The 30 minute oeuvre is a work of comic genius, and really lays bare how disgracefully the BBC descends, from time to time, into raw propaganda and flat-out lying.
You don't need to watch the whole thing, which is a little bit like pulling teeth, rather just check out this quite entertaining 4 minute overview prepared for Russian TV news viewers.
People who understand Russian well will appreciate the sarcastic and snarky comments the Russian voice-over makes, the subtitles don't quite capture it, but, still, well worth watching.
Apparently the director, John Sweeney, has quite a reputation for saying anything for money, no lie is to brash for him. He comes across like a complete cad in this thing. Well, just watch the Russian take-down.
The indispensable Anne Applebaum, who always acts like she has a pencil up her bum, make a completely predictable cameo, complaining of 'losing sleep' over the Trump presidency. Yes, well one can see how she might. She is married to a power-grubbing, neocon, sell-out, but nonetheless, I've always pitied the man for having to gaze upon this harpy at the family brekky. She is a deeply unhappy woman. The aura she emits is reminiscent of a lingering toothache.
There was also a bit of scandal in the making of the thing, because one of the Russian interview subjects, the right-wing Russian philospher Alexander Dugin, got so angry at Sweeney, that he had security throw them out of his office, mid-interview, and then took to Facebook, where he has 30,000 followers, callling Sweeney a 'bastard', 'swine', a 'zero', an 'imbecile', a 'propagandist', and urging people to stay away from him.
Ripping stuff. Couldn't have said it better myself. Dugin's advice is spot-on.
The Russian news site Life.ru did an in-depth investigation into Sweeney and his colleagues, Richard Hill and Nicholas Stardi, in Russian, which is more great stuff exposing what awful 'journalists' these guys really are.
A translation follows below:
The best indicator of how well the propaganda dept at the BBC is doing is the comments on the version of the film that is open to the public on YT. They are devastating.
Chalk up another propaganda faceplant for the BBC and a win for the Russkies.
From Life.ru:
While fake exposures ะพf Mr Trump have been widely ridiculed by the US media themselves, their British colleagues took the lead in playing up the ridiculous information. BBC has recently produced and broadcast a documentary film on the allegations. Life News conducted their own investigation to find out how the BBC team operated in Moscow to make this stunning 'documentary'.
BBC dispatched 2 journalists to Moscow to be aided by a large group of Russian journalists and technicians. Some of those were freelancers while others were quite experienced professionals.
According to Life's sources, the BBC team's cameraman was Yuriy Burak who had worked previously with Discovery, ABC, National Geographic. They were also assisted by liberal columnist Pavel Greenshpun.
But the key "players" of course were the two British journalists, John Sweeney and Richard Hill coordinated from London by Nicholas Stardi - a very remarkable person. We'll talk of him later.
Upon arriving to Moscow in December 2016, the British team went on to interview Russian experts and newsmakers. One of the first to be interviewed happened to be Alexander Dugin, a famous Russian philosopher of Eurasianism.
By their highly provocative questions the journalists were openly and successfully provoking him. He did call in the guards who threw the Brits out of the office. The incident immediately leaked to the social nets. In his FB account, Dugin himself had harsh words to say on them later to be used by Sweeny as an example of a 'new world order rhetoric' interposed with Donald Trump's campaign footage:I've kicked a BBC correspondent out. A rare bastard! ... John Sweeney was in charge. His name tells it all: he's a "globalist swine". ('Sweeney sounds like the Russian word for 'swine' - 'sveenya' - Ed.). They are making a fake news documentary on how Russians helped Trump to become President. Their only evidence - that Putin had worked in the KGB. Complete imbeciles. Zero journalistic skills! Soviet-style propagandist. Stay away from them!Next, Sweeny asked the leader of Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) Vladimir Zhirinovsky about 'what lessons in democracy Russia could teach the US after the assassination of Boris Nemtsov'. This happened at a public place, at the Moscow Youth Palace. According to the LDPR deputies present there, Zhirinovsky had a good laugh at Sweeny reminding him of the US militarism and interventionism. None of his comments made it to the film.
In another attempt to extract clichรฉs confirming their prejudices, Sweeny and Hill approached Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Federation Council's Foreign Relations Committee. He disappointed them by pointing to the legality of Russian actions in the Crimea, and saying it was not an aggressor, and had no plans of territorial expansion.
In the best traditions of western journalism, all standups dedicated to the terrible Russian state and its omnipotent security services were filmed against the background of the FSB headquarters on the Lubyanka square in the center of Moscow. To be sure, it was accompanied by a sinister sounding music.
Some of the staff on the crew shared with us their increasing sense of annoyance with what they had to do. Both Russians and Brits told us that Sweeny's choice of experts and his manners were taking the work nowhere. Two of our sources present at the conversation between Sweeny and Hill with the London office, told us that the interview with Zhirinovsky was brushed away as useless, while Kosachev was described as an official pretending he did not know about Putin's connections with Trump. Dugin was deemed a particular disaster.
Eventually Lilia Shevtsova, fellow at the UK's Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House, was invited as an expert. Interestingly, her interview did not made it to the film although Shevtsova did voice the full set of accusations of 'Russian hackers', 'Putin - Trump connections', 'suppression of dissent through intimidation and murder'.
Life's sources present at the interview explain this by the fact that Shevtsova had some positive words to say about Vladimir Putin calling him a skillful strategist and good manager. She also said 'Russians have a very good foreign intelligence'. Apparently, according to our sources, the Brits failed to cut the interview in a suitable way.
Asked why she thought her interview was not used in the film, Lilia Shevtsova said she could not 'recall' being interviewed.โ "I don't remember, I don't remember. I give lots of interviews. I just don't remember this one, even the questions. Honest to God, I don't remember."And here some words are due about the third main player in the story - the team's London coordinator Nicholas Stardi. As Life found out he is an old Russian hand. E.g. his Ukrainian contacts provided him with the video on the Adam Osmaev case. The guy was detained in Ukraine for plotting an assassination of Putin but was released by the post Maidan Ukrainian authorities in 2014. He needed this for a film on the killings of the members of North Caucasian terrorist underground in Turkey.
An anonymous source at the BBC Moscow bureau told us that as early as January 11 Stardi had talks with the investigations editor of Novay Gazeta Sergey Kanev and BBC's Moscow bureau representative Olga Ivshina concerning a report by an unidentified MI6 agent on Trump's connections with Russian intelligence.
Is it any wonder that it was Stardi who coordinated the Sweeny-Hill team in December. Mind you, December - well before the BuzzFeed exposรฉ of Trump.
One's got a feeling that BBC knew about a forthcoming leak well in advance and was preparing itself for its coverage by shooting in all the right places in Moscow like Kremlin etc. If so, the whole set up looks like a provocation by the US and UK security services to undermine the legitimacy of the US President Elect.
Russian political analyst Dmitry Drobnitsky remarks that the documentary drives at formenting a sense of fear of the 'gang of hooligans', aka European and US right wing conservative forces.โ "I expected much more from the BBC. The documentary is yet another proof of the new lows to which the Western media sank in 2016. They are afraid of change, they are afraid of the breaking up of the globalist project. Their journalistic investigations are scam," says Drobnitsky.This is why the film was made, he says.
"The film is completely groundless yet its message is transparent โ Trump is either a so called useful idiot, or part of the global mafia together with the Russians and Putin."โ "The filmmakers rely primarily on spy agencies' sources including the CIA. Or take Anne Applebaum as a key expert. She's worse than McCaine."Applebaum is a war mongering journalist indeed. The film is supposed to make the European audiences tremble from fear.
John Sweeney losing it with scientologists - [Link]