Bombs (sorry, blasts, as you term them) take lives – they do NOT ‘claim’ them (see News Online homepage and Turkish resort blast claims lives).
Sky News’ online version, Deadly explosion on bus, is appropriately unequivocal. Unfortunately, the twerps presenting Sky News just now are also using the emollient ‘claim’ for the apparent murder and grievous injury of real people, all of whose lives mattered as much to them and their families as those of you and your families do to you. Think about it.
Update: As if by magic, the BBC News Online headline now says Turkish resort blast kills four.
Like so many of the newly well-heeled middle class the BBC is contemptuous of its roots and would not be seen dead with ordinary Britons. Grovelling to ‘celebrities’, foreign expatriates seeking refuge from their own countries’ enquiry into crime and fraud, and all those with power and influence abroad – regardless of their moral worth and the interests of Britain – however comes so naturally. It is frankly much more enjoyable and rewarding than rigorous enquiries into truth. So twentieth century.
Two thirds of Tories? What about the other third? They actually believe the BBC is impartial?! At least a third of them are indeed The Stupid Party.
No sign that the LibDems are unhappy. What a surprise.
And Respect must just LOVE the BBC. Endless publicity.
Great news, I was beginning to doubt there is bias at the BBC. JiL, your’e not hallucinating after all.
“So we went from Marxism to Islamic fundamentalism, to barking mad mysticism – all in one day.”
The BBC outdoes itself
Good discussion in the comments too.
It’s about time!
Pete
And the Tories have the audacity to wonder why they didn’t get elected!
There have been many instances since the bombings where the BBC has taken the line “What did we do to deserve this”.
This is typical Guardian line, so it is unsurprising to have the BBC present a lot of it. A sickening mont, some might say. Too much concern for the aggressors.
But the Guardian really went over the top with the now-famous “sassy” article by a trainee who turns out to be linked with just about the most extreme Islamist grop in Britain. The crowd who assaulted and threatened George Galloway, no less.
And this blog tells us that the Guardian trainee has previous form – he did their coverage of the schoolgirl jilbab case, which was set up by the same extremist group. (And which Cherie Booth acted on, bless her cotton socks.)
Don’t the media owe it to us to tell us where their commentators are coming from ? And in this context I mention again Frank Gardner who has been opining all week on BBC, deflecting some of the real issues IMHO – and who it turns out is claimed to be Muslim. “Not a lot of people know that.”
Fine by me if he is in fact Muslim. I would simply like to know. After all, we are dealing with a threat that is rooted in an ideology that springs from within Islam. I don’t want any downplaying of the threat.
Sorry here is the link about the Guardian extremist trainee :
http://blog.spartac.us/339
Well done the BBC for being judged Knave of the Week by the Washington Times. I feel so prod for or national broadcaster !
Do they present the award personally to the Chairman of the Governors ?
(Governors ? Who they ?)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050715-085559-6903r.htm
The Guardian-BBC axis is a matter of record.
Why both are agents of Islam deserves closer scrutiny.
The Guardian-BBC crowd have done a sterling job over the past thirty years of undermining Christianity and Judaism and have shown no such inclination towards Islam, indeed they are afraid even of negative suggestion where Muslims are involved.
I could understand a policy that sought to undermine Religion period, but thier behavior is mighty suspicious.
Knowing the BBC bent, is Islam percieved by al beeb as the new Marxism?
Given thier love of authoritarianism, central control and a belief in the perfectability of mankind I think this is what they are up to. All funded by the spoils of Capitalism (goes without saying really).
Who would bring up young children in Europe today???
Confidence in the BBC has collapsed because so much of their news output is opinion, not facts.
They don’t do plain-vanilla journalism any more. Not mch like this, for example, in a downmarket UK rag :
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15733488&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=7-7–war-on-britain–you-ll-be-rewarded-for-all-eternity—and-you-ll-see-your-dad-again-soon–name_page.html
O/T: I heartily recommend that you read the following about the psychology of fashionable politics.
http://jameshamilton.typepad.com/james_hamilton/2005/07/suicide_bombing.html
The BBC has totally failed the nation in underplaying the risks of terrorism.
And even now London hs been bombed, it sanitises the news. Not dumbing down it is NUMBING down. “These people are a miniscule minority, their families are appalled etc”
Not so, it appears in this case. The uncle of Shehzad Tanweer denies he is a terrorist, and thinks he was justified in his actions. :
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/story_pages/news/news2.shtml
Where is this appearing on BBC ? Why will it not be picked up in any section on “whht the papers say” ?
BECAUSE IT DOES NOT FIT THE BBC’s PREJUDICES.
Two thirds of Tories? What about the other third?
That’s what struck me. There’s still only a small huddle of Tory MPs in Parliament anyway, but 65 of them think the BBC is just fine. Strewth! It’s not just the stupidity that’s so worrying as the position these people must occupy on the political spectrum.
What a load of crap the bbc has been spouting about poor disadvantaged Muslim youths in the UK as the beeboids try to find a reason for the London bombs.
If only they, beeboids, knew just a bit of history they would see how Nazi-like Muslim terror is. They adopted this stance in the 1930’s at the time of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini who became the great friend of Hitler. That Austrian maniac claimed that the real struggle was between Germans and Jews, and it was only the Jews who were blocking the Nazi road to world domination. Just replace Nazis with Muslims and you will see how they have adopted all the nasty Muslim Brotherhood rubbish which owes so much of its ideology to Germany of the war years.
So what do the beeboids do? They trot out the talking heads who wring their hands as they anguish over the plight of deprived British no-hope Muslims worried about Hamas terrorists in “Palestine”.
The IDF (Israeli Army) keeps issuing bulletins day after day describing terrorists they encounter and subdue. And make no mistake about it. These people with bombs, grenades, assualt rifles,hiding even in caves and in houses all over Gaza, are TERRORISTS!
Frank Gardner has “previous”.
12 March 2004, when it was still thought ETA was behind the Madrid bombings.
Radio 5 on Friday morning.
‘Nikki’ Campbell – ‘… and of course, ETA have had links with the IRA’
Frank Gardner (BBC Security Correspondent) – ‘That’s right – in fact Gerry Adams said in a speech – not that Gerry Adams is IRA, but Sinn Fein do have contacts with them …’
Apparently the BBC’s Security correspondent was happy to deny that Gerry Adams was an IRA man, when he sits on the Army Council. What kind of ‘expert’ is he ?
He is about as authoritative is the BBC Newsnight Industrial Correspondent who went to music college.
poor disadvantaged Muslim youths in the UK
In W.Yorks the Asian community cause their own disadvantage.
Clan/family responsibilities require that a spouse (particularly a bride) is brought over from the old country. This results in the offspring having English as a second language, despite having a UK born father.
The UK Muslim boys go along with this as they get a young pliable girl rather than a more “sassy”, older, UK born bride.
The children are then further disadvantaged by taking months out of school to go back to the old country.
By teen years many of the boys are extremely sassy – as wayward as many white youths, but there seems to have been a “let the community leaders deal with it” policy. But I think that those leaders get no more respect from wayward youth than would be the case on a white council estate.
None of this cycle of disadvantage seems to be recognised by media or government.
This phenomenon, & our looming immigration crisis, would be helped by adopting similar laws to Denmark which prevent taking foreign (ie non-EU) spouses under the age of 24.
And no child should be allowed to be absent from school for months on end.
What a load of crap the bbc has been spouting about poor disadvantaged Muslim youths in the UK as the beeboids try to find a reason for the London bombs.
The excuses are legion from how ‘bad’ it is in Palestine through racism to being oppressed. I wonder if they look for ‘excuses’ when dealing with other scum like the BNP.
Bloody YasminAlibi on the box again – the 12 noon politics show on BBC1 !!! “Its all Britain’s fault”
The Guardian is refusing to sack its “sassy” extremist journalist. I wonder if they consulted the family of the other Guardian trainee, the one who was murdered in the terrorist bombings. (Whoops – I’ve used that T word again.)
How are the mighty fallen.
http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article299681.ece
How we laugh when old codgers go on about Britain having the best forces in the world, the best cars and motorbikes in the world, the best police in the world, the best everything in the world etc etc. Unfortunately the BBC has told so many people, so many times that it is a wonderful, world-class, world-respected broadcaster that even now many people still believe it to be true. Let’s grow up as a nation and get rid of it.
Yesterday Tony Blair made a hugely important speech on Islamist terrorism – defining it, sweeping aside the excuses. But today, it is no longer linked on either on the main news page OR the “London Bombings In Depth” page.
Have the BBC shoved it down the memory hole just 4 hours later? Because it directly challenged the equivocations that the BBC normally propagates ? There are plenty of stories still there that are older, far less important or informative.
Nick Cohen at the Observer nails the BBC :
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1530248,00.html
It is dog eat dog now.
Should the London Business School do a case-study on how BBC Governors and management are managing to trash a great brand ?
Natalie and Andrew and Scott and others – thanks again for keepiung the pot boiling on the BBC. This is the only blogstorm that has reaached anything like lift-off in the UK.
So thank you again for letting us let off steam, for providing a forum and a source of info and links. The more the links fly round and round the web, the more the storm starts. The BBC need to be brought down a peg or two, and this current mess is IMHO forcing them to reexamine some of their approach.
JiL It is dog eat dog now
If I read you right, I think that the Observer is not quite The Guardian & IIRC supported the overthrow of Saddam.
I’ve yet to see anyone on the BBC explain to me why Hindus and Sikhs in Britain do so much better by any standard of measure, then do their racially identical muslim brethren from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Would the BBC care to comment on this before launching into knee jerk attacks against Britain and by implication the British people?
dan
By dog eat dog what I mean is journalists attacking other journalists or news managers, often it is all behind the curtain.
two days ago al-tamimi who has well-known views on the middle-east conflict was presented as an “expert on hamas.” he then went on not so much to show his expertise on hamas but to attack israel.
his views are known to the bbc from the sebastian hard-talk show.
i am amazed that the craven bbc can get away with calling the terrorists “bombers”.
the problem is that the leftist bbc
hires like minded people so we have a problem that is quite insoluble.
the only solution is to stop government subsidies.
and now from the John Ware piece on the Today programme :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4681857.stm
Yet another programme on 5Live this morning about the implications for the muslim community, and their fear of a backlash, despite the fact that there has been no widespread anti-muslim hostility, much to the BBC’s disaqppointment no doubt.
Yes there ws altogegther too much seething and whining and prevarication. Not much room found for what WE the plebs might be thinking.
We keep coming back to talking about Islam all the time but that seems only natural because of the grave dangers we’re facing. Here’s an article I’ve been looking for:
“The following are excerpts from interviews with the director of the Al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies, Dr. Hani Al-Siba’i. The first aired on Al-Jazeera TV on July 8, 2005; in it, Al-Siba’i discussed the London bombings.
The London Bombings
Al-Siba’i: “I think that British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a grave error when he spoke before the investigation and claimed that the perpetrators of these acts were acting in the name of Islam. I think that he will pay the price for this grave error in the future. No possibility should be ruled out. We do not rule out the possibility that it was done by the intelligence agency of another Western country hostile to Britain. We do not rule out countries… or some Zionist Americans who wanted to overshadow the G-8 summit. But at the same time, we do not rule out the Al-Qa’ida organization. It’s been claimed that Al-Qa’ida died in Afghanistan, and was buried in the caves there. And behold: it was resurrected after the American occupation of Iraq. Moreover, Al-Qa’ida controls the war agenda in Iraq. It is the Al-Qa’ida organization in the Land of the Two Rivers [Iraq], headed by Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi, that imposes its policies, to the extent that the Egyptian government was forced to… It was forced to recall [its ambassador], and other countries are afraid to send ambassadors there.”…
Host: “Mr. Hani, make no mistake. The same assembly ruled that Jihad in Iraq is allowed against soldiers. Even Sheik Osama [sic.] Al-Makdisi, Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi’s mentor… Okay. Abu Hani, okay… He asked Al-Zarqawi not to kill civilians and to attack only the Americans… I mean, only soldiers…”
Al-Siba’i: “The term ‘civilians’ does not exist in Islamic religious law. Dr. Karmi is sitting here, and I am sitting here, and I’m familiar with religious law. There is no such term as ‘civilians’ in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar Al-Harb or not…
Host: “Excuse me, who do you want to promote? Those who want the banner of ‘There is no god but Allah’ over the Queen of England and Buckingham Palace? Those who want to establish a caliphate and turn the Queen of England into a captive? Those who say [England] is Dar Al-Harb and property there can be plundered? Are those the kind of people you want?”
Al-Siba’i: “These associations do not represent the Muslim public. They collaborate with the British police for certain interests. They want an ‘English Islam,’ and not the Islam that was sent to the Prophet Muhammad. If Al-Qa’ida indeed carried out this act, it is a great victory for it. It rubbed the noses of the world’s eight most powerful countries in the mud. This victory is a blow to the economy…”
Sources: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/007125.php and http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD93205
An observation and maybe a strategy.
There have been many attempts to pin the BBC down in the area of bias.
Most often the accusation has revolved around a point of view it has promoted and the Corporation is usually able to draw attention to an instance where it has given airtime to an opposing viewpoint and refute the bias. In the process it gets the chance to revisit it’s initial ‘propaganda’ and so benefits doubly from the allegation. It is fighting on it’s own ground.
This time, over the ‘t-word’ controvesy the argument is over what it hasn’t said and every time it tries to defend it’s position it has to restate the allegations, just digging itself in deeper. It is not fighting on a ground of it’s choosing.
Perhaps a strategy of highlighting issues that the BBC hasn’t covered would target it where it most vulnerable.
Ah… forgot to mention the Beeb’s muslim pin-up boy Amir Khan:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/boxing/4690285.stm
What a nice guy, a role model even…
Too many people at the BBC believe the organisation to be an active participants in the social happenings in our society, rather than just there to report events. The BBC has no business broadcasting propaganda aimed at stopping a backlash against the Muslims in the UK. If such an unfortunate event does occur, the BBC news should tell us about it. We pay them for news, not social control.
Excerpt from the above piece on Khan:
“Khan attends his local mosque, reads the Koran and expects to enter into an arranged marriage in time.
He also supports his local football team, cites fish and chips as his favourite food, while his dad wears a union jack waistcoat.
He is handsome, charming, modest, yet endearingly confident, does not drink and does not smoke.
Kids of all races will want to be like him and men and women of all races will want their kids to be like him.”
Does this mean we should all want to attend our local mosques, read the koran and enter into an arranged marriage? This is the way forward, people – 72 virgins (or is it grapes?) are waiting!
The accusation that the BBC employs a plethora of people with similar views is hardly news and can always be refuted by a plea of ‘accomodating a diversity of opinions'(albeit from the same end of the political spectrum but trying to argue that disinction is a lost cause.)
What would be effective is irrefutable proof that they have denied someone employment solely because of their politics when those politics are well within the spectrum of main stream opinion.
I bet the BBC does not report that the main funder of George Galloway’s Respect party is mired in claims that 7/7 was a conspiracy staged by the police, Blair or Mossad:
http://www.ericlee.me.uk/archive/000126.html
Marc
quite so, and that is where the wretched BBC is compromised.
IT IS AN ORGAN OF THE STATE.
try and keep this in mind.
I presume the one third of Tories who think the BBC is impartial are the Ken Clarke supporters.
england: “What would be effective is irrefutable proof that they have denied someone employment solely because of their politics when those politics are well within the spectrum of main stream opinion.”
How about I axed Forsyth on orders from above, says Today editor for a start? (as mentioned here on Biased BBC at the time).
I’m sure there are plenty of other unknowns who haven’t been employed by the BBC because their face doesn’t fit either, even though their politics will be well within mainstream British thought.
Time for the BBC to stop just talking to the same self-appointed spokesmen from the Muslim commnity
http://tom_fuller.typepad.com/random_reactions/2005/07/where_do_you_st.html
Maybe Eastenders could deal with the ‘issues’ raised by the terrorism, I mean bombings, with a ‘free’ number to ring if we think we’ve been affected by the program. It worked with me. I was a raging homophobe before the program dealt sensitively and carefully with the gay issue, and the recent Africa season has convinced me the whole continent is full of vibrant, interesting people who have a variety of cultures whose diversity I will now celebrate for 2 hours every Monday evening, bank holidays excepted.
O/T – Ted Heath’s gone.
Expect glowing obits from the Beeboids – after all, nowadays, the old baton fiddler would have been somewhere to the left of Clare Short …
(And compare to the eventual coverage of Lady T, when the time comes.)
I wonder if there is any correlation between one third of Tory MPs thinking everything is fine with the BBC and the number of Europhile Tory MP’s?
Here’s jolly jape – co-sponsored with our money by the BBC, according to the vido on the BBC holepage :
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13388358,00.html