I recently read this in the concluding chapter of James Hunter’s 1995 book, ‘On the Other Side of Sorrow; Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands’:
Conservation organisations nowadays take for granted that the Highlands are degraded ecologically. They are consequently committed, as this chapter has stressed, to enhancing that region’s biodiversity; to restoring its woodlands; to assisting with the reintroduction of those birds and mammals which, in the Highlands anyway, have long been extinct. The osprey and the sea eagle have already been reinstated. The crane, the beaver, even the wolf, could well be brought back in the future. But there is one species which environmentalists seem curiously reluctant to have re-established in the Highland localities from which this species was expelled in the course of the nineteenth century. The species in question is man.
Environmentalists are disinclined to contemplate the resettlement of places like Boreraig or Achadh nan Seilach for a whole variety of reasons. The ecological devastation which such environmentalists are seeking to make good has resulted, after all, from human action. And it is perfectly understandable that a conservationist struggling to restore extensive pinewoods to the almost totally depopulated Knoydart peninsula, for example, should be a little less than enthusiastic about the possible reappearance there of a substantial human population — on the grounds that such a population, or so the conservationist might fear, would tend to make excessive demands on an environment which, because of earlier abuse, is dreadfully susceptible to further damage.
This is a quite legitimate anxiety. But it is by no means the sole explanation for the relatively lowly role allocated to homo sapiens in environmentalist strategies for those part of the Highlands most affected by the clearances. Environmentalist suspicion of human beings is bound up also with ideas which the concept of the Highlands as a devastated landscape should have long since served to undermine, indeed discredit. Today’s environmentalists have inherited from their nineteenth-century predecessors — not least Henry David Thoreau and John Muir — the notion that the perfect landscape is one bereft of people. This notion, as a previous chapter demonstrated, derives in part from those writers who so effectively romanticised the depopulated landscapes of the Highlands. But since the landscapes which were thus held up as little short of ideal are now known to have actually been horrifically degraded, it is at least an arguable proposition that environmentalists and conservationists ought to be questioning philosophical assumptions which were founded on very basic misunderstandings of the character of the landscapes from which they were derived. If it makes sense to reinstate Scots pines to settings from which Scots Pines are today known to have been artificially stripped, might it not be equally acceptable — bearing in mind that human beings have been part of the total Highland ecosystem for just about as long as pine trees — to restore people to some at least of the many glens from which human beings were removed by men like Patrick Sellar? Is it not the case that clearance and eviction were every bit as disruptive of the settled order as those processes which resulted in so much ecological devastation? Is there not as good an argument for the social rehabilitation of our glens as for their ecological restoration?
Speaking at one of the sessions of a local authority enquiry into the probable environmental consequences of covering the Sutherland flow country with non-native conifers, a Rogart postman and crofter, John MacDonald, said:
‘I want to make clear my own view that no trees should ever be planted on much of the flow country. That landscape is a precious, living thing. But all around it there are empty places where our people use to live. I see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to live there again.’ (pp.206-8)
The book is worth a read* for its exploration of differing attitudes and perspectives on the Highlands over the centuries and millennia, contrasting the views of those who actually lived there to those who wished to exploit it or, more recently, to romanticise it as a depopulated landscape and allow only for tourism or the alienated appreciation of naturalists ‘taking only photographs and leaving only footprints‘.
I found it particularly affirming because it describes my motivations for finally taking the plunge and starting a market garden with my partner up here in Scotland. Well, part of the reason is that we couldn’t afford to do so anywhere else in the UK, and this brings its own issues of incomers moving to the area, diluting the culture and possibly exacerbating gentrification in the long term. I mentioned this concern to the Scottish landowner we’re leasing our field from, and luckily he didn’t seem to mind. He was more concerned that the land be put to productive use, a point which Hunter echoes:
It would be foolish to deny that in-migration of the Skye type has produced tensions […] But it would be equally foolish to insist that the people now moving into the Highlands from other parts of Britain are not, in any circumstances, to be tolerated and encouraged. Down that road there will be found only still more strife and bitterness of the sort which, if the cultural and other consequences of earlier oppression are ever to be got over, everybody involved in trying to shape the Highland future must, one way or another, put aside in favour of something more constructive. […] Can we define the term ‘Highlander’ in such a way that the issue of a person’s ancestry becomes of much less importance than the fact that such a person lives in, works in, is committed to, this quite amazing tract of territory? (pp.215, 219)
We’ve been here for a year now, and there are plenty of concerns about the viability of the project, especially looking at it from a business perspective where we’re subject to all the same pressures everyone is facing at the moment from rising costs, depressed wages, loss of public services etc. But from a purely practical point of view we’ve already been successful in growing a wide variety of food from the land here, in spite of the considerable challenges the climate has thrown at us. And this with no tractors**, no herbicides, pesticides or artificial fertilisers (or debt to the companies providing these) and one estate car for deliveries and essential travel. Changes in the wider economy or ignorant bureaucratic demands could easily swipe it all away from under us, but worth it to make the attempt in any case, I think, if only to show what is possible from human labour and creativity, if the powers-that-be ever decided to stop f*ing things up and just got out of the way if they can’t make themselves useful.
More broadly speaking the Highlands are potentially an interesting place for witnessing, and engaging with, the process of ‘opening of the map’. This is another idea I owe to Jason Godesky from the Anthropik website back in the early 00’s. It builds on the anarchist writer Peter Lamborn Wilson aka ‘Hakim Bey’ and his description of the ‘closure of the map‘ referring to how the nation-states brought the entire globe under their domination:
The last bit of Earth unclaimed by any nation-state was eaten up in 1899. Ours is the first century without terra incognita, without a frontier. Nationality is the highest principle of world governance– not one speck of rock in the South Seas can be left open, not one remote valley, not even the Moon and planets. This is the apotheosis of “territorial gangsterism.” Not one square inch of Earth goes unpoliced or untaxed…in theory. The “map” is a political abstract grid, a gigantic con enforced by the carrot/stick conditioning of the “Expert” State, until for most of us the map becomes the territory- -no longer “Turtle Island,” but “the USA.”
Godesky’s insight was that collapse, brought about largely by the end of cheaply available fossil fuels, will lead to a reversal of this process, where it will become too expensive to continue the exploitation of resources and people in the peripheral areas – usually the last places the ‘map’ closed over, and therefore these will become the first outposts of genuinely free societies as the dominant culture loses its grip:
[A]s the energy available to civilization declines, most of the historical patterns of civilization will begin to run in reverse, including the closure of the map. In decline, we will see a new phenomenon: the opening of the map. This will not strictly unfold as a function of distance from civilized centers, because the map is drawn not only across dimensions of distance, but the energy it takes to reach and exploit those areas, versus the energy they return. The map will open unevenly, just as it closed; in fact, we can learn a great deal about how the map will open from the way it closed. The last areas to close were precisely those areas that took the most energy to reach and exploit, and returned the least energy for the effort. These will likewise be some of the first areas of the map to close. The Allegheny National Forest is today within a day’s drive for half the U.S. population, yet it was one of the very last places for the map to close: the railroads, and then the highways, opened the forest to civilized exploitation. As the fossil fuels that allowed that closing decline, the map will open up again there. (archived page)
We can definitely see this process unfolding where we are, mainly with government services like schools, healthcare, public transport, road maintenance etc. getting cut or disappearing all together. Mainly it feels a bit like descriptions of how the body responds to hypothermia by cutting off circulation to the extremities which are least essential for survival. However, it also presents a golden opportunity for any with the courage to cut loose and form their own autonomous communities. Probably there won’t be much choice in the matter, and the people who already live here will stop paying bills, taxes, insurance etc simply because they can’t afford to. It’s just a question of whether the state still has the reach to assert its will via the police (another defunct public service) or armed forces – as well as whether things are in place to take care of essential needs like food and healthcare via non-state-run alternatives. Or groups of hippies and anarchists, or climate/conflict refugee immigrants, will descend on the area and everyone will be complaining and outraged but secretly jealous.
As Gramsci said nearly a hundred years ago, it’s an intractable situation where ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born’ – I would say the old is actively preventing the new from being born. The past year has been a crash course in the discipline enforced by market fundamentalism and the insane requirements of government-run institutions that have no idea about the realities of landwork, and we’ve been doing our best to dot our i’s and cross our t’s so as not to attract the ‘wrong’ kind of attention. But I try to keep in mind at the same time that we’re trying to lay down a viable foundation for what’s to come after. This leads to an odd kind of schizophrenia! It goes back to our old discussion about RD Laing’s description of the authentic vs inauthentic selves and how the dominant culture constantly takes the side of the latter. At some point I expect there will have to be a conflict between the two stances, and the authentic self – and the authentic society – will have to win or it will all go to hell. I don’t think we’re there yet…
And if you won’t take it from me, here’s a Scotsman making some similar arguments, relating them to modern discussions around rewilding which we’ve also touched on here many times:
(Main discussion in the ‘forest thoughts’, 37:50 in the first video, 27:35 in the second)
Oh, and because I’ve not said anything here about the Gaza genocide please accept this quote from Hunter’s book by way of apology and to point to some shared experience between colonised, dispossessed peoples across time and space. It’s geologist Archibald Geikie’s report of the evictions from Boreraig and Suisnish on Skye around 1850:
[A]s I was returning home from my ramble a strange wailing sound reached my ears at intervals from the west. On gaining the top of one of the hills on the south side of the valley, I could see a long and motley procession winding along the road that led north from Suisnish. It halted at the point of the road opposite Kilbride, and there the lamentation became loud and long. […] It was a miscellaneous gathering of at least three generations of crofters. There were old men and women, too feeble to walk, who were placed in carts; the younger members of the community on foot were carrying their bundles of clothes and household effects, while the children with looks of alarm, walked alongside . . . Everyone was in tears . . . When they set forth once more, a cry of grief went up to heaven, the long plaintive wail, like a funeral coronach, was resumed and after the last of the emigrants had disappeared behind the hill, the sound seemed to re-echo through the whole wide valley . . . in one prolonged note of desolation. (p.149)
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Further thoughts, April 10th:
A relevant question: when did the map actually close in the Scottish Highlands? If we’re talking about arrival of farming and the displacement or eradication of mesolithic hunter-gatherers then that seems to be around 4000 BC, the change coming swiftly throughout the British Isles within a few centuries (although it’s unclear whether hunter-gatherer communities persisted alongside farmers as they did in Europe, sometimes for many centuries.)† If we focus on regional autonomy, then that could arguably have lasted through until the crushing of the last major Jacobite uprising in 1745, the building of military roads, the undermining of Gaelic language and culture, the dissolving of clan traditions. For economic independence that would have to go back a long time, as a lot of the cattle-oriented land use was directed, certainly in the later period of droving and cattle markets, to supplying English cities and the military expansion of the British Empire. Or for elements of subsistence in peoples’ lives it would have to be the clearances which made it practically impossible to provide directly for their own needs without being 100% dependent on cash transactions and the wage labour needed to pay for it.
Probably we should think of it as an ongoing process, with the ‘map’ being imposed ever-more tightly as the elite power in the cities grows increasingly demanding and builds new capabilities for extending and exerting its control. Hakim Bey stressed that:
because the map is an abstraction it cannot cover Earth with 1:1 accuracy. Within the fractal complexities of actual geography the map can see only dimensional grids. Hidden enfolded immensities escape the measuring rod. The map is not accurate; the map cannot be accurate. (ibid.)
So we shouldn’t be looking for an end point where everything was finally locked down, but keeping an eye out for those elements of society where freedom, rebellion and authenticity continue to find a way through, because there are always new attempts made to assert that basic humanity and one day the forces of repression are going to run out of energy to put us back down again. If the ‘map’ can never be fully closed, then that means it’s still open, even now, and it becomes a case of finding ways to widen those openings until we can throw it away entirely and return to those ‘enfolded immensities’ of the actual territory.
Just sayin’…
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* – if you can find a copy. I picked it up cheaply in a second hand book shop, but it seems to be out of print and thus very expensive online, even the 2014 paperback. ** – we used silage tarps to kill the grass and a two-wheel rotovator to break ground and form the veg beds. Hand tools for the rest. In theory we only need the machinery and plastic tarps to get it started. After that, regular manure/compost and occasional loosening of the soil with a broadfork should suffice. Lime also needed to reduce the acidity of the soil for veg production – difficult to access without industrial methods, but not impossible. † – ‘[T]here is little clear evidence for early mesolithic activity in Scotland, and the first radiocarbon dated site is Cramond, on the shores of the Forth, dates to about 8500-8300 BC. […] In Scotland the arrival of the neolithic is very controversial, with some writers suggesting that the transition to farming happened slowly, with mesolithic communities choosing to adopt agriculture. Others have suggested that colonisation was important. Regardless of the mechanism, changes seem to take place in the centuries following 4000 BC. In the east, the agricultural heartlands of Scotland, a large timber hall containing lot of cereals at Balbridie was burnt down between 3780-3640 BC. Pits from Dubton Farm near Brechin containing very similar crops date to 3940-3650 BC. These sites, and other, suggest the presence of successful agriculture early in the fourth millennium.’ (Graeme Warren, ‘Mesolithic Lives in Scotland’ pp.34,38)
[Some concluding thoughts on Ofcom’s ban of RT for impartiality violations committed by the BBC and other western media outlets on a regular basis. Part one, part two]
What do I hope to achieve from this, you may ask? Well, oddly enough I’m not that huge a fan of RT. I found the editorial line reactionary and supportive of dangerous right wing political figureheads, disliked the constant praise of Russian military technology and the way tabloid-esque criticisms of ‘woke’ identity politics blurred into climate change denial and attacks on environmental activists. The reason that I valued it and why I used to be one of the people who regularly viewed the channel when it was on air in the UK was for the platform it gave to western dissident voices.
I happened to see an episode of US comedian Lee Camp’s ‘Redacted Tonight’ one evening and was shocked enough by the programme’s frank and uncompromising dissection of western ‘late stage capitalism’ and the willingness to honestly discuss issues like climate change, militarism, corporate power, inequality and other subjects in a way I’d never seen on the TV. This is borne out by Camp’s explanation for why he ended up working for a Russian state-backed media outlet:
In my comedy, in my writing, in my life, I’m not willing to throw the American people under the bus to do pro-corporate crap, the propaganda you see on corporate airwaves. There are very few channels left where you can speak of these things, go after corporations that own our systems and own most of our politicians. I have a TV show on RT America because I have been given complete freedom. I write my own words.
I subsequently discovered several thoughtful, critical shows by dissenting figures like Afshin Rattansi’s ‘Going Underground’, Abby Martin’s ‘Breaking the Set’, Chris Hedges’ ‘On Contact’ or shows like ‘Renegade Inc.’, ‘The Keiser Report’, ‘Watching the Hawks’ and ‘Cross Talk’, all of which presented material of a kind which practically never appeared on UK TV, or even across the mainstream print outlets (even in the supposedly left-wing Guardian serious dissidents are more often attacked and smeared than allowed space to elaborate on their views). Of course the same effect we see in western media’s highlighting of Russian dissidents could be said to apply here, with radical voices tolerated and even encouraged if they target an official enemy – this time of with the roles reversed. It’s true that you wouldn’t see much criticism of Russia on RT, but it was noticeable that the anti-war, anti-imperialist voices I followed all stuck to their principles and voiced opposition to Russia’s military interventions in Crimea and then Ukraine (although they didn’t have much time to do so with the latter invasion). Crucially they were allowed to do so on air, most dramatically in the case of Abby Martin’s opposition to the annexation of Crimea – a courageous stand which many western journalists were sacked for taking over the 2003 invasion/occupation of Iraq, yet Martin kept her job. Chris Hedges also denounced the invasion of Ukraine as a ‘criminal war of aggression’ shortly before having his entire work at RT America censored and disappeared from the internet. In a powerful essay he explains that:
I was on RT because, as a vocal critic of US imperialism, militarism, the corporate control of the two ruling parties, and especially because I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, I was blacklisted. I was on RT for the same reason the dissident Vaclav Havel, who I knew, was on Voice of America during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. It was that or not be heard. Havel had no more love for the policies of Washington than I have for those of Moscow.
Hedges had previously observed that a 2017 Director of National Intelligence investigation into RT America had focused in on the dissenting American voices spreading ‘radical discontent’, not supposed Russian propaganda. Furthermore they were guilty of calling the US a ‘surveillance state’, alleging ‘widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use’, talking about ‘Wall Street greed’ and comparing the US to ‘Imperial Rome’. For Hedges this showed that the real point was to shut down the last platforms available to dissident voices in the US:
The DNI report clarifies what the ruling elites fear—not fake news but the truth. And the truth is that the elites have destroyed the country and are traitors to democracy.
There’s that word again, ‘truth’. I suppose Ofcom wouldn’t have minded these heavy criticisms of the US state if they had been properly balanced by a government figure lying and saying everything was fine. For me this all points to the limitations of having impartiality as a guiding virtue or a rule to be (subjectively) enforced. As the US historian Howard Zinn pointed out true objectivity – and hence impartiality – was impossible because even if you scrupulously reported every possible side to the story, you were still making a choice about which story to cover, which inevitably accorded with your own personal biases:
By the time I began teaching and writing, I had no illusions about “objectivity,” if that meant avoiding a point of view. I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian. […] there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.
I’ve always found it far more important that people are honest, regardless of the popularity of their opinion. If they are open about their biases then audiences can adjust their skepticism accordingly, but criticism should be made over points of fact, not box-ticking exercises of how many other perspectives were added – including from outright liars – to dilute and confuse the message they were trying to get across. In a media landscape where condemnation of Russia is near unanimous and reporters have no qualms passing on the crudest Ukrainian propaganda as fact it is perverse to require the one outlet reporting the other perspective to also pump out the same narrative as every other news outlet. They don’t need to be ‘balanced’, they are the balance.
Back to the question of what I hope to achieve here, I guess it’s up to Ofcom. I think I’ve shown that the BBC have failed their test of ‘due impartiality’ as much as, if not more, than RT. If they wish to be consistent in enforcing the principle (and rescue their own impartiality), then logically they should either re-instate RT’s license or revoke that of the BBC. I don’t think they will do either of these things because, as seems clear from the chain of events, they were willing to be used by the political establishment in the UK as a tool to punish an official enemy and to further homogenise the media landscape by purging alternative, non-conformist views. I see from their website that you can’t complain to them about the BBC directly, but have to go through the BBC’s own notoriously labyrinthine complaints system first. Further, point 13 in Section 5 of the Broadcast Code used against RT states that:
5.13: Broadcasters should not give undue prominence to the views and opinions of particular persons or bodies on matters of political or industrial controversy and matters relating to current public policy in all the programmes included in any service (listed above) taken as a whole.
It also notes that ‘for the avoidance of doubt, [Rule 5.13] does not apply to any BBC services’. Maybe there’s an innocent explanation for this, but I can’t think what it might be. It could work as a handy get out clause in any case.
I will pursue this matter with Ofcom but I don’t expect anything except perhaps the moral victory of revealing their double standards and role as de facto censor for the UK government.
I’ll close this with a saying popular in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the USSR, when people were just starting to get to grips with life under a capitalist system:
I expect Russia is guilty of creating propagandistic distortions and lies about the war in Ukraine – truth being the first casualty of war and all that – and RT may indeed be culpable in repeating these falsehoods. Likewise some reports from the BBC and other western media outlets may occasionally present a fair and unbiased account of the situation in a way that the Russian public might otherwise struggle to access, despite the torrent of anti-Russian propaganda that currently prevails. From what I’ve read, factual reality aligns much more closely with narratives coming out of Russia than those coming from Ukraine and its western allies, but that could be a reflection of my own biases. Really, if we care about the truth, claims and counter-claims should be evaluated on their own merits, case by case, and not from a basically ad hominem approach of rejecting a statement simply because of who is saying it. This is made impossible if the right of reply is taken away and we only get to hear one voice, a point often made by critics of state censorship in rival nations like China, Iran, Venezuela and, ironically, Russia itself.
We need to hear external perspectives on our societies because outsiders can often see truths about us that remain hidden from our day-to-day experience. This is true of Russians but it is also true of us in the west, no matter how confidently our elites crow about democracy and freedom of the press (while imprisoning journalists like Julian Assange). The dissident thinkers allowed on a media platform like RT reveal a huge chasm in our mainstream political dialogue, and we could draw a lot of lessons about the true nature of our societies from that simple fact. There may be an agenda behind the inclusion of these figures on a channel sponsored by a rival country, but then there’s always an agenda behind the choice of which media figures get included, and – more to the point – behind which figures get excluded from the wider conversation. Ultimately there has to be a degree of trust in the public’s ability to make its own mind up. So, as viewers of RT in the west can take that channel’s output with a pinch of salt, considering the source, so Russian viewers ought to be free to view the BBC and other western outlets and decide whether the viewpoint of the outsider has any merit. Closing off these opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue is unprecedented1 and highly dangerous for the prospects of coming to peaceful resolutions between the nations and avoiding the catastrophic slide into World War 3.
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1 As Noam Chomsky put it in a recent interview with Russell Brand:
‘Without freedom of speech, we have no hope of dealing with any of the problems that concern us. We can see this very clearly today, very dramatically. Take the United States today: it is living under a kind of totalitarian culture, which has never existed in my lifetime, and is much worse in many ways than the Soviet Union before Gorbachev. Go back to the 1970s, people in Soviet Russia could access BBC, Voice Of America, German television, if they wanted to find out the news. If today in the United States you want to find out what prime minister Lavrov of Russia is saying – cant’ do it, it’s barred, Americans are not permitted to hear what Russians are saying. Can’t get Russian television, can’t access Russian sources. That means also that fine American journalists like Chris Hedges, one of the best, is cut out, barred from Americans because he happens to have a program running on RT, Russian television. You want to find out what the adversary is saying, which is of utmost importance, you can maybe tune in to Indian state television and find it out, or you can read it on Al Jazeera. But the United States has imposed constraints on freedom of access to information, which are astonishing, and which in fact go beyond what was the case in post-Stalin Soviet Russia. That’s just a remarkable fact. It goes well beyond… anyone who dares to break the party line on the dominant issue of today – Ukraine – is simply demonized, vilified, can be sent to the gulag. It’s a free country, still, but you can barely talk, and that has very dangerous implications for the current situation and beyond.’
[As discussed in part one, here is my selection of 29 separate instances the BBC failed in its Ukraine coverage to live up to Ofcom’s standards of ‘due impartiality’, whereby broadcasters are required to be careful, especially ‘when dealing with matters of major political controversy’ such as wars or conflicts, to not give just one side of the story but to ‘[include] and [give] due weight to an appropriately wide range of significant views’. These standards were invoked by Ofcom in their decision to ban RT from broadcasting in the UK because of their coverage of the war in Ukraine. Will Ofcom now also revoke the BBC’s license for the same reasons?]
#1: Explosions rock Ukrainian port hours after grain deal, July 23rd
Newsreader Tanya Beckett: ‘Local reports suggest today’s strike damaged port infrastructure. Ukraine says Russia would be to blame if the grain export agreement now collapsed. Moscow has not made any comment on the attack.’
US Ambassador Bridget Brink (tweet): ‘Outrageous. Russia strikes the port city of Odesa less than 24 hours after signing an agreement to allow shipments of agricultural exports. The Kremlin continues to weaponize food. Russia must be held to account.’
Reporter Paul Adams: ‘The spokesman for Ukraine’s air defense forces said that the missiles struck at precisely the point where grain was being stored.’
Ukrainian MP for Odessa, Oleksiy Honcharenko: ‘We can’t believe Russians, and once again they showed to the world that they do not respect any agreements, and that Putin wants as much chaos in the world as possible so he made this brutal attack today […] he is acting like a terrorist, food terrorist. He took as a hostage hundreds of millions of people throughout the whole planet, those who are starving, those who are suffering from high food prices’.
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Notes: No response from Russian officials to the claims of ‘weaponizing’ food, that grain storage was specifically targeted, or that ‘food terrorist’ Putin or ‘Russians’ want to create ‘chaos’ and ‘take hostage’ starving people around the world.
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#2: Nord Stream 1: Russia restarts gas supplies to Europe through biggest pipeline, July 21st
Reporter Jenny Hill: ‘Martina’s [coal transporting] barges are busy, but she sees the damage done by Vladimir Putin’s gas war […] few here trust Russia but Germany relied on its gas. […] Vladimir Putin has forced Germany’s climate-conscious government back to coal, at least in the short term. He wants to trigger political and economic chaos in the West.’
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Notes: No comment from any Russian official or context about US/EU sanctions leading to gas restrictions as a reaction from the Russian government. Reporter stating her opinion about what Putin ‘wants’ from his ‘gas war’. Was the Iraq invasion/occupation of 2003 ever referred to by a BBC reporter as ‘Bush and Blair’s oil war’?
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#3: Russia’s independent TV Rain channel back on air July 19th:
Reporter Azaday Washiri (?): ‘They [TV Rain] were taken off air because of their coverage of the war in Ukraine, but now, months later, Russia’s last independent news network is back […] Because of Russia’s restrictive new laws other major independent media outlets have also been forced to either close down or relocate. TV Rain is hoping that despite their new location they’ll still be able to get the facts out to Russia.’
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Notes: No comment from Russian officials or challenge of the implication that other Russian media is not ‘independent’ and devoid of ‘facts’. No mention of the Ukrainian government’s hostility to oppositional media outlets, even before the invasion.
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#4: Russian army is struggling with morale against Ukraine, UK defence chief says, July 18th
Reporter Sophie Raworth: ‘We’ve seen terrible attacks on civilians a very long way away from the front line. Vinnytsia last week, Kremenchuck the shopping center where a lot of people were killed, and these were cruise missile attacks. Is there an element of psychological warfare in that? Those are civilian targets that are being hit.’
UK’s Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin: ‘Yes, I think it’s definitely psychological. These are not military targets, these are acts of terrorism, these are random events where president Putin is endorsing the taking out of civilians’
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Notes: No comment from Russian officials or balance to the claim of terrorist attacks by the Russian military under Putin’s orders.
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#5: Russian soldier’s mum speaks out against war in Ukraine, July 14th
Reporter Steve Rosenberg: ‘Ask president Putin and he’ll tell you he ordered troops into Ukraine to defend the motherland. He wants Russians to rally around the flag. But Valya [not her real name] is in touch with soldiers’ mothers across Russia and she says that many of the mothers blame the Kremlin for what is happening.’
‘Valya’: ‘They hate the government, they hate Putin, they all want this war to end. If the mothers of all the soldiers who are fighting there and the ones who’ve lost sons, if they all rose up can you imagine how big that army would be? And they will. Their nerves will snap. Stop. Stop all this. Stop it and protect our children.’
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Notes: No comment from any Russian official or balance in the form of, say, a Russian mother who is proud of her son fighting in a war to ‘liberate’ the Donbass.
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#6: Russian UN veto could threaten aid deliveries to 3m people in Syria, July 7th:
Newsreader: ‘Russia’s threatened to use its veto at the UN security council later to close the only remaining route for vital aid to get into north-western Syria. Like much of the middle east Syria is facing a dire wheat shortage triggered by the war in Ukraine and the effects of more than a decade of conflict. Closing the final remaining cross-border aid corridor would be a devastating move by Russia that would immediately put more than three million people at risk of starvation.’
Reporter Anna Foster: ‘Will people die if this crossing closes?’
WFP Emergency Co-ordinater [sic]: ‘I think we can quite confidently say that there would be more preventable deaths because of closing this UN truck shipment out.’
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Notes: No comment from Russian or Syrian officials, or context provided to explain that the ‘decade of conflict’ in Syria has included the US military’s ongoing occupation of key oil and wheat producing regions, essentially holding them hostage and denying the Syrian government and people access and revenue. Of course the BBC goes to Idlib province, though at least the piece notes that it is controlled by a ‘jihadist’ organisation.
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#7: Zelensky vows to win back Luhansk from Russia, July 4th:
Reporter Sarah Rainsford: ‘Vladimir Putin calls this a war of liberation. Ukraine says it’s obliteration. Its own forces have been defending with everything they’ve got but they say they need more.’
Ukrainian soldier: ‘Russians like tactic to destroy all of city or village totally’
Second soldier: ‘We want to protect our families, friends, wives from terrible scenes that Russians do with our citizens in Irpin, Bucha, Gaston[?], Mariupol. We cannot let this happen again.’
Newsreader: ‘They say they’re pulling out for now. The hope is they may be able to go back in the future. But obviously they need more weapons, something they’ve been calling for pretty much every day of this dreadful war. Where are they at in terms of supplies from other countries?’
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Notes: No comment from Russian officials, Putin quote is clearly only included to be disparaged. Openly ‘hoping’ along with Ukrainian armed forces for more arms shipments and training and effectively agitating for western countries to supply these asap. When have they ‘hoped’ for a speedy Russian victory?
*****
#8: Russian missile strikes kill 20 in Ukraine’s Odesa region, July 1st:
Newsreader: ‘President Zelensky’s chief of staff has accused Russia of waging a war on Ukrainian civilians in response to military defeats. It follows missile strikes overnight on a resort near the black sea port of Odessa. The emergency services say 19 died and more than 30 others were injured in the attacks’
Reporter Joe Inwood: ‘[T]he the missiles struck an apartment building as you said, a nine-story apartment building pretty much destroyed by one missile and a resort hit by another […] what’s interesting, as you mentioned, is that this happens just hours after the Russians were forced to retreat from Snake Island, that iconic, that strategically important outcropping of rock in the Black Sea which people may remember from the start of this conflict when the defenders of Snake Island gained some celebrity here in Ukraine, became national heroes for telling the flagship of the black sea fleet of the Russians to go away in no uncertain and rather more florid terms. […] There was some hope that that [re-taking of Snake Island] would ease the pressure on places like Odessa’
*****
Notes: No comment from Russian officials, retailing Ukrainian propaganda without noting all the untruths that surrounded it and other stories, more ‘hope’ from the Ukrainian perspective, clearly shared by the reporter who would never hope for Russian military successes.
Newsreader: ‘The Ukrainian authorities say Russia fired eight missiles at a city in the South of the country killing three people in a residential building. It comes as president Zelensky released CCTV of the moment a missile exploded in a shopping center in Kremenchuk. 18 people were killed in that attack on Monday. Mr. Zelensky said that was a deliberate strike designed to kill as many people as possible. Russia denies that it hit the shopping center, claiming it had struck a nearby arms depot which ignited the fire.’
Reporter Joe Inwood: ‘President Zelensky maintains it was a terrorist act.’
Zelensky: ‘The Russian missile hit this location precisely, deliberately. It is clear those were the orders given. They wanted to kill as many people as possible in a peaceful city in an ordinary shopping mall.’
Inwood: ‘In this war Russia has often been accused of lying. Rarely has it been so clearly demonstrated.’
*****
Notes: Several comments from Russian officials in this, but all heavily criticised with direct accusations of dishonesty, including from the BBC reporter, and no response allowed to the claim that it was a deliberate ‘terrorist’ attack.
*****
#10: Where is Russia taking Ukraine’s stolen grain?, June 27th:
Newsreader Sally Bundock: ‘A BBC investigation has found evidence of occupying Russian forces stealing thousands of tons of Ukrainian grain. The UN is warning of famine in Africa and the middle east because of the disruption to supplies from Ukraine which is one of the world’s biggest wheat producers. Moscow denies accusations of theft but Russian installed authorities have been found to be issuing decrees saying they are nationalising Ukrainian grain.’
Reporter Nick Beake: ‘Russian forces in Ukraine are accused of war crimes, murder and rape but they’re also accused of stealing Ukrainian grain on an industrial scale.’
Anonymous farmer: ‘They destroyed our premises, destroyed our equipment, everything they saw. Everything they touched disappears. […] They looted our offices, even pulled the wiring from the walls and took away the photographs of our relatives.’
Nick Beake: ‘Thousands of tons of grain were then taken and transported in stolen lorries […] it’s feared Ukrainian grain is being packed up and exported as Russian grain […] Ukrainian officials fear the Russians have stolen as much as eight hundred thousand tons of grain since the invasion. It’s bringing back memories of the great famine that Joseph Stalin inflicted on this country nearly a century ago.’
Anonymous farmer: ‘The Russians are destroying us as a nation, as people who strive for freedom and work. They don’t want us to have this land, to earn from this land.’
Nick Beake: ‘Grain that isn’t being robbed is being destroyed. This footage posted by the Ukrainian military is said to show Russian forces blowing up a grain store. Moscow denies it’s destroying or robbing Ukrainian produce but instead it claims it’s nationalising Ukraine’s grain.
Anonymous farmer: ‘I think there are so many people in the world now sitting eating a sandwich not realizing that this grain has been stolen and that so many people are suffering. I don’t understand why the world is silent and not doing anything to punish this injustice.’
Nick Beake: ‘The wholesale theft of Ukrainian grain threatens to cripple this vital sector of an economy already under such strain. A Russian crime targeting individual farmers will be felt by a whole nation and beyond.’
*****
Notes: A few brief denials allowed from Russian officials but all the most serious allegations are left unanswered. The reporter manages to use the word ‘alleged’ once, but other than that it’s described unequivocally as ‘theft’, ‘stolen’, ‘robbed’, a ‘crime’ etc.
*****
#11: Russia blockading Ukrainian grain is a ‘real war crime’ says EU, June 20th
Reporter Joe Inwood: ‘What the president [Zelensky] has always said, the message he continuously puts across is that they need continued support […] I think there is a danger, there’s a concern here that war weariness, fatigue in those populations [of countries supporting or arming Ukraine] means that there’s a diminishing support for the high levels of support that the west is giving president Zelensky and the Ukrainians. And I think the fear is if there is a drop off in support they’d really be struggling on the battlefield.’
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell: ‘The problem comes from the Russian blockade of the Ukrainian grain. Millions of tons of wheat is being blocked and millions of people will not be able to eat this wheat, so the war is going to have a dramatic consequence for the world. We call to Russia to de-blockade the ports and let these products go […] one cannot imagine that millions of tons of wheat remain blocked in ukraine while in the rest of the world people are suffering hunger. This is a real war crime.
*****
Notes: No comment from Russian officials. No cheerleading or taking the Russian side from the reporter or attempts to bolster international support for their efforts. No presentation of a Russian politician’s statements at face value or speculation about what causes ‘fear’ or ‘concern’ for Russians.
*****
#12: Russia ‘used cluster munitions’ in Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, June 13th:
Newsreader Lucy Grey: ‘Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv since the start of the conflict by indiscriminate Russian shelling. In a new report Amnesty International accused Moscow of routinely using internationally prohibited cluster munitions and scatterable mines. The human rights organization said the decision to use such weapons showed an utter disregard for civilian lives and could constitute war crimes. The Kremlin has previously denied using cluster munitions in Ukraine and insisted that Russian forces have only struck military targets.’
Reporter Whirrad Davis [?]: ‘From the very start of this war the city of Kharkiv bore the brunt of Russian shelling, often indiscriminate and wildly inaccurate […] Kharkiv was a key Russian target in the early weeks of the war and they literally threw everything at this city including widely banned weapons indiscriminate by their very nature.’
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, weapons expert, Cambridge University: ‘The world has made these weapons illegal because they are so devastating and indiscriminate and mainly affect civilians. There can be no reason legally or morally to use cluster munitions in Ukraine or anywhere else.’
Whirrad Davis: ‘This demonstrates the indiscriminate destruction that cluster munitions can bring. A large shell explodes casting off dozens of smaller bomblets. As they then explode over a certain area they shower people and buildings with thousands of pieces of shrapnel in this case Kharkiv’s children’s hospital.’
Newsreader: ‘This is just the latest in a long list of accusations of war crimes against Russia isn’t it, but it is a hugely damning report, this.’
Reporter Joe Inwood: ‘Yeah absolutely and very credible as well.’
*****
Notes: No comment from Russian officials apart from brief notes of denial from the Kremlin. The report says that cluster bombs are ‘internationally prohibited’ but doesn’t note that the US has refused to sign onto this and has itself used them as recently as 2009 in Yemen. I’m going to guess the BBC didn’t report the effects of this on civilians on the ground with this level of empathy, if they reported it at all. (Ukrainian forces have also been accused of using cluster munitions.) Bretton-Gordon is presented neutrally as a ‘weapons expert’ without any note of his previous ties to the intelligence services, the British army’s 77th psy-ops brigade, or his record of gunning for war in Syria.
*****
#13: Ukraine war leaves Mariupol at risk of major cholera outbreak, June 11th:
Newsreader: ‘Ukrainian officials say humanitarian conditions in the city of Mariupol are getting worse under the current Russian occupation and people there are at risk of diseases like cholera. The exiled deputy mayor of the southern port city says bodies are still being discovered in the ruins, there’s a shortage of doctors and food and water are in short supply.’
Reporter Nick Beake: ‘There was one woman who we managed to make contact with and she explained that her mother left the city [Mariupol] about a week ago and she left behind a city of corpses. She said that she had friends who had died there and they simply weren’t being buried. This is a place where medicine is in very short supply, a lot of doctors and nurses are not able to treat people and also link to this warning we hear today about a possible widespread cholera outbreak. Getting running water is really difficult and that is said to be because a lot of the pipes have been hit by the intense Russian shelling. So it’s a really bleak picture that’s painted of life in the city. About a hundred thousand people are said to remain there and of course the accusation leveled at the Russians is that they’ve come in and they now cannot cannot provide just the most basic of services to the Ukrainian people, and of course these are people the Russians claim they’ve come in to liberate and make their lives better.’
*****
Notes: No comment from Russian officials or evidence provided of a cholera outbreak. Blame for the state of Mariupol is laid entirely at the feet of ‘the Russians’ with no description of the notoriously brutal tactics of the Azov Battalion, who formerly had their stronghold in the city.
*****
#14: ‘Lack of Russian military discipline’ could result in war crimes in Ukraine, says lawyer, June 5th:
War crimes lawyer Sir Howard Morrison QC: ‘Different cultures deal with war in different ways. Some cultures are just simply brutal in the sense that they want to win their conflict at any cost and at any price and take no notice of whether or not that involves flattening towns, destroying civilians, destroying cultural property. Others are more cautious, others obey the Geneva conventions and protocols in a much more managed way. Western armies by and large now have lawyers embedded with them for targeting purposes. I’ve not seen any evidence of that so far in the Ukraine.’
Newsreader Sophie Raworth: ‘But some of it just seems so random. Some of the instances that we’ve seen, for example the CCTV footage of two security guards, Ukrainians walking away and Russian soldiers shooting them in the back as they walked away.’
Howard Morrison: ‘Well the immediate cause of that is a lack of discipline, a lack of military training […] I’ve read from some American military commentary that it’s the lack of a proper non-commissioned officer base who would bring that sort of discipline down to the front line, and that is lacking in it seems in the Russian military, and a lot of people are simply doing whatever they want at the time because they think they can get away with it.’
*****
Notes: No comments from Russian officials about alleged lack of discipline or war crimes committed. Racist othering of Russians and their ‘brutal culture’ dressed up in legalese. Ridiculous claim of western militaries being somehow better in their wars and that embedding lawyers prevents war crimes. How did that work out in Iraq & Afghanistan? Fresh allegations emerge every couple of months about murders committed by Western troops during those occupations and there’s no reason to think having a few lawyers around will stop that. Will they be going along on all the night raids? Will they be watching everything the drone operators do and following it up with investigations on the ground? Of course not. The US is not a signatory to the ICC, which is widely regarded as biased against countries in the global south while letting rich war criminals in the west off the hook.
*****
#15 : Torture stories emerge from Russian-occupied region of Ukraine, Kherson, June 1st:
Reporter Caroline Davies: ‘Olexander’s bruises are fading but the memories of what happened to him in Kherson have not. This he says is the result of torture at the hands of the Russian authorities. He explains how he was hung by his wrists and put in the stress position.’
Olexander: ‘They put the bag on my head. The beating began. The Russians began to threaten that I would not have kidneys. I didn’t take off my watch. They started smashing it, trampling my feet. When I was severely beaten on this side I lost consciousness.’
Caroline Davies: ‘Oleg is a journalist. Within days of Russia’s invasion he says he was kidnapped.’
Oleg: ‘Later when I went to the doctor I learned that they had broken four ribs. I heard them torturing other prisoners. I think that was even worse for me than the physical beatings because psychologically it was very difficult to survive.’
Caroline Davies: ‘Without being able to go into the region it’s difficult to corroborate these accounts but we’ve heard multiple testimonies with allegations of kidnap and torture.’
Anonymous Kherson ‘hospital doctor’ apparently speaking over the phone: ‘I saw gunshot wounds, consequences of rape, burns, fractures, injuries of internal organs, craniocerebral injuries when a person is brought in an unconscious state […] I saw burn marks on genitals and burns from an iron on a patient’s back and stomach. A patient told me that a wire was connected to a car battery, two bare wires were attached to his groin and his feet were on a wet rag.’
Caroline Davies: ‘The Russian authorities did not respond to our request for comment. They previously called other allegations of war crimes staged but as more testimonies are gathered many paint a picture of fear, intimidation, violence and repression of life under Russian control.’
*****
Notes: Rare mention of an attempt to get a response from Russian officials, but insufficient to provide a balanced view in light of the grave accusations, unverified and/or anonymous so failing basic standards of reporting. No mention of allegations of Ukrainians torturing Russian POWs, so again Russia is presented as the sole aggressor, uniquely evil. Abu Ghraib?
*****
#16: Ukrainians used as ‘bargaining chips’ in Russian prisoner of war exchanges, May 31st:
Newsreader: ‘Well the war in Ukraine has seen not just soldiers captured but civilians too. For those who survive many find themselves as bargaining chips for prisoner of war exchanges or forced by the Russians to accept their occupation.’
Reporter James Waterhouse: ‘Klib is only just taking his first steps. two months ago he was defending Mariupol with the marines watching for the enemy […] He survived but was captured. No one knew whether he was dead or alive until this video was posted online by his captors. He was taken to a hospital in Russian occupied territory.’
Klib: ‘They held a dagger on my leg, up my throat then led to my ear and said it would be nice to cut off your ear. They did it to nearly everyone. I couldn’t feed myself because my jaw was broken and I couldn’t sit up but some nurses would taunt me by leaving food down in front of me and say try and eat that you low-life Ukrainian. We were lying there without any painkillers or anything. So only my faith and the understanding that I had to survive helped me to carry on.’
James Waterhouse: ‘In war capture is an occupational hazard for a soldier. But this conflict has seen people, citizens taken by the Russians as they try to do two things: either use them as currency and prisoner exchanges, and that seems to have worked in some cases, but also to try and crush their resistance, their fight. And that hasn’t been so successful.’
Klib: ‘Yes, I want to go back and continue fighting for Ukraine to help bring us victory over Russia.’
*****
Notes: No comment from Russian officials or answer to the serious allegations of mistreatment at the hands of the Russian military and medical personnel. In any case, in the report these concern a soldier, not a civilian, and no evidence is presented that the latter are captured and ransomed, as stated. It’s obvious from the sympathetic portrayal that the BBC reporters support the ‘resistance’ of the Ukrainians – hardly impartial.
*****
#17: Russian mum’s fight to save sons from President Putin’s war in Ukraine, May 26th:
Newsreader: ‘Among the Russian forces who’ve been fighting are two brothers whose mother has spoken to the BBC. She claims they were conscripted despite president Putin’s assurance that only professional soldiers have been deployed. She spoke to our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg.’
Reporter Steve Rosenberg: ‘This is how Moscow portrays its soldiers in Ukraine, as professionals. But away from the official images some here tell a different story.’
Anonymous mother: ‘I got into the car and started searching for my sons. On the phone one of their commanders insisted they were on military exercises in the fields. I said I have driven round all the fields where their exercise is. They’re not there, please don’t lie to me. He hung up.’
Steve Rosenberg: ‘Fearing her sons were dead or injured Marina [not her real name] went to a military hospital. No sign.’
Anonymous mother: ‘There wasn’t enough medicine or bandages. Local residents supplied everything. The soldiers they were cold and hungry.’
Steve Rosenberg: ‘Eventually an admission from the military: her sons had gone into Ukraine.’
Anonymous mother: ‘I was told the terrifying news, your children have signed contracts to be professional soldiers, they are taking part in the special military operation, they will return as heroes. I said what on earth are you talking about? They had no plans to sign a contract, they’ve been in the army for three months, they’ve only held a gun once.’
Steve Rosenberg: ‘Vladimir Putin had said there wasn’t a single Russian conscript in Ukraine. The authorities later backtracked. Marina filed a complaint, it was upheld. Her sons hadn’t signed any military contract, they were brought back to Russia.’
*****
Notes: No comment from Russian officials responding to the claims about misconduct by the military or the poor state of their hospitals, though it appears there might at least be some evidence of a complaint this person made which was then upheld by the authorities. As her identity is concealed none of it can be verified yet again. I am yet to see any reports from the BBC about misconduct by the Ukrainian military.
The use of the word ‘mum’ in the title of the piece, instead of ‘mother’ or ‘parent’ strikes me as odd, sentimentalising another Russian dissident figure in a way that would never happen for Official Enemies. Any Taliban, Hezbollah or Hamas ‘mums’ out there? Only the ones who want their sons to lay down their arms and stop fighting the West, I would imagine…
*****
#18: One Russian’s anti-war protest on side of his shopping centre, May 20th:
Newsreader: ‘The red cross has registered hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners of war who left the besieged steel works in Mariupol. The Russian authorities say all those surrendering will be treated in line with international standards but there are fears the fighters could face prosecution by president Putin’s courts.
Steve Rosenberg: ‘Tired and wounded, Moscow released these images of Ukrainian fighters leaving the steel works they’d been defending in Mariupol, giving themselves up to the Russians. Ukraine is hoping for a prisoner swap but in Russia there are calls to put some of the soldiers on trial for war crimes.’
Yevgeny Popov, Russian MP: ‘They are killers, they are criminals, but we give them medical care.’
Steve Rosenberg: ‘But your country invaded Ukraine with more than a hundred thousand troops. That’s aggression isn’t it?’
Yevgeny Popov: ‘No, it’s not an aggression, it’s not an aggression, don’t bully us.’
Steve Rosenberg: ‘Moscow tries to justify invading Ukraine with a false claim that it’s gone in to fight nazis. A war crimes trial could shore up an unconvincing narrative. The Kremlin wants Russians to believe that in Ukraine their army is battling nazis and NATO, Europe and America were all plotting away to attack and destroy the motherland. And there are many here who believe this parallel reality but not everyone does.
Dmitry Skurikhin admits that his country, Russia is the aggressor. He is appalled by the bloodshed and wants his whole town to know it. He’s transformed the outside of his shop into a message board with the names of Ukrainian towns Russia’s attacked: Kherson, Irpin, Kiev. Peace to Ukraine it says. He’s even turned his roof into the Ukrainian flag.’
*****
Brief comment from Russian authorities assuring prisoners will be well treated but otherwise free reign given to indulge fears about politicised war crimes trials. Rosenberg has no trouble making categorical statements about ‘false’ or ‘unconvincing’ Russian claims to be fighting nazis and the ‘parallel reality’ of it also being a proxy war with Western powers. These aren’t balanced by any analyst pointing to the extent of fascist activity in Ukraine, especially in the armed forces, security and police, or by anyone pointing out the documented history of western interference in Ukrainian politics to serve its interests and undermine Russia. Compare to the next video reporting solemnly on a Ukrainian war crimes trial sentencing a 21 year old soldier to life imprisonment for allegedly killing a civilian:
*****
#19: Russian soldier jailed for life for killing civilian in first Ukraine war crimes trial, May 23rd:
Newsreader: ‘A Russian soldier has been given life in prison for the murder of a 62 year old Ukrainian man. Vadim Shishimarin is the first person to stand trial for war crimes since the start of Russia’s invasion. It comes as president Zelensky of Ukraine told the world economic forum that Russia should be punished for its invasion of his country in order to discourage future international aggression. Our correspondent Joe Inwood has the latest.’
Reporter Joe Inwood: ‘This was a moment of great significance, the first Russian soldier officially declared a war criminal, twenty-one-year-old Vadim Shishimarin sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Oleksandr Shelipov. The Russian tank commander had admitted killing the 62 year old but said he was simply following orders. A Ukrainian court disagreed and gave him life. But almost at the same time another announcement was being made here in the capital. There will be real anger at the news that the defenders of Azovstal, men who are considered national heroes for their defense of Mariupol, are to be tried in what’s being called an international tribunal in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The news was made by Denis Pushilin, the leader of the breakway region. We haven’t got more details yet but it could be he’s referring to all of the fighters or just the leadership.’
*****
Notes: No fears of a politicised trial here – indeed the quote from Zelensky appears to show endorsement of using judicial punishment as a ‘discouragement’ – not balanced by any Russian viewpoint. Joe Inwood is fully embedded in the Ukrainian perspective as ever, even appearing to get angry himself when describing the reactions of people in Kiev to the prospect of Ukrainian soldiers (likely many of them from the openly fascist Azov battalion that was defending Mariupol) facing trial in Russia. Presumably he wouldn’t blandly note their sentencing as ‘significant’, noting simply that a ‘Russian court disagreed’ with their defense before handing out a harsh punishment.
*****
#20: Ukraine’s soldiers trapped in Mariupol evacuated, May 17th:
Newsreader Tim Willcox: ‘More than 260 wounded soldiers from the Azovstal steel works on the edge of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol have been evacuated. They’ve been holding out against a Russian offensive for nearly three months, gaining almost legendary status among many Ukrainians in the process […] these latest pictures suggest that the soldiers in the Azovstal plant were bussed out and have now reached Novoazovsk which is a Russian-controlled town in eastern Ukraine.
[Footage of buses with big white ‘Z’s taped on the windows]
At least 50 of the soldiers are said to have been taken to local hospitals there. It’s not clear at this stage if they will be released into Ukrainian government hands. Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky has stressed the importance of their release:’
Vladimir Zelensky: ‘We hope to save the lives of our boys. Among them are the heavily wounded. They are being treated. I want to underline Ukraine needs its Ukrainian heroes alive. This is our principle. I think these words can be understood by all adequate people.’
Newsreader Tim Willcox: ‘Let’s get the latest now from Joe Inwood who joins us from Lviv. Uh Joe, is this effectively the end of the siege of Mariupol?’
Reporter Joe Inwood: ‘Uh I’m not sure we can say that for certain yet. We do know that there are, we certainly suspect that there are soldiers still inside. It may be that some have decided they’d had enough, and you can understand why, but some have decided that they are going to stay and fight, maybe because they are the members for example of the Azov battalion who feared they would not receive anything approaching fair treatment. So I think until we have confirmation that every single soldier is out of that complex I think we can say, we can’t say that the battle is completely over, but I think this does represent a marked shift in the conflict.
[…]
I think it’s fair to say that, whilst the Russians have clearly come close to winning the battle for Mariupol they might be losing the wider war. That’s certainly the assessment that we’re getting from analysts and from the intelligence that we’re seeing up in Kharkiv as you mentioned. This is Ukraine’s second city, we’ve seen a counter-offensive, we’ve seen Ukrainian forces pushing Russian forces back and yesterday indeed there was a video that was released – I’m sure people will have seen this – of Ukrainian forces carrying a big yellow and blue striped post to the border to reimpose their post on the internationally recognized border. They sent a message to the president, president Zelensky saying “We are here, we’ve done it” so yeah, we are seeing these Ukrainian counter-offensives even pushing Russian forces back across the Seversky Donets river around Donetsk and holding the line in Isiam [?]. So I think the general pattern, although it’s varied in different places, the general pattern is that the Russians seem to be struggling, they’re losing a lot of forces and the Ukrainians are trying to push them back where they can.’
*****
Notes: No comment from Russian officials or explanations for why the ‘heroes’ of the Azov battalion might not expect ‘fair treatment’ from the Russians, eg: because of claims they held civilians hostage in the steel works, or because of the fascist politics of the battalion. Almost comical bias shown in the attempt to present a clear Russian victory as somehow not significant, not complete, and anyway they’re losing the war elsewhere in the region. The BBC describes it as an ‘evacuation,’ rather than the more accurate description of ‘unconditional surrender and imprisonment’, as many comments under the video point out.
*****
#21: Russian soldiers caught on camera killing Ukrainian civilians, May 12th:
Reporter Sarah Rainsford: ‘These are Russian soldiers on their way to loot and to kill, but their every move is caught on multiple cameras and so is Leonid the security guard. As he approaches them the men talk, even smoke and then the soldiers leave but suddenly two turn back they shoot Leonid and a second man multiple times in their backs. Leonid somehow survives. His boss dead, the guard staggers back to his hut and starts phoning for help. I met one of the friends Leonid called that day.’
Friend Vasya[?]: ‘The soldiers claimed they don’t kill civilians then they shot him. I asked how he was. I said can you at least bandage yourself up and he said, Vasya, I barely crawled here, everything hurts so much, I feel really bad. So I told him to hang in there and started calling the territorial defense.’
Sarah Rainsford: ‘The Russians drove a stolen van dubbed with their v symbol and the words “Russian tank special forces” and this is the man we saw shooting now helping himself to a drink. He has no idea he’s being filmed. No one does until it’s too late. And all this time Leonid is hiding in here, bleeding heavily. Weeks later we found his clothes and mattress bundled up outside. He died before help could reach him.’
[…]
‘Police have told us the Russians shot at anything that moved here [a ‘nearby road’]. They found the bodies of 37 civilians on just this stretch of road.
[…]
‘Leonid’s daughter shared this image of her dad [with a cat] as she’d like him remembered. Yulia is abroad now. She tells me she wants her father’s killers to face justice.
Yulia: ‘My dad was not a military man at all. He was a pensioner. They killed a 65 year old, what for? I’m not so much furious as full of grief and fear these damn Russians are so out of control that I’m afraid of what they might do next.’
Sarah Rainsford: ‘Leonid never returned to his home or his pets. Another life stolen by Russian troops now notorious for their brutality.’
*****
Notes: Lots of serious accusations, for once with compelling footage apparently backing the claims (though this has been questioned in detail). However, Ofcom’s professed standards would still require a balancing statement from Russian officials for ‘due impartiality’, especially when generalised to a ‘notorious brutality’ in the entire Russian military as the BBC reporter does. This is not provided.
*****
#22: ‘I fought against Nazis with the Soviets, now I flee Putin’s war’, May 11th:
Arkady: ‘I heard that the shells were flying and immediately realised that this was a war. Even though they said it wouldn’t happen.’
Caption: ‘At 92 years old, Arkady had to flee his home in Ukraine.’
Arkady: ‘Sirens wailed at night and shells flew like this and like that, and so much burning, bombs. It was so scary.’
Caption: ‘It’s the second time he’s had to run from war. As a young Jewish boy he became separated from his family while escaping the Nazis in World War Two.
Arkady: ‘They were shooting all the Jews. They were receiving bonuses for each one found. There was a cellar. I lived there for a month. The Germans went there twice but did not find me.’
Caption: ‘At the age of 11, he joined the local resistance fighting alongside the Soviet Army against the Nazis.
Arkady: ‘I had the same automatic weapon as everyone else. On my shoulders I had a bag with mines and grenades just in case. I participated with the grown-ups in these operations.’
Caption: ‘He never imagined he would be running from the Russians, leaving eight decades of his life behind.’
Arkady: ‘I didn’t have time to take anything with me. I left in slippers. It was six in the morning. I closed the apartment, turned off the lights and that’s it.’
Caption: ‘He’s safe now at his daughter’s house in Israel. But he’s angry that Russia claims to be fighting Nazis again.’
Arkady: ‘Ukraine is a quiet and peaceful country. There are no fascists here. It’s vice versa.’
Caption: ‘For him, 9 May – when Russia marks its victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two has always been a difficult day. This year, it’s a tragedy.’
Arkady: ‘The parade is always festive. How can it be done when everything is on fire and burning all around?’
Caption: ‘And his message to the Russians…’
Arkady: ‘I have no words.’
*****
Notes: Another human interest story that just happens to coincide with Ukrainian/Western propaganda aims and to undermine the Russian war effort by pushing as many emotive buttons as possible. Where are the videos of elderly Russian WW2 veterans who identify the threat of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and support the invasion and stated purpose to ‘de-nazify’ and disarm Ukraine? Polls of the Russian public’s support for the war and the actions of the Putin government suggest that there would be plenty around and due impartiality would require giving at least as much sympathetic airtime to their stories. Not on the BBC.
*****
#23: Odesa shopping centre hit by Russian missiles, Ukraine says, May 10th:
Newsreader: ‘Authorities in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa say aircraft dropped seven missiles on a shopping centre and a warehouse on Monday evening. The city streets were empty because of a curfew. One person is believed to have died and five others injured and taken to hospital. Officials say the missiles used were Soviet style which caused extensive fires. Well, let’s cross live now to our correspondent Joe Inwood who is in Lviv, and Joe, what more do we know about that particular attack?’
Reporter Joe Inwood: ‘Well, it happened at about 10.30 yesterday evening and it completely destroyed, we understand, the back half of a big shopping center and a warehouse with finished goods in as well. Luckily, as you mentioned, luckily it happened about 10.30 at night, so in the evening when the curfew was in place, and that’s why, we understand, there was only one person killed and five wounded. If it had hit a busy shopping center in the middle of the day, well if you’ve seen the pictures, the smoldering rubble with firemen walking through, it could have been far, far worse, I’m sure.’
Newsreader: ‘Joe, bring us up to date about another aspect of what’s been going on in Ukraine, because of course as the fighting and the attacks continue the people in many areas of the country continue to suffer. In particular we’ve been hearing about food shortages being acute in so many areas in the country.’
Joe Inwood: ‘Yeah, absolutely, I mean there’s, but I think in terms of food shortages there was quite an interesting kind of set of developments yesterday, not regarding food shortages inside the country, but outside the country. Now Ukraine is a huge exporter of grains, of wheat, of maize, of corn, and all of that usually is exported via the sea via Odessa, where we’re hearing about those missile strikes. And what we saw yesterday was Charles Michel from the European Council was coming looking at some of those warehouses which, we understand, are full of grains – are full of food produce that is ready to be exported but can’t be because of the Russian sea blockade. Now, Russian ships are stopping anything coming into or out of Odessa and there’s a real concern, I think, and this is something that David Beasley from the World Food Program has talked about as well, there’s a real concern that that food is not going to be able to get out. It may even rot in warehouses, the next year’s harvest might not be able to be stored anywhere because lots and lots of countries especially in the developing world, in East Africa, somewhere I’ve worked extensively, they were heavily reliant on grain that comes from Ukraine. And if it isn’t coming out those places are going to suffer real either food shortages, rising prices or both.’
*****
Notes: No comment from Russian officials about the missile strike or the alleged blockade of grain in Odessa. Interesting style of reporting the former in how bad it could have been for civilians if done at a different time of day – perhaps that was why the Russians chose that time to carry out the strike? No indication that there could have been any military objective other than to wantonly destroy civilian infrastructure. With the grain story, as ever the fact that the Ukrainian military mined the port of Odessa, thus making shipments impossible regardless of any Russian blockade, goes unmentioned.
*****
#24: Ukraine war ‘a horror story of violations against civilians’, April 22nd:
Newsreader: ‘Hello, and a very warm welcome, and let’s start with some breaking news: the UN human rights office has issued a damning statement describing the war in Ukraine as a horror story of violations against civilians in which respect for international law has been tossed aside. The UN monitoring mission in Ukraine has documented the unlawful killing of 50 civilians in Bucha northwest of Kiev, a town shattered in the fight for control of Ukraine’s capital. The UN said such killings amount to war crimes and this comes as Ukrainian officials accuse Russian forces of burying the bodies of hundreds of civilians in mass graves outside the besieged city of Mariupol. Now this is a picture taken by the US satellite company Maxar on the 19th of March. It shows a cemetery in the village of Manhush [?] just outside Mariupol. Images taken two weeks later on the third of April appear to show freshly dug trenches in Manhush. Now the mayor of Marupol says the photos show Russia was trying to conceal the number of people it had killed. Well, I’m joined now by Anna Foster our correspondent in Kiev. Anna, this looks like powerful evidence presented by the UN today.’
Reporter Anna Forster: ‘That’s right, they say that they’ve documented the killings of 50 civilians in Bucha. I should just say by the way if you can hear the sound of sirens in the background here in Kiev that is still a regular feature of life here in Ukraine at the moment. So, 50 civilians – the UN say they have documented their killings and they express in their report a litany of indiscriminate killing, sexual violence and torture. It’s worth saying as well in Bucha 50 deaths are a small number, it would seem, of the losses in that town. I have been there on various occasions now, and there is that mass grave next to the beautiful Saint Andrew’s church in the middle of the town of Bucha, and estimates were that there were three to four hundred people buried in that mass grave alone. We’ve seen, of course, the pictures of bodies on the streets, bodies which appeared to have been shot in the back, people with hands bound behind their backs. The UN say that this is clear evidence of war crimes. I spoke actually to the chief prosecutor at the international criminal court here in Kiev the week before last. He said that they were gathering all of this evidence, that it was important for the legal process to take its course to try and produce some sort of meaningful result. But certainly from the UN human rights office today they say that not just in Bucha, in towns around Kiev and across the country now, they now have this clear evidence of war crimes having been committed by Russian forces.’
*****
Notes: No comment from Russian officials about these very serious allegations. No discussion of the gaps in the Bucha narrative that had already started to emerge by the time of this report. No indication that Ukrainian forces may themselves have committed war crimes, eg: the aforementioned footage of Ukrainian soldiers apparently shooting Russian POWs in the knees, which the BBC felt obliged to forensically investigate for itself before conceding it looked real. Any such rigour before relaying Ukrainian claims of Russian atrocities?
*****
#27: Stories of sexual violence against Ukrainian women from Russian forces, April 11th:
Newsreader: ‘Well, with Russian troops retreating from areas around the capital that they used to control Ukrainian forces are moving in and are uncovering more and more stories of violence used against the local women, in particular of soldiers using rape as a weapon of war. Our correspondent Nikita Lamai [?] has been speaking to some of those affected, and you may find some of the vivid descriptions of abuse in her report upsetting.’
Reporter Nikita Lamai [?]: ‘A quiet rural neighborhood shattered by barbaric violence in a village west of Kiev, a first-hand account of rape by invading soldiers. When we started talking to this woman we didn’t know what we were about to hear. We’re hiding her identity to protect her.’
Anonymous woman: ‘Soldier entered the house. My husband and I were there. At gunpoint he took me to a neighboring house. He was ordering me, “take your clothes off or I’ll shoot you here”. Then he started raping me. While he was doing that four more soldiers entered. I thought I was done for but they took him away.’
Nikita Lamai: ‘She returned home to find her husband shot in the abdomen. He died two days later, she buried him in the back yard.’
Anonymous woman: ‘I found drugs and viagra that they left behind. They would get high and they were drunk. Most of the invading soldiers are killers, rapists and losers, only a few are okay. I want to ask Putin why is this happening? I don’t understand. We’re not living in the stone age.’
Nikita Lamai: ‘Just up the road we heard of another rape case. It’s being investigated by the police. This is the house a woman was taken to and assaulted. Upstairs, the bedroom where she was later killed. It’s a disturbing scene. On the mirror a message in lipstick: “tortured by unknown people, buried by Russian soldiers” it says. Out in the garden we were shown her grave. A day after we went Ukrainian police exhumed her body. The note, we’re told, was left by a separate unit of Russians who found her body and buried her here. They later told a neighbor Oksana Smolenska about the dead woman.
Oksana Smolenska: ‘They told me she had been raped and that her throat was either slit or stabbed and she bled to death. They said there was a lot of blood.
Nikita Lamai: ‘We traveled 70 miles east to another village to what used to be the home of a family, a couple in their thirties and their young child. Signs of their peaceful ordinary life lie amidst the ruins. On the ninth of March Russian tanks rolled in. Two soldiers shot the man dead. The woman who lived in this house managed to escape along with her child. She called the Ukrainian police and she’s given them her testimony. She told them she was raped multiple times by the two drunk Russian soldiers who killed her husband, and she said they threatened to kill her little boy too if she didn’t do exactly as they said. As the soldiers left they burned down the house. The police chief has told us they’ve gathered evidence and planned to go to the international court. We met Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova who’s been recording rape cases.’
Lyudmyla Denisova: ‘About 25 girls and women aged 14 to 24 were raped during the occupation in the basement of one house in Bucha. Nine of them are pregnant. A 25 year old woman called to tell us her 16 year old sister was raped in the street in front of her. To calculate the number of such sexual crimes is impossible at the moment because not everyone has come to us, not everyone is willing to talk to us.’
Nikita Lamai: ‘Among the people we met there’s no relief that the Russians have gone because they’ve left behind deeply wounded lives that might never recover.’
*****
Notes: No comment in the video from any Russian official to these very serious, emotive (but unverified) allegations of sexual violence, murder, drunkenness and drug abuse from Russian troops – although the drop-down menu on the youtube video does note simply that ‘The Kremlin denies that its troops have committed such offences.’ The BBC has no problem presenting these stories as settled fact, endorsing the view of ‘barbaric violence’ committed by ‘the Russians’ (words used by the BBC reporter herself, not those she interviewed).
*****
#28: Ukrainians say Russian soldiers used them as human shields, April 7th:
Newsreader: ‘There has been further Russian shelling of towns and cities in eastern Ukraine. Russia is expected to intensify its offensive there over the coming weeks. Meanwhile there has also been more evidence of potential Russian war crimes in the area very close to Kiev itself. The BBC has been told that Russian troops in Ivankiv rounded up civilians and used them as human shields. Families say they were taken at gunpoint to a local school and held there for 24 hours as the Russians tried to stop Ukrainian forces taking back their village. Our correspondent Jeremy Bowen’s report contains details you may find distressing.’
Reporter Jeremy Bowen: ‘Deep in the forest towards the border with Belarus Ukrainian forces were securing the territory the Russians have left. Large areas are hard to reach as bridges are down and roads blocked by mines. On the edge of the exclusion zone around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is a village called Termehifka [?]. [Bowen in camera footage: “Really swampy ground”]. Everyone wanted to talk about the Russians. Bogdan shared a place where Russian soldiers made him dig a shallow grave to bury a man they’d killed. [“And they had to sleep under these rags?”] He said that with four other young men he was held as a prisoner for 15 days in the open, often bound and blindfolded, threatened with fake executions then one shot him in the leg.
Bogdan [showing a wound on his leg]: ‘He put me on the bench, aimed his machine gun at me and shot my knee. It’s because my younger brother was in the army. They found his military cap and photos.’
Jeremy Bowen: ‘Ukrainian soldiers and others said the Russians had used civilians as human shields in the next Village Obukhovychi. It’s a small place on a lake. The Russians tried unsuccessfully to blow up the dam before they left. The people of Obukhovychi are still traumatized by the Russian occupation and by the 24 hours when they were held as human shields at the village school. Ivan said it was chaos, children were crying, everyone was crying. [“How would you describe the experience?]’
Ivan: ‘Vandals, fascists. I don’t want to think about the Russians, they’re not people.’
Jerey Bowen: [“What happened that day?”] “They were getting bombarded, that’s what,” said Ludmilla. She said at night the Russians forced them out of cellars where they’d been sheltering, pointing their machine guns. They broke open the doors if people didn’t answer them. [“On the 14th of March there was heavy fighting in the area. The Ukrainians were on the attack, the Russians were losing men. That night the Russians went door to door in the streets around here and at gunpoint marched – estimates vary, 100 to 150 – people of all ages, old people, children as well and they put them in that school and they held them as human shields. Maria [?] said she survived the second world war.’
Maria: ‘They were like the Germans except they spoke Russian so I knew what they were saying.’
Jeremy Bowen: ‘We were invited into the house. Maria, the great grandmother was left behind, terrified about the rest of the family who were held in the freezing cold school gymnasium. Marina said her daughter still shows signs of anxiety.’
Marina: ‘I was afraid I’ll be shot in that gym. I was scared for my daughter. I don’t have the words. I’m still frightened. Machine guns. I’m sorry, I’m going to cry.’
Jeremy Bowen: ‘Slowly this part of Ukraine is being reconnected to the rest of the country. A temporary crossing has replaced a bridge the Russians blew up as they retreated. Many families were using the chance to get out of the war zone. Anna Shishka [?] was desperate.’
Anna Shishka: ‘We’ve been in the cellar for more than a month. My daughter has a new baby. They stole everything. I cut my hair so I wouldn’t get raped.’
Jeremy Bowen: ‘Further down the road is the village of Zahatzi [?], destroyed in the fighting. The only person left is Stefan. He used to have a neighbor. Stefan took us to his home. He died on his own three weeks ago while the village was in Russian hands. Animals have eaten the flesh from his head. He had basic medications but it’s not clear how he died. It is clear that the occupiers didn’t help him. Where Ukrainian forces are back evidence is accumulating that Russian troops repeatedly broke the laws of war. The question is how the Russians are treating civilians in the places which they still occupy.’
*****
Notes: No comment from Russian officials in response to the serious allegations about use of civilians as human shields, mistreatment of prisoners and other abuses. Again, the BBC only ever seems to report on alleged crimes from the Russian military forces. Viewers are left to assume the Ukrainian military have scrupulously followed the ‘laws of war’ and behaved unimpeachably to civilians and the opposing armed forces. At time of writing I’ve been unable to find any reporting from the BBC about Amnesty International’s investigation into the Ukrainian army’s use of civilians as human shields, ten days after it was published and quickly denounced by Zelensky himself.
*****
#27: Ukraine’s President Zelensky accuses Russian forces of genocide, April 4th:
Newsreader Samantha Simmonds: ‘Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky has accused Russian forces of committing genocide in towns near the capital Kiev. He described the war as the torture of an entire nation. There’s been condemnation of Russia from leaders around the world including the Prime Minister Boris Johnson but the Kremlin is continuing its offensive in the east of Ukraine. Simon Jones has the latest.’
Reporter Simon Jones: ‘The withdrawal of Russian forces from areas around Kiev reveals the destruction and a mounting death toll. More than 400 bodies have been recovered in the region according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, civilians apparently indiscriminately killed in the street by retreating Russian soldiers. Residents of the city of Bucha have witnessed unimaginable horror.’
Tamar Havriutina, resident of Bucha: ‘I’m so worried. I’m already 90. I shouldn’t have lived to see this.’
Simon Jones: ‘These satellite images from Bucha are said to show evidence of a mass grave in the grounds of a church. It’s a bleak landscape. Boris Johnson says Russia’s despicable attacks against innocent civilians are yet more evidence that President Putin and his army are committing war crimes. The Ukrainian President says it has to end.’
Vladimir Zelensky: ‘I call on all our citizens and friends of Ukraine in the world who can join this work and help establish justice to do so. The world has already seen many war crimes at different times on different continents but it is time to do everything possible to make the war crimes of the Russian military the last manifestation of such evil on Earth.’
Simon Jones: ‘Russia’s military focus is shifting to the east of Ukraine. New footage from Mariupol shows the devastation caused by more than a month of shelling. And this is what remains of a theater used as a shelter which came under attack. Hundreds appeared to have died.’
Sergei Orlov, Deputy Mayor of Mariupol: ‘You saw these pictures, you saw these videos, and we see that Russian army they are not human being. Where, I don’t know who they are – are they animals, are they orcs or who they are, I don’t know. How it’s possible to do this I cannot even imagine.’
Simon Jones: ‘Tens of thousands of people remain trapped in the city struggling to find food and water. There is now an exodus underway from the city of Kramatosk [?]. Emotional farewells, people here fear Russia could soon attempt to besiege the city making it a second Mariupol. In Moscow some buildings display the letter Z, a symbol of support for what Russia has always labeled its special military operation. Despite growing outrage Russia says the grim images emerging from cities like Bucha are fake. There is condemnation of the Kremlin’s actions from leaders around the world with a threat of further sanctions, a call for president Putin to face the consequences, but despite all the political pressure the war goes on. Simon Jones, BBC News.’
Samantha Simmonds: ‘Well, our correspondent Emma Vardy in Lviv in western Ukraine and Jenny Hill in Moscow gave me this update on the conflict.’
Reporter Emma Vardy: ‘Very strong words from Mr Zelensky overnight accusing Russian forces of a deliberate massacre of civilians in these towns around the capital Kiev, and he says he’s moving very quickly now to see if alleged war crimes can indeed be prosecuted. Mr Zelensky said he’s putting together a specialist team of investigators of judges, of prosecutors. That process he says will begin immediately to gather evidence and prosecute if it is possible to do so. And we saw this surprise video address from Mr Zelensky last night which was played at the Grammy Awards in which he was making another passionate plea, asking world leaders not to stay silent on this. But as these terrible images from towns emerge world leaders have not been silent. There has been outrage, there has been condemnation from many countries who are saying that these alleged atrocities must now be properly investigated, which will take work by experts on the ground in the days ahead.
Samantha Simmonds: ‘Yeah, meanwhile, Jenny, the response from the Kremlin saying that these images are propaganda prepared and created by the West.’
Reporter Jenny Hill: ‘Yep, Moscow says that all of those reports, all of those images, all of that footage are all fake news. They’ve accused the Ukrainians of having staged the scenes that you’ve seen broadcast from Bucha and the Ministry of Defense here has said not a single local resident of Bucha suffered from any violent action. On the contrary its troops, it said, have taken humanitarian aid to the settlements all around that area. And not only is Moscow accusing Ukraine of staging fake news, it’s demanding a meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss what’s happened. It says that Ukraine has perpetrated a blatant provocation designed to escalate tensions and to disturb peace talks – peace talks of course which are due to resume in an online format later today.’
*****
Notes: Unusual response from Russian officials tagged on to the end of this report but hardly sufficient to balance out the solid 4 minutes of Ukrainian and western accusations. No response to the specific claims of ‘genocide’, ‘indiscriminate’ killing of civilians, or the harsh depiction of the Russian military as ‘not human’, ‘animals’ or ‘orcs’. In the context of the long string of accusations (relayed by the BBC without question or critical examination) you could even view the inclusion of brief, nonspecific denials from Russia as another attack on them, with the implication being that they must be lying or gaslighting because surely ‘all of those reports, all of those images, all of that footage’ (in the words of Moscow correspondent Jenny Hill) can’t be ‘fake news’.
*****
#28: Russia attacks theatre sheltering civilians in besieged city of Mariupol, March 17th
Reporter: ‘Well in the east of the country hundreds of miles from here rescue efforts are taking place to try to find survivors after a theater was bombed in the besieged city of Mariupol. President Vladimir Zelensky has accused Russia of deliberately dropping a bomb on the theater, that’s where hundreds of people were thought to be sheltering below in the basement. It’s understood to have withstood the blast. For its part Russia has denied carrying out the attack. Our first report in today’s program is from our Kiev correspondent, James Waterhouse.’
Reporter James Waterhouse: ‘This has been an attack on the whole of Ukraine and its very future. The way it’s resisted Russian forces is the main reason why still only one major city has fallen but the cost of that is growing and nowhere has paid a bigger price than Mariupol. The south eastern port city is the only location separating advancing Russian troops from the south and east so for the last fortnight they’ve surrounded it and bombarded it. [Pictures released by Azov Media, 10 March] People have been forced underground where supplies have been extremely limited. Here around 1200 people were sheltering in this theater. “Children” had even been written in Russian outside to warn attackers from above but they either didn’t care, didn’t believe or didn’t see. An image [of the theatre burning] to make everyone fear the worst. Then word that the basement they were in withstood the bomb blast. Casualties appear to be low.’
Dmytro Gurin, Ukrainian MP: ‘The basement wasn’t destroyed and people, more than a thousand people who were there – it’s mostly women with children – they started to went out and looks like nobody dies.’
James Waterhouse: ‘Moscow’s denied the strike, instead blaming so-called Ukrainian nationalists without offering any evidence. Russia’s also been accused of continually shelling or attacking routes where temporary ceasefires have been agreed. Humanitarian aid hasn’t been able to get in and people haven’t been able to escape.’
Vladimir Zelensky: ‘They are destroying everything round the clock and they don’t let any humanitarian cargo into our blocked city. For five days Russian troops have not stopped the shelling to prevent the rescue of our people.’
James Waterhouse: ‘In the last few days though some grains of hope. Thirty thousand have made it out, say authorities, but more than four hundred thousand are still trapped. This is the one Russian advance which hasn’t stalled. According to western officials Mariupol’s resistance is thought to be softening too. The rest of Ukraine will be watching and wondering what it means for them if this city falls. James Waterhouse, BBC news in Kiev.’
*****
Notes: Is it impartial for James Waterhouse to open his report with the statement that ‘this has been an attack on the whole of Ukraine and its very future’? Brief denials allowed to Russian officials but the BBC is careful to note a lack of evidence supporting their claims. No response to Waterhouse’s opinion that Russian forces ‘either didn’t care, didn’t believe or didn’t see’ a sign saying ‘children’ outside the theatre.
*****
#29: What untruths is Russia spreading about Nazis in Ukraine?, March 27th
Newsreader Ros Atkins: ‘Vladimir Putin has given several reasons for his invasion of Ukraine. This is one of them.’
Vladimir Putin: ‘We will be aiming at demilitarization and de-nazification of Ukraine.’
Ros Atkins: ‘At a recent Putin rally a banner declared for a world without nazism and Putin has described a gang of drug addicts and neo-nazis who settled in Kiev and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage. But Russia’s claims about nazis in Ukraine are a mix of falsehoods and distortions. For a start Ukrainians are not being held hostage by nazis. Their president Vladimir Zelensky, he’s Jewish, he has relatives who died in the holocaust and he’s president because he won 73 per cent of the vote in 2019. The main far-right candidate reached 1.6 percent and that result is part of a broader shift. In the 2012 parliamentary election the main far-right party won 10 per cent. In 2014 it was 6 percent. In 2019 it was 2 per cent. No far-right groups have any formal political power in Ukraine and based on polling and results the far right’s much less popular in Ukraine than, for example, the leader of the far-right in France, Marine le Pen. Far-right groups though do exist in Ukraine and Russia’s focus on them is not new.’
Izabella Tabarovsky, Wilson Center: ‘The word de-nazify, the idea that Ukraine has been overrun by the nazis is something that Russian propaganda has been talking about for eight years since the first invasion of ukraine in 2014.’
Ros Atkins: ‘Ukraine wasn’t, and isn’t being overrun by nazis, but what happened eight years ago is relevant here. That’s because in late 2013, under pressure from Putin, Ukraine’s then president Viktor Yanukovych backed out of a cooperation deal with the EU. Huge protests followed, as would a crackdown. In time Yanukovych would flee to Russia. This was a challenge to Putin’s ability to influence Ukraine, and he retaliated. First, Russia annexed Crimea, then it backed separatists in parts of eastern Ukraine. And this is where the story connects back to the far right, because in 2014 the Ukrainian military was much smaller than it is now. It was struggling, and brigades of volunteers joined the fight against the separatists. Some of them had far-right elements, the most high profile was this one: the Azov battalion. It was set up by this man, Andriy Biletsky, who has a history of racist and anti-semitic views. And in 2014 the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg spoke to him.’
Steve Rosenberg: ‘Much has been written about Azov. About it being ultranationalist and even neo-nazi. What is Azov’s ideology?’
Andriy Biletsky: ‘Yes, we’re nationalists. We’ve never hidden that. Our whole ideology is in our symbol. It’s a combination of the letters I and N. It means ‘Idea of the Nation’.’
Ros Atkins: ‘This [pictured] is the Azov emblem being shown to Steve there. It’s a pagan symbol known as wolf’s angel, and a version of it was used by some SS units in nazi Germany. Andreas Umland’s [of the Swedish Institute for International Affairs] an expert on Ukrainian nationalism. He’s looked at this, writing: “The wolf’s angel has far-right connotations but it’s not considered a fascist symbol by the population in Ukraine.” That may be but back in 2015 Azov acknowledged that some of its fighters held nazi views. A spokesperson told USA Today that only 10 to 20 percent of the group’s members are nazis, and he sought to make a distinction using one fighter as an example: “I know Alex is a nazi,” he said, “but it’s his personal ideology. It has nothing to do with the official ideology of the Azov.”
Now the degree of nazi sentiment in Azov is impossible to verify but this 2015 quote is relevant, because by this time Azov had become part of Ukraine’s national guard. It was under government command and there was one main reason for that happening.’
Kacper Rekawek, University of Oslo: ‘We have to be honest, they were just good fighters in 2014 and they seem to be pretty good fighters now in Mariupol. That’s why they were taken on the books.’
Ros Atkins: ‘And in 2014, with Russia backing separatists, urgent military considerations trumped all others. Ukraine was under attack and its then president Petro Poroshenko called Azov “our best warriors” but when in 2015 he was asked by the BBC about the group’s far-right links his reply was blunt: “Please, don’t listen [sic] Russian propaganda.”
Russia has used Azov in its propaganda for years, and as we assess claims about Azov’s role in Ukraine context is vital here. Ukraine’s armed forces total 250,000 plus 50,000 national guard. Azov is part of the national guard with around a thousand volunteer fighters. It’s a tiny fraction of the Ukrainian military. It’s also not the same force as it was in 2014.’
Adrien Nonjon, National Institute of Oriental Languages & Civilizations: ‘Azov opened its recruitment to the whole of Ukrainian society and eventually this radical core was drowned out by the mass of newcomers who joined the regiment because it was an elite unit.’
Ros Atkins: ‘And while the membership was evolving the founder also left to start a new far-right political party, a party which has failed to achieve any electoral success. But the Azov regiment that he left behind is high profile and mainstream. This is the view of the Ukrainian government:’
Anton Herashchenko, Adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister: ‘The only nazi elements we have on the territory of Ukraine now are the Russian fascist army.’
Ros Atkins: ‘In the last few days president Zelensky announced that Azov’s commander in Mariupol will receive the highest national military award. But despite this acclaim, despite the evolving membership, questions about neo-nazi links remain. In January Buzzfeed’s Christopher Miller reported that he’d seen an Azov veteran wearing white supremacist and nazi symbols. There is, though, no evidence such sentiment is widespread. Here’s Vitaliy Shevchenko from BBC monitoring:’
Vitaliy Shevchenko: ‘I was looking at the Azov battalion’s social media activity and its website and all they talk about is fighting the Russian forces, and there’s very little in terms of extremist anti-migrant or xenophobic rhetoric there.’
Ros Atkins: ‘And so it is this Azov regiment that is part of Ukraine’s resistance, and just as in 2014 its focus is the Donbas region that includes the two breakaway republics and the city of Mariupol. It is close to the sea of Azov which gives the regiment its name. It’s also where Azov made its name back in 2014. Azov successfully defended the city. As Mariupol is bombarded by the Russians now, alongside other Ukrainian forces it’s trying to do so again. And Azov’s presence in Mariupol once more makes it central to Russia’s false narratives. You’ll remember the horror of Russia bombing a maternity hospital in the city. Afterwards the Russians said this:’
Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister: ‘At the UN security council facts were proffered by our delegation saying that the maternity hospital had been taken over by Azov battalion and other radicals.’
Ros Atkins: ‘But there’s no evidence Azov were based there, no evidence it was a military facility. Then there’s Russia’s attack on a theater in Mariupol that was sheltering civilians. Russia accuses Azov of doing this. There’s absolutely no evidence this is true. And so while any Azov volunteers having nazi sympathies is shocking and worthy of note, neo-nazis are not the threat that Russia describes.
But perhaps this is not about an actual threat and rather about something else entirely. The New York Times writes of how the word nazi “appears geared towards Russians, for whom remembrance of the Soviet Union’s victory over nazi Germany remains perhaps the single most powerful element of a unifying national identity.” Putin is looking to the past to create motivation in the present. This is the historian Shane O’Rourke:’
Shane O’Rourke, York University: ‘What the regime is doing is using the memory of the war, the very deep feelings it arouses, to legitimize its actions not just in Ukraine but in many other places as well.’
Ros Atkins: ‘Putin has his reasons to do this but he doesn’t have the facts. Just after Russia’s invasion 150 historians who studied genocide, nazism and World War 2 released a statement. In it they argue “this rhetoric is factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive to the memory of millions of victims of nazism and those who courageously fought against it.” The rhetoric is factually wrong. Nazis don’t hold Ukraine hostage. They’re not launching attacks on Ukrainians. There’s no evidence to support this kind of claim:’
Sergei Markov, Former Russian MP: ‘Most of the Ukrainians hate these neo nazi groups and they pray for Russia and for somebody else to liberate ukrainian society from a nazi group.’
Ros Atkins: ‘Ukrainians don’t need liberating from nazis. To their president this idea is pure fiction:’
Vladimir Zelensky: ‘It’s already the 25th day of the Russian military trying in vain to find imaginary nazis from whom they allegedly want to defend our people, just as they’re trying in vain to find Ukrainians who would greet them with flowers.’
Ros Atkins: ‘That search will continue to be in vain because, while the evolution of the Azov regiment deserves scrutiny, neo-nazis and the far-right do not play the role in Ukraine that Russia falsely describes. They didn’t in 2014 they don’t now.’
*****
Notes: A complete whitewash, ignoring and distorting so much evidence about the Azov battalion and the prominence of far-right, fascist politics and organisation in Ukraine. The only purpose of this lengthy piece is to shore up Ukrainian propaganda and attack Russia’s – hardly the act of a disinterested, impartial broadcaster. When has the BBC ever devoted so much time and effort in an attempt to debunk western ‘untruths’ in the run-up to its numerous wars?
[This is a long document I started to put together back in July. I’ve split it into three parts for readability. There may be further updates with ongoing correspondence with Ofcom or other relevant parties. Enjoy!]
On March 18th 2022, under pressure from both major parties in the UK government, members of the mainstream press and a spike in complaints over coverage of the war in Ukraine, the broadcasting regulator Ofcom decided to take away the license of Russia Today (RT) and stop them from broadcasting in the UK. This followed a ban across EU countries, the blocking of their Youtube channel, the overnight disbanding of the entire RT America platform, putting over 100 employees out of work, (including veteran and cuttingedge American journalists) and the censorship of the RT website, which in many countries can now only be accessed by using a VPN or other backdoor approaches (the TV channel can still be viewed live here)
In its announcement Ofcom said that it didn’t consider RT to be ‘fit and proper to hold a UK broadcast licence’, with their decision coming ‘amid 29 ongoing investigations […] into the due impartiality of RT’s news and current-affairs coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.’ As broadcasting regulator they insist on a ‘duty to be satisfied’, and that despite a clean record for nearly four years:
‘We consider that ANO TV Novosti’s [the license-holder for RT] position as a state broadcaster, financed by a state which has recently invaded a sovereign state and effectively criminalised independent journalism, and in a context where a journalist can be imprisoned for up to 15 years for failure to adopt the state’s view of the news, means that we cannot be confident that it will be able to abide by the due impartiality rules of the Code.’ – point 49, p.10 of the full document
This in spite of ANO TV Novosti’s explanation that:
‘ANO TV-Novosti receives annual subsidies from the Russian Federation’s state budget every year, under a procedure established by federal law which prohibits any state interference in its editorial policy or any role of its ‘founder’ in the editorial process. These subsidies partly cover the ANO’s expense of running the RT television channel, the rest being covered by advertising and other similar activities as is normal for a media organisation. Nothing in the arrangements for these subsidies gives the state any right of control over the editorial decisions or content of the RT channel; indeed to permit such control would be illegal.” ‘ – ibid. p.6
Remembering that Ofcom had only said that their 29 investigations into due impartiality were ‘ongoing’ and that they had ‘not concluded on any of these investigations’ (ibid. p.10), on June 20th I sent in a Freedom of Information request to the Ofcom website enquiring about the results of these investigations and asking if they could provide:
‘any relevant documentation about the substance of these complaints and the outcome of the subsequent investigations, ie: whether RT was found guilty of spreading documented falsehoods about the war in Ukraine’
Whether this spurred them into action or they were intending to publish their findings anyway, I don’t know, but on July 18th I received a reply from Ofcom informing me that they had published the outcome of their investigations, which found that all 29 violated Section Five of their Broadcasting Code which requires that:
‘broadcasters must maintain due impartiality in news. When dealing with matters of major political controversy and major matters relating to current public policy such as wars or areas of conflict (in these cases, specifically the ongoing conflict in the Donbas region), broadcasters must also comply with the special impartiality requirements in the Code. These rules require broadcasters to take additional steps to preserve due impartiality – namely by including and giving due weight to an appropriately wide range of significant views’
Looking at the full text document outlining their decisions – an intimidating 525 pages long (much of it consisting of identical passages repeated multiple times) – the first thing I noticed was that the alleged breaches of impartiality related to news bulletins on February 27th, March 1st and March 2nd and one documentary, ‘Donbass Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’. To me this looked like 4 investigations, not 29, but they argued that:
‘despite containing some similar content, each programme was a standalone news bulletin reporting events which evolved throughout the day. Therefore we have considered each programme individually’ – pp.2-3
Fair enough if that was their approach, but it also serves to inflate the number of alleged violations to support their original contention that ‘We consider the volume and potentially serious nature of issues raised within such a short period to be deeply concerning’ – a volume of 29 sounding much more impressive than a volume of 4.
The next thing I noticed, after beginning to read through the transcripts of the programmes and Ofcom’s objections, is that none of it took issue with points of fact or the truthfulness of any given statement. The complaint that came again and again was that RT had made ‘contentious claims’ which were ‘highly critical of the Ukrainian authorities, including its military’, and that, while broadcasting critical comments was ‘not, in itself, a breach of due impartiality rules’, because:
‘It is essential that news programmes are able to report on controversial issues and take a position on those issues, even if that position is highly critical, particularly during times of conflict. However, a broadcaster must maintain an adequate and appropriate level of impartiality in its presentation of matters (and major matters) of political controversy. It may be necessary, in order to comply with the due impartiality requirements, that alternative viewpoints are broadcast.’ – first instance, p.16
So it turns into a much more slippery question of whether the ‘alternative viewpoints’ which RT provided (and their responses, included in the document, show many examples of this attempt at balance) are considered to be enough in order to maintain an undefined level of impartiality, as judged by Ofcom. For example, in dealing with the first news bulletin on February 27th:
‘In Ofcom’s view this programme lacked the inclusion of any alternative viewpoints on the matter of political controversy and current public policy that was discussed in relation to the specific and ongoing conflict in the Donbas region. For example, the perspective of the Ukrainian state and/or military which: contested the highly critical claims about Ukrainian forces in the region (for example, accusations that “the Ukrainian military is conducting relentless shelling of residential areas …”); and/or challenged the viewpoints of the Russian armed forces, the Donetsk People’s Militia (“DPM”) or the Luhansk People’s Militia (“LPM”) (for example, the claim that a tactic said to be used by Ukrainian armed forces was “used by international terrorists in Syria”) was not included in any form in this programme.’
RT had noted descriptions by Ukrainian and Western leaders of the Donbas conflict as ‘an act of aggression’ and ‘war’ conducted by an ‘invading army’ but this wasn’t considered sufficient because these more general criticisms of Russia:
‘did not represent, in any form, the significant view of the Ukrainian state and/or military in relation to the highly critical allegations that were made about their conduct within the Donbas region, specifically that Ukrainian forces were deliberately attacking residential areas, using “terrorist” tactics, and had been doing so for the last eight years.’ (p.17)
RT had responded that, as a Russian TV channel they were ‘prepared that our output would be viewed with extra scrutiny’ but that they had strived to ‘provide the picture that’s both true to facts and sufficiently balanced’. For its part Ofcom recognised:
‘that RT viewers would have expected to see news on the channel relating to the conflict in Ukraine from a predominantly Russian perspective and that, as stated above, determining facts during times of significant conflict can be more difficult.’
However:
‘Ofcom’s investigation into this programme concerned due impartiality and not due accuracy […] it was legitimate for RT to broadcast news on the conflict in Ukraine from a Russian perspective and also to report on the allegations that were being made by Russian officials and spokespersons about Ukrainian forces in the Donbas. However, it was still incumbent on TV Novosti to maintain due impartiality on this matter of major political controversy by including a wide range of significant alternative viewpoints and giving them due weight in this programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes, including, for example, the perspective of the Ukrainian state and/or military on the ongoing conflict in the Donbas.’ (p.18, my emphasis)
I started to understand why Ofcom had dodged my request for the ‘substance’ of complaints made against RT and for the ‘documented falsehoods’ they were supposed to have disseminated: they weren’t interested in truth or facts, it was just about balance. Even if they were lying through their teeth RT (and presumably other broadcasters) were obligated to provide the viewpoints of the opposing side, or the accused parties as a kind of right of reply – seemingly in every instance where a strong criticism was made over a ‘controversial’ issue.
This was darkly humorous to me as a long time critical observer of Western mainstream news sources, because on most ‘controversial’ subjects it is clear that invariably the story is slanted to presenting one side in a favourable light – the story favouring state/corporate power interests – while denigrating any other interpretation. This is especially the case when it comes to foreign policy and the West’s own wars and military assaults oroccupations of other countries. Western forces are depicted as benign, moral actors, greeted as liberators except by those so barbaric and unenlightened to consider resisting. The news landscape fits accordingly with information tightly curated, sanitised, and fed to embedded reporters who faithfully relay the Western perspectives while ignoring or actively attacking contrary views. When did we ever hear from Iraqi officials, Afghan officials, Libyan, Syrian, Palestinian officials, given the space to respond to Western claims of atrocities supposedly committed by their countrymen, and just so happening to provide the pretext for Western military intervention? The only times I remember this happening were in cases where the people were mocked or carefully presented as propagandists to not be taken seriously. Similarly, dissident figures in the West who could provide alternative analyses are typically dismissed as deluded, self-hating or worse, useful idiots or even active 5th columnists for the official enemy of the day. Thus any criticism or counter-narrative can be safely ignored as part of the enemy’s propaganda effort, while the pro-Western propaganda effort goes ahead unchallenged.
I wondered how long it would take me to find 29 examples of a Western media outlet failing to report with due impartiality according to the standards applied by Ofcom to RT. So I decided to challenge myself to do just that. To make it like vs. like as much as possible I opted to focus on UK state media, the BBC, and narrowed down my search parameters by looking at the BBC News youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BBCNews The first playlist is dedicated entirely to the ‘Ukraine crisis’, with 528 videos at time of writing, going back to February 2015 (326 since the invasion).[1] To make it harder for myself I aimed to find 29 truly separate examples, not counting how many times each broadcast would have been aired across the BBC’s various platforms. Making it somewhat easier, on Ofcom’s terms I didn’t have to prove that anything reported was factually incorrect or deliberately misleading (though I have commented when aware of different interpretations and contradictory evidence), merely to note that a highly critical statement had been made about the Russian military and/or political establishment without providing an adequate response to the specific criticism from a Russian official or an independent analyst taking a different view.
It didn’t take long to start racking up examples. The very first video I looked at, ‘Explosions rock Ukrainian port hours after grain deal’ contained an accusation from a US politician that Russia was trying to ‘weaponize food’ and from a Ukrainian MP calling Vladimir Putin a ‘food terrorist’, with no alternative point of view put forward and the reporter only noting that ‘Moscow has not made any comment’. Moving down the list of videos many critical statements didn’t even bother with that minimal level of balance. The accusations were relentless, one-sided and worded very harshly and unequivocally, not just from Ukrainian sources but somtimes directly from the BBC reporters themselves. The words ‘murder,’ ‘rape,’ ‘theft,’ ‘atrocity,’ ‘war crimes’ were ever-present with Russian troops described several times as ‘terrorists,’ ‘animals,’ ‘not human,’ ‘orcs’ and portrayed variously as drunk, on drugs, raping women, killing or abusing civilians, none of which was rebutted beyond a token mention of ‘Moscow denies this’ – which of course the casual viewer would think was a lie, given all the other crimes thathad apparently been committed by ‘the Russians’. Again, this is a kind of direct, unqualified language that the BBC would never use to describe the many abuses of Western troops, and it was never used to describe the actions of Ukrainian troops, except when presented as yet another dishonest Russian propaganda trope.
Another feature of the coverage was the use of human interest-type stories looking at the lives of individuals dealing with the conflict. On their own these were fairly innocuous, but the fact that they were nearly all from the perspective of Ukrainian citizens and soldiers had a powerful effect of creating what Noam Chomsky calls ‘worthy victims’[2] whereby empathy is directed selectively towards one group, humanising them in contrast to another group – in this case the dastardly Russians, or the Ukrainians in the Donbas region who have been attacked and killed mainly by the Ukrainian military since their attempted secession in 2014. Where BBC reporters do interview Russians they are almost always dissenting figures who oppose the war and the policies of Putin and the Russian government. Somehow they never seem to find an ordinary citizen who speaks in favour of the actions of their government, which would be odd from an impartial broadcaster given that Putin’s approval rating since the launch of the ‘special military operation’ has risen from around 70% to just over 80%.
Interestingly, Ofcom is fully aware of this propaganda technique when it comes to RT’s reporting, as they point out in their decision on the documentary, ‘Donbass Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow’ (view online here, contains graphic images):
‘[T]he programme made no reference to the views of residents in the Donbas, for example, who are not pro-separatist, who do not recognise the self-proclaimed republics in Donetsk and Luhansk, or who in any way support the actions of the Ukrainian Government in the Donbas. By contrast, allegations that were highly critical of the conduct of the Ukrainian authorities were made repeatedly throughout the programme, frequently accompanied by emotive and graphic footage of warfare and its after effects’ (ibid. pp.241-242)
(Although, unlike the BBC, at least RT were reporting a majority opinion in the separatist region, not giving undue prominence to the dissident minority.)
Their specific complaints about the documentary are worth quoting in full as something to bear in mind when considering the BBC’s reporting:
‘• Allegations of Ukrainian “war crimes” and violence against civilians. For example, Ronald Van Amerongen alleged that the Ukrainian army was responsible for committing “brutal murders” in Donbass, stating “they target civilians”; and George Eliason said “You can’t say that…there wasn’t war crimes”. Similarly Vasily Prozorov alleged that Dobrobats (“volunteer nationalist battalions”) “committed war crimes pure and simple: torture, rape, extrajudicial killings, robberies, looting”; and Victor Lanta said “The real aggressor is obviously the army of Kiev. Every day they bomb civilian facilities”.
• References to historical events, such as the Maidan protests in February 2014 and the fire at Odesa in May 2014, where details have subsequently been contested. For example, the narrator described the Maidan protests as a “coup” which led to “fratricidal war in Ukraine” and alleged that “People who asked for a peaceful referendum and the chance to speak their native language were burned alive in Odessa’s Trade Union building”. Yuly Lyubotsky, speaking about the Odessa Trade Union building similarly alleged: “The Ukrainian Government encouraged such actions. The people who tried to escape by jumping out of windows were shot at”.
• Repeated allegations that the Ukrainian authorities, including its military, were fascists or Nazis who were attempting to commit genocide against Russian-speaking people in the Donbas. For example, Anna Soroka, said: “300 to 500 civilians are buried, who were killed by the military-political leadership of Ukraine. There’s only one word for this – genocide”. Clips of residents included statements such as “Only the Germans did this during World War II. Now, the Ukrainians are doing the same thing to their own people”; and “We’ll drive out these evil fascists who want to come to our land”.
• Allegations that the people in the Donbas had rejected the Ukrainian Government. For example, the narrator said: “Donbass keeps living, working and dreaming of a peaceful future – without Ukraine”. In addition, Denis Pushilin said: “The vast majority can no longer imagine themselves as part of Ukraine…Those two to three percent who want to go to Ukraine, they want to return to the old Ukraine, as it was before 2014”; and Alexis Castillo said: “Donbass residents no longer want to be part of Ukraine”.
• Allegations that the Ukrainian Government was acting under the influence of the West. For example, Russell Bentley said that when he saw footage of a US diplomat “handing out the cookies” at Maidan, Kyiv in 2014 he “understood that this was also the work of the criminal United States government”. Janus Putkonen said that the Maidan Uprising “was not a plan of Ukraine. This is a civil war situation, fuelled from abroad, not from Russia…Fuelled from Washington, from Canada, from Finland even…This is a civil war situation, not war between Ukraine and Russia, but war from the West against [the] Russian world”. Roman Omelchenko said: “They need territory: the USA, England, Canada. Why? They need some place to put their bases, so they can deliver an instantaneous, unanswerable strike on Russian territory”. ‘ (pp.239-240)
Once again, they objected that, in spite of presenting the views of western officials critical of Russia and quoting speeches from Volodymyr Zelensky:
‘[T]he programme made no reference to the significant view of the Ukrainian state and/or military in relation to the numerous highly critical and specific allegations that they: had committed war crimes and violence against civilians; were fascists or Nazis who were attempting a genocide of Russian-speaking people in the Donbas; had orchestrated contested events such as the Odesa Trade Union building fire in 2014; and were acting under the influence of the West.’
It wasn’t considered sufficient that the documentary began with the disclaimer that:
‘The opinions of the people who appear in this film are their own and do not necessarily reflect the policies or position of RTD. The Ukrainian authorities have been asked to comment on the issues presented in this film but have yet to respond’ – p.242
And RT’s further explanation:
‘Russian media is viewed by Ukraine as an “adversary” and that it had been “denied access to the ‘Ukrainian official position’ since March 2014”, along with other Russian TV channels […] we believe that there’s no need (as our compliance trainers claimed re Ofcom’s “impartiality” rules) to present equal “pro & contra” airtime to every single point of view expressed in a program (documentary)’ (p.238)
was considered inadequate because:
‘[I]f alternative views cannot be obtained from particular institutions, governments or individuals, broadcasters could refer to public statements by such institutions, governments or individuals or such viewpoints could be expressed, for example, through presenters’ questions to interviewees’ (p.242)
The inevitable conclusion:
‘An appropriately wide range of significant viewpoints on the relevant matter of major political controversy and major matter relating to current public policy were not adequately represented or given due weight within this programme.’ (p.243)
Remember this when you read the BBC’s numerous highly critical allegations about the Russian military and the policy of the Russian government and their routine failure to provide a response to the claims from a Russian official. Ofcom, when standing in judgement of RT, doesn’t accept a few token quotes on general matters as adequate balance, or even saying that the opposing side has been given the opportunity to respond but has not yet done so. Every effort has to be made to search out and present alternative views, even when none are forthcoming…
In the end it took me just under a week, spending a few hours most evenings, to find the total 29 examples and copy the most blatant failures of impartiality within the pieces. The selected videos were from a period between July 23rd going back to March 17th and I didn’t watch every one so likely there are many more examples that I missed. Some of the names will be misspelled, for which I apologise (I made use of youtube’s auto-transcript feature which is a bit hit-and-miss with unusual words), and I didn’t manage to find out the names of all the newsreaders, but it should be easy enough to find out for anyone who would like to dig deeper. In time I might include full transcripts of the pieces so the selected quotes appear in context. I think I have fairly represented the contents and lack of balance in each one, though you may have to watch yourself to be sure. There is a chance, with these videos being clipped from longer news bulletins, that some attempt at impartiality was made elsewhere in the programme as it went out live. I’m happy to be corrected if this turns out to have been the case, although I would think mention should have been made on the youtube channel if so.
[1] In itself this is an indication of the skewed priorities of the BBC. There is no visible playlist or remotely comparable level of coverage for the Yemen crisis, still ongoing and far worse in terms of lives lost and humanitarian catastrophe than the situation in Ukraine as it stands. I think it’s fairly obvious that this lack of coverage is because the main antagonist in the conflict, Saudi Arabia, has been covertly supported by Western powers, including the UK. So of course UK state media has no interest in damaging the reputation of the government which supports it, helps to fund it and dictates its management structure.
[2] ‘Our hypothesis is that worthy victims will be featured prominently and dramatically, that they will be humanized, and that their victimization will receive the detail and context in story construction that will generate reader interest and sympathetic emotion. In contrast, unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage.’ – https://chomsky.info/consent01/
I see that Extinction Rebellion have launched a new project and website called truthteller.life, tag line: ‘whistle-blow for the planet’. Here’s their pitch:
Do you have new, insider information about the Climate and Ecological Crisis?
Do you know anything about: efforts to cover-up environmental destruction, attempts to prevent positive action on climate change and biodiversity loss, the true scale of the threat of ecological breakdown or the fragility of our global systems to climate shock?
However large or small your revelation, TruthTeller is here to help you anonymously disclose what you know.
I like the idea, but something about it sounds familiar… Oh, that’s right, this is exactly what a lesser-known organisation called WikiLeaks has been doing for the past 15 years! Well, I don’t suppose they copyrighted the practice of publishing classified information, and maybe it would be good to have a platform solely dedicated to leaks on environmental issues. However, it would seem worthwhile, or even just polite, to acknowledge the organisations that have blazed a trail before you. Perhaps there are a few things you could learn from them; some lessons from their successes and failures that could be relevant both for your platform and for those passing sensitive information to it? For some reason this does not so far seem to be the case with TruthTeller.
A search of the website turns up zero results for ‘wikileaks’ and I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere in the various promotional materials XR have put out about it (correct me if I’m wrong!) Maybe somebody told them that they have to present it with a USP in order to improve its chances of success? I suppose it’s possible the people behind it have never heard of WikiLeaks, though this would indicate supreme negligence on their part. Remarkably, searches of the main XR website, facebook page and twitter account also turn up zero results for ‘wikileaks’.
A self-styled ‘legal eagle’ edition of the global newsletter published on January 12th managed to avoid any mention of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose extradition to the US had been refused on January 4th. The judge had validated all the antiquated espionage charges against him, effectively outlawing investigative journalism, but refused to extradite on the grounds of Assange being a suicide risk in an US supermax prison. She then proceeded to deny him bail and send him back to rot in a UK maximum security prison while the Americans figure out how to appeal the decision… For some reason it appears this isn’t considered a relevant subject or even a topic worthy of occasional conversation among ‘rebels’. This mirrors a general lack of interest from the corporate media, even at the most left/liberal end of the spectrum since the initial flurry of interest around the Iraq & Afghanistan ‘war logs’ in 2010 and following the 2016 leaks which revealed corruption in the US Democratic Party surrounding Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid of that year.
It could be replied that WikiLeaks’ main revelations have to do with geopolitics and thus lie outside of XR’s main remit of the climate and extinction crises. However, plenty of WikiLeaks’ documents are concerned with climate change policy, and generally speaking there is no way to extricate these issues from the wider political landscape. The 2003 invasion/occupation of Iraq, for example, was primarily motivated by a desire to control that country’s oil reserves. The ensuing mass death, displacement and torture, much of which exposed by WikiLeaks, was the price ordinary Iraqis were forced to pay for the onward march of the global oil economy. A direct consequence of burning this oil will be the catastrophic heating of the global atmosphere – the price we’re all eventually going to be forced to pay for the insatiable demands of the fossil fuel economy.
More to the point, if your concern really is with ‘telling the truth’ (one of XR’s core demands, lest we forget) then you have to stand with those who do reveal those truths, however uncomfortable they might be, and fight alongside them when the inevitable repression comes down on their heads. And particularly if you’re going to encourage others to risk coming forward with politically important material it’s beholden on you to be honest about the possible consequences of these acts based on the experience of other people in similar circumstances in the recent past. To their credit TruthTeller do note the following:
We will do our utmost to guard your identity but leaking information will always involve risk of detection and no technology is failsafe.
Before sharing information with us, please consider the possibility that you will be caught, what the consequences would be for you and whether you are prepared for them.
If you decide to proceed, follow our guide for how to contact us and take all other necessary precautions to protect yourself.
If your identity does become known, we will help to find you the support you need.
Ultimately we hope that if enough people have the courage to break ranks and reveal what they know, however large or small the revelation, we will reach a tipping point where leakers feel safe to share information that the public have a right to know.
But where is the acknowledgement and warning of potentially life-destroying consequences for leaking or publishing this kind of information, as seen in the cases of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden among others? I understand that they wouldn’t want to discourage potential whistle-blowers, but it seems basic responsibility would demand an up-front discussion of the lessons to be learned from these examples. Since XR aren’t apparently willing to do this I will give it my best shot, based on my familiarity with both movements and general reading around the subject matter. No doubt I will miss some important things, but it’s a start at least, and better than nothing…
Lesson #1 – Don’t trust The Guardian
Really this applies to all of the corporate media which is structurally biased against honest reporting on the consequences of unfettered corporate capitalism, but because of initially favourable reporting and support from high profile journalists such as George Monbiot, The Guardian still mostly gets a free pass in XR circles. The TruthTeller site says that leaks they receive ‘will either be published directly on Extinction Rebellion’s online and social media platforms following a process of analysis and verification, or in partnership with a trusted media outlet with additional resources and expertise’ (my emphasis). WikiLeaks originally trusted corporate outlets like The Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times enough to work with them to release their original leaks. These newspapers profited handsomely from this collaboration but it didn’t take them long to turn on WikiLeaks, perhaps none more viciously than The Guardian. This page pulls together a list of 44 headlines smearing WikiLeaks and Julian Assange in the strongest terms from 2010-2019. All the US government talking points about supposed dangers posed by WikiLeaks were routinely relayed as fact, allegations of sexual misconduct in Sweden taken at face value without right of reply or due process of law, fears of extradition and imprisonment downplayed or dismissed, character assassinations of Assange from every possible angle, a front page fake news story alleging secret meetings with Paul Manafort, a diplomat associated with Donald Trump, and then near total silence after Assange was finally dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy and held in Belmarsh prison, now for nearly two full years.
It emerged during Assange’s trial that, contrary to the claim that he had cavalierly revealed identifying information about people in dangerous circumstances it was in fact the corporate ‘media partners’ he was working with who wanted to push ahead with publication before proper redaction of names, complaining about how ‘irritated’ they were by Assange’s fastidiousness in ‘[getting] rid of the “bad stuff”‘. Two of these ‘partners’ employed by The Guardian, Luke Harding (author of the fake Manafort story) and David Leigh later wrote a book about WikiLeaks in which they divulged a crucial password which defeated the encryption on masses of information held in files which then became accessible to anybody. It was this act which caused the real danger to informants.
It’s barely worth noting that The Guardian eventually mumbled a quiet objection to Assange’s possible extradition (I won’t even bother linking to it), naturally without apologising for the part they played in justifying his persecution and totally blackening his name in the public eye. The message should be clear: the corporate press, including supposedly left/liberal outlets, will exploit you for a while if you prove to be good for ratings, but challenge the power structures (of which they are an integral part) too strongly or consistently and they will smear you and hang you out to dry. Whistle-blowers should instead seek out non-corporate independent media outlets, which in any case will be more prepared to host information that challenges power, and incidentally help them to grow in stature and importance as a result.
Lesson #2 – Your values will be used against you
In the case of WikiLeaks, those most likely to be supportive of their work are on the left side of the political spectrum, especially in the strong anti-war constituency that has emerged since the War on Terror after 2001. Most often this is a moral objection rooted in strong conceptions of social and political justice, involving anti-racist, anti-imperialist, feminist and, yes, environmentalist struggles. One result of this strong public anti-war sentiment is that governments have resorted to more subtle propaganda techniques to persuade people to support their rapacious wars, culminating in the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ or R2P doctrine whereby ostensible ‘concerns’ about human rights violations, poor treatment of minority groups or women and allegations of atrocities, whether real, fabricated, or even future predictions, are used to justify massive military intervention.
Thus one stated reason for invading Afghanistan was to help women, Libya had to be bombed back to the stone age because pro-Gaddafi forces were planning viagra-fueled mass rapes, Syria had to be attacked because Assad gassed his own people etc etc. Lies to cover up the real motives for military assaults which are always based in machiavellian geopolitics and the control or outright theft of resources, and disingenuous to boot when compared to the cosy relationships with murderous, quasi-medieval dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.
The flipside to these cynical manipulations is that dissidents who oppose these wars and other predatory state behaviour are often targeted using the same tactic. The substance of their opposition is ignored and instead they are personally attacked for crimes, again, real or fabricated, which are most likely to alienate potential allies and supporters of their cause. The tool used to greatest effect against WikiLeaks were the allegations of sexual harrassment (not ‘rape charges’ as was consistently misreported) against Julian Assange made by two women in Sweden. Especially when coupled with the rise of the #MeToo movement, this could be relied upon to damage WikiLeaks’ support in a key demographic, those identifying as feminists, most especially those who had been persuaded that the most important thing was to ‘believe women’ before due process in a court of law. It could also be used to pin Assange down indefinitely for fear of extradition to the US. The account of Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture makes it totally clear that the allegations were used to fit Assange up from the start, with the story illegally leaked to the press, a statement re-written by police and the first woman refusing to continue with questioning when it was suggested that Assange would be arrested on suspicion of rape, texting a friend that it seemed the police were just interested in ‘getting their hands on him’.
Again, the media played its role, with hardly a single person standing up in defense of Assange or WikiLeaks, facing ridicule or attacks when they did. Media Lens captured the universal, borderline fascist outpouring of toxic hatred & scorn from all corners of the UK press at the time of Assange’s arrest which still makes for stunning reading. Tellingly it wasn’t the work that was attacked, but Assange’s character was smeared from every possible angle, from accusations of arrogance, mental instability, sexual aggression, even down to claims about his personal hygiene – all bogus or exaggerated beyond any basis in reality. Arguably the most damaging attacks came again from the liberal/left extreme of the spectrum, as from the public perception if even these people weren’t defending Assange then he must truly be beyond the pale. As one who used to believe that comedy was one arena where truth could sometimes come out I was struck by the lock-step denunciations, as with Frankie Boyle’s despicable comments:
Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy, shouting ‘resist, resist!’ which is quite an ironic thing to shout when you’ve been accused of rape. There are women watching that in Sweden going ‘you’ve changed your fucking tune’. […] Some people say: why didn’t he try to escape? He was in the embassy for seven years, apparently because every time his tunnel got to a certain depth he tried to fuck it. There are other people who say: what Julian Assange is accused of isn’t actually rape, as he’s about to discover in prison. Actually he looked so pale, I think his best chance of survival is if an armed robber’s semen contains vitamin D.’
Or when Miles Jupp concluded on The News Quiz that ‘Julian Assange has backed Trump up, and in these times of mistrust it’s good to know there’s such a thing as brotherly solidarity amongst paranoid sex pests’ – a stunningly dense barrage of lies, libelous defamation, guilt by association and snide violence to the word ‘solidarity’ – which is what he should have been expressing, as the group ‘Women Against Rape’ had the courage to do at the time. For their part the token ‘radicals’ at The Guardian either stayed silent in the case of George Monbiot or delegitimised the fears of extradition (while saying that it would be wrong) and urged Assange to go back to Sweden in the case of Owen Jones (who was also happy to throw accusations of ‘misogyny’ at Assange’s defenders).
The Jupp comments from 2017 are an example of a later smear tactic, associating WikiLeaks and Assange with Donald Trump and alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails with the suggestion of ‘collusion’ with Russia which frustrated Hillary Clinton’s attempt at the US presidency in 2016. Naturally there was no evidence to support the claims of deliberate conspiracy to install Trump at Vladimir Putin’s behest, but associating WikiLeaks with these figures – already bêtes noires for most of the press – was another effective way to steer people away from supporting their work.
XR has so far escaped the worst of these cynical attempts to undermine it, though there have been shots across the bow as when The Guardian asked whether it has a ‘race problem’ or the attempts to show the events of Canning Town tube station as indicative that XR are ‘out of touch’ or hostile to working class interests. Founder Roger Hallam has been falsely accused of antisemitism and ‘relativising‘ the nazi holocaust but nowhere near to the extent that Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party was attacked on this basis. (You could write a book on the lessons to be learned from that sorry saga, indeed there was one published in 2019 which itself was promptly denounced as antisemitic!) Time will tell if XR are capable of defending themselves against bad faith attacks of this kind. Responses to state cries of ‘extremism’ have been reasonably strong IMO, but answers to these more insidious claims so far seem tepid and too apologetic or defensive. The way Hallam has been dragged over the coals and effectively hounded out of the movement over a few misunderstood comments is in my view disgraceful and indicative of a prioritisation of enforcing woke pieties over actual effectiveness. See him discuss his own case and the broader issue of countering elite propaganda narratives here:
The point isn’t that XR and other movements have nothing to learn and no internal problems that need addressing, but to recognise that when corporate-owned media and political figures start making these claims it’s not in a spirit of friendly constructive criticism, but rather a diversionary attempt to encourage navel-gazing and make the story about the movement and its failings, real or fabricated, instead of the problems the movement is attempting to draw attention to. The attempt is to divide activists along pre-existing fault lines, driving a wedge on tangential issues to encourage in-fighting and suck energy away from the main unified effort. The phenomenon was called ‘horizontal hostility’ by the feminist and civil rights activist Florynce Kennedy, neatly illustrated in this cartoon:
I first heard about this from the Deep Green Resistance book, written by a radical environmentalist group born in the US which calls for the total, active dismantling of industrial civilisation. Ironically they were soon fighting furiously & losing supporters over the issue of gender politics after being accused of ‘transphobia’, another excellent wedge device we can expect to see more of in the UK.
Lesson #3 – Your movement will be weaponised against others
I can’t actually think of an instance where this has happened with WikiLeaks. You could argue that the 2016 DNC leaks were used by the Trump campaign to ensure victory against Hillary Clinton, but if the Democrats didn’t want to be exposed for corruption then it was their responsibility to not be corrupt. Also, rather than negatively damaging Trump’s rival candidate the leaks could be seen as supportive of Bernie Sanders and the movement behind him, revealing how he had been cheated of the primary nomination by dirty tricks from the dominant corporatist wing of the party.
What I have in mind with this segment is a small but crucial insight into how environmentalism can be co-opted and used to advance the aims of capitalism and imperialism. Fittingly it also comes from diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks, this time on the subject of the Chagos islands. These are a small group of tropical islands in the Indian ocean formerly ‘owned’ by the British before they were sold to the US and had their population of some 1,500 people forcibly removed during the 1960s to make way for a military base on the main island of Diego Garcia. Tying our geopolitical and environmental threads together, the site was considered too valuable as a staging post for US air assaults in the middle east and a black ops site for CIA rendition, detention and torture, that the Chagossians’ persistent pleas to the UK government for a right to return had to be refused, time and time again on the flimsiest of pretexts. Perhaps the most cynical, underhanded effort was to designate the island group a marine nature reserve in 2010. In the leaked cables this was explicitly discussed as ‘the most effective long-term way to prevent any of the Chagos Islands’ former inhabitants or their descendants from resettling’. Furthermore (my emphasis):
[Colin] Roberts [then Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) Director, Overseas Territories] acknowledged that “we need to find a way to get through the various Chagossian lobbies.” He admitted that HMG is “under pressure” from the Chagossians and their advocates to permit resettlement of the “outer islands” of the BIOT. He noted, without providing details, that “there are proposals (for a marine park) that could provide the Chagossians warden jobs” within the BIOT. However, Roberts stated that, according to the HGM,s current thinking on a reserve, there would be “no human footprints” or “Man Fridays” on the BIOT’s uninhabited islands. He asserted that establishing a marine park would, in effect, put paid to resettlement claims of the archipelago’s former residents. Responding to Polcouns’ observation that the advocates of Chagossian resettlement continue to vigorously press their case, Roberts opined that the UK’s “environmental lobby is far more powerful than the Chagossians’ advocates.”
For me this provides a perfect example of how peoples’ best intentions can be exploited to perpetuate horrors on others, and it shows the importance of having a deep understanding of all the factors in play before rushing to intervene in situations you don’t fully understand. The conservation movement has a long history of unwittingly or deliberately playing a supportive role in colonial land grabs and dispossession of indigenous people, which continues to the present day. XR needs to get real about these dangers, with presumably naive ‘rebels’ already sucked in to lending their support to US-backed regime change efforts in Bolivia and Ecuador. Not to mention the dangers of uncritical support for ‘green new deal’ initiatives that include biomass, nuclear, fracking, carbon off-sets based on phoney ‘net zero’ targets and massive expansions of mining for so-called ‘renewable’ technologies. Bolivia has the world’s largest supply of lithium, increasingly important for batteries used in ‘electric cars, computers, and industrial equipment’, a factor widely believed to be a key motive behind the 2019 coup against president Morales which put the country in the hands of anti-indigenous right-wing Christian fascists until the socialist MAS party was re-re-elected last October. Otherwise even benign-sounding ‘solutions’ like reforestation could result in mass ethnic cleansing and dispossession if the land usually suggested for such schemes – pasture rangeland for grazing livestock – is taken by force.
Lesson #4 – Attack the leaders, neutralise the movement
I’ve made a conscious effort in this article to refer to WikiLeaks as a discrete organisation and point to the work they’ve actually done rather than the cooked-up scandals that have engulfed their leadership, but it’s remarkable how hard this has been. This shows how effective the elite strategy is of making it about the people, not about the issues. Past a certain point you just have to engage with the smears to try and repair the damage they are doing to your organisation. Thus energy that was formerly dedicated to exposing the crimes of the powerful is now channeled into campaigns against the persecution of one individual. Even when this is used to remind the public of work that the organisation did in the past, this comes to feel distant and somehow irrelevant in the present moment. Even though I have actively sought out information about WikiLeaks and paid attention to the alternative news sites which covered its findings in the depth they deserved, it can be hard even for me to recall work they have done beyond the ‘greatest hits’ of the DNC leaks, torture revelations and of course the ‘collateral murder’ video which even sometimes gets shown on corporate TV outlets. Somehow it’s much easier to feel the emotional pull and empathy towards one individual facing oppression, and learn all the minutiae of the legal case against them. Not to say that there is no value in doing this of course, that we don’t owe Julian Assange anything for the service he’s provided, or that the legal abuses he has endured aren’t an urgent cause for outrage and resistance in themselves, but if this all gets reduced down to the drama of one person then the state has already won because it holds all the power in the courts and we can (for the most part) only passively observe its crooked deliberations. We more effectively assert our own power by supporting work like this:
Again, key documents exposing these elite tactics have come into the public domain because of WikiLeaks. The Stratfor emails briefly mentioned in the above video (around 8:45) are worth looking into for anyone who wishes to understand the deliberately formulated – not accidental or coincidental – strategies to discredit and neutralise movements that threaten power. Here’s a two-part article drawing conclusions from the leaks with this key passage:
‘Radicals, Idealists, Realists, Opportunists’
While its client work was noteworthy, the formula Duchin created to divide and conquer activist movements — a regurgitation of what he learned while working under the mentorship of Rafael Pagan — has stood the test of time. It is still employed to this day by Stratfor.
Duchin […] created a three-step formula to divide and conquer activists by breaking them up into four subtypes, as described in a 1991 speech delivered to the National Cattleman’s Association titled, “Take an Activist Apart and What Do You Have? And How Do You Deal with Him/Her?”
The subtypes: “radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists.”
Radical activists “want to change the system; have underlying socio/political motives’ and see multinational corporations as ‘inherently evil,’” explained Duchin. “These organizations do not trust the … federal, state and local governments to protect them and to safeguard the environment. They believe, rather, that individuals and local groups should have direct power over industry … I would categorize their principal aims … as social justice and political empowerment.”
The “idealist” is easier to deal with, according to Duchin’s analysis.
“Idealists…want a perfect world…Because of their intrinsic altruism, however, … [they] have a vulnerable point,” he told the audience. “If they can be shown that their position is in opposition to an industry … and cannot be ethically justified, they [will] change their position.”
The two easiest subtypes to join the corporate side of the fight are the “realists” and the “opportunists.”
By definition, an “opportunist” takes the opportunity to side with the powerful for career gain, Duchin explained, and has skin in the game for “visibility, power [and] followers.”
The realist, by contrast, is more complex but the most important piece of the puzzle, says Duchin.
“[Realists are able to] live with trade-offs; willing to work within the system; not interested in radical change; pragmatic. The realists should always receive the highest priority in any strategy dealing with a public policy issue.”
Duchin outlined a corresponding three-step strategy to “deal with” these four activist subtypes. First, isolate the radicals. Second, “cultivate” the idealists and “educate” them into becoming realists. And finally, co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.
“If your industry can successfully bring about these relationships, the credibility of the radicals will be lost and opportunists can be counted on to share in the final policy solution,” Duchin outlined in closing his speech.’
This formula was used by Stratfor in its attempts to destroy the protest movement against the Alberta tar sands, to smooth the way for oil company financial support of the Sierra Club and to oppose the passage of climate change legislation, among other actions. As for Julian Assange and (then) Bradley Manning?
[Stratfor employee] Bart Mongoven has a simple solution to “isolate” them, as suggested by Duchin’s formula.
“I’m in favor of using whatever trumped up charge is available to get [Assange] and his servers off the streets. And I’d feed that shit head soldier [Bradley Manning] to the first pack of wild dogs I could find,” Mongoven wrote in one email exchange revealed by the “Global Intelligence Files.” “Or perhaps just do to him whatever the Iranians are doing to our sources there.”
Discrediting radicals in leadership roles also has a long and sordid history, as well as the subsequent emphasis and elite support given to those willing to compromise and dilute their principles away to nothing. In recent times the almost ritual political annihilation of Jeremy Corbyn and his replacement by moral eunuchs like Keir Starmer stands out as a key example of this. But questions also have to be asked about the treatment of Roger Hallam, and whether the concerted effort to smear him and kick him out of the movement he founded also follows this pattern of elite co-option and neutralisation (I have no evidence to confirm this has been an undercover psy-op, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if that turned out to be what has happened).
The 2019 Policy Exchange report, ‘Extremism Rebellion‘ (pdf) can be seen as a Stratfor-esque attempt to damage the standing of key leadership figures within XR, as well as sowing division in the movement among the four ‘sub-types’ of radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists and seeking to portray entirely rational critiques of the global economic system as ‘extreme’ and thus unacceptable for mainstream discourse – possibly even a matter for police investigation. It’s actually quite a useful compendium of statements (some no longer available on the internet) made by the XR founders and other key figures as well as from previous organisations such as Rising Up! and Compassionate Revolution which show how sharp their analysis used to be, and how unafraid they were of naming the problems of capitalism and economic growth and proposing some pretty radical solutions. One article apparently posted to the Rising Up! facebook page even offers a pretty good critique of civilisation, suggesting that we ’embrace [its] collapse, and use the opportunity to create something better’. Tellingly, nowhere in the 76 page report do the two ‘counter-terrorism specialist’ authors offer a reason why these analyses are wrong. Instead they assert that :
the leaders of Extinction Rebellion seek a more subversive agenda, one that that is rooted in the political extremism of anarchism, eco-socialism and radical anti-capitalist environmentalism. (p.5)
with smears of ‘antisemitism’ (p.14) and potential ‘terrorist activity’ (p.55) thrown in for good measure to indicate that these people are not to be trusted. Founders Roger Hallam and Gail Bradbrook and influential figure Jem Bendell each have extensive sections detailing the supposedly outrageous things they’ve said (again not factually disputed), and there are explicit appeals for XR to ‘[change] its current strategy towards engaging in lawful protest whilst acknowledging the liberal democratic order’ (p.6) and speculation on how the movement could be ‘moderated’:
It is conceivable that these figureheads could eventually be side lined by more moderate figures who will seek to move into the mainstream. Under such a scenario, a more radical fringe might breakaway so as to have a free hand to undertake actions, such as those involving drones or hunger strikes. For the moment, the momentum of significant numbers of people joining the campaign’s demonstrations and the vocal support from politicians and celebrities may be incentive enough for the activists to rein in any more extreme elements. (p.70)
Is it a coincidence that a few months after this paper was published and splashed across the media XR were ‘unreservedly denounc[ing]’ Roger Hallam’s comments about the Nazi Holocaust in Die Zeit, before demanding he attend a ‘restorative process‘ that lasted nearly a whole year with Hallam not permitted to publicly associate with XR for all that time? It’s revealing that in their effort (pdf) to oust him from their platform XR Global Support called Hallam a ‘highly divisive figure’ with the ‘controversy’ around his statements and activism allegedly causing ‘damage’ to ‘our work’. He has indeed been forced to ‘breakaway’ [sic] from XR by forming the organisation ‘Burning Pink‘ which is taking a more hardline approach in messaging and actions. Score 1 for the moderates…
The obvious counter-strategy to this trend is to work to educate and push as many members of the movement to the radical end of the spectrum as possible and not tolerate those willing to sell out or capitulate on key issues (or at least not allow them near influential decision-making positions). Stephanie McMillan talked about how best to do this in the following talk for the DGR ‘Earth at Risk’ series (watch from 34:45):
Lesson #5 – Those in power will never tell the truth
One of the things that first excited me about Extinction Rebellion were these paragraphs near the end of the original ‘Declaration of Rebellion‘ in April 2019 which spoke bluntly in terms of the ‘social contract’ between government and citizens:
We, in alignment with our consciences and our reasoning, declare ourselves in rebellion against our Government and the corrupted, inept institutions that threaten our future.
The wilful complicity displayed by our government has shattered meaningful democracy and cast aside the common interest in favour of short-term gain and private profits.
When Government and the law fail to provide any assurance of adequate protection, as well as security for its people’s well-being and the nation’s future, it becomes the right of its citizens to seek redress in order to restore dutiful democracy and to secure the solutions needed to avert catastrophe and protect the future. It becomes not only our right, it becomes our sacred duty to rebel.
We hereby declare the bonds of the social contract to be null and void, which the government has rendered invalid by its continuing failure to act appropriately. We call upon every principled and peaceful citizen to rise with us.
I’ve heard it said that a key moment in the collapse of empires comes when a critical mass of ordinary citizens feel that they’re no longer getting anything in return for their participation in the project, with provision of a basic level of safety and security as the crucial part of the state’s responsibility in the bargain. Why continue to pay taxes to Rome when they can’t even keep the barbarians from the gates? For me this showed that XR were willing to entertain the possibility that the number one priority of the state was never really our safety, but rather the ongoing concentration of wealth and power from the systematic destruction of the living planet – and our lives along with it. (Same as it ever was, as John Dewey put it back in 1931: ‘as long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance’.) It suggested that XR were willing to move beyond the liberal framing of how it’s all one society, and we’re ‘all in it together’, and start building an actual oppositional force, pointing out enemies and declaring war on the whole system rather than accepting the toxic lie that we’re all responsible and complicit and have to ‘be the change we want to see’ etc etc. The removal of this sense of identification – a toxic mimic of location of a sense of identity in the wider group which was adaptive in a context of small-scale tribal societies but totally synthetic in the modern landscape of mega-cities and globalisation – is crucial for the formation of serious resistance movements capable of challenging the death march of the dominant culture.
But this messaging hasn’t been repeated or built upon since the early days of the movement, and the emphasis has moved to one of weak bargaining for governments to ‘tell the truth‘:
Governments worldwide are failing to act, consistently refusing to acknowledge the serious and imminent threat posed by this twin crisis.
Without leadership, citizens, corporations and institutions lack direction and purpose in the fight against this climatic and ecological nightmare that worsens with every passing day. This leaves all of us – and the planet we call home – in a desperate and dangerous position.
That is why “Tell the Truth” is the first of Extinction Rebellion’s three core demands.
We demand that governments everywhere tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with the public, businesses and other institutions to communicate this urgent need for change. […] Governments have delayed long enough. The advanced state of the twin crises unfolding today is proof that such empty rhetoric is simply not enough to even begin to address the situation we find ourselves in.
The only ‘failure’ here is the inability of bright green environmentalists to break through their denial about the true nature of these institutions. ‘Delay’ and ’empty rhetoric’ is all we will ever get from them because what these crises really call for – complete dismantling of the industrial infrastructure and a return to sane & sustainable ways of living within the global solar budget – is complete anathema to the corporate interests they represent. They don’t ‘lack direction and purpose in the fight’ – they are actively fighting against any restriction on their relentless planet-killing sociopathy. They are our enemies, and we should start treating them accordingly.
WikiLeaks never had this problem, a radicalism which is probably the real reason they were hated not just by the establishment but by reformist liberals still desperately clinging on to their illusions that maybe change was still possible within the system. Implicit in the very structure of the organisation was an understanding that power maintains itself through systematic dishonesty, cover-ups and false PR about its true nature & priorities. Asked by Der Spiegel back in 2010 why he founded WikiLeaks when he could have ‘started a company in Silicon Valley and lived in a home in Palo Alto with a swimming pool’ Assange replied that:
We all only live once. So we are obligated to make good use of the time that we have and to do something that is meaningful and satisfying. This is something that I find meaningful and satisfying. That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards. So it is enjoyable work.
A world away from the collaborationist mentality on display in the above statement from XR, and a combative attitude which would probably lead to expulsion from the organisation as it stands today. Truth here is being used as a weapon to expose state/corporate criminality, to aid the pursuit of justice for the victims and to deter future abuses for fear that they too will be revealed. It is not imagined as some kind of magic wand, that if those in power start using the Correct Words everybody will change their minds and start living a different way. Plenty of local and even national government bodies have happily declared climate emergencies as XR suggested they do. What has actually changed as a result? HS2, more road building, new coal mines, airport expansions, fossil fuel investments, onshore oil production etc. are all still getting green lights in the UK (all protested by members of XR to their credit, alongside locals), showing yet again that government bodies are more than happy to employ ’empty rhetoric’ if it will take some heat off them and allow them to kick the can down the road for a bit longer.
I originally titled this section ‘speaking truth to power is a waste of time’, but I know that with its efforts at grassroots movement-building with the ‘heading for extinction‘ talk and the still somewhat promising emphasis on citizens assemblies, this isn’t a totally fair summation of XR’s approach. Nonetheless, the Gandhian belief in the power of truth-telling seems oversold and based on a very liberal understanding of social change happening through education and changing ideas. The DGR book is well worth reading on this subject too, summing up the fundamental distinction between liberal and radical approaches thus:
Liberalism also diverges from a radical analysis on the question of the nature of social reality. Liberalism is idealist. This is the belief that reality is a mental activity. Oppression, therefore, consists of attitudes and ideas, and social change happens through rational argument and education. Materialism, in contrast, is the understanding that society is organized by concrete systems of power, not by thoughts and ideas, and that the solution to oppression is to take those systems apart brick by brick.
It might not even just be the powerful who have an aversion to hearing the truth on these matters, but the cognitive dissonance inherent in being forced to live within a system of turbo-charged capitalism means that most people are literally unable to keep these truths in their minds, let alone rearrange their lives according to them (if that were even possible). In the words of Upton Sinclair ‘it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it’ and many are still in that position, at least while the economy remains stable enough to keep the salaries coming… In any case this is where the discussion and organising needs to happen, face to face among peers who can then formulate suitable plan of action to build resistance to this omnicidal culture, and XR do still seem to have this part right. Governments and corporations might never tell the truth, in fact are probably incapable of telling the truth, but that doesn’t mean truths about the climate & ecological crises can’t be used to generate movements to challenge and eventually overthrow a system that ultimately must lie about itself and everything else or fall apart. Noam Chomsky put it this way:
[M]y Quaker friends and colleagues in disrupting illegitimate authority adopt the slogan: “Speak truth to power.” I strongly disagree. The audience is entirely wrong, and the effort hardly more than a form of self-indulgence. It is a waste of time and a pointless pursuit to speak truth to Henry Kissinger, or the CEO of General Motors, or others who exercise power in coercive institutions — truths that they already know well enough, for the most part.
Again, a qualification is in order. Insofar as such people dissociate themselves from their institutional setting and become human beings, moral agents, then they join everyone else. But in their institutional roles, as people who wield power, they are hardly worth addressing, any more than the worst tyrants and criminals, who are also human beings, however terrible their actions.
To speak truth to power is not a particularly honorable vocation. One should seek out an audience that matters — and furthermore (another important qualification), it should not be seen as an audience, but as a community of common concern in which one hopes to participate constructively. We should not be speaking to, but with. That is second nature to any good teacher, and should be to any writer and intellectual as well.
Concluding remarks
I hope these comments will be received in a spirit of constructive criticism, but honestly I doubt if the liberalising momentum or ongoing NGO-isation of XR is amenable to course-correction at this point. I can see the reasoning behind ducking out of taking a stance on controversial issues like WikiLeaks/Assange, the antisemitism witch-hunt, Israel/Palestine, the militarisation of society and other topics – it would be easy to get bogged down in conflicts about subjects that aren’t the main focus of your campaigning, sapping away precious energy from where you could perhaps be most effective. However, in my view this effectively legitimises those controversies, the lack of solidarity making it that much harder for others to speak up without immediately getting their heads bitten off. Of course, that’s exactly the reason the controversies were stirred up in the first place, to make the subjects taboo and those involved not acceptable within polite discourse. On the flip side there’s no reluctance, or penalty for taking political stances that are in line with state/corporate priorities, as with XR’s de-facto support for US-backed regime change ops in South America, or for taking swipes at socialists in the UK, or saying Joe Biden’s election brings ‘hope‘. No controversy there!
I guess my main point is about the futility of siloing yourself off into a single-issue movement. If you don’t stand with others, build connections and common cause, learn from each others’ successes and failures and stick up for one another when the hammer comes down, then not only will your movement be the poorer for it, but it will be that much easier for the powers that be to swat you away when they decide your time has come.
Sat down to record a few new additions to the repertoire…
#1 – Songs Of Love by The Divine Comedy
I’ve been introducing the new gf to classic nineties sitcoms, and I started humming the theme to Father Ted all the time so figured I’d better learn how to play it. Turns out The Divine Comedy, who wrote it & lots of other little bits & bobs for the series, also recorded it as a song for the album ‘Casanova’. Here’s a live version from the tribute show to Dermot Morgan, the actor who played Father Ted and sadly died a day after completing the third series. It has been nice to finally start going through DC’s back catalogue after all this time of being only dimly aware of them. Lots of gems in there and Neil Hannon, another former choirboy, has a great voice and wicked sense of humour in his songwriting.
#2 Memory Lane by Elliott Smith
A good one for the feelings of trapped paranoia & cabin fever that seem to be dogging this lockdown more than the last. Maybe it’s just me, being in a caravan on a muddy farm near the motorway, but it feels a lot more grim this time, especially without the spring morning chorus from the birds, fresh greenery and clear blue skies to take the edge off… So many delicious little things crammed into this short autobiographical number from Smith. Sweet but devastating once you start going down through the layers, something of a hallmark. ‘If you want to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh or disguise it as a cheery Beatles song or they’ll kill you’ – GB Shaw (adapted) A live recording from 2003.
#3 – You’re So Vain by Carly Simon
Had this in the back of my mind to learn for a while and the excuse came while putting together a few campfire songs to sing with R. Quite an unusual subject for a pop song, I always thought. Quite a few men had the vanity to insist it was written about them, but Simon never confirmed, except possibly to one competition winner who was sworn to secrecy.
#4 – My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
I’ve been singing this one in close harmony groups I think since secondary school, usually just the first part before the arrangement wisely lets a tenor take over for the high G section. In recent years I’ve been encouraged to play it at Burns Night get-togethers with old uni friends, one of the few occasions I manage to see them during the year. It happened over the interwebs this year, but criminally I neglected to bring the guitar out so here’s a slightly more polished version than usual in recompense (ie: minus the beer & whiskey!)* Here’s a nice article speculating what kind of rose Burns may be referring to and suggesting the the references to seas ganging dry and rocks melting with the sun might point to an influence from the contemporary geologist James Hutton and the concept of ‘deep time’ he helped to popularise:
[Hutton and friend James Hall] discovered the famous unconformity at Siccar Point, near where I live, where an ocean going dry formed a sandstone which was eroded and folded upright, then overlain after an unimaginable interval by another ocean, which also ran dry. Hutton and Hall were among the distinguished men and women of Edinburgh society we know Burns met during his time in the city.
Gotta love a bit of geopoetry…Maybe I should do Bad Religion’s ‘No Control’ next, as they lifted Hutton’s line, ‘no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end’ directly for the lyrics to that frenetic, bouncy punk song. Would be a bit of a contrast!
Another nice campfire singalong, this was another song I learned for the Irish folk night I went to in Suffolk last year. Heard it through The Pogues and also Ewan McLennan whose performance on Transatlantic Sessions I much prefer to the recorded version on ‘Rags and Robes’ on account of the stumbling artsy ‘placement’ of the chords which for me ruins the rhythmic flow of the song. Nice travelling from place to place these last few years and feeling like it’s speaking a literal truth to my audience. Damn, I miss pubs…
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More to follow in about a week (I’ve made a new free vimeo account but they still have the weekly upload limit of 500MB).
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* – Yes, I know it’s horrible Cultural Appropriation and we should all be celebrating Barnes Night and coming to terms with our Englishness instead… (I did finally keep my promise of recording a version of Linden Lea, which will make it to these pages in due course.) At least we can still eat haggis, as that comes from Lancashire!
Spent a couple of afternoons recording some more tunes. A bit rough & ready recorded straight to my laptop without a proper mic, but you get the feel of it… Enjoy!
#1 – Sisters of Mercy by Leonard Cohen
Felt like learning this Cohen song for reasons unbeknownst.
#2 – The Letter by the Box Tops
A song I picked up from working in a record store. It was on a compilation CD that got repeated and repeated and repeated through the day, but I was the only one who was bothered or wanted to change it. I ended up hating most of the other songs on the record but quite liked this one. A young Alex Chilton, later of Big Star fame, does his gritty soul singer impressions on the original. I suppose in this day and age it’s important to factor in the climate impact of getting to your sweetheart as fast as humanly possible.
#3 – Independence Day by Elliott Smith
Very slowly coming round to some of Smith’s old stuff and finding that I’m just about good enough now to do a passable interpretation of some of them. He did this in an open D tuning but that puts the vocal too high, so a capo & re-jig into regular tuning sat it in the right place. One of these days I’ll get the tremolo picking down for Tomorrow, Tomorrow.
#4 – I wish I knew how it would feel to be free by Billy Taylor and Dick Dallas
Originally a jazz instrumental made famous by Nina Simone and adopted as a civil rights anthem in the US. Hopefully my version isn’t as cringeworthy as some of the other earnest, white folky renditions. ‘Back goes pale face to basics’ in Gil Scott Heron’s chastening words. Hopefully the lack of freedom we’re all experiencing at the moment will give us pause to think about other prisoners around the world, such as Julian Assange or the people of Gaza (lately being spat at by Israeli settlers & soldiers), as well as those imprisoned in life circumstances less privileged than our own. But really, nobody knows what true freedom feels like within this globe-spanning prison called civilisation.
#5 – Les copains d’abord by Georges Brassens
Managed to finally piece all the verses of this together last Autumn. Georges is talking about the boat he took out onto the Mediterranean with his mates and all the good times they had. The title means ‘friends first’ but also sounds like ‘the friends on board’. I spent an enjoyable time with a couple of french women running through all the obscure slang and literary/cultural references he uses, some of which are noted on this translation page (Note to English readers and historians: Trafalgar is referenced to suggest a nautical disaster, not a famous victory!) This was take 1, which is why it’s so nice & loose – I was only intending to do the first verse and check back on it, but carried on to the end, thinking it was feeling too good to stop. A triumphant Brassens performance here.
#6 – Leatherman by Pearl Jam
A lesser-known B side with a nice energetic strumming pattern. I like how Vedder elides ‘way’ and ‘with’ into one word in the last verse.
#7 – Corrinna, Corrinna
An old blues tune first recorded in 1928. I heard it via Bob Dylan, who apparently attached the lyrics to a different melody. Toyed with the idea of changing it to ‘Corona, Corona’ and getting all clever with lyric alterations but heard someone doing that with Bohemian Rhapsody and thought that was enough of that sort of gimmickry.
#8 – The Mountains of Pomeroy by George Sigerson
I heard a nice heartfelt version of this old Irish song by Niall Hanna and thought I’d try my hand at it. I also found a nice way to play it in regular tuning (the above is in DADGAD) with a capo, so I might record that and see if I can do it without having my eyes glued to the fretboard the whole way through! The original version has Reynardine offering to guard his golden-haired maid ‘with my gun’ not ‘with my life’ as Hanna puts it, though I can understand it might be a more politically sensitive subject for an Irish performer. There are lots of similarities in the song to an old English ballad, ‘The Mountains High‘ and the figure of Reynard as a were-fox and seducer of unwary young women (among other things) goes back a long way into medieval European history, at least as far back as the 12th century. The archetypal/mythic feeling of an unknown creature coming down from the hills and interfering in the lives of townfolk to me suggests a far older tradition, possibly harking back to pre-Christian shamanic mediations between the wild and civilised worlds, but that could just be me… Sigerson was clearly happy to use it as an allegory for guerrilla warfare against the English and all the risks that involved, not just for romantic relationships. Another kind of wildness that must be tracked down and destroyed, mountains or no mountains…
Less seriously, I had some amusement with my farm hosts while I was learning this last year trying to come up with different rhymes for ‘Pomeroy’ than the 3 ‘destroy’s that Sigerson uses. My favourites were ‘where we’ll grow some pak choi’ and ‘they say he’s a naughty boy’ 😛
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A few more to come next week once the upload limit gets refreshed! I’ll maybe record some others too in due course…
It’s revealing how quickly and automatically leaders and some people who should know better have been talking about the response to Covid-19 in terms of warfare. ‘Fight’ the virus, ‘win the war’, health workers ‘on the front line’, global ‘struggle’ not seen since WW2 etc etc. Even the focus on how health services are lacking in equipment in some ways mirrors the outrage over under-equipped militaries fighting foreign wars: no questioning of the root causes of why the ‘battle’ is necessary in the first place, or whether a military response is preferable or even effective in the long term. Symptoms are furiously addressed; underlying factors driving the emergence of those symptoms are ignored, so the next time round they get worse. And worse. And worse.
For anyone who has read their Quinn it’s clear that this war footing is a default of the dominant culture. Being based on the domestication of a few key plant and animal species for 10-12,000 years has set us up to react aggressively to the point of total ecocide against any creature, ‘weed’, ‘pest’ or pathogen that shows itself to undermine or get in the way of the supremacy and expansion of the human & domesticate populations. This is a violation of what Quinn described as the ‘law of limited competition’:
You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war.
[…]
“Funny. . . . This is considered almost holy work by farmers and ranchers. Kill off everything you can’t eat. Kill off anything that eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn’t feed what you eat.”
“It is holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated.”
I think the history of medical responses to disease, especially in the case of pandemics but also in the case of other more chronic ‘diseases of civilisation‘, has been a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it. All the factors laying the ground for fast spreading, high lethality pathogens – proximity to livestock, high density populations, globalised trade networks, destruction of ecosystems etc. – remain unaddressed (because ‘the economy, stupid’) and well-meaning researchers put themselves to work to try & deal with the inevitable consequences of the civilised way of life. Of course this then drops the mortality rate and paves the way for yet more population growth, intensity of agriculture & increased capacity for economic growth, and the next generation of researchers are left to fight increasingly potent responses for ever diminishing returns until what they’re doing no longer has a measurable effect (eg: bacterial resistance to antibiotics). It’s all part of the 10,000 year War Effort, but it’s a war we’re guaranteed to lose because we’re really fighting the blowback from our own activities. As Quinn puts it:
If [the Takers] refuse to live under the law, then they simply won’t live. You might say that this is one of the law’s basic operations: Those who threaten the stability of the community by defying the law automatically eliminate themselves.”
“The Takers will never accept that.”
“Acceptance has nothing to do with it. You may as well talk about a man stepping off the edge of a cliff not accepting the effects of gravity. The Takers are in the process of eliminating themselves, and when they’ve done so, the stability of the community will be restored and the damage you’ve done can begin to be repaired.” (ibid.)
It should be clear that we need to end this war, on all levels across the culture, or failing that help to bring about such a total defeat that it becomes impossible for the civilised to pick up their weapons afterwards. Covid-19 has given us a taste of what that might look like.
Hands around my throat
Smothering
Choking
A steady murderous intent
Silencing the words
Before I speak them
Suffocating before my lungs
Can draw breath
And give me back my strength
I knew it was this way
And yet somehow, still,
I didn’t
Until I gave that small part of me
(Inoculation)
To those who spoke my mind
In the halls of power
It’s not a fair fight,
Not a free exchange,
Innocent flow of ideas
Shared in good faith
No, it’s a bitter, centuries-old struggle
And we have arrived, fresh-faced
To the battlefield with the blood
Of the last lot still warm,
Still sticky underfoot
They won’t listen,
They won’t bargain or negotiate
They will SMELL us out
And see their sworn enemy in our eyes
Just another iteration
Of the same beast to slay
And they will come for us
With all their force
And malevolent fury
Look at what they’ve done
The hero cut down
Pleading, wheedling, abject apologies
And the crowd divided, split,
Whittled away, wedged apart,
In disarray
And now we’re at eachothers’ throats
The larynx swells,
The words rise up,
An indignant heat prickles the forehead
But we stay silent,
Standing ashamed before the corpses
Of innocent comrades we failed to defend
While the murderers gloat and goad
And spit in our faces
Was I so naive to think there would be
No consequences for speaking this way,
For giving voice to these thoughts,
So forbidden, so utterly banished?
Now the consequences lie before us
In plain sight, left to rot in the open
To serve as a lesson
Is it my own fear that I feel
Tightening a noose around my neck?
They say that the purpose of a lynching
Was demonstrative, intended to smother
Any thought of rebellion in its infancy
One night of terror, public, brazen
And suddenly there’s a slavering mob
Watching over every utterance
Ready to pounce on our imaginations
Make no mistake: this is a war
They have declared it over and over
To those who were listening,
Who weren’t trying to believe
In comforting illusions,
To stay infantilised, neotenised,
Learned helpless, desperate to the last
When will we stop bringing penknives
To this gun fight?
When will we accept that these enemies will not be placated
And must be defeated?
How many times, how many different ways
Must we learn these lessons
Before they finally stick?
It won’t be pretty
It won’t be perfect
But we really,
REALLY have to start
In which the author finally gives way to his inner hippie…
#1 – ‘The Manchester Rambler’ by Ewan MacColl:
A song from the 1930s inspired by his participation in the mass trespass action on Kinder Scout, demanding greater rights of access to wild spaces for the general public, not just the notional landowners and their gamekeepers.
MacColl was a keen rambler, travelling out of Manchester by bus into the Peak District, like thousands of other young unemployed people with time on their hands. For MacColl, rambling was integral to his politics; he did not simply find nature beautiful and the urban world ugly: instead, it was an objective of the hoped-for revolution: ‘to create a world that would harmonize with that other one that you enjoyed so much… If the bourgeoisie had had any sense at all they would never have allowed the working class into that kind of countryside. Because it bred a spirit of revolt.’ – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchester_Rambler
Recorded by P in Italy, August 2018.
#2 – ‘Mountainside’ by Yours Truly:
My one complete song. A bit of amateur ethnography coupled with observations of rewilding and thoughts about its possible futures. Fluffed the last verse a bit but like the feel of the performance otherwise. The sausages weren’t my idea!
Recorded by P in Italy, August 2018.
# -‘El Cóndor Pasa (If I Could)’ music by Daniel Alomía Robles, lyrics by Paul Simon:
Footloose travel song which Simon tacked onto a 1913 composition by Robles, ‘based on traditional Andean music, specifically folk music from Peru’ which he heard being played by a band called ‘Los Incas’ in Paris. That’s a charango you can see on the table and I also recorded the song using that, which comes closer to a ‘traditional’ South American sound (the Incas’ arrangement used to back the S&G version also uses charangos) but I prefer this performance over all. A nice tune to play over this last year living out of my rucksack, often with the travel-friendly charango as the only available instrument.
Recorded by P in Italy, August 2018.
#4 – ‘Something’ by George Harrison:
Thought I’d better include a charango video. I think I learned this without ever looking up the lyrics, which would be why they’re a little ‘off base’ at times!
Recorded by A in the Czech Republic, November 2017
#5 – ‘Anděl’ by Karel Kryl:
I managed to learn two songs in Czech, this classic Karel Kryl tune and ‘Darmoděj‘ by Jaromír Nohavica (no recording yet). People seemed to appreciate the effort when I played it in public over there, and it was a moving experience to have them singing along in the way Czech people do (everybody seems to know all the words to all the songs). Spot the deliberate mistake in the melody which the audience gets right! Kryl has a big resonance over there because of his history of protest songs against the communist regime and his subsequent exile until the Velvet Revolution in 1989, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_Kryl . This is a more dreamlike song describing an encounter with an angel in an abandoned church, their debates about God, watching the birds and envying their freedom, and the singer’s attempt to replace the angel’s broken wings with new ones made from shell casings (ending their friendship after the angel flies out the window). I’ve struggled to find a good translation online, but a commenter on this thread makes the best effort, interpreting it as a song describing the boredom of military service in which ‘Forging souvenirs of empty cartridges was common amusement of soldiers’.
Recorded by A in the Czech Republic, November 2017
#6 – ‘Where’er You Walk’ by G.F. Handel:
From his oratorio ‘Semele‘, first performed in 1744. Jupiter tells Ino, Semele’s sister about all the wonderful things she can expect after he has brought her to Jove’s palace, where Semele is staying. Have sung this off & on since I was a boy and thought it might be nice to arrange it for guitar.
Recorded by O (video) & A (audio) in SE England, June 2017
#7 – ‘Down By The Salley Gardens’ – much loved folk song recorded and adapted by W.B Yeats and put to the traditional Irish tune of ‘The Maids of Mourne Shore’ by Herbert Hughes in 1909:
Yeats called it ‘an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of Ballisodare, Sligo, who often sings them to herself’. Some think this would have been ‘The Rambling Boys of Pleasure‘ which has a similar verse.
It has been suggested that the location of the “Salley Gardens” was on the banks of the river at Ballysadare near Sligo where the residents cultivated trees to provide roof thatching materials. “Salley” or “sally” is a form of the Standard English word “sallow”, i.e., a tree of the genus Salix. It is close in sound to the Irish word saileach, meaning willow. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_by_the_Salley_Gardens
Also, ‘As well as providing willow shoots for thatching, [willow gardens] doubled up as a meeting place for young lovers’. I used to sing the Ivor Gurney version which has a beautiful alternate melody and piano arrangement, but haven’t found a satisfactory way to play it on the guitar. The Benjamin Britten arrangement is nice too.
Recorded by O (video) & A (audio) in SE England, June 2017
#8 – ‘Mountainside’ (again):
My first attempt at recording this song (see #2). I’m happy playing it at a slower pace these days….
Recorded by O (video) & A (audio) in SE England, June 2017
#9 – ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightning’ – by Richard Thompson
My fingerstyle isn’t up to Thompson’s speed or accuracy (watch slack-jawed here, documentary discussion of the song here) so I’ve gone with this halfway house arrangement with a plectrum. When I was working as a gardener we used to stop for lunch at a cafe by the same Box Hill that gets namechecked in this song. So even though I know nothing about motorcycles, singing this reminds me of all the leather-clad bikers we’d see getting their bacon sandwiches and cups of tea with the hillside trees looming large behind us. The story of the song also makes me think of a friend of mine who lost her husband to cancer.
Recorded by A in SE England, July 2017
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More to follow… vimeo has an upload limit of 1 video about this length per week so check from Feb 7th.
Frequently Found Growing On Disturbed Ground 
