A pseudonymous BBC reporter calling himself Charlie Walsham has written a brilliant exposé in the Spectator about the pro-lockdown bias of his colleagues. Here’s how it begins:
I have been a BBC journalist for many years, and in that time I have been committed to impartiality and the corporation’s Reithian values to inform and educate. My despair about the BBC’s one-sided coverage of the pandemic though has been steadily growing for some time. And in early December, as I listened to a BBC radio broadcast, I felt the corporation reach a new low.
During a morning phone-in show on 5Live the topic of discussion was Covid jabs and whether they should be mandated, or if punitive action should be taken against those who refuse them, such as imposing lockdowns on the unvaccinated. Setting aside the fact that these authoritarian measures are now considered a matter for breezy debate, I at least expected a balanced discussion.
This was wishful thinking on my part, as ‘Michael from Birmingham’ – a caller – was about to find out. Michael told the host he hadn’t been vaccinated because he didn’t trust ‘the data’ and cited historic incidents of documented corporate malfeasance by pharmaceutical giants to explain why he was concerned. Now you may disagree with Michael, or think him completely deluded, but he was still a person who had genuine fears about the vaccine and its safety. Yet instead of holding a reasoned debate with his concerned caller, the host immediately lost his temper, talked over Michael, implied he was a flat-earther and then muted him entirely.
It was an interaction that goes to the very heart of the dismal failure of BBC News. I have been working at BBC News throughout the Covid era and have witnessed how the insatiable demands of the 24-hour news cycle have exacerbated a serious and protracted crisis. I have also seen how any attempt at balance has been abandoned in favour of supporting and promoting Covid restrictions.
The downhearted journalist began to feel a bit better in the run-up to July 19th, but the reaction to the Omicron variant has plunged him back into despair.
As ‘Freedom Day’ beckoned in July this year, I began to feel less downbeat about the BBC. Sure, BBC News outlets continued to invite an army of Covid zealots onto the airwaves, all of whom seemed to call for restrictions to continue indefinitely. But I thought the end of the pandemic might be in sight. Most of my BBC colleagues are good, well-meaning people. Perhaps senior managers and editors were guilty only of a form of noble cause corruption, trying their best during an unprecedented health crisis to help keep the public safe. Maybe the BBC had done nothing fundamentally wrong and I was the one who was overreacting.
But this winter has seen a rise in infections again, and inevitably there have been renewed calls for the country to lock down to protect our health service. No one knows how bad the Omicron wave will be and it might just be that only a lockdown can prevent the NHS being overwhelmed this winter. But the national broadcaster should surely feature both sides of the debate and not just relentlessly make the case for further restrictions while ignoring the toll they have on our society.
The BBC insists that it has “covered the pandemic with great care and in detail, which is what people expect of the BBC and it is why we have seen record audiences coming to us throughout, both in the UK and around the world”. But there are signs that the corporation is once again failing in this critical function. The BBC News website now almost constantly features the ‘Live’ number of coronavirus cases. “Two vaccine doses don’t stop you catching Omicron” read a headline last week, as if this was somehow remarkable – totally ignoring the fact that double-jabbed BBC staff had been succumbing to Covid for months, long before Omicron reared its head.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: In spite of the BBC churning out pro-lockdown propaganda 24/7, the public are generally content with the current level of restrictions and don’t want them to be ratcheted up. That was the finding of Kekst CNC, as reported in today’s Sunday Times: “58% of people oppose closing all pubs and restaurants, while 60% oppose a ban on household meetings over Christmas.
You can read a detailed breakdown of this polling in a Twitter thread by Kekst CNC head James Johnson here. And worth bearing in mind that this is an online poll so is almost certainly exaggerating support for further restrictions due to pro-social bias, as described by Mike Hearn in this piece.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I have a niggling worry about the entire conflict. I’ve mentioned this before, but why hasn’t Putin made public The Great Reset? He certainly has nothing to lose. I see only three possible reasons:
1. He doesn’t know about it
2. It doesn’t exist
3. He is complicit
1) is virtually impossible given his surveillance network and close connections with the WEF. 2) is virtually impossible given everything that’s happened and everything we know. So that leaves 3) and that is a deeply disturbing thought.
I agree and maybe your analysis is correct. Without a doubt something is niggling me about this war and it all stems from the timing. Just as most countries necessarily were easing up on the Scamdemic along comes this war to provide the plebs with another distraction.
Something is not right.
How about a fourth possibility, that – having been comprehensively briefed on it – Putin considers The Great Reset irrelevant because very unlikely to succeed ?
A) Ukraine was neither a member of NATO nor in the direct process of joining it when the Russian Federation invaded.
B) In any case the Putin regime never genuinely believed that NATO represented any sort of military threat to Russia.
If it did it clearly would not have invaded the NATO-aligned Ukraine, thus offering the alliance the perfect excuse to go to Ukraine’s defence / enter into a war with Russia under UN Article 51.
C) This Russian claim has no more legitimacy than if the similarly tyrannical and expansionist Nazi regime had stated in the late 1930s that if Poland even thought about entering into a defensive pact with Britain and France then Germany had a right to invade.
Like all of the Russian propagandist stories regarding its naked act of unilateral military aggression on 24 February 2022, the NATO excuse collapses upon the briefest of examinations.
And all you are left with is indeed early modern Tsarist or USSR style imperialism.
Regarding A), I will quote a previous article of mine:
Plus, I already noted that “whether Ukraine eventually joined NATO is less important than the fact it was in a close military alliance with the US”.
Regarding B), Putin did believe NATO represented a threat to Russia. In his Feburary 21st speech, he explicitly states, “Ukraine joining NATO is a direct threat to Russia’s security”. This comports with the memo William Burns sent to Condoleezza Rice in 2008:
Regarding C), whether Russia’s claims have “legitimacy” is a matter of judgement. If you believe that powerful states should never be able to make demands of their neighbours, you will regard it as illegitimate. And that’s a perfectly reasonable viewpoint. Of course, it implies that a lot of Western foreign policy is illegitimate too. However, it’s also kind of irrelevant.
The thing that matters is what you do when a powerful state makes demands of its neighbours. The West could have gone to war with Russia over Ukraine, just as it went to war with Hitler when he invaded Poland. (Although note that we didn’t go to war when the Soviet Union invaded Finland.) This might have led to Russia withdrawing or being decisively defeated. However, it could just as easily have led to a major conflict involving China, or even nuclear war. I think the proposal outlined by John Mearsheimer – of turning Ukraine into a prosperous, neutral country – made much more sense.
I think the proposal outlined by John Mearsheimer – of turning Ukraine into a prosperous, neutral country – made much more sense.
In 2014, Putin used the so-called Russian separatists as cover for the annexation of the Krim. Now, he’s in the process of permanently disconnecting these two provinces (and – if possible – an unrelated swathe of Ukrainian territory in the north) from Ukraine. Unless he dies before this happens and a future Russian government changes coures, the remaining parts of Ukraine will follow in due course. That’s the exact strategy the tsars already used to conquer this (enormously huge and mostly empty) area: Occupy it piece by piece until nothing is left.
The whole ‘NATO threat’ excuse is most likely to be pure deception.
Actions speak louder than words, and by progressively attacking Ukraine – beginning with the annexation of Crimea then intervention in the Donbass civil war and culminating in the outright invasion of February 2022 – Russia knew that it was positively inviting a military response from the US and UK (legal guarantors of Ukraine’s security via the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, ironically like the Russia Federation itself) plus any other combination of the world’s armed forces (including the whole of NATO) through UN Article 51.
Not exactly the behaviour of a fearful nation.
The thing that matters is what you do when a powerful state makes demands of its neighbours. The West could have gone to war with Russia over Ukraine, just as it went to war with Hitler when he invaded Poland. (Although note that we didn’t go to war when the Soviet Union invaded Finland.) This might have led to Russia withdrawing or being decisively defeated. However, it could just as easily have led to a major conflict involving China, or even nuclear war. I think the proposal outlined by John Mearsheimer – of turning Ukraine into a prosperous, neutral country – made much more sense.
I was purely challenging Russia’s false excuses for the invasion, not pointing to possible solutions.
Ultimately we need to work towards a disarmed and cooperative world, which in turn means the dismantling of the inherently violent and conflict-prone nation-state system (with totalitarian and non-democratic systems such as Russia and China representing the greatest barrier to this sort of progress). And to pre-empt a frequent misinterpretation of this approach it is most certainly not a call for world government, quite the opposite – violence and coercion based governance is the problem, not solution.
If you can bear it, I’d highly recommend Oliver Stone’s Putin Interviews. This was 2017, and Putin explains exactly why from a strategic and security viewpoint, Russia cannot allow NATO to operate in Ukraine. They feel encircled. I know this wouldn’t change your mind about the legitimacy of the intervention, but it does show that security, rather than imperial ambitions are the motivating factor. Also, why did Russia decline DPR and LPR in their attempts to join the Federation?
I think the author makes some good points but the problem seems to be Putin himself. He is keen to show that he has maintained his physical fitness regardless of advancing age and he is at a point in his life where he wants to leave a legacy – male ego.
Is this invasion part of his personal ambition or is it a reaction to having a possible NATO aligned country in Russia’s underbelly in much the way that Cuba in 1962 was in the USA’s underbelly?
I know these two notions are not seemingly huge when viewed from a distance but to Putin and his potential legacy, it may be a significant issue to be gained at any cost ….. and he can!
I have already watched this interview in which Oliver Stone allowed President Putin to present his propagandist world view and agenda (including regarding ‘NATO encirclement’) with no serious challenges.
There is another very revealing video in which Stone himself is interviewed by Lex Fridman, who really pushed the film director as to why he is default sceptical about US / Western leaders’ claims, but took those of Vladimir Putin on face value. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov567pDEMEM
Mr Stone replied that he did try to check out some of the Russian President’s statements when he got back to America, but found that all the books about him were negatively biased and hence unreliable.
In other words he made the basic journalistic, academic and general research error of turning to opinion pieces rather than primary sources, which are the only route toward genuine fact checking.
If Oliver Stone had even glanced at original documents, film footage etc he would have found that (as just one example) the claim that there was a US-led violent coup in Ukraine in 2014 is a complete fabrication.
Quite the opposite, it was the Russian-backed President Yanukovich who attempted to violently overthrow the democratic Ukrainian constitution by denying both his own and the Parliament’s overwhelming democratic mandate to form an economic partnership with the EU then brutally suppressing (at least originally) entirely peaceful protest.
He was then legally and constitutionally removed from office by a vote of 328 to 0 by Ukrainian MPs and fled to Russia.
No coup (again other than a failed Russian one).
Ukraine used to be part of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth which got eliminated in the course of the three Polish partitions. Consequently, almost all of Poland is exactly as Russian as Ukraine. Poland actually reconquered some parts of it after the first world war. This was later again corrected by Stalin who – as per his usual policy – also made sure he got rid of the Poles living there. Consequently, if there’s anybody who currently has a historic claim to this territory, it would be Poland.
As far as I’m aware the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth didn’t hold any territory adjacent to the Black Sea, and certainly never Crimea, which strikes me as very clearly both historically and demographically Russian rather than Ukrainian.
That’s because Crimea was part of another country Russia annexed around the time of the 3rd Polish partition (Crimean Chanate). It’s nowadays demographically Russian because – who would have guessed that! – Stalin deported the original inhabitants so there’s basically nothing left except a huge, Russian naval base and the supporting civilian infrastructure (mirroring the situation in the northern half of East Prussia, by the way).
I thought they bought Crimea from the Ottomans.
Are you claiming that the population of Crimea wasn’t majority Russian well before Stalin’s time?
But I’m glad you accept that the P-L Commonwealth never had Black Sea territory and that Crimea isn’t in any way Ukrainian.
I never wrote that Crimea was part of the Polish-Ukrainian commonwealth, hence, I didn’t accept the opposite of it. Apart from that, for reasonably undisputed history, Wikipedia is a great source of information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Khanate
Noah Carl under the impression he can determine imponderables again. Look Noah, you simply can’t know the motives of men for sure. You are not Putin and you do not know it is because he was concerned about NATO expansion. You can never, ever, ever be proven right or wrong so it gets a bit tedious that you get so het up about it and it says more about you than any surety or knowledge in the matter.
Russian Orthodox Church SANCTIONED as Rightwing Converts SURGE!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCfeRdCM21Y
Dr. Steve Turley
This is your “Conservative” Government doing this in Britain.
Stand for freedom & make friends with our Yellow Boards By The Road
Tuesday 21st June 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
A329 Peel Centre
Skimped Hill Lane,
Bracknell RG12 1EN
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Henley
Mills Meadows (bandstand) RG9 1DS
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
A interesting debate for all of us sitting many miles from the action.
But how are we to know the real motivations of “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,”?
The truth is that, particularly from this distance, comfortably seated, we cannot know
We can only infer.
But what do those close to the action say?
The Baltic states are in no doubt as to Russia’s long term goals, that they are on Russia’s ‘little list’.
Finland and Sweden are also in no doubt, moving from age old neutrality towards membership of NATO.
We also have the example of the invasion of Crimea. What was the motivation for that? To keep NATO at bay? Clearly not. It was simply the beginning of an extended drama still playing out in front of our disbelieving eyes, and set to run and run.
Russian motivations for the invasion of Crimea? The federalisation of Ukraine. Why? So that the Russian satellite regions can veto EU membership. How do we know this? Because Russia has used that model in Moldova; border disputes, Russian troops in Transnistria, preventing Moldovan membership of the EU, even though Moldova has already committed itself to not joining NATO.
And what can we infer from Putin’s utterances themselves?
”It’s impossible — Do you understand? — impossible to build a fence around a country like Russia. And we do not intend to build that fence.’ 10 June 22
We have also been told of Russia’s intention to secure a route through Ukraine to Transnistria by Russia’s Central Military District Commander, Maj. Gen. Rustam Minnekaev 27 Apr 22
And, before that, Putin set out, in his own newspaper, RIA Novosti, 04 April 22, the real reason for his invasion of Ukraine:
‘….the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.’
‘Nazi Ukraine will be eradicated, but including, and above all, Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration’
Putin is, quite simply, a totalitarian dictator intent on subjugating a neighbouring capitalist democracy whose liberal values appear a great deal more attractive to the youth of his nation than his own stifling organs, agencies, of autocratic, plutocratic, state control.
A thriving Ukraine, once it becomes a member of the European Union, threatens Putin’s vision of a reconstituted USSR
We can infer this from what his planning documents tell us, plain as day:
‘While the 9th Directorate of the FSB’s Fifth Service Department for Operational Information prepared for the occupation of Ukraine from July 2021, the 11th Unit of the Department for Operational Information, responsible for Moldova, was assessing plans for the next round of operations under the direction of Major General Dmitry Milyutin. In November 2020, the FSB’s strategic objective in Moldova was to bring about ‘The full restoration of the strategic partnership between Moldova and the Russian Federation’.
And from what Putin himself has said:
‘When President Putin set out his reasons for invading Ukraine in a televised address, he described how the Soviet Union had been broken up by ‘a truly fatal document, the so-called ethnic policy of the party in modern conditions’. Putin described how by empowering the constituent nationalities of the USSR, ‘It is now that radicals and nationalists, including and primarily those in Ukraine, are taking credit for having gained independence. As we can see, this is absolutely wrong. The disintegration of our united country was brought about by the historic, strategic mistakes on the part of the Bolshevik leaders and the CPSU leadership…’ As hinted at here by Putin, the consequence of this mistake – which his policy in Ukraine aimed to correct – was not restricted to Ukraine but also encompassed Belarus, Moldova and the Baltic states.’
RUSI: ‘The death throes of an imperial delusion’
So there you have it, fall out from the Great War of 1914/18 still rocking our world in 2022, NATO only relevant in the sense that it too is a product of that conflict, or perhaps what history may very well judge to have been part two of that conflict, and the invasion of Ukraine part four or five or part think of your favourite number……..to be continued…….
This article is plain wrong headed on many levels. Fundamentally it does not consider the fundamental elephant in the room that Putin is a dictator and power through violence and expansion is his driving force.
read the article by Sasha Lensky in The Spectator to see what Russians dreamed of in the early nineties but had it all taken away by the drunkard Yeltsin leaving Putin in charge.
NATO is merely the military alliance of The West required still because of Putin. No Putin, no NATO.
NATO countries do not want to conquer Russia or China or Colonise anywhere. Rather we dream as indeed do enlightened citizens of Russia and China et al of a world of free speech, libertarian countries, trading and visiting each other at Will with democratically elected and accountable governments.
Thats all.