Monthly Archives: February 2012

THE ROTTING APPLE…

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Yes, this one did catch my attention and B-BBC Alan lays out the indictment;

“A squirmingly coy Evan Davis attempts ‘clever’ but finishes looking ‘stupid’. 

Here Davis thinks he can work a fast one on Mark Toner from the US State Department asking him if the US would ever veto a UN security council resolution to defend an ‘ally’ in the Middle East.

Davis believes this is a ‘cheeky’ question….implying that Toner would not know that the US does veto such resolutions and that the ‘ally’ is of course Israel. The line of questioning has nothing to do with Syria and Russia….but it tells us that Davis thinks Toner is too stupid to know the US uses vetos and that Davis would happily compare Israel with Syria which has happily gunned down peaceful protesters and tortures many of its own people, and that the US is comparable to Russia.

The payoff was of course that it was the US’s position on Israel that caused the violence in Syria….by being a bad example it led allowed Russia to veto the resolution and Syria to continue its violent strategy…if only the US would stop supporting the nasty little Jewish state we could have peace in the Middle East.

 So in the end it’s all Israel’s fault really. The democratic Israel which has defended itself against 60 years of Muslim attacks is comparable to a Syrian dictatorship which slaughters its own people. Israel being allowed to fight its corner and defend its borders and its very right to exist is in fact the instigator and leading protagonist of violence in the Middle East that gives cover to other regimes that fight viciously against the will of the people.

Israel is the rotting apple that turns all other nations bad. Israel supplies arms to other equally appalling regimes, it supplies nuclear technology to dangerously unstable countries and trains and equips terrorist organisations whilst the corrupt political class ignores the plight of its own massively poor and illiterate population….oh no that would be Pakistan. But Pakistan is Muslim….so that’s OK.”

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Question Time LiveBlog 9th February 2012

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Tonight Question Time comes from London.

David Dimbleby is joined by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, Alastair Campbell, Shirley Williams (apparently not dead yet, it seems), Alan Partridge Steve Coogan and journalist Ann Leslie.

Just an observation – only one elected person on the whole panel? Really?

As with last week, please remember that humour is good, sarcasm is fine, biting wit is even better but direct threats of violence and disgusting language are not acceptable. We will not add such comments. Have fun – but be good now…

Your Moderators line-up consists of David Vance, David Mosque, TheEye and, hopefully, John Ward.

It’s a 10:30pm kick off and we’ll be staying open for This Week too. See you here later!

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THE WORLD’S LARGEST LIBERAL ECHO CHAMBER

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Interesting post HERE on the DT from Ed West concerning the BBC;

“The difference between the makers of Fox’s political programmes and the BBC is that the former believe they are in a battle of ideas while the latter genuinely thinks their beliefs are “the” default correct ones. That is why the BBC – which is still a first-class broadcaster – is so keen to respond to criticism of bias, because they really do not believe they are. Yet bias it is, and the BBC remains the world’s largest echo chamber.

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Sticky Spot

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Mark Mardell addresses the difficult subject of US foreign Policy without committing the new BBC crime of “Value Judgement.”

Poor Obama is in a sticky spot. In a period of of electioneering, he must wrestle with the tricky problem of who to suck up to.
Should he choose the disproportionately influential Jewish lobby, which is conspiring to suck America into another of their selfish Jewish wars?
Or should he courageously plump for pleasing the good American people who are “tired of foreign conflicts” and consider it expedient to appease the Iranians.

Carefully avoiding any Value Judgements, Mark Mardell turns to some important experts on the Middle East to find out more. He approaches Cliff Kupchan and Michael Scheuer for their interesting views on the matter. Or should that be interested views.
Professor Matt Kroenig does inject some sense into the mix at this point, but Mardell has not been entirley open about the earlier two spokespersons. We are told is that one is a ‘maverick’ but, what are their political leanings?

“Republicans regard any hesitation in backing Israel as unpatriotic,” says Mark Mardell. His impartial opinion appears to be that good folk vote Democrat.

Seriously, the online article is a little more nuanced, and they did link to a Ronan Bergman NYT article I linked to myself the other day.
To many listeners the Today item I heard this morning would have been a stand-alone item, and that would have been a definite value judgement crime of the first degree.

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MODERATE ISLAM

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Here’s a story that the BBC seems to a tad reluctant to cover for some reason. B-BBC contributor Alan observes;

“No mention of this story on the BBC website despite it being on ‘Drudge’ hours ago and the Daily Mail having picked it up….wonder why not? (Though the BBC does find time to complain of Iranian intimidation of its own staff: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16874177)

Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, annihilate 
Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, annihilate Israel
Iran lays out legal case for genocidal attack against ‘cancerous tumor’

“The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people. The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

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SMACKDOWN!

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There are moments when you listen to the BBC when the clouds suddenly part, the sun breaks through and the person being interviewed layeth a smackdown on the BBC interviewer. Such was the case this morning when RBS CEO Stephen Hester was interviewed here on Today by James Naughtie. What a cracking performance from Mr Hester. Naughtie pursued the usual dismal biased BBC narrative which seems to reduce to; 1/ The Banks were solely responsible for the financial crisis  2/ Bonus payments are wrong 3/Fairness should be the central nostrum for capitalism. Each time he tried to get Hester to agree, the RBS Chief effectively dismissed the proposition put forward. When Naughtie compared Hester to a Doctor, implying the latter did what he did without bonus payment, Hester compared Naughtie to a Nurse (!) and batted the point straight back. This was a seamless performance and even at the very end when Naughtie resorted to making a cheap point using Hester’s parents,  this too was dealt with. If you haven’t bought shares in RBS, you should. It’s a pity we are forced to buy into the BBC. Well done to Mr Hester.

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DON’T MESS WITH THE MISSIONARY MAN…

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Richard Black attracts a lot of attention in these pages. Biased BBC’s Alan notes…

“You have probably heard that the science is settled, that the debate is over….because the consensus is that AGW is real. However that may not be the case…it seems the consensus is only of importance when it ostensibly backs up your own case…or in this case, Richard Black’s case.

As the remorseless tide of public opinion and mounting evidence says the science is far from settled Black has decided that the consensus is irrelevant…what counts is the truth:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16906738

‘The numbers tell you precisely nothing of value….and may not matter very much.
A couple of years back, at one of the UNFCCC meetings in Bonn, I had a long chat with Viscount Monckton. As a scholar of Classics, he was able to detail with Classical derivation the reasons why consensus matters far less than simply being right. And he is surely correct; after all, in more recent times, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and Hawking are among those whose work broke with the consensus, yet turned out to be correct. But if the presence of a consensus is irrelevant, so, logically, is its absence; which makes the continued use by sceptics’ groups of the “consensus is cracking” meme a bit mystifying.’

So you see when the consensus is no longer a consensus….it no longer matters what the numbers say.

So you see the BBC’s refusal to allow sceptics a fair hearing based on numbers of scientists who oppose them is, according to Black, wrong….what matters is what is right….so before it seems that if enough people claimed something was true the BBC science journalists would print the legend as fact!

Black is very definitely on the defensive now….he firstly reduced the amount of space for comments on his blog…presumably because that makes it so much harder to rebut his fallacious claims, and now he has retreated behind Twitter from where you have to track down his blog.

I guess he doesn’t really want to engage with the public because the public were having great fun shooting ‘fish in a barrel’…namely his journalism, so called.

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BBC SCOTLAND

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A B-BBC reader from north of the border has this cry of despair for  BBC Scotland;

“The BBC Scotland is an organization that is so biased to one religion & a minority community in Scotland that is has no fear of hiding this bias any longer. The vast majority of BBC Scotland’s employees are from the Roman Catholic community. There is nothing wrong with following any religion but when that community is only 16% of the country and has the running of the country then something is very wrong. Please see continued attacks on the Protestant community in Scotland (mainly the west of Scotland) as evidence of this bias. The BBC Scotland has now convinced a large portion of Scotland that sectarianism is a one way steet in this country. The message that the BBC send out is Catholic = good & Protestant = bad.

Rangers football club have pulled all communication with the BBC in Scotland for continued attacks on the club & it’s fans. The Rangers family have had enough of this organization which we are forced to pay for. All that is asked for is an even playing field on reporting. Example: Celtic manager (Neil Lennon) supposedly had bullets sent to his home address. The BBC reported this from outside Ibrox stadium (home of Rangers FC, why not outside Celtic park?) when in fact this had absolutely nothing to with Rangers football club. This is only one small example of subliminal reporting that the BBC Scotland has been involved in over a least a decade on the Protestant majority & Rangers football club in Scotland.”

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