A sneak peek at the new BBC Election 2010 intro. This is an early edit so it might be subject to a few changes between now and the big kick off.

Andrew Maguire is the story the BBC will not mention. Robert Peston is the BBC’s business editor and on his BBC blog Peston’s Picks he claims to offer his “take on the business stories and issues that matter.”

“Business stores and issues that matter” in this case of course refers to stories and issues that matter to Robert Peston and his fellow mainstream gatekeepers at the BBC. Anything else that might well be of critical importance to you, the general public, will never see the light of day.

Mr Peston’s blog is a typical mainstream filtering device. Corporations like the BBC rely on omission to ensure you are kept ignorant of or steered away from anything that runs contrary to the establishment agenda.

This agenda operates on many levels but is ultimately geared to protecting the interests of power and money. And, in the case of the BBC, it uses your money to do its anti-social work.

Some wonder, therefore, how it is possible to openly criticise the BBC and see your criticism printed. The BBC is a shield designed to deflect and absorb such criticism. The criticism is then used as evidence that organisations such as the BBC are honest and receptive to conflicting opinions. “Fair and balanced” as the notoriously unfair and unbalanced Fox News shamelessly boasts. It’s a clever trick and it works well.

But you will hit a brick wall of silence and censorship when you attempt to dig behind the issues and raise a wider perspective than is approved by the media gatekeepers.

Andrew Maguire’s revelations about fraud in the gold and silver futures market and the comprehensive proof he offered to the authorities that implicates JP Morgan Chase is a classic example of the mainstream media agenda at work.

The Andrew Maguire story has been gathering steam on the Internet for weeks now but the mainstream media has deliberately failed to notice. This story is important as it provides a link to other issues that have unavoidably broken into the mainstream, particularly the news that Goldman Sachs has yet again been charged with fraud for market manipulation.

The Maguire story connects dots, a practice long since extinct at the BBC. Goldman Sachs stand accused of manipulating the housing market prior to the crash of 2008. Will Hutton in his article in the Observer finally realises what has been obvious to many for years.

Hiding behind the complexities of our financial system, banks and other institutions are being accused of fraud and deception, with Goldman Sachs just the latest in the spotlight. This has become the most pressing election issue of all – Will Hutton, Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn’t a mistake – it was a con, The Observer, Sunday 18 April 2010

Well done Will, so will you follow this up to ensure it really does become an election issue? I think not. He’s right though, the banks have been stealing your money for ever. It’s the blue whale in the living room, because elephants just don’t measure up in size to the levels of the fraud we are discussing.

The mainstream media is playing a story about fraud in the housing market that discusses the same type of criminal activity detailed by Andrew Maguire in the evidence he submitted to the CFTC. Why is fraud committed two years ago a hot topic when fraud being committed today isn’t worth a mention? Who is drawing the bigger picture?

In 2009 Matt Taibbi aired all of Goldman Sachs’ dirty and blood-stained laundry in an epic article in Rolling Stone. It catalogues Goldman’s involvement in six major cases of deliberately creating financial bubbles and then profiting by collapsing them.

Does Robert Peston lack the necessary skills to do a Google search as he endeavours to offer his, “take on the business stories and issues that matter?” Is Will Hutton moving beyond the suggestion that tighter regulation is all that is required to control the banksters? He even hints the Lib Dems are ideally placed to come to the rescue. Since when have we heard Nick Clegg or the oracle Vince Cable even mentioning the banks’ perpetual debt machines that have sucked the blood from humanity through the ages?

No, a few new regulations here, a tweak there, a couple of scapegoats thrown into jail and all will be well and everyone can get back to business as usual. It’s called a limited hangout, you concede a little ground in order to disguise the fact you already own the pitch. It’s revealing the bare minimum in order to ensure the minimum fallout.

The banks can’t hide the massive scope of their misdeeds and nor can they hide the immense sum of money it has cost you. They think you are stupid but they know nobody is that stupid. So you get a few of the facts in isolation and they tell you what needs to happen next. The politicians parrot the same song and a consensus is constructed to which you’ll be invited to subscribe at pains of being branded a conspiracy theorist or general malcontent should you refuse.

The issues are very complicated, don’t you know? Far too complicated for you to understand. You need to leave it up to the Robert Pestons of this world to decide how much you ought to know and when you need to know it.

Please follow the links in this article. They’ll lead you on a path that Robert Peston hopes you will never tread. Then go back and read his blog and marvel at his footwork as he dances around the whale.

Andrew Maguire had the courage to step forward and expose corruption. When will the BBC have the courage to do the job we pay them handsomely to do?

Edward Bernays 1891-1995

The report found the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total global assets. Half the world’s adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth. (Guardian, 6 December 2006)

There has always been inequality in our societies and for many reasons, some morally arguable but others unquestionably a shameful indictment of humanity. During the time of kings and emperors and throughout the centuries since the rise of usury, more politely termed as “banking” today, great wealth has underpinned great power and so shaped the policy of nations.

But in the modern age of progressive enlightenment, which we claim as the bedrock of our “altruistic” political, economic and social systems, how can it remain acceptable that millions of people, including helpless children, starve to death as millions more watch their suffering on television whilst excusing themselves every reason to reverse their own decline into obesity?

Why is it we will make sacrifices in order to consume the latest goods and services, often luxuries we merely want but don’t actually need, but won’t make a comparable sacrifice to save human beings from the despair of life threatening poverty? Are we evil, misguided, deranged, incapable of behaving morally?

Imagine if most of us, if left to our own volition and perhaps even instinct, tended towards moral behaviour by default. We’d all like to think that was true. Then imagine a powerful force that acted to subvert our conscious desire and provoked and promoted our darkest nature. Imagine a force that lurked beneath and perverted every honest principle upon which we imagine our societies to be based. Such a force exists, it is very real and the chilling evidence of its domination over every aspect of our lives is hidden in plain sight.

Who or what could be behind such corruption? A religious devil, a supernatural demonic power? The answer is less dramatic and has a name. Edward Bernays.

In 2002 the BBC commenced its award winning four part series, “The Century of the Self”, with an examination of the generally forgotten but fundamental role Bernays played in the debasement of our societies by developing a new and destructive science designed to assault the human subconscious and direct our darkest and most basic emotions and instincts for the purpose of generating financial profit.

Bernays termed his scientific technique the “engineering of consent”. We know it by any of its common names, propaganda, brainwashing and public relations.

Adam Curtis, producer of “The Century of the Self”, certainly travelled a less worn path in his documentary and should be commended. But there were certain routes he refused to take, the ways that would have lead to ultimate truths about why we fight wars, why we consume, why we stuff our faces and watch other human beings starving to death.

After its release, David Edwards, co-editor at MediaLens.org, was quick to point out the irony of Curtis, “reproduc[ing] exactly the kind of deceptive spin that Bernays used to camouflage the truth about big business control.” – MediaLens, The Unspoken Rule of Media Reporting: The BBC’s The Century of the Self , April 2002

Curtis was good enough to respond and the exchange is worth a read. But first, if you haven’t already watched this series, here are all four parts. Highly recommended.

If you watch the 24/7 news on TV or read the usual newspapers you’ll have no trouble recognising the environment they take for granted they are operating in and we are supposedly living in. It goes like so:

• The United Kingdom is a democracy,
• That has a parliament led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and an “opposition” led by “Dave” Cameron,
• And the office of the Prime Minister is the highest in the land,
• And the laws made in parliament are a representation of the will of the public as expressed at the ballot box.

Which makes me wonder why the old sayings, “None of them are any good!”, or, “This lot are as bad as the last lot!”, are as popular today as they have ever been.

Many people I have talked to seem to accept as sound the structure of our society yet they don’t seem very happy with how it currently operates. In political terms they are cynical of it, jaded at the monotonous disappointment that follows every honeymoon period afforded to one government after the next. Brown was prudent and solid enough and the only real choice for the job, the media told us. Things could “only get better” under Blair, if you recall. “Honest” John Major was going to sweep away the harshness of a Thatcherite system that initially excited the average citizen but ended up being despised. Labour before that was too disastrous to contemplate, though the Winter of Discontent might seem small potatoes compared to the global meltdown we could be facing if the media is incorrect in its present prediction of an imminent recovery – as wrong as they were about this crisis happening in the first place, or Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, for example.

“This lot are as bad as the last lot!” Why? Because their diametrically opposed policies are just as hopeless as the other crowd’s? More likely because you can’t tease a cigarette paper between the agendas of either party. Could it be that both parties are so similar that in effect there is only really one party split into two groups? Sounds like a conspiracy theory and we’ve been conditioned to reject anything carrying that label, out of hand. So why was “Dave” Cameron elected as Tory leader? It’s not a secret, they wanted the next Tony Blair. Many Labour backbenchers often wondered why Tony Blair hadn’t selected the Tories as his natural home. And Gordon Brown placed the banks at the heart of his agenda from day one, like any good Tory would do, cutting them loose to build the financial disaster we are currently experiencing. The Tories are selling you their compassion and environmentalism, whilst agreeing to hand unrestrained power to the banks, giving them a free hand whilst claiming to be championing consumer protection. Yes indeed, the differences between the parties that constitute our democracy are there for all to see.

Which brings me to Peter Mandelson. Apparently Gordon Brown, the man in possession of the highest office in the land, only held onto his chair because Mandelson provided him support at a crucial time. When I heard the TV news loops relay these facts I couldn’t help wonder what it means to be “in charge” when a subordinate holds the power to issue a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Of course the electorate in this democracy wasn’t consulted, either at the time when Blair transferred power to Brown under the terms of a pre-arranged deal or more recently when Brown’s fate was in the balance. The media casually explains the government has the right to delay all such consultation with the people, apparently regardless of the circumstances. Those are the rules, and the rules need no further comment.

“Dave” Cameron, meanwhile, has been whispering at the top of his voice and demanding a general election. And, by golly, if there is an election and provided the Irish haven’t re-voted “Yes” and provided the treaty hasn’t already been verified, Cameron will see to it the British people get a say in whether the sovereignty of this nation is handed over to Europe. It’s not as stirring a performance as Elizabeth rousing the troops at Tilbury or Churchill urging us to fight them on the beaches, but at least he made suitable noises during the right scene. If events overtake his desire for a democratic resolution to the European question, as appears inevitable, he can point to his innocence in the whole affair as he reluctantly accepts the will of a few old men in Brussels. Democracy is not perfect then, or even utilised when inconvenient, but if you believe what you read in the press and hang on the words of the news anchors we, the people, are running this show.

To cap it all, I hear Tony Blair is in the frame for the presidency of Europe. And Mandelson has kept Brown in office and so prevented a general election that might have forced Cameron to actually offer a referendum on Europe. Such happy coincidences.

If you have read this far then some of you, at least, will be furiously shaking your heads and muttering, “Yes, I bloody know all that! It’s obvious!” So why does the TV news and the newspapers continue to try to make you believe the exact opposite? Why do they continue to insist we live in a democracy and that Gordon Brown is our leader and that the will of the people is paramount and that our parliament is the ultimate representation of our will?

Whilst this charade goes on we will never get to ask the big questions. The big questions will always be swamped by the trivia. At the heart of it, the politicians work for us, so it is said. Do you believe that? Really? What if it simply isn’t true? What if the facts upon facts upon facts show otherwise?