John Pilger: What Did Theresa May Know About Manchester Terrorists?

Now for a very serious question, amid all the hilarity surrounding Theresa May’s craven cowardice at the Leaders’ Debate yesterday. Earlier that day, veteran human rights journalist, John Pilger, had written a piece on the Counterpunch site asking what May knew about the Manchester bomber and his fellow terrorists.

He pointed out that Salman Abedi and his family had been members of a Salafist (Muslim fundamentalist) terrorist group, the LIFG. These people were such a threat, that they had all been subject to control orders. When demonstrations broke out in the Libya against the dictator, those control orders had been lifted so that the terrorists could travel to Libya to overthrow Gaddafy, just as other Salafist groups, trained and supplied by Britain, and reinforced with the SAS, rose up against him. Britain and America also began a bombing campaign in support of the rebels.

Britain gave its military support because of a spurious claim by the Salafists that Gaddafy was about to start a massacre of his opponents on a scale comparable to the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s.

Parliament subsequently held an inquiry, which concluded that David Cameron, the Tory prime minister, had led this country into a war on ‘erroneous pretences’.

Pilger places the actions of the security and intelligence services using the Manchester terrorists and others like them to overthrow Gaddafy in the context of western imperialism. Britain and the West had allied with the Salafists and intolerant Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia as a way of combating secular Arab nationalism. Gaddafy was deemed a threat because he wanted to abandon the petrodollar, substituting instead an unified African currency based on gold. He also wanted a common African bank and work towards economic union between poor nations with valuable natural resources.

And additionally, Libya possessed valuable oil fields.

The Manchester boys were no strangers to attempting to overthrow Gaddafy. In the 1990s they had made a series of attempts to assassinate him with covert British support.

After overthrowing Gaddafy, the Salafists moved south to attack Mali. Obama, who was the principle force behind the western support for the rebels, took the opportunity to send US forces into Uganda, South Sudan, the Congo and the Central African Republic. The London Chamber of Commerce staged a massive arms fair, at which British merchants of death boasted about the market for their wares in the Middle East. And last month Theresa May was in Saudi Arabia again, trying to sell them British arms, arms that have been and are being used to kill innocents, including children, in Yemen.

He makes the point that the Manchester bombing was another case of imperial blowback, in which the terrorists the West have trained and used to overthrow secular and progressive Middle Eastern regimes then return to attack and kill America, Britain and the other western countries.

Just like Blair was warned would happen prior to the disastrous, illegal invasion of Iraq.

Pilger also makes the point that Abedi’s connection to western backed Salafist terrorism is being denied. The official line is that he was a ‘lone wolf’ and petty criminal.

And critically, the FBI warned Britain that the terror cell of which he was a part was looking for a ‘political target’ in Britain.

Pilger writes

‘The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review”.

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years.

The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organisation which seeks a “hardline Islamic state” in Libya and “is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida”.

The “smoking gun” is that when Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in “battle”: first to remove Mu’ammar Gadaffi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a “terrorist watch list” and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a “political target” in Britain. Why wasn’t he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May?

These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the “lone wolf” spin in the wake of the 22 May attack – thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump’s apology.’

‘In 2011, according to Middle East Eye, the LIFG in Manchester were known as the “Manchester boys”. Implacably opposed to Mu’ammar Gadaffi, they were considered high risk and a number were under Home Office control orders – house arrest – when anti-Gadaffi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.

Suddenly the control orders were lifted. “I was allowed to go, no questions asked,” said one LIFG member. MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.’

‘In London, one of the world’s biggest arms fairs was staged by the British government. The buzz in the stands was the “demonstration effect in Libya”. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled “Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies”. The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs, which were used extensively against civilian targets in Libya. The blurb for the bank’s arms party lauded the “unprecedented opportunities for UK defence and security companies.”’

‘The spin is back, not surprisingly. Salman Abedi acted alone. He was a petty criminal, no more. The extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished. But the questions have not.

Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a “political target” in Britain?’

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/31/terror-in-britain-what-did-the-prime-minister-know/

Abedi’s attack in Manchester was made easier by May’s decimation of the police, armed forces, border guards and emergency services. She warned that this would harm intelligence gathering and damage national security. She airily dismissed these criticisms as ‘scaremongering’.

But if May was told by MI5 that Abedi’s terror group were looking for a target in Britain, then this makes May, in my opinion, culpably negligent for not placing him and his gang under greater scrutiny. Quite apart from using them as part of another imperialist war of aggression.

Jeremy Corbyn has made it very clear that imperialist aggression in the Middle East does not justify Islamist terrorism. But he has pledged to restore Britain’s police and armed forces, border guards and emergency service, so that they can give us better protection.

And he does recognise that the western invasions of the Middle East are not solving the problems of global terrorism, and that another approach is needed.

We need Corbyn’s wisdom. We won’t see any such insights from Theresa May, who will just bring more wars, and more domestic terrorism created by these wars. All so that she and her paymasters in the arms industries can sell more of that ‘wonderful kit’ Cameron lauded when he visited an armaments factory in Lancashire.

Vote Labour on June 8th, and do something to stop more deaths.

Vox Political: Bank of England Economist Says High Executive Pay Damages Economy

Mike over at Vox Political has posted a piece about the remarks by Andy Haldane, the Chief Economist at the Bank of England, that Britain’s economy is being damaged by exorbitantly high executive pay. An article in the Independent notes that the average pay of FTSE 100 bosses is now 150 times that of the average UK worker. The Indie then went on to say

This large and growing remuneration gap, Mr Haldane said, “drive[s] a wedge between management and employees…that in turn erodes social capital. A company, like a country, whose physical and social capital is being eroded is one whose wealth-creation capacity is being impaired.”

Social capital refers to trust and relationships in a society and Mr Haldane argued this matters “every bit as much to wealth and well-being” as financial capital such as stocks and shares and other such assets.

It also reported that there have been a number of shareholder rebellions against the high pay awarded to chief executives.

Mike comments

Trust between bosses and employees is at an all-time low – not helped by Conservative Government policies that trample on workers and try to reduce their rights and remuneration. Look at the junior doctors’ strike for an example.

Mr Haldane is saying the direct result of this is harm to the economy, and we can see that this is true.

Why would any worker want to provide a high-quality product for an employer who is ripping them off?

And if they lose their job, why would the next worker want to provide a high-quality product for an employer who is paying them less than the last worker (because they can)?

Go read Mike’s piece at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/05/19/highly-paid-bosses-are-harming-the-economy-says-bank-of-england-bigwig/ for more information and his very relevant remarks.

The Korean-born economist, Ha-Joon Chang tackles this problem in his book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism in the chapter ‘Thing 14 US Managers Are Over-Priced’. Chang concentrates on American managers because they are paid a whopping 300-400 times that of the average American blue-collar Jose or Josie. They are paid way more than the managers of comparable companies elsewhere in the world, including Japan. The chapter is an attack on the Neo-Liberal attitude that if the managers are paid so much more than their counterparts elsewhere in the world, and their workforce, it must be because their performance is somehow worth it in the market economy. Chang shows that this is not the case. He argues that US managers now are not more efficient and effective than they were a generation ago, when they were only paid 30 to 40 times more than their workers. And they certainly aren’t worth that money compared to their European and Japanese competitors, who are actually beating them.

Finally, he discusses the damage such executive pay actually does to the wider economy. He argues that the managerial class now has so much power through their contacts in government and their grossly inflated pay that even when they fail, they are not punished, but instead rewarded. They most they receive are extremely generous severance packages. And the people who have to suffer, ultimately, to pay for their bloated salaries are the workers and the taxpayers, who have had to bail out the banks. He writes

Despite this, little is done to check excessive and biased (in that failures are hardly punished) executive pay packages because the managerial classes in the US and Britain have become so powerful, not least because of the fat paycheques they have been getting over the last few decades. They have come to control the boardrooms, through interlocking directorship and manipulation of information that they provide to independent directors, and as a result few boards of directors question the level and the structure of executive pay set by the CEO. High and rising dividend payments also keep the shareholders happy. By flexing their economic muscle, the managerial classes have gained enormous influence over the political sphere, including the supposedly centre-left parties such as Britain’s New Labour and America’s Democratic Party. Especially in the US, many private sector CEOs end up running government departments. Most importantly, they have used their economic and political influence to spread the free-market ideology that says that whatever exists must be there because it the most efficient.

The power of this managerial class has been most vividly demonstrated by the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. When the American and the British governments injected astronomical sums of taxpayers’ money into troubled financial institutions in the autumn of 2008, few of the managers who were responsible for their institutions failure were punished. Yes, a small number of CEOs have lost their jobs, but few of those who have remained in their jobs have taken a serious pay cut and there has been an enormous, and effective, resistance to the attempt by the US Congress to put a cap on pay of the managers of financial firms receiving taxpayers’ money. The British government refused to do anything about the £15-20 million pensions payout (which gives him around £700,000 yearly income) to the disgraced former boss of the R.B.S. (Royal Bank of Scotland), Sir Fred Goodwin, although the intense negative publicity forced him subsequently to return £4 million. The fact that the British and the American taxpayers, who have become the shareholders of the bailed-out financial institutions, cannot even punish their now-employees for poor performance and force them to accept a more efficient compensation scheme shows the extent of power that the managerial class now possesses in these countries.

Markets weed out inefficient practices, but only when no one has sufficient power to manipulate them. Moreover, even if they are eventually weeded out, one-sided managerial compensation packages impose huge costs on the rest of the economy while they last. The workers have to be constantly squeezed through downward pressure on wages, casualization of employment and permanent downsizing, so that the managers can generate enough extra profits to distribute to the shareholders and keep them from raising issues with high executive pay (for more on this, see Thing 2). Having to maximise dividends to keep the shareholders quiet, investment is minimized, weakening the company’s long-term productive capabilities. When combined with excessive managerial pay, this puts the American and British firms at a disadvantage in international competition, eventually costing the workers their jobs. Finally, when things go wrong on a large scale, as in the 2008 financial crisis, taxpayers are forced to bail out the failed companies, while the managers who created the failure get off almost scot-free.

When the managerial classes in the US and, to a lesser extent Britain, possess such economic, political and ideological power that they can manipulate the market and pass on the negative consequences of their actions to other people, it is an illusion to think that executive pay is something whose optimal levels and structures are going to be, and should be, determined by the market. (pp. 155-6).

Mussolini Vs. the Banksters

Mussolini was a thug and a mass murderer, who took a nation of poets, thinkers, writers, musicians, scientists and philosophers and tried to turn them into goose-stepping butchers like himself, and their country into a cross between a vast open-air prison and an army camp. Ultimately he failed, and the best thing that happened to his regime was that it more or less completely evaporated after he was overthrown by his own Fascist Grand Council.

But he knew how to handle the banks. After the Great Crash of 1929, he nationalised them. New Labour bailed them out, and then both New Labour and the Tories have allowed the bankers to go on as before, making the same kind of dodgy financial deals and awarding themselves massive pay rises and bonuses far beyond the percentages given to ordinary workers. When these workers are given pay rises at all, thanks to the government’s austerity programme and the repeated insistence on fiscal responsibility, combatting inflation and all the other rubbish.

This is a post that would shock American Republicans. Glen Beck, one of the loonier characters in right-wing broadcasting, cried on his show about Obama’s totalitarian Nazi oppression of the banksters. He really did carry on as if he believed that the heads of Lehmann Brothers, Goldman Sachs and the like had been carried off to some gulag in the wilds of Alaska or somewhere. He made a speech in which he paraphrased, yet again, the Martin Niemoller poem, ‘First they came for…’. He altered it to, ‘First the came for the bankers’. Tears and histrionics followed.

But Obama didn’t imprison or even punish the bankers. He bailed them out, and the world has effectively continued to bail them out, and has been subsidising their profligacy and lavish lifestyle ever since.

This attitude comes from the deliberate Republican and Conservative conflation of Fascism with Socialism, in which any criticisms of financial capitalism are automatically equated with Hitler’s attacks on Jewish bankers. Hitler did indeed make speeches attacking Jewish capitalists and bankers, including one in which he said that when he came to power, he would throw their coffers into the street. It’s vile stuff, and Hitler did carry out his threat. Jewish shops and businesses were smashed during Kristallnacht, and signs were put up ordering gentiles to boycott their businesses. They were watched, and any gentile going into one was photographed. And then during the Holocaust they seized the property of the people they murdered, though they continued to exploit skilled Jewish artisans to produce luxury items in a grotesque merchandising operation in the concentration camps. The SS even produced a catalogue of goods available from them, which were made by the Jewish artisans they had imprisoned and were working to death.

But Hitler wasn’t against capitalism or the banks per se. Indeed, in the next part of his speech he went on to declare how he would not treat good gentile German capitalists and employers the same way, as they treated their German employees well and worked for the good of Germany as true members of the Volksgemeinschaft – the racial community. The head of the Nazi big business organisation was the head of Allianz Insurance, and Hitler himself was very careful when on the verge of power to win over big business. And Hjalmar Schacht, a banker, who was at one time the Nazis’ economics minister, told Hitler to tone the rhetoric down about attacking big business and the capitalists.

Mussolini was also a vile anti-Semite. He wasn’t originally. When he started his career on the Right, he was merely ultra-nationalist. This was bad enough. It led the Italians to commit terrible atrocities in Africa, where they gassed and bombed civilians in Libya and Ethiopia. In Libya they also used massacres of the civilian population and mass rapes to terrorise the population. My guess is that memories of these war-time atrocities were responsible for Gaddafi’s expulsion of the Italian population after he seized power. I don’t know, but I strongly suspect that they’re still being used by the Islamists to whip up hatred against Europe. But it was only after the rise of Hitler that he became anti-Semitic. In 1937 he passed anti-Semitic legislation that was modelled on, but rather weaker, than those in Nazi Germany. At the end of his career, when he was ostensibly keep to introduce a quasi-Socialist regime in the Nazi puppet republic of Salo, he still insisted on keeping anti-Semitism as a key component of Fascist ideology. Because the Italian anti-Semitic legislation was weaker than that of Germany, however, 80 per cent of Italian Jews were able to survive, though this should not detract from the fact that 20 per cent were still murdered, along with all the other Italians the regime butchered.

Mussolini’s nationalisation of the Italian banks, however, wasn’t based on racial theory. It was based on the same entirely practically considerations that also led the Labour government to nationalise the Royal Bank of Scotland. This, however, has since been privatised in what I think was another deal that left the tax-payer out of pocket.

Musso was a tyrant and butcher, but in this instance, he was right. Unlike the New Labour and the Tories, who prefer to bail the banks out, let them continue as before, and then punish the country’s working people for their failings, under the guise of necessary financial restructuring, and the idiotic mantra ‘we’re all in this together’. They fact that the bankers and big businessmen are still giving themselves massive bonuses makes it very clear that we aren’t.

G.D.H. Cole on the Need to Nationalise the Banks

I found this very interesting passage in Cole’s Great Britain in the Post-War World. Much of the book is dated, but I think this is possibly more relevant now, post 2008, than it has been previously.

In a properly organised economy, it will be for the central bank-the Bank of England-to follow a financial policy which will provide the monetary supplies needed in conjunction with ‘full employment’-of which more anon-and for the deposit banks to ensure the distribution of credits in proper relation to the requirements of the national plan of production.

With this end in view, it is plainly necessary to socialise the deposit banks, whose existing directors will be apt to be visited by a ‘loss of confidence’ when any progressive Government sets about a policy of social control and economic planning, or threatens in any way the dominance of monopoly capitalism. the deposit banks are largely directed by men closely connected with the big industrial interests, and, with some exceptions, ten to favour big business as against small. They are for the most part bigoted opponents of Socialism, and entirely convinced that capitalism is the best of all possible systems. They are therefore likely to look with special disfavour and lack of confidence on State-promoted industrial plans, and to do all they can to aid and comfort any industrialist who is endeavouring to stand out against a socialistic Government. But fortunately the war has already put them largely into the State’s power. There are very large holders of the public debt, and have become accustomed under war conditions to doing the State’s bidding in the supply of accommodation. They will doubtless strive to escape from this position of dependence on the return of peace; but no quick escape it like to be possible. The time for taking them over is now, while they are acting in effect as the State’s agents in pursuance of war-time economic plan.

The bankers and their allies try to scare the public into opposing socialisation chiefly by two arguments-that private person’s deposits will be less secure when the banks are publicly owned, and that the tax-gather will then be in a position to know all about the private man’s affairs. As for the safety, this argument is mere nonsense. Bank deposits cannot be made less secure by having the formal guarantee of the State behind them; indeed, the truth is quite the reverse. As for the tax gatherer, he knows a great deal already, and it is entirely in the interest of the vast majority of people that the few who now successfully evade taxation should be prevented from getting away with it. Finally, there is the fear among business men that it will not be so easy to get credit from a State Bank as from a private banker. This is doubtless true, where credit is wanted for speculation or for other anti-social purposes; but a State which is deliberately following a policy of ‘full employment’ will surely be eager to grant credits to anyone who is prepared to produce in accordance with the requirements of the public economic plan. If the State decides, as I have urged that it should, to leave private enterprise in being over a considerable part of the industrial field, a State Bank is most unlikely to stint the businesses which are left in private hands of the credit needed for carrying out their part of the production plan. Indeed, the small business is likely to find State credit a great deal easier to come by than it has found private bank credit in the recent past.

There remain the ‘financial houses’-discount and acceptance houses which discount or accept bills chiefly in connection with overseas trade, issuing houses which handle new issues of capital, again, until recently, mainly for overseas, and a few private banks which conduct certain highly specialised forms of financial business for big clients, including both foreign Governments and overseas banks and financial concerns. The deposit banks are already in direct competition with the financial houses over a considerable part of this range of business, and tend to compete more and more. Socialisation of the deposit banks will bring the State right into discount and acceptance, if such transactions are to survive at all. Issuing of new capital is a rather different matter; but there is no reason why a State banking system should not make its own provision for all the issuing that is likely to be required, either directly through the State Bank or Banks, or, as has been often suggested, through some sort of National Investment Board empowered both to underwrite and issue approved loans and investments, or itself to make public investments in concerns which call for development in accordance with the provision of the national economic plan.

It’s now seventy-four years after this was written, and it’s still highly relevant. The banks have opposed any kind of socialisation of the economy. They supported Broon and Bliar only when they promised to continue regulating them lightly. And the result was the financial mess that exploded in 2008. And like the banks in the War, which became heavily indebted to the state, the banks then had to be bailed out by the state, and in the case of the Royal Bank of Scotland, nationalised. And the investment banks are still geared mainly to providing credit for overseas, not for domestic industry.

The Young Turks on Snobbery and Sneering by Wall Street Secret Society

Here’s another video by The Young Turks from last year. Kevin Roose, a journalist with the New York Times, infiltrated the annual party by a secretive Wall Street society, the Phi Kappa Alpha. The society basically seems like a university frat/ sorority for elite bankers. Their party was marked by some truly outrageous behaviour. Many of them turned up in drag. One leading financier appeared in a Confederate hat, and at one point in the evening a group turned up on stage in dressed as Mormon missionaries to sing a version of ‘I Believe’. What was particularly shocking was the sheer contempt the Wall Street capitalists had for the government, that had bailed them out. The CEO in the Confederate hat used it to sing a song about how they had successfully ripped off the American authorities, who’d been forced to bail them out. The group dressed as Mormon missionaries did the same. This is particularly shocking in an American context. America is still a deeply religious country, with many politicians, especially Republicans stressing their personal religious faith. This incident would genuinely shock many Americans, who would associate such blasphemy only with the Left. It reveals the genuine contempt the rich 1% have for religion and people of faith, regardless of whether they’re Mormons or not. The assembled bankers and financiers also joked and laughed about how they’d wrecked the country’s economy. They also mocked Hilary Clinton, despite the fact that she has herself done much to aid the American financial sector and defend it from attack. When they discovered the reporter’s identity, they approached him in an attempt to do a little damage limitation. One of them said that they could be ‘very helpful’. In other words, they offered him a bribe, which he refused.

Here’s the video:

I’m posting this video because such attitudes aren’t confined to that side of the Atlantic, and the bankers and elite financiers over here have links with them.

About a decade or so ago the City of London was in the news because of the appalling attitude of the financiers and stockbrokers there. The City was accused of being viciously misogynistic with extremely chauvinistic attitudes towards women. The Daily Mail, very definitely not a feminist paper, quoted one former female financial executive as saying that she was miserable all the time she worked there, despite the fact that she was earning enough to afford closets of extremely expensive clothes. All the women she knew were also extremely unhappy.

The financiers also had absolute, complete contempt for their clients, laughing and boasting about how they had ‘shafted’ them.

These are the people, however, which the British government under New Labour, was forced to bail out, but, with the exception of the odd executive, have never been brought to book for their destruction of the economy, and who are continuing to demand concessions from the government. Despite scandals like Northern Rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland, these are the people, who are still awarding themselves eye-watering pay rises. Well, the video might be American, but I’ve no doubt the precise same culture of elitism and sneering exists over here.

One of the regular contributors to Lobster said that he had a friend, who attended a meeting of high level bankers and financiers in New York. Curious, he asked him what they were like. ‘Worse than you can possibly imagine’, was the answer.

BBC’s Tricky Nick Robinson’s Misreporting of Alex Salmond on Scottish Independence

Mike over at his blog has frequently discussed the repeated misreporting and, indeed, deliberate censorship of left-wing demonstrations against the government by the BBC and the other mainstream broadcasters. Apart from the usual tactic of deliberately giving the number of protestors as smaller than there were in reality, the BBC has also totally omitted several major demonstrations against the government from its television news. Instead, some minimal coverage was grudgingly given to them on the radio and on-line. Several of Mike’s readers and commenters, including Mike himself, have complained about this. They’ve been brushed off with a standard reply about the limited amount of space available, and the necessity of skipping or omitting some items in favour of more important news. The Beeb has then smugly declared that it’s duly investigated the case, and found that everything was done properly and appropriately.

So that’s alright then, as Private Eye says when an organisation or authority guilty of misconduct similarly exonerates itself by giving the exact same reply.

The debates over Scottish independence, leading up to the referendum last Thursday, threw the BBC’s pro-government bias into sharp relief. The Corporation’s reporter, Nick Robinson, selectively edited and then completely falsified his report on a question he asked Scotland’s then First Minister about the possible damage independence might have to the nation’s finances. This was then edited by the Beeb to claim that the First Minister had attacked the treasury. Robinson stated that several of the banks and insurance companies, like the Royal Bank of Scotland, had stated that in the event of Scotland gaining its independence, they would move their headquarters from Edinburgh to London. This would, suggested Robinson, lead to a massive loss of corporation tax for the Scottish government.

Salmond disagreed. He gave the opinion of other leading financiers north of the border that there would be no significant loss of tax revenue, as corporation tax was paid in the country where there a corporation had most of its economic activity, not where it had its headquarters. The banks and other financial institutions may move south to London, but they would still end up paying the same amount of corporation tax. I noticed that the I newspaper made a similar claim. I also wondered how the Royal Bank of Scotland could possibly continue under its name, if it very unpatriotically pulled out of its home country.

This, however, was not the answer Robinson wanted. When Salmond moved on to answer questions from the other reporters present, Robinson heckled and continued to demand an answer from Salmond. Salmond returned to the point, gave a full answer, and pointedly stated that he knew the BBC would report it in its scrupulously unbiased reporting. He then tried to move on to questions from the foreign press. This wasn’t good enough for Robinson, who asked the same question, and got the same answer.

When the BBC reported Robinson’s question and Salmond’s reply, they selectively edited the footage so that it looked like Salmond was attacking the British treasury, and praising the BBC. In fact, as the original footage makes clear, Salmond had been making a veiled criticism of the quality of the BBC’s reporting. Later still, on Newsnight, Robinson claimed that Salmond had not answered his question at all: a bare-faced lie.

As you might expect, Scottish Nationalists are massively unimpressed with this blatant falsification by the BBC, and there are several videos about it on Youtube. Here are two I found that make the case particularly well.

This video, The BBC Is Killing Democracy, gives footage of what really happened when Robinson asked his question. It then gives Robinson’s own highly selective report, pointing out how it has been altered and edited to present the answer Robinson wanted, rather than the one he got. It then moves on to Robinson’s final report, where he lies and states that Salmond didn’t answer the question. It then concludes with a brief resume of Robinson’s and Salmond’s careers, pointing out that Robinson was first head of the Young Conservatives in Macclesfield, and then national head of the organisation.

This video, Dodgy reporting from BBC News Editor – Nick Robinson 11/09/2014 goes further, and gives the relevant passages in the BBC’s charter that demand impartiality, and which the BBC’s reporting of Robinson’s question to Salmond broke.

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There were protests against the BBC’s biased reporting of the independence campaign outside the BBC’s headquarters in Scotland on the 1st and 29th June 2014. This video below, Protest Against BBC Scotland Referendum Bias shows pro-independence Scots discussing the Beeb’s bias, and their disillusionment with the Corporation.

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One of the women speaking is actually an English person living in Scotland. She states that she is voting for independence for Scotland because she is worried about the Westminster establishment’s destruction of the NHS and tuition fees. She states her daughter will not be able to afford to go to uni, and the only people that will, will be the elite.

Robinson’s deliberate falsification of Salmond’s answer is important far beyond the immediate debate about Scots independence. Regardless of one’s personal opinion of that particular issue, it should concern everyone worried about the Beeb’s pro-establishment bias. It’s clear and undeniable evidence that the Corporation has blatantly lied in order to serve the interests of the Tory Westminster elite. It also shows how Tricky Nick Robinson really is little more than a Corporation apparatchik spouting propaganda, and that the BBC is now well and truly the establishment’s equivalent of Pravda and TASS, the state news agency in the Soviet Union or the various state-controlled newspapers and broadcasters in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

From 2011: Information Tribunal Casts Doubt on Suitability of Infrormation Commissioner after BCCI Cover-Up

In their issue for the 30th September-13th October 2011, Private Eye also had an article on the questions raised about the performance of the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, after he sided with the government in refusing to disclose information about some of the people involved in the BCCI scandal. That was the bank, which was at the centre of a massive web of corruption and whose collapse in the 1980s caused a huge scandal. It was so corrupt, that it was at one point nicknamed The Bank of Crooks and Conmen International. The articles runs:

Freedom of Information

FoI-led Again

A recent decision by the Information Tribunal, which forced the Treasury to hand over previously concealed details of a 20-year-old report into the BCCI banking scandal, code-named Sandstorm, raises serious questions over whether the current Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, is the man for the job.

Two years ago he had to rule on the Treasury’s non-disclosure of material including the names of people running the fraudulent bank and organisations propping it up. Its stance was based largely on the unlikely grounds that divulging the names would harm international relations or that the names constituted personal data (which can still be disclosed in the public interest).

Among the names concealed as “personal data” were BCCI founder Agha Asan Abedi, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Royal Bank of Scotland and an entire country in the government of Cameroon. Amazingly graham agreed completely with the Sir Humphreys (who also happen to hold his purse strings). But when lefty accountant Professor Prem Sikka from Essex university challenged his decision and took it to the Information Tribunal, it was dismissed out of hand.

“we were surprised to see that the Treasury sought to extend the protection of the data protection principles,” said the tribunal judges, “to information about some individuals who exercised ultimate control over the whole of BCCI’s operations and were the architects of a group-wide programme of fraud and concealment.”

When it came to countries and companies, the Treasury had made the most basic error of treating their names as “personal”. The judges must have been even more surprised to find that an Information Commissioner who is supposed to understand the subject endorse this., On the concealment of Abedi’s name, they concluded with some understatement: “the legitimate interest of the public …justifies disclosure of the identity of the man in overall charge …”

Mike and a number of other bloggers have had their attempts to obtain the true figures of the numbers of people, who have died after being assessed as fit for work under the Freedom of Information Act, turned down. Mike himself was told by the Information Commissioner that his request was ‘vexatious’ by the Information Commissioner after he challenged the decision. This case, unfortunately, shows that Mike and the others are not alone in having their requests turned down under what may be considered highly questionable grounds. Mike’s case is due to go before the Information Tribunal, and I hope they will decide in favour of Mike and the other people wishing to obtain the information. THi

Private Eye Questions on the Competence and Integrity of Information Minister over FOI Inquiry About BCCI

As I’ve covered before, a number of bloggers, including my brother, over at Vox Political, have had their Freedom of Information Act request for details of the numbers of deaths from Atos assessments turned down. The spurious reasons for their refusal was that such requests constituted ‘harassment’. Private Eye have also raised questions about the suitability of Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, for his refusal to disclose 20-year old details about the BCCI scandal at the behest of the Treasury.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or as it was known after the scandal, the Banks of Crooks and Cocaine International, collapsed in the 1980s, leaving a very nasty mess. The Treasury compiled a report on the scandal, Sandstorm, which was the subject of a FOI request. The Treasury turned the request down, and the case went to the Graham as the Information Commissioner, who supported the Treasury. Private Eye published an article on this story in their 30th September-13 October issue. Entitled ‘Freedom of Information: FOI-led Again’. The story ran

‘A recent decision by the Information Tribunal, which forced the Treasure to hand over previously concealed details of a 20-year-old report into the BCCI banking scandal, code-named Sandstorm, raises serious questions over whether the current Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, is the man for the job.

Two years ago he had to rule on the Treasury’s non-disclosure of material including the names of people running the fraudulent bank and organisations propping it up. Its stance was based largely on the unlikely grounds that divulging the names would harm international relations or that the names constituted personal data (which can still be disclosed in the public interest).

Among the names concealed as “personal data” were BCCI founder Agha Asan Abedi, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Royal Bank of Scotland and an entire country in the government of Cameroon. Amazingly Graham agreed completely with the Sir Humphreys (who also happen to hold his purse strings). But when lefty accountant Professor Prem Sikka from Essex university challenged his decision and took it to the Information Tribunal, it was dismissed out of hand.

“We were surprised to see that the Treasury sought to extend the protection of the data protection principles”, said the tribunal judges, “to information about some individuals who exercised ultimate control over the whole of BCCI’s operations and were the architects of a group-wide programme of fraud and concealment.”

When it cam to countries and companies, the Treasury had made the most basic error of treating their names as “personal”. The judges must have been even more surprised to find that an Information Commissioner who is supposed to understand the subject endorsed this. On the concealment of Abedi’s name, they concluded with some understatement: ” the legitimate interest of the public … justifies disclosure of the identity of the man in overall charge…”

It thus would appear the Information Commissioner and his office have bee all too eager to protect the rich, unscrupulous and corrupt against reasonable requests for information. This, and the latest refusals to answer questions about the death toll from Atos’ cessation of benefit payments, suggests that Graham is definitely not suitable for the job and cannot be trusted to protect the public interest against abuse.