis' position as "disturbingly bigoted" and ignorant, and by natural implication that the neo-cons are disturbingly bigoted. This is not what alot of people want to hear. Get real if you expect to hear the whole inside story on reality. It's a hell of a lot better than nothing.
It's an awful lot more likely in today's intellectual atmosphere for Amis' book to be praised than slammed, & Dalrymple basically compares Amis' position to nazi style thinking, where he considers Amis describing the Muslims as untermenschen- subhumans.

Anonymous said...

Dalrymple's article falls very far short of where it should if he really had freedom to write what he wants. He has said nothing new or ground-breaking, many people are already aware that books like Amis are shameless propaganda efforts. When he mentioned Al-Qaeda, House of Saud, Bush, Bin Laden etc he could have said a few words more about how they are all connected to the CIA, which he will no doubt be aware of, but he made no effort to give the truth of the matter any real coverage. He could have done alot better at destructing Amis book if he desired, that article is merely designed to appear as though the paper is open and fair, but his article has exposed nothing of use.

Andrew said...

Why would he have to say something ground-breaking? He's writing a review of a book. What the hell do you expect- that he'll start talking about Kinghts of Malta & the Jesuits?