Tag: channel 4 news

“Liberation” & the false flag thesis: The west’s collusion with Islamist terrorism

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By Daniel Margrain

Image result for pics of boris johnson with saudis

On September 16, 2013, the UN published its evidence in response to the claim that president Bashar al-Assad of Syria used chemical weapons in an attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Based on interviews with US intelligence and military insiders, Seymour Hersh, the journalist who revealed the role the United States played in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, was unequivocal in his assertion that the incident on August 21, 2013, was a false flag attack that was exploited politically by Obama in an attempt to deceive the world in making a cynical case for war.

This assertion was supported in April, 2016, by former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, who argued that the Turkish government, at the behest of Washington, engineered the chemical attacks in Ghouta in order to draw the United States into Syria. McGovern stressed that one of the Turkish journalists who exposed Turkey’s involvement in the alleged false flag attack has (as part of president Erdogan’s crackdown on independent journalism), been imprisoned and charged with treason.

Journalist Serena Shim‘s sources in the Southern Turkish province of Hatay appeared to corroborate the false flag thesis. The journalist cited local activists who claimed al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front insurgents transported chemical weapons to Syria from Turkey.

In its report entitled, The Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in the Ghouta Area, the UN did not, as the majority of the corporate media claimed, blame the Syrian president for the August 21, 2013 attack. One day after the incident, on August 22, 2013, the Guardian claimed there was not “much doubt” that Assad was to blame.

In an article for the same paper almost four years later (April 5, 2017), Jonathan Freedland, echoed the near-consensus view among the corporate mass media that Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad’s government was responsible for another alleged chemical gas atrocity, this time in Idlib province in the north of the country the previous day (April 4, 2017):

“We almost certainly know who did it. Every sign points to the regime of Bashar al-Assad”, he said.

What these ‘signs’ are were not specified in the article. Since the alleged attack over three months ago, there has not been a single piece of independently verifiable evidence that has been presented which alludes to Assad’s guilt.

Channel 4 News

Channel 4 News markets itself as a high grade impartial news broadcaster. On October 4, 2016, reporter, Krishnan Guru-Murthy described a rebel (Jihadist terrorist) “victory” in east Aleppo as “rebels fighting back against the forces of President Assad”. Guru-Murthy reported the battle from the narrow perspective of al-Qaeda and it was clear from his general tone to whom he intended his viewers sympathies to be aligned with.

Guru-Murthy’s embedded report also failed to mention that – as evidenced by the logo clearly displayed on a jacket of one of the individuals featured in the film – that the self-proclaimed ‘humanitarians’ depicted were in fact White Helmets inculcated with Harakat al-Nour al-Zenki, one of 22 brigades that operate in and around Aleppo that comprise one of many U.S. State Department-funded terrorist fighters.

Finally, the Channel 4 reporter omitted to mention that a video had surfaced shortly before the broadcast of the report in which Harakat al-Nour al-Zenki members were shown abusing and then beheading a child, Abdullah Issa, from a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Aleppo. Ten weeks later, on December 21, 2016, an observant commentator, Edward Laurance, inquired of Channel 4 News why it pulled its October, 4 film: “Would be interested to know why this film has disappeared without trace”, he said.

Getting involved in Syria

According to the Pew Research Journalism Project, “the No. 1 message” on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera, is that “the U.S. should ‘get involved’ in the conflict in Syria”. Although propaganda reports from the likes of Guru-Murthy are useful in terms of getting the public partially onside, they are on their own terms insufficient. A high level of public involvement is often achieved as the result of a singularly defining propaganda image or event. In terms of the first Gulf conflict, the event in question was the infamous nurse Nayirah affair. In relation to the 2003 Iraq invasion, it was the WMD debacle, and in Libya in 2011 it was the false claims of rape said to have been committed by Libyan government troops.

The image that probably more than any other captured the public imagination in relation to Syria, was that of a small boy, Omran Daqneesh, photographed covered in dust sitting on a chair which brought a CNN anchor to tears. The pro-regime change broadcaster, Al-Jazeera, produced what was clearly another piece of theatre, albeit far less convincing, in which the news anchor struggled not to laugh out loud live on air while interviewing the absurd figure, Abdulkafi Alhamdo, against a backdrop of a sound recording of explosions. This was reminiscent of CNNs “interview” with fake reporter and Western-funded propagandist, “Danny”.

Liberation

The media propaganda intensified in late November, 2016, following the trouncing of the UK-US and Saudi funded and trained salafist mercenary terrorists by joint Kurdish-Syrian government forces. During this time, these forces began liberating vast swaths of territory in east Aleppo including the Sakhour, Haydariya and Sheikh Fares neighbourhoods.

In the wake of the liberation, at least 120 British MPs backed a petition calling for the UK government to carry out “life-saving aid drops” (euphemism for the implementation of a no fly zone) over eastern Aleppo. Among the MPs demanding the “aid drops” was Labour’s Emily Thornberry, who in the House of Commons cited the White Helmets as the justification for advocating this course of action. On the November 28, 2016 edition of Sky News, journalist Sam Kiley described the re-capture of a third of east Aleppo as a “so-called liberation”, in addition to uttering the trigger phrase “Assad regime”.

The persistent Bana myth

Kiley’s source for his ambivalent statement was Fatemah Alabed, mother of seven year old, Bana Alabed. Bana, in whose name a twitter account was set up in September, 2016, allegedly in an “unknown east Aleppo neighbourhood” – and whose tweets have consistently focused on anti-Assad and anti-Russian themes and the need to be saved from bombing – has been uncritically endorsed throughout the corporate media. Bana has garnered celebrity status, her most notable fan being the author, J K Rowling. Bana and Rowling share the same talent agent.

Bana’s mastering of English idiomatic expressions on twitter is indicative of somebody who is fluent in the language. But her prompted robotic responses to questions by Sky News presenter, Alex Crawford, clearly suggests otherwise. In addition, the various inconsistencies in Bana’s twitter feed narrative reinforce the notion that the seven year old’s account – given the number of tweets – is being run by others out of Aleppo for nefarious purposes. It’s clear that the Bana project, like the White Helmets, is an extremely well-funded propaganda operation. As Dr Barbara McKenzie puts it:

“There can be no doubt that the Bana project is a scam. The tweets are not the thoughts of a little Syrian girl wanting the world to save her from Russian bombs. Rather, they are the product of a sophisticated and well-planned operation designed to shape public perception of the Syrian and Russian operations, in order to justify Western intervention in Syria and facilitate regime change.”

Tormenting the liberated

The media strategy used to achieve this has been to depict the Russian and Syrian forces as tormentors rather than liberators. This has been the mass corporate media’s overriding narrative throughout six years of conflict. It’s an inversion of truth that also typified BBC reportage on the liberation of east Aleppo.

The truthful narrative in which 18,000 civilians in east Aleppo had been liberated by Syrian and Russian forces from their Islamist fundamentalist captors, had been twisted in the media to one in which civilians had been “forced to flee” this part of the city as a result of it being “besieged” by government troops.

This kind of false propaganda is intended to demonize the Syrian’s and Russian’s and thus give new meaning to the unfolding of events.

Mosul: The double standards

The contrast between the media coverage of the alleged killing of forty-five civilians as they fled to a safe-haven corridor in east Aleppo, on the one hand, and the subsequent coverage of atrocities committed by Western-backed Shia terrorists in Mosul, on the other, is stark. While, the devastation of Mosul was described in the media as a “liberation”, the liberation of east Aleppo by Syrian government forces was described as a “devastation”.

In east Aleppo civilians were evacuated by Syrian forces through a safe-haven corridor in order to protect them against Western-backed Sunni fundamentalists. In Mosul, Western-backed Shia fundamentalists shot civilians on mass and threw others off a cliff. Channel 4 News journalist, Jon Snow, had the audacity to smear Aleppo MP, Fares Shehabi for defending his constituents against the former (see below), while no UK minister has been challenged by Snow, or anybody else, to justify their support for the latter.

Jon Snow – an apologist for salafist beheader’s?

This fake narrative of civilians being besieged by government forces was subsequently adopted by the liberal-left’s favourite ‘pinko’ journalist, Channel 4s Jon Snow. “Interviewing” Aleppo MP, Fares Shehabi on the November 30, 2016, edition of Channel 4 News, Snow introduced Shehabi as a “regime MP” and proceeded to announce to his viewers with apparent authority, that Syrian and Russian government forces were responsible for “bombing civilians from the air with barrel bombs”, killing forty-five of them as they attempted to flee to safety.

Snow’s evidence for this was that the Al-Qaeda-Al-Nusra Front propagandists, the White Helmets, who are embedded in terrorist-held eastern Aleppo, filmed what was purported to be the aftermath of the attack. Snow’s stenography underscored his subsequent independently unverified assertion that the Syrian civilian population held in captivity by salafist terrorist obscurantists on the UN terrorist list, “do not wish to live under Mr Assad, they do not wish to live under your [Assad’s] regime, they wish to be free (note how Snow repeats the propaganda ‘trigger term’, “regime”).

Presumably, Snow was unaware of General Martin Dempsey’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in September 2014, when the latter admitted he knew “major Arab allies who fund them [ISIS].”

Or perhaps he was ignorant of the information contained within a leaked US State Department memo, dated 17 August 2014, which states that:

“We [the United States] need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIS and other radical groups in the region.”

Or lastly, maybe Snow was unaware of the direct links between John McCain and ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in whose company he has been photographed (see below). If Snow had done his research, he would have known that McCain traveled to Aleppo in May, 2013 to arrange arms shipments to al-Qaeda and ISIS and that in early November, 2015, Joe Biden admitted that the Gulf Kingdoms Washington are aligned with, are among those supporting Islamist terrorists in Syria.

Image result for pics of isis with US politicians

Leaving those rather awkward facts aside, Shehabi responded to Snow’s absurd claims by stating that Syria is not a regime “but a legitimate government fighting international terrorism.” For a population that supposedly doesn’t want to live under a president who Snow claimed was responsible for bombing them, the reaction among the 18,000 civilians who had at the time been liberated from terrorist controlled areas, belied that claim.

If the general public were to have been made aware of the significance of the jubilant scenes among the Syrian people in the aftermath of their liberation, it would have immediately brought the false propaganda perpetuated by the likes of Snow crashing down in flames.

Snow won’t settle

A snarling Snow, who must of been aware of these facts, looked on incredulously at his opposite number, the MP for Aleppo, and continuing, in no uncertain terms with his unsubstantiated allegations, stating: “Your own constituents, your own friends, have been killed by the government, flying planes, dropping barrel bombs.”

It’s inconceivable that somebody like Snow would direct a similar line of aggressive questioning to, say, French president, Macron, for speaking out against the terrorist threat posed by ISIS on the streets of Paris. But this was precisely the terrorist-apologist approach Snow undertook in relation to Mr Shehabi.

It is also unlikely that an establishment-embedded journalist like Snow would entertain the possibility that terrorists and Western-backed mercenaries, rather than Syrian government forces, could have killed forty-five civilians as part of a possible credible false flag attack.

In response to Snow’s independently unverified claim, an increasingly frustrated Shehabi, who clearly recognized that he had been set up, effectively accused Snow of being an apologist for the head-chopping salafist terrorists: “Look, if you are going to legitimize and beautify the existence of terrorist activity inside my city, you will not get any approval from me or any citizen in Aleppo”, he said.

It apparently hadn’t occurred to Snow that the rational explanation was that civilians were far more likely to have been killed by terrorist sniper fire as they approached the safe haven corridor controlled by the Syrian army, than they were by Syrian “barrel bombs”.

Seemingly undeterred, Snow continued to repeat similar soundbites to Shehabi as though the public at home watching needed to be reminded of the false propaganda one more time:

“You are the MP for Aleppo”, exclaimed Snow. “Your own constituents are dying from your own air force, and you don’t do anything about it.” He added: “You don’t seem to care a damn about your own constituents.”

Looking and sounding increasingly exasperated with Snow’s blatant one-sided line of aggressive questioning and baseless assertions, Shehabi, responded angrily: “Listen, this is absolutely false”, he retorted. “Our own civilians were being taken hostage, in the largest hostage-taking situation in the world by terrorists on the UN terrorist list.”

At this point Snow interrupted Shehabi, clearly realizing that such utterances of truth that have the potential of swaying public opinion towards the Syrian government position, cannot be tolerated by a British mainstream broadcaster. So Snow shifted the discussion towards another propaganda ‘trigger point’ – Aleppo hospitals.

Oblivious to the fact that the mainstream printed media had reported Russia’s alleged bombing of hospitals in eastern Aleppo on at least twenty separate occasions since 10 June, 2016, and that these hospitals have been turned into terrorist command centres and sniper towers, Snow snapped back at Shehabi, “Why do you bomb the hospitals in which your own constituents, your own civilians, are seeking aid to help them repair their wounds that your air force has inflicted?”, he remarked.

Shehabi, who by now seemed to be losing the will to live, exclaimed, “Your line of questioning is absurd.” On the basis of that fact alone, there would have likely been hundreds of thousands of people nodding in agreement at their TV screens.

Aleppo’s terrorist doctors

Evidence uncovered by Professor Tim Anderson, points to the fact that the Aleppo hospital claims are an imperialist smokescreen used to cover-up terrorist massacres in Syria. Dr. Hamza al-Khatib, who has been interviewed, uncritically, on Channel 4 News, after almost every alleged attack on an Aleppo hospital, was credited with filming “new pictures inside [Aleppo]” for the news broadcaster.

One of the images al-Khatib filmed for Channel 4 News was of Cardiologist, Dr. Abo Zaid.

Independent investigative journalist, John Delacour, uncovered information from the Revolutionary Forces of Syria Media Office (RES), which revealed that Zaid, as well as being a Cardiologist, is also a legal adviser to the Syrian government opposition, the FSA.

Neither this, nor the obvious conflict of interest issues that arose from images produced by al-Khatib, were explained during the Channel 4 report. When Delacour asked Chief Correspondent, Alex Thompson on twitter, the reason why viewers were presented with a deliberately under-exposed, darkened image of Zaid in his report, Thompson’s “reply” was to block him.

Inconvenient narratives or inconsistencies that independent journalists and ordinary members of the general public expose or attempt to legitimately challenge, are either shunned by many corporate journalists, or those concerned are smeared as “conspiracy theorists.” If the media were to accurately report that Syrian society is largely secular and its people unified behind their president in opposition to the mercenary terrorist forces the UK-US-Saudi governments fund and support, the entire media charade would collapse.

One of the media’s biggest lies is the notion that violent attacks against the Syrian people amounts to a “civil war” when in reality the violence is the consequence of a proxy war initiated and fueled by external mercenary forces. This is highlighted by the graphic below:

Source: Maytham

Dr Declan Hayes, who has experience on the ground in Syria, offers some additional insights:

“If this were a genuine revolution or revolt against a tyrannical regime, the sort of despots one gets in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait or Turkey, one would expect most Syrian moderates to support it. Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, to take one pertinent example, famously had the support of the shopkeepers, hawkers and students of Tehran who ended up sending the Shah, his secret police and their toadies scuttling for American-supplied bolt holes overseas.

Whatever its rights or wrongs, Iran’s Islamic Revolution had widespread support, as do Bahrain’s moderate protesters, who brave the henchmen of Saudi Arabia every time they protest against that truly autocratic regime. Moderate Alawites, Shias or Christians cannot support the Syrian insurgents as all the rebels are agreed that the Alawites and Shias must be exterminated and the Christians driven into exile, if they are not first also exterminated. All of Syria’s Christian leaders support, implicitly at least, the government of the Syrian Arab Republic, not least because, a few token rebels apart, there is no area in rebel-held Syria where they can openly practice their religion or live without perpetual fear.”

Hayes continued:

“Nor is there anywhere the moderate rebels control that Christians and other minorities can be safe from kidnapping by these same moderates, who will then sell them on to their more violent partners in crime, in much the same way the moderate rebels sold on the Ma’lulah nuns and the two American journalists who were recently beheaded. There is, in short, no way Syria’s Christians, Shias or Alawites, who do not have a death wish, can support the moderate rebels.”

The British government support the mercenary forces and terror organisations of the kind outlined by Hayes to the tune of £2.3 billion – a sum that is channeled into propaganda campaigns. Conservative estimates suggest that many countries and regions have handed over at least £100m to the White Helmets, alone. 

Interwoven web

The existence of a complex interwoven web that connects the various government departments, NGOs, opposition groups and activists with the corporate media, facilitate and amplify the propaganda in order to help achieve the ultimate objective of regime change in Syria. The evidence outlined by Barbara McKenzie is compelling:

“The role played by the British Foreign Office and other government departments in the unremitting propaganda against the Syrian government is unquestionable. The British government is determinedly pursuing its policy of regime change in Syria, and sees gaining public acceptance of that policy through propaganda that demonises the Syrian government and glorifies the armed opposition as essential to achieving that goal.”

The propaganda effort was stepped-up after the government failed to persuade parliament to support military action against the Assad government. In the autumn of 2013, the UK embarked on behind-the-scenes work to influence the course of the war by shaping perceptions of opposition fighters. It was during this time that the media narrative in which Islamist extremist beheaders were described as “Jihadists” and “terrorists” began to shift to the more benign terms, “rebels” and “Syrian opposition”.

McKenzie notes that the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), working with the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office and the Prime Minister’s Office formed contracts companies for the express purpose of creating “targeted information” in relation to the war on Syrian. In effect, the British government is funding a comprehensive top of the range advertising campaign to promote sectarian extremists in Syria who function as units of al-Qaeda and ISIS.

This involves the production of videos, photos, military reports, radio broadcasts, print products and social media posts branded with the logos of fighting groups by contractors hired out by the Foreign Office and overseen by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The nature and extensive reach of the state outlined is what is meant by the military-industrial complex or Deep State. Established broadcast media like Channel 4 News which, as discussed above, deliberately frames its reports and interviews based on compromised sources, is deeply embedded in the Deep State.

Lack of credibility

The lack of credibility of Channel 4 News reportage is, of course, not unique to them. The BBC have upped the ante. Having gone to great lengths at the tax payers expense to promote their regime change agenda, the organisation who are embedded with Ahrar Al-Sham terrorists, produced a far more elaborate form of state propaganda as part of their Panorama documentary strand.

An episode of Panorama entitled “Saving Syria’s Children”, which purported to depict the aftermath of a chemical weapons attack, and was released just before the crucial vote by the Commons on the government’s request to go to war with Syria, was an elaborately staged piece that was probably planned for months, possibly even years, in advance. The “documentary” has been meticulously critiqued by independent researcher, Robert Stuart. 

I alerted the post-satirist television producer, Victor Lewis-Smith, to Stuarts work. Convinced of the veracity of Stuart’s case, Lewis-Smith confronted BBC executives with an ultimatum. He insisted that unless he be handed the unedited rushes to Saving Syria’s Children, he would tear up his BBC contract.

Having failed to fulfill their part of the bargain, Lewis-Smith followed through on his promise, evidence of which he filmed. Lewis-Smith then contacted Stuart with a view to collaborating on the possible production of a crowdfunded documentary examining the issues surrounding Saving Syria’s Children, the plans of which have yet to be finalised.

Dr Saleyha Ahsan

The Saving Syria’s Children production team were assisted in the hoax by a willing cast of actors among whom was Dr Saleyha Ahsan, executive with Syrian ‘charity’ Hand in Hand – a propaganda front for the Syrian opposition. Robert Stuart revealed that Ahsan, who claims to be an humanitarian, is in fact closely connected to ‘revolutionary’ elements opposed to president Assad’s rule.

Ahsan, a BBC TV presenter and doctor, was the first female Muslim commissioned in the British army. In her previous role she provided arms and logistics assistance to the Libyan rebels. While based in Benghazi, Ahsan removed photos from her Facebook page, in which she was shown smiling alongside anti-Assad armed Jihadist groups, after Stuart raised the issue in his twitter page articles.

According to Moeen Raoof, the BBC presenter trained al-Qaeda affiliates in the UK in the use of arms and battlefield first aid. In addition, Raoof claims she assisted British Islamist Jihadists travelling out to Syria in road convoys that comprised second-hand British ambulances. Prior to assisting and training these Islamist terrorists, Raoof claims Ahsan met in London with one of the lead negotiators on Libya in the UN Security Council, Reza Afshar, who contributed to the passing of UNSCR-1973 that led to NATO action during 2011. Afshar is also head of UK FCO with responsibility for Syria Policy.

Shortly after the meeting, Ahsan is said to have proceeded to Turkey where it is alleged she received several containers from Kenya. These containers, ostensibly medical equipment, operating theatre equipment, medicines and other related equipment, were allegedly packed with weapons. Once cleared, the containers were shipped out to the Turkey-Syria Border town of Gazientep and handed-over to rebels who used the weapons to hold on to towns, cities and regions.

The organizers of the much hyped “People’s Convoy”, led by Ahsan, which set off for the Turkish-Syrian border a week before Christmas, 2016, has been less than transparent about the convoy. On December 23, 2016 the Telegraph revealed the conviction of a terrorist sympathizer who had allegedly infiltrated another “aid convoy” whose aim was to funnel cash to al-Qaeda members.

One would think that the highly dubious credentials of Ahsan that both Raoof and Stuart exposed – which include gun-running and Jihadist activities – would be cause for concern for not only the state broadcaster that prides itself on its supposed impartiality, but would also ring alarm bells for the UK security services. On the contrary, the former were only too willing to give publicity to the “People’s Convoy to Syria” that Ahsan partly led.

On March 29, 2014, Robert Stuart filed a report to the Metropolitan Police regarding the activities of Ahsan and other contentious issues, but at the time of writing the authorities have failed to follow up on the report. It would appear that the publicity generated as a result of the arrest and conviction of relatively small-fry Islamist terrorist instigators is intended to divert the public’s attention away from the far more significant players.

Meanwhile, the deaths of innocent people that result from these actions by way of blow back is presumably a price the establishment regard as worth paying in order to ensure that their broader geopolitical objectives are achieved. A key part of the establishments agenda is to not only defend human assets on their payroll, but to discredit their opponents.

Exposed

What the secrecy surrounding Syria’s Children exposes, are the lengths to which the corporate-political establishment, in collusion with the national state broadcaster and terrorists tied to al-Qaeda, are prepared to go in their efforts to dupe the public into supporting the case for illegal war. But more than that, it raises serious questions about the wider role both the BBC and UK intelligence services play in the conduct of the so-called war on terror.

The revelation, for example, that the Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi, was known by MI5 to have been part of a North African-based cell of ISIS “plotting to strike a political target in the UK”, contradicts PM Theresa May’s assertion that Abedi acted as a “lone wolf”.

It also adds to the suspicion that operatives are being used by the Deep State to foment terrorist acts in Britain in order to perpetuate the cycle of tit-for-tat violence as the justification for the continuation of endless war.

Whatever the truth, blow-back is an inevitable consequence resulting from evidence which points to “UK covert and overt action in the region in alliance with states [who are] consistently supplying arms to terrorist groups.” In fact:

“Agencies of the British government have, in some senses, become part of the broader ‘terrorist network’ with which the British public is now confronted…Without these actions – by Britain and its close allies – it is conceivable that Abedi might well not have had the opportunity to become radicalised in the way he did.”

Regardless of whether the suspicion ultimately has its basis in conspiracy or cock up, the UK government cannot seriously deny the credibility underlying former M15 Director General Eliza Manningham-Buller’s assertion that wars of aggression increase the terrorist threat.

Breakdown of funds

The latest manifestation of government secrecy and possible media collusion that is likely to invoke blow-back, concerns the refusal by the Home Office to provide a breakdown of funds donated to Islamist terrorist organisations, many of which are arguably linked to Saudi Arabia, who use their “charitable status” as a way of increasing their revenue streams.

On July 12, 2017, Home Secretary Amber Rudd refused to issue a full report into the nature of the funding. Instead, the government published an edited summary. The reports full exposure would have revealed the extent of UK-Saudi links to extremist Islamist groups.

It can safely be assumed that the Tory cover-up also extends to UK government links to “charities”, CEOs and other UK and Syrian-based organisations that fund terrorism – and and in some cases are terrorists – inside Syria such as Hand in Hand and the White Helmets. Indeed the Telegraph conceded as far back as October 4, 2013, that charity cash “was going to Syrian terror groups.”

This was reiterated, and added to, by Vanessa Beeley who stated on the July 17, 2017 edition of UK Column:

“The UK government through UK Aid is funding and sponsoring a number of NGOs and charities that are fundamentally supplying the terrorist factions inside Syria. So the UK government is actually creating, funding, supporting and promoting the NGOs it then accuses its own public of funding terrorism through.”

Because of the lack of funding transparency, the government could, in theory through a “charity” like the Jo Cox Fund, implicate the British people in the funding of terrorism inside Syria as a means of diffusing and deflecting their own culpability.

Beeley goes on to point out that a high proportion of funding to Syrian terrorists from the UK is channeled from the Foreign Office’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund through International Diplomat, an organisation that was set up by former Foreign Office employee, Carne Ross, in 2004:

“The funding goes from ID into the White Helmets and the Syrian opposition in order to destabilize Syria and to affect regime change.” 

On June, 2013, former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas claimed that Britain had been planning war on Syria “two years before the Arab spring” which was to involve the organizing of an invasion of rebels into the country. “This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned”, he said.

Who can seriously deny that the goal of the political and media establishment in Syria is to secure yet another illegal and immoral middle east resource grab?

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Killing them softly

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By Daniel Margrain

The 30 minute documentary film Killing Us Softly (1979) based on a lecture by Jean Kilbourne focuses on the effects of advertising on women’s self-image and the objectification of women’s bodies. Kilbourne argues that the superficial, objectifying and unreal portrayal of women in advertising lowers women’s self-esteem and that sexualized images of women are being used to sell virtually all kinds of goods.

Kilbourne then goes on to posit that these images degrade women, encourage abuse, and reinforce a patriarchal and sexist society. She also makes the connection between advertising and pornography, stating that “the advertisers are America’s real pornographers”.

Below is a video of Jean Kilbourne almost four decades later discussing her ideas as part of a campaign to bring her film to a new audience of young people. Significantly, she says since her film’s initial release in 1979 things have got worse, not better.

Thirty-six years after the release of Killing Us Softly, Channel 4 News reported on the inquest of 21 year old bulimia sufferer Eloise Perry who on the April 12 last year died at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital one week after having swallowed eight unlicensed fat-burning pills that she purchased from the internet.

The pills, which the Food Standards Agency describe as being illegal to sell for human consumption, contained DNP which is an industrial chemical historically used in the manufacture of explosives and fungicides. Website companies who sell this chemical depict DNP as a fat burning product and some even use the tag line “getting leaner through chemistry” as a marketing tool.

No sooner had the UK authorities made attempts to close down these sites, they reappeared under different names and hence it’s clearly a battle that they are losing. The fact that informed young people like Ms Parry who are aware of the risks, are so desperate to lose weight that they are prepared to go to such extreme lengths raises wider questions about the nature of the kind of society we live in.

The social pressures for young women (and increasingly young men) to conform to certain expectations placed upon them by the media are immense. The upshot is that they are involved in a constant psychological battle between myth and reality. In Britain, for example, the average size of a woman is now 16 but the ‘aspirational’ size is zero – an unobtainable goal.

The contradiction between reality and aspiration is undermining many of the gains that women made in the feminist debates of the 1960s and 1970s. What Ariel Levi terms “raunch culture” is another symptom of the undermining of the gains made.

A tour by High Street Honey’s that involves women employed by lads mags touring the various university campuses throughout the country dressed as porn stars, is yet another social layer as part of the pressure for young women to conform to certain body-image stereotypes placed upon them.

The notion that pole dancing which is sold as exercise classes at some universities and widely regarded as being empowering for women in terms of getting them in touch with their inner sexuality, is in reality, setting back women’s rights decades. Activities like this inhibit the way women (and increasingly men) feel about their bodies and therefore they cannot be disentangled from the tragic case of Ms Parry.

The normalization of sexist imagery in pop videos and television commercials and the sexualization of young girls clothes is another illustration of raunch culture outlined by Levi in which fantasies, desires and ambitions are transformed into commodities to make money.

The growth in cosmetic surgery is another factor that increases expectations on women’s appearances. Ninety-one per cent of cosmetic surgery is undertaken on women of which the most popular is breast enhancement. I was astounded to learn that in the U.S it’s widely considered normal practice for girls to be given a breast enlargement as a graduation present.

It’s a fact that a growing number of girls who suffer low self-esteem perpetuated by a media system that constantly portrays an ‘ideal’ body shape is a tendency that’s less common in the developing world.

This would seem to suggest that mental illness, of which eating disorders are a reflection, is to a large extent symptomatic of the growth of the consumerist capitalist society in which human relations are objectified. In Marxist terms, objectification is the process by which human capacities are transferred to an object and embodied in it.

Young females who read fashion magazines tend to have more bulimic symptoms than those females who do not – further demonstrating the impact the media has on the likelihood of developing the disorder. As J. Kevin Thompson and Eric Stice have shown, individuals first accept and ‘buy into’ the ideals set by fashion magazines, and then attempt to transform themselves in order to reflect the societal ideals of attractiveness.

The thin fashion model ideal is then reinforced by the wider media reflecting unrealistic female body shapes leading to high levels of discomfort among large swaths of the female population and the drive towards thinness that this implies.

Consequently, body dissatisfaction coupled with a drive for thinness is thought to promote dieting and its negative affects, which could eventually lead to bulimic symptoms such as purging or binging. Binges lead to self-disgust which causes purging to prevent weight gain.

Thompson’s and Stice’s research  highlights the extent to which the media affect what they term the “thin ideal internalization”. The researchers used randomized experiments (more specifically programmes) dedicated to teaching young women how to be more critical when it comes to media, in order to reduce thin ideal internalization. The results showed that by creating more awareness of the media’s control of the societal ideal of attractiveness, the thin ideal internalization significantly dropped.

In other words, less thin ideal images portrayed by the media resulted in less thin ideal internalization. Therefore, Thompson and Stice concluded that there is a direct correlation between the media portrayal of women and how they feel about themselves.

Social media also plays a part in how young people feel about themselves. A recent two part study [1] looking at social media sites, such as Facebook, researched influence and risk for eating disorders. In the first part of the study, 960 women completed self-report surveys regarding Facebook use and disordered eating. In the second part of the study, 84 women were randomly assigned to use Facebook or to use an alternate internet site for 20 minutes.

What this cross-sectional survey illustrates is that more frequent Facebook use is associated with greater disordered eating. The survey indicates a close correlation between Facebook use and the maintenance of weight/shape concerns and state anxiety compared to an alternate internet activity [1]. Other research suggests an etiological link between eating disorders and the tendency towards self-harming [now referred to as Non Suicidal Self Injury (NSSI)] [2].

In terms of prevalence, over 1.6 million people in the UK are estimated to be directly affected by eating disorders. However, the Department of Health estimate that the figure is more likely to be 4 million due to the huge level of unmet need in the community [3].

Recent studies suggest that as many as 8 per cent of women have bulimia at some stage in their life. The condition can occur at any age, but mainly affects women aged between 16 and 40 (on average, it starts around the age of 18 or 19). Reports estimate that up to a quarter of Britons struggling with eating disorders may be male [4].

 

References

1.Mabe AG, Forney KJ, Keel PK. Int J Eat Disord. 2014 Jul;47(5):516-23 Do you “like” my photo?  

2.Colleen M. Jacobson and Cynthia C. Luik, Epidemiology and Sociocultural Aspects of Non-suicidal Self-Injury and Eating Disorders 2014

3. Joint Commissioning Panel For Mental Health (www.jcpmh.info/wp-content/uploads/10keymsgs-eatingdisorders.pdf)

4. http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Bulimia/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Putin calls Obama’s bluff

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By Daniel Margrain

On the October 7 edition of Channel 4 News, anchor Jon Snow said of Russia’s firing of 26 cruise missiles on eleven targets in Syria from ships in the Caspian sea, as “a significant escalation in the Syrian crisis”. The reporter Jonathan Rugman belittled Putin’s attempt at cooperating with the American’s despite the fact that it was president Obama who denied the former the coordinates with which to target ISIS. Instead, Russia has reportedly attacked CIA backed rebels with the apparent aim of scuppering their hopes of toppling the Assad regime.

The context in which Russia has entered the conflict comes on the back of 3,731 coalition air strikes on Syria since August 2014, the deaths of an estimated 200,000 people in the four and a half years of the “civil war” and, as the Washington Post quoting US officials reported in June, the CIA have trained and equipped nearly 10,000 “rebel” terrorist fighters. According to Patrick Cockburn, half of the 22 million Syrians have been either displaced inside the country or are external refugees. Syria represents one of the last bastions of resistance to US power and its gateway to Iran.

The illegal US-led invasion and overthrow of the Saddam regime was the catalyst for the current wave of chaos from which Al-Qaeda and then ISIS emerged which, according to a recently declassified US intelligence report, written in August 2012, was a development the United States government welcomed.

The report also indicates that the US effectively welcomed the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an Al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies Al-Qaida in Iraq and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria. Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”,

The Pentagon report continues, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”. This is consistent with the charge that the initial violence in March 2011 (on the back of the Arab Spring) in the border city of Dara’a involved covert support to Islamic terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence in which radical Salafist groups (supported by Israel) played a part. Other reports have pointed to the role of Saudi Arabia in financing the protest movement. Jeremy Salt, associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University, Ankara,wrote:

“The armed groups are well armed and well organised. Large shipments of weapons have been smuggled into Syria from Lebanon and Turkey. They include pump action shotguns, machine guns, Kalashnikovs, RPG launchers, Israeli-made hand grenades and numerous other explosives. It is not clear who is providing these weapons but someone is, and someone is paying for them.”

This is not to say the US created Al-Qaeda- ISIS, but it has certainly exploited its existence against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western hegemony. Moreover, the Gulf states are backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. These are the groups Russia is reportedly requesting coordinates for, but which the US is refusing. The US also supports Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen which over the last few days have killed hundreds of civilians.

Obama’s policy is as weak and muddled as Putin’s is strong and clear. Syrian’s understand that ISIS and it’s affiliates won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought them to Iraq which is why they want Russia to intervene to help regain some kind of control over a situation that long ago spun out of control. They understand that prior to Iraq there was relative stability in the region and therefore prefer Assad remaining in power than the chaos the west has brought.

Peace cannot return to Syria and Iraq until ISIS is defeated which, for it’s own narrow geopolitical and strategic interests, America has no intention of letting happen. Regardless, Putin seems intent on forcing the hand of his imperialist adversary.

At his news conference on Friday, Obama said, “in my discussions with President Putin, I was very clear that the only way to solve the problem in Syria is to have a political transition that is inclusive — that keeps the state intact, that keeps the military intact, that maintains cohesion, but that is inclusive — and the only way to accomplish that is for Mr. Assad to transition [out], because you cannot rehabilitate him in the eyes of Syrians. This is not a judgment I’m making; it is a judgment that the overwhelming majority of Syrians make.”

But Obama did not explain how he knew what “the overwhelming majority of Syrians” want. Many Syrians – especially the Christians, Alawites, Shiites and secular Sunnis – appear to see Assad and his military as their protectors, the last bulwark against the horror of a victory by the Islamic State or Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which is a major player in the so-called “Army of Conquest,” as both groups make major gains across Syria.

Obama’s inaction against the terrorists he effectively supports as part of what is now widely accepted as a policy of regime change in Syria, has been exposed by Putin for what it is. Obama adopted a similar approach toward Libya which is now a failed state. Putin’s decisive intervention in Syria is the third time he has wrong-footed Obama – the first when he called him out over the veto with regards to UN resolution 1973 in relation to Libya, and the second was his overstepping of Obama’s ‘red line’ in respect to the unproven Assad-chemical weapons allegations.

Katrina, Ethnic Cleansing And The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism

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Katrina, the costliest natural disaster in American history, hit the Gulf Coast just as America prepared to mark the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. This is deeply symbolic since what the aftermath of the disaster highlighted was the extent to which the one dovetailed neatly into the other. The American government’s quest to bring American-style freedom and democracy to other nations exposed their inadequacy in resolving fundamental domestic disparities and inequities closer to home.

Katrina did not create these disparities and inequities, it simply added an important reminder that they are deeply embedded and constitutive of American political, economic, and social life. One of the major legacies of Katrina is that the disaster laid bare the inequalities, not just within New Orleans, but America itself.

It is perhaps naive to think that the catastrophe will provide a longer-term wake-up call to the political establishment in America to set about actively building a more fair and meaningful democracy in the country. Subsequent inaction would indeed appear to indicate that there is some justification for this naivety.

There is little indication a decade down the line that any attention has been paid to the role of American political institutions in addressing contemporary racial, economic, regional, and gendered inequities.The tenth anniversary visit of George Bush to New Orleans recently was emblematic of his administration’s incompetence rather than any cause for gratitude from the people affected by the tragedy.

The visit of Obama was no less irrelevant. In emphasising his apparent commitment to the recovery process, the president said: “Part of our goal has always been to make sure not just that we recovered from the storm but also to make sure we dealt with some of the structural inequities that existed long before the storm happened.

It’s strange then that when Harry Shearer took out a full page ad in the local newspaper suggesting that Obama as the commander and chief of the US Army Corp of Engineers acknowledge this agencies’ responsibility for the deaths of 1,800 people, he was met with silence from the president. As usual, Obama offered nothing other than empty rhetorical platitudes as a substitute for tackling real problems.

Shearer, who made a documentary film about Katrina that focused on why the disaster happened, argued on Channel 4 News that Katrina was a man made catastrophe. Quoting one of the co-authors of a Berkeley report, he said that this was the greatest man made engineering catastrophe since Chernobyl.

Are these failed systems still in place a decade later? And if so, what is to prevent a similar catastrophe happening again?

Shearer says that the new improved system that cost the US taxpayer £14 billion has been built to a substantially lower standard than the system that failed. Last week, one of the members of the Levee Authority told Shearer that his advice to the citizens of New Orleans regarding whether they should feel more safe or not, was to maintain a constant skepticism.

None of this would be a surprise to author and activist Naomi Klein who, in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, views the social breakdown of societies and communities as being a feature of neoliberal economic policies of governments’. This breakdown is not the result of incompetence or mismanagement, therefore, but is integral to the free-market project, which can only advance against a background of disasters.

Disaster is part of the normal functioning of the type of capitalism we have today: “An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, ecological or financial.”

Media reports in the immediate aftermath of Katrina – for example, here, here, here, here, here and here – would tend to support Klein’s thesis. Unnatural disasters such as wars as well as natural ones like tsunamis and Hurricanes, allow governments and multinationals to take advantage of citizen shock and swiftly impose corporate-friendly policies.The result: a wealthier elite and more-beleaguered middle and lower classes. Sri Lankan fishing villages become luxury resorts and public schools along the Gulf Coast become corporate-run “charter” schools.

Three weeks after Katrina, the state sacked all the unionized teachers, disbanded the school board and turned the schools over to a state receiver in Baton Rouge resulting in the loss of community accountability. Margaret Spelling, the secretary of education, dumped $24 million into New Orleans, but it wasn’t allowed to go into public schools. It went to the charter schools thereby resulting in the shifting of power away from people towards the creation of a three-tier privatized system.

The destruction of New Orleans resulting from Katrina, also paves the way for its potential gentrification and social and ethnic cleansing where the city’s working class Black population – the people who are the very soul of the city, and who created its culture and made it famous – are seen as the major obstacle to the city’s economic recovery. A minority of them are necessary to be service workers in casinos and hotels. But the bigger idea has been to shrink the Black population and push the poor out of the city.

This kind of ruthless attitude toward the poor is symptomatic of the statement made by Republican congressman Richard Baker when he was overheard telling lobbyists “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” It’s difficult to believe that the comment could be construed as anything other than informing some of the planning for a disaster in New Orleans. Flood becomes part of an ethnic cleansing process. City politics has been aiming at that for the last 20 or 25 years.

Cathy Newman’s Hatchet Job

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An indication of how desperate the mainstream media have become over Jeremy Corbyn’s runaway lead in the opinion polls was no better illustrated by Cathy Newman, the Channel 4 journalist who went into a panic on social media for implying in February that the mosque she visited displayed (falsely) a culture of intolerance and sexism [1]. Newman has been criticised on Twitter by attempted to dig up dirt in her smearing of Corbyn in relation to reports he had links with Holocaust deniers and people with anti-Semitic views.  The Independent reported that:

“The Channel 4 journalist interviewed the Labour leadership hopeful in an alleyway about his connections with Deir Yassin Remembered, a group founded by self-declared Holocaust denier Paul Eisen, and the cleric Raed Salah, who was convicted for inciting violence and racism after accusing Jews of using children’s blood to bake bread.

Corbyn denied her repeated suggestion that he had made “misjudgements” by attending events by Deir Yassin Remembered and describing Salah as an “honoured citizen” some years ago, accusing Newman of putting words in his mouth.

He insisted that Eisen was not a Holocaust denier when he met him 15 years ago, telling Newman: “Had he been a Holocaust denier, I would have had absolutely nothing to do with him. I was moved by the plight of people who had lost their village in Deir Yassin.

Corbyn said he was unaware Salah had been convicted of racial incitement when he met him. The interview, which was broadcast on Monday evening, quickly sparked a backlash against Newman, with many accusing her of trying to smear him.” [2].

TrutherTom in the Independent comments section commented:

“Now Jeremy Corbyn has dozens of Jewish academics writing a open letter to the Jerusalem Chronicle stating that he is not anti-semitic and so another expose backfires against anti Corbyn media. I did not see him getting angry but I was certainly feeling it myself as she kept repeating “Was it a misjudgement Mr Corbyn” ad nauseum.

Totally pathetic attempt to try and stitch him up while hoping to make a name for herself but all she has done is make herself look foolish and unprincipled and extremely arrogant. Full marks to Jeremy Corbyn for keeping his cool when others may have reacted hastily but his constant denial and refusal to be baited, made her look very superficial and rather stupid.”

Tough Tories

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Mr Amin hatched a scheme to persuade the English Defence League (pictured) to announce an inflammatory march against a new £18million ‘mega-mosque’

Employers who take on illegal immigrants will apparently face new sanctions under the law. Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire said companies “will be hit from all angles” (1) with raids and checks concentrating on building sites, cleaning firms and care homes.

Apparently, the government intends to use a multi-pronged attack using HMRC, the tax office, the health and safety executive and the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (the body that issues licenses to employment agencies and gangmasters within the agricultural industries) in an attempt to tackle employers who break the law in this way.

But is this merely another illustration of government grandstanding and the use of soundbites in exchange for any serious commitment to tackling the issue? A Freedom of Information request found the Home Office had issued almost £80m in fines but collected just £25m. The figures show that more than 8,500 penalties totalling £79,300,000 were issued between 2008/09 and 2012/13, but two-thirds of that total remains uncollected (2).

In 2009/10 the number of employers fined for using illegal immigrants stood at 2,254. By 2013/14 (the latest available figures) the number had been reduced to 2,090 (3). The government would claim that this is a success. But Labour and the unions say that this merely shows that the problem is going undetected because a lack of resources because of cuts, hence the need for the crackdown.

Unite, the country’s largest union, argue that the scope and powers of The Gangmasters Licensing Authority need to be expanded to prevent abuses that amount to modern day slavery (4).

They said that if the government was really serious about this crackdown it would expand the remit of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority to include more sectors other than just agriculture. And they would give it more money. In fact, it’s funding was frozen in 2010 (5).

The gangmasters when contacted by Channel 4 News about the supposed government crackdown didn’t know anything about it (6). A poll of Border Force employees revealed 98% ­questioned thought staff shortages were stopping them making all the checks they should (7).

Meanwhile, on the back of Cameron’s description of migrants as a ‘swarm’ (8), Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond defended his use of the term ‘marauding’ when describing the immigrants at Calais who are trying to access the tunnel their (9).

This narrative fits in with the government’s perceived crackdown on rogue employers who take on illegal workers. In reality, the appearance of toughness has more to do with appeasing their right-wing constituency in an attempt to win back former Tory voters who deserted the party for UKIP prior to the last election.

People Socially Cleansed As ‘Dirty Money’ Floods Into London

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“There is no place for dirty money in Britain”, so says UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, who has promised to crack down on dodgy offshore companies that buy up luxury properties in the UK. Cameron says he will introduce a public land registry of properties owned by foreign investors. Channel 4 News has access to the data which highlights the problem is particularly acute in London.

“London must not become a safe have for corrupt money from around the world”, says Cameron. “We need to stop corrupt officials or organized criminals using anonymous shadow companies to invest their ill-gotten gains in London property without being tracked down.”

The figures are staggering. Some £122 billion worth of property in England and Wales is owned by foreign companies. Around 100,000 UK property titles are registered to them. Most are in Greater London where almost 43,000 properties are owned by overseas firms. “There is no place for dirty money in Britain. Indeed, there should be no place for dirty money anywhere. That is my message to foreign forces. London is not a place to stash your dodgy cash”, he said.

Undercover reporters’ working as part of the Dispatches documentary, From Russia With Cash, discovered just how easy it is to buy property in London with no questions asked. Chido Dunn from Global Witness says that “the presence of corrupt money in the London property market props up corrupt regimes overseas and means that a lot of people are stuck in poverty and violence and don’t have access to education.

So concretely, how is Cameron proposing to deal with the problem?

In the Autumn, data will be released that will highlight which foreign companies are buying up property in England and Wales. Although the data already exists within the public domain, Downing Street says it will now be more easily available.

In Westminster, where one in ten homes are owned by foreign investors, Channel 4 asked  Transparency International about the changes that are being consulted on.  A TI spokesman said that if enacted, the proposals would require foreign owners to declare their interests at the same standard as UK companies. The unanswered question is why the discrepancy in the first place?

That aside, over last 10 years a suspected £180 million of laundered money has been investigated by the authorities. However, according to Global Witness, that’s merely the tip of a very large ice berg. What these new measures will do if enacted will be to identify where the corrupt money is and prevent it from coming in to the country in the future. Currently the government is able to identify who owns a property on an individual and company basis but crucially not who the real people are who hide behind these companies.

People can still use offshore companies to structure their investments in order to benefit from things like inheritance tax and capital gains tax. But, if the consultation process succeeds, people hiding money for a criminal reason will no longer be able to hide it in property.

This appears on the surface to be an important first step. The question is, should the proposals go through, will law enforcement be empowered to properly investigate the practice of money laundering in the UK?

In a speech to Muslims in Birmingham on July 20, Cameron said “that people can grow up and go to school and hardly ever come into meaningful contact with people from other backgrounds and faiths”.

But money laundering is a major contributory factor (as is the failure to tax property effectively) in house price rises which in turn results in the kind of social cleansing I discussed here. Any failure by Cameron to get to grips with the problem will increase the problem of social exclusion he claims he wants to redress.

As with much else in the area of social and economic policy, the UK government appear to be tugging at the coat tails of the United States. What applies across the Atlantic is of as much relevance in New York as it is London. But at least in the former, rent controls to some degree ameliorate the problem. That said, UK government policy is geared towards increasing the disconnect between the rich and poor in much the same way the United States is.

As George Monbiot astutely puts it:

“The rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it.” We suffer the same curse: a ruling class whose wealth lies offshore, and which identifies more readily with a transnational elite than with the other people of this nation. On behalf of this elite, the government now gives away £93bn a year in corporate welfare: a sum bigger than the deficit. It champions the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership; a graver threat to the interests of this nation than Islamic extremism presents.”

The failure to tax property effectively has fuelled a rise in house prices so severe that entire English regions are becoming almost uninhabitable to the poor. The situation is made all the worse by the announcement from the head of the National Crime Agency who said there is a direct link between money laundering in property and the massive rise in London house prices.

Objectification kills

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By Daniel Margrain

The 30 minute documentary film Killing Us Softly (1979) based on a lecture by Jean Kilbourne focuses on the effects of advertising on women’s self-image and the objectification of women’s bodies. Kilbourne argues that the superficial, objectifying and unreal portrayal of women in advertising lowers women’s self-esteem and that Sexualized images of women are being used to sell virtually all kinds of goods (1). Kilbourne argues that they degrade women, encourage abuse, and reinforce the patriarchal, sexist society whilst also drawing connection between advertising and pornography, stating that “the advertisers are America’s real pornographers”.(2).

Thirty six years after the release of Killing Us Softly, yesterday evenings Channel 4 News (July 23) reported on the inquest of 21 year old bulemia sufferer Eloise Perry who on the April 12 died at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital one week after having swallowed eight unlicensed fat-burning pills that she purchsed from the internet. The pills, which the Food Standards Agency describe as being illegal to sell for human consumption, contained DNP which is an industrial chemical historically used in the manufacture of explosives and fungicides. Website companies who sell this chemical depict DNP as a fat burning product and some even use the tag line “getting leaner through chemistry” as a marketing tool.

No sooner were attempts made by the authorities to close down these sites, they reappeared under different names.  It’s clearly a battle that the authorities are losing. The fact that informed young people like Ms Parry who are aware of the risks are so desperate to lose weight that they are prepared to go to such extreme lengths raises wider questions about the nature of the society we live in.

The social pressures for young women to conform to certain expectations placed upon them by the media are immense. The upshot is that they are involved in a constant psychological battle between myth and reality. In Britain, for example, the average size of a woman is now 16 but the aspirational size is zero – an unobtainable goal for the vast majority.

The contradiction between reality and aspiration is undermining many of the gains that women made in the feminist debates of the 1960s and 1970s. What Ariel Levi terms “raunch culture” is another symptom of the undermining of the gains made. A tour by High Street Honey’s that involves women employed by lads mags touring the various university campuses throughout the country dressed as porn stars, is about as debased as it gets.

The notion that pole dancing which is sold as exercise classes at some universities and widely regarded as being empowering for women in terms of getting them in touch with their inner sexuality, is in reality, setting back women’s rights decades.

Activities like this inhibit the way both men and women feel about their bodies and therefore cannot be disentangled from the tragic case of Ms Parry. The normalization of sexist imagery in pop videos and television commercials and the sexualization of young girls clothes is another illustration of raunch culture in which fantasies, desires and ambitions are transformed into commodities to make money.

The growth in cosmetic surgery is another factor that increases expectations on women’s appearances. Ninety-one per cent of surgery is undertaken on women of which the most popular is breast enhancement. In America it’s normal practice for girls to be given breast enlargement as a graduation present. The fact that a growing number of girls suffer low self-esteem is a sad and depressing indictment on our society at large.

The Enslavement Of Greece

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Austerity has won. The demands of the Troika upon which Syriza caved in to – or as some commentators have alluded acquiesced – are intended as a warning to the rest of Europe that a left-wing government anywhere will not be tolerated.

Non-capitulation by Tsipras would have effectively been construed as something akin to the threat of a good example being set to the rest of the nations that comprise PIGS. Thus, this outcome would have been regarded by the banking clique that dominate the Troika as totally unacceptable.

What has happened in Greece is a lesson for the rest of us. I am in absolutely no doubt at all that European democracy is in the process of being usurped by an unelected elite at the top of society. Teachers and other public sector workers who previously might of been reluctant to take to the streets of Athens, will soon be scouring the bins for food along with the unemployed. Riots and looting will follow in due course, of that, I’m certain.

Lucid and concise analysis of the issues that led to yesterdays “negotiated” settlement resulting in yet more Greek bailouts in return for yet more austerity, has been hard to come by in the mainstream media. The exception was the analysis by professor Mariana Mazzucato on the UKs Channel 4 News (July 12).

“In financial terms, where is the capital of Greece tonight?”, inquired anchor, Jon Snow.

“Is it in Athens, is it in Brussels, or is it in Berlin?”, he continued.

“In some ways it’s in the banks”, retorted a smiling but incredulous Mazzucato.

The professor continued:

“I think we forget sometimes that only 10% of the bailouts went to the Greek economy. The rest went to the banks who were bad lenders and they are not paying any price. After WW2 not only was 60% of Germany’s debt forgiven but also we had the Marshall Plan which provided an investment package. With Greece we are just postponing the crisis until the next bailout.”

Mazzucato then went on to outline some of the myths perpetuated by the bankers and offer some sensible remedies:

“Privatization is not accompanied by employment and investment. What we need is a coherent package that allows Greek businesses to compete with German businesses as opposed to destroying them” continued the professor. “We have to learn from Keynes”, she said.

“There was a problem of aggregate demand in Germany after the Schroeder reforms when there had been a massive wage restraint. There was excess cash in the German banks. These banks lent to the Greek banks which lent to Greek businesses who then bought from German companies, So this was part of Germany’s export strategy.”

Placing the emphasis for the crisis squarely on the shoulders of the bankers, and outlining further alternatives to the established media narrative, Mazzucato went on to say:

“The same problem of aggregate demand is happening in Greece where we are not allowing various types of workers to benefit from investment packages.This will not only increase the number of jobs but the quality of jobs. The Syriza government was running a surplus. There were already massive reforms in place but the Greek government were not given time to implement them. As a government they are far from perfect, but the idea that they were governing badly is a mischaracterisation of what has been happening.”.

http://www.channel4.com/news/greece-deal-tsipras-eurozone-bailout-merkel-hollande