Monthly Archives: April 2011

JUST ANOTHER PROPHET

By | |
5 Comments

The BBC’s contempt for those of us who carry a Christian faith contrasts nicely with its deep concern not to offend those who follow Mohammad or indeed any other faith. Take this item on the Today programme this morning concerning the death of Indian “sage” Sai Baba. In the commentary by the BBC presenter , Jesus Christ is referred to as “another prophet”. Just to be clear – Christians do NOT view Christ as “another Prophet.” This causal insult to British Christians is par for the course from the profoundly anti-Christian State Broadcaster.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

MORE?

By | |
8 Comments

Do you share his pain?

Despite paying annual salaries of hundreds of thousand of pounds, Mark Thompson claimed it was “extremely hard” to fill executive roles as the broadcaster tried to cut costs. In the past year, the BBC has pledged to reduce what it pays in some executive roles after repeated criticism. 

Mr Thompson is trying to find a new director of television after Jana Bennett left the public service part of the BBC to join BBC Worldwide, its commercially-funded arm. Miss Bennett’s remuneration in the last financial year was £517,000, but it is understood that the salary on offer to her replacement could be less than £400,000. 

Even so, Mr Thompson told a House of Lords committee yesterday that it was “not true” to say there was a “long queue of people” for top positions. “It’s extremely hard now to fill senior jobs in the BBC and increasingly remuneration is a factor,” he insisted.

Maybe we should all offer to pass the hat around for the £3bn a year poverty strucken BBC?

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

BACK FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY!

By | |
48 Comments

Still electioneering but wanted to highlight this story for you! Does Al Queda have sympathisers in the BBC?

The files, obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph, disclose that a phone number of someone at the BBC was found in the phone books and phones of a number of extremists seized by US forces.  

A detainee assessment, dated 21 April 2007, states: “The London, United Kingdom (UK), phone number 0044 207 XXX XXXX was discovered in numerous seized phone books and phones associated with extremist-linked individuals. The number is associated with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).” Analysis by The Daily Telegraph suggests the number is one for Bush House, home of the BBC World Service.

The assessment continues that US forces uncovered many “extremist links” to this number, suggesting that extremists could have made contact with BBC employees who were sympathetic to extremists or had information on “ACM [anti-Coalition Militia] operations…”

I’m surprised that Bin Laden doesn’t have the State Broadcaster on speed dial…… 

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

READ AND WEEP

By | | ,
45 Comments

A guest post by Hippiepooter.

This is overdue but I think you’ll agree very worthwile covering. H/T to ‘Buggy’ for bringing this up in the Open Thread a couple of weeks ago.

Here is a BBC Online report 7th April that they headline thus:-

Blackpool children ‘safer than ever from grooming gangs’

When you compare it to the Blackpool Gazette story below, you may agree with me that it touches levels of Orwellian depravity that belong in a surreal horror movie. This is the Blackpool Gazette headline for the story:-

‘We hid nothing’ say sex case cops

Both stories stem from a paywalled report in The Times. Below is how both reports address the The Times as the source of the story.

BBC

A report in The Times said more than 60 girls in the resort were groomed for sex by a group of men.

The Times reported that an unpublished report by Blackpool Council recorded that more than 60 girls in the resort had been groomed for sex by a group of men connected with a cluster of town centre takeway restaurants.

Blackpool Gazette

Lancashire Police came under fire in a report by The Times which accused the force of ‘hiding a sex grooming scandal’ in Blackpool and ‘inhibiting’ further research by political correctness.

The Times article also connects to another missing Blackpool girl, Paige Chivers. […] Paige was just 15 when she disappeared in 2007. The report claims the teenager was also a “victim of sexual exploitation” but police say her disappearance remains a missing person inquiry and they are “keeping an open mind”.

You will be wearily unsurprised that the BBC report mentions nothing about Paige Chivers, nor the comments below by a retired senior detective featured in the Blackpool Gazette:-

Former Lancashire Det Supt Mick Gradwell, said police should, however, have a “more open debate”.

He said: “There is a lot of work going on with these operations (such as Awaken) but there is a reluctance to talk openly about the full facts.

I would suggest that all the BBC report was interested in was whitewashing how Lancashire Police had been whipped into submission by 25 odd years of BBC thought policing and the disaster that their ‘nationcidal’ promotion of multiculturalism has wrought upon us.

The mailonline also published a report on this the same day as the BBC, although they didn’t mention it had been prompted by what The Times ran. It carries more extensive comment from former Det Supt Mick Bradwell and draws yet more stark and chilling contrast to the take of the BBC.

While trying to find the Times report I found there’s plenty on this on BNP and EDL sites, but the views of racist neanderthals don’t interest me.

The Gramscian BBC and the BNP are twin sides of evil. They couldn’t live without each other.

From one of the areas of the BBC untainted by its Gramscian subversives, here is information on how to assist the Police with their inquiries over the missing Paige Chivers.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

By | |
11 Comments

Mail Online, which has just overtaken The Huffington Post to become the second most popular newspaper website in the world, reports on a story that the BBC is also running near the top of its news agenda today – but their take on the story could hardly be more different to the BBC’s:

‘We will unleash a nuclear hellstorm if Osama is killed’: Wikileaks releases chilling interrogation files of Guantanamo suspects
Top-secret files detailing the interrogations of more than 700 terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp have been obtained by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
They include claims that Al Qaeda terrorists threatened to unleash a ‘nuclear hellstorm’ if Osama Bin Laden is caught or killed – and that the interrogations uncovered plots to attack Britain.
Thousands of pages of sensitive documents relate to a decade of interviews in which extremists also admit to plotting attacks against America and across the world.

They go on:

The documents detail the background to the capture of each of the 780 people who have passed through the Cuban facility, along with their medical condition and the information they have provided during interrogations.
Around 220 of those detained are assessed to be dangerous international terrorists, while around 380 are judged to be lower-level foot-soldiers.
At least a further 150 people, including innocent Afghans and Pakistanis, were held and assessed at the U.S. camp, but later released due to lack of evidence, according to the files.

The BBC’s take, on its radio news bulletins and online, has a very different focus:

Wikileaks: Many at Guantanamo ‘not dangerous’
Files obtained by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks have revealed that the US believed many of those held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent or only low-level operatives.
The files, published in US and European newspapers, are assessments of all 780 people ever held at the facility.
They show that about 220 were classed as dangerous terrorists, but 150 were innocent Afghans and Pakistanis.

The bulk of the article then concentrates in considerable detail on the innocent rather than on the dangerous ones.

Both the Mail Online and the BBC Online articles are biased in their own way. One, however, is a private newspaper, privately funded. The other is a public corporation funded by a compulsory licence fee and legally bound to be impartial.

An incident bias, which David Preiser has highlighted in the past, is that the BBC was very enthusiastic about Wikileaks when the Guardian were publishing them around the turn of the year. Since ‘Wikileaks’ moved to the Telegraph, however, the BBC has shown a lot less enthusiasm for reporting the leaks. Taking that into account, isn’t it revealing that The Mail report says of the source of its story, “The documents seen by the Washington Post and Daily Telegraph confirm that the Americans have seized more than 100 Al Qaeda terrorists…” while the BBC Online article says “The latest documents have been published on Wikileaks,the Guardian, the New York Times and in other newspapers…”? Hmm.

The Telegraph itself takes a more even-handed approach that either the BBC or the Mail:

WikiLeaks: Guantanamo Bay terrorist secrets revealed
Guantanamo Bay has been used to incarcerate dozens of terrorists who have admitted plotting terrifying attacks against the West – while imprisoning more than 150 totally innocent people, top-secret files disclose.

The Guardian, however, unsurprisingly takes the same line as the BBC:

Guantánamo leaks lift lid on world’s most controversial prison
• Innocent people interrogated for years on slimmest pretexts
• Children, elderly and mentally ill among those wrongfully held
• 172 prisoners remain, some with no prospect of trial or release

By their friends shall ye know them!

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Double Standards

By | |
8 Comments

When something bad happens to Jews or Israelis the BBC reacts with indifference or worse. The reporting of two recent incidents (or non-reporting of one of them) contrast sharply with the BBC’s treatment of similar incidents, which, when they concern Palestinians or Muslims, cause cataclysmic BBC eruptions.

Incident 1, the burning of the Torah in Corfu, was mentioned on the Open Thread with a link to Ray Cook’s blog, but ignored by the BBC. Burning Korans make quite a splash, don’t they? (H/T Demon 1001)

The second incident is described sensitively by blogger Oy Va Goy. It concerns the shooting of some religious Jews, killing one and seriously injuring others, and was at least reported by the BBC, though they dwelled on certain things which almost seemed as though they intended to justify the actions of the Palestinian police perpetrators.
When I switched on the radio this morning I caught the end of a news bulletin. They seemed to be saying that the dead and injured Jews were in a Palestinian controlled area without permission. That’s all. Did anyone else hear that news bulletin?

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

The Protection of Information Act

By | | , ,
10 Comments

Everybody who frequents this site will know that the BBC has spent lashings of our telly tax on legal fees to safeguard the secrecy of a report they themselves commissioned. The subject was their coverage of the Middle East, and the question was: is the BBC biased against Israel?
The legal battle took many twists and turns, and Steven Sugar, who steadfastly fought for the release of the Balen report, very sadly and inopportunely died at the age of 60, shortly before another stage of the unfolding court case was due to be heard.
No-one knows whether Malcolm Balen’s findings confirmed the BBC’s anti Israel bias, but one thing’s for sure, the battle to keep them secret certainly gives the impression that they did. So, in some ways, the BBC’s intransigent refusal to let us take a peek works against them almost as much as the revelation of its contents might have done.

One slightly ironic bonus of this ongoing legal tussle is that the public gets to discover a bit of extra information for free, namely that the BBC is virtually exempt from the obligations of the FOI act, because of a cunning exclusion clause concerning ‘journalism art or literature,’ for the purpose of, yer honour m’lud.
Anything in that category is ‘out with’ the FOI act. In other words the entire BBC output can, if it likes, shelter under the same get-out umbrella.
So are we up in arms at the arrogance of the BBC for wallowing in a unique all-embracing exemption from scrutiny, which flies in the face of the ultra desirable, most-wanted virtue du jour – *transparency* – the essential quality that all organisations long for, and the one thing that makes everything come good? (WikiLeaks, anyone?)
Bear with me.
As well as (and to a large extent because of) the media – the dinner-party set, socialists, trade unions, celebrities and the Muslim community – all currently bask in a toxic climate of pro Palestinian advocacy and anti Israel activism. It’s a kind of global man-made antisemitic climate-change, and it is alive and well, flourishing even, in our universities. You can virtually get a doctorate in hating Jews.

The Arab sourced funding that some of our universities currently rely on has led to the alarming ascendancy of Islamic studies departments set up by Saudi Princes at places like Exeter, where anti Israel polemicists Ilan Pappé and Ghada Karmi prevail, and the LSE, Oxbridge and various other renowned academic institutions. I vividly recall reading with dismay this 2008 article about Aberystwyth University. It implies that if a student won’t toe the line they will probably fail their degree.
So here’s my point.
I found a FOI request that I am glad the BBC refused to deliver. It’s in the public domain, and there’s no super injunction preventing me from knowing about it. I found it on Google, by accident, as I was looking for something else.

I have no idea what this Palestinian gentleman from Strathclyde University intended to do with the information he requested. Ideas that ran through my head ranged from: *write a learned dissertation on Hasbara, *organise a troll blitzkrieg on B-BBC, and sadly, but inevitably, *kill infidels.

Why would I be grateful that the BBC refused to give details of the complainants and complaints about anti-Israel reports to a post graduate student who might be doing some important academic research? Because the student is a Palestinian activist with links to some very hostile people. Because we live in a culture of intimidation. Because B-BBC is number 12 on the list. Because because because.

I hesitated before posting this. I sought advice. They said “publish!” which I hereby do, sincerely hoping that B-BBC and I won’t be damned. What a sorry state I’m in to have such worries. It’s regrettable that some of us, because of our particular circumstances, are conscious of the need to take limited steps to preserve our anonymity, just because we dare to defend Israel.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

WHERE OTHERS LEAD….

By | |
7 Comments

A so-called “investigative” scoop in the Daily Telegraph suggesting that the BBC is involved in the organisation of COMplus, an international group that supports climate change alarmism, has also caused ripples in the blogsphere. Richard North and WUWT have followed up. I’m totally in favour of enterprising, sceptical journalism, but I’m afraid on this occasion, the Telegraph is more than a year behind. I filed this story (based on research I carried out after an item by Richard North) on COMplus – whose acolytes include toerags such as former Labour ministers Eliot Morley and Stephen Byers – on March 15, 2010 (with a follow-up amplifying some of the key points on the same day) and gave chapter on verse why it was an insiduous menace in which the BBC was playing a major role. EU Referendum also had this, detailing the full scale of COMplus linkages. What was unearthed back then went far beyond the Telegraph’s latest revelations, and I spelled out one aspect of the way the influence operated:

The scale and modus operandi of this activity beggars belief, and the BBC is in every sense a key component, putting it firmly in bed with the main greenie activists around the world. Look for example, at just one of the COMplus partner organisations, the Television Trust for the Environment (TVE). Naturally, its main goal is to make greenie propaganda (the annual report is a manual about the chilling art). The main outlet is on the BBC World television service; its programmes such as Earth Report reach 172 countries and notch up audiences of 100m plus. Principal funders of TVE include the World Wildlife Fund, Christian Aid, and Oxfam – the usual suspect NGOs who, in their pursuit of climate change nonsense, have become polticial activists whose main aim is to spread the lie that the West is to blame for all the developing world ills. Predictably, TVE is run by one Cheryl Campbell, a former BBC journalist (and greenie fanatic) who was also communications chief of Christian Aid.

Also in on the act is the Reuters Foundation, which, as B-BBC also established in a previous post is the founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. This body is run partly by BBC journalist James Painter, a climate change activist who is a model of his type; Goebbels would have been proud of him.

I don ‘t want to be churlish, and I am pleased that the Telegraph is finally looking at the rat’s nest of establishment money-down-the-drain activity that supports climate change hysteria. But if investigative ace Jason Lewis properly read blogs such as EU Referendum and B-BBC, he’d truly be ahead of the pack. The real scandal here is that the BBC is not only involved in COMplus, but also directly part of a huge related network of climate change activism.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.