Ending the myth of the ‘Millionaire Mullah’ – Part 2
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei waves to tens of thousands of Basij members from Tehran province at Azadi Stadium, Oct. 4, 2018. (Photo by Khamenei.ir)
By Ramin Mazaheri – Press TV – July 5, 2019
Part 1 of this article discussed why the recent US sanctions on Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei provoked laughter in Iran, and derision even from Iranophobic Western mainstream media.
Beyond Ayatollah Khamenei, I can very briefly explain how and why the West can persist with its “Millionaire Mullah” mythology:
There are many economic principles that guide the Iranian economy which have no basis in the West – they are, after all, “revolutionary”. Many are based on the principles of Islamic charity and of Islamic finance; many are also based on the anti-capitalist principles which were obviously drawn from the 20th century socialism. There are almost too many to list, but in Part 2 of this 3-part article I will pick a few key ones which specifically relate to the clergy, and which – when added with Iranophobia – create such widespread and ignorant propaganda.
One of the five pillars of Islam is to give to charity (zakat), but one of the five additional pillars of Shia theology is that businessmen must give 20% of their profits to charity (khums). Thus, it should be clear why some say that Iran has an “alms-based economy”. That’s an exaggeration, because there are state taxes as well, but this money goes directly to religious authorities and has gone there for over 1,000 years.
For example, Ayatollah Khamenei was raised in a family (lower middle class clerics on both sides of his parents) which would have never received this money directly – they would have been the recipients of this charity from the much higher-ranking clergy.
Ayatollah Khamenei, through hard work, sacrifice and other virtues, is now a “Marja’” (top religious authority). He now heads various religious foundations which receive – and redistribute downwards – this zakat and khums money.
Of course, he heads these foundations, but this money cannot (and is not) be used by him to buy a Ferrari for his favourite nephew, for example. The Iranian press would die of happiness at the sales prospects caused by such a sensational, unheard-of event! These are “religious foundations” not “The Clinton Foundation”: These foundations serve the poor – they do not trade high-level political access and favours in return for funding a jet-set lifestyle. Of course, most Western media cynically assume that everyone – even a Marja’ as publicly present as Ayatollah Khamenei – secretly operates on shameless Western capitalist principles.
Let’s clarify two key issues: zakat and khums are individual choices – they are not compelled to go to Ayatollah Khamenei. Iranians can send their charity to a Marja’ in Iraq if they like, and many do. Secondly, drastically changing this historic process of zakat and khums would certainly constitute a major revolution in Iran – however, for many it would constitute a rather “un-Islamic Revolution”, and there is no doubt that the democratic majority wanted an “Islamic Revolution”.
Therefore, Islamic charity is a reality of modern economics and finance in Iran. It is not something which non-Muslims can easily comprehend, perhaps, but the failure to do so will help fuel nonsense like “Millionaire Mullahs”. Unlike neoliberalism in the West, these financial principles have the virtue of being democratically-supported, and I can easily argue that they have the additional virtue of far more efficiently increasing economic equality than neoliberalism does.
Ayatollah Khamenei, as the Supreme Leader, is also often listed as the head of companies simply out of respect by the company’s founders. It is often purely honorary. Ayatollah Khamenei is not, for example, giving ideas on product improvement or production strategies to such companies (now the rare ex-president Rafsanjani – rare because he was an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary cleric from a rich, business-oriented background – might have gotten involved, but Ayatollah Khamenei has evinced no such interest)and he is absolutely not in any control of the companies’ assets. He is there in name only as a sign of respect for him, Islam, Iran, etc. Of course, this is distorted/misunderstood by Western pro-capitalist papers.
The Iranian Islamic Revolution also did something which no doubt enrages Western imperialist-capitalists, and about which they have no desire to spread honest information: the revolution took a huge chunk of the factories and industries owned by the Shah and his tiny coterie and gave them to charity.
These are called the bonyads, and they are an estimated 15-20% of the entire Iranian economy. A staggeringly revolutionary concept, no?
The bonyads are thus different from the Islamic charity I have described, and the Islamic foundations which administer that charity, because the bonyads were expressly charged with getting involved in economic production.
The bonyads are not designed for capitalist profit, but are cooperatives which exist to create low-cost goods and jobs for Iranians. This planned” inefficiency” – in attaining maximum profit, but not in social cohesion and equality – is falsely branded as“corruption” by raging Western capitalists, sadly.
Ayatollah Khamenei heads some bonyads, and this gives him economic influence, of course, because the popular, democratic, openly-debated decision to award a significant chunk of the Iranian economy to the administration of religious authorities was a popular, democratic, openly-debated decision of the Iranian people. Oppose decisions arrived at in this manner, and you oppose democracy for Iran.
Bonyads are not specifically proscribed in the Qur’an, unlike zakat and the ubiquitous concepts of charity and anti-usury (high interest/compound interest), but if one tries to overturn them, well, all I can say is – prepare for a serious fight. If you think the millions of bonyad workers and recipients of bonyad lower-cost goods want all that to be replaced by (mostly-Western) stockholders, good luck with your efforts.
Very obvious, but of course not perfect, parallels can be made elsewhere: the lower class supporters of Chavismo’s collectivos have won an unprecedented number of votes (and street battles) to preserve similar anti-neoliberal economic concepts and structures. Iran is not nearly as susceptible to Washington’s meddling, in large part because such gains have been consolidating democratic support for the government for a generation longer than in Venezuela. Cuba adopted similar (though not Islamic-influenced) concepts a generation earlier than Iran did. China is a generation up on Cuba, and aren’t they doing rather well? China doesn’t have bonyads, of course, but Beijing and Tehran have such a strong and long-term alliance because they obviously have much in common.
The common threat here is modern economic solutions designed to fight imperialism, and also those forms of capitalism which are rapacious and undemocratic.
So, between zakat, khums, the bonyads, generalized Iranophobia and a desire to denigrate any economic thought which is not far-right neoliberal capitalism, this is how we have arrived at Western nonsense like “Millionaire Mullahs”, and the propaganda is unrelenting.
Like, for example, the 2013 Reuters report on Setad, a bonyad headed by the Leader, was absurdly titled, “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures”.
Part 3 will examine this report, which is still being cited today despite its obvious bias, misrepresentations and clear goal of spreading Iranophobic and Islamophobic propaganda.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of “I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China”.
US, UK Intel Services Prepare Fakes About Putin’s Inner Circle Via Soros, Browder Entites – Source
Sputnik – July 13, 2019
According to a military diplomatic source, the defamation campaign repeats the Panamagate scenario in 2015 when Western media published dossiers about tax havens implicating various political leaders.
UK and US intelligence services are currently in an active phase of the anti-Russian campaign aiming to discredit individuals from the inner circle of the Russian president, as well as the leadership of the Defence Ministry.
“As part of the undisguised provocative actions, specialists from the American and British intelligence agencies fabricate fakes about the Russian leadership”, the source stated.
The source noted that aggressive actions could be seen in the information space, and provocations were no longer being concealed.
The fake information will wind up in the media controlled by foundations established by influential financiers such as George Soros and William Browder, according to the report. The source added the defamation campaign will also engage news agencies openly funded by US authorities, naming Radio Freedom and Current Time among others.
According to the report, the campaign follows the Panamagate template by disseminating biased information through non-commercial organisations affiliated with the State Department.
The source underlined that the fakes about the Russian leadership constitute direct interference in Russia’s internal affairs.
“As in the case with the Panama dossier, despite the absurdity of the accusations, the White House predictably uses fakes to justify sanctions. Such actions are direct interference in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation aimed to destabilise the country, weaken the economic potential of Russia and form the levers of political influence on its leadership”, the source added.
Millions of documents known collectively as the Panama Papers were leaked in 2016 from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The leaked data exposed a large number of offshore operations and shell companies, and implicated multiple highly-placed individuals from across the world.
Two Think Tanks Claim Sputnik Meddled in 2017 French Election, Present No Proof… Again
Sputnik – July 11, 2019
Russian media outlets last year faced accusations of interfering in France’s internal politics, but a recent probe by French intelligence has reportedly found no signs of such activities.
The French Institute of Strategic Research of the Military School (IRSEM) and American think-tank the Atlantic Council have in a recent collaborative project produced a report, the latest in a row of similar ones, claiming that Russia meddled in the internal affairs of a foreign government. This time, the researchers accused Moscow of trying to prevent the victory of Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 French presidential election.
The researchers try to prove that by using state-funded media outlets, namely Sputnik, as an “information weapon”, the Kremlin allegedly organised a coordinated “disinformation campaign” against then presidential hopeful Macron. However, like many similar papers on alleged “Russian meddling”, this research also fails to present solid facts that substantiate the claims and stumbles into certain problems when trying to prove that such a targeted “campaign” actually existed in the first place.
Notably, the report’s key author and head of the IRSEM, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, who also serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the NATO Defence College, took most of his points of evidence from the works of Ben Nimmo, a researcher at the Atlantic Council. The latter, like many other Western think tanks, regularly publishes research devoted to proving the existence of Russian attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of Western countries and proposing ways in which they can counter this alleged “threat”.
“Anti-Macron Campaign” or Factual Reporting?
The IRSEM study recalls that back in February 2017, Macron’s digital manager accused Sputnik of publishing “fake news” about his employer from the “very beginning of [the election] campaign”. The author of the paper, Vilmer, claims that this “disinformation campaign” began when the French edition of Sputnik published a report about statements by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in which he revealed that he possessed “interesting information” about Macron, albeit without specifying whether it was compromising in any way.
Referring to the Sputnik article as “menacing”, the IRSEM report draws parallels to the 2016 US presidential election and WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. At the same time, the paper didn’t elaborate any further on how exactly reporting on an interview with a famous whistle-blower, in which no compromising information about Macron was published, was able to affect the outcome of the election. It also failed to mention that WikiLeaks’ threats, covered by Sputnik, were not limited to Macron, but also touched his main opponent in the second round, Marine Le Pen.
“Hand-Picked” Speakers vs Hand-Picked Examples
The IRSEM head admits in the report that Sputnik didn’t publish any “fake news” during the election campaign in France, but instead accused it of “information manipulation”. Vilmer claims that the Russian media outlet had expressed “a strong bias” by allegedly leaving out important information and by “hiding behind the quotations” of the “right people”.
While failing to present any proof that Sputnik had omitted any important facts in its articles, the researcher instead tried to substantiate his claim by indicating that Sputnik had interviewed only two persons, who happen to be members of the French Parliament – Thierry Mariani and Nicolas Dhuicq – in regards to the upcoming election. However, a simple search on the news outlet’s website reveals that in reality Sputnik had interviewed far more contributors on the topic, such as Jacques Lamblin, another member of the country’s parliament, as well as various European lawmakers and pundits.
Alleged “Focus” on “Macron Affair”
The paper proceeds to claim that Sputnik covered the election in France with “a distinct bias against Macron”. According to Vilmer, this was expressed in a strategy of giving a deaf ear to scandals involving other contenders for the presidency, such as “the Kremlin’s favoured candidate”, Marine Le Pen, and instead focusing on “rumours” about Macron’s alleged offshore accounts.
The IRSEM research insisted that most of Sputnik’s articles were devoted to the “invented Macron affair” involving offshore accounts while it “defended Le Pen and amplified her party”. However, the paper does not include any factual proof of a discrepancy in the coverage of Macron-related scandals and controversies involving his rivals. It also fully omits the actual fact that Sputnik covered the latter.
“Blame Russia” Trend
France was the second Western country to try to blame Russia for interfering in its domestic affairs. This was preceded by an attempt by the US Democratic Party, and specifically its candidate Hillary Clinton, to shift the blame for the defeat in the 2016 presidential election on to supposed meddling by Moscow.
This blame-game later became a trend among Western governments and political parties in countries such as the UK, Germany, and Spain, to name only a few. But just as in the case of the US, none of these states managed to provide any credible evidence to substantiate the claims, at best referring to obscure “intelligence reports”. Moscow has repeatedly pointed out this lack of underlying proof when rejecting these groundless accusations
Notably, following Macron’s victory in the elections his team abandoned the narrative for a while, only to return to it in February 2019, accusing Moscow of “orchestrating” the Yellow Vest rallies, which demanded Macron’s resignation, and pointing to Sputnik and RT for this purpose. However, earlier reports by local news outlets said that the French intelligence services’ investigation had failed to find any signs indicating that the Russian media was able to impact French domestic affairs.
Hiring the swamp: Meet new RFE/RL boss, a Russiagate-pushing neocon
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | July 11, 2019
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a US government-funded propaganda outfit, will soon get a new president – a NeverTrump neoconservative flack, who last worked at an outfit promoting the ‘Russiagate conspiracy.’
Jamie Fly is supposed to take over at RFE/RL in Prague on August 1, having reportedly been handpicked by board chair Kenneth Weinstein and endorsed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He reportedly received unanimous support from the board, composed of Democrats and Republicans appointed under the Obama administration.
Fly’s name may not be familiar to the general public, but he is well known in Washington. His latest posting was at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), a quasi-non-governmental outfit that sponsors the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), among other things. The ASD was set up by leading Democrats and neoconservatives in July 2017, and operates the notorious Hamilton68 dashboard, the shady analysis tool that sees “Russian bots and trolls” everywhere.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has followed ASD since its inception, called Hamilton 68 “the single most successful media fraud & US propaganda campaign” he had seen in years of covering US politics.
The ASD was just one of the outfits that sprung up since 2016, driven by the allegations that Russia “meddled” with the US presidential election that were concocted and weaponized to help explain how President Donald Trump got into the White House instead of the establishment favorite Hillary Clinton – and fuel calls for Trump’s impeachment.
What they all had in common was seeing “Russians” all over social media, and demanding purges from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms. Fly himself boasted, from his GMF/ASD perch, that his outfit was guiding Facebook in its crackdown on “Russian” pages and other “fringe” views in October 2018, and that it was “just the beginning.”
Meanwhile, RFE/RL was getting caught red-handed violating Facebook’s advertising rules by posting pro-NATO propaganda.
The rest of Fly’s work history is hardly better. Between 2013 and 2017, he worked as a foreign policy adviser to Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida). Rubio, you may recall, currently champions “regime change” in Venezuela and seems to enjoy Trump’s favor even after voting against his efforts to secure the US-Mexico border.
Prior to working for Rubio, Fly was executive director at the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), an interventionist think-tank that operated between 2009 and 2017 and was co-founded by a trio of prominent neoconservatives. Dan Senor served as the chief spokesman for the US occupying authority in Iraq and later as a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012. The other two co-founders were Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, formerly of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and authors of an infamous 1996 treatise advocating “benevolent global hegemony” by the US.
During the neoconservative-dominated George W. Bush administration, Fly worked at the National Security Council and at the office of the Secretary of Defense, under both Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.
In other words, Jamie Fly is the perfect example of what Trump had called the “swamp” and vowed to “drain” in his 2016 campaign – a neoconservative Washington operative dedicated to policies and ideas that Trump got elected by denouncing and opposing. Yet in an administration whose foreign policy is run by Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, he should be a perfect fit.
IRGC rejects US claim of Iran attempt to seize UK tanker in Persian Gulf
Press TV – July 11, 2019
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has dismissed a claim by US officials that its naval forces tried to stop a British tanker in the Persian Gulf.
Early on Thursday, two American officials, who were speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, claimed that five boats believed to belong to the IRGC had approached the tanker British Heritage at the northern entrance of the Strait of Hormuz and ordered it to stop.
The Iranian boats dispersed, said one of the sources, after the UK’s Royal Navy frigate HMS Montrose, which had been escorting the tanker, “pointed its guns at the boats and warned them over radio.”
The other official also called the alleged incident an act of “harassment and an attempt to interfere with the passage.”
However, the IRGC rejected the US officials’ claim, stressing that Iranian boats were carrying out their normal duties.
“Patrols by the IRGC’s Navy vessels have been underway in the Persian Gulf based on current procedures and missions assigned to them with vigilance, precision and strength,” said the Public Relations Department of the IRGC Navy’s Fifth Naval Zone in a statement.
“In the past 24 hours, there has been no encounter with foreign ships, including British ones,” it added.
The statement further noted that the IRGC Navy’s fifth zone has the power to act “decisively and swiftly” and seize foreign vessels in the area it is tasked with patrolling if an order is issued to that effect.
Similarly, Britain claimed Thursday that three Iranian vessels had tried to block the passage of its tanker but backed off.
“HMS Montrose was forced to position herself between the Iranian vessels and British Heritage and issue verbal warnings to the Iranian vessels, which then turned away,” a British government representative said.
Zarif: Such claims have no value
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also reacted to the allegations, saying they are merely meant to create tensions.
Those who make such claims attempt to “cover up their weak point,” he added. “Apparently the British tanker has passed. What they have said themselves and the claims that have been made are for creating tension and these claims have no value.”
The claims came two weeks after British marines illegally seized an Iranian oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar under the pretext that the vessel had been suspected of carrying crude to Syria in violation of EU sanctions against the Arab country.
Reports, however, said the seizure took place at the request of the US.
The Islamic Republic condemned the illegal seizure as “maritime piracy” and summoned the British ambassador on three occasions to convey its protest at the confiscation.
Salvini Refutes Claims About Receiving Russian Financial Support for Lega Party
Sputnik – July 10, 2019
ROME – Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini once again refuted claims on Wednesday about receiving financial support from Russia for his Lega party.
“I have already filed a lawsuit [concerning this issue] earlier and I will do it today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. I took no ruble, no euro, no dollar, no litre of vodka of financing from Russia”, Salvini said in a statement released by his press office.
The statement may be triggered by an article that appeared on the BuzzFeed News portal earlier in the day and included a transcript of a conversation between Salvini’s representatives and alleged Russians discussing financing Salvini’s Lega party through the supply of Russian oil. The conversation took place on October 18, 2018, according to the media outlet.
This is not the first time Salvini is suspected of gaining financial support from Russia. Late February, Italian weekly L’Espresso also published an investigation claiming that Salvini and his representatives had visited Moscow in secret on October 18. 2018, to discuss financing of the Lega party with Russians ahead of European election. The party has allegedly gained 3 million euros ($3.3 million) under cover of Russian diesel exports. Moscow, as well as Salvini, has repeatedly refuted such allegations.
Campaigner Scores Major Victory, Forcing BBC Admit to Factual Inaccuracy
By Kit Klarenberg | Sputnik | July 2, 2019
Simon Maginn is many things – author, activist, piano teacher, and also one of the BBC’s most determined agitators. He submits complaints to the state broadcaster on a borderline daily basis, lodging grievances about what he feels are fundamental misrepresentations of opinions and facts by the corporation’s journalists and interviewees.
Often, Simon files complaints related to the alleged “anti-Semitism crisis” in the Labour party, which he believes to be a mythical smear perpetuated by the party’s detractors for political reasons.
“They’re usually near the top of my phone’s most recent calls list. I don’t always go the written route – it’s wearying, and by design. They deliberately try to grind you down with a maddeningly slow bureaucratic process, and most people get put off quite quickly, but I’m a bit bloody-minded. They don’t stop, it’s been unrelenting for three years or more. I’m dug in, it’s trench war – I’ll never accept the BBC is entitled to serve as a propaganda platform, both as a license fee-payer and a citizen. It’s not what we pay them to do, and it needs to end,” Simon says.
By this point, he knows well complainants “never get anywhere” if they submit objections to the BBC about ‘bias’ – such protests typically elicit a “stock response” that the state broadcaster takes “very seriously” its Charter obligations to “ensure controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality”.
Issues of clear and demonstrable factual accuracy are a different matter though – and on 26th February Nick Robinson, the BBC’s former political editor and currently presenter of BBC Radio 4’s flagship ‘Today Programme’, committed a significant breach of his obligations in this regard.
‘Insufficiently Accurate’
In a public Twitter post directed at Chris Williamson, MP for Derby North and currently suspended from Labour due to flagrantly bogus allegations of anti-Semitism, Robinson sneeringly asked why the parliamentarian claimed to have “never seen” anti-Semitism in the party, given he himself had “agreed to screen a film in Parliament by a woman suspended from Labour for saying the Jews controlled the slave trade”.
Robinson was referring to Jackie Walker, a veteran Labour member and former vice chair of Momentum’s steering committee expelled from the party for “prejudicial and grossly detrimental behaviour” on 27th March this year.
Her ejection resulted from a manufactured controversy, in which comments she made in a private Facebook conversation with a friend in 2016 were publicised and taken out of context by the Israel Advocacy Movement, which aims to “counter British hostility to Israel”.
When Walker’s friend raised the question of “the debt” owed to Jews as a result of the Holocaust, Walker said she hoped they “feel the same towards the African holocaust”.
“My ancestors were involved in both – on all sides as I’m sure you know, millions more Africans were killed in the African holocaust and their oppression continues today on a global scale in a way it doesn’t for Jews…Many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade which is of course why there were so many early synagogues in the Caribbean. So who are victims and what does it mean? We are victims and perpetrators to some extent through choice. And having been a victim does not give you a right to be a perpetrator,” she explained.
Simon felt the BBC “had nowhere to hide”, and indeed believed he’d a better than average chance of his umbrage being taken seriously, so wrote to the corporation outlining his concerns.
“Robinson said an arrogant, stupid thing I – and indeed anyone who’d spent more than five minutes looking into the matter – knew to be completely untrue. Walker – herself Jewish – had merely stated the historical record in a nuanced and thoughtful way – Jews, Christians, Muslims, all sorts of people financed the slave trade, that’s not in dispute. However, her comments were then compacted, filleted and distorted in order to present them as suggesting Jews alone created and controlled the slave trade. Robinson evidently hadn’t done even basic fact-checking – but then again it’s the BBC, so that’s pretty standard,” he says.
The BBC’s initial response was merely that Robinson “might’ve phrased it differently”, effectively admitting his statement was in no way accurate but dismissing the seriousness of the faux pas. Refusing to accept their equivocating excuse, Simon continued to pursue the issue – four months later, the Beeb has finally confirmed Robinson gave “an insufficiently accurate impression of her actual words”, and upheld his complaint. The reason for the significant delay is anyone’s guess – people have suggested to Simon the BBC may have sought legal advice, given Robinson’s comments were clearly libelous and a blatant Charter breach.
Quite what will come of the finding also isn’t clear, although Simon believes it should have significant implications not merely for Robinson but several other BBC personalities who’ve framed Walker, her comments and those who’ve supported her as anti-Semitic – for instance, Radio 5 Live presenter Emma Barnett has likewise levelled a number of “damaging” allegations against Williamson, all of which relate to his defence of Walker.
Censorship and Sensibility
While happy to have finally gotten the BBC bang to rights, Simon isn’t optimistic the concession will produce actual change, believing the broadcaster will continue to use its “uniquely privileged place” in the information sphere to “pump out absolute garbage every day” – after all, he notes that for as difficult as it is to nail the BBC for factual inaccuracy, political smears inserted into ‘non-factual’ entertainment are effectively protected by broadcast rules.
For example, in May 2018 David Baddiel appeared on Frankie Boyle’s popular ‘New World Order’ show, and commented among other things on a survey of Labour voters that found 28 percent agreed with the notion there was a “secretive elite” controlling the world. As Simon notes, respondents were referring to things such as “Integrity Initiative, HSBC and the like, proven conspiracies against the left, and truth” – Baddiel conversely suggested the secret conspiracy they spoke of was “the Jews”. Baddiel subsequently made clear the ‘gag’ was in fact an accurate reflection of his views on the subject, attacking those who took issue with his damaging mischaracterisation – although the BBC didn’t take the comment quite so seriously.
“I complained, but was told as it was a comedy show and not a news program standards of accuracy didn’t matter, just ‘due accuracy’. So Baddiel can just get away with totally misrepresenting a survey and in the process smearing hundreds of thousands of British left-wingers in an extremely damaging way on a prime-time show potentially watched by millions as long as he gets a big laugh apparently,” he despairs.
The BBC also frequently lies by omission Simon feels, not reporting, misreporting or actively suppressing significant stories. In May this year for instance, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) submitted over 20 pages of evidence to the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the wake of the government’s refusal to adopt a proposed definition on Islamophobia, and called for an investigation into Islamophobia in the Conservative party – it went entirely unmentioned by the state broadcaster.
“I asked the BBC why they’d been completely silent on the MCB’s public demand, and they justified their failure on the basis the story ‘hadn’t been picked up by the media in the way the anti-Semitism issue has’. They also said they hadn’t received a press release from the MCB – I’m not a global news-gathering brand, and yet I heard about the story and they didn’t?! While the temptation is to respond with a curt ‘f*** off’, I refuse to be put off by their insultingly childish excuses,” Simon rages.
“The BBC is sick to its core and in dire need of reform – we can’t go into another General Election with the broadcaster in this mode. It’s terribly dangerous, many people take all their news from the corporation and no other sources. I supported the Beeb all my life, grew up with it, my generation has a massive cultural affiliation… it’s been terribly disturbing for me to realise since Corbyn’s election it’s actually a ruthless purveyor of propaganda that will do anything to stop a left-wing government getting into power. The broadcaster is supposed to be all kinds of things, which it isn’t. This is very serious – we need a full and thorough investigation into what’s gone wrong, and how to put it right.”<
Hope for a Breakthrough in Korea
By Ray McGovern – Consortium News – July 1, 2019
There is hope for some real progress in U.S.-North Korean relations after Sunday morning’s unscheduled meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, largely because Russia and China seem more determined than ever to facilitate forward movement.
Sitting down before the talks began, Kim underlined the importance of the meeting.“I hope it can be the foundation for better things that people will not be expecting,” he said. “Our great relationship will provide the magical power with which to overcome hardships and obstacles in the tasks that needs to be done from now on.”
Trump was equally positive speaking of Kim:
“We’ve developed a very good relationship and we understand each other very well. I do believe he understands me, and I think I maybe understand him, and sometimes that can lead to very good things.”
Trump said the two sides would designate teams, with the U.S. team headed by special envoy Stephen Biegun under the auspices of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to start work in the next two to three weeks. “They’ll start a process, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.
New Impetus
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who met individually with President Trump at the G20 in Osaka, have been singing from the same sheet of Korea music — particularly in the wake of Xi’s visit to North Korea on June 20-21. Putin’s remarks are the most illuminating.
Putin at FT interview. (Kremlin photo)
In an interview with The Financial Times, Putin pointed to “the tragedies of Libya and Iraq” — meaning, of course, what happened to each of them as they lacked a nuclear deterrent. Applying that lesson to North Korea, Putin said,
“What we should be talking about is not how to make North Korea disarm, but how to ensure the unconditional security of North Korea and how to make any country, including North Korea, feel safe and protected by international law. …”
“We should think about guarantees, which we should use as the basis for talks with North Korea. We must take into account the dangers arising from … the presence of nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that if a way can be found to satisfy North Korea’s understandable determination to protect its security, “the situation may take a turn nobody can imagine today.”
“Whether we recognize North Korea as a nuclear power or not, the number of nuclear charges it has will not decrease. We must proceed from modern realities …” And those realities include fundamental, immediate security concerns for both Russia and China. Putin put it this way:
”[W]e have a common border, even if a short one, with North Korea, therefore, this problem has a direct bearing on us. The United States is located across the ocean … while we are right here, in this region, and the North Korean nuclear range is not far away from our border. This is why this concerns us directly, and we never stop thinking about it.”
Xi’s ‘Reasonable Expectations’
Last week in Pyongyang, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China is waiting for a desired response in stalled nuclear talks with the United States.
“North Korea would like to remain patient, but it hopes the relevant party will meet halfway with North Korea to explore resolution plans that accommodate each other’s reasonable concerns,” he said.
A commentary in China’s official Xinhua news agency said China could play a unique role in breaking the cycle of mistrust between North Korea and the U.S, but that both sides “need to have reasonable expectations and refrain from imposing unilateral and unrealistic demands.”
There is little doubt that the Russians and Chinese have been comparing notes on what they see as a potentially explosive (literally) problem in their respective backyards, the more so inasmuch as the two countries have become allies in all but name.
On a three-day visit to Moscow earlier this month, President Xi spoke of his “deep personal friendship” with Putin, with whom he has “met nearly 30 times in the past six years.” For his part, Putin claimed “Russian-Chinese relations have reached an unprecedented level. It is a global partnership and strategic cooperation.”
A Fundamental Strategic Change
Whether they are “best friends” or not, the claim of unprecedented strategic cooperation happens to be true — and is the most fundamental change in the world strategic equation in decades. Given the fear they share that things could get out of hand in Korea with the mercurial Trump and his hawkish advisers calling the shots, it is a safe bet that Putin and Xi have been coordinating closely on North Korea.
The next step could be stepped-up efforts to persuade Trump that China and Russia can somehow guarantee continued nuclear restraint on Pyongyang’s part, in return for U.S. agreement to move step by step — rather than full bore — toward at least partial North Korean denuclearization — and perhaps some relaxation in U.S. economic sanctions. Xi and Putin may have broached that kind of deal to Trump in Osaka.
There is also a salutary sign that President Trump has learned more about the effects of a military conflict with North Korea, and that he has come to realize that Pyongyang already has not only a nuclear, but also a formidable conventional deterrent: massed artillery.
“There are 35 million people in Seoul, 25 miles away,” Trump said on Sunday. “All accessible by what they already have in the mountains. There’s nothing like that anywhere in terms of danger.”
Obstacles Still Formidable
Trump and Kim meet Sunday before Trump became first US president to step on North Korean territory. (White House photo)
Trump will have to remind his national security adviser, John Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that he is the president and that he intends to take a firmer grip on reins regarding Korean policy. Given their maladroit performance on both Iran and Venezuela, it would, at first blush, seem easy to jettison the two super-hawks.
But this would mean running afoul of the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academe-Think-Tank (MICIMATT) complex, in which the corporate-controlled media play the sine-qua-non role today.
In a harbinger of things to come, The Washington Post’s initial report on the outcome of the Trump-Kim talks contained two distortions: “Trump … misrepresented what had been achieved, claiming that North Korea had ceased ballistic missile tests and was continuing to send back remains of U.S. servicemen killed in the Korean War.”
The Trump administration could reasonably call that “fake news.” True, North Korea tested short-range ballistic missiles last spring, but Kim’s promise to Trump was to stop testing strategic not tactical missiles, and North Korea has adhered to that promise. As for the return of the remains of U.S. servicemen: True, such remains that remain are no longer being sent back to the U.S., but it was the U.S. that put a stop to that after the summit in Hanoi failed.
We can surely expect more disingenuous “reporting” of that kind.
Whether Trump can stand up to the MICIMATT on Korea remains to be seen. There is a huge amount of arms-maker-arms-dealer profiteering going on in the Far East, as long as tensions there can be stoked and kept at a sufficiently high level.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His first portfolio at CIA was referent-analyst for Soviet policy toward China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
MH17: Turning Truth & Victims into Pawns
By Ulson Gunnar – New Eastern Outlook – 29.06.2019
As the wreckage of Malaysian flight MH-17 laid scattered in eastern Ukraine, and many days before the first investigators even arrived on scene, the US had already blamed Russia and separatists it accused of aiding for the tragic downing of the passenger plane and the loss of all 298 people on board.
It would be a July 31, 2014 article by the BBC titled, “Ukraine MH17: Forensic scientists reach jet crash site,” nearly 2 weeks after the aircraft’s downing that would announce the arrival of forensic scientists at the crash site.
Yet as early as July 21, more than a week before investigators arrived, Newsweek in its article, “U.S. Report Outlines Evidence That Rebels Downed Flight MH17,” was already claiming:
The U.S. State Department has outlined the evidence behind its assertion that Russia-backed separatists are responsible for the missile strike that downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17. In a statement posted on the website of the U.S. embassy to Ukraine, it said the flight was “likely downed by a SA-11 surface-to-air missile from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine.”
The assertions made within the report were a summary of accusations the US leveled against Russia even earlier still.
An Australia’s ABC would report a day before the investigators’ arrival in eastern Ukraine that the US and EU had already leveled additional sanctions against Russia, spurred on by US accusations regarding MH-17.
The article, “MH17: US and EU to impose broad sanctions on Russia over support for Ukraine rebels; fighting keeps investigators from Malaysia Airlines crash site,” would note:
The measures mark the start of a new phase in the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cold War, which worsened dramatically after the downing of MH17 over rebel-held territory on July 17.
German chancellor Angela Merkel, who had been reluctant to step up sanctions before the crash because of her country’s trade links with Russia, said the EU measures were “unavoidable”.
Washington’s accusations and its rush to leverage their impact on public and political circles at the time to pass further sanctions against Russia fits a pattern not of an impartial investigation or search for truth, but a cynical propaganda campaign carried out at the expense of both.
A Familiar Lack of Evidence…
The subsequent Joint Investigation Team (JIT) assembled to supposedly ascertain the truth behind the airliner’s downing included among its member states, Ukraine. As others have pointed out, Ukraine was and still is a prime suspect.
Ukraine’s decision not to close airspace over contested areas where military aircraft were already being shot down alone makes Kiev at least partially culpable for the loss of MH-17.
Expectations of honesty and cooperation from Kiev (berated by even its Western sponsors as being corrupt, abusive and inept) are unrealistic and their inclusion within the JIT undermines its credibility and any conclusion they reach, especially if that conclusion lacks substantial evidence to support it.
The fact that no convincing evidence has been produced by either the JIT or the nations using it as a vehicle to target Russia years after the incident and that the JIT itself cited “social media” as an “important part of the investigation,” further illustrates the political motivations of the team.
Mentioning the use of “social media” as evidence points toward NATO-backed propaganda platforms like Bellingcat which, again, represent “investigators” and “experts” on the payroll of and working with potential suspects in the downing of MH-17 itself.
If it would be unreasonable to place Russia at the center of such an investigation, it is likewise unreasonable to place those who benefit most from Russia being found “guilty” at the center of it as well.
… And a Familiar Lack of Motivation
Russia and any separatists it was backing in eastern Ukraine at the time had nothing to gain by shooting down a civilian airliner. At best, if separatists did launch the missile that allegedly brought down MH-17, it would have been an accident with Ukrainian military aircraft undoubtedly their intended target.
Conversely, the US and its allies had everything to gain by either allowing a civilian airliner to stray over territory knowingly putting it at risk, or shooting it down themselves as part of a false flag operation.
It is already admitted fact, even across the Western media that Ukraine failed to close airspace over eastern Ukraine. This is despite Ukraine losing several military aircraft to separatist air defenses in the weeks leading up to MH-17’s downing.
The BBC just days before the MH-17 downing would report in their July 14, 2014 article, “Ukraine military plane shot down as fighting rages,” that:
A Ukrainian military transport aircraft has been shot down in the east, amid fighting with pro-Russian separatist rebels, Ukrainian officials say.
Despite this incident and others like it leading up to the loss of MH-17, Kiev has claimed it did not believe civilian airliners would be at risk.
A Reuters article titled, “Ukraine defends not closing airspace where MH17 shot down,” would claim:
Ukraine on Tuesday defended its decision not to close airspace in the east of the country where a Malaysian passenger plane was shot down, saying it was unaware that anti-aircraft weapons were being used in the area and that planes could be under threat.
How the JIT is moving forward with a “trial” implicating Russia while Kiev’s overt negligence remains not only unpunished, but now unmentioned, further illustrates the politically motivated nature of the JIT and the nations involved.
It should be noted however that Malaysia, a member of the JIT, has (to say the least) expressed skepticism over the JIT’s latest move to begin trials implicating Russia and Ukrainian separatists.
Malaysia’s PM Doubts the JIT’s Credibility
The BBC in its article, “MH17 crash: Malaysia PM Mahathir denounces murder charges,” would note:
A day after the MH17 plane crash inquiry team announced murder charges against four men, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has condemned the decision as “ridiculous”.
The article also noted:
“From the very beginning it became a political issue on how to accuse Russia of wrongdoing,” Mr Mahathir said.
Of course, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is absolutely correct. As we’ve seen, the US and its allies accused Russia of MH-17’s downing before any investigation began, let alone any evidence was in hand. The conclusion was reached as MH-17’s wreckage still smoldered.
For the JIT, the Truth Doesn’t Matter, Just People’s Perception of it
If it is possible that Russia or separatists mistakenly identified MH-17 as a Ukrainian military aircraft (the only possible explanation if Russia or separatists were responsible) it was only because Ukraine itself intentionally left dangerous airspace its own military aircraft were being shot out of open to invite just such a disaster. They did so with every intention to politically exploit any potential tragedy to target Russia.
It is also possible that Ukraine and its US-NATO sponsors took advantage of their strategic losses on the ground and the growing tempo of lost military aircraft overhead by shooting down MH-17 themselves, also meaning that even before MH-17’s downing, they fully intended to frame Russia.
The entire “Skripal affair” follows the same pattern, complete with a crime blamed on Russia but lacking any conceivable motivation for Moscow to have carried it out. In fact, in both cases, either with the downing of a civilian aircraft at the height of separatist victories in eastern Ukraine or the alleged poisoning of the Skripals on British soil at the onset of the Russian-hosted World Cup, only Washington and London had anything to gain from either crime.
The immediate accusations made before investigations even began and the politically motivated nature of the investigations that followed, along with their predictable lack of evidence and their equally predictable conclusions only adds insult to injury for the victims of MH-17 and any notions of actual justice.
The truth and justice have been openly turned into pawns to the point of the Malaysian prime minister himself, whose nation is on the JIT, calling out this politically motivated circus for what it is.
We may never know what really happened on July 17, 2014 over eastern Ukraine because those with the power to find out have already long since decided the truth doesn’t matter. What matters is only how manipulating public perception regarding that day’s events benefits them politically, strategically and geopolitically.
With the JIT’s “trials” set to begin, their charges and trials will be cited as “evidence” Russia did it, rather than any actual evidence proving it did.
This leaves us with another example of the West’s so-called rules-based international order and maybe gives us a little more insight into why so many have lost faith in it or why it is no longer sustainable. We have to wonder though, do the people in Washington, London or Brussels stop and think about this when considering why their rules-based international order no longer inspires confidence and as it begins to fade?
Iran ‘Violates’ Nuclear Deal, After US ‘Withdraws’
By Joshua Cho | Fair | June 21, 2019
Quick question: Does the US ever break, breach or violate its international agreements?
Apparently not, according to US coverage of Iran’s recent announcement that it intended to go beyond the limits of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in enriching uranium for its civilian nuclear program (frequently mischaracterized as a nuclear weapons program in media coverage). Reading corporate media’s inversion of reality, it’s hard to escape the impression that while Iran betrays its international agreements, the US just leaves them behind.
An Associated Press report carried by USA Today (6/17/19) was headlined: “Iran Says It Will Break Uranium Stockpile Limit in 10 Days,” and reported that Iran’s announcement indicated its “determination to break from the landmark 2015 accord,” while noting that “tensions have spiked between Iran and the United States,” partly because the US “unilaterally withdrew” from the landmark agreement. Note that the US rejection of its obligations under the deal is referred to in neutral terms—Washington “withdrew”—while Iran’s response to US nonobservance gets negatively characterized as a “break”—a pattern that persists throughout the coverage.
There was no indication in the AP piece that Iran offered conditions under which it would continue to comply with the Iran Deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which gives the false impression that Iran’s decision to end compliance with the JCPOA is settled and unconditional.
The Wall Street Journal (6/17/19) offered the same kind of misleading headline: “Iran to Breach Limits of Nuclear Pact, as US to Send More Troops to the Middle East.” Again, Iran’s potential departure from the pact whose terms the US has vitiated is portrayed as a “breach,” while the US’s actual violation of the deal is labeled a “pullout” in the accompanying piece.
The Journal, unlike the AP, did note that Iran offered conditions under which it would continue to comply with the JCPOA’s terms:
The spokesman for Iran’s atomic energy agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said that by June 27—10 days from Monday—the country would surpass its enriched-uranium limits. He said Iran would further increase its production in early July, but could reverse both steps if Europe provided relief from [US] sanctions.
CNN (6/17/19) went with “Iran says it will break the uranium stockpile limit agreed under nuclear deal in 10 days,” as their headline. Only people who read past the headline, which most people don’t, would’ve known that that’s not really what Iran is saying:
Iran has reiterated that it could reverse the new measures should the remaining European signatories in the nuclear deal (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) step in and make more of an effort to circumvent US sanctions.
To its credit, CNN added “withdraw” in addition to the usual “violate,” “break” and “breach” in its list of words to describe Iran’s potential departure compared with just “withdrew” to describe the US’s actions.
The New York Post (6/17/19) chose “Iran Will Violate Nuclear Deal, Boost Uranium Stockpile” as the headline to mislead readers, and kept with the pattern of describing the US’s JCPOA breach as “pulling out of the deal.” However, unlike other reports, it didn’t feature any sources skeptical of Iran’s responsibility for the recent Gulf of Oman attacks on Japanese and Norwegian commercial oil tankers, despite crew members aboard the Japanese Kokuka Courageous contradicting US allegations of an Iranian mine attack by claiming to have been hit by a “flying object,” and European officials calling for further investigation and urging “maximum restraint.”
The New York Times’ headline (6/17/19): “Trump Adds Troops After Iran Says It Will Breach Nuclear Deal,” not only continued the above trends by not giving any hint that Iran might not depart from the pact, and characterizing the US’s JCPOA violations as a mere “withdrawal,” it also reported on US sanctions on Iran without mentioning that the sanctions themselves are violations of international law (Guardian, 10/3/18).
The Times uncritically cited Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statements that the US is “considering a full range of options”—including military strikes—without mentioning that these would be violations of international law because they go against UN Security Council Resolution 1887, which requires peaceful resolutions to disputes regarding nuclear issues, in accordance with the UN Charter and the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which both the US and Iran are parties to.
In fact, virtually all coverage fails to address the JCPOA in light of the NPT, because none of it challenges the legitimacy of the US’s prerogative to impose limits on Iran’s civilian nuclear program to begin with. Article IV of the NPT supports the “inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” in accordance with Articles I and II forbidding the transfer and receiving of nuclear weapons from nuclear-weapon states.
FAIR (10/17/17) has observed that corporate media frequently attribute malicious intentions to Official US Enemies without going through the bother of presenting evidence. Iran is often accused of sneakily plotting to develop nuclear weapons, the way US ally Israel actually did when it built the only nuclear weapons arsenal in the Middle East (Guardian, 1/15/14).
This is ironic, because Iran has actually been a consistent leader in the nuclear disarmament movement. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, when Iran was the chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, critiqued the JCPOA because it didn’t go far enough to ensure peace in the Middle East by not establishing a Nuclear Weapons–Free Zone there. Iran was also one of the first countries to propose making the Middle East a NWFZ, bringing up the proposal to the UN General Assembly in 1974 (CounterPunch, 12/13/13).
Journalist Gareth Porter (Foreign Policy, 10/16/14), reporting on Iran’s little-understood theocratic system, noted that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against building any kind of WMDs in the 1990s is a formal ruling on Islamic jurisprudence, holding a legal status above mere legislation. He also pointed to Khomeini’s refusal to develop WMDs when up to 20,000 Iranians were killed by chemical weapons by then–US ally Saddam Hussein in the 1980s (Reuters, 9/16/13)—with an additional 100,000 survivors developing chronic diseases. Current US sanctions aiming to bring Iran’s “oil exports to zero” are exacerbating those chronic diseases, in addition to further strangling Iran’s economy, by restricting access to necessary medicine (Guardian, 9/2/13).
Of course, none of this can be mentioned, because it contradicts the corporate media narrative of Iran being an enemy that must be confronted, with US aggression against Iran being portrayed as defensive countermeasures (FAIR, 5/19/19, 6/6/19). For US media, Iran is the only JCPOA party with commitments that can be “breached,” “violated” or “broken,” with the US free to leave them whenever it wants to, without harming its reputation as a trustworthy party to international agreements.
Cyber sleuths responsible for Russiagate now warn of ‘Iranian hackers’
RT | June 21, 2019
Iranian hackers are threatening US computer systems, cybersecurity firms FireEye and CrowdStrike claimed just as tensions between Washington and Tehran pulled back from the brink of war.
“Really, we’re seeing increased cyber activity that seems to be focused on the West,” Adam Meyers, vice president of Intelligence at CrowdStrike, told Politico. “In early June, mid-June is when it really started to kick off.”
Ben Read, senior cyber-espionage analyst at FireEye, confirmed the timeline and told the paper that the latest campaign is led by a government-connected Iranian hacker group known as APT33 or “Refined Kitten.”
Wired magazine carried a story on Thursday also alleging Iranian attacks, based on information from CrowdStrike and another firm, Dragos – this time targeting the US Department of Energy with phishing emails pretending to come from the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
“The Department of Energy is aware of the reports of APT33 activity and for security reasons we do not comment on current cyber activity directed at the Department’s networks,” the agency said in a statement.
CrowdStrike is the contractor that accused Russia of hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016. Federal investigators just took their word for it, never actually examining the DNC computers.
FireEye also accused Russia of trying to hack Democrats, this time during the 2018 midterms. The firm also picked Hillary Clinton – of the private email server in attic fame – as the keynote speaker at their upcoming cybersecurity conference in October.
Allegations of Iranian cyber-warfare came as almost everyone in Washington expected some form of US military action against Tehran following the shooting down of a US spy drone over the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday.
A shooting war seemed to have been avoided in the nick of time, however, with President Trump saying on Friday that he changed his mind about a “disproportionate” response just minutes before the operation was underway.
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From the Archives
How the occupied mentality syndrome works
Saudi Arabia on the American chessboard – Part 3
By B. J. Sabri | American Herald Tribune | June 27, 2016
Read part 2: “The occupied mentality Syndrome“
Previously I argued whether Saudi Arabia’s repeated involvements in U.S. interventions and wars stem from free national will or in response to a specific condition. For starters, in Saudi Arabia there is no national will. In Saudi Arabia, the national will is the will of the Al Saud clan. Still, when a major Arab state allies itself with a superpower that committed unspeakable crimes against humanity in almost every Arab country, then something is wrong. This fact alone should compel us to examine the U.S.-Saudi relation for one exceptional reason. As a result of the U.S.-Saudi wars, hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia have lost their lives. Millions became displaced in their own homelands. And millions more rendered refugees.
Attributing the Saudi policies to the bonds of “partnership” with the U.S. is frivolous. There are no bonds between these two thugs except those of business, military deals, secret plots, and wars. Proving this point, bonds such as these have no space for the American and Saudi peoples to share significant cultural or societal exchanges. If partnership is not the reason for the Saudi contribution to the U.S. strategy of empire and imperialism, then another reason must exist.
This leads to three possibilities. … continue
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