… a weakening of its biggest trade competitor, Europe, has been the most tangible benefit for Washington of the war it provoked in Ukraine. Most glaringly evident in the sabotage of Nordstream and its consequences for European businesses, Germany’s in particular, it is now crystal clear to the attentive that Europe’s leaders (with Macron a faint and partial exception for which he is being whipped back into line) are Quislings; servants not of their own peoples but compradors to Washington and Wall Street.
Steel City Scribe: The emerging New World Economy
The work [of the Danish Broadcasting Company] is to cut and paste, translate and edit news from US and other Western media like Reuters and The Guardian. Correspondents abroad serve two functions; if in the West, they explain benevolently what the US, NATO and EU do; if in China or elsewhere, it’s only negative stories.
Jan Oberg of The Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research (TFF)
There’s nothing new about turkeys voting for Christmas but that pithily sardonic metaphor took on heightened meaning after Washington provoked the Kremlin move of February 24 last year.
The truth shown by these maps doesn’t cover the half of NATO’s provocations – e.g. Maidan 2014 – but they’ll do for now
As in all of its wars – backed to the hilt by my own government, which has had no independent foreign policy since Harold Wilson declined to commit British forces in Vietnam – Washington’s proxy war on Russia is mis-sold, in Europe as in Japan, the Antipodes and Canada, on the back of lies spun by media incapable of doing otherwise on matters of non negotiable importance to the US ruling class.
(I know my use of ‘ruling class’ alienates liberals, who fondly believe ours is a democracy, even if it’s a flawed one. Frankly I’ve stopped caring. A spade’s a spade and those who object to my use of the r-word are cordially invited to debate the point with me.)
A huge aspect – see here and here – of the mendacity by omission is that a weakened Europe is not an unfortunate downside of Washington’s war on Russia. It’s Washington’s most tangible gain. As German firms go under for lack of energy, else relocate in the US of A, and as Europe’s domestic consumers turn to imports of LNG from guess where at prices way above those for Nordstream gas, the turkeys voting for Xmas – i.e. shivering Europeans paying hiked prices for life’s basics as their contribution to dollar rule sold and bought as a war of freedom standing up to tyranny – are shrinking in number, but nothing like as fast as they should be.
Do we count Scholz, Macron, Sunak et al – ditto Albanese and Trudeau, Von der Leyen and Lagarde – with the turkeys? I think not. Geniuses they ain’t, but they’re not stupid either. Just treacherous marionettes who, when Washington tells them to jump, ask “how high?”
As do the not so great and good of the Danish Broadcasting Company. Cue for Jan Oberg, cited at start of this post, on its no-platforming of Seymour Hersh. Remember him? He was the cub reporter who almost sixty years ago brought us the truth about My Lai. And the octogenarian who in February confirmed what a sea of circumstantial evidence – means, motive, opportunity and Biden’s own words – had already indicated: that the author of the Nordstream sabotage in September last year was none other than Uncle Sam himself.
The Danish Broadcasting Company cancelled Seymour Hersh with arguments revealing its conveniently ignorant role as His US Master’s Voice.
April 13, 2023
Ages ago, I was born in Denmark, and I still hold a Danish passport. Quite often, I visit the homepage of the Danish Broadcasting Company – Danmarks Radio (DR). It is public service, regulated by laws passed by the Danish People’s Parliament – “Folketinget.”
I sadly admit that there is an element of masochism in my visits to DR. In the particular fields of news reporting on global affairs, security politics and peace/war, this public service’s long-term trend has been down in quality and out of relevance.
Sometimes I visit it only to see how biased the coverage of a certain event or decision in the mentioned fields is. I have often written an admittedly wry comment on social media or on my online home and blog, Jan Oberg. Why?
Because I believe that public service has a fundamentally important role to play in a democratic society serving only to inform and educate its citizenry, promote healthy informed debates and consciousness-raising, as well as convey reasonably broad-minded perspectives about its own country, the world and the relations between the two.
No such thing is happening at DR anymore. Anyone without special education can write about international affairs, even former sports reporters or youth department journalists. The main work they do is to cut and paste, translate and edit news and information that comes exclusively from US and other Western news media and bureaus like Reuters and The Guardian. Correspondents abroad serve two functions; if they are in the West, they are explaining benevolently what the US, NATO and EU do; if in China or elsewhere, it’s only negative stories, good news twisted into caricatures or non-existent. The only themes, foci and narratives promoted are those – again – of the US and selected European media.
Enigmatically, it is as if the Internet, with its incredible wealth of information and perspectives accessible from a chair at a desk with a computer, does not exist in the minds of these people. Diversity of stories, perspectives and backgrounds – as well as the fine principle of struggling to be unbiased, ‘objective’ and fair as well as triple-checking sources – are qualities of the past. The state and the media have become one.
The ethos is remarkably similar. No originality. The old-type of correspondents who lived in a region for years, spoke the language, followed the local media and told her/his audiences something original – all the result of that correspondent’s on-site investigative journalism – is dead and gone. So is the idea that each media’s outstanding feature was to bring something new, new perspectives on old stories and new stories – that is, being different from other media.
Today, it seems, the outstanding feature is to be as politically correct and isomorphic with the leading Western mainstream media as possible. In short, hellishly boring, predictable and fundamentally unable to ask critical questions about Western policies – markedly so about war and peace – and giving full blast to Russo- and Sino-phobia – by coincidence, the main designated adversaries of the US and its uni-polar global dominance.
The recent coverage of the NATO-Russia conflict and the war in Ukraine is an empirically strong example. But far from the first. The decline in international news reporting took off shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union and accelerated with NATO’s illegal bombing (both in terms of international law, the UN Charter and NATO’s Treaty) and 9/11.
Today’s Denmark, in contrast to earlier times, is an extremely loyal follower of the United States in everything foreign policy, security and warfare. It’s been a leading bomber nation since its participation in NATO’s war on Serbia/Kosovo in 1999. So these trends pertain in the extreme to the Danish Broadcasting Company as well as, say, the Swedish (which I shall deal with in a follow-up article to this).
In a more detailed analysis, I have dealt with my personal experiences with this type of media over almost 50 years. I regret that I have found so little positive to say.
Let me now turn to one concrete and extremely important case – DR’s cancellation of Seymour Hersh’s report on who destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022.
Read the full post on the TFF site …
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Dear Philip – many thanks for the honour of being re-posted by you.
Best,
JAN
My pleasure, Jan. Yours is an important voice
As a former avid Guardian reader, I now, like Jan, only read its stuff to check on the line being promoted on a given issue. Even so I find myself getting pissed off very quickly. Hersch’ story at the very least should be covered by mainstream media if only to accommodate official rebuttals – but hardly a mention. I suppose we should be grateful that Saddam is not being fingered this time.
Soon as I can find the time, Bryan, I want to do a dissection not of a Guardian feature on Russia or China – I’ve done that several times, most recently here – but of the sagacious pomposities traded below the line of such a feature.
Like you I check in at the Graun frequently for headline skimming purposes to see what is being promoted (and what ignored). Plus, on matters not critical to class rule, it’s capable of putting out decent stuff. Like the recent weekly exposes of the British royal family.