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Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:
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United by anti-Semitism, the bigots of the academic Left and Muslim fundamentalism are destroying freedom of thought in this country.
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/8463/Leo+McKinstry
The BBC and its love of the ‘H’ Word. (Hezbollah)
Hezbollah’s secret nectarines
In southern Lebanon, where the Israeli army and Hezbollah fighters fought last year, an uneasy peace reigns. But as Darius Bazargan reports, Hezbollah remains a force to be reckoned with.
(Yes the BBC reports on how powerful its Islamic masters really are. Nothing about how so many of its trained terrorists were slotted by those nasty Jews. Terrorist which it could not afford to lose. Hence the image that they are more powerful than they ever have been. The BBC and have you been duped)
……………………………
They are the secret bunkers of Hezbollah, recently abandoned by the Shia Islamist guerrillas after last year’s ceasefire took hold. You can find them in amongst the cluster bombs and debris of war. I spent many a sweaty day stumbling up and down the precarious slopes of Lebanese mountains, looking for such heavily disguised sites for a documentary I was filming.
(Err Darius (Nice Persian name that) if the place is crawling with cluster munitions can you please explain how you had no problem searching around without losing your legs. I mean if somebody says minefield to me.I keep well away)
……………………………………………….
As we drove into the misty mountains, my trusty driver Dawoud – himself a Hezbollah supporter from south Beirut – regaled me with stories about how “The Party of God” dealt with espionage during last summer’s war.
(Trusty BBC???)
…………………..
Live minefields spread out as far as the eye could see, the earth was also seeded with unexploded and unmapped cluster bombs.
But you had no problem searching those bunkers Darius?)
……………..
“We are not forcing Christian or Druze off their land,” one Hezbollahi insisted. “We’re offering them a good price. They’re moving of their own free will. Anyone can buy land here,”
And when the Jews buy land off Muslims in Israel, the BBC calls it theft)
……….
Hezbollah were not building new bunker networks, missile bases or anything military, he said. They were, in fact, moving into fruit production. “We are going to import nectarine plants from Italy,” he said. “Then we will sell our fruits on the world market. It is most important you tell the world what we are doing.”
I’m sure that Hezbollah will have no problem exporting its fruits. I mean the number of muslims from that neck of the woods seeking asylum for being gay rises every year
……………..
It was completely unprofessional of me. But I was in such a hurry to get home safely, that I forgot to ask him whether or not Hezbollah’s nectarines were going to be grown organically.
(But BBC, fruits that are flown into the country from abroad aren’t organic. You only have to ask Mandelson about his Brazil nuts.(Yes I know it’s a seed. But Mandy loves to succeed))
Dons to consider Israeli boycott
“Dons” gives them a nice air of respectability doesn’t it?
Academics have backed calls for a wide-ranging debate on a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
The University and College Union (UCU) was urged, at its annual conference, to consider the “moral implications” of links with Israeli universities.
There’s a whole page of views from people who support the boycott, mostly young “Claptonians” and “Islingtonians” by the looks of them, then by way of ‘balance’ we have just this:
Higher education minister Bill Rammell said he was “very disappointed” at the vote.
“I profoundly believe this does nothing to promote the Middle East peace process. In fact the reverse.”
The vote has also horrified the Israeli government and Jewish groups in the UK.
Israeli education minister Yuli Tamir claimed students at an Israeli college were being “bombarded by Palestinian Qassam rockets every day”.
He “claimed” but the BBC seems not to be very convinced.
Try this:
From Gaza to rocket-battered kibbutz
Qassam hits Sderot building
I hope their boycott jumps up and bites them in the arse:
Research foundation blocks new grants for Britons
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“Now, yet another Oscar Winner is linked with pro-Palestinian propaganda. Oscar winner Helen Mirren (who spent a career bearing her crotch for all the world to see) is being lined up to star in a film set in Gaza, about a woman whose journalist daughter falls in love with a Palestinian and gets killed.
But don’t you worry, this won’t be a movie against the Palestinians and their own special brand of terrorism. It’s being produced by pro-Palestinian brits, so you can bet it will be very sympathetic to this terrorism-loving people. Bet that the death of the daughter is somehow a Zionist Israeli plot . . . just like Israel is being blamed for the current, real-life kidnapping of a pro-Palestinian BBC “journalist” by Palestinian terrorists”.
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2007/05/yet_another_osc.html
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Israeli education minister Yuli Tamir claimed students at an Israeli college were being “bombarded by Palestinian Qassam rockets every day”.
Yuli Tamir said a heck of a lot more, but the BBC gave all its available space to pro-boycott vegetarian, anarchist, antisemitic tree-huggers.
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3406955,00.html
Poor timing; flawed logic
British boycott approved while rockets rain down on Israeli schools
Yuli Tamir
There is considerable irony in the fact that now of all times, while Qassam rockets are raining down on Sderot schools and on Sapir College, not only does Britain’s University and College Union (UCU) not find it appropriate to express its support for Israeli students forced to endure incessant life-threatening attacks • but it has also chosen this particular time to announce its call for a boycott of Israel’s academic institutions.
The use of an academic boycott as a weapon is fundamentally offensive, because it strips the academy of one of its most unique traits • freedom of thought and the freedom to choose academic partnerships. The freedom to work with any researcher at any time in the aim of expanding common knowledge is one of the basic principles of academic work. When an academic does not select a partner according to research interests but according to political identity, he strips himself of the academic robe and becomes a politician whose stances outweigh curiosity.
Academic institutions driven by political objectives not only demonstrate a basic lack of understanding of academic meaning but also social and historical ignorance. The chances of an academic boycott changing Israel’s policies – or any other country for that matter – are negligible. The risk that such a boycott would adversely affect the “proponents of openness and dialogue” are far greater.
A “successful” boycott isolates and weakens those who the boycott is supposed to encourage; a failed boycott sparks anger and emboldens those it aims to weaken.
In light of the above, the current boycott will inevitably fail. As in previous cases, I have no doubt that the British government, as well as the best of British universities will not adhere to the principles stipulated by the boycott.
Israel’s academic institutions are strong enough to deal with the boycott. All that will remain of it in the future will be further evidence of the extent of foolhardiness embodied in a one-sided view and in the inability of those who are supposed to be open-minded to do what’s right with the freedom their status grants them.
Yuli Tamir is Israel’s education minister
BBC News 24 had Huw Edwards repeatedly saying of Lugovoi“The man Britain wants”
The UK (sic) said the matter was a criminal rather than an intelligence matter.
The UK (sic) has requested Mr Lugovoi’s extradition in connection with the crime.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6706921.stm
This is such sloppy reporting . The CPS of England and Wales surely, I was unaware that Scotland or the Scottish COPFS wanted him?
I notice too that the BBC with its “Excerpts: Lugovoi news conference” page
Has left out his revelations about how easy it was to buy political asylum, and doesn’t seem to think that this is of interest! I heard something about a Civil Liberties Foundation, and names named.
They are inviting “specialist academics” on who are nonchalantly saying this is all a “typical smokescreen”.
BBC doesn’t like ISLAMOPHOBIA but loves RUSSOPHOBIA
Israeli education minister Yuli Tamir claimed students at an Israeli college were being “bombarded by Palestinian Qassam rockets every day”.
He “claimed” but the BBC seems not to be very convinced.
Biodegradable | 31.05.07 – 6:40 pm
Should be She “claimed” but the BBC seems not to be very convinced.
Sorry madam minister 🙁
I really think that all of this anti-American lunacy, currently infecting the UK, can be laid at the feet of the BBC and the British press. For the most part (with certain exceptions, including the Telegraph) the UK is home to the most fanatically anti-American press this side of North Korea.
I vividly remember how, in the immediate hours following the 11 September attacks, the BBC hosted ‘question time’ type shows where a former American ambassador was basically heckled off the stage by an audience that had been intentionally recruited to be almost all muslim.
While the French are supposed to be the most virulent foes of the US, French newspapers after the 9/11 attacks were filled with articles of sympathy and denunciations of the act. I recall reading an article in Le Monde (hardly a pro-US paper) that almost made me cry because it was so magnanimous and filled with sympathy. By contrast, UK papers such as the Guardian and the Independent were filled with articles attacking US foreign policy.
I understand that there is, of course, a place for such criticism, but the British press commenced their assaultive articles on 12 September, before the smoke had even cleared.
By the way, the BBC’s Israeli education minister Yuli Tamir claimed students at an Israeli college were being “bombarded by Palestinian Qassam rockets every day”. is yet another example of their deceptive use, or abuse, of “quotes”.
As seen above her exact words are, “while Qassam rockets are raining down on Sderot schools and on Sapir College”.
Pedantic? Yes, but it’s wrong in my opinion to attribute to a minister “in quotes” something other than what she actually said.
Words are important, the minister weighed hers caefully, the BBC should have shown her the courtesy of quoting her accurately or else using reported speech.
From tonight’s Newsnight newsletter:
AFGHANISTAN
We have a powerful film from Alastair Leithead on the often forgotten story of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
Puhleeeeeeeeeese!
All we ever hear about are civilian casualties in Afghanistan!
BBC2 have just shown “This World -Hunting For Hezbollah”.
It seemed to me that it gave an honest assessment of Hezbollah’s strengths & intentions.
The reporter visited the Bekaa Valley to investigate rumours that Hezbollah were constructing bases for rockets, having sufficient range to overfly the hippy UNFIL troops on the Lebanon-Israeli border.
They found large earth moving vehicles. They were “arrested” by Hezbollah, who told the reporter that they were just producing nectarines.
Hezbollah were obviously so encouraged by the regular fruit farm stories during last summer’s war,
(e.g. “The raid on the Lebanese village of Qaa, on the northern tip of the Bekaa Valley, hit a vegetable warehouse where farm workers were loading produce, local civil defence officials said.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5245884.stm )
that they are sticking with their story.
The “This World” reporter didn’t believe a word of it.
I wonder if the BBC News reports will again be so unquestioning of Hezbollah press releases in the next border war.
“climate change sceptics” No JR they are not “climate change sceptics” – This is the problem with proaganda. Not one scientists paper that I have read denies climate change – they are “sceptical” on the man made bit.
I notice the BBC do this a lot they tar someone with a label like “climate change sceptic” which inevitably makes them out to be idiots. How can anyone deny “climate change”? The climate has always changed.
While we are on the subject can you ask one of your collegues in the “science” department to explain how the Germans are going to reduce the temperature of the planet by 2 °C? by cutting 50% carbon (they realy mean CO2)emmisions ?.
“Lindzen states explicitly that a doubling from 300ppmv to 600ppmv of atmospheric carbon dioxide would result in only 0.5 °C warming. Rather obviously, Lindzen’s calculations do not suggest a particularly large greenhouse influence on post-Industrial Revolution temperatures and, significantly, this does not include clouds, so CO2 would really only be a fraction of the total effect shown”
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
New Statesman editorial 17 September 2001
“Look at the picture of Americans running from the 9/11 explosions. American bond traders, you may say, are as undeserving of terror as Vietnamese peasants. Well, yes and no. America has democracy; if it often seems a greedy and overweening power, that is partly because its people have willed it.”
The irony of Minister Yuli Tamir protesting the proposed academic boycott of Israel is that she is as nutty a left-winger as anyone. She is also coincidentally a PhD in Political Philosophy from Oxford.
As a founder of Peace Now she is at least indirectly responsible for an organization whose major activity is providing propaganda for Israel’s enemies.
Read her paper Hands Off Female Circumcision and decide if you would want such a person as education minister of any country, let alone one at war.
But when is the body improved and when is it mutilated? In most cases, the answer depends on one’s conception of beauty.
Yuli Tamir (apart from the accident of being a minister in an Israeli government) has the world view of a typical writer for Independent, The Guardian or the BBC
Biodegradable | 31.05.07 – 5:32 pm:
John Reith | 31.05.07 – 5:11 pm
was not the John Reith you know but don’t love.
Same IP address, but not me. Mischievous friend. Have read riot act. Won’t happen again.
John Reith | 31.05.07 – 5:19 pm
ROTFL!
So it’s true!
There is a whole office at the BBC dedicated to watching and trolling this site!
(PS: my bet is it was the Bullshitting Detective)
Biodegradable, your observation coincides exactly with mine from the previous open thread:
Jonathan Boyd Hunt:
David Gregory: [as in David Gregory (BBC)]
David, you’ve just had your The Great Escape “Good luck” moment at the railway station. Your mask just slipped way past your knees. You betray knowledge of my distant exchanges with John Reith that is far too intimate for the supposed casual, reasonable, passer-by that you portray yourself to be.
Biodegradable:
It seems to me that these trolls are (unconsciously) betraying more and more, that they are in fact in communication with one another outside the B-BBC forum.
Which means that the trolls are a product of an organised response to the threat that B-BBC poses.
What you say?
‘Same IP address, but not me. Mischievous friend. Have read riot act. Won’t happen again.’
John Reith | 31.05.07 – 5:19 pm
LOL
132.185.136.103
netname: BBC
descr: British Broadcasting Corporation
descr: This address space is used for BBC Staff members accessing the internet.
Brannigan27.
Anonymous | 31.05.07 – 7:04 pm:
Thank you for providing me with an apposite opening. Yes, your memory serves you well. The BBC Question Time programme following 9/11, whose audience was stuffed to the rafters with embittered radical Muslim American-haters, was reported upon by the Daily Mail here:
How the BBC Shamed Britain
Four weeks later, the BBC’s then Head of News Richard Sambrook explained away to the Daily Telegraph the Beeb’s perverse loading of the Question Time audience by citing the fact that “There wasn’t a view expressed in that programme that hadn’t been written in the Press that week.”
For “Press” read “Guardian”.
Here’s how it works: The Guardian (and Indi) airs opinion attacking forces for good (U.S.A.) and championing forces of evil (murderous swivel-eyed nutcases). Oh-so-impartial Beeb selects said seditious views for airing while suppressing commonsense decent opinion of Mr American-appreciative Regular Bloke.
The Beeb and The Guardian have been working their double act since at least the mid-1970s and they probably go further back than that.
deegee | 31.05.07 – 9:34 pm
Thanks for that info, I had no idea. However I still think the BBC should properly quote people.
Which means that the trolls are a product of an organised response to the threat that B-BBC poses.
What you say?
Jonathan Boyd Hunt | 31.05.07 – 9:40 pm
I would hate to be accused of being a paranoid conspiracy theorist ;-/
deegee | 31.05.07 – 9:34 pm
I was interested in your post about
Israeli Minister Yuli Tamir.
Read her paper Hands Off Female Circumcision and decide if you would want such a person as education minister of any country
From your tone here, I was expecting to find that Tamir was defending female circumcision. Instead, she says this:
Clitoridectomy is obviously a deplorable practice. It is, among other things, an extremely painful, traumatizing mutilation of young girls that leaves them permanently disfigured and deprived of sexual enjoyment. We should express no sympathy toward those who practice it, and support those who struggle to end it.
Well, I wouldn’t argue with that. She is clearly unambiguously opposed to the practice.
Not that a passing reader of your post would have got that impression. Because the quotation you used to illustrate her argument gave exactly the opposite impression:
But when is the body improved and when is it mutilated? In most cases, the answer depends on one’s conception of beauty.
She does use some of these words in her article. But not about genital mutilation. You have ….er….mutilated….her sentence to spin a meaning that wasn’t there in the original.
Let’s put her words back in context:
But when is the body improved and when is it mutilated? Are parents who force their children to wear braces mutilating their children’s teeth or improving them? In most cases, the answer depends on one’s conception of beauty. Because we tend to see straight, white teeth as beautiful, and a sign of good health, we spend lots of money inflicting pain and inconvenience upon our children to achieve this goal.
Aha! The words related to dental braces, not female circumcision!
If you misrepresent BBC stories (as much to yourself as to others) in the same way as you misrepresent this woman’s argument • then no wonder you find ‘bias’ where no such bias exists.
To my family, my family… [audio cuts off abruptly].
[An on-screen caption says: “BBC refused to take this message to his family.”]
Why did the BBC agree to accept all of the propaganda instead?
john | 01.06.07 – 12:36 pm | #
It’s difficult to say why the BBC did this. Very strange, that they reached an editing agreement with the Army of Islam. I’ve never seen this before where the BBC decides what should be left in and what should be left out of a video demand made by kidnappers. It might be a smokescreen one of those cunning Russian tactics of spreading disinformation and the truth of the matter is that the BBC didn’t refuse to take any message whatsoever. But, then why should the Army of Islam make a point of telling the world that the BBC refused to take a message to his family. Sounds to me that there are considerable backroom deals going on and that the BBC is negotiating. What other conclusion can one draw?
John Reith:
The point of Yuli Tamir’s article was not to defend female circumcision. The point was to refuse to justify steps against it because opposition to it was personal and cultural, not absolute. You could replace female circumcision with wife-beating, honour killings, sex with 9 year old children, beheading prisoners of war, death penalty for apostates or anything currently frowned on in British culture, to the point of being forbidden by law, and the argument would be the same.
It is inline with the postmodern hypothesis that no values are absolute but must be seen as reflections of a particular culture or individual. Forcing a child into dental braces morally equivalent to female circiumcision. If all values are equal effectively there are no values.
I was always taught that a teacher has three jobs: to inform; to train and to instill values. What possible values could Yuli Tamir promote when any value she might believe is negated by anyone else’s values?
Such arguments can and are expressed in today’s universities but are completely inappropriate in a Government Minister. Whether Yuli Tamir (the academic)is appalled by female circumcision is irrelevant if Yuli Tamir (the minister) is not intellectually capable of using her position to educate against the practise.
It is cowardice masquerading as intellectualism.
Apropos Nigel Wrench, and the story of his arrest and charging and being suspended from the PM programme not being reported on BBC News, I wrote to Feedback about it on the same day that the BBC did report the arrest and charging of two named London police officers for possessing indecent images of children.
I just got the standard auto response and there was no mention in today’s programme – which appeared to have less serious isues to discuss
Matt.
deegee | 01.06.07 – 2:25 pm,
As I was reading Reith’s triumphant “expose” (10:31 am) of your 31.05.07 – 9:34 pm post, I could see where he was misinterpreting what you had said. Knowing a bit about the extraordinary moral equivalence rut into which much of academia worldwide has fallen, I couldn’t agree more with your response.
A few days ago I came across Reith’s scathing attack on those on this blog who defend Israel:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/1195663365858000750/#350688
I will respond soonish. I found it interesting that Reith feels that if he succeeds in discrediting us in one area he will thereby cast doubt on all our criticisms of the BBC.
Alan Johnston’s latest report for the BBC is very good, shame about the picture quality.
Oh its a hostage tape.
Hard to tell the difference between what the Islamic fundies had him read out and what the BBC spouts in its news.
John Reith | 01.06.07 – 10:31 am | #
Don’t be such a d*ckhead. If you’re going to cherrypick then at least pick the whole cherry.
You used to put up a brave fight but you really do clutch at straws these days. I feel sorry for you.
The main BBC 6:00 pm News on Radio 4 announces the unveiling of the London 2012 logo. It’s wonderful (according to an ecstatic Lord Coe) but in a, what, 2 minute segment, we are not told how much it cost – not bias perhaps but certainly crap reporting.
BTW the figure charged by design consultancy Wolff Olins for this childish daub was, as reported here, £400,000: makes the licence tax look (almost) reasonable.