generated by Matt Well’s now famous piece (Quick! Slap on the “Viewpoint” label!) that I am genuinely not sure whether Rottweiler Puppy’s fisking has already been mentioned on this blog.
The BBC was earlier congratulating itself on having had 400,000 page impressions on this piece over the weekend 3-4 September. Ed gently suggested that even then not all of them might have been from fans – although I am willing to believe most of them were: the sort of person that makes up the audience of Question Time would have lapped this up. It would be interesting to know how high the total is now, and what the referring pages were.
Good grief, they don’t even think we’re human anymore, do they?
Why does the BBC so resent the “American abstinence movement”? Are they afraid that it would cut down on the number of the future clientele for their socialist welfare paradises?
Makes all the little 11 yr old British slappers look bad. It is not their fault, or their mother’s (there are no fathers in evidence, ever) fault. It is the krool, judgemental capitalists. These children have every right to make a “lifestyle choice” without being made to feel somehow inadequate by lecturing fat American Christians who drive SUVs and keep their air-conditioning running 24 hours a day thus robbing the Africans of cheap petrol and whose president did not sign the critical Kyoto Agreement. Obvious.
Why does the BBC so resent the “American abstinence movement”? Are they afraid that it would cut down on the number of the future clientele for their socialist welfare paradises?
My best guess is that if such a movement has success, it threatens to discredit many of the liberal social-engineering and sexual freedom ideas of the past 50 years or so.
Or another way to look at it is just as how the rock & roll and woodstock generation shocked its parents, todays teens are shocking and rebelling against their Boomer parents in the only way possible: by becoming religous and practicing abstinance.
🙂
Just popped into Harry’s Place and popped out again pretty quickly on encountering this trashy article in the grauniad
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,981171,00.html
I did, however, take time to post this responxe and then thought it would fit better on this blog.
“John Willis has made a fundamental mistake which blows apart his whole stupid essay.
Letting the Media respond to the market means giving the people what they want (obviously).
That’s what is driving the trends he is describing. If it appears that the Media are giving the Government what it wants then maybe that is because the people and the government are in agreement.
In the UK the beeb describes giving the people what they want as ratings chasing and haughtily refuses to do it. They would say that they know better than us.
In fact, they refuse to chase ratings for the simple reason that they would then have to be impartial and drop their moronic left wing drivel.”
This man Willis is employed by the beeb as rhe “director of factual and learning”. How inappropriate is that!
Apologies: I didn’t notice that the article I mentioned above was from June 2003.
Still, I don’t think the beeb mindset has changed much since then
uth,
If it were Muslims instead of evangelical Christians preaching abstinence programs to teen-agers the Beeb would fall all over themselves describing how wonderful and clever and “culturally rich” it all was — except for the honor killings, of course, which they would discreetly ignore.
Katrina deaths
The overall confirmed death toll in the hurricane-affected states is now above 500.
Officials have said the final number of dead could be much lower than the thousands feared initially.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4242512.stm
Note BBC now quote 500 for all the “hurricane-affected states”.
Is the BBC reluctant to accept that its heroic mayor of New Orleans knew absolutely nothing when he was quoted as follows?
New Orleans Mayor: 10,000 Feared Dead
Oh, Dan, that is hyterical! 500 (I am not diminishing in any way the horror of such a death and tragedy for their families of those deaths) dead in all the affected states instead of “over 10,000” dead in NO alone. How is the BBC bringing itself to quoted these new lower figures without feeling like a jackass? They have been made an utter fool of at so many levels throughout this episode.
Susan, I meant to agree with you above. If it had been Muslims preaching “abstinence” it would have been all about those wonderful Muslim family values, respect for their elders, including all their father’s “wives”, with forced marriage of underaged girls to first cousins, and nightmareish female genital mutilation not worth a mention.
Yes Verity — ironic isn’t it? After all our Judeo-Christian-Hellenic culture had positive family values like respecting your elders too — until all the Gramsci-dominated organizations like the Beeb decided to take a meat-axe to them.
O/T
Great article (as one would expect) from Mark Steyn in the Telegraph, presenting more OUR take on the Katrina disaster.
Bush kept his head and the danger’s passed
Susan – What is interesting about the BBC and the Blair government (and some American lefties too) is, they don’t give a monkey’s about the Muslims. The Muslims are a heaven-sent – if I can use that term – tool for the destruction of the West. That is all.
What is really amusing about the Lyce Doucettes, Matt Freis, Orla Guerrins and all the little left programme directors and editors and all the little people who book guests is, they honestly believe that if there were a Muslim majority in our countries, the Muslims would respect them for being on “the right side”. But they would be as dead as anyone else. They’re still “infidels” (I put that in quotes because I refuse to be defined by crazy people) and don’t count.
They’ve even been told that, but they don’t hear it.
Funny thing is, the left are quick to ‘speak’ for the islamists, and funny enough the list of gripes of the islamists is pretty much the same as the gripes of the left.
But if you actually listen to the islamists, it becomes clear that their biggest gripe is decadent, secular liberalism.
But if you actually listen to the islamists, it becomes clear that their biggest gripe is decadent, secular liberalism.
uth | 13.09.05 – 9:41 pm | #
I don’t think they care one way or the other. They will use ANYTHING that undermines our society – whatever is the flavour of the day. Their strategy is simply DIVIDE AND CONQUER.
uth
Funny thing is, the left are quick to ‘speak’ for the islamists …
In the same way that the left always picked up the baton for poor, abused blacks, whilst any black with half a brain and an ounce of self respect had nothing but contempt for their white, middle class champions.
Well, no one loathes the Beeb more than I do, but this is far more unspeakable than anything I’ve seen any Gramscian organization do so far:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=17488_Steyn-_Flight_93_Re-Hijacked&only
They want to use the Islamic symbol to “honor” the 9-11 passengers of Flight 93. Guilty party: the Heinz Foundation, controlled by one moonbat billionairess known as Theresa Heinz “Swift Boat” Kerry.
The only thing I can think of that compares is erecting a giant swastika as a memorial to the victims of Auschwitz.
The left has no decency whatsoever. No decency at all. Just a raw, red open maw of blind hatred and nihilism.
Susan, I saw that design of the memorial and couldn’t believe it. An islamic crescent to commerate the brave Americans who died stopping islamic terrorists from flying into the White House !! It looks as though large parts of both the American and European Left are suffering from a self-hating sickness that is terminal.
OT – Just sent a complaint in. Dont expect a reply.
“On the BBC1 news tonight your reporter said that ‘as of next year viewers will not be able to watch the Ashes for free’ This was also mentioned on 5Live by a presenter. Can you confirm that I can watch CH4 free from now on and not pay the licence fee.”
It’s similar to the Bishops and (Red)Ken Livingstone inviting the parents of the suicide bombers to the memorial service for those killed in the terrorist attacks in London.
Setting new standards for ignorance.
I didn’t know anything was currently free to watch the Broadly Bonkers Broadcasting Corp. I thought it cost around ÂŁ12 a month to subscribe, like it or not.
(Saxon Brother – how could people have been outstandingly stupid enough to vote for Tony Blair, Gramscian-in-Chief? OK, most didn’t. They stayed home because they didn’t care enough about the alternative. There should be a law that any result based on less than 70 electorate turnout isn’t valid. Blair’s in office with around 25% of the electorate having voted for him. Some endorsement, eh?)
Teddy Bear,
Yeah, I agree, but that 7/7 memorial mass (why a mass? isn’t that offensive to the oh-so-precious Muslims? will Christian hymns not be sung and prayers not be said in order avoid singing their delicate little ears with infidel expressions of piety?)will be gone and done with, but that freakin’ “memorial” to the Flight 93 victims will stand for a very, very long time, a constantly bleeding raw wound in the psyche of my nation.
Damn’ straight, Susan!
People here have questioned the BBC’s motives in producing close-cropped & unflattering photos of opposition (ie opposed by the BBC) politicians.
What to make of this photo of Supreme Court nominee Roberts, courtesy of al-Reuters?
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050913/ids_photos_ts/r2839689154.jpg
Susan, it’s only the beginning. Don’t forget 9/11 is already 4 years old. If they’re already inviting parents of suicide bombers to attend the memorial for the victims of their sons actions, who knows what they will be doing in 4 years to appease the Muslims fascists. The ones who are really integrated don’t need this bullshit, they understand the score. Consider that Red Ken already wanted to put up a statue of Mandela in Trafalgar Square. This is after Mandela had been in Lockerbie visiting the bomber there, and pleading for Britain to send him to a Muslim state out of compassion.
What a crock.
dan,
That photograph of Roberts is absurd. Roberts is a youngish, rather handsome man. They would have had to really work to get an unflattering photo of him, and this transparently obvious piece of juvenalia is the best they could do?
Freakin’ juveniles.
Teddy Bear,
In four years’ time? I suspect they will be demanding that the families of the murderered 7/7 victims convert to Islam for the sake of “world peace.” Whoever is in charge will pass legislation demanding that the families be threatened with jail time if they don’t comply.
What the hell, anything’s possible these days, the utter garbage you hear coming from the left.
Verity,
I’ll meetcha in a certain cornfield in Shankhill, PA with a truckload of Round-up in tow.* Let’s roll!
(*The crescent is to be made of red maple trees; Round-up is a trade name for a very effective herbicide.)
Them suckers are comin’ down!
Yes, ma’am!
Plenty to do on the other side of the Atlantic, too. Tony Blair now has Cat Stevens advising him. Could they trivialise the safety of Britain’s 93% indigenous population any further? Why are the British letting them get away with it? For the same reason the Americans are. The whole thing is so astounding that no one can quite take it in. And all this is reported and discussed on the Beeb in tones of absolute normality. As though discussing cricket scores.
And BBC, read our lips. Holocaust Day stays. It doesn’t get diluted and it doesn’t get renamed “Genocide Day”. It is part of European history and whiny, manipulative immigrants from “less developed” countries don’t have a voice in the decision.
Lessons the BBC might like to learn from the current fuel protests:
nobody gives a monkeys about climate change, they want fossil fuels to burn and they want them now.
nobody gives a monkeys about gordon brown and his glorious visions of social justice, they`d rather have cheap fossil fuels.
nobody gives a monkeys about using less energy, soon it will be cold and I have to drive the kids to school.
nobody gives a monkeys about peace in the middle east, to paraphrase Bob Gandalf “give us your F***ing oil”
nobody gives a monkeys about “no blood for oil”. we just want the goddamned oil.
George Monbiot is not an expert on global fuel consumption, he`s an apologist for high fuel taxes.
worry about the ozone if you want to, Sharon and Tracy are going to be pretty pissed if you get between them and thier two weeks holiday.
when BBC journalists etc went on strike earlier hs year, nobody was queueing up at midnight for thier output.
Even at a pound a litre, most people would choose 127 litres over a licence fee.
goodnight BBC, may you soon be abolished.
I can see only one possible advantage to converting Holocaust Day into Genocide Day.
If all genocides are listed it will quickly become apparent that most of them, particularly the high body count ones, are products of left wing “governments”.
I’ve always maintained that for all the communists’ bragadaccio about the efficiency of socialism the only thing they were really efficient at was genocide/mass murder.
However, I have far too much respect for Jews to make this a serious suggestion.
Susan
I had seen that awful business about the Flight 93 memorial.
If I were American I would be cutting those trees down. Time and again, every time they tried to plant them. The whole thing is a monstrous insult to the heroes on that plane.
I think the threats to destroy the insulting monument need to be made now, before the idea goes any further.
And it was not surprising to see that Kerry’s wife’s fund money is in there. Just as Soros money is in behind the insulting ideas for Ground Zero.
JIL,
You’ve got Moonbat Cherie and we’ve got Moonbat Terry Kerry. The thought of her as first lady gave me nightmares and hives.
Cherie couldn’t win an election – soundly rejected when she tried to worm in as an MP – so next time, she ran Tony. She’s still running him – make no mistake. He is not the brightest light in the harbour.
In honour of those brave, brave heroes who sacrificed their lives for America – just like that! at a moment’s notice! – this crescent must not be allowed to stand. Americans are braver than today’s British and I don’t believe they will allow it. I hope they destroy it. If they are effective, it may give courage to the Brits who still love their own country – and our Anglosphere.
The BBC will paint them as racists (Islam is not a race) and raving loonies.
Spot on Verity.
Another blood chilling nightmare is the prospect of Cherie’s best buddy Hillary in the White House in 2008
Just a thought…any Westerner denying the Holocaust is rightly villifed. Why then can Muslims also speak in similar disgusting terms and there be not a word of criticism from the left /liberal media? (amongst which I include the BBC)
Well, Anti Aunty, thanks for the support. But I am a libertarian and I think loonies and bonkers people have a right to voice what is the truth to them. If they want to deny the Holocaust, that should not be a crime.
History and all the records demonstrate incontrovertibly that they are wrong, so why be so intolerant of the fact that there will always be people among the 5bn on the planet who don’t agree with you? Dissenting, even over something as emotional and real as the Holocaust, should be tolerated in a democracy. There is no way they will ever find even a minority that registers on the Richter scale. Let them rant. Same with Sickbal Sacristy.
I certainly would not elevate his bizarre circumlocutions to a level of importance or expect a head of government to be so servile as to give him a hearing.
He’s a pub bore, but without the pub, which is even worse. He’s one of those ghastly people who grab you by the elbow (cf Jehova’s Witnesses, Hari Krishnas et al)and try to hold your eye as you look wildly around for the Exit sign.
Chrisopher Hitchens has just written a hatchet job on George Galloway, prior to debating with him tomorrow in the US. I knew Galloway was bad, but this detail tells any decent person that he is positively evil.
So why do the BBC choose to give him so much irtime ? The only reason is that he is a vociferous critic of Bush and Blair over Iraq. Here is the article :
http://slate.msn.com/id/2126121/
And here is a selection of some of the truly mad, evil stuff that Galloway has said in recent years :
Click to access GallowayLeafletFINAL.pdf
I missed the Radio Times comments about Medium and No Sex,…, since it’s already Wednesday in the UK, but came across this comment for Murder Blues:
‘We’? Speak for yourself.
BTW: They use a horrible stylesheet that makes the fonts ridiculously small. I bet they wrote the CSS for IE only….
Socialism is Necrotizing – I think things are worse than you state.
Many do care about climate change, social justice, etc etc but they have the infantile attitude that “the government should do something about it” but only on the basis that they don’t have to pay the taxes. “Tax the rich” is often the answer. They also think that the profits of the oil companies go to some shadowy super rich people, whereas the vast proportion of distributed profits go into the pension funds of the nation. “The governnment should do something about the pension shortfall” (& let’s make the job harder by the government imposing a higher tax take on the companies’ profits).
Susan, Verity
If you don’t mind, I’d like to gatecrash your horticultural party when I’m in the US. Frankly, I don’t understand why that cresecent is still standing but I’d happily while away the hours chopping, spraying, ripping and dragging that alien and un-American symbol out of the ground. It would be a labour of love.
What i don’t understand is that for years Britain and America stood together, as one, despite political differences.
Now we find ourselves in unchartered territory.
I am a firm believer that the BBC spews out pro government propaganda, New Labour have the BBC by the balls and whilst politically give the impression they are “friendly” with the US. The new labour mantra is to be seen as pro European, hence anti US.
New Labour are very good at lying, twisting the truth and bad mouthing people, i would have thought that such governance should be frowned upon. However, when you have a mighty machine like the BBC supporting you, its very difficult for the rest of us to counter act the brainwashing.
I am pro American, so is practically everyone i know.
I find that the BBC news in general except for last night, when Ben Brown reported on Katrina in NO, where he was very matter of fact. (As he should be). They lose the plot and have become so obsessed with anti America movement its uncanny for a news broadcaster. They have taken sides and have clearly shown their true colours.
That said programmes such as Spooks, give the impression that its not just the americans who are “bad” its the positive discrimination against the majority white population in the UK which has me concerned.
Its almost “portray at any costs anyone who is white, middle class and patriotic, as racist and nasty”.
I find it pathetic, and yes i have noticed this manipulation of the BBC reporting and drama series.
It concerns me because the BBC is refusing to accept the truth about terrorism. It seems to feel that no one of muslim origin could be a terrorist despite all the attacks that have taken place, across the globe.
I find it almost disgusting that whenever BBC news reports/ interviews the public i am yet to ever see a middle class, white, straight man interviewed, its almost like the Dodo, extinct. At least that’s what they want you to believe.
The problem is that demographic is enormous in the UK, and the BBC tries to push that group underground.
I liken the similarities to the Northern Ireland situation at present, the predominantly pro British community now feel isolated in their own country because of the BBC and New Labour Government.
For me, they don’t realise what whirlwind they have created, and like Katrina may well end up catching them off guard.
Overall, the BBC has calmed down recently since Katrina, and rightly so. The News service has improved slightly, and if it continues this way, maybe we will see better things.
But there is still much work to be done.
Pete in London – I don’t think the memorial has been built yet. The design has merely been selected as the winner from a shortlist of five or six other designs so you’ll have to wait a while before you get the chainsaw out.
“The Crescent of Embrace”…
A Bloody Scar of Dhimmitude.
Alan G
I see that the victims of Islamic terrorism have not yet been Embraced by the Crescent (c. Mark Steyn.) I cannot get my head around this. Leftism/liberalism is plainly a mental illness but the decision to choose this defies belief. If it was Haringay Council making the decision in North London I’d expect nothing else but Mark Steyn is right in describing this gross insult to the dead as an abomination.
So I have to wait, but still nothing else would give me greater satisfaction than to go over and start chopping and sawing. If the people of the United States allow this to stand then we’re in big trouble.
Sorry, Steyn here: http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=21
I’m sorry, but this has pissed me off just about as much as it is possible to piss me off. Steyn is right as usual:
Most of us are all but resigned to losing New York’s Ground Zero memorial to a pile of non-judgmental if not explicitly anti-American pap: The minute you involve big-city politicians and foundations and funding bodies and “artists” you’re on an express chute to the default mode of the cultural elite. But surely it’s not too much to hope that in Pennsylvania the very precise, specific, individual, human scale of one great act of American heroism need not be buried under another soggy dollop of generic prettified passivity. A culture that goes to such perverse lengths to disdain its heroes cannot survive and doesn’t deserve to.
Four years ago, Todd Beamer’s rallying cry was quoted by Presidents and rock stars alike. That’s all that’s needed in that field: the kind of simple dignified memorial you see on small-town commons saluting Civil war veterans, a granite block with the names of the passengers and the words “LET’S ROLL.” The “crescent of embrace”, in its desperation to see no enemies and stand for nothing, represents the precise opposite of Beamer, Glick, Burnett and co: Are you ready, guys? Let’s roll over.
Susan, time to oil the chainsaw and sharpen the axe.
Has anybody heard of a book by Robin Aitken -a former BBC journalist- entitled, Taking Sides: Bias at the BBC ?
Mr Reynolds
Here’s some further calculations on the disastrous failure to use the buses in New Orleans :
http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/007288.html
http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_09_11.html#004819
http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_09_11.html#004820
and Mayor Nagin has no answers :
http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_09_11.html#004809
Also, more on the Governor refusing to let the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army provide food, water and sanitation supplies to the Superdome and the Convention Centre. It gets worse – they were blocked even BEFORE the levee broke :
http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_09_11.html#004814
You will see that nearly all these links are to a single website – the one that originally posted the pictures of the flooded buses, the buses that were not even moved out of the parking lots a few hundred yards to higher ground.
That single website has done a more accurate job of reporting the root causes of the New Orleans disaster than the BBC.
The BBC grossly misinformed us about what happened. But they allowed plenty of ranting against Bush – and it is still going on, including the World Service. “It was all FEMA’s fault, because Bush doesn’t care about black people” is not too far wide of the mark in describing the thrust of the BBC’s overall coverage.
NOWHERE on the BBC have I heard ny dissection of the question of the unused buses and the failure to get people out of the city in what was supposed to be a mandatory evacuation. THAT is the root cause of most of the deaths and distress. And the BBC simply looks the other way.
THIS is the truth of the mtter. The truth that the BBC has avoided tellng us.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/regan_preston200509061439.asp
Pete in London,
I read about the design a couple of days ago and was appalled by the crassness of it. Have a look at this site: http://zombietime.com/flight_93_memorial_project/ (you’ll need to use your anger management skills when viewing).
Interestingly, (according to the blurb on the National Park Service pages: http://www.nps.gov/flni/pphtml/newsdetail19815.html) the design received “overwhelming support from the families of Flight 93”. While members of the families were part of the judging panel, I wonder whether it reflects the views of all?
I would also like to help sponsor your artistic reinterpretation of the death crescent.
I would suggest instead adding a few MORE crescents to make the biohazard symbol.
I hope the Islamohazard symbol will catch on.
LMO
The Aitken book has been mentioned at this blog. Aitken is a former BBC employee who is blowing the lid of the endemic bias at the BBC. The first news was in a Telegraph article.
A quick google search gave various links. I think the best is to Blithering Bunny which carries the whole Telegraph article :
http://blitheringbunny.com/archives/2005/05/15/the-annual-political-tax/
Re: Susan
I’ll meetcha in a certain cornfield in Shankhill, PA with a truckload of Round-up in tow.* Let’s roll!
(*The crescent is to be made of red maple trees; Round-up is a trade name for a very effective herbicide.)
Them suckers are comin’ down!
A defensive idea, but it might just prevent accusations of vandalism:
Why not plant a few more red maple trees around the ‘memorial’ so that it will no longer look like a crescent ?