“I couldn’t help noticing the ridiculous BBC online coverage of the idiotic global warming protest camp at Heathrow over the weekend. The BBC’s coverage sure seemed to me like a veritable propaganda newsletter, complete with maps.”
Ah, but he was not the only one.
Donal Blaney writes on his blog:
“With fawning excitement, the BBC has paid excessive attention to the sordid collection of hippies, pot smokers and anarchists who are protesting at Heathrow Airport against freedom of movement of our citizenry.”
Meanwhile the excellent Weasel writes (with highlighted quotes) about one of the early articles during the protest:
“This is such propagandist, sandal wearing tosh, it is hard to know how to begin, but it is yet another clear demonstration that the BBC has lost all pretense of being neutral about certain issues, the environment being one of their little pets”
But David, in his comment, alludes to a darker side to the protests, and sure enough he is right to- Green Activists Attack Jewish Warehouse- Hoist Palestinian Flag!.
I don’t know what pro-Palestinian gestures and anti-Israeli violence have to do with green issues, but there seems to be something in the mind of protesters that there is such a connection.
It seems to me there is something though which might explain both the BBC’s reticence concerning reporting negative news concerning them, and their positiveness concerning the protests generally.
There is a strong sense in the BBC that such protests are righteous, falling into a long and in their eyes noble tradition of “progressive” protest, and the Beeb throws its moral weight behind them.
Also noted – this protest was supposed to be against carbon emissions – so what where the ecofacists doing protesting outside sizewell A and B Nuclear power plants – the only reliable method of generating electicity without producing tons of carbon dioxide – this protest was nothing to do with even the dubious AGW thoery and everything to do with the ususal demofreak tendency getting themselves publicity
Ed,
Regarding the last paragraph of your post, there’s this interesting piece by Daniel Finkelstein in the Jewish Chronicle:
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s32s35&SecId=35&AId=54677&ATypeId=1
There’s also the matter of the protestors not allowing reporters to enter the camp except as part of organised tours, complete with minder (even more ironically, the minder who accompanied ITV on the first day had a North Korean flag on his satchel). I imagine the BBC would be complaining about freedom of the press and whether “they have something to hide” were this pro-US rather than pro-Green.
Thanks for calling attention to this issue, Ed. Sadly, this is not anywhere near a unique occurrence. There has long been an intimate connection between all these anti-this, anti-that activist groups. I can’t even count the number of marches and demonstrations I’ve seen about garden variety Leftist political issue (anti-World Bank, anti-IMF, anti-Bush, anti-thisIraq war, anti-MMGW) where signs for “Free Palestine” or “Israel = Apartheid” signs are proudly brandished side by side with the slogans for the political issue of the day.
It got so bad at one point that the lead neo-Marxist of the US, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the Daily Kos had to tell his followers to quit waving Pally flags at anti-Republican political rallies, as it was a distraction from the issue at hand.
I’m sure you’ve all seen it at every anti-thisIraq war or anti-World Bank in London in the last few years. This is not a mystery. International ANSWER, one of the key groups behind many of the anti-US, and anti-IMF-type demonstrations in Europe and the US, are actually offspring of the Communist Party. Says so in their website. And they’re also the first ones in line to demonstrate against Israel, seeing as how the “R” in ANSWER supposedly stands for “racism”. As there is no “I” for “irony”, one assumes it’s lost on them.
And the BBC hides it from you. It’s important to note that this was not just a guy carrying a sign way in the back of the crowd. Nor was this a separate act perpetrated by persons totally independent of the happy campers at Heathrow. The BBC even defended the act with a lie. The lie was probably told by whichever leftoid wastrel got the first quote out, yet the BBC repeated it blindly, even after a Palestinian flag was raised on the grounds of the Israeli company. Any connection with such an act and the cause of defending against man-made global warming is a delusion.
I know it seems like the needle on my phonograph is stuck, but I repeat: What kind of hiring standards produce editors that deliberately (there can be no other word for it) hide a rather major pro-Palestinian act of vandalism in the middle of a demonstration about their beloved MMGW?
“What kind of hiring standards produce editors that deliberately (there can be no other word for it) hide a rather major pro-Palestinian act of vandalism in the middle of a demonstration about their beloved MMGW?”
Very low ones since they are mostly recruited via the Gaurniad…..
I’m actually rather glad that this has turned out to be the usual rent-a-mob crowd of leftist nutcases. What worried me was the participation of some semi-respectable NIMBY types. Now that it’s clear they’ve just been duped into providing a smokescreen, the thoughtful observer will be more convinced than ever that AGW is simply the latest “loony left” bandwagon, and therefore nothing to get too worked up about.
So I propose a hearty vote of thanks to the BBC for providing them with all this negative publicity. Alhough I’m sure that wasn’t the intention.
max | 20.08.07 – 8:49 pm |
That Finkelstein article in the JC is brilliant. I have read it a couple of times and still can’t work out whether he is serious or if he is having the one of the most delightfully sly digs at the BBC I have ener seen. Whatever, it is essential reading for all B-BBC regulars.
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s32s35&SecId=35&AId=54677&ATypeId=1
The sad thing though is that the anti-everything, soap-dodging ne’er-do-well squatters that the BBC has been waiting on hand and foot in their ‘climate camp’ have diminished, in the eyes of the country, the case for reining in the expansion of Heathrow – local people in West London have a legitimate case against the building of a third LHR runway, with flightpaths over swathes of central and west London, causing blight, almost non-stop aircraft noise and high levels of pollution for millions of Londoners.
There was an interesting programme on BBC2 on Monday 18th February – interesting for more than one reason.
”The Twenties in Colour: The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn’ had some fascinating moving colour photography of pre-World War 11 Palestine. We were shown scenes of the life of ordinary Arabs in the area, and heard first-hand stories of how they related well with the Jews who were living there at the time.Then we were told the story of the Balfour Declaration which promised the Jews a homeland there.There were shots of Jews celebrating Balfour at the foundation of the University.
We were told much about the joy of the Zionists as their dreams of the restitution of Israel, promised in the Bible and brought to reality by Balfour, a Christian Zionist, came true.
But while the Zionists rejoiced, their happiness was, we were told, at the expense of ‘the nightmarish experience of dispossesion for others.’
I have listened to the BBC for I suppose 50 years, more or less solidly, but, do you know, I have never once heard or seen any programme devoted to the ‘nightmarish experience of dispossession’ of the British people of their homeland, thanks to mass immigration.
How is it that this organisation, the BBC, which has so competely and totally betrayed the people of this country, the people who rely on it to give an honest and objective account of Britain today, and who are taxed to keep it in being, is allowed to get away with its fraudulent, total cultural marxist bias?
Isn’t it high time this oppressor of the people was ‘consigned to the dust-bin of history?’