BBC Rides with Al Qaeda in Aleppo, Syria
BBC Covers Up War Crimes – Misleads Over Syrian Security Operations.
by Tony Cartalucci
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Update: Indeed BBC did not see “MIGs” bombing Aleppo, though it appears they weren’t even anti-tank SU-25′s but rather training aircraft. Aero L-39 Albatros are also not even “Russian-made” as the BBC claimed. The article below has been amended to reflect this information. Read here for more.
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July 25, 2012 – When big lies must be told, BBC is there. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya and now Syria, (mediachecker-add Kosovo to the list) BBC has paved the way for Western disinformation meant to mange public perception around a war the public would otherwise never support or tolerate.
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The BBC, caught on record producing entire “documentaries” on behalf of corporate-financier interests, has already been caught in immense lies regarding the NATO-fueled destabilization of Syria. This includes the disingenuous use of photos from Iraq, to depict a so-called “massacre” in the village of Houla, Syria. Now, as NATO’s Al Qaeda mercenaries operating under the banner of the so-called “Free Syrian Army” flow over the Turkish-Syrian border in an attempt to overrun the city of Aleppo, BBC is there, attempting to manipulate the public’s perception as the conflict unfolds.
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BBC’s Ian Pannell admits he rode with a convoy of milatnt fighters into Aleppo at night. He claims many are desperate for the FSA to succeed, “clamoring for freedom denied by their president,” but concedes many others fear an “Islamic takeover” and sectarian “division and bloodshed.” The latter of course, is self-evident, while the former is the repeated, unfounded mantra of the Western media used to cover up the latter. Pannell poses amongst staged settings, claiming a single burning tire equates to a barricade set up by the militants (see more on the use of burning tires as propaganda here and here). He concedes that militants are taking to the rooftops with sniper rifles in the districts they claim they control – begging one to wonder where else terrorist snipers have been, and how many “sniper” deaths have been mistakenly blamed on the government.
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Covering Up FSA War Crimes
Pannell then attempts to cover up serious war crimes committed by the FSA militants he is traveling with, claiming that men the FSA arbitrarily rounded up while “seeking revenge” were “suspected Shabiha,” harking back to Libya’s NATO-backed terrorist death squads rounding up and killing Libya’s black communities in orgies of sectarian genocide – which outlets like the BBC defended as simply rebels targeting “suspected African mercenaries.” Pannell papers over what he just reported with the unqualified claim that there is “little justice” on either side. What became of the FSA’s victims is not revealed.
Pannell then attempts to cover up serious war crimes committed by the FSA militants he is traveling with, claiming that men the FSA arbitrarily rounded up while “seeking revenge” were “suspected Shabiha,” harking back to Libya’s NATO-backed terrorist death squads rounding up and killing Libya’s black communities in orgies of sectarian genocide – which outlets like the BBC defended as simply rebels targeting “suspected African mercenaries.” Pannell papers over what he just reported with the unqualified claim that there is “little justice” on either side. What became of the FSA’s victims is not revealed.
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Image: From BBC’s Ian Pannell – young men “suspected” of being “Shabiha” are rounded up as the FSA “seeks revenge.” BBC fails categorically to explain how NATO-backed terrorists can “liberate” a city that is admittedly pro-government – but it appears it will be done through terrorism, brutality, mass murder, and intimidation.
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BBC reporter Ian Pannell’s failure to report on the war crimes he admitted witnessing, smacks of endorsement and complicity – an attempt to preserve the romanticism the West has desperately tried to associate with their FSA death squads. Pannell’s report also confirms earlier descriptions of widespread atrocities committed by the so-called “Free Syrian Army.”
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In Libya, when the government of Muammar Qaddafi collapsed, and as Libyan terrorists overran the last of the nation’s security forces, entire cities of Libya’s blacks were overrun, their populations either mass-murdered, imprisoned, or forced to flee to refugee camps. These are people who had lived in Libya for generations. A similar fate awaits Syrians should NATO prevail.
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BBC Confirms Syrian Army Use of Heavy Weapons ARE Proportional to FSA Threats
Pannell’s propaganda in Aleppo continues, where he admits FSA militants possess tanks they allegedly “captured” from the Syrian military, but then, showing video of what is either an anti-tank SU-25 aircraft or an Aero L-39 Albatros training jet, rolling in with machine guns, claims it marks a “dramatic escalation” and a sign of “desperation.”
Pannell’s propaganda in Aleppo continues, where he admits FSA militants possess tanks they allegedly “captured” from the Syrian military, but then, showing video of what is either an anti-tank SU-25 aircraft or an Aero L-39 Albatros training jet, rolling in with machine guns, claims it marks a “dramatic escalation” and a sign of “desperation.”
Image: From BBC’s Ian Pannell -FSA tanks are positioned in or around Aleppo, according to BBC. The myth that NATO-backed militants are “lightly armed” is unraveling as they attempt to take on large cities flush with cameras and media from both sides. Eager propagandists attempting to portray victories have more than once shown “captured tanks” in the hands of militants. Heavy militant weapons beget heavy government weapons.
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In reality the Syrian army is using force directly proportional to the threats NATO-backed militants have presented. Tanks and heavy weapons mounted on trucks, also featured in the BBC report, are legitimate targets for government heavy weapons. The precision an SU-25 lends the battlefield versus heavy artillery bombardments when neutralizing FSA heavy weapons is the only conceivable way to minimize civilian casualties.
Images: (Top) From BBC’s Ian Pannell – BBC and other Western media outlets have claimed “MIGs” are bombing Aleppo’s civilian populations. This all based on a single “tweet” made by BBC’s Ian Pannell. Pannell now reports this video depicts what he saw – which in reality is either an anti-tank SU-25 or Aero L-39 deploying machine guns, not bombs, versus what Pannell already admits are FSA heavy weapons, not civilian populations. (Bottom) Several orthographic views of the SU-25 and Aero L-39 for comparison.
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And as the Western media is so found of reminding its viewers, Aleppo is decidedly pro-government, and pro-President Bashar al-Assad. Therefore to indiscriminately use disproportionate force serves no purpose for the Syrian government, who has gone through extraordinary lengths and placed its soldiers at great risk to minimize damage to the city and its inhabitants – a city and population that serves both an important role economically and culturally for all Syrian people.
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Remember Fallujah, Iraq
A government is put in a difficult position when armed gangs enter a city “seeking revenge” as BBC’s Ian Pannell puts it, when these gangs have trucks mounted with heavy weapons as well as tanks in their possession. For the West, to berate the Syrian government and portray its security operations as unmitigated “brutality” is disingenuous at best, especially considering the militants are there solely because of years of financial, military, and political support from the US, Israel, and the Gulf State despots.
A government is put in a difficult position when armed gangs enter a city “seeking revenge” as BBC’s Ian Pannell puts it, when these gangs have trucks mounted with heavy weapons as well as tanks in their possession. For the West, to berate the Syrian government and portray its security operations as unmitigated “brutality” is disingenuous at best, especially considering the militants are there solely because of years of financial, military, and political support from the US, Israel, and the Gulf State despots.
Image: Western hypocrisy – Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 was bombarded by artillery and airstrikes for weeks leading up to the final invasion. When over 10,000 troops entered the city, they were accompanied by tanks, and supported by heavy artillery and airstrikes. When the West is subjugating others, heavy weapons seems acceptable – but not when another nation attempts to defend itself from admittedly Western-backed terrorists.
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The West might want to also revisit the lessons it learned from flattening the Iraqi city of Fallujhah, twice. The US bombarded the city for weeks prior to its final invasion in 2004, where over 10,000 troops entered with heavy artillery and air support. Apparently it is acceptable for the West to subjugate others using such tactics, but nations are prohibited from using similar tactics to defend themselves. The Syrian uprising was a foreign-plot stretching back as far as 2007, foreign militants admittedly flowing over the border from across the Arab World, admittedly armed and funded by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
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The Battle of Fullujah is considered a notch in the belt of Western military prowess, while the West condemns Syria’s attempts to defend one of its most important cities from foreign-subversion and destruction. While NATO believes it can still win the geopolitical battle it is waging against the Syrian people, it has already long lost the battle for moral superiority.
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BBC Deceitfully Posts Images from Iraq in Syria Massacre Report!
Houla horror: truth is elusive, lies are easier to spot.
Syd Walker SydWalker.info
Syd Walker SydWalker.info
May 27, 2012
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Editor’s Note: Land Destroyer has independently confirmed this by searching and finding other news outlets that posted the original BBC story here and here.
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Update: May 28, 2012 - The London Telegraph has now confirmed, indeed BBC did use a photo of an Iraq massacre for their Houla, Syria coverage. The Telegraph quoted the photographer who took the original photo, Marco di Lauro, as saying, “someone is using someone else picture for propaganda on purpose.”
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Over the last 24-hours there’s been a renewed media storm over Syria – prompted by a horrific story of atrocities in the town of Houla. Very gruesome images of dead children have been offered to the media, which has lapped them up and used them again and again on our screens and in our newspapers. The UN observers in Syria, so far, have declined to draw definite conclusions about who’s responsible for this terrible massacre. But unsurprisingly, western media has been less circumspect. There’s a deafening chorus of howls complaining ‘The World’ isn’t doing anything, while President Assad gets away with murdering his own people – again!
Image: Before and after BBC’s reckless/deceitful journalism. (click image to enlarge) Notice how the image on the left is “unverified” like most of what the Western media reports regarding Syria, and that this photo was supplied by “activists” who have been revealed as serial liars (see here & here). Visit Syd Walker’s blog to see the original screen grabs.
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I’ve no doubt some of the Twitter users tweeting and re-tweeting this type of sentiment on the #Houla hashtag are genuine in their concern. Yet remarkably few people ever seem to pause and ask themselves the obvious question – why on earth would the Syrian Government want to kill Syrian children? And even if for some reason they did – why would they do so in a way more or less guaranteed to attract international condemnation and renewed calls for intervention? In other words, ‘cui bono‘? Who really benefits from this atrocity – and who doesn’t? Surely the insurgents and their foreign backers benefit.. and the Syrian Government most certainly does not! Given that recent bomb atrocities in Damascus have been blamed – almost universally – on extremist opponents of the Assad Government, isn’t it at least plausible they’re also behind this latest horror?
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Yet just as mainstream media doesn’t want to give that line of inquiry much encouragement, major ‘human rights’ NGOs like Amnesty have also rushed to judgement. Their weekend tweeps have been hammering away, sneering at the Assad Government and spinning the incident as grounds for outside “intervention”… just like they did last year over Libya. Every now again again the mass media is so dishonest it gets caught out. The BBC came a cropper only a few hours ago – but there’s been no acknowledgement and I suspect BBC staff would like their ‘mistake’ flushed rapidly down the Memory Hole. To make it a tad harder for them, this post tells the story for posterity. The information on which it’s based comes from a pro-Syrian tweeter called Hey Joud, whom I’ve found to be well informed and savvy. A few hours ago the BBC posted a story on its website (Middle East section) entitled Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows. The latest update is given as 04.40 GMT. It has some rather unremarkable graphics – a photo of a UN observer witnessing bodies in sheets and a map showing the location of Houla, near Homs. However, a friend of Joud’s was smart enough to take a screenshot of an earlier version of this story. Then he/she did some homework – and discovered the dramatic image which it featured prominently was in fact a photo from Iraq dating from several years ago (according to the associated image data, May 2003). It’s featured as image no 52 on this webpage. The accompanying text makes it clear the bodies had been removed from a mass grave.
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Hey Joud tweeted about this discovery. That’s how I became aware of it:
Hey Joud tweeted about this discovery. That’s how I became aware of it:
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By the time I went to check the same BBC’s story online for myself, the photo from Iraq was no longer there. At any rate, it doesn’t appear now on the equivalent BBC webpage, viewed from here in Australia. I’d guess the most likely explanation is that the original (highly deceptive) photo was taken from BBC archives, used in this article for its high dramatic impact – then quickly replaced when the BBC became aware someone had spotted the deception. If that’s not what actually happened, perhaps the BBC would care to correct me?
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This is not the first time I’ve reported on image fakery with regard to Syria. The western media’s sustained attack on that beleaguered nation has now been underway for more than a year. A comprehensive account of all its deceptions and misreporting over that period would fill many volumes. No-one ever seems to be held accountable for the gross breaches of journalistic ethics that do come to light. Jobs in organisations like Reuters and the BBC must be relaxing. Unlike humble bloggers out here in the ‘real world’, these folk don’t need to bother about truth and accuracy. If they ever do get busted by a wary public, their butt is always well-protected.
George Orwell’s book 1984 is often viewed as a parody of totalitarian states such as Soviet Russia, even though the tale was actually set in England. I think there’s another possibility. In the early 1940s, Orwell spent a year devising war propaganda for the BBC. Working at the Beeb was probably all the inspiration he needed to write the most famous dystopia of his century..
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Click some of the links in the above articles for further examples of the BBC deception. I’d rather read Pravda!
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Note: The BBC is a member of Chatham House [UK] which is associated with the Council on Foreign Relations and the [Continental] European Council on Foreign Relations (the Sauds/UAE/Big Oil….are partners). These institutions (and their think tanks) write the policies for governments and all those on their payroll are expected to market their plans: http://www.chathamhouse.org/membership/corporate/corporate-list
more info:
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Peter Horrocks: BBC news director claimed £81 suit hire for Buckingham Palace reception
A senior BBC executive, Peter Horrocks, claimed £81 on his expenses for “specialist clothing” to attend an official event at Buckingham Palace. (his salary – over 200,000 pounds)
The BBC defended Peter, in fact, he was promoted as Director of the BBC World Service conglomerate. heh A story I couldn’t resist!
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BBC’s 2012/13 Annual Report its total income was £5,102.3 million,[71] which can be broken down as follows:
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£3,656.2 million in licence fees collected from householders;
£1,101.2 million from the BBC’s Commercial Businesses;
£269.7 million from government grants, of which 264.7 million is from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the BBC World Service;
£75.2 million from other income, such as rental collections and royalties from overseas broadcasts of programming.
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The BBC World Service gets a hefty chunk of change from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – head of this office is William Hague – the guy whose running around marketing a Syrian War. The BBC touts their independence (independently biased) but an ”unknown source leak” indicating William Hague is considering cutbacks…might encourage fauxtography and other fabricated deeds for those depending on a paycheck. From someone on the outside looking in, such as yours truly, it appears that the UK Foreign Service has the financial opportunity to run/manipulate the BBC World Service.
