Monthly Archives: September 2009

THE WONDER OF AIDS

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BBC lead story @ 6am concerns Obama rebuffing Brown’s desperate attempts for a formal meeting. One hour later, lead story changes and instead we get the good news about a putative breakthrough in the AIDS vaccine. BBC new running this as THE big story. Meanwhile Sky News does not appear to have received the memo and runs with the Obama snub as lead. BBC – just doing what it can for the Dear Leader.

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BBC Once More Open to Climate Change Doubts…

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It was a magical moment and, of course, the BBC captured it.

A 13-year-old Indian school girl has addressed world leaders during the inaugural session at the UN Climate Change Summit in New York.
During her speech, Yugratna Srivastava from Lucknow appealed to the world’s leaders to do more to combat the effects of climate change, asking “is this what we are going to give to our future generations?”

But later the BBC, wishing to be balanced, reported that not all the leaders were impressed…

Czech President Vaclav Klaus sharply criticized a U.N. meeting on climate change on Tuesday at which U.S. President Barack Obama was among the top speakers, describing it as propagandistic and undignified.
“It was sad and it was frustrating,” said Klaus, one of the world’s most vocal skeptics on the topic of global warming.
“It’s a propagandistic exercise where 13-year-old girls from some far-away country perform a pre-rehearsed poem,” he said. “It’s simply not dignified.”
……
Klaus said there were increasing doubts in the scientific community about whether humans are causing changes in the climate or whether the changes are simply naturally occurring phenomena.
But politicians, he said, seem to be moving closer to a consensus on climate change.
“The train can’t be stopped and I consider that a huge mistake,” Klaus said.

Whoops – sorry! That comment from the Czech President came from Reuters…couldn’t find it on the BBC – I wonder why?

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A BLOODY DISGRACE

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The BBC reports here that the report on the events of Bloody Sunday has been delayed again. (Let’s hope the lawyers are not out of pocket!) Tribunal chairman Lord Saville has confirmed he hopes to hand the report to the Northern Ireland Secretary at the end of March 2010.

Now, if you follow the sidelinks the BBC helpfully provides, you will see a profile on Martin McGuinness here and it is that which I would like to address. You see the BBC plays loose and easy with the details of this self-confessed IRA terrorist. It starts off by saying that

For many years, leading unionists have labelled Martin McGuinness a member of the IRA’s Army Council and, on one occasion, the “IRA godfather of godfathers”.

True. But not just unionists. Many informed journalists have provided clear evidence that McGuinness was an IRA terrorist, see this as an example. The BBC is instantly portraying this as a sectarian issue when it patently is not. It then moves on to sanitise.

When the Provisional IRA began to emerge (albeit in small numbers) in key nationalist areas in 1969 and 1970, Mr McGuinness joined and rose through its newly formed ranks

What did Mr McGuinness DO that saw such quick promotion? Nothing from the BBC on that. We can but wonder. The BBC finishes with a flourish…
Irrespective of what position he now holds within the movement, his republican credentials have remained as impeccable to this day.
What does “impeccable” mean in this sense? A trail of terror, or murder, off savagery, culminating in a BBC portrayal as a dove of peace.
Funny old world…

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QUESTION TIME LIVEBLOG

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Tomorrow night, why not relax, pour yourself a glass of something pleasing, and JOIN IN the first of a new series of Question Time liveblogs. We go live at 10.30pm or so! My sincere thanks to G.O.T. for the smart new logo, much appreciated!! See you all LIVE tomorrow evening..

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Dowd’s Political Quotes

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New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd claimed that when Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” during Barack Obama’s speech to Congress, what he really meant was “You lie, boy”. This made quite an impression on BBC correspondents Kevin Connolly and Mark Mardell who both quoted it approvingly. They therefore might be interested in the Ace Of Spades Top Ten American Political Quotations (As Recollected by Pulitzer Prize Winning NYT Columnist Maureen Dowd). The number one quote is particulalry interesting, and unlikely to be repeated by a BBC correspondent for the usual partisan reasons.

Update. BBC correspondents were very keen to highlight Joe Wilson’s past as an aide to one-time segregationist Storm Thurmond. In 2005 one-time segregationist and ex-Klansman Robert Byrd opposed the confirmation of the first female black secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. If you can find that mentioned in the BBC’s news reports you will have done better than me. Byrd is of course a Democrat and Rice a Republican, so naturally racism can’t have been an issue.

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"Democracy Kills"

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On Wednesday’s Up All Night, presenter Rhod Sharp spoke to BBC foreign correspondent Humphrey Hawksley about his new book “Democracy Kills”. It opens, he explained, with a puzzle:

HH: Basically I’m trying to paint a scenario whereby a catastrophe is sweeping the world and you’re sitting in your house moments before you’re gonna be destroyed with your partner and your two children. One’s very bright and is a musician and wants to be a biologist – your daughter, about 13 – and your 11 year old son who’s a little lippy, gets into trouble at school but again very intelligent. And an elderly relative – mother, with diabetes, perhaps a little frail on the legs resting in the corner. And you’re very privileged because you have two choices of countries that you can actually flee to and you’ve been given sanctuary there. One of them has got pretty good health, pretty good education, you’re thinking of building a future for your family, your grandchildren, but not a lot of political freedom. The other one has got a great cell phone system, internet connection’s fine if you can pay for it, but you live 20 years less than the other country and people are fairly illiterate and it’s a fairly violent place. One of those countries is called Cuba, and the other is 90 miles away and it’s called Haiti. Which one would you take your family to to go and set a new life for yourselves.

RS: That’s a great question! That’s a great question!

The point Hawksley is trying to make of course, in his far from subtle way, is that the nascent democracy in Haiti compares badly with the communist regime of Cuba. Rhod Sharp chose to take his version of Hawksley’s family of overachievers to Cuba, naturally. I think I might have enough faith in my family’s resilience and resourcefulness to take our chances in Haiti and forego the wonders of the communist idyll. What would happen to my intelligent children when they question the Communist Party line in the classroom, for example? Not so much of a worry where Hawksley’s kids are concerned, I would imagine.

It’s interesting that Hawksley chose Cuba and Haiti as the basis for his argument and not, say, North and South Korea, or Israel and Syria.

Perhaps we could chip in and buy Hawksley and his BBC colleague Matt Frei one-way plane tickets to the communist dictatorships of their choice?

[If any Firefox users are having problems using the new comment system (as I was) try ticking “Accept third party cookies” in Options]

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DISARMINGLY BIASED

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BBC giving lots of publicity to McDoom’s suggestion that we emasculate the UK nuclear defence capability. Now then, no real surprise there since the BBC has been a long time supporter of Britain abandoning nuclear weapons. But what is REALLY bothersome is that in this article is that the only view used to “balance” McDoom’s suggestion are those of David Miliband, Nick Clegg and CND’s Kate Hudson. Anyone detect a lack of balance? I notice one major political party fails to get a comment on the topic of UK defence but no bias, of course…

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

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Another Thought for the Day from a Muslim cleric, this time Abdal Hakim Murad – Muslim Chaplain at the University of Cambridge. Abdal is very concerned about how people treat all those poor “asylum seekers” that the French cleared out of the jungle yesterday, even razing their temporary Mosque he adds. Indeed he went on to suggest that we have a duty to show “charity” towards such people by inviting them into the UK before adding that Islam itself is all about showing goodwill and charity. Mmmm.

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