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Quentin Letts in The Mail says this of Labour backbenchers latest fad
Labour hecklers, making high-pitched whooping noises. A new trend, this, and one to be discouraged
This is the same racket that has been adopted by the audience of “Question Time” – how strange!
Will: Yes and they did it when Clegg pointed out that over 1 million people won’t even get back what the fat one eyed jock took from them in the first place.
Labour don’t give a shit about the working class, all they care about is winning an election to keep their fat salaries, nice pension and the John Lewis catalogue. All backed up by the BBC.
The sinister TV licence advertisement shows how we have become slaves of the database state
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3933535.ece
Unfortunately we are acquiring cultures who take direct action.The toytown Gestapo should watch out,some of them learned their trade in Mogadishu,Afghanistan and Chechnya.
Matt Frei is just wrapping up his latest hour of his so-called BBC World News America with a news brief on Lucian Freud’s ‘Benefits Supervisor Sleeping’ which has just been sold at auction for over $33.6 million, a record for a living artist. We see video footage of the painting (a large painting of a large woman), then it’s back to the studio as Frei gets in this quip:
“Clearly the recession isn’t there for all of us.”
I won’t pass judgment on the tone of his delivery or the expression on his face, as anything I say can be dismissed as being too subjective. But the intent of the words is plain in the text itself.
So, I will just ask any and all BBC employees: is this bit of editorial comment acceptable behavior or not?
Memo for BBC:
Police wrong on Channel 4’s ‘Undercover Mosque’:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=566438&in_page_id=1773
Reluctantly, the BBC has been forced to discuss:-
“Who is behind the India bombings?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7401573.stm
Although self-censorship by the BBC, for its UK readership, of the words, ‘JIHAD’ and ‘JIHADISTS’ normally applies, as approved by the Labour Government, such omissions prove glaringly inadequate in this context.
This BBC report finds that it has to report the murderous activities of the Islamic group, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami.
That’s really good news, George R. If the police had won that case, Britain would have been that much closer to the status of a third world country with a paralysed media and citizens living in fear of the police and government.
Meanwhile, World Have Your Say has been up to its usual adolescent tricks, turning its collective nose up at George Bush. But at least they published this:
This earthquake is a major disaster and certainly worthy of coverage. But you covered it on WHYS earlier in the week so I’m wondering why it is necessary to cover it again now. It’s not like there were no other major news stories in the world on Wednesday. For example, President George Bush arrived in Israel. Here was the president of the most powerful country on earth visiting one of the major hot spots on this planet and it was not newsworthy enough?
Now I’m not one for conspiracy theories but I was amazed that back in January when the president visited Israel WHYS chose to concentrate instead on the Democratic Party primaries (totally ignoring the
Republican primaries, but I’m digressing). So here we had the the president’s visit completely ignored in favour of the very beginning of a contest to choose the next president. And the the BBC in general could not have given the visit less coverage.
Now I see that tonight you have chosen this topic: “Who should protect the Amazon rainforest?”
Has a memo gone out, guys. We know you don’t like him, but are you deliberately snubbing President Bush?
http://worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/has-international-pressure-changed-china/#comment-23020
Bit on the Beeb London news last night (10:20 or so) about another vicar being beaten up in east london by “youths”.
The East London Advertise has managed to dig up some more details on said “youths”:
http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/content/towerhamlets/advertiser/news/story.aspx?brand=elaonline&category=news&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsela&itemid=WeED09%20May%202008%2013%3A36%3A42%3A987
Watched “Child of our Time” last night. This series is rapidly exposing itself as a vehicle for Gramscian brainwashing of the viewers.
In the early series the programmes were based more on genuine “science”. Viewers werre readily sucked in to its soporific presentation. Watching violent movies really does make kids violent it seemed (in much the same way as watching Thomas the Tank Engine really does turn kids into train drivers).
Now we are at series 8 and any attempt at “science” (even contraversial science presented as ‘fact’) has been abandoned. We were told all about the evils of SATs. Rather conveniently, as this is SATs week (and the BBC News has already taken plenty of opportunity to have a dig at SATs already this week). Our kids cannot cope with SATs! They are under too much pressure! We are damaging them! It seems that SATs are rather more damaging than watching you mother die slowly of cancer, as young Eve had to endure. Well grow up child, stop your whinging – you come from a middle class family. Middle class families don’t have problems! SATs are far more stressful than bereavement!
Well maybe I’m a bad dad. So I’m open minded. I ask my two sons what they think of SATs. They are most at risk of damage from SATs according to Robert Winston, because they are in the top group in class. My sons tell me I’ve lost the plot. SATs are easy – but a bit boring. No, they aren’t under any pressure from SATs. Relationships with friends and girlfriends are top of their list of gripes.
As I drop the kids off at school today, the other children are playing happily as ever in the playground. Nothing seems very different because SATs are going on. Indeed, if SATS are so awful, why do schools have so many of them? The government only imposes SATs twice – but schools usually hold mock SATs in the other years to monitor the children’s progress.
SATs are very unpopular with the most left-wing of the teaching unions the NUT, of course. They don’t like SATs because SATs are used to monitor teaching performance, and in my experience the weakest teachers tend to be members of the NUT. They would rather not be monitored. So no surprise that the Beeboids are brainwashing people into toeing the Guardianista/NUT line that SATs are the worst kind of evil. The BBC are, after all, rather more left-wing than NuLabour.
My wife accused me of being too cynical, until I pointed out that Professor Robert Winston is not a child psychologist but a fertility expert that knows nothing very much about growing kids. He does know a lot about socialism, being a Labour peer with close connections with the Labour Party.
Child of Our Time is also an Open University programme, so the Gramscian brainwashing is destined to be perpetrated on another generation of academics.
Meanwhile parents this week will be watching their kids go through SATs and wondering if they really are as bad as Professor Lord Robert Winston made out. No doubt many will ask the questions I did today. I expect they will come to the conclusion that the BBC are once again talking a load of balls. The kids, meanwhile, can relax and take the rest of term off – the teachers are no longer interested in doing much real teaching once SATs are done and dusted!
Memo for BBC:
Police wrong on Channel 4’s ‘Undercover Mosque’:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=566438&in_page_id=1773
George R | 15.05.08 – 6:49 am
Yes indeed – and let’s remind ourselves about what “John Reith” once had to say about that very same programme:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/1502687126413285216/#366578
But now PC Plod has to stump up £100G. Seems the programme was a bit more reliable than “an RDF showreel” after all.
Well done Channel 4 for (a) running the investigation in the first place while al-Beeb continues to downplay the Jihadis in our midst and (b) for not being cowed by the pathetic politically correct witch hunt attempted by the promulgators of multi-culturalism.
well spotted byan and anonymous.
al beeb went mad on this story – i recall it was number 2 on the 6 pm and 10 pm news last year.
the complete capitulation by the politcally correct inspector knacker – anil patani and the cps lawyer bethan david is very nice to see.
the beeb coverage of this story is of course buried away in the entertainment section.
at the time of this story surfacing last year al beeb linked it to their own story re the reediting of the queen. the insunuation was that “all media get found out form time to time”.
clearly a victory for common sense today.
what about disciplinary action against bethan david and anil patani for wasting £15k of taxpayers money?
excellent post from Ryan.
I am suprised this blog hasnt highlighted the BBCs approach to downing street to make GB “more popular than Alan Sugar” by getting him involved with a political apprentice.
Operation save Gordon is in full swing.
RE: Dispatches ‘Undercover Mosque’
More to the point • now that the police have accepted that the production team did not fake or overly edit the content of this programme • when can we expect charges to be levied against the imams concerned?
Moreover, when will the BBC launch a similar investigation into the preachers of hate still at work in our local mosques? After all, haven’t we heard on a number of occasions elsewhere, that the BBC has a duty to promote multi-culturalism and don’t radical firebrand preachers undermine that goal?
If so, why doesn’t the BBC spend some of its vast revenue investigating and exposing the lies told by these men? Wouldn’t it be in all our interests • Christians, Jews, Atheists, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh and Hindu alike [sorry if I missed anybody out] to expose such evil men? Remember we are repeatedly told that these guys are distorting the true peaceful message of Allah. So wouldn’t the BBC be doing the ROP a favour by commissioning such a programme? So why the ambivalence to this subject? Why no panorama special etc..?
“So wouldn’t the BBC be doing the ROP a favour by commissioning such a programme? So why the ambivalence to this subject? Why no panorama special etc..?”
Because there is no ROP.
“when can we expect charges to be levied against the imams concerned? ”
Never, hopefully. Freedom of speech either means that or it doesn’t mean anything at all.
I suggest a discriminatory immigration policy, and a campaign at home on why Islam is wrong and false.
Ryan
Your opinion on SATs (actually NCTs) is totally wrong. SATs do not monitor teacher performance-They only monitor 1.which teachers can drill the children the most,(at the expense of all other subjects, by the way) 2.which teachers have the most middle class of families in their intake.
3. which teachers have the least number of children with special needs.
The reason why SATs are despised by the majority of the teaching profession (not just NUT) has nothing to do with being Nu-Labour or any other political motive.
The fact that your bright kids are not stressed, but a bit bored, has everything to do with it. Of course they’re bored. They’ve been doing paractice tests since February. And probably not much else.
It’s the less able kids who are stressed out- they know they can’t access much of the test, and become despondent and depressed about it.
At age 10/11. Do you really think that’s a good thing?
And the reason schools do it? Because they, they Head Teachers, the local Authority, and hence , teachers, are all given targets to aim for. If they do not achieve those targets, they are then targeted by OFSTED as being under-achieving/unsatisfactory, and then maybe subject to closure.
Of course those types of achools, with an immigrant population,or in deprived areas, are under enormous pressure to equal the achievement of ‘middle class’ schools.
And the reason schools test EVERY year, is because they have to track the progress of every child, and prove they are making ‘2 sub-levels’ of progress every year. There is computerised data checking up on the progress of each cohort of children which has to be checked each year in order for schools to ‘prove’ their ‘value-added’ scores.
And teachers actually look forward to the time after SATs so that they can do some real teaching.
The REAL problem is that education has become so politicised. All parties are guilty.
Believe me. I know the BBC is biased.
But you can’t blame the BBC for this one.
I remember last year when Republican candidate (at the time) Mike Huckabee was interviewed on BBC World News by Katty Kay. Most of the media had been giving Huckabee a hard time about being too Christian, too much of a Bible-banger, and the BBC played along. During that interview, Katty actually told Huckabee that people were afraid of his overt religious leanings, and that the country didn’t want anyone too reliant on their religious beliefs to be President.
I also remember when some BBC talking head (Paxman? I forget) snickering when he asked Tony Blair if he had prayed with George Bush during some visit.
Obama’s religious background (or, at the very least, certain figures in his religious background) has been a great topic of discussion everywhere, including here. Obama is presented as a believer, a regular church-goer, and has spoken glowingly of how he found Jesus and all that. But, strangely, nobody is ever critical of that. The only criticism we are allowed to hear about Obama and religion is when idiots are quoted (they always manage to find one) saying they think Obama was Muslim.
When Huckabee made a campaign commercial with a bookshelf in the background, part of which resembled a cross, everybody was up in arms about religious pandering, and he was doing too much in-your-face Christian noise. I can’t find any BBC reference to it, but I do remember very clearly Katty Kay’s essentially insulting the strength of his Christian belief, as well as other BBC talking head criticizing Christians (never, ever Muslims) for being too religious.
Now, Obama has done a blatantly Christian campaign ad. Everyone should read the words on the ad, and all BBC employees should ask themselves if any of their colleagues will now be as critical of Obama for being overtly religious as they were of Huckabee or President Bush.
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/double_standards_for_politicians_and_religion/
Anybody think Justin Webb will have anything to say about this on his blog? Yeah, right.
Re: WoAD
I acknowledge your freedom of speech argument, but in all civilised societies there is and always has been limits e.g. would it be acceptable for someone to enter a packed auditorium and shout fire, just for kicks? I would say no • it could cause needless injury.
Moreover, at the moment the law is quite clear • you cannot incite racial (or homophobic) hatred. Now you may disagree with the law and you are free to campaign for a change in that law • but whilst these provisions remain on the statute books, shouldn’t we all be held accountable to the same standards? If I had repeated some of the remarks that ‘Despatches’ showed these Imams making at speakers corner • how long do you think it would have taken before the Old Bill came to arrest me? Why should these guys be seen to be above the law? Moreover, why aren’t these questions being asked by the BBC? Ordinarily you’d have thought that the BBC would have sided with their fellow journalists • along the lines of • organ of the state [CPS and police] try to prosecute and shut down a legitimate line of investigative journalism • so why the comparative silence?
As for your view on the ROP • fair comment, but it does diverge from the narrative that the BBC usually tries to promote. So my original questions still stands • why doesn’t the BBC try to help out the moderate Muslim population by exposing the extremists in their ranks and showing them for what they are? After all, I’m a Roman Catholic and rather than condemn Journalists for exposing Paedophile priests, I think that in the long-run they have done my church and humanity a favour, by exposing this problem to the light of day.
“Anybody think Justin Webb will have anything to say about this on his blog”
Of course not, as the true marxists at the BBC, they “know” that Obama is only saying that to fool the unenlightened sheeple. Like them, they know that Obama only worships one Lord and that is a government run by liberals.
Of course Obama is a “christian” who lead opposition in Illinois to a bill which required medical aide be given to babies who survived an abortions procedure alive.
Jonathan Hall | Homepage | 15.05.08 – 5:32 pm |
As for your view on the ROP • fair comment, but it does diverge from the narrative that the BBC usually tries to promote. So my original questions still stands • why doesn’t the BBC try to help out the moderate Muslim population by exposing the extremists in their ranks and showing them for what they are? After all, I’m a Roman Catholic and rather than condemn Journalists for exposing Paedophile priests, I think that in the long-run they have done my church and humanity a favour, by exposing this problem to the light of day.
I’m afraid the long lost John Reith has given us some insight into why they’ll never do any such thing. Reith had been trying to convince us for a long time that these extremists were merely an extreme minority (to coin a phrase) amongst the Muslim population in the UK, and that highlighting this was only going to piss the rest of them off even more. We should just shut about it, Reith told us, and let the BBC get on with its social cohesion programmes.
Nick Reynolds has said similar things, but hasn’t been nearly as up front about it as Reith was on a couple occasions.
In short, the BBC seriously believe the ostrich policy is best. Although, it’s an ostrich that has its head in the sand while broadcasting pro-Islam propaganda out its ass.
RE: David Preiser
I fear you might be right David; the BBC does seem to have taken an ostrich like approach to this problem. But I can’t for the life of me understand, why?
If they truly believe in multiculturalism and tolerance, then why not expose the purveyors of intolerance and violence? These radical Imams are opposed to everything that the BBC supposedly holds so dear. Perhaps the journalists and broadcasters at the BBC have simply been frightened into silence. So much for there claims of journalistic conviction.
From where I stand, it just seems so illogical. Perhaps someone from the BBC could enlighten me.
“Freedom of speech either means that or it doesn’t mean anything at all”
Which is pretty much why and how Weimar fell. Fascist propaganda and racist hate speech and so on have no place in a democracy not hell-bent on suicide. Democratic systems have no obligation to allow themselves to be undermined: quite the contrary.
Can anyone ever remember a negative story about Moozlums on the BBC?
I notice the BBC have been running this warm cuddly prgramm on BBC 2 about a Moozlum woman in Yemen and how she need sto “update” her black Moozlum clothing.
Why is the BBC obsessed with Moozlums?
Jonathan Hall | Homepage | 15.05.08 – 6:13 pm |
These radical Imams are opposed to everything that the BBC supposedly holds so dear. Perhaps the journalists and broadcasters at the BBC have simply been frightened into silence. So much for there claims of journalistic conviction.
They are genuinely frightened of, and confused by the issue. They also genuinely believe that the British Public in general are more to blame. It’s all part of that same “chickens come home to roost” mentality that leads to things like the infamous post-9/11 QT in which the audience was packed with people who said the US had it coming. They believe that Islamo-nutters are focused solely on things like Iraq and the Palestinians, and that if we (the Christian and Jewish West) would just back off, they’d all calm down and we’d all get along. The problem is that most Beeboids share the opinion that the US and Tony Blair oppress Muslims with their illegal war in Iraq, and that the Jews of the US and Israel control US policy on the Palestinians. Because they agree with the Islamo-fascist tenet that the US (except for the golden Clinton years, obviously) is the problem, and that the jihadis are merely reacting to nasty aggression. For instance, in general they see no difference between the current US military action in Afghanistan and the Soviet Union’s invasion of it 20-odd years ago. None. So it’s no wonder that the BBC is sympathetic to all that Muslim anger.
Unfortunately, the foolish Beeboids think that just because they share the same enemy as the Islamo-fascists (Bush and the bogeyman of Western/Capitalist Imperalism), that they must also share the same thought processes.
That is what passes for Gospel at Broadcasting House. They honestly think that casting the harsh BBC glare on jihadi imams will only incite race/religious hatred and will not get a single, solitary “moderate” Muslim to do anything. Hence the dogpile on C4’s Undercover Mosque deal. You may have noticed that, even though the filmmakers’ position has been confirmed in court, the BBC article on the story still has it that the undercover reporter only “claimed to provide evidence that certain speakers preached messages of religious bigotry and extremism.” Nowhere does the BBC article come out and say that the C4 programme was, in fact, accurate regarding the nastiness being spewed by these imams.
The BBC will never do a report like this, because they don’t want to draw this to the attention of either potentially (in BBC minds) bigoted British citizens, nor to “moderate” Muslims. If anything, they’ll attack people who do, as they did with the report from Policy Exchange.
Worse, I would bet that the “soft bigotry of low expectations”, so common amongst Leftoids, leads them to believe that “moderate” Muslims are mostly weak, and won’t ever lift a finger to stop any of this. Conversely – the cynic in me says – they’re just lying to us and deep down they’re afraid that the majority of Muslims in the UK really do support jihad and want shariah in Britain, but they can never, ever say that for the reasons I’ve outlined above.
Either way, they force pro-Islam propaganda down your throats to get you to accommodate Muslim “sensitivities” instead.
From where I stand, it just seems so illogical. Perhaps someone from the BBC could enlighten me.
They can’t, and won’t.
I may not be adding anything to the debate, but well said, David Preiser!
Remember this?
“Now, when the authorities are trying to get ordinary UK Muslims onside in the struggle against Islamist extremism • how helpful are you being?……….This isn’t helpful in prosecuting the ‘war on terror’ or whatever you want to call it.
John Reith | 18.03.08 – 12:04 pm | #”
Was baffling at the time, and still baffling now.
The Beeboids are not “afraid” of Muslims. This week, during Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations, they are running several stories on the plight of Palestinians, for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7390166.stm
Its full speed ahead reporting about Palestinians who’d been “exiled” by Israelis since 1948, but no mention on why Israel is so full of Jews “exiled” from Muslim lands.
This is not simple dhimmi submission, but actively propagandizing.
Sue writes: “Was baffling at the time, and still baffling now.”
I’m not sure it’s baffling. In fact I think it was a perfect summation of the BBC’s collective attitude.
I have no doubt that “Reith” and the vast majority of his (equally deluded) co-workers believe that if they keep placating Moslem opinion, they will bring the majority ‘on side’.
It’s absurd, of course – almost akin to believing that if you screw your eyes up nice and tight, eventually oil and water will mix.
But that’s the Left-liberal mindset for you – what they want to be true wins out over reality every time.
Re Ian’s post:
“Sixty years ago, the Diab family swapped the simple life of Palestinian peasants in western Galilee”
Al Beeb: We propagate antisemitic lies. It’s what we do.
“Which is pretty much why and how Weimar fell. Fascist propaganda and racist hate speech and so on have no place in a democracy not hell-bent on suicide. Democratic systems have no obligation to allow themselves to be undermined: quite the contrary.”
It isn’t that simple Oxfordian. Hitler came to power in 1933 with the invoking of the emergency powers in the Weimar constitution, obviously to protect the integrity of the republic under attack from Communists.. The Third Reich was the intellectual, artistic, and cultural culmination of Weimar, I would argue, but that’s for another time.
— Skip this bit if you don’t want ad lib dissertation on history —
What do I mean by the Third Reich being the culmination of Weimar? Well, Weimar was an authentically Liberal order. Being that it was Godless and lost at sea regarding values, kind of like our time post 60s. Weimar “art”, like our modern “art”, is a sad testament to this. Philosophers like Nietzsche had pronounced “God is Dead” and “foretold” the coming of a “Superman” who would “recreate values”. Heidegger, an existentialist philosopher, developed this a little further with his ideas regarding “authentic action” as opposed to the “inauthentic” humdrum bourgeois (and by creative extension Jewish) life. Out of this intellectual foment came Hitler, a man who called himself Der Fürher–The Guide–who would lead his beleaguered people and recreate new values for a new-age in a glorious Triumph of the Will.
This decadent Nietzsche inspired outlook has been reincarnated in a “left-wing” form through Michael Foucault. Foucault, like Nietzsche, like Hitler, believed the irrational was a wellspring of creativity, as opposed to reason which, he believed, tended to deaden ones enjoyment of life.
The results of this are highly instructive with regards to the conflict with radical Islam today.
(I think this is really important, pay attention now)
During the Iranian revolution Michael Foucault warmly received the news that left-wing movements in Iran had hybridized the war-like and austere Shia Islam with Communism. Think about it, Communism with religious fanaticism. When the Shia aspect of this Shia-Marxist glorious “peoples revolution” (as Foucault beleived it to be) began beheading gays and stoning women he couldn’t acknowledge what had happened. Moreover, he didn’t want to condemn the direction the revolution had taken for to do so would be to imperialistically and occulsively impose Western values on a non-Western revolution.
According to a
correction:
“Which is pretty much why and how Weimar fell. Fascist propaganda and racist hate speech and so on have no place in a democracy not hell-bent on suicide. Democratic systems have no obligation to allow themselves to be undermined: quite the contrary.”
It isn’t that simple Oxfordian. Hitler came to power in 1933 with the invoking of the emergency powers in the Weimar constitution, obviously to protect the integrity of the republic under attack from Communists.. The Third Reich was the intellectual, artistic, and cultural culmination of Weimar, I would argue, but that’s for another time.
— Skip this bit if you don’t want ad lib dissertation on history —
What do I mean by the Third Reich being the culmination of Weimar? Well, Weimar was an authentically Liberal order. Being that it was Godless and lost at sea regarding values, kind of like our time post 60s. Weimar “art”, like our modern “art”, is a sad testament to this. Philosophers like Nietzsche had pronounced “God is Dead” and “foretold” the coming of a “Superman” who would “recreate values”. Heidegger, an existentialist philosopher, developed this a little further with his ideas regarding “authentic action” as opposed to the “inauthentic” humdrum bourgeois (and by creative extension Jewish) life. Out of this intellectual foment came Hitler, a man who called himself Der Fürher–The Guide–who would lead his beleaguered people and recreate new values for a new-age in a glorious Triumph of the Will.
This decadent Nietzsche inspired outlook has been reincarnated in a “left-wing” form through Michael Foucault. Foucault, like Nietzsche, like Hitler, believed the irrational was a wellspring of creativity, as opposed to reason which, he believed, tended to deaden ones enjoyment of life.
The results of this are highly instructive with regards to the conflict with radical Islam today.
(I think this is really important, pay attention now)
During the Iranian revolution Michael Foucault warmly received the news that left-wing movements in Iran had hybridized the war-like and austere Shia Islam with Communism. Think about it, Communism with religious fanaticism. When the Shia aspect of this Shia-Marxist glorious “peoples revolution” (as Foucault beleived it to be) began beheading gays and stoning women he couldn’t acknowledge what had happened. Moreover, he didn’t want to condemn the direction the revolution had taken for to do so would be to imperialistically and occulsively impose Western values on a non-Western revolution.
According to a hugely interesting article Foucault:
“Michel Foucault stated that he was ‘impressed’ by the ‘attempt to open a spiritual dimension in politics’ that he discerned in project on an Islamic government. Today there are little girls all in black, veiled from head to toe; women stabbed precisely because they do not want to wear the veil; summary executions for homosexuality; the creation of a ‘Ministry of Guidance According to the Precepts of the Koran;’ thieves and adulterous women flagellated.” ”
Moreover Foucault saw a redemptive power in Shia/Marxism
“He concluded the article by referring to the crucial place of “political spirituality” in Iran and the loss of such spirituality in early modern Europe. ”
Then he called his opponents Islamophobic:
“Returning to the problematic notion of an Islamic government, Atoussa H. pointed to the brutal forms of justice in Saudi Arabia: “Heads and hands are cut off, for thieves and lovers.” She concluded: “Many Iranians are, like me, distressed and desperate about the thought of an ‘Islamic’ government. . . . The Western liberal left needs to know that Islamic law can become a dead weight on societies hungering for change. They should not let themselves be seduced by a cure that is perhaps worse than the disease.” Foucault, in a short rejoinder published the following week in Nouvel Observateur, wrote that what was “intolerable” about Atoussa H.’s letter, was her “merging together” of all forms of Islam into one and then “scorning” Islam as “fanatical.” It was certainly discerning on Foucault’s part to note in his response that Islam “as a political force is an essential problem for our epoch and for the years to come.” But this prediction was seriously undercut by his utter refusal to share any of her critique of political Islam. Instead, he concluded his rejoinder by lecturing Atoussa H.: “The first condition for approaching it [Islam] with a minimum of intelligence is not to begin by bringing in hatred.” In March and April 1979, once the Khomeini regime’s atrocities against women and homosexuals began, this exchange would come back to haunt Foucault.”
He may as well have called his critics “Islamophobic” and because their criticisms were only thinly veiled “discourses of the will to power”, because, after all, there is no objective truth. God is Dead. The Will-to-Power creates truth and order.
We are naive in the extreme if we think this reincarnation of Godless German philosophy is not going to end up with another Nazi tyranny.
No, I’d say this tyranny has already begun with the spurious “Hate-Speech” legislation where quoting from the Koran in public, or perhaps just filming and displaying what Muslims think of gays, can land you in prison, or subject to investigation because after all, there is no truth, no ideas, only speakers, and if one says something that makes another look bad by reference to his beliefs and culture–which are protected as a human right, i.e. religion is irrational, but being irrational it is a wellspring of life and therefore essential to humanity therefore to insult religion is to insult someone’s humanity–then you’re on the road to Auschwitz.
—
There is an ancient struggle between freedom and order. Order lies in the soul of every member of the polity. This means order is your responsibility.
What this practically amounts to is this: If you hear someone calling for the death penalty against homosexuals, you must incite the protection of homosexuals.
Just one point quickly, as I am knackered:
“Being that it was Godless and lost at sea regarding values, kind of like our time post 60s. Weimar “art”, like our modern “art”, is a sad testament to this” –
Hardly. Much of Weimar art was hugely human and humane. Look e.g. under Bauhaus and the many artists who worked and taught there or were associated with it. But perhaps your term ‘Godless’ means that according to you, anyone who isn’t religious, specifically atheists, is a sinner who ‘has no values’. If that is what you are saying – are you??? – then I regard this view as bigoted beyond words.
Classic BBC liberal whitewash on the News at Ten, this evening.
In a feature about the rise in the number of girls being convicted of criminal offences, and despite the footage showing teenagers brawling in the streets, a polytechnic (let’s not kid ourselves) lecturer was wheeled-out to opine that the problem was actually the criminalisation of what were formerly treated as minor offences.
We next saw a teenage girl with a conviction for assault, who ‘previously would have got a detention’, we were assured.
More Guardianista editorialising being passed-off as news reporting by the Biased Broadcasting Corporation.
This is far too vague:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7403654.stm
The word “community” is mentioned 5 times without clarifying what type of community and who they represent.
Chinese? Gay and lesbian?
It’s about time the Beeb started reporting FACTS, warts ‘n all.
Ooo, I see the BBC are about to show a TV-movie about Mary Whitehouse. I will imagine that’ll be fair and balanced.
Personally, I can’t stand people like Whitehouse. But surely the BBC can’t actually take an opinion on her in their programming? We shall have to wait and see.
” ‘Godless’ means that according to you, anyone who isn’t religious, specifically atheists, is a sinner who ‘has no values’. If that is what you are saying – are you??? – then I regard this view as bigoted beyond words.”
I wouldn’t say it if I couldn’t defend it.
Reality is not a slogan.
“Once again, as we’ve seen from so many different angles, everything returns to the denial of the transcendent. The denial of the transcendent makes language impossible, as you’ve said, because language points beyond itself. But on a more immediately apprehended level, the denial of the transcendent makes disagreement dangerous because there is no objective truth or objective standard by which disagreements can be resolved.”
I suppose I’m just assuming you have already read Nietzsche and other philosophers. The decline from Hume has been slow but sure, and irrationalism was the result.
On art: Bauhaus was an attempt to combine the functional and mass produced with the artistic and pleasing. It was a Weimar movement so my sweeping dismissal of Weimar art is not completely justified. It is in that regard, however, distinct from the other Weimar movements.
But on Weimar art, one must only look at the first page of google images for Weimar art to see things that look like mutilated corpses and abnormal wraiths. That Hitler condemned this art as ‘degenerate’ is instructive with regards to the decline of unbelief. Of course Hitler and others wanted to escape that world, that he made the foulness of Weimar Art a living reality is inevitable given that he was entirely part of the intellectual avant garde that fancied itself of the post-god world.
“To the Orthodox Christian observer, concerned not with what the avant-garde finds fashionable or sophisticated, but with truth, little reflection should be required to understand the secret of this art: there is no question of “man” in it at all; it is an art at once subhuman and demonic. It is not man who is the subject of this art, but some lower creature who has emerged (“arrived” is Giacometti’s word for it) from unknown depths.
The bodies this creature assumes (and in all its metamorphoses it is always the same creature) are not necessarily distorted violently; twisted and dismembered as they are, they are often more “realistic” than the figures of man in earlier modern art. This creature, it is clear, is not the victim of some violent attack; rather, he was born deformed, he is a “mutation.”
Even more revealing than the bodies of these creatures are the faces. It would be too much to say that these faces express hopelessness; that would be to ascribe to them some trace of humanity which they most emphatically lack. They are faces, rather, of creatures more or less “adjusted” to the world they know, a world not hostile but entirely alien, not inhuman but “a-human.”
The crisis is over; man is dead. The new art celebrates the birth of a new species, the creature of the lower depths, subhumanity.”
GCooper: Same line being pushed by the Plaid Cymru woman on QT this evening.
Nice direct comment from Alan Duncan, however when some woman started spouting off about the wicked Americans and Iran: “If that lady believes Iran is a model of democracy, she needs her head examining!”
another pop at Boris, on the paper review, a weak link but any opportunity.
A balloon over Paris measuring air quality…maybe it would drift to
London…then it wouldnt be the only thing full of hot air.
weak, very weak.
some ginger women, not michael white.
Oops, by ‘readers recommended’, HYS on the poor Palestinians is not going too well for a Beeb favourite cause;
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&forumID=4794&edition=2&ttl=20080516023524&#paginator
Not necessarily bias but an example of the BBC’s sloppy reporting and attention to detail.
‘Leeds had gone into the game drawing confidence from the fact they boasted the second best away record in League Two this season.’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_2/7393761.stm
Now anyone who knows the slightest thing about English football would know that Leeds are in League ONE.
It really is just very sloppy and poor.
“That Hitler condemned [things that look like mutilated corpses and abnormal wraiths] art as ‘degenerate’ is instructive with regards to the decline of unbelief”
Hitler et al condemned Mondrijan as degenerate also. I don’t think this argument holds up. Furthermore, I don’t take the ramblings of this madman as rational art criticism.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7397497.stm
The vile Vicki Derbyshire is having a go at Willie Walsh this moring about his salary and bonus pay.
This vile woman NEVER stops asking about what people earn. But guess what? She never tells us what she gets paid. Why not? I’ve emailed the show numerous times to ask. After all I’m forced to pay her salary under fear of imprisonment.
She’s also going on about his bonus. Hmm. She doesn’t mention the bonus payments to senior Beeboids.
Typical leftie BBC types, they despise the private sector, but think there is nothing wrong with useless Guardian reading Beeboids feeding off the poor for their 6 or 7 figure salaries.
When it comes to telling it straight about Hamas, Hezobollah, the Mahdi Army or their Iranian sponsors, the Beeboid mentality can’t help obscuring the facts with a little flowery language.
How about this from Jim Muir in Beirut…
“Hezbollah’s political position has been damaged by its use of resistance arms in the domestic arena.”
‘Resistance arms in the domestic arena’?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7404034.stm
You and I might call it killing innocent civilians, but hey, the Beeb knows best.
If it singularly fails to tell the reader what happened, does it still count as journalism?
Steve E. | 16.05.08 – 9:31 am
In this week’s deal, the two sides also agreed to a parallel dialogue on spreading state sovereignty throughout Lebanon while pledging to refrain from using weapons to further political aims and to remove militants from the streets.
Such stipulations, says the BBC’s Jim Muir in Beirut, imply Hezbollah’s political position has been damaged by its use of resistance arms in the domestic arena – although the group’s strength in the clashes demonstrated its undoubted supremacy on the ground.
Incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever read a more bizarre distortion and minimising of the murderous acts of terrorists. But of course, if one fully unscrambles Muir’s grotesque code, he’s saying Hezbollah would stronger politically if it turned its “resistance arms” on Israel rather than fellow Lebanese. Muir, like so many of those motley BBC Middle East hacks, has identified with Hezbollah terrorists to the extent not only of using their language without quotes, but presenting their terror as legitimate.
David Preiser (USA) | 15.05.08 – 4:13 am |
Re Lucian Freud’s painting of the large woman. O/T as far as BBC bias is concerned but this cartoon from the Edinburgh Evening News amused me:
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/cartoon/Boyling-Point.4085969.jp
My comment is rational, though I should elaborate on “decline of unbelief” a little more.
Hitler’s materialistic outlook was entirely concurrent with that of the intellectual foment of Weimar:
Hitler shared the common faith in ‘science,’ ‘progress,’ and ‘enlightenment’ (though not, of course, democracy), together with a practical materialism that scorned all theology, metaphysics, and any thought or action concerned with any other world other than “here and now,” priding himself on the fact that he had “the gift of reducing all problems to their simplest foundations.” He had a crude worship of efficiency and utility that freely tolerated “birth control,” laughed at the institution of marriage as a mere legalisation of a sexual impulse that should be “free,” welcomed sterilisation of the “unfit,” despised “unproductive elements” such as monks, saw nothing in the cremation of the dead but a practical question and did not even hesitate to put the ashes, or the skin and fat of the dead to “productive use.” He possessed the quasi-anarchist distrust of sacred and venerable institutions, in particular the Church with its “superstitions” and all its “outmoded” and “recidivist” laws and ceremonies. He abhorred the institution of monarchy; a determining factor in his refusal to crown himself Emperor of Germany. He had a naive trust in the “natural” man,” the “healthy animal” who scorns the Christian virtues – virginity in particular – that impeded the “natural functioning” of the body. He took a simple minded delight in modern conveniences and machines, and especially the automobile and the sense of speed and “freedom” it affords.
Taken from Nihilism, the root of the revolution of the modern age
Bryan
And its not only the language that’s problematic.
Let’s look at their maths
“More than a thousand people have been killed and 2,500 others injured, mainly civilians, in fighting between government forces and Shia militias in Baghdad and southern Iraq over the past seven weeks.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7401634.stm
“A total of 599 Mahdi Army fighters have been confirmed killed in and around Sadr City since March 25, according to numbers compiled by The Long War Journal.”
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/05/attacks_decrease_in.php
Nearly Oxfordian
Atheists are sinners?
Not bigoted, its just the truth
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23)
All are sinners – atheists, Christians and everyone else