Mark Thompson has left the building. Last week in fact.
Perhaps now we can have a genuine outbreak of free speech at the BBC and an open discussion about religion.
We all probably know Thompson’s views on the broadcasting of critical, or what some might deem offensive, programmes based on religion.
If it’s Christianity essentially anything goes…as long as it can be ‘justified artistically’.
Islam…..well that’s a different ball game…for two reasons…first and probably foremost, the threat of extreme violence being perpetuated upon you, second that to criticise Islam is just another form of racism.
The first is a very real threat…and a perfect reason for not actually bowing down and surrendering your values….give up freedom of speech and what do you have to give up next?
The second, criticism of Islam is akin to racism, is a narrative dreamt up by Muslims to silence their critics. They have seen how opponents of mass immigration were forced into silence by being shouted down as ‘racists’ and have adopted that tactic to further their own interests.
For the BBC to adopt this narrative is a policy of extreme danger that shuts down the normal avenues of debate when controversies arise and leaves only more extreme measures to resolve the issue…ironically resulting in the very violence the BBC thinks its policy of submissive silence prevents.
Below is Thompson being interviewed and it is the famous interview in which he agrees his fear of Islamic violence acts as a natural editor as to what he allows on the screen.
Below that is the transcript of a speech by Christopher Hitchens in which he lays out the reasons why everything Mark Thompson stood for in regard to freedom of speech and Islam is wrong….and ultimately dangerous.
Who should George Entwistle listen to? Thompson or Hitchens? Who speaks truth to power, who speaks the unadulterated truth, who speaks without fear of being silenced by some fanatic….no, who speaks his mind despite the fear of being finally and irrevocably silenced by a knife wielding Islamic fanatic?
Hitchens.
Thompson believed everything was relative and negotiable…..He had no real principles, just words….that ultimately signified nothing. His legacy….a BBC that is cowed and still as biased, if not more, as when he took over.
Proof?
This is the reality of the BBC in action:
BBC refuses to screen play about Islamic threat to freedom of speech
Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director-general, says it will not screen the controversial ‘Can We Talk About This?’. Although the BBC was willing to disregard protests from Christians who considered its decision to broadcast Jerry Springer: The Opera as an affront, Mark Thompson, its outgoing director-general, is more wary of giving airtime to Can We Talk About This?, the National Theatre’s examination of how Islam is curtailing freedom of speech.
Perhaps someone at the BBC has read or will read Hitchens’ speech, his plea, for the defence of freedom of speech, not just in relation to those things that we either know aren’t ‘offensive’ or those that we know though offensive will not bring retribution upon us but also those difficult subjects that demand courage to stand up and say when something is wrong no matter what.
Perhaps someone at the BBC will take that plea to heart and act upon it. Somehow I doubt it.
It really is time for the BBC to make its mind up…is it going to defend freedom of speech come what may or is it going to allow itself to be silenced not just by threats of violence but by false considerations of whether or not someone may be offended in their own mind by this or that programme?
Thank God for the Internet!
(in two parts)
In 2005, the BBC broadcast Jerry Springer: The Opera despite protests from Christian groups (read and comment on our case study). The BBC received more than 60,000 complaints about the show – a record at the time. In an interview with Free Speech Debate, Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, explains the broadcaster’s decision to air the show: “It was a serious piece of artistic work.”
In 2008 a decision was made to abolish blasphemy laws in England and Wales, which for centuries had made it illegal to insult Christianity. Thompson says: ”That’s now left our law. Well, I rejoice in that fact.” But would the BBC have broadcast the programme if it had been about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad? Thompson says it probably would not, and offers this explanation: “It’s not as if Islam is spread evenly across the UK population. It’s almost entirely a religion practiced by people who may already feel in other ways isolated, prejudiced against and where they may well regard an attack on their religion, racism by other means.”
Mark Thompson on the BBC and religion
Interview by Timothy Garton Ash, director of Free Speech Debate
MT: Jerry Springer I saw without feeling that it was offensive to me because the intention of the piece was so clearly a satire about an American talk show host and his world rather than the religious figures as such. Now I readily accept that that’s a matter of opinion but that was my view.
MT: Post-Satanic Verses, so if this debate in broadcasting or in British cultural life suddenly got energized by the Satanic Verses, that was an absolute watershed I think for us. It was after that but of course it was before 9/11 and the sense and fear, and so forth, in the sense that some of this could lead to direct violence against individuals.
TGA: It is an ace, isn’t it? And a rather nasty ace if people say, “I feel so strongly about that; if you say it or broadcast it, I will kill you.”
MT: Well clearly it’s a very notable move in the game, I mean without question. “I complain in the strongest possible terms” is d ifferent from “I complain in thestrongest possible terms and I’m loading my AK47 as I write.” This definitely raises the stakes. But I think there’s two or three things going on, so manifestly a threat to murder, which by the way is quite rightly a crime, massively raises the stakes.
MT: It’s not unreasonable to ask what the consequences of broadcasting something, or writing something will be for a particular individual or for a community, especially communities who may reasonably – I think that’s perhaps an important word to use – reasonably take the thing to be an attack, or to be threatening.
MT: I do not think that it’s appropriate that there should be laws inhibiting freedom of speech in the interest of protecting religions.
As I said…all fine words but in reality?
Hitchens:
The (partial) transcript of a speech by Christopher Hitchens from a debate at Hart House, University of Toronto, 15 November 2006. “Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate.” Hitchens argued the affirmative position
Now, I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion, and organized religion. Absolutely convinced of it.
I speak as someone who is a very regular target of this, and not just in rhetorical form. I have been the target of many death threats, I know within a short distance of where I am currently living in Washington, I can name two or three people whose names you probably know, people who can’t go anywhere now without a security detail because of the criticisms they’ve made on one monotheism in particular. And this is in the capital city of the United States.
So I know what I’m talking about, and I also have to notice, that the sort of people who ring me up and say they know where my children go to school, and they certainly know what my home number is and where I live, and what they are going to do to them and to my wife, and to me and who I have to take seriously because they already have done it to people I know, are just the people who are going to seek the protection of the hate speech law, if I say what I think about their religion, which I am now going to do.
I’m beginning to resent the confusion that’s being imposed on us now and there was some of it this evening between religious belief, blasphemy, ethnicity, profanity and what one might call multicultural etiquette.
It’s quite common these days for people now to use the expression for example anti-Islamic racism, as if an attack on a religion was an attack on an ethnic group. The word Islamophobia in fact is beginning to acquire the opprobrium that was once reserved for racial prejudice. This is a subtle and very nasty insinuation that needs to be met head on.
Somebody said that the anti-Semitism and Kristallnacht in Germany was the result of ten years of Jew-baiting. Ten years?! You must be joking! It’s the result of 2,000 years of Christianity, based on one verse of one chapter of St. John’s Gospel, which led to a pogrom after every Easter sermon every year for hundreds of years. What are you going to do about that? Where is your piddling sub-section now?! Does it say St. John’s Gospel must be censored?!
We believe in the truths of holy books that are so stupid and so fabricated that a child can and all children do, as you can tell by their questions, actually see through them. And I think religion should be treated with ridicule, and hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.
Now let’s not dance around, not all monotheisms are exactly the same at the moment. They’re all based on the same illusion, they’re all plagiarisms of each other, but there is one in particular that at the moment is proposing a serious menace not just to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but to quite a lot of other freedoms too. And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity.
I am talking about militant Islam.
Globally it’s a gigantic power. It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several large countries and states with an enormous fortune, it’s pumping the ideology of Wahhabism and Salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young and its madrassas, training people in violence, making a culture death and suicide and murder. That’s what it does globally, it’s quite strong.
In our society it poses as a cringing minority, who’s faith you might offend, which deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need.
Now, it makes quite large claims for itself, doesn’t it? It says it’s the final revelation. It says that god spoke to one illiterate businessman in the Arabian Peninsula, and the resulting material which was largely plagiarized from the Old and the New Testament, almost all of it actually plagiarised, ineptly from the Old and the New Testament, is to be accepted as a divine revelation and as the final and unalterable one and those who do not accept this revelation are fit to be treated as cattle, infidels, potential chattel, slaves and victims.
Well I tell you what, I don’t think Mohammad ever heard those voices. I don’t believe it.
But who is the one under threat? The person who propagates this and says I’d better listen because if I don’t I’m in danger, or me who says No, I think this is so silly you could even publish a cartoon about it?
And up go the placards and up go the yells and the howls and the screams, Behead those who cartoon Islam, this is in London, this is in Toronto and this is in New York, it is right in our midst now…. Behead those, Behead those who cartoon Islam.
Do they get arrested for hate speech? No. Might I get in trouble for saying what I’ve just said about the prophet Mohammad? Yes, I might. Where are your priorities ladies and gentlemen? You’re giving away what’s most precious in your own society, and you’re giving it away without a fight and you’re even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it. Shame on you while you do this. Make the best use of the time you’ve got left. This is really serious.
Look anywhere you like in the world for the warrant for slavery, for the subjection of women as chattel, for the burning and flogging of homosexuals, for ethnic cleansing, for anti-Semitism, for all of this, you look no further than a famous book that’s on every pulpit in this city, and in every synagogue and in every mosque.
And then just see whether you can square the fact that the force of the main source of hatred is also the main caller for censorship.
I wonder how this one’s going to turn out ?
http://tinyurl.com/d5dlg9o
Will the BBC turn over footage omitted from a documentary film that may well help Israelis in a legal battle against the Palestinian Authority concerning relatives and victims of ‘suicide’ bombers, who believe that the omitted material may well provide confirmation that Fatah, Mr Arafat, the PLO and others were involved in funding terrorist groups – i.e. state-sponsored terrorism ?
Note that the BBC has not released any of this footage, and has been refusing to do so because this would “…compromise its editorial independence and damage its ability to gather news”.
Hmmm – editorial independence which allows the BBC to basically withhold information which could possibly identify state-funded terrorism against an ally, and the ability to gather, but not disseminate, news which does not fit its ideology regarding the Middle East.
A bit of state-funded terrorist support, one might say, from the BBC.
I could almost put up with the BBC’s constant Islamogrovelling if only it wasn’t always accompanied by two ludicrous lies.
The first is that there’s something heroic about offending Christians. Right now, a massive state broadcaster airing a play in which Jesus is sodomised by Hitler is about as bold as admitting a liking for whisky while in Glasgow.
The second lie is how the BBC denies everything. They ceded the editorship to Abdul Al-Loon but they then put about and start talking about the ‘vast majority of peace-loving terrorists’ and anyone who mentions Rotherham is clearly a right-wing extremist. It like George Osborne claiming that he’s never even heard of this ‘Cameron’ dude and anyone who says otherwise is a conspiracy nut.
It’s one thing for gutless broadcasters to turn themselves in to hacks and propagandists but the continuous insistence on their own heroism really is too much to take.
“piss christ” comes to new york as does mr obama
does he change hats from “film critic” in chief to “art critic” in chief, on any offence? .. hurting the feelings of millions? ya da, ya da … arrest the artist maybe?
staunchly denounce it as reprehensible?
i ve just heard that in house “scaredy cat” al bbc expert on security, frank gardner, couldn t take his own advice, and so has been caught blabbing to all
about a supposedly private conversation with the queen 😀
the “secrets safe with me” security guy? …
“safe as houses” he is … 😀 hilarious
“loose lips” frank
ps
i hope he s been nowhere our troops sensitive information ?
The BBC distaste for Israel and Jews is so ingrained and institutionalised that its editors and Board of Governors are unable to comprehend any way of presenting information about them, other than the critical or the contemptuous. Why was the BBC Panorama programme– ‘Price Tag Wars’ on the subject of alleged West Bank settler violence shown on the evening of the Jewish New Year? Imagine broadcasting an unflattering item about Islam on the eve of Ramadan -it’s unthinkable isn’t it, because the BBC knows that if they were to schedule such a broadcast at such a time there is a good chance that there would be violent Muslim protests, so the BBC will prudently avoid that possibility. With British Jews however they know they have a soft target. No complaints, no violence, no marches, just supine acquiescence. Auntie knows best,we must be at fault. Forgive us for we have sinned.
PS Given that there is a pronunciation unit in the BBC that ties itself into knots training its journalists to pronounce difficult Arab names why are they still unable to pronounce the simple Hebrew word Haaretz. Its not Haretz BBC,its Haaretz and the faith of this much maligned community is not customarily pronounced a la nouveau BBC style as ‘Jew-DAY-ism’ but Judaism!!
“They have seen how opponents of mass immigration were forced into silence by being shouted down as ‘racists’ and have adopted that tactic to further their own interests.”
The OIC redefined the word ‘racism’ at their June ’01 meeting in Mali as being “of cultural disparagement, not biological”. All 56 muslim states signed up to this. A new meme was created. And the more you repeat a lie, the more it becomes ‘true’. Their useful idiots at Al-BBC have been doing just this ever since.
panto nikki this morning 5live, allows “capn hooks” family to lie through their teeth, about his rights, justice etc -uninterrupted, then has a gent on whose own wife was killed by his band of facist nutjobs -and ensures he interrupts with the peace and love koran routine … (shakes head).
has a muppet on, insinuating pap about romney – the jewish lobby – the usual biased crap …then
pushes the boat out on your call, about complicity and years of peadostani child rape gangs …
oops! sorry … thinking aloud …
its about a teacher (non muslim) – going to france with a pupil (unforgivable)
yep! SHOCK HORROR STOP THE PRESSES, lets ask ALL the awkward questions, get to the real reasons, info etc.
incidently sidestepping muslim riot/murder/rampage for
now the 14th day … we ve had badgers – page 3 – the use of the pleb word etc etc.
traitors all
I think I saw a gang of accountants or they could have been dentists complaining rather loudly, I think they were high on smocked salmon. They were shouting and burning a Leeds United scarf. The world trembles.
Have a good fast.
Strange isn`t it?
The BBC were disembowelling South Yorkshire police over Hillsborough only a week ago were they not?
And in a similar scandalous cover-up , it would appear that loads of white girls have been systematically sexually abused by an organised gang of men in the very same part of the world.
Don`t the BBC normally pile in on top in a pigpile when two such stories have such similar themes…the fuzz covering up for their own etc…
And yet-that second story-which was headline news in the Top Peoples paper only yesterday-has “yet to get traction or to excite the viewer”…and so you`ll do well to find any mention of this “regional account of workplace incidentals and misdemeanours”.
Now this gang of blokes would not be northern Muslims like those of Blackpool, Derby, Rochdale or Oldham would they…Bradford or the like..would they?
Sheer bloody coincidence eh?…oh look…does Pleb really constitute hurtful racist or offensive incitement to hatred?…here`s our team of reporters to help you out.
Soory white trash of Barnsley, Sheffield or Rotherham-until Jenni Murray piles in a few years hence , you can just find other kebab shops or booze bins…no Islamist will ever be troubled in the making of any BBC programme between now and Paradise…f***ers!
More on the Muslim Child Rape scandal
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/south-yorkshire-police-and-rotherham.html.
I am astounded every time I read stuff like this to even think this kind of thing could be allowed to happen in a so called civilised Christian Country.
Also consider the reaction if gangs of White British men had groomed and raped young under age Muslim girls. I really am embarrassed by our Timidity.
http://www.archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/eu-joins-with-islamic-states-to-declare.html
The BBC will probably report on this and knowing them support it but as for the Rapes well least said the better.
There will be no change because it would be against their religion: Multiculturalism.
On a similar subject there was a great interview between CNN’s Erin Burnett and Pamela Gellar available here:
http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/
where Erin gives a hilarious definition of Jihad, and means it.
Enjoy
The BBC makes me sick with the way they always attack Christianity. But won’t do that to Islam because they are cowards. If that isn’t BBC baised what is.
One day soon the BBC and its employees will have to answer for their actions.
Lake of fire by any chance?
Yep, you got it Nicked me ol’ china!
If they are lucky! but as an atheist I would rather kick them where it hurts in this world !
Nah, Mr Emus.
Too good for `em and so Old Testament.
Much worse-no invites to Russell Brand premieres, no Business class flights and the cold shoulder from Kirsty Wark at the Edinburgh fringe…oh, can body language be so cruel?
A living hell, my dears!…oh the humanity.
I do not think it is a bias. Just call it by it’s real name- fear. The liberal elite is becoming defined by it’s fear.
That will be the end of it’s hegemony over us thank God.
I think the whole strategy of stifling criticism by calling it racism was invented by the Left, not the Mohammedans. It’s a standard weapon in the Left’s arsenal: we see it nearly every day when discussing the President’s re-election. Mark Mardell is particularly prone to using it. Top agitators in the so-called “Muslim World” just know a good strategy and a willing bunch of enablers when they see them.
I actually agree with Thompson about there being a difference between the Springer thing and the Innocence film. I do not, however, agree with him that there’s a value difference due to the intent behind each. If one were to make an equivalent version of Springer, the same people would still be offended, and get just as violent, regardless of the producers’ intent. The fact that neither Thompson nor the President nor anyone else condemning Innocence or the Mohammed cartoons speak out against Piss Christ or the homosexual Jesus play shows up the severe lack of integrity behind their position on the issue.
More evidence of the lack of integrity in Thompson’s thought processes is when he says that threatening to kill someone is “quite rightly” a crime. Why on earth would he need to emphasize that he approves of such a law? Because he himself helped to create an environment which incentivizes those threats. It leads to foolishness like the BBC banning a grown man named Nicky from describing cartoons, and Huw Edwards describing the violence and killings by people in Pakistan and Afghanistan when that Florida pastor threatened to burn a Koran (expressing a thought, not actually doing anything) as “less nuanced” behavior than many people would prefer, and then sitting there nodding his understanding when a guy from the Muslim Council of Britain said that because these Mohammedans had just spent a month of Ramadan deep in religious thought and contemplation, it was only natural that they’d want to kill.
The Beeboids know this is wrong, but are absolutely unable to cope with it. It’s more than fear – it’s an intellectual failure across the board, largely due to their flawed personal belief systems. I can only imagine what the tiny minority of staff who can see through this crap think when their superiors do things like this. They probably have to remain silent out of fear for their own jobs. Editorial meetings must be a joy.
The OIC thus intends to redefine “racial discrimination”. …
The participating States express their commitment to, a summary document from the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers in Bamako, Republic of Mali, was published in June, 2001. …
In other words, in their insidious proposal “defamation” is equivalent to racism, this is of course horsesh-t, but you d be surprised how
shamefully grovelling outlets like al bbc, continue
to push this perversion of the term, and have been caught out doing so.
At the OIC meeting in Mecca ’05, they detailed their ten year plan, in which, in section VII clause 3, they committed to “endeavour to have the UN adopt an International Resolution to counter Islamophobia, and call upon all States to enact laws to counter it, including deterrent punishments.” Looks like they’re almost there…
If that’s not enough for you, The Third OIC Islamophobia Observatory Report, section h), says that Muslims in non-muslim countries “should not be attempted to be assimilated, but should be accommodated.”
Does this look like conspiracy theory, or conspiracy fact?
Mecca in 2005 eh? Don`t suppose that there were any “independent observers” there to corroborate whatever it was that they said had been agreed, were there?
And-because there won`t have been-why the hell would we believe a word of what they said as was agreed.
When that nasty little part of the world becomes a place where we can all go to see their Friday beheadings-should we be sick enough to do so-only then will I consider them to be fellow citizens of a free world community.
Why the hell do we let the likes of Hamza and Atta into OUR cities-but we`re unclean and not allowed to have a good look at their hell holes for ourselves.
Not a question Rageh Omar will be challenging us all with anytime soon huh?
any one notice the beeb let a private conversation between them and the Queen about a certain 1 handed soon to be gone from our shores person get into the media. made an apology to ma’am.
http://news.sky.com/story/989328/bbc-apologises-to-queen-after-hamza-breach
Yes, and they ran a HYS discussion on it where lots of comments were critical of the Queen for expressing her views. I was honoured that my post was moderated out. It expressed a desire that Rotherham City Council – protectors of Muslim pedophiles – should accompany Captain Hook.
Yes, they ‘regret’ it… but I’m betting Frank ‘I’m a Muslim’ Gardener won’t be getting the Carol Thatcher treatment any time soon.
A pay rise and promotion seems more likely for the ingenuous, islamic oxygen thief!
Madonna claims that “we have a black Muslim in the whitehouse ” > http://kebabtime.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/madonna-digs-president-obama.html
And who was this Labour Foreign Secretary involved in gossip with the BBCs dhimmi wit…Frank Gardner?
Any chance of seeing whether they used the word “pleb” or not in their conversation-which is about the only excuse for the BBC to go sniffing round the Tories laundry basket.
Anything that Labour ever did?…well, it would have been right wouldn`t it?
25% of the world’s states are islamic … a good start to the islamic empire with strong footholds too n all democratic countries … well done moslems …
but … 100% of the sh-thole states are islamic 😀