The BBC: Washington’s Mouthpiece

[Peter Presland]

I would argue a little differently to Paul Craig Roberts.

The BBC is now wholly a tool of the British government (it mostly was anyway, but hey) and the British government is a complete tool (in all senses of the meaning) of Washington. Close, but not quite the same thing in my view.

The last vestige of the Beeb's independence disappeared during the Blair years with the fallout from the assassination of Dr. David Kelly and the dodgy dossier affair.

I concur with all of that but I am becoming ever more skeptical about assuming the UK, US, French, German etc etc so-called "Governtments" (ie the public faces of nation states) to be the real power-brokers in the globalising end-game we are witnessing.

Real power it seems to me is increasingly trans-national and offers ever decreasing allegiance to nation states whose "governments" it largely controls. A couple of quotes; The first from the CEO of ExxonMobile on the prospect of western (non)-sanctions over Crimea:

"There has been no impact on any of our plans or activities at this point, nor would I expect there to be any, barring governments taking steps that are beyond our control," he said at the company's recent annual meeting, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. "We don't see any new challenges out of the current situation."

My boldfacing of that little Freudian slip or is it that they are so damned cock-sure of themselves that they don't care about the facade any more?.

And the former ExxonMobile CEO Lee Raymond when asked about the prospects of Exxon building more US refining capacity to forstall impending gasoline shortages:

Raymond's reply: "I'm not a U.S. company and I don't make decisions based on what's good for the U.S."

Quite so.

Nation states remain the best and most useful means for the real trans-national power arbiters to herd their respective populations, the better to keep them fearful and compliant - and blissfully ignorant of what is really going on.

Put a bit crudely I guess but you get the gist.