Angelina Jolie Teams Up with BBC to Fight Fake News. Just Don’t Mention the BBC’s History, Kids

FILE PHOTO: Angelina Jolie poses as she attends the UK premiere of "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil" in London, Britain

October 9, 2019. Reuters / Peter Nicholls

Graham Dockery

The BBC has hired Angelina Jolie to teach kids how to spot fake news and make up their own minds on pressing issues. But given its own history of bias, is the BBC the right authority to lecture children on the real and the fake?

The venerable broadcaster will air a new series every Sunday at 11:30am - right after the morning cartoons – on BBC World News, and on YouTube and the BBC iPlayer in the UK. The series will use the reporting of the BBC World Service to illustrate how reporters sift fact from fiction, and help kids aged 13 and up to “distinguish the real from the false online,” in the words of BBC World Service Group Director Jamie Angus.

“I hope it will help children find the information and tools they need to make a difference on the issues that matter to them, drawing on the BBC World Service’s network of thousands of journalists and multiple language services around the world,” Jolie said in a statement this week.

Jolie’s fake-news-busting credentials check out. As some of her fellow celebrities spouted garbage about vaccines causing autism and Gwyneth Paltrow implored women to “steam clean” their vaginas, Jolie has been credited for speaking out about her own experiences with cancer, drawing attention to the disease and justifying her decision to opt for a double mastectomy using solid scientific research. This time, she’ll have to call again on those research skills – a more complicated task, given the political games the BBC used to play. 

A history of bias

The BBC has a less-than-stellar reputation in the information game. Though its coverage is undoubtedly more balanced than the hyper-partisan squawking of Fox News and MSNBC across the Atlantic, the BBC has over the years allowed itself to be used as a propaganda bullhorn by the British government.

I should mention here that this report comes from RT (Russia Today), otherwise known as VoP (Voice of Putin). Nevertheless, it's a good history lesson on how western media is manipulated, with their complicity, by western governments. 

Earlier this month, declassified government documents revealed how Her Majesty’s Government persuaded Reuters to set up a reporting service in the Middle East in the late 1960s, funding it covertly through the BBC. Officials at the government’s Information Research Department hoped the service would allow them to exert “a measure of political influence” over this politically volatile region, at the height of the Cold War.

At the time, British diplomats in the Middle East described the service in familiar language, saying it would combat the “calculated fabrications” of rival “slanted” news agencies.

Which is a valid argument. If only they were still combating the propaganda coming from the Palestinians, but they don't seem to be doing that anymore.

In 1953, the BBC was used by MI6 and the CIA to support a coup attempt against Iran’s democratically-elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Even the BBC itself admits this, with a 2011 documentary describing how “Anti-Mossadegh material was repeatedly aired on the radio channel to the extent that Iranian staff at the BBC Persian radio service went on strike in protest.” The service was also accused of sending coded messages to the coup plotters in its broadcasts.

Flashing forward to present times, the BBC used unverified video footage and the assertions of US officials to finger Syrian leader Bashar Assad for allegedly gassing his own citizens in the city of Douma in 2018. Footage supposedly showing civilians being treated for sarin gas exposure in a hospital was used to justify joint British, American and French missile strikes on Syria, despite BBC Syria’s own producer describing the attack as staged, and an OPCW whistleblower accusing the chemical weapons watchdog of falsifying its report on the attack.

Later that year, BBC Russia correspondent Olga Ivshina was caught messaging a contact in Paris, desperate to prove that “Russia is behind” the ‘Yellow Vests’ protests consuming the city at the time. “The editorial board wants blood,” she told her contact, after failing to find any Russian influence in the demonstrations.

So is the BBC the best authority to lecture children on bias and impartiality? Probably not. But then again, no news outlet is completely free of slant. Perhaps kids should instead keep an old Russian proverb, popularized by Ronald Reagan, in mind: “Trust, but verify.”

Mainstream media has long-ago lost my trust. My attitude is 'Assume bias, don't trust anything they say if it lines up with political correctness, climate hysteria, Russia - Syria bashing, or anything else that justifies a world gone mad.'

Yes, I know Syria and Russia do some very awful things, but most of what they are accused of is propaganda for the sake of moving military equipment and the inventories of war, made by the countries who make the most profit from their military industries - USA, France & Britain.

French Civil Servants Paid Millions to do NOTHING for 25 years

What a mess France is in! Rapidly increasing numbers of Muslims;

Yellow vest protests every singe week this year, and the

government seems impotent to do anything about either.

© Pexels

Imagine turning up at work every day and doing absolutely nothing. Or better yet, staying at home and doing nothing and still getting paid. The dream is a reality for 30 French civil servants.

French taxpayers have been spending more than €1 million per year to pay the salaries of 30 so-called “phantom” bureaucrats in the southern city of Toulon, a report by the Provence-Alps-Riviera Regional Audit Office, seen by local newspaper Var-Matin, revealed.

One of these ghosts picked up his state paycheck while simultaneously working a managerial job in the private sector, while all 30 received promotions and pay increases based on seniority, despite not working for more than 25 years.

The workers initially lost their jobs when water services in Toulon were privatized in the 1990s. Local authorities failed to find them replacement jobs, and were therefore bound to keep paying their wages.

“It is regrettable, to say the least, that the city was not capable of finding new jobs for some of these employees, especially the youngest,” the audit report read. The report also criticized the “jobless” workers for staying on the government payroll until the mandatory retirement age of 67 to maximize their pensions.

While money for nothing might be a particularly shocking story, French private sector workers have often bemoaned the ‘jobs for life’ culture of the civil service, which employs nearly one in five French workers. Furthermore, an Economic Ministry report in March revealed that more than 300,000 civil servants were failing to work their statutory 35 hours per week.

The report comes after months of unrest in France, as workers protested their rising tax burden and falling wages.

In a bid to placate an angry public, French President Emanuel Macron promised to cut 120,000 public sector jobs by 2022, to facilitate tax cuts and a reduction of €60 billion in public spending. However, the planned layoffs have also triggered mass protests.

Macron has also promised to pass laws forcing workers to actually show up for their 35-hour work week, and clamp down on staff taking more than their five weeks annual leave.

Unbelievable! The gov't could have continued to pay their wages for 3 years and told them to use that time to train for another field, longer if necessary. But to just continue to pay them for decades for doing nothing, and then promoting them and giving them raises is utter insanity. I wonder how many more civil servants are doing this?

‘Anti-Semitism Spreading Like Poison’: France Stained by Weekend of Vandalism & Year of Hate Crimes

Strasbourg's Grand Rabbi inspects graves desecrated with anti-Semitic graffiti in 2018 © Reuters / Vincent Kessler

France’s interior minister has vowed to take a tougher stance on hatred, after multiple incidents of anti-semitic vandalism, and a spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes last year.

Parisians were greeted with crudely daubed anti-Semitic slogans on shop fronts last weekend, including swastikas sprayed over images of late politician and Holocaust survivor Simone Veil, and the German word for Jews (“Juden”) sprayed on a bagel shop in the city center.  

A memorial tree planted in honor of a young Jewish man, tortured to death in a 2006 attack, was also chopped down. Visiting the suburb where the tree once stood, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner declared that “anti-Semitism is spreading like a poison, like a venom.”

“It’s rotting minds, it’s killing,” Castaner continued, before vowing to crack down on anti-Jewish hatred.

Yellow Vests blamed by some

Castaner did not blame any particular group for the spread of anti-Semitism, but some within the French government and media were quick to blame extremists among anti-Government ‘Yellow Vest’ demonstrators. Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux linked the graffiti to an arson attack on the home of Parliamentary Speaker Richard Ferrand one week earlier, believed to be the work of the Yellow Vests. The Union of French Jewish Students also pinned blame for the racist daubings on the Yellow Vests.

The bagel bakery’s owner disputes the link, and said that the graffiti appeared on his shop hours before protests broke out nearby.

video 4:11

Most vicious attacks by Muslim extremists

The video above manages to ignore the role of Islam in the growing antisemitism in France, but it has a major role.

Moreover, France has been struggling with anti-Semitism long before protests began last November. The number of reported anti-Semitic attacks in France rose 74 percent last year to 541, up from 311 in 2017. The most vicious of these attacks was carried out by Islamic extremists, who have revived an ancient religious conflict on the streets of modern France.

After surviving the Vichy government’s roundup of Jews in 1942, 85-year-old Mireille Knoll was was stabbed to death and set on fire in her apartment last March by her Muslim neighbor. Prosecutors said the attack was motivated by the neighbor’s anti-Semitic beliefs.

One year earlier, another elderly Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, was killed by a Malian man who shouted: “Allahu Akbar,” before throwing her out of a window. In 2015, a gunman pledging allegiance to the Islamic State terror group killed four people in a Kosher supermarket in Paris, while 2012 saw three children and a teacher from a Jewish school in Toulouse killed by an Islamist fanatic.

Ilan Halimi, whose memorial tree was vandalized over the weekend, was abducted and ransomed by a group of attackers who believed that all Jews were rich, and could afford to pay up. His family could not afford the ransom, and Halimi died after being tortured for three weeks. In court, the ringleader of the attackers appeared unrepentant, declaring“all Jews are my enemies” and pointing upwards while saying: “Allahu Akbar.”

All radical Muslims are completely insane!

After every attack, the French government pledged to do more to combat anti-Semitism. However, some of France’s Jewish population – the largest in the world behind the United States and Israel – have had enough. An EU-wide survey last year found that French Jews were among the most likely to consider emigrating to Israel, where citizenship is a birthright for Jews worldwide. More than 20,000 of France’s roughly half a million Jews made the one-way trip since 2014.

“In two months we’ll be emigrating to Israel because of the anti-Semitism in Europe,” one French woman told the survey. “Nothing is being done about it. So we are leaving voluntarily.”

As this article points out, radical Muslim are responsible for the most heinous acts of antisemitism, but is it likely that the extraordinary influx of apparently moderate Muslims into Europe is feeding the growing hatred of Jews? Are EU countries addressing this issue in any way? If they don't act soon, most of Europe will be as antisemitic as Nazi Germany was in the late 1930s.

Wonder Why France is Under Seige by Yellow Vests?

France is the new tax hell in Europe and beyond

Hundreds are being arrested in Paris at this very moment

FILE PHOTO: A French flag is held by protesters in Paris, France © Reuters / Stephane Mahe

While the dust has not yet settled in the streets of Paris, after sweeping protests against fuel tax hikes, it just so happens that France has taken the crown from Denmark as the most taxed country in 2017, the OECD found.

Among the 34 developed members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Emmanuel Macron leads the nation with the highest tax-to-GDP ratio, the organization reported. France leads with 46.2 percent of GDP against the average of 34.2 percent of other members, thus dropping the long-standing leader in the rating, Denmark.

The Scandinavian country’s numbers, meanwhile, shrank to 46 percent, down by 0.2 since last year. Sweden, Italy, and Greece round out the top five, while Mexico is the last on the list at 16.2 percent.

© www.oecd.org

Canada, and several other countries were left off this chart for whatever reason. Canada ranks 24th, right between Britain and Japan at 32.2%, just below the OECD average. By 2019, with Trudeau's carbon tax coming in, Canada will jump, probably above the average. Remember, not only will gas prices increase, but every commodity that moves by air, truck, ship or rail will increase in price and therefore increase in taxes.

Notably, tax revenues for OECD member states, on average, reached historically high levels in 2017, rising to 34.2 percent of GDP. It is up only slightly from 34 percent, the previous peak recorded by the organization in 2016.

France is currently in the midst of weeks of social unrest over proposed fuel tax hikes. The latest Yellow Vest mayhem in Paris resulted in nearly 100 injuries and more than 200 arrests, as protesters descended into street battles. The violent rallies finally pushed the French government to drop its plan for fuel tax hikes at least for the 2019 budget.

Environmental hysteria is literally putting the cart before the horse in its attempt to eliminate fossil fuels before there are reasonable alternatives. The effort is causing a rapid decrease in the wealth of middle and lower class families. 

The French, watching their culture be destroyed by political correctness and globalism, are rejecting the climate hysteria that politicians are inflicting on western countries, most of which contribute little in carbon footprints compared to the USA, China and India.