Monthly Archives: February 2012

RADICAL, NOT EXTREME

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Abu Qatada, the Islamic extremist

“The BBC has told its journalists not to call Abu Qatada, the al-Qaeda preacher, an “extremist” in order to avoid making a “value judgment”, the corporation’s managers have ruled that he can only be described as “radical”. Journalists were also cautioned against using images suggesting the preacher is overweight. A judge ruled this week that the Muslim preacher, once described as “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe”, should be released from a British jail, angering ministers and MPs. Adding to the row, Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, yesterday insisted that Qatada “has not committed any crime” and said his release has nothing to do with the European Court of Human Rights.

Meanwhile in the gravity based community a British court has called Qatada a “truly dangerous individual” and even his defence team has suggested he poses a “grave risk” to national security. Some might say that by pretending this Jihad preacher is NOT extreme the BBC is a “grave risk” to the Nation.

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The Right Threat

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So the BBC is focusing on right-wing terrorism Today. That’s nice. ( link )

Dr. Matthew Goodwin has created a nice politically correct name for Islamic inspired terrorism. “A.Q. terrorism.” Doesn’t that sound nice and respectful? A.Q. stands for Al Qaeda, the distorted version of Islam.
In the unfortunate event that we must mention such a thing on the BBC, say, when a bomb goes off somewhere, for balance we must also mention its equivalent. Right wing terrorism. We haven’t created a cute name for that yet.

We know there are:
“47 international (Islamic inspired) terrorist organisations are proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000.
Of these, two organisations are proscribed under powers introduced in
the Terrorism Act 2006, as glorifying terrorism.

14 organisations in Northern Ireland are proscribed under previous
legislation.”

Typical of the right wing are….. Anders Breivik, Oslo and Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma?
Oh well. There’s the EDL. And the BNP. We realise they’re not proscribed (yet) but we’re working on it.
We insist that the underpants bomber wasn’t influenced at UCL,(very much) but people are being radicalised by right wing websites.

“Large numbers of citizens remain deeply concerned about immigration, feel anxious about the cultural compatibility of Muslims, and are threatened by rising diversity. In fact, in recent years the Brits have become equally if not more concerned about these issues than many of their European neighbours. These voters are also extremely dissatisfied with the response of the main parties to such trends”

So, because immigration is the game and multiculturalism is the aim, we must find a way of dealing with these pesky citizens who are ‘more concerned’.

“The key issue is how to respond to voters’ profound anxiety about this issue.”

We’ll ban the lot of it! Shut down The Gates of Vienna! Internet Service Providers must consider removing right wing websites!!

We must make sure that people don’t “get their news from JUST ONE source.” No, not the BBC. We meant the internet.

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A COMMERCIAL BREAK….

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Let’s be clear. This is a blog concerning itself with BBC bias. It is also a blog that is entirely self funding and which does not advertise or clutter the space. So, in a blatant instance of opportunism – I bring you news of the perfect Kindle or IPAD download – my little canter through the uplands and valleys of the appeasement process here in Northern Ireland! For a trifling £2.63, you can enjoy  the thrills and spills of what happens when terrorism is indulged and then rewarded – all in the name of peace. And now back to the main feature….
Unionism Decayed: 1997 - 2007

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STEPHANOMICS?

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Ed Balls’ andLabour’s whole line of attack on Coalition economic policy has been blown outof the water by the IFS ‘Green Budget’ report but strangely enough this is not considered ‘headlinenews’ for the BBC’s economic guru Stephanie Flanders. 


Biased BBC’s Alan notes;


“Balls claims that Osborne’s economic policies have cut growth and increasedborrowing because of that. The IFS report resoundingly shatters that delusion saying that Labour wouldhave caused borrowing to skyrocket by an extra £200bn in 7 years:

‘In a blow to shadow chancellor Ed Balls, the IFS undermined Labour’s argumentthat cutting ‘too far and too fast’ has driven up borrowing by choking offgrowth. The watchdog said that under the plan proposed by former Labour ChancellorAlistair Darling before the General Election, the deficit would be £76 billionin 2016-17 rather than the £24 billion currently forecast. In total, a Labour government that followed Mr Darling’s plan would haveborrowed around £200 billion more over the seven year period than planned bythe Coalition.’

But what does the BBC tell us in the shape of Stephanie Flander’s‘Steph’n’Nonsense’ blog? She fails to mention Labour’s extra £200bn borrowing at all though she does deignto tell us that perhaps the extra Coalition borrowing is not caused by theausterity policy….but this is merely ‘a small poke in the eye’ forBalls…not headline stuff!

‘Is Ed Balls right to blame the government for this poor performance? The IFSdoesn’t answer this directly. Labour would say that the extra tax rises and spending cuts introduced by thecoalition have been a waste of time – indeed, may even have hurt borrowing bytanking the recovery. There’s a complicated answer to that question in this report, but the bottomline is that the IFS does not really buy the Ed Balls version of reality. The think tank does not think the extra borrowing has been caused by the extraausterity, or not very much of it. Not a great headline, perhaps – but another small poke in the eye for Ed Ballsfrom the guild of independent economists.’

A major plank of Labour’s attack is torpedoed and Flander’s thinks this is notheadline news…in fact not news at all…as she doesn’t mention the £200 bn albatross. However credit where credit is due…she does reveal this!

‘Kevin Daly from Goldman Sachs noted recently, the official story that we havepermanently lost at least 7-8% of our national output in this crisis impliesthat the past few years have done more lasting damage to our economic potentialthan either World War II or the Great Depression.’

‘More lasting damage than WWII or the Great Depression’! And note the weasel phrase ‘past few years’…..the Coalition has been in powerfor nearly 2 years…is she suggesting that they are to blame?

She seems reluctant to state the unvarnished truth, namely that economic stabilityand potential has been destroyed by Gordon Brown and his team of Treasuryadvisers….that is Ed Balls and Ed Miliband….currently the two main playersin the Labour Party car crash now….and of course both ex boy friends of theBBC’s very own Stephanie Flanders.

This (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16829768)is the official BBC report on the Green Budget…and is intent on claiming theIFS supports Ball’s policies of more borrowing and ‘stimulus’…and of coursefails to mention all the above.

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Road to Damascus

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Jeremy Bowen’s Islam-friendly reporting seems to have come back to bite him on the bum.

All those years of Israel-bashing and pro Palestinian propaganda, all that peculiar sucking up to Gaddafi. Now the BBC don’t seem prepared to give his sneakily defensive interpretation of Bashar al-Assad’s desperate struggles, the time of day. (BBC News24) The BBC is squarely on the side of the rebels. Could Jeremy Bowen be the only one at the BBC who suspects, in a ‘better the Devil you know’ Damascene moment, that toppled dictators could really be replaced by something much worse?

All day the outrage at Russia and China’s refusal to support the UN resolution backing an emasculated Arab League peace plan, has been topping the BBC headlines.

There has been a huge, as yet unquantified death toll in Syria, which makes the argument for the stability of Bashar’s murderous regime against the uncertainty of what the rebels might have to offer, (possibly equally murderous) all the weaker.
Melanie Phillips sets out the “utter intrinsic bankruptcy of the UN.”
I don’t recall the BBC questioning the legitimacy of the UN security Council before, but they seem to be hinting at something like that now, in respect of these vetoes. This is obviously because they approved of previous UN resolutions which have, of course, mostly been against Israel.

A great failing of the BBC is that they refuse to see radical Islam as a threat. “They’re just like us,” they always seem to be saying. “Talk to Hamas. Talk to the Taliban”. They wouldn’t entertain the possibility that radical Islam was beyond reason, that the core beliefs in Islam were irreconcilable with our own. At the same time, the group they chose to portray as ‘other’ with a vengeance, were those dastardly Jews in Israel.
Now look what is happening. The Arab Spring has unleashed goodness knows what. Democracy? Freedom? Not on your Nellie.

It must be worth considering the possibility that being controlled by Despots and Tyrants is the only way of keeping a lid on an explosive, unruly, ungovernable, squabbling bunch of religious maniacs whose hatred of each other is only trumped by their hatred of Israel, America and Britain. The intellectuals and idealists who revolted in Tahrir Square have melted away. Now all that’s left is the wild bunch.
So if Jeremy Bowen’s belated reservations about the Arab world’s new-fangled vision of democracy jars with the BBC, they might stop defending his scrupulous impartiality and start treating him as a pariah, as well as the Jews and the Zionists. Wouldn’t that be weird?

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BBC: POLITICAL PRESSURE GROUP

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Is the BBC a political pressure group? Many, such as Booker, say it is; and I increasingly agree. Today, for example, 101 Conservative MPs – almost half the parliamentary party – have signed a letter suggesting that the government’s subsidy commitment to onshore windfarms is basically bonkers. Autonomous Mind explains why these monstrosities are a shameful waste of taxpayers’ money here – despite the billions spent on wind energy, in times of cold weather, such as now, they contribute only 1% of our power needs. But, damn democracy, ignore the evidence, call in the greenie cavalry, Richard Black is on the case. He’s already made up his mind – backed with quotes from eco-nutter Tony Juniper, the boss of Friends of the Earth – that, in the wake of the tragic departure of “feisty” (BBCspeak for wonderful) Chris Huhne, pressure must be kept up to make sure that the renewables revolution continues. Did he plan his piece as a pre-emptive strike? My guess is that he did. But even if he did not, it shows the BBC up as precisely what it is – a campaigning organisation that is hard-set against the vile ‘Tories’ and in favour of environmental revolution.

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The Cancer of Israel

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Politics explained in five simple stages.
1) An ideologically driven movement or individual gains power by charisma or by hook or by crook.
2) In order to enact the ideological vision effectively unity must prevail.
3) Dissenters are curbed or controlled by hook or by crook.
4) Suppressing the dissenters eventually overrides the original vision.
5) The situation boils over into another revolution.
The current chess game of world politics is complex, chaotic and intricate. Iran is governed by religious zealots who have persuaded their humble subjects to focus on the afterlife, thus undermining the deterrent effect of Mutually Assured Destruction. At the same time there is a significant pro-western element within the Iranian population, which has so far failed to get itself sufficiently organised to revolt.

As Iran’s specially singled-out hate-object, Israel is being tasked to preemptively deal with Iran. Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons, although Israel has not confirmed this. The rest of the world hopes Israel will do the dirty work so that it can distance itself from the ensuing nastiness, while blaming Israel’s aggressive character and secretly sighing with relief.
The UK, the USA and Saudi Arabia will be particularly delighted, as long as they can simultaneously condemn Israel and kill the threats emanating from Iran, with one stone.

The BBC is grooming us for this. Renowned Israel-hater Leon Panetta, US defence secretary, has advertised his notion that Israel is nearly ready to strike, thereby purposely compromising any surprise element, should such a strike be thought feasible. The BBC has announced this several times.

But in any case the surgical strike option sounds like a fantasy. Even if Iran hadn’t managed to secrete its nuclear derring-do deep, deep underground and distributed the bits and pieces far and wide so that it would be impossible to take them out at one fell swoop, if Israel went ahead Israel would take massive hits from all directions through Iran’s proxies, and the rest of the Arab world might well jump on the bandwagon.

This isn’t at all simple. Con Coughlin has been investigating. He has found out what Michael Totten has been telling us for years. Iran’s proxy Hizbollah has been building up an extraordinary cache of weapons in Lebanon, aimed at Israel.

The one thing that all desperate failing governments will grasp with both hands, is a cause that is sure to unite disenchanted voters and squabbling underlings. That cause is the destruction of Israel. The coalition has already made its position quite clear on the Middle East. What with the impossibility of appeasing everyone at once it’s out of its depth and floundering. However much of a threat Islam is to us, it’s not impossible that a nuclear device could one day find its way into London, so perhaps the government thinks it expedient not to be too friendly to Israel. This particular government has never been that way inclined anyway, and never mind Obama’s iron-clad commitment..
The BBC has good reason to understand the threat Iran poses with its extended reach. Will it be influenced by Ayatollah Khamenei’s promise: “From now on, in any place, if any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime, we will endorse and we will help. We have no fear expressing this.”
So if the BBC decides to go along with the Ayatollahs and protect its Persian staff by continuing its Israel-bashing agenda, constantly insinuating that Israel is a rogue state so it doesn’t matter much if it is annihilated, think 1930s.

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ALL ABOUT PRIORITIES

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That most scrupulous and ethical organisations, the United Nations, has released statistics that claim 3,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year. The BBC covered it this morning. 77% of deaths were caused by the Taliban, with the balance attributed to NATO forces. Guess which element of these statistics the BBC focused on? Let’s not talk about Taliban savagery towards fellow Muslims, shall we?

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