I’ve been away for a few days and am busy catching up on recent blogposts and comments (and excellent stuff it is too).
I see that the BBC has devoted some attention to links between the Gaddafi family and various British institutions and politicians. However, I can’t seem to find any mention of the useful idiots who, in the name of climate change, supported this particular PR exercise/vanity project back in 2007:
The Libyan government has announced the creation of what it claims is “the world’s first sustainable region”. It’s backed by architects Foster and Partners, enthusiastically endorsed by Sir Nicholas Stern – and directed by the Colonel’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.
The Green Mountain Conservation and Development Authority (GMCDA) will cover the northeastern region of Jabal al Akhdar (literally, ‘Green Mountain’). This encompasses several of the country’s major cities, including Benghazi, and stretches from the coast inland to a plateau featuring junipers, cypresses and wild olives. According to Norman Foster, it’s “one of the most beautiful and little known landscapes on earth”…
Sir Nicholas Stern… has given his blessing: “If we are to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change… we need urgently to build new economic and social models of development on a substantial scale. The GMCDA will show how environmental and cultural objectives can help to build a thriving and sustainable local economy in a crucial part of the world.” Among other organisations involved are UNESCO, WWF and the Prince of Wales School of Traditional Arts.
The locals didn’t seem to share the enthusiasm of Lords Stern and Foster and the Prince of Wales for Saif Gaddafi’s vision. Green Mountain and Benghazi were among the first areas to revolt.
The BBC’s Michael Hirst was at the press conference at which Saif’s eco-utopia was unveiled. It’s a shame he didn’t remind his colleagues on Newsnight about it before their recent report; I can’t be alone in wondering how much money Foster and Partners received for their work on young Gaddafi’s project, or what financial return Lord Stern and others got for their endorsement. (Yes, I know – the BBC avoids asking the blessed Lord Stern awkward questions, especially concerning his lucrative career as one of the world’s foremost climate change alarmists.)
One final point relating to people who have in the past sucked up to the Gaddafis – who else remembers the edition of Have Your Say from the Oxford Union in which the BBC’s David Eades made a total tart of himself?
UPDATE. Thanks to John Horne Tooke for pointing out that David Eades continues to make a tart of himself, most recently at a “Sustainability Day” sponsored by Italian energy giant Enel last month – see here and here.
OT – if it hasn’t been mentioned already, Biased BBC got a shout out from Delingpole in the Spectator this week.
I note that the BBC are still keeping quiet about the link from Saif Gaddafi through LSE Professor David Held to Ed Miliband; any reason that you can think of?
Hmm. That’s a tough one.
Um…
Nope – can’t work that one out
Thanks for that post and link, DB. They’ve had a few Gaddafi topics on Have Your Say. Current one questions whether there should be a no-fly zone:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2011/03/should_there_be_a_no-fly_zone.html#comments
Think I’ll mention the BBC’s fawning over Gaddafi there.
Eades is another “journalist” who does not seem to understand the difference between reporting and actually taking sides in a “debate”
Here he is again – is he filling in for Harrabin?
Here are some more inks to Gaddafi which the BBC will probably not mention.
http://www.therightperspective.org/2011/02/25/gaddafi-and-the-anc-brother-regimes/
“Gaddafi’s Photos 1969 – 2011, 42 years in power”
http://ourwikiworld.blogspot.com/2011/02/gaddafis-42-years-in-power.html
Can you can see any “right-wing” world leaders hugging Gaddafi? No? I wonder why.
Come on BBC tell us who supported Gaddafi during his dicatatorhip ( and which vile groups he in turn gave money and guns )
This man, however was not a Gaddafi appeaser.
BBC ego blow jobs alert!
The BBC always have a spare slot for its fellow travellers and the BBC toady invites John Beddington, you may remember him for his mindless fanatical suport for the CAGW fraud.
Apparently he is a legend in his own lunchtime, he is the man who got everything right such as the flu pandemic that never was, he single handedly inflamed the alarm to hysterical levels that led to hundreds of millions being wasted on a vaccine that was not needed. Yet in Beddingtons walunt sized brain he got it right even though he got it dead wrong, he made the situation worse by his advice and it cost a lot of money. The flu was so mild many people didnt even know they had it, it was less harmful than ordinary flu for the vast majority of people.
BBC toady asked any difficult questions? You know the answer to that.
Mr Beddington then informed us about the volcanic cloud? He missed out some points, the ash cloud did no damage whatsover, the grounding of aviation was not needed and the risks were wildy overblown and he supported the response at the time and he supported the computer models used and he offered flawed advice to the government and he was a primary mover in the airport closures and airspace shutdown. Talk about rewriting history!
He wants scientists like himself to have more influence in quantifying and assessing risks to the UK? The idiot shouldnt be allowed to run a street cleaning team. John Beddington, a bloated ego and perfect beeboid material.
Yes, I heard that too. What a feckin’ idiot that Beddington twat is. And how right they all were, predicting that dreadful swine ‘flu pandemic, which, as they so correctly prophesied, went on to annihilate all known human life on earth… (and went some considerable way to swell the coffers of big pharma, too).
What a sincere, believable, self-important clown. But the BBC love clowns…
More broadly, in recent years, the West’s political elite has acquiesed in, or supported Libya’s demands, while opposing Israel (as INBBC’s participatory Bowen and co know all too well, but don’t even mention).
“The UN’s Libya failures”
[Extracts]:
“In 1996, an estimated 1,200 prisoners, mostly opponents of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorial regime, were rounded up and gunned down in the space of a few hours in Tripoli’s infamous Abu Salim prison. The victims’ bodies were reportedly removed from the prison in wheelbarrows and refrigerated trucks and buried in mass graves. To this day, the Libyan authorities refuse to disclose the whereabouts of these graves. It wasn’t until 2004 that Gaddafi admitted that the massacre had taken place.”
[…]
“Established in 2006 with a mandate to reform its predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights, the HRC has in the past five years issued some 50 resolutions that condemn countries; of those, 35 have been focused on Israel, and not one has been issued against Libya. Even as of Monday evening, as protesters were being shot down in the streets of Libya, no emergency session of the HRC had been called by its members, which include the US and the EU, as Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, noted in a soon-to-appear interview with The Jerusalem Post’s Ilan Evyatar.”
[…]
“Indeed, instead of being condemned, Libya has been lionized. In May 2010, Libya was, absurdly, elected as a member of the HRC, a move that was not blocked by the Obama administration (as Iran’s bid for membership was). This was the culmination of a steady ascendancy to every important diplomatic body at the UN – including the African Union chairmanship, the UN Security Council and the presidency of the UN General Assembly.]”
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=209250&R=R6
Mr. Eades clearly has the ‘right stuff’ for a glittering career chez Aunty.
Ability x
Integrity X
Dignity X
Belongs to the right outfit – and how
Gratifying to see that the GWPF has picked this up.
Related – Walter Russell Mead at American Interest:
To name and shame everyone who colluded with this nasty piece of work — and a few are still standing by him now — would take far too long. But this moment in world history should not pass without a shout out to the worst of the worst: the top ten Gaddafi enablers who gave gratuitous aid and comfort to this murderous nutjob.
Here’s Mead’s list: 1.Human Rights Commission of the UN. 2.Gordon Brown & his government. 3.Hugo Chavez. 4.Sarkozy. 5.Blair. 6.Louis Farrakhan. 7.Berlusconi. 8.Castro. 9.LSE. 10.Delusional American College Professors.
Link to Mead.
A well-earned link from the GWPF. Good stuff DB.
JHT’s spot – David Eades (sometime presenter of The World Tonight) doing a Harrabin on the conference circuit and going beyond ‘moderating’ into outright advocacy – adds worryingly to the picture Robin has been building of the impartiality-busting extra-curricular activies of serious BBC reporters/presenters.
‘…serious BBC reporters/presenters.’
Have to look up my ‘BBC re-definitions’ book again.
Does that mean they try not to use smiley faces when reading out doom-laden tripe 😎
Mind you, the peroxide soaks paid £97kpa to read out words often forget when sharing human tragedies.
Why is it “pro-Gaddafi forces” rather than government forces?
Why is it “opposition fighters” rather than armed rebels?
Why has the BBC etc decided that after 40 years Gaddafi has no legitimacy? Who has decided that the rebels would be more legitimate? The BBC are scornful of the pussy-footing about by NATO & even Obama – they want our intervention.
Just like with Milosovic arbitrary decisions are made by the media which force the politicians to follow suit.