Home » Posts tagged 'bbc'

Tag Archives: bbc

Getty Images A boat cuts a path through a layer of slime on the sea near the shore of Turkey's Marmara Sea (Credit: Getty Images) — Excessive phytoplankton growth can choke the sea surface with a jelly-like layer of slime known as “sea snot” as ocean temperatures increase (Credit: Getty Images)

Record ocean temperatures suggest the seas are warming faster than expected, and the impacts will be felt from polar ice shelves to coastal cities across the globe.

The world’s oceans are like a planet-sized battery: they absorb huge amounts of heat, which is then released slowly. So far, our oceans have soaked up over 90% of the heat trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere by rising greenhouse gas emissions. But recently, their rate of warming has been dramatic.

Every day since late March 2023, global ocean surface temperatures have set new records for the hottest temperature ever recorded on that date. On 47 of those days, temperatures have also surpassed previous highs by the largest margin seen in the satellite era, according to data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. (Read the analysis of the data in this article by the BBC News Climate and Science team.)

In February 2024, the world had breached 1.5C warming of surface air temperatures for a full year. But in some regions last year, ocean temperatures were similar to those expected if overall global warming of surface air temperatures reached 3C above pre-industrial levels – suggesting quicker ocean heating than expected.

This rapid heating raises a puzzle for scientists: why is recent ocean warming even greater than models suggest?

“The step-change in ocean temperatures over last year is huge,” says Hayley Fowler, professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University in the UK. “The fact we can’t simulate these step-change increases and understand why it’s happening is terrifying.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Israel’s strike on Iran: Crisis shows how badly Iran and Israel understand each other

April 21, 2024

Israel’s strike on Iran: Crisis shows how badly Iran and Israel understand each other

Reuters

Israel says it will defend itself against Iran – but its allies want to avoid a wider Middle East war

Israel’s attack on Iran was not the fierce response that US President Joe Biden and other western leaders had feared.

They have been urging Israel to draw a line under the dangerous series of events that started with Israel’s assassination of a senior Iranian general in Damascus on 1 April.

More than six months after the Hamas attacks on Israel, war continues in Gaza and has spread to the area either side of the Lebanon-Israel border and to the Gulf.

The fear is that the Middle East is on the brink of an all-out war, with global as well as regional dangers.

The Iranians are playing down the significance of what’s happened in Isfahan.

Initial reports said there had been no attack. Later, an analyst on state TV said air defences had knocked out drones that had been launched by “infiltrators”.

Official media outlets have posted jokey photos of miniature drones.

Israel was responding to the attack last Saturday from Iran. Despite years of enmity and threats it was the first time since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 that Iran had launched a direct strike from its territory onto Israel’s.

During that attack Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones. Almost all of them were destroyed by Israel’s air defences, augmented by forces from the US, UK and Jordan.

The Iranians had made their intentions clear, giving Israel and its allies time to prepare themselves, and quickly issued a statement at the UN in New York that their retaliation was over.

Mr Biden urged Israel to “take the win” but Israel insisted it would hit back.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ukraine war: World Bank warns of ‘human catastrophe’ food crisis

April 23, 2022

Ukraine war: World Bank warns of ‘human catastrophe’ food crisis

The world faces a “human catastrophe” from a food crisis arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, World Bank president David Malpass has said.

He told the BBC that record rises in food prices would push hundreds of millions people into poverty and lower nutrition, if the crisis continues.

The World Bank calculates there could be a “huge” 37% jump in food prices.

This would hit the poor hardest, who will “eat less and have less money for anything else such as schooling”.

In an interview with BBC economics editor Faisal Islam, Mr Malpass, who leads the institution charged with global alleviation of poverty, said the impact on the poor made it “an unfair kind of crisis… that was true also of Covid”.

“It’s a human catastrophe, meaning nutrition goes down. But then it also becomes a political challenge for governments who can’t do anything about it, they didn’t cause it and they see the prices going up,” he said on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank meetings in Washington.

The price rises are broad and deep, he said: “It’s affecting food of all different kinds oils, grains, and then it gets into other crops, corn crops, because they go up when wheat goes up”.

There was enough food in the world to feed everybody, he said, and global stockpiles are large by historical standards, but there will have to be a sharing or sales process to get the food to where it is needed.

Mr Malpass also discouraged countries from subsidising production or capping prices.

Instead, he said, the focus needed to be on increasing supplies across the world of fertilisers and food, alongside targeted assistance for the very poorest people.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The devil is in the detail

February 20, 2022

The devil is in the detail

If you get your news from the BBC, you might be forgiven for thinking that the economic hit from the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions has come to an end. Indeed, if you merely skim through the headlines in your social media feed, you might believe that the UK is poised for an explosion of growth, the like of which we haven’t witnessed since the late 1960s. “Retail sales,” we are told, “rebound in January as Omicron eases.” The “UK economy rebounds,” they say, “with fastest growth since WW2.” Chancellor Sunak – who wants to be seen as a prime-minister-in-waiting – announced that:

“Today’s figures show that despite Omicron the economy was remarkably resilient. We were the fastest growing economy in the G7 last year and are forecast to continue being the fastest growing economy this year.”

The GDP figures are certainly better than they might have been if more businesses had been left to go bust during lockdown. Nevertheless, they are still well below February 2020, following the massive crash immediately after lockdown was ordered. As the Office for National Statistics explain:

“UK gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have increased by 1.0% in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2021… Compared with the same quarter a year ago, GDP increased by 6.5%.

“Following the large 9.4% fall in 2020 because of the initial impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and public health restrictions, UK GDP saw an annual rise of 7.5% in 2021.”

Worse still, manufacturing GDP was negative, and continues to lag well behind its February 2020 level:

“Production output fell by 0.4% in Quarter 4 2021 and is now 3.6% below its pre-coronavirus levels. The fall in production output was because of a 3.2% fall in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (energy) and a 4.5% fall in mining and quarrying.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Largest UK Supermarket Warns “Worst Has Yet To Come” Amid Food Inflation Crisis

February 8, 2022

Largest UK Supermarket Warns “Worst Has Yet To Come” Amid Food Inflation Crisis

Britain’s largest supermarket chain warned “the worst is yet to come” on food inflation as the cost-of-living crisis pulverizes the working poor.

John Allan, chairman of Tesco Plc, told the BBC’s Sunday Morning Live that low-income households have difficulty choosing between food and heat this winter. Budgets are tight, triggering a ‘winter of discontent’ if widespread inflation doesn’t diminish.

“In some ways, the worst is still to come – because although food price inflation in Tesco last quarter was only 1%, we are impacted by rising energy prices. Our suppliers are impacted by rising energy prices. We’re doing all we can to offset it … but that’s the sort of number we’re talking about. Of course, 5%,” Tesco’s Allan said.

He said food and energy inflation would change consumer spending patterns, buying fewer luxury goods and big-ticket items and going out less to eat. Food inflation comes as households experience one of the most significant jumps in annual energy costs in years.

“It troubles us, and I’m sure troubles many people, that people may have to struggle to choose between heating their homes and feeding their families,” he said. “And that’s clearly not a situation that any of us should tolerate.”

For some context for our international readers, Tesco controls about 28% of the UK grocery market. So when Allan speaks about the worst of the food inflation has yet to come — it’s very concerning that food price hikes might continue well through spring. It’s still unknown the social ramifications of high inflation.

Food prices globally are at decade highs, likely to hit new records by spring.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How the world embraced consumerism

December 8, 2021

How the world embraced consumerism

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Consumerism was essentially an invention of capitalism (Credit: Getty Images)

Over the course of the 20th Century, capitalism moulded the ordinary person into a consumer. Kerryn Higgs traces the historical roots of the world’s unquenchable thirst for more stuff.

_____

The notion of human beings as consumers first took shape before World War One, but became commonplace in America in the 1920s. Consumption is now frequently seen as our principal role in the world.

People, of course, have always “consumed” the necessities of life – food, shelter, clothing – and have always had to work to get them or have others work for them, but there was little economic motive for increased consumption among the mass of people before the 20th Century.

Quite the reverse: frugality and thrift were more appropriate to situations where survival rations were not guaranteed. Attempts to promote new fashions, harness the “propulsive power of envy,” and boost sales multiplied in Britain in the late 18th Century. Here began the “slow unleashing of the acquisitive instincts,” write historians Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J H Plumb in their influential book on the commercialisation of 18th-Century England, when the pursuit of opulence and display first extended beyond the very rich.

But, while poorer people might have acquired a very few useful household items – a skillet, perhaps, or an iron pot – the sumptuous clothing, furniture, and pottery of the era were still confined to a very small population.

At first, consumer goods were more likely to supply basic needs rather than luxury items (Credit: Getty Images)

In late 19th-Century Britain a variety of foods became accessible to the average person, who would previously have lived on bread and potatoes – consumption beyond mere subsistence. This improvement in food variety did not extend durable items to the mass of people, however..

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Putin Hacked Our Coronavirus Vaccine” Is The Dumbest Story Yet

July 17, 2020

“Putin Hacked Our Coronavirus Vaccine” Is The Dumbest Story Yet

OMG you guys Putin hacked our coronavirus vaccine secrets!

Today mainstream media is reporting what is arguably the single dumbest Russiavape story of all time, against some very stiff competition.

“Russian hackers are targeting health care organizations in the West in an attempt to steal coronavirus vaccine research, the U.S. and Britain said,” reports The New York Times.

“Hackers backed by the Russian state are trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research from academic and pharmaceutical institutions around the world, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said on Thursday,” Reuters reports.

“Russian news agency RIA cited spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying the Kremlin rejected London’s allegations, which he said were not backed by proper evidence,” adds Reuters.

I mean, there are just so many layers of stupid.

First of all, how many more completely unsubstantiated government agency allegations about Russian nefariousness are we the public going to accept from the corporate mass media? Since 2016 it’s been wall-to-wall narrative about evil things Russia is doing to the empire-like cluster of allies loosely centralized around the United States, and they all just happen to be things nobody can actually provide the public with hard verifiable evidence of.

Ever since the shady cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike admitted that it never actually saw hard proof of Russia hacking the DNC servers, the already shaky and always unsubstantiated narrative that Russian hackers interfered in the US presidential election in 2016 has been on thinner ice than ever. Yet because the mass media converged on this narrative and repeated it as fact over and over again they’ve been able to get the mainstream headline-skimming public to accept it as an established truth, priming them for an increasingly idiotic litany of completely unsubstantiated Russia scandals, culminating most recently in the entirely debunked claim that Russia paid Taliban-linked fighters to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Former Supreme Court Justice: ‘This is what a police state is like’

April 4, 2020

Former Supreme Court Justice: ‘This is what a police state is like’

The former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption, QC, has denounced the police response to the coronavirus, saying the country is suffering ‘collective hysteria’. This is an edited transcript of his interview with BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme earlier today. Derbyshire police have shamed our policing traditions

BBC interviewer Jonny Dymond ‘A hysterical slide into a police state. A shameful police force intruding with scant regard to common sense or tradition. An irrational overreaction driven by fear.’ These are not the accusations of wild-eyed campaigners, they come from the lips of one our most eminent jurists Lord Sumption, former Justice of the Supreme Court. I spoke to him just before we came on air.

Lord Sumption The real problem is that when human societies lose their freedom, it’s not usually because tyrants have taken it away. It’s usually because people willingly surrender their freedom in return for protection against some external threat. And the threat is usually a real threat but usually exaggerated. That’s what I fear we are seeing now. The pressure on politicians has come from the public. They want action. They don’t pause to ask whether the action will work. They don’t ask themselves whether the cost will be worth paying. They want action anyway. And anyone who has studied history will recognise here the classic symptoms of collective hysteria. Hysteria is infectious. We are working ourselves up into a lather in which we exaggerate the threat and stop asking ourselves whether the cure may be worse than the disease.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“There exists a government within a government within the United States” -Osama bin Laden

November 19, 2019

“There exists a government within a government within the United States” -Osama bin Laden

“I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself… That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks. … The American system is totally in control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States.”

-Osama bin Laden statement, published by BBC

In essence, this article is about a map, a video, a timeline, and a chart. Please, take a few minutes to carefully examine each.

The Map

I have asked dozens, if not hundreds, of Americans to please tell me why, exactly, America is at war with Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. Some say, “Because they attacked us.” Most have no answer, whatsoever, but instead ask me, “Why?” I respond by asking them what large oil-producing nation borders Afghanistan in the west. Some guess, “Iraq.” Nobody knows. I then ask what large oil-consuming nation borders Afghanistan on the East. Nobody knows. I tell them the answers are Iran (Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s arch enemy) and China.

0 miles: Distance from Afghanistan to Iran

0 miles: Distance from Afghanistan to China

7,477 miles: Distance from Afghanistan to Washington, D.C.

Said a different way, the USA invaded and occupies a nation on the other side of the planet that fucking borders Iran and China, then complains about Persian and Chinese aggressive behavior in the Persian Gulf and South China Sea.

lol

The Video

It is highly unlikely that you have seen the interviews in this 4 minute and 13 second video, a compilation of FDNY firefighters talking about the explosions inside the WTC on 9-11-2001. Watch it now, before it is memory holed by The Ministry of Truth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The BBC Thought Police

November 1, 2019

The BBC Thought Police

“The need for sensitivity in talking about religious, political or social issues has now been taken to absurd proportions… making it difficult to say anything worthwhile. The aim of Thought for the Day has changed from giving an ethical input to social and political issues to the recital of religious platitudes and the avoidance of controversy, with success measured by the absence of complaints. I believe Guru Nanak [the founder of Sikhism] and Jesus Christ, who boldly raised social concerns while stressing tolerance and respect, would not be allowed near Thought for the Day today.” – Lord Indarjit Singh, The Times, October 4, 2019.
So here is another thought for the day: Why should the BBC — or the rest of the mainstream media — rely on journalistic accuracy, when a sensationalist misquote will do?

Celebrated interfaith activist Lord Indarjit Singh has sensationally quit BBC Radio 4 after accusing it of behaving like the “thought police”. (Image source: UK Parliament)

He alleges that the corporation tried to prevent him discussing a historical Sikh religious figure who stood up to Muslim oppression — in case it caused offence to Muslims, despite a lack of complaints.

The Sikh peer, who has been a contributor on Radio Four’s Thought For The Day programme for more than three decades, is also accusing Radio Four bosses of “prejudice and intolerance” and over-sensitivity in relation to its coverage of Islam, after he says he was “blocked” from discussing the forced conversion of Hindus to Islam, under the Mughal emperors in 17^th century India.

The 87-year-old peer’s resignation comes as a blow to the show’s flagship segment, that has been a part of Radio Four’s Today programme since 1970, and has been described by Britain’s former chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, as “one of the last remaining places in the public square where religious communities are given a voice in Britain.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BBC Producer’s Syria Bombshell: Douma “Gas Attack” Footage “Was Staged”

February 14, 2019

BBC Producer’s Syria Bombshell: Douma “Gas Attack” Footage “Was Staged”

Now approaching nearly a year after the April 7, 2018 alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria — which the White House used as a pretext to bomb Syrian government facilities and bases throughout Damascus — a BBC reporter who investigated the incident on the ground has issued public statements saying the “Assad sarin attack” on Douma was indeed “staged”.

Riam Dalati is a well-known BBC Syria producer who has long reported from the region. He shocked his nearly 20,000 twitter followers on Wednesday, which includes other mainstream journalists from major outlets, by stating that after a “six month investigation” he has concluded, “I can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged.”

One of many widely circulated images of the Douma hospital scene from April 2018. The Times (UK) published the image with the following headline: Syria attack: ‘We found bodies on the stairs. They didn’t see the gas in time’

The “hospital scene” is a reference to part of the horrid footage played over and over again on international networks showing children in a Douma hospital being hosed off and treated by doctors and White Helmets personnel as victims of the alleged chemical attack.

The BBC’s Dalati stated on Wednesday: “After almost 6 months of investigations, I can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged. No fatalities occurred in the hospital.” He noted he had interviewed a number of White Helmets and opposition activists while reaching that conclusion.

He continued in a follow-up tweet:

Russia and at least one NATO country knew about what happened in the hospital. Documents were sent. However, no one knew what really happened at the flats apart from activists manipulating the scene there. This is why Russia focused solely on discrediting the hospital scene.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Original ‘Fake News’? The BBC and the Information Research Department

January 13, 2019

The Original ‘Fake News’? The BBC and the Information Research Department

Last month Ritula Shah presented a BBC World Service discussion programme entitled Is “Fake News” A Threat To Democracy?

Predictably the debate focused on Russian attempts to influence Western populations and political systems.

Asked whether the US has been involved in similar activities, Dr Kathleen Bailey, a senior figure in the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the 1980s, was dismissive:

“We [the US] certainly do not have a budget, bureaucracy or intellectual commitment to doing that kind of thing.”

Carl Miller, the research director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, also played down the West’s activities:

“I think Western countries do do less of this as a kind of tool of foreign policy than autocracies.”

“Read real journalism” — presumably BBC journalism — was one of the guest’s suggestions for countering Fake News.

Putting this self-serving and self-congratulatory narrative to one side, it is worth considering the BBC’s, and particularly the BBC World Service’s, own relationship to the British government’s own propaganda.

“Directly funded by government [the Foreign Office], rather than the licence fee” the World Service is “deeply embedded in the foreign policy, security and intelligence apparatus of the British state,” Dr Tom Mills notes in his must-read 2016 book The BBC: Myth of a Public Service.

In particular, the BBC had a very close relationship to the Information Research Department (IRD) — “a Foreign Office propaganda outfit which sought especially to foster anti-communist sentiments on the left,” explains Mills, a Lecturer in Sociology and Policy at Aston University.

Set up in 1948, the IRD “was one of the largest and best-funded sections of the Foreign Office until it was discreetly shut down in 1977 on the orders of [then foreign secretary] David Owen,” investigative journalist Ian Cobain reported in the Guardian in July 2018.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why One Should Distrust the News

January 7, 2019

Why One Should Distrust the News

An article by the BBC on “The world’s most nutritious foods” ranks the healthfulness of foods on the basis of an article at the supposedly scientific PLOSone journal, titled “Uncovering the Nutritional Landscape of Food”. That study is based on a dataset that entirely ignores antioxidant-content of foods. Antioxidant-content has come to be recognized during recent decades as constituting perhaps the most important factor in nutrition. It’s probably even more important than vitamin-content and than mineral-content and than protein, carbohydrate, and fat content. So, the basis upon which the article’s ranking was done is the factors that were known about, in 1950, to be important, but that are now known to be far less determinative of a person’s health and longevity than are foods’ anti-oxidant contents. Neither the article nor its underlying dataset even so much as just mentions “oxidant” anywhere. The authors of the BBC and PLOSone articles and of the underlying dataset were apparently entirely ignorant of the findings in nutritional research during the past 60+ years — findings about antioxidants, which have transformed our understanding of nutrition. (Furthermore, there were many other important methodological flaws producing that PLOSone ranking, not only its ignoring antioxidants.)

This is not unusual.

(Incidentally, “ORAC Values: Antioxidant Values of Foods & Beverages” is a ranking of foods on the basis of antioxidant-contents, as measured by ORAC; and this is likely a far more accurate indicator of the relative healthfulness of foods than is the ridiculous BBC-PLOSone ranking — but far fewer people are being exposed to it.)

Here’s another example of the untrustworthiness of news-media and of other allegedly nonfiction presentations, even in many ‘scientific’ journals — but this one will be an example from what has become overwhelmingly the world’s leading encyclopedia: Wikipedia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Don’t Laugh : It’s Giving Putin What He Wants

December 16, 2018

Don’t Laugh : It’s Giving Putin What He Wants

The BBC has published an article titled “How Putin’s Russia turned humour into a weapon” about the Kremlin’s latest addition to its horrifying deadly hybrid warfare arsenal: comedy.

The article is authored by Olga Robinson, whom the BBC, unhindered by any trace of self-awareness, has titled “Senior Journalist (Disinformation)”. Robinson demonstrates the qualifications and acumen which earned her that title by warning the BBC’s audience that the Kremlin has been using humor to dismiss and ridicule accusations that have been leveled against it by western governments, a “form of trolling” that she reports is designed to “deliberately lower the level of discussion”.

✔

Turns out jokes are a Russian disinformation conspiracy. Is nothing safe?What will those barbarian Others think of next? Weaponizing our tears? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46567364 …

Russian President Vladimir Putin smiles during his meeting with athletes at the Russia in October 2018

How Putin’s Russia turned humour into a weapon

Russia’s government wants people to have a laugh – as long as it’s at its opponents’ expense, and not Mr Putin’s.

bbc.co.uk

“Russia’s move towards using humour to influence its campaigns is a relatively recent phenomenon,” Robinson explains, without speculating as to why Russians might have suddenly begun laughing at their western accusers. She gives no consideration to the possibility that the tightly knit alliance of western nations who suddenly began hysterically shrieking about Russia two years ago have simply gotten much more ridiculous and easier to make fun of during that time.

Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the emergence of a demented media environment wherein everything around the world from French protests to American culture wars to British discontent with the European Union gets blamed on Russia without any facts or evidence.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Washington is Ramping Up Military Confrontation With Russia and China

November 30, 2018

Washington is Ramping Up Military Confrontation With Russia and China

Photo Source DVIDSHUB | CC BY 2.0

On November 26 the New York Times asserted that “Russia’s seizure [on November 25] of three Ukrainian naval vessels was the first overt armed conflict between the two since 2014, when Russian forces occupied Crimea.”

There was no armed conflict in Crimea and not a drop of blood was spilled. There was no “occupation” because, under treaty, over 20,000 Russian troops were stationed there.

Crimea’s citizens have always been Russian-speaking, Russian-cultured and in general pro-Russia. Following the US-sponsored rebellion in Ukraine that went the way the US intended it to go, there was the awkward matter of Crimea which had been part of Russia until, as noted by the BBC, “In 1954 Crimea was handed to Ukraine as a gift by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.” In 2014 the majority of Crimean citizens wanted to rejoin Russia rather than stay with crippled post-revolution Ukraine which would have victimized them because of their Russian heritage. In March 2014 Crimea’s parliament voted to ask to join Russia. A referendum was held and the vast majority of voters were in favor. But you wouldn’t know this from western media or politicians, who continue to refer to Russia’s supposed “annexation” of Crimea.

The Ukraine revolution of 2014 was encouraged by the United States whose Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, was photographed together with the US ambassador handing out cookies to rebels in Kiev’s Maidan Square in December 2013. (The goodies were taken to the square by her armed US security guards. Then when the time was right for the cameras she was given the bags and doled them out. It was a gruesome but well-orchestrated little pantomime.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: bbc

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts