30 Responses to Open Thread

  1. Will says:
    December 17, 2009 at 7:53 pm

    The BBC give prominence to the latest edict from Sir Liam Donaldson. He wants to stop parents letting their offspring sample alcohol. So “Today” quickly identify the flat earth denier of this scientific wisdom – its Cameron. Shame that probably more people with have sympathy with Cameron’s opinion than that of  the interfering Donaldson. 

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  2. John Horne Tooke says:
    December 17, 2009 at 9:15 pm

    Sir Liam Donaldson? Can’t remember seeing his name on a ballot paper.

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    • Jack Bauer says:
      December 19, 2009 at 3:29 pm

      John Horne Tooke 
      Sir Liam Donaldson? Can’t remember seeing his name on a ballot paper. 

      Oh it’s right there, alongside others like:

      The crypto-Marxian BBC


      The crypto-Marxian Teachers Unions


      The crypto-Marxian UN


      The crypto-Marxian global Warm Mongers


      The crypto-Marxian Jonathon Porritt

      They’re in invisible ink, so as not to scare the horses or servants — that would be us, we all serve the all seeing, all knowing state, doncha know.

      Sure it’s all a bit Kafkaesque, but it’s for our own good. It’s the sate we are in.

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  3. Martin says:
    December 17, 2009 at 10:07 pm

    So a man is found guilty of an honour killing. But read the beeboid crap here. Notice anything missing? how about the “M” word?

    No doubt some Cocaine snorting twat of a beeboid will be on here telling me that it’s not relevant to the case, except she was murdered because her boyfriend was a different type of Muslim and as we know honour killings are common place in Muslim families.

    In fact this BBC article is a total whitewash. Why doesn’t the BBc investigate why the Social Services in Bradford turn a blind eye to 14 year old Muslim girls who go missing from schools every year?

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8389053.stm

    It is one of the great unspoken mysteries of the British school system. What becomes of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of Muslim girls who disappear without trace each year at the age of 12 or 13?

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/the-mystery-of-the-missing-muslim-girls-1319082.html

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  4. George R says:
    December 17, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    BBC directive: HONOUR KILLINGS – don’t mention ISLAM.

    Question for BBC: Which religious affiliation results in the most ‘honour killings’ in Britain? And what religion is involved in this case?

    “‘Honour killing’ father given life for Tulay murder”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8389053.stm

    The BBC deliberately avoids mention of ISLAM in the above case.

    ‘Jihadwatch’ :
    has this uushielding report on the same case, correctly referring to the relevance of Islam:

    “UK: Muslim father found guilty in daughter’s honor killing”

    http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/12/uk-muslim-father-found-guilty-in-daughters-honor-killing.html

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  5. Martin says:
    December 17, 2009 at 10:19 pm

    Sheena Easton on the 10PM news has just done a total whitewash over honour killings. MOST of them are done by Muslims. Tell the truth Easton you prat.

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  6. Anonymous says:
    December 17, 2009 at 10:22 pm

    According to the beeb “honour killing is not restricted to one religion region or race” it’s all about men controlling women….Oh really? I had to laugh at the idiot from the CPS. She was ok with the mother of Tulay Goren who perverted the course of justice when she misled the police about her daughter. It’s their culture innit.

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  7. George R says:
    December 17, 2009 at 10:46 pm

    ISLAM and honour killings: what the BBC censors –

    “Most of the honour killings known to have occurred in the UK
    appear to have been carried out be people of South Asian origin.


    Most of these murders are carried out by Muslims from Pakistan
    and Bangladesh. Hindus and Sikhs also carry out honour killings
    but seemingly at a proportionally lower rate. Although many
    – and perhaps most – honour-related murders are carried out
    by first-generation immigrants to the UK, an increasing number
    also involve people born and raised in Britain. Honour killings
    by South Asians occur nationwide. Although there have been
    several such killings in towns in the Midlands and the North,
    there is little evidence to suggest that such crimes are much more
    prevalent there than in London and the South East.
    Several of the murders have been carried out by relatively welloff
    immigrants who would usually be regarded as ‘well-integrated’.
    This suggests that lack of education or socio-economic
    deprivations do not, in themselves, cause honour killings.”

    -from page 39 of the Centre for Social Cohesion report:

    “Crimes of the Community: Honour-based violence in the UK” (available free in pdf format here -)

    http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1229624550_1.pdf



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    • George R says:
      December 18, 2009 at 12:04 am

      The BBC’s phoney ‘wake-up’ call on ‘honour killings’. Islam still shielded.

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8311200.stm

      When will the BBC get around to the ‘wake-up’ call of Labour’s continuing ‘policy’ of mass immigration from Muslim countries, and the connection to Islamic jihad in the UK?

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  8. George R says:
    December 17, 2009 at 11:20 pm

    I think we know whose side the BBC is on in this:

    “Britain’s judicial system is being used to help the bad guys: the state’s ability to defend itself against militant Islam is now at risk”

    (by Benedict Brogan)

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/benedict-brogan/6828695/Britains-judicial-system-is-being-used-to-help-the-bad-guys.html

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  9. ibjc says:
    December 17, 2009 at 11:39 pm

    There is a very good response to Black Dick from JoNova at

    http://joannenova.com.au/

    This is well worth a read!

       1 likes

    • John Horne Tooke says:
      December 18, 2009 at 12:03 am

      Thanks for the link.

      It raises another question Dick Black could have asked.

      “Why are all ‘climate bedwetters’ bullies”?

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  10. Millie Tant says:
    December 18, 2009 at 2:03 am

    Martin: how about the “M” word?  
    Yes, I was just wondering why they don’t use the word “murder” rather than the anodyne-sounding “killing”.

    Honour killing sounds benign, almost worthy, doesn’t it?
    In reality, it is murder most foul (and all the more repugnant because it is done by fathers and family to their own children. 

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  11. Abandon Ship! says:
    December 18, 2009 at 9:24 am

    As AGW threatens to destroy the world by next week:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8419769.stm

    The BBC also reports other unrelated matters:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8420057.stm

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  12. George R says:
    December 18, 2009 at 10:21 am

    BBC: spinning for Muslim evangelist.

    Imagine the BBC allowing a Christian reporter write a long, positive piece about a CHRISTIAN evangelist!

    Note that the BBC decided to spin the following pro-Islam story, using the propaganda resources, funded by the UK taxpayers, of the BBC World Service, and one of its ‘Arab Affairs Analysts’, Magdi Abdehadi.

    “Muslim evangelist takes his message to millions”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8414422.stm

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  13. Martin says:
    December 18, 2009 at 10:22 am

    With climatecrap about to destory the world, what does the BBC consider the biggest story of the day?

    Some talentless fat Irishman called a disc jockey who apparently after ripping the English tax payer off of millions for 30 years is retiring or something.

    Shouldn’t we be pleased he’s not taking us for even more money?

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  14. Umbongo says:
    December 18, 2009 at 11:39 am

    Further to Abandon Ship’s earlier comment, the BBC doesn’t do irony.  On Radio 4 News at 9:00am the first item ended on the info that Luton Airport remained closed following heavy snow: the next item reported the rejoicing that Obama was going to bang heads together when he arives in Denmark and sign whatever climate change related piece of paper is put in front of him.

    On BBC1 News at 10 last night Mardell – gritting his teeth – reported from the US MidWest.  Written up here

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/

    Of course, he chose an oilman to be the sceptic of choice (subtle!) and contrasted the oilman’s vice with the virtue of the burghers of Greensburg rebuilding their town as a green paradise.  He interviewed Sen Imhofe who – as a senator in a democratic country – said that Obama can sign what he likes and promise untold $s and unprecedented cuts in CO2  to the world but it’ll never get through the Senate: Imhofe mentioned en passant the 95-0 Senate vote rejecting Clinton’s signature at Kyoto as a precedent.  It’s OK though: Mardell cheered himself up by noting that “they [the US government agency – the EPA] could simply issue an edict to make the cuts”.  Ah, the grand tradition of democracy hailed by a BBC apparatchik.

    On Today, the BBC continued to spin (following wild allegations by the government’s chief scientific shill) that the Climategate story really is about theft and a conspiracy to ruin Copenhagen rather than the corruption of science as told in the substantive (and undenied) accuracy of the leaked emails.  An obviously disappointed Webb was silenced by a computer expert who said that getting computer-stored info out of an educational institution was easy.  Further the emails appearance from a Russian site proved nothing about whether or not there was either a “conspiracy” or that – were there a conspiracy – it was a Russian one.

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  15. ibjc says:
    December 18, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    It’s all the fault of the BBC!

    Thanks to The Times – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6961367.ece

    12.01 Colombian President Alvaro Uribe starts slowly by listing his own nation’s accomplishments, particularly in the arena of biofuels.

    But now he’s got the delegates to sit up and listen: “I’d like to draw your attention to drug trafficking,” he says.

    OK, then.

    “Drug trafficking has destroyed more than two million hectares of our forest – drug trafficking destroys the forest and the jungle,” he says, refusing to follow everyone else’s proceedural approach. “Whenever a citizen in an industrialised nation consumes cocaine – he is destroying one of the world’s lungs”

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  16. David Preiser (USA) says:
    December 18, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    I noticed the BBC failed to report Hugo Chavez’s special moment at the Warmist Synod in Cophenhagen.


    Speaker after speaker from the developing world railed against this idea, with the Sudanese vice president Nafie Ali Nafie speaking on behalf of the developing world and declaring that they stood ready to agree to a new commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol. That would be the agreement where developing countries aren’t obliged to do anything. The other proposed agreement that would require big developing country emitters to bind themselves to their own type of emission reductions they are a lot less keen on.

    Then President Chavez brought the house down.

    What’s this, the BBC missing out reporting on their beloved Chavez getting a rousing reception at this world-savingly important conference, the most important meeting of world leaders ever in the history of BBC broadcasting?  Why didn’t the BBC report that Chavez said this:

    When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

    Sound pretty typical, no big deal, right?  Why on earth did the BBC choose to hide this from you?


    When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

    Wait a minute, I think I have an idea why.

    But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ – “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell….let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.”  He won a standing ovation.

    Ah, that explains it.  The reality of the movement behind all this Warmism.  This is the ugly truth behind all the protests, the activists, the political machinations.  It’s what many of us here have been saying all along, and part of what made BBC Midlands Science Correspondent David Gregory run away from debating the topic with us on this blog a couple years ago.

    The BBC realizes that this truth might distract people from the message of saving the world from carbon dioxide, so they keep this information from you.  The BBC simply cannot be trusted on this issue.

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  17. Millie Tant says:
    December 18, 2009 at 8:10 pm

    BBC accused of bias and sour grapes over X-Factor beating it in the ratings, leading it (the BBC) to promote an American band’s attempt to beat the X Factor winner’s record to the coveted Christmas No.1 position :

    ” Meanwhile, the BBC has been accused of allowing its DJs to push the U.S. rock band’s song, compromising its strict anti-commercial policies.
    A senior ITV source claimed the BBC’s behaviour was ‘sour grapes’ after the success of the X Factor final, which attracted more than 19million viewers.
    Rage Against The Machine’s live performance on the BBC’s Radio 5 Live breakfast show yesterday had to be faded out after a series of F-words were broadcast.
    The Climb, a Miley Cyrus cover, has sold 216,795 while Killing In The Name was in the lead with 253,476.”
    http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=1184182

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1236591/BBC-backing-Rage-Against-The-Machine-sour-grapes-X-Factor-beating-Strictly-says-Simon-Cowell.html#ixzz0a4XViHKz

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  18. deegee says:
    December 18, 2009 at 10:04 pm

    Heavy snow causes traffic chaos in parts of England
    Copenhagen not much better

    There is a certain genius in holding a climate fest in midwinter so close to the artic circle. I HATE GLOBAL WARMING 🙁

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  19. deegee says:
    December 18, 2009 at 10:58 pm

    It’s not a terrible piece but it does miss things and the anti Israel bias sneaks in.
    Yemen’s last remaining Jews: A community in decline by Owen Bennett-Jones.

    I would have thought the Yeminite Jewish community is effectively finished but that would be picky.

    “The Jews of Yemen go back to at least the sixth Century AD,” says historian Tim Mackintosh Smith. There are legends of the Yeminite Jews arriving at the time of King Solomon and others of Yeminite Jews arriving at the time of King Herod. Wikipedia claims The immigration of the majority of Jews into Yemen appears to have taken place about the beginning of the second century AD. Smith may have just been conservative but the BBC could have mentioned the traditions. Put simply the Jews were living in Yemen before it became Muslim.

    Mr Mackintosh Smith says the creation of Israel effectively broke the back of the Jewish community in Yemen. As always Israel is at fault. What Smith and by extension the BBC don’t acknowledge is that Jews in Yemen suffered every disadvantage (Dhimmi) that a non Muslim could suffer under Islam. Emmigration from Yemen began as early as 1881. In 1922 the government of Yemen, under Imam Yahya reintroduced an ancient Islamic law entitled the “orphans decree”. The law dictated that, if a Jewish boy or girl under the age of twelve was orphaned, they were to be forcibly converted to Islam.

    Facing discrimination and murder virtually the entire Jewish population was happy to leave when the creation of Israel gave them the opportunity.

    But not all Jews in Yemen think this money is being well spent.
    Rabbi Yusuf Jaish says the money raised in America should be spent on preserving their community in Yemen. Could it be that with most of the community leaving or already left the Rabbi represents the small minority who wants to stay or possibly was speaking under duress?

    Somehow, when the BBC reluctantly disusses the destruction of Jewish communities all over the Middle East there’s a word they prefer not to use. Not Islam (although relevant) the Jews of Yemen owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country. They are Refugees.

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    • sue says:
      December 19, 2009 at 12:21 pm

      I heard Owen Bennett-Jones giving that report on Today a couple of days ago. I started to write about it, thinking it was oddly pitched, though in a superficial way, sympathetic to the plight of the dwindling Jews. But the link with BBC bias seemed elusive.

      Imagine my surprise when on the same day I saw an article in a local paper about a cultural exchange between a local school and one in Yemen.
      Given the appalling human rights record of Yemen, the recent resurgence of AlQaeda activity, and terrorist attacks on all and sundry, including western tourists, I was wondering if that was wise, and whether it was done in the spirit of cultural understanding of the sort that turns a blind eye to forced marriage, FGM and the death penalty for apostasy. Or the sort that thinks it’s quite cute to go to school in a burka.

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      • Millie Tant says:
        December 19, 2009 at 5:41 pm

        Yes, sue, that article made me want to throw up. All this bland worthiness that emanates from the brainwashed, stupid and naive ever ready to resort to the embrace of the C word- oh, how it covers a mutlitude of sins and every kind of heinousness. Their eager blind ignorance and moral vacuity remind me of that woman in Africa who named the teddy bear for the prophet.

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  20. George R says:
    December 19, 2009 at 12:56 pm

    BBC’s phoney ‘Spooks’ and Islam.


    B-BBC has rightly taken the BBC to task for its shielding of Islam in the TV series ‘Spooks’.

    Nick Cohen has a broadly based survey on the issues. (‘Spooks’ is referred to towards the end of this article.)

    “Spooked by Islamists”

    http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/2533/full

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  21. George R says:
    December 19, 2009 at 1:43 pm

     The BBC seems concerned about a Ugandan move to criminalise homosexuality:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/12/controversial_debate.html

    -but the BBC is less concerned about Islamic efforts to impose Shariah law in Britain.

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  22. Gary Wintle says:
    December 20, 2009 at 8:56 am

    Chavez is less nauseous than the disgusting Corporate Welfare King Bernanke, At least he did not give away trillions of taxpayers money to bankers, an act of treason for which all involved should be executed.

    No one who supported the bailouts can call themselves a capitalist, as the bailouts are by their nature corporatist.

    The panic over the economy was media, political and bank orchestrated fear, indeed,  like a sly welfare sponger, the bankers schemed to steal the taxpayer’s money.

    Goldman Sachs runs the US government, the people have no power, I suspect as Lloyd Bankfine rapes the American taxpayer up the ass, the taxpayer will find it hard to be so dismissive of Chavez’s statements.

    The unnecessary bailouts, which were based on the ridiculous notion that banks are “too big to fail”

    The notion that the economy would have collapsed if we let the banks fail (as they deserved to) if total BS spouted by Chimpy Bush, O-bama, Skank Paulson, Tiny Tim. Greenspastic, Lloyd Bankfine and many other fearmongers who lied about the extent of the banking crisis.

    A Jim Rogers said, the failed banks would have been replaced by better banks, as part of the natural process of the free market. According to Matt Taibbi, the whole thing was a scam to seize control of taxpayer’s money and create permanent corporate welfare.

    The only smart person in the US was the heroic Brooksly Born, proved to be smarter than Greenspan and Bernanke by a massive margin.

    Handing Welfare to Bankers and not demanding any conditions that they lend is the act of incompetents and morons who believe in “Trickle Down” bollocks (honestly who believes that dumb crap?) which is universally discredited.  In rewarding incompetence, we will now pay the price for Corporate Welfare as more competitive countries beat us.

    Lest we forget that Bush’s Banker Welfare was the most socialist act in American history.
    Note that both Labour and the Tories support Corporate Welfare.  Corporatism is now alas permanent.

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