BBC

British journalist, Graham Philipp's counter-propaganda channel on youtube, has been covering the Ukrainian civil war for years and continues to cover current conflict. We introduce his work with his 2021 film about how the BBC went from slanted reporting on the region in 2014 to total propaganda.

"It is incredibly rare that the BBC ever admits that one of their reports on Douma in Syria failed to meet the Corporation's editorial standards for accuracy by reporting false claims… Blink and you’d have missed this admission, but we didn’t, and it adds to a volley of misreporting that has dogged journalism and peace in the Middle East for decades." (Ross Ashcroft, Renegade Inc.) Ross Ashcroft skilfully reviews mainstream western media attacks on journalists who tried in 2018 to properly investigate false claims that the Syrian Government launched chemical attacks on its people. He reinterviews those journalists, as he analyses the recent BBC admission of defending lies that support the western media conspiracy to justify US-NATO attempts to overthrow Assad Government. He is joined by political scientist Dr. Piers Robinson and journalist Vanessa Beeley to discuss the crumbling narrative around the alleged Douma chemical attack.

In this video, BBC journalist Orla Guerin interviews Azerbaijan President Aliyev, assuming that Azerbaijan press and politics are heavily censored, and presses him on that. He denies the accusation, then asks her why Julian Assange has been held inhumanely for years, if the British and western press are so free. The BBC journalist simply won't acknowledge the situation for journalists and the media in her own country, kind of proving the president's point.

Interview with Vladimr Putin by NBC News propagandist Megyn Kelly, text published on the website of the President of Russia, June 5, 2017 - https://www.newcoldwar.org/valdimir-putins-televised-interview-on-nbc-june-5-2017/, and a link to Excerpts from transcript of Megyn Kelley interviewing President Putin, et al., St Petersburg International Economic Forum plenary meeting, June 2, 2017 - https://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/54667. (If you cannot reach the Kremlin site, try dropping the s in https. We have put the 's' in because of inflexible Firefox padlock tag rules.)

Megyn Kelly: Shifting gears to Syria, our president has said that you are backing an evil guy there. He said that Assad is an evil guy. Do you believe that?

Vladimir Putin: What? That Assad is an evil person? Ask other leaders who have met him. After all, since he was elected, he has been to Europe more often than to Russia. We are not defending so much President Assad as Syrian statehood. We do not want Syria to be confronted with a situation similar to that in Libya or Somalia or Afghanistan, where NATO has been present for many years but the situation is not changing for the better.

We want to preserve [Syrian] statehood and once this fundamental matter is resolved, to move further towards settling the Syrian crisis by political means. Yes, perhaps everyone is to blame for something there. But let us not forget that if it were not for active intervention from the outside we would not have had the situation and the civil war that we are seeing now.

What does President Assad stand accused of today? We know about the charges of using chemical weapons. There is absolutely no proof. As soon as that happened we proposed conducting an inspection right there on the airfield from where President Assad’s aircraft had allegedly taken off with chemical weapons on board. I would like to reiterate because not everyone has heard this: if chemical weapons had been used, if some shells with toxic agents had been loaded, modern analysers, modern control systems would definitely have detected that there were chemical weapons there on board this aircraft, on that exact spot.

They declined. Nobody wants to. There is a lot of talk but no practical action. We proposed conducting an inspection in the area of the attack, “Let us see what there is.” No way again. “Why not?” “It is too dangerous there.” “What is so dangerous there if the strike was allegedly carried out against the good part of the armed opposition? These are normal people out there, why would they be dangerous?” “No, it is not possible there either.” However, it is known for certain that in Iraq (an Iraqi representative is present here, and we also welcome him), in Iraqi Kurdistan, militants used chemical weapons and that fact was established by the entire international community. Therefore, they have them. And judging by the statements made by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Syria has destroyed these weapons.

You see, if reasons and excuses are invoked, without any intention of looking into the essence of the problem, then one can talk about anything. Let us get down to the heart of the matter. Has Assad made mistakes? He probably has, and quite a few, too. Now, are the people who are up against him angels? Who is killing people, executing children and beheading people there? Are we supposed to support them?

As you know, we argued with our US colleagues until we were blue in the face about whether certain territories could be attacked. “No, that is off limits.” “Why?” “The healthy part of the opposition is based there.” We say: “But ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra are still there.” “Yes, but everything is intermingled there, so it is hard to understand who is where.” “Well, separate them then. What are decent, honest people doing with terrorists? Do you have control over them? Let them go and let us fight terrorists.” “No, do not touch them.” Why not? Should we wait until they come to you or to us? We will not. If you want to agree on something, let’s agree.

The Prime Minister is nodding because India is constantly confronted with the terrorist threat. It is not an imaginary problem. According to our preliminary estimate, there are 4,000 people from Russia alone in Syria, plus 4,500–5,000 from the CIS countries, mainly from Central Asia. It is a real threat to us. They are trying to return. Some are in fact returning. This is precisely why we began our operation in Syria, because we realised where things were headed. So, there should be no name-calling. Let us simply work together on the matter at hand. We are prepared for this. What is needed is a constructive position on your part.

Megyn Kelly: So, we know that Assad has used chemical weapons before, and Russia entered into an agreement in 2013 to stop that. I mean, Russia acknowledged that in 2013 to try to stop that by Assad. The only question is whether he launched the chemical weapons attack that happened a couple of months ago. And I just want to ask you, to press you a little further on this, because we all saw the video of the suffering, dying children, and that was the reason that President Trump dropped the bomb. Do you deny – because Assad denies that those tapes are real, he is purporting to tell us not to believe our lying eyes – do you believe those tapes are fake?

Vladimir Putin: Firstly, when President Obama and I agreed to work together on destroying chemical weapons in Syria, we acted on the premise that those weapons were out there. However, we have never acknowledged that Assad used them. I would ask you to be more accurate.

Secondly, regarding the people killed or injured as a result of the use of weapons, including chemical weapons, this is false information. At the moment, we are absolutely certain that it was simply a provocation. Assad did not use those weapons and all of that was done by people who wanted to blame it on him.

Furthermore, our intelligence services received additional information suggesting that there were plans to re-enact a similar scenario in other parts of Syria, including near Damascus. We made that information public. Thank God, the plotters had enough common sense not to follow through.

Megyn Kelly: If I could just follow up on that, though, because the bodies of the victims were autopsied at Turkey’s and our forensic medicine institution. The autopsies were witnessed by officials from the World Health Organisation and from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and they concluded that the victims were attacked with zarin gas. Are we really to believe that the whole thing was staged? That everybody was in on it – the World Health Organisation, the forensic medicine institution, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons?

Vladimir Putin: The answer is very simple and you know it: it could have been used – however, not by Assad, but by someone else in order to put the blame on Assad. So any further investigation without understanding who did it is senseless. It only plays into the hands of the provocateurs who organised this attack. That is all. What is there you cannot understand? It seems to me that everything is absolutely clear.

However, I would like to ask you a question: why didn’t they immediately go to the spot from where the chemical weapon attack had allegedly been launched? Why did nobody go to inspect the airfield? Why did nobody inspect the aircraft that had allegedly been used to carry out the strike, as we proposed? Why did nobody go to the place of the attack? The answer is simple: because they were afraid that this entire falsification would be uncovered – that is all.

As for what you are telling me, it does not convince me in the least but only goes to show that it would be far better not to indulge in speculation or a tug of war but combine efforts against real threats. We know very well what it is like. America is far away and there was a minor explosion, as a result of which, unfortunately, people were hurt at a well-known athletic event. And do you have any idea of how we have suffered here? We know full well, who we have to deal with.

Under no circumstances can anyone from this environment, which is hostile to modern civilisation, be used to address current political issues. Meanwhile, sometimes we see such attempts: “Let’s use these and those to fight Assad.” Why these and those? Because there is nobody else who can fight. Once you use them today, you will never know what will happen to you tomorrow. Then they will start fighting you.

At one time, Al-Qaeda was created to fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. And then Al-Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks in the United States. This is what this can lead to. It is important to think about the possible long-term consequences.

In a 27 January talk for the Edinburgh SNP Club former UK ambassador Craig Murray appears to reveal that contacts within the BBC have admitted to him that events featured in Ian Pannell and Darren Conway's 29 August 2013 BBC News report about an incendiary attack on a Syrian school were "exaggerated" and that some parts were "filmed again".

"I think there’s been an awful lot on the BBC that’s simply been deliberate propaganda and when they had the debate on bombing Syria – the idea that bombing Syria would help stop people dying – in the run up to that debate you remember we were having almost
every BBC news bulletin was full of stories of the Syrian government forces killing civilians, whereas our own bombs never do, apparently, and I think that push for war by the BBC was really very worrying.

There was one particular thing that I blogged about myself and on which other people have done a lot of work where I just happened to notice that on two different news bulletins, a female - an item the BBC had  done about a chemical weapons attack on a school in Syria, it was extremely emotive, on two different news bulletins the doctor speaking had said different things, ostensibly the same sentence, ostensibly filmed at exactly the same time, but with different words in it, one said “napalm” and one said “chemical weapons” and her mouth was hidden by her doctor’s mask so you couldn’t actually see her lips move, it was kind of voice over going on and yet it appeared to be a “breaking news” news item of everything happening before you almost live - and dug down into that quite a lot and the footage was used again on a Panorama programme the BBC did, which was very much, undoubtedly it was designed to stoke an emotive appeal to British military intervention in Syria, that was the purpose of it and it became plain that there just were a number of things in that video that weren’t right.

Now I have friends in the BBC and in Panorama itself in fact and what I’m told happened, which I think I believe is the truth - I mean there’s some people who believe that the whole thing was, the entire thing was a setup, that the whole bombings and things never happened at all and the whole thing was just set up with actors - I don’t think that is true I think what happened was that they were filming when something had happened, they rather exaggerated how bad the incident was and bits of it they filmed again because they didn’t get it clearly or it wasn’t exactly as they wanted and it seems to me that there’s a line here that’s been crossed because if you’re doing something that’s supposed to be news and you’ve got someone bringing in someone on a stretcher you can’t say “right, sorry, can we have another take?” and get them to bring him in on the stretcher again and that’s what was happening, so no matter how real the incident on which the thing was based what we were seeing was a fictionalised account posing as real life and that, to me the BBC has been crossing that kind of line quite regularly in its coverage in Syria."

In a blog post of 9 March 2016 Mr Murray stated: “Let me pin my colours to the mast and say that I am absolutely convinced that the BBC did deliberately and knowingly fake evidence of chemical attacks”.

In a March 2014 email to One World Media, when Ian Pannell and the "Chemical School Attack" report were nominated for awards, Mr Murray wrote: “I am obliged to say, having personally been in my career in rather similar conflict situations, I was struck by the strange absence of panic and screaming both by patients and surrounding family - I have seen people in that sort of pain and situation and they are not that quiet and stoic, in any culture." (Mr Murray has previously granted permission for me to publish his email online and the extract above is now copied #plausibility" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/%23plausibility&source=gmail&ust=1486256273850000&usg=AFQjCNF7N16QlGcFV1hg-43-Rdk4S32hMA">on my blog).

Parts of my March 2016
presentation for Frome Stop War on BBC Panorama 'Saving Syria's Children' have been featured on Syrian television:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqGmLlbVBHo&feature=youtu.be 

Dr Marcus Papadopoulos was interviewed by BBC News about 'russophobia' in Britain and policy in Syria . Speaking very clearly, Papadopoulos gives a history of British resentment of Russia, dating from the Crimea and thinks that Britain is acting in part out of a feeling of being left-out in the region. Islamist terrorists in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria are the only ones benefiting from this British ignorance and bias. It should be remembered that those Islamic terrorists that the west is backing, pose a huge threat to the people of Britain. The US-led coalition in Syria is not acting legally.

Newly-discovered images of alleged BBC "napalm victim": In June 2014 a Netherlands resident contacted me, expressing anxiety about being recognised in a frame from 'Saving Syria's Children' which I had posted on Facebook. Although the woman was not among the group of alleged napalm/thermite victims in the frame in question, I subsequently recognised her in a You Tube video shot at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013, apparently in the guise of a victim of the same alleged events portrayed in Ian Pannell and Darren Conway's BBC reports. This is the latest report in Robert Stuart's extraordinary investigation into BBC war propaganda.

1. In June 2014 a Netherlands resident contacted me, expressing anxiety about being recognised in a frame from 'Saving Syria's Children' which I had posted on Facebook. Although the woman was not among the group of alleged napalm/thermite victims in the frame in question, I subsequently recognised her in a You Tube video shot at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013, apparently in the guise of a victim of the same alleged events portrayed in Ian Pannell and Darren Conway's BBC reports. I have written about this here and here.

A number of images currently viewable on the Facebook account of one of the woman's relatives would appear to make it plainer still that the person who contacted me is indeed the same person who appears in the You Tube footage of the aftermath of the alleged Aleppo incendiary bomb attack. Details here.

2) My attempts to secure documents relating to Saving Syria's Children from the BBC through a Freedom of Information request appear, somewhat inevitably, to have run aground.

Following a decision notice from the Information Commissioner's Office upholding the BBC 's rejection of my request, I had argued in an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) that the evidence set out in my blog:

...clearly demonstrates that the BBC has committed the greatest betrayal of audience trust imaginable by a news broadcaster – the fabrication of an atrocity for the purposes of war propaganda. Such an egregious transgression is quite possibly unique in the history of broadcasting.

I further argued that Saving Syria’s Children and related BBC News reports had breached Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that “Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law”.

In response the Tribunal has issued a Case Management Note (3 May) observing that:

"Mr Stuart’s rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights may be capable of being litigated and remedy given to him if a Court finds there was a breach of those rights. The question of whether reports are genuine or fabricated may also be capable of being independently investigated."

However the Tribunal "is unable to grant Mr Stuart a remedy for what he says is a contravention of his rights under that Covenant" and directs that I must provide it with reasons why the information I have requested from the BBC was or is “not held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature”.

The deadline for submitting a response is 24 May.

3) A high quality copy of Saving Syria's Children is currently available on Vimeo. The section which forms the focus of my blog commences at 30:38. As BBC Worldwide has long since blocked all You Tube postings of the documentary, please consider downloading the Vimeo copy while it is available. This version is the highest quality I have seen to date and has already yielded a number of interesting new details, such as an apparent glimpse of the Dutch woman pictured above (see update here).

4) Further to my submission of shocking images of a staff member of UK registered charity Hand in Hand for Syria's "flagship medical facility", Atareb Hospital, Aleppo, posing with an array of weapons and munitions, an officer of the Charity Commission's Investigations Monitoring and Enforcement department has responded (12 April):

"I am currently considering the information that you have provided in order to determine what regulatory action, if any, is required. I confirm that I will provide a more detailed response once I have completed my assessment."

5) A reminder of the two sets of graphics highlighting some very startling inconsistencies in accounts of the alleged events of 26 August 2013 by BBC International Correspondent Ian Pannell and BBC 'Trust Me I'm A Doctor' presenter Dr Saleyha Ahsan and my recent presentation on Saving Syria's Children for From Stop War.

Robert Stuart
https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com