Skiluros

Mr Prescott, who until June 2025 was an independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board, also highlights serious problems with BBC Arabic’s reporting on Gaza, in which it apparently gives extensive space to the views of Hamas.

I was curious what this meant, so I read the relevant section and while some of the arguments seem suspect, there were definitely massive red flags with the policies of BBC Arabic.

Haven’t read the US election part yet, but the points raised in the intro don’t sound coherent.

EDIT: The US election part is a lot less convincing. They should have explicitly stated that they are combining two separate sections from the speech, but the argument seems more like a technicality. Some other minor points were fair, but there were a lot of incoherent arguments. One example.

The BBC sometimes fell into using, without attribution, contested language such as “reproductive rights”. This signals to many BBC viewers, particularly those in America, a biased mindset.

Reproductive rights isn’t a contested term.

Terrible headline.

This was a helpful and concise blogpost.

Americans oligarchs are comical in their approach to corruption.

An assumption based on undeniable facts:

• Certain professions are still subject to exist control in Cuba
• The average Cuban salary does not allow a citizen to get a passport, let alone pay for the ticket

I will note that you where very cavalier without you “Trump pressure”, I merely pointed out that you are not aware of factors that would lead to Ukraine to vote with the US beyond “Trump pressure”.

India, a russian ally, has been very public about their opposition to recruitment by the russians and India does not have exit restrictions for specific professions.

Think whatever you want. It honestly sounds like you are unwilling to consider that you might not be seeing the full picture.

It doesn’t need government cooperation, and I haven’t seen anything that indicates it except social media accounts that can’t think of an alternative

Are you sure about this? Note that I didn’t mention anything about the process.

I said that there is no way this is happening without the authorization (if not direct, committed support) of the Cuban government. This is a country that still has exit restrictions on certain types of professions.

They see a military age male, suddenly getting a large amount of money that their salary clearly can’t support (they know this because they would have to validate their profession to give them a passport to leave the country), getting a passport and flying to russia and they can’t connect the dots?

But yes, Russia is recruiting from poverty stricken areas, and often the people signing up aren’t told they’re going to war or even joining a military till they get to Russia.

I am well aware of that. But do you see the difference between Uzbekistan and Cuba? Specifically how getting from Cuba to russia without the authorization and support of the Cuban government is very unlikely compared to say Uzbekistan.

So why shouldn’t Ukraine (which is where I live btw) not treat Cuba like an enemy state? What’s your logic here?

The Cuban government has sent thousands of Cubans to fight for the russians.

https://kyivindependent.com/exclusive-1-076-cubans-identified-fighting-for-russia-ukraine-says-96-dead-or-disappeared/

The Cuban foreign ministry didn’t deny their presence, they claim they have nothing to do with this (which is clearly bullshit, Cuba is an island and average salaries are way too low to get an international passport).

Considering the above, why shouldn’t Ukraine treat Cuba as an enemy state (like North Korea)?

That’s why I said your original point is misleading, there are legitimate reasons for Ukraine to support sanctions against an enemy state.

My would you require strong pressure to diplomatically oppose a country that is directly aiding a genocidal imperialist invader (while also pretending to oppose imperialism)?

What is your logic here?

If anything it makes perfect sense to support sanctions against your enemy (i.e. Cuba).

The framing of Ukraine yielding to “strong pressure” is somewhat misleading.

Thousands of Cubans are taking part in the invasion of Ukraine. The Cuban government claims they have nothing to do with it, but there are legitimate reasons to believe that they are lying.

Russia didn’t escape anything. The breakup of the USSR started due to pressure from occupied countries that were forced to be part of the USSR. In under 10 years, they were back to supporting a KGB dictatorship. 2000 and 2004 victories by putin are generally considered to be legitimate and analysis of subsequent elections do not show falsification/pressure as being a matter for going above 50% support.

But I digress. I would argue even when I was living in the US (Bush II, Obama), there were clear early seeds of support for a “managed democracy” approach. The one that came to mind immediately was lack of voting franchise in Washington DC and another one that I later figured out was regional geographic disenfranchisement.

But I do agree that American polemics about freedom are unconvincing and only serve to enable limitation of freedom.

When I was living in the US (this was a while ago), I often got the impression that there were a lot of subtle but important similarities to russia (happened to have lived there for some time too, we left as soon we had the option to, this was before they invaded Georgia). The superpower exceptionalism, the fake-religiousity, the support for corruption among the plebs.

That being said I have always been pro-America in a pragmatic, “we deal with what we have” sense.

But the US really is becoming like russia. Putin didn’t just appear out of nowhere, it was very much with the support of russian society and russian genocidal imperialism was a thing under Yeltsin too.

You provided no details and cited no sources. You explained nothing.

All you did was list some oligarchs whose names are more in the news. You missed one really important one and Abramovich wasn’t that important on a relative basis.

So beyond saying their names, can you cite specifics?

So you are saying all the current oligarchs were nobodies back then?

I will just add that you coming with fake excuses for the russians benefits no one (even the russians themselves).

Russian banks as private banks did not exist

This is false and easily verifiable. At any rate, the whole thing didn’t even work as you describing.

Name the specific western banks and cite your sources.

This is false, a sort of a hearsay theory used to justify and white-wash russian genocidal imperialism.

Russian intervention in Moldova began in 1990 and was continued by Yeltsin. So the “west is at fault” argument doesn’t work as a matter of fact.

Since you claim your that statement is factual, can you name the specific oligarchs and Western banks. Provide details and also address a key hole in your argument with respect to current members of putin’s regime (it should be easy to understand what I am referring to if you actually know what you are talking about).

Keep in mind I lived in russia between the mid 90s and the mid 2000s and speak fluent russian.

This might not be your intention, but you are de facto white washing the genocidal imperialism of russian society. Treat russians like adults, not like children.

This is a russian victimhood polemic.

Their genocidal imperialism started way before putin, as early as 91 with Moldova and then Chechnya in the mid 90s. We are ignoring USSR and Tsarist russia of course.

Russians alone are responsible for putin. Don’t treat them like children.

Fascinating article. One that seemingly raises some salient points, but eventually collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.

If this “slobs vs. snobs” allegory is true, what would stop US oligarchs from buying paying some demagogues to do something to stupid before running the pro-oligarch propaganda copytext?

Say Joe Rogan could stick a hot dog up his ass and eat it and then run a pitch for position A [oligarch copytext] and bitch about position B [the alternative] being woke and that the snobs want to limit American freedom and you won’t be able to stick a hot dog up your ass.

And that’s just the tip of iceberg, the article is littered with unconvincing American cultural axioms about “Americans fighting the system” and “the slobs always win”.

If you want to buy into Brooks’ movie derived allegory (and I don’t agree with this), the place to look for is Idiocracy where Luke Wilson’s character explains why you need to use water for plants and not soda:

After several hours, Joe finally gave up on logic and reason, and simply told the cabinet that he could talk to plants and that they wanted water.

Isn’t this conclusion consistent with Brooks’ “slobs vs. snobs” allegory?

Gates being connected to Epstein was widely reported a few years back, no?

Source article:

https://fortune.com/2025/09/21/behind-closed-doors-ceos-say-trump-is-bad-for-business-and-its-time-to-make-america-into-america-again/

It’s honestly a fascinating read. It’s fundamentally a PR piece, but the details (especially if you read between the lines) provide some interesting insights about how American oligarchs want to be viewed.

Difficult to make any educated speculation without direct access to the event (this is a PR piece first and foremost), but I get the impression there is an attempt to hedge their bets and avoid a scenario (even if it is low probability at this point) where they will have to go down with the ship.

Nearly three-quarters of CEOs surveyed said they were confident that U.S. free-market capitalism can compete with China’s socialist market economy in the global AI contest, and they expressed a near-unanimous discontent as the Trump administration has veered away from the capitalist system.

This is a particularly funny quote. America is not a free market model and China does not have a socialist market economy. Both are state capitalist countries with China being more centralised via the CCP and America allowing a measure decentralisation for oligarchs.

highly corrupt PR firm

McKinsey is a consulting firm, not a PR firm.

That’s fair, it’s not a one to one comparison.

But at the same time there also were unqiue challenges in the Baltics, Ukraine and other countries occupied by the russians. Protesting against the soviet union was a very high risk activity and protesters were killed during the subsequent acceleration of demands for freedom and self determination. The USSR was likely capable of putting down the demonstrations, but thankfully luck was on our side and it helped that the USSR was seen by most as having reached a dead end.

All protests against authoritarian thuggish regime carry challenges. I personally think if the scale of protests in the US reaches a sufficient size and intensity (which is unfortunately a big if), you can overcome the challenges with size.