I was listening to BBC Radio 4 “Today” this morning and tuned in to an interview concerning the explosion of xenophobic violence that is afflicting the so-called Rainbow nation of South Africa. I was amazed to hear an interviewee place the blame for all this mob thuggery squarely on….apartheid! The BBC interviewer went with this nonsensical idea and their was an agreement so absolving those murderous black gangs of any sense of real responsibility for their intolerant actions. Theo Mbeke really owes the BBC!
SOUTH AFRICA – WHERE THE BLAME LIES.
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Oh I am sure, eventually the BBC will search deeper and uncover the real blame for the killers that predate even the Boer imposed apartheid!
The British.
Who invented the concentration camp in SA of course. Yawn.
One can “Listen Again” here at around 8:16
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/
The interviewee is a “South African businesswoman”.
This is in keeping with the standard narrative of the left, that no individual is responsible for his or her own actions and that every aspect of a person’s behavior is attributable to their environment. To the left, environments are the only influence in a person’s attitudes and behavior and there is no such thing as individual responsibility.
Of course this belief doesn’t apply to white Western males, who as individuals are inherently evil and are no only responsible for their own actions but for everyone else’s too.
It doesn’t occur to the leftoids that problems persist as long as everyone blames everyone else and nobody takes responsibility for their own actions. And it also betrays their ultimate view of humanity – that people are simply pieces of fluff carried blown around by the wind this way and that, with no hand in their own destiny. And of course to them, “the wind” is represented by “the state”, which is why the state (sheepdog) must take the reins of every aspect of the lives of the people (sheep).
Not to start a debate, but I’d just like to dispel that myth about the British inventing the concentration camp. Spain and the United States were playing that game before the British started it.
That out of the way, the BBC do have a wonderful knack of covering for their chosen few states, don’t they? Is it any wonder half the world loathes the BBC these days?
meanwhile on sky news i saw Mbekes brother who is some sort of academic openly blame SA government on covering for Mugabe as the root of the problem…there is hope both for SA and the truth
But we did invent the Boy Scout Camp though?
Lord Sidcup: Are you sure that ‘only’ half the world loathes the BBC? I’m sure it’s much more than half.
Lord Sidcup | 24.05.08 – 3:49 pm |
I think you’ll find people have been rounding up their adversaries and corralling them for millennia. The British did not invent this but are often accused of it – hence the yawn.
The implication of the British inventing the concentration camp is the notion that the Boers were deliberately exterminated in a similar fashion to the holocaust. A calumny yet one oft repeated by the BBC, who should know better.
The South African interviewee blames apartheid for depriving the black South Africans, who are now murdering other blacks, of the means to become entrepreneurs. She is certain that had they had the opportunity to become business people like her they wouldn’t be on the rampage murdering immigrants.
It does sound similar to the claim that “Palestinians” wouldn’t be murdering Israelis if only they weren’t deprived of a chance to have their own state.
Somebody remind me who’s fault it is that “Palestinians” have done nothing to better their lot in 60 years, and remind me how many years there’s been majority rule in South Africa free of apartheid.
Half the world does loathe the BBC, and with excellent reason.
On another thread, someone mentioned a beeboid reporterette claiming that all Americans loved Al Beeb. Well, all the sane Americans I know detest it as the sewer-dwelling slug it is.
I listened to the clip. The interviewer should definitely have challenged the businesswoman when she started going on about there being no education for blacks in any shape or form under apartheid. This is, of course, rubbish. Education was no doubt inferior to that of the whites but that didn’t stop blacks becoming professionals pre-apartheid as well as post-apartheid. Presumably she herself is one example of a “coloured” woman achieving success against the obstacles. Imagine the BBC pointing that out to her. I can’t.
Apartheid officially ended in 1994 when South Africans voted the ANC into power. But years before that, discriminatory laws and regulations were already being scrapped. The excuses are wearing very thin indeed and of course there is no excuse for the savagery of the past few weeks.
This is not to say that illegal immigration isn’t a huge problem. But the blame should be laid squarely at the door of the ANC government for turning a blind eye to it for all its years in power, and not blamed on “the legacy of apartheid.”
Bryan,
That is exactly the point but one that the BBC interviewer ran away from so leaving the phantasm of apartheid still floating in listeners minds. Mbeke and his cronies carry great reponsibility here but you would never know that from listening to the BBC.
Hi David,
I have followed the link Biodegradable kindly copied in a few comments above.
At around 18:37 the interviewer asks following question:
Interviewer: The South African government has taken an awful lot of wrap over the past view days, particularly in the news papers over there handling on this. I think one of the headlines in the papers today is that ambassadors warned Pretoria a month ago about Xenophobic attacks. Should they have seen this coming?
This was the last question asked and answered as such:
Interview: … inaudible … I think this has been a kind of cake that has been burning for a while … inaudible … there has not been big focus on domestic policy. Ehm, I believe … yes definitely they should seen this coming.
Well, that was the last impression to the listener.
David Vance | Homepage | 24.05.08 – 6:01 pm,
Yes, the impression I got was less that of an interview than the BBC scouting around for someone to present its own deluded, PC point of view, finding her, and then simply giving her the microphone.
Two groups of people can do no wrong in the eyes of the BBC: black South Africans and Palestinians. The former being the people whose cause so many of the BBC grew up demonstrating and organising boycotts for, the latter the people they have adopted as they need a cause after the “good guys” won in South Africa. The use of the phrase “apartheid state” to describe Israel is no accident, it helps bind the new cause to the old. As a result, two groups can do no right in the eyes of the BBC: white Afrikaners and Israelis.
The BBC just doesn’t want to admit that immigration causes violence and will look for any other excuse to try and explain it.
David,
If a person the BBC has interviewed wishes to blame Aparthied for the muderous attakcs on immigrants, then I fail to see how shows BBC bias.
Chloe,
The BBC select the people they interview and decide which bits of the interview to play on air.
In one of their many internal reports into their own impartiality, published last summer, BBC researchers admitted:
“We had to look really hard, but eventually we found an elderly white lady from the east end who thought that mass immigration had been a good thing”
If being discriminated and persecuted down the ages gives one an excuse for anything, then surely the Beeb’s most excused people should be the Jews.
A few days ago I was listening to the BBC World Service here on WNYC, and they were talking about the SA racist violence. After listening to totally unchallenged views from people saying it was the fault of apartheid, I thought it couldn’t get any worse. Then the last interviewee they had on spent a couple of minutes explaining that the problem was “free market economics”. There was no counter or challenge offered at all.
Did the Tories get any chance to comment on the Andy Marr show this morning? All I can see is wall-to-wall Labour types. Is that legal?
Chloe,
The bias lies in the lack of challenge to the assertion.
Confiteor:
Did the Tories get any chance to comment on the Andy Marr show this morning?
Confiteor | 25.05.08 – 10:03 am | #
Mr. Pickles was there earlier, if only for the review, but oddly not at the ‘love in’ at the end.
For what it is worth, and accepting the interview ‘line up’ seemed… ‘comfortable’… Messrs Prescott and Johnson probably did more damage to their party’s ongoing chances than any Conservative representative might have.
Peter is right. But in the general picture, Al Beeb has been acting illegally for years. Its lack of even-handedness is in direct breach of its charter.
Nobody seems to have the guts to challenge this through the courts. I would have thought that an enterprising young Tory MP pressing for a judicial review or what-have-you could make a name for him/herself.
I have emailed my (Tory) MP and Cameron about this several times. All I get back is mealy-mouthed generalities. In my MP’s case, I suspect it’s on higher orders, because normally he is quite enterprising on my behalf.
I have emailed my (Tory) MP and Cameron about this several times. All I get back is mealy-mouthed generalities.
It’s depressing, but unsurprising.
The BBC has a self-congratulalory historical story of ‘dark irony’ about African slavery here:-
“Dark irony of a slaver enslaved”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7417000.stm
But the BBC reporter, Ravenscroft, can find no ‘dark irony’ in the fact that Islamic slavery began centuries before Western slavery, and continued for centuries afterwards. Perhaps there is no ‘irony’, it is simply a neglected fact.
So did the Arab slaver who captured a European slave ship’s surgeon see the ‘dark irony’ and repent? Of course not; but that’s Islamic slavery, not Western slavery, and so is not to be judged by the same moral standard:-
“Two views of Islamic Slavery in Africa”
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/SStephan/islamic_slavery.htm
The BBC should be seen for what it is,an entity similar to the great medieval magnates or the Church, almost a separate country.
The BBC knows that politicians fear its power base,unfettered access to the public.Since the BBC has long since been institutionally left wing,an extension of undergraduate politics,all politicians can do,is pretend that it is Auntie and not anti.
It will take the equivalent of the Dissolution of the Monasteries to clean up the BBC.
Yes, excellent, Peter!
The interviewer should definitely have challenged the businesswoman when she started going on about there being no education for blacks in any shape or form under apartheid.
Remind me… Mandela studied at the Fort Hare University where he would have achieved his BA had he not been asked to leave for his political activities.
He later completed his degree at the University of South Africa after which he completed his law studies at the University of Witwatersrand.
So much for education of Blacks in S.A. under apartheid.
“Anonymous:
The BBC just doesn’t want to admit that immigration causes violence and will look for any other excuse to try and explain it.
Anonymous | 25.05.08 – 1:41 am”
I’m no BBC fan but that ‘argument’ is a great big crock.
Immigration does not (of itself) cause violence.
The circumstances of it might.
Otherwise nations of almost all immigrants like Australia and the USA would be the most violent nations on earth – they aren’t.
I have emailed my (Tory) MP and Cameron about this several times. All I get back is mealy-mouthed generalities. In my MP’s case, I suspect it’s on higher orders, because normally he is quite enterprising on my behalf.
I’m sure he probably feels tortured by time wasters and conspiracy nuts like you and gives you the usual bla blah blah.
Nobody cares because you are in a tiny minority of extremist nutcases.
Good luck
What sort of mental case thinks it’s “extremist” to object to being taxed to pay for a TV broadcaster.
What that would be Joel,
Oh there goes Joel with his typical glib anti B-BBC argument: “The BBC isn’t biased, you’re biased”.
George R – the BBC’s defense of Islamic slavery is an absolute disgrace and can be seen on this page here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/slavery_4.shtml
No mention of the fact that male slaves were generally castrated before they were sold to their Islamic masters, since they were not allowed to reproduce or have families. No, reading that article you’d think that Islamic slavery was nothing more than a mild form of servitude, with human rights respected all round.
Read these truthful accounts of Islamic slavery, as compared to the BBC’s fawning apology for the practice:
http://www.africanecho.co.uk/africanechonews5-sept29.html
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/009139.php
The BBC talks about the difference between American and Islamic slavery, yet totally fails to mention castration, mortality rates nor the fact that in America, slaves were allowed to have families and raise children, while they were forbidden to do so in the Arabic world. The BBC should change this page immediately – I complained to them at one point, but as you can imagine I didn’t even receive a reply.
“Otherwise nations of almost all immigrants like Australia and the USA would be the most violent nations on earth – they aren’t.”
You are ignoring what happened to the small,out gunned indigenous populations.
Joel, you are not only a nutcase yourself, but ignorant and obviously illiterate. Otherwise you would have been able to comprehend from what I said that I am on excellent terms with my MP, who has helped me in the past and has been involved in lots of local and national initiatives.
“Immigration does not (of itself) cause violence”
Nonsense. Large-scale, uncontrolled immigration has always caused violence. Invariably, the local population has responded with anger (Apaches, Germans v. Turks, etc).
Immigration is a heap of shit.
Nice use of the word “extremist” there, Joel! Havn’t your masters re-educated you in the ‘appropriate’ use of that word? It’s to be wheeled out only when the arument concerns mass-murder by suicide bomb – especially by Muslims. Even the most fervent beeboid could hardly equate that with writing to one’s (Tory) MP. Allow me to suggest that, in order properly to differentiate between perjoratives in the English language, you re-introduce the word “terrorist” (on second thoughts, don’t bother – writing to one’s Tory MP probably qualifies as ‘terrorism’ in your book)
George R | 25.05.08 – 12:55 pm |
…no ‘dark irony’ in the fact that Islamic slavery began centuries before Western slavery
Hardly. Slavery had been in the West for hundreds, if not thousands, of years before Mohammed shagged his six year old wife. Remember the Romans? Or the Greeks ? Or the Celts?
Slavery died out in Britain after the introduction of the Feudal System (which was arguablely a form of slavery in itself) but only because it was no longer necessary.
The real irony is that, thanks to the Minimum Wage, it is making a come back in Britain today.
Joel is an extremist nutcase.
There are nations on earth that would not even exist without immigration, the United States of America being a more recent example, England courtesy of the Anglo Saxons being a more historic example though admittedly a more violent one.
And your point?
Actually I have no problem at all with immigration, as long as immigrants are banned from receiving any form of tax-funded welfare, benefits or entitlements, no free housing – and as long as the state makes no “special allowances” for them whatsoever. No tax funded “community centers”, no tax funded translations of government literature, no special laws, no “private beaches” (a la what happened in Italy). Immigrants must be made to understand that moving to another country is a risk and that if they find no work, then they are on their own.
Oh yes and if they commit a crime, immediate deportation. There is nothing wrong with immigration per se – it’s all about the quality of the immigrant. Vast hoards of uneducated, angry, intolerant Muslims who believe the West owes them a living, who siphon as many benefits as possible and who riot if they feel their hosts aren’t doing enough for them? Ship ’em all back. The same goes for those Mexicans in America who sneak in, have “anchor babies” which are immediately citizens and paid for by the state, form murderous drug gangs which terrorize communities, and talk about “reclaiming their stolen land” and having state funded babies at four times the average national rate.
Oh yes and then they hold angry protests in the street in which they bang drums, blow whistles and jump up and down holding Che Guevara placards and socialist slogans. I just witnessed one of these on Broadway a few weeks ago. THESE types of immigrants, we can do without.
It’s also astounding to see the general differences between Muslim immigrants in America, who are generally pro-enterprise, hard working and respectable, and Muslim immigrants in Europe who are anti-west, anti-white, who live in vast state funded ghettos on welfare, who riot, form terrorist cells, plot the destruction of their hosts and blow up trains and buses.
Jason, I agree with all that. But I still say, this is a small and overpopulated island, therefore on top of everything else, the sheer numbers are unsustainable. Let me rephrase that: allowing such levels of immigration is just plain stupid.
But Nearly O, the BBC tells us that nearly 2M people have left the UK recently so everythings in balance isn’t it?
So much for education of Blacks in S.A. under apartheid.
curbishly | 25.05.08 – 1:59 pm
The lefty BBC can’t emerge far enough from its PC cocoon to join those particular dots.
Nobody cares because you are in a tiny minority of extremist nutcases.
Joel 25.05.08 – 2:37 pm
As Bob pointed out at 6:04 pm you have to be careful how you use the word extremist since the BBC has mangled it beyond recognition.
And for goodness sake Joel, do something about that homepage of yours. It’s quite simple, really. Since you don’t have a homepage, leave the bloody URL bar above the comment box blank.
“And your point?
Nearly Oxfordian | 25.05.08 – 8:50 pm”
Joel really is an extremist nutcase, isn’t that clear enough.
In the first place, Spiro, I don’t believe a word Al Beeb says.
In the second place, the hyperactive, obsessive disease called ‘plonking ugly estates on every inch of green belt land’ does suggest that the population is increasing.