Action Alert: BBC’s fairy tales, genocide denial and how to win the lottery!

UPDATE: BBC News Online has corrected its article [See Action Alert below]

The original paragraph read:

“That contrasts starkly with the 100,000 or so civilians dead, four million refugees inside and outside Iraq, 4,141 coalition soldiers who have died and the cost to the UK of well in excess of £5bn.”

The new paragraph now reads:

"That contrasts starkly with the several hundred thousand dead and injured Iraqis, four million refugees inside and outside Iraq, 4,141 coalition soldiers who have died and the cost to the UK of well in excess of £5bn."

While I welcome the improvement, this is NOT enough. The BBC News article still doesn't mention the relevant studies on the subject, namely the ORB poll and the Lancet's. Please, keep writing the BBC to the email addresses below.

***

Action Alert: BBC’s fairy tales, genocide denial and how to win the lottery!
by Gabriele Zamparini

"England’s always gotten credit for having invented hypocrisy" once said Gore Vidal. Nobody knows better than the BBC whose News website presents its readers with a masterpiece of this fine art:

How did the US come to invade Iraq with no post-war plan for governing Iraq - and how much did Tony Blair know of the matter? John Ware reports in the first of two articles linked to a new TV series.

A frequent Media Lens Message Board’s contributor, John Hilley, made this excellent comment that encapsulates the BBC’s fairy tale:

One for the gallery.

A classic illustration of the 'good warmonger - bad warmonger' BBC version of Iraq, replete with Ware's feigned gravitas and a cast of self-serving denialists (ie, Powell's ex aide, Colonel Larry Wilkinson, Sir Christopher Meyer et al) lining up to denounce 'the crazies' and telling of their stern warnings about the 'problems of occupation'.

A model example of liberal revisionist propaganda posing as cutting-edge reportage.

BBC’s John Ware writes:

“That contrasts starkly with the 100,000 or so civilians dead, four million refugees inside and outside Iraq, 4,141 coalition soldiers who have died and the cost to the UK of well in excess of £5bn.”

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) must of course deny the Iraqi genocide the British government is co-responsible for. This genocide denial business is really a piece of cake for the BBC (among others) can safely rely on the meticulous count of the British Iraq Body Count.

The reality must be suppressed and the readers-viewers-voters-taxpayers are presented with all the news that’s fit to print, which do not include:

- a recent Opinion Research Business (ORB) study suggesting a total of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age).

- the studies conducted by the world leaders in the field of epidemiology and published last year as peer-reviewed scientific papers in the world's leading medical journal, the Lancet; [link PDF]

- Please, see also:

1) IRAQ BODY COUNT: “A VERY MISLEADING EXERCISE” by MediaLens
2) Iraq: Genocide by all definition by Gideon Polya
3) US Genocide in Iraq by Ian Douglas
4) None Dare Call It Genocide by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
5) and my two latest blogs:
- Iraq is still the issue - Part 1: Waiting for the partition
- Iraq is still the issue - Part 2: Amerika’s New Iraq - The Quiz

What can you do?

You may write to the BBC and ask them to correct the article above and to make sure to give their readers/viewers the correct information in the future, starting with John Ware’s new TV series.

Please, write to:

BBC’s John Ware - John.Ware@bbc.co.uk

BBC News Online Editor Steve Herrmann - steve.herrmann@bbc.co.uk

Head of BBC TV News Peter Horrocks - peter.horrocks@bbc.co.uk

BBC News Director Helen Boaden - helenboaden.complaints@bbc.co.uk

Head of the BBC Programme Complaints Unit Fraser Steel - fraser.steel.01@bbc.co.uk

General complaints to the BBC can be submitted via this form

P.S.

On 20 September 2007 the Toronto Star informed us:

"The death toll could be twice our number, but it could not possibly be 10 times higher," he [John Sloboda, professor of psychology at Keele University, and a co-founder of IBC] told me, referring to the other studies.

How can a professor of psychology who collects Iraqi deaths through media reports possibly know what the death toll in Iraq could be?

Since Professor Sloboda seems to be an expert in prophecies and oracles, you may want to write him and ask for numbers to win the lottery. Good luck!

Iraq Body Count’s John Sloboda - john@sloboda.fsnet.co.uk

Please, always maintain a calm, rational and polite tone.

P.P.S.

Yesterday, the AP reported on a series of protests in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities. The AP reads:

Our signs are limp from the rain and the ground is soggy, but out spirits are high," said Bal Pinguel, of the American Friends Service Committee, one of the national sponsors of the event. "The high price we are paying is the more than 3,800 troops who have been killed in the war in Iraq."

Vince Robbins, 51, of Mount Holly, N.J., said there needed to be more rallies and more outrage.

"Where's the outcry? Where's the horror that almost 4,000 Americans have died in a foreign country that we invaded?" Robbins said. "I'm almost as angry at the American people as I am the president. I think Americans have become apathetic and placid about the whole thing."

Why do these two anti-war Americans focus on the “high price” America is paying? Do they know about the 1.2 million Iraqis slaughtered because the US-led war of aggression against their country? Do they know about the 4.5 million Iraqis who have become refugees? Where is the outcry indeed?