Selective news

I like reading the news on the internet, because it lets you pick and choose the most interesting stories, rather than watching half an hour of what someone else dictates as the 'top' stories. I am very selective, having no interest in celebrities or gossip, or the tit-for-tat that spews from the mouths of our politicians - glancing at a political headline is more than sufficient. Whereas some stories really grab my attention, and for a long while the weather related ones were some of them.

The BBC news site, my channel of choice purely because it doesn't have adverts, used to have a page devoted to weather news. I found it when I was doing a presentation on climate change and wanted some recent examples of extreme weather events. You could guarantee that there would be a flood or drought causing death and destruction virtually every single day, that would barely ever make it into the 'top stories'. You can see my 'weather scrapbook' summary for 2010 below. How many of those do you remember seeing on the news?

• January saw significant widespread snowfalls across the UK. Not quite the 17.8 inches of snow that fell in Washington D.C. in February, which was their snowiest winter ever. Even Miami saw sub-zero temperatures for the first time in 20 years.
• 125 deaths were reported from the severe cold in Northern India in early January.
• Heavy thunderstorms and flooding caused 10 fatalities in Egypt in January.
• Severe droughts hit southern and southwestern regions of China over the first part of the year, affecting 6.1 million hectares of farmland and leaving 18 million people short of drinking water.
• The worst floods in a decade also swept through parts of China with more than 3,100 dying and included a devastating mudslide which left 1,471 people dead.
• In May Tennessee saw epic floods killing 31 people in all and breaking the monthly record by the 2^nd day of the month.
• Cyclone Phet killed 24 people in Oman in June.
• Devastating floods hit Pakistan in July and by August a fifth of the country was submerged. 20 million people affected and nearly 2,000 deaths.
• July also saw a heatwave in Russia, the hottest since records began. A month of temperatures above 30 Deg. C also led to a severe drought and raging wildfires. Death toll is estimated at 50,000 from heat and air pollution. Crops were also badly hit and all exports of wheat have been stopped.
• The UK had its wettest July ever recorded and flooding hit.
• The Amazon rainforest suffered from an “exceptional” drought the worst in 108 years of records with entire stretches of river drying up completely.
• November brought snow to the UK and throughout much of Europe and North America severe cold and heavy early snowfalls occurred. The Arctic however was unusually warm.
• The Hurricane season saw 19 named storms, 12 hurricanes and 5 intense hurricanes, coming in 2^nd place for the most hurricanes in a season after 2005. Luckily many of these did not make landfall.
• 2010 was also the second hottest year globally on record, after 2005.
• 19 countries set new records for the highest temperature in 2010, and one country set a record for the lowest temperature.

Since then it became harder and harder to find the weather-related stories on the BBC, and now I have given up looking for them. These events haven't just stopped happening, but whether through lack of funds, lack of interest or ulterior motives, far less are being reported.

It is becoming more and more obvious, that the BBC offers a tainted view of world affairs. Just as they are selective with climate/ weather related stories, they are selective in other areas too. So I now read RT news site as well, the Russian news channel which often has news from a different perspective than the BBC. (Plus it doesn't feature the leering face of David Cameron or his cronies quite so often.)

Mostly RT has the same stories, but there are differences. For instance regarding Eastern Ukraine the BBC will always refer to 'pro-Russian rebels' or 'Russian-backed separatists'. You can see this in todays report on the shelling of Mariupol where blame for the attack is immediately assigned to the rebels, who are then reported to deny this. The equivalent report from RT refers to the 'East Ukraine militia' in the text (although the initial photo uses 'pro-Russian rebels' in its description, though the image is from Reuters). The BBC give the impression they are showing the rebels' side of the story, by saying that the rebels deny the attack. However the RT report goes further and points out that the militias stronghold is 110km away and the militia are quoted as saying they have no heavy artillery within range of Mariupol.

The government in Kiev must know who attacked Mariupol. Either the government issued the orders themselves or they didn't and it was the rebels/ militia. But firing on civilians is an international offence, and they are hardly likely to incriminate themselves, so can we trust what they say? The same applies to the rebels. That is why I would expect there to be investigative journalists coming up with proof and interviewing witnesses, but when it comes to the shenanigans in Ukraine there really seems to be very little based on actual evidence and a lot based on what the different sides say. Our best hope may be from the OSCE but little seems to be reported from them either in the media. Gathering evidence is clearly a frustratingly slow process.

To me it feels like the invasion of Iraq pantomime all over again. "You have weapons of mass destruction!" says the US. "Oh no we don't!" say the Iraqis. "Oh yes you do!"  "Oh no we don't!"..... The trouble is that the truth didn't come out until after we went to war and half a million people died. Then it just became a big joke to some people, but to me it seems like an apology is due.

That is why I am interested in knowing the truth. The mainstream media just aren't providing that any more, and I would encourage you to question everything and share your doubts, while we still can. Do we really want to be blindly misled into another war?

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Well I wrote the paragraphs above this morning and since then both the news articles I quoted have developed further. The BBC are saying that Aleksandr Zakharchenko, a rebel leader, has launched an offensive against the city port of Mariupol and takes responsibility for the rocket attacks, with the Ukrainian Prime Minister accusing Russia of breaching the Minsk agreements. Whereas RT are quoting Aleksandr Zakharchenko as saying that since it was the Ukrainian government who attacked Mariupol, they are launching an attack on the government positions to the East of Mariupol. And so the pantomime continues. Oh no it doesn't! Oh yes it does........... :-(