British Council Embraces Hacks Long-Silent On Book-Burning?
As you may know, the British Council is funded by UK tax-payers. It calls itself a ‘charity’ but is very much part of the Foreign Office apparatus.
“There is a widespread assumption that The British Council is a wing of our Secret Intelligence Services, however minor. Officially it is no such thing but there are connections……..” Feuds and turf wars put Fresh Talent flagship plan in jeopardy
Unfortunately, UK tax-payers don’t get to know much about that sort of thing, nor do they get much say in what the BC does “Speaker Michael Martin in secrecy row over British Council trips”. The Daily Telegraph
And THEN there are such activities as….
Collaboration with Red China’s communist censors…
Ma Jian protest paints the London Book Fair red.
Bringing Censors to the Book Fair.
…and promotion of ‘gay’ propaganda…
In 2015, the British Council launcheda free, online, 10-day LGBT film festival…the first global online LGBT film festival .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Council
If you are a Brit tax-payer, maybe you think that’s an outrageous abuse of your money.
Or maybe you are okay with that sort of nonsense.
However, today, a look at the British Council’s open collaboration with a newspaper infamous here for its failure to condemn IslamoNazi book-burning!
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“Writing on Diversity”, an event hosted by The Jakarta Post and The Jakarta Post Writing Center in partnership with Raffles Hotel Jakarta and British Council Indonesia.
The report adds that those present included former chief editor of The Jakarta Post Endy Bayuni…the discussion focused on how writers can employ diversity to help counter rising intolerance. http://www.thejakartapost.com/multimedia/2018/04/02/writing-on-diversity-taking-up-stories-against-intolerance.html
I don’t know about the ‘writers’ present, but I do know about Endy Bahyuni, who, as noted, for some years held a senior editorial position at the Jakarta Post.
Endy has more than once presented himself as a fan of free expression and religious tolerance.
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“Don’t give any room to the hard-liners,” said Endy…“Please cover them when they’re violating the law, but don’t give space to small group of people when they rally against something absurd. They used the media effectively and deceive the media to suit their own means. ”http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/indonesian-media-needs-to-cover-religion-not-radicals-iarj/
That was a year after Gramedia collaborated with the bigots, and we duly took note!
Bayuni’s Bravado, Gramedia’s Grovel, Jakarta Post’s Double Standards
That occasion, a couple of years ago, would have been a golden opportunity for Endy to redeem his newspaper’s good name with a spirited public denunciation of the Gramedia company, of whose business empire the JP is part.
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Alas, he did not take that opportunity, nor, so far as news reports tell us, did he do so at the Raffles Hotel this month.
Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has any member of the editorial clique ever done so.
Despite its frequent blathering about the virtues of pluralism, I have yet to see any JP editorial condemnation of Gramedia’s disgusting grovel to sectarian censorship, which occurred five years ago…
….an episode which culminated in an action replay, jointly supervised by Gramedia and Islamist ‘scholars,’ of the sort of conflagration – book-burning- which characterised Hitler’s Germany.
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Germany, 1930s (above)
Indonesia 2012 (below)
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JazPen, 
Fiona Fenton, 
Petra Malley, and 2 others are discussing. 
rossrightangle 
Mike Grattan 20:11 on April 11, 2018 Permalink |
I used to use the British Council’s library till they gave it away. to the Indonesian government.
I never knew anything about their bad record, the Communist China story or the spy story either.
If they are a respectable organization, they would have nothing to do with the Jakarta Post.
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Jim in Jakarta 21:35 on April 11, 2018 Permalink |
Good, Ross, keep after the hacks!
Thanks for that about the British COuncil, no idea they were like that.
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Petra Malley 22:06 on April 11, 2018 Permalink |
This is very interesting. It’s sad that the media there are so keen to work with Islamists, because if Islamists come to power, press freedom disappears.
From what you have been writing in the past 12 months, there’s every chance the Islamists will come to power in Indonesia, so some journalists are hedging their bets.
So much for integrity, but Western journalists are a pretty foul lot too.. .
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Fiona Fenton 01:13 on April 12, 2018 Permalink |
And who did you say funds this British Council?
Us mugs, the British tax-payers, who never gave them permission to cover-up the way they spend our money.
That story of how the Speaker of the House of Commons slapped a ban on revealing junkets by MPs at British Council (i.e. OUR) expense is outrageous. Same goes for them being so hand in glove with the communist censors in Beijing.
Shameless.
Iwonder how many MPs would vote to clean up this ‘British’ Council?
How would their junketing MP guests vote?
We should start a petition to either wind this so-called ‘charity’ up altogether or kick them off the gravy train.
Slash their salaries, stop them spending our money on queer film fests and make them work for British interests!
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JazPen 12:22 on April 13, 2018 Permalink |
I see the British Council is keeping its head down.
They must think nobody cares how low they can sink and thats probably true.
Not my taxes anyway so I leave it to the British tax-paying public.
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