Friday, June 26, 2015

Why is the BBC lying? An investigation...

(This post contains original research. Please spread this one around.)

Last month, the BBC World Service broadcast a radio documentary in which Peter Taylor investigates the origins and funding of the Islamic State -- ISIS. (Go here.) According to Taylor, the group gets money from taxation, from (literal) bank robbery, from oil, and from selling antiquities.

(The last-mentioned source may reward further study. You can't make money selling artifacts unless you have a buyer. Who are these buyers? How did a bunch of universally-detested Islamic radicals contact the people who control the antiquities market?)

Taylor's tale is noteworthy for what it omits: He does not mention the many, many reports that ISIS received funding from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. Many mainstream news sources have made this claim: See here and here and here and here -- and that's just for starters.

If you click on that last link, you'll find this quote:
Günter Meyer is Director of the Center for Research into the Arabic World at the University of Mainz. Meyer says he has no doubt about where ISIS gets its funding. "The most important source of ISIS financing to date has been support coming out of the Gulf states, primarily Saudi Arabia but also Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates," Meyer told Deutsche Welle. The Gulf states' motivation in financing groups like ISIS was to support their fight against the regime of President Bashar al Assad in Syria, according to Meyer.
Many respected experts have said the same thing. Yet the BBC is having none of it.

The BBC World Service refuses even to mention the idea that the Saudis have funded ISIS -- not even to debunk the oft-heard allegation.

The absurdity of this BBC report becomes apparent when you give the matter a little thought. ISIS had to conquer one hell of a lot of territory before they got into a position to sell oil. Conquest takes an army, and armies require money. Where did the initial investment come from?

The BBC leaves that question dangling.

Peter Taylor traveled far to compile this report, but who were his sources? First, we heard from a man named Abu Hajar, a captured ISIS "finance minister" (who actually seems to have been little more than a bag man). He is now being held by the Iraqi government.

A prisoner who has been subjected to torture cannot be expected to speak freely. He will say only what he feels is safe to say.

The BBC's other main source is Daniel Glaser, who works for the Treasury Department: He's the Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing. Is this man likely to speak with complete candor on any topic that might endanger US/Saudi relations?

Along the way, Taylor also speaks to that remarkable British spy -- or former spy -- Alastair Crooke, whose name I stupidly misspelled in an earlier post. (Apologies.) As it turns out, that earlier post has some bearing on our current discussion -- even though the topic, on that occasion, was how to make the Russians dance to our tune:
Crooke says that a chief architect of these schemes was a fellow named David S. Cohen, of the Treasury Department. As Moon of Alabama notes, Cohen has moved on the CIA, where he is The New Number Two. That extraordinary piece of job-hopping tells you a lot about the world we are in.
You don't just jump right into the Number Two position at CIA; you get a job like that only if you've spent a good portion of your life working for the intelligence community. For decades, the Agency has seeded its personnel throughout the government and military. (Cohen's job at Treasure was really an intelligence position, since he focused on the financing of terror.)

If you Google the names of Cohen and Glaser, you will see that the two are as close as Batman and Robin. If Batman was CIA, the same is probably true of Robin.

In this light, you should take a look at Glaser's Wikipedia entry. In its current incarnation, this bio is genuinely startling:
Daniel L. Glaser is the Assistant Secretary for the Department of the Treasury of the United States.[1] He serves under David S. Cohen, the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Intelligence in the Obama Administration. His work came into prominence as the result of the WikiLeaks progressives spying for Putin's KGB.
"WikiLeaks progressives spying for Putin's KGB..." Good lord. Who wrote this bilge?

After trying to track the author -- and a merry chase it was! -- I suspect that these words were written by either Glaser himself or by an associate, although I cannot prove the point. The many progressives who voted for Obama may be interested to learn whether or not a member of the Obama administration believes that progressives are Putin spies.

Needless to say, there is zero evidence for the assertion that Putin controls the Assange operation.

So what do we have here? Simply this: The BBC World Service purports to give the world the straight skinny on how ISIS gets its money, but they ignore the many experts who have spoken of Saudi backers. Instead, the BBC relies on testimony from a torture victim -- who, obviously, will say whatever his captors want him to say -- and from an Obama administration official who seems spookier than the Haunted Mansion. The BBC also talked to David Petraeus, who ran the CIA.

As noted above, Taylor also talked to Alastair Crooke of MI6. He avers that ISIS is committing atrocities precisely because they want the "crusaders" to send "boots on the ground" -- a claim that does much to explain the events of this day in France and Tunisia.

But on the topic of exterior support for ISIS, the BBC does not allow Crooke to say the kinds of things he says here, in an article titled "Ex-intel officials: Pentagon report proves US complicity in ISIS."
Alastair Crooke, a former senior MI6 officer who spent three decades at the agency, said yesterday that the DIA document provides clear corroboration that the US was covertly pursuing a strategy to drive an extremist Salafi “wedge” between Iran and its Arab allies.
The strategy was, Crooke confirms, standard thinking in the Western intelligence establishment for about a decade.

“The idea of breaking up the large Arab states into ethnic or sectarian enclaves is an old Ben Gurion ‘canard,’ and splitting Iraq along sectarian lines has been Vice President Biden’s recipe since the Iraq war,” wrote Crooke, who had coordinated British assistance to the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s.
Gee. You'd think that the BBC would be interested in this material.

But no: Auntie Beeb doesn't want to say anything about the US using ISIS as a proxy army against Assad. Instead, the BBC prefers to give us the world according to David Glaser.

One other thing. The BBC also claims that ISIS is getting money from -- get this -- Bashar Assad, the very man that ISIS is determined to destroy. Predictably, we are not favored with even the slightest whisper of proof for this nonsense. (The source is unmentioned. I'm guessing it was Glaser.)

The BBC does many marvelous things, but on this occasion, they have misled the public with a load of codswallop. And the citizens of the UK are paying for this propaganda.

3 comments:

b said...

Neither the BBC nor any other part of the British mainstream media knowingly does anything to upset the Saudi princes, and that has been the case for as long as I can remember. If it ever happens by accident, they back down and grovel. The princes spend a huge amount on British-made weapons each year. The British weapons industry might even collapse without Saudi contracts.

There is also a lot of Saudi money in British universities, and it was Saudi money that bailed out Barclays Bank, one of Britain's largest high-street banking concerns.

Countries (or is it companies?) such as Saudi, the Emirates and Qatar were all British creations and retain 'special economic relations' with Britain. Dubai is especially important in the British corruption system. Most British medics, for example, enjoy frequent luxury holidays in Dubai paid for by Big Pharma. (All that these stupid arrogant lying fuckers care about is 'luxury' - yachts and bracelets, yachts and bracelets. They wouldn't have the intelligence to go somewhere that's interesting to the active mind, such as Venice or Carcassone.)

There's another angle to this: the BBC is doing a lot of the Islamic State's propaganda for it. During WW2, the British authorities didn't assist with the circulation of German propaganda in Britain. But I have heard 'experts' on the BBC convey the IS message in the most obvious way, telling British Muslims that they will be warmly treated if they join IS, spelling out the message for different parts of the British Muslim market. It is surely taught in PR and Advertising 101 that you shouldn't do that: don't make the other side's case for it. Do we think the IS does the same service for Britain?

The obvious suspicion for the critical mind is that perhaps the "enemy" is not such an "enemy" after all.

There is massive propaganda for a major war, a war that would be extremely lucrative for some.

Meanwhile, young people in the West are being encouraged to become desensitised to headchopping videos, to enjoy the feelings they get from watching them. This is not of minor concern. Watching snuff videos affects people psychologically a lot. It's not 'wussy' to recognise that.

The BBC and the rest of the mainstream media are ramping up a vile prurient interest, especially among young males. Schizo culture - passivity sold as activity - is highly beneficial for some and clearly deliberately enabled and encouraged.

You should try fishing for views about the Amazon Echo etc. where young people hang out. I've done that - and in connection with other bits of technology too - and the results are scary.

To improve our understanding of British state-corporate propaganda on the current 'clash of civilisations', or whatever we wish to call it, meaning The West versus Militant Islam, we should consider the results of the propaganda so far. One useful place is the British army's rumour service, an 'unofficial' but highly influential website - a typical example of today's participatory PR (a much more accurate term than 'social media').

It is clear from that site that a large proportion of British service personnel view the war against militant headchopping liver-eating Muslims as part of the same conflict as the antagonisms between white people and brown-skinned Muslims (whom they designate using the racist term "Pakis") in cities such as Bradford in England. Soldiers are not known for being encouraged to think for themselves, and this widely held view is the result of propaganda.

My own contacts report tinderbox conditions in parts of several British cities. It strongly seems to me that the state-corporate outfits are pushing on the home front for ethnic war on the streets - not just in Britain but throughout much of western Europe - and that we can expect some explosive points of departure.

maz said...

"Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing."

b said...

"WikiLeaks progressives spying for Putin's KGB". Good lord. Who wrote this bilge?"

I'd strongly caution keeping an open mind on this.

The KGB - a good enough term for FSR+FSB - is a very formidable player in both the Western and Muslim worlds.

I don't doubt that there were and are many genuine people with admirable motivations involved with Wikileaks, but "Hey whistleblowers! Send your stuff to a central secure point and we'll help you" was always the wrong way about it.

Whatever happened to fuck the mainstream media? For that matter, what happened to the critique of professional radicals who control the use of certain tools, whether physical violence or hacker knowhow?

FWIW I don't think the KGB own Wikileaks but I think they have a sizeable share in it. Even those who disagree should welcome it that someone is playing devil's advocate.

The CPSU crumbled in '89-91; the KGB didn't. No mainstream western analyst will say that. The KGB is kicking the arse of the west in various areas.