Monthly Archives: September 2012

Mitt Romney released his 2011 tax returns today. Included in the details was the fact that he paid $4m to charity – 30% of his income.

Follow Newssniffer to see the partisan priorities BBC journalists are placing on this story. As I write there have been two versions of the article so far and still no mention of charitable donations.

UPDATE Just a reminder – still nothing on the BBC website about the unravelling of the Obama administration’s Benghazi narrative. Even David Frum – a favourite of BBC tweeters when he attacks the GOP – says the White House is lying. No BBC journalists are linking to that article though. Funny, that.

I wasn’t going to post this yet as I was saving it as part of a longer post but it will be a while before that gets done, so here is a prime example not only of BBC anti-climate sceptic propaganda but  a deliberate attempt to ‘smear’ sceptics and dismiss their ‘scepticism’ as some sort of psychological problem which is not based on rational thought or science:

Political Prejudice

Availability: over a year left to listen Duration: 30 minutes First broadcast: Monday 17 September 2012 

If you think that you are rational and unprejudiced, Michael Blastland hopes you will be open minded enough to listen to the evidence which suggests that you are probably not.

We might think our views about global warming, nanotechnology or the value of IQ tests are based on scientific evidence. But the beliefs we hold about these issues often say more about our ability to screen out the evidence we dislike than it does about the scientific facts.

Michael Blastland investigates the causes of our cognitive biases and our remarkable ability to not let the facts get in the way of a deeply held belief.

The programme concentrates on ‘right wing climate sceptics’ almost to the exclusion of anything else….it mentions Left Wing ‘deniers of scientific truths’ but blink and you’ll miss it….presumably just included to provide evidence of at least a minimal attempt at balance.

Good of the BBC to leave it on the iPlayer for at least a year…..can’t have you missing out on the facts.

Here’s a fascinating and comprehensive description of a Muslim terrorist:

‘militant Islamists sympathetic to al-Qaeda’

Always like that ‘militant’ bit, as if they were just a bit bolshy and gobby when in fact they had come dressed to kill, so to speak:

They ‘were heavily armed with rifles and equipped with bullet-proof vests and explosive belts.’

Kevin Connolly explains why the Israelis get rocketed:

‘Israel’s options in responding to Friday’s attack are constrained, reports BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Marcus.

In the past it has chosen to attack Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, prompting rocket fire on Israel in return.’

If only those bloody Israelis would just leave the Palestinians in peace!

Here is what you might call a balanced report on climate with ‘inconvenient’ facts (for AGW proponents) included:

Arctic sea ice reaches lowest extent on record while Antarctic ice grows

Scientists announced yesterday that Arctic sea ice had completed its summer melt and in the end reached the lowest extent since satellite measurements began. At the other end of the globe Antarctica was seeing the exact opposite as the ice at the South Pole grows to record levels.

The BBC have been quick off the mark to highlight that the Arctic ice is melting rapidly….but I can find no mention of the Antarctic ice growing.

Nor it seems can other people as they have been complaining to David Shukman that he hasn’t mentioned it….his answer is…..

The ‘big melt’ at the roof of the world

‘So is it scaremongering to report on this new record? Several people have suggested I should mention how the sea ice around Antarctica has expanded this year. It has, but Antarctica is a continent isolated by an ocean with its own unique and incredibly cold weather.’

Ah, it’s ‘weather’ or something…not climate that controls the Antarctic then!

The BBC were not shy of reporting on the Antarctic when it suits them though……

….in August 2012:

Antarctica warmth ‘unusual, but not unique’

and Richard Black in July:

Antarctic: Grand Canyon-sized rift ‘speeding ice melt’

Can’t imagine that when ice is ‘melting’ that suddenly the Antarctic is an integral part of the climate change story for the BBC….surely not?

Hi all! I’ve taken a little break from the daily chores here but will be back next Monday. It’s funny but having endured BBC news in the past few weeks it makes me want to return here as their bias is not just visceral but also profoundly destructive in so many ways. But wanted to thank Alan, David DB and Craig for keeping the show rock and rolling in my absence and invite you now to comment on this OPEN THREAD! BBC been annoying you? They haven’t half been irritating me!

The BBC seem always to be ambivalent about Muslim violence and free speech and tend to side with the view that such protests are the result of centuries of Western colonisation, imperial exploitation and cultural imposition.

Wonder what they will make of this:

An Iranian cleric is claiming that two young girls beat him up after he told one of them to cover up and dress more conservatively.

The report is a reversal of the more common claim that women are beaten by the country’s strict religious police when their clothing is considered inappropriate.

According to his account in an article run by Mehr News Agency, which is partially government owned, the man allegedly asked them ‘politely’ to cover up.

‘She responded to me by telling me to cover my eyes, which was very insulting to me,‘ CNN reports he said.

He repeated his request and that was when the girl fought back

‘She pushed me and I fell to the ground on my back. From that point on, I don’t know what happened. I was just feeling the kicks of the woman who was beating me up and insulting me,’ he said according to Radio Free Europe.

Following the alleged attack which took place in August, the cleric said he was hospitalized for three days but he did not list what injuries- if any- he sustained.

At least Radio Free Europe has their eye on the ball.

Wouldn’t it be terrible if all Muslim women, forced into subservience, felt empowered enough to do the same.

The BBC will have a link to a ‘support and counselling ‘ service soon

Cats look down on you

Dogs look up to you

Pigs look you straight in the eye and treat you as an equal

The BBC doesn’t give a shit what you think.

The BBC?…..‘good examples of moderate, liberal devotion to the idea of a polite, eggheaded vanguard, without whom the proles get distracted, confused, besieged, and eventually succumb to the terminal disease of false consciousness.

The problem is that the contemporary Left has been used to the idea of itself as a paid bureaucracy as the measure of the success of class struggle.

 You actually believe that someone like you [intellectual liberal/socialist] is better able to grasp the “objectivity of a social reality” than are poor workers, because your privilege, your education, has better equipped you to see the world as it really is, without the ornamentation of language, without the bias of place or time–absent the subaltern subject position they suffer from. You’ve been able to rise above ideological distortion.

 Notice what you have made of yourself: God. Your perspective is from nowhere. In the name of those poor workers, you have turned yourself into the God who will judge them for their sins against the “objectivity of a social reality,” the sins that usually congregate under the heading of false consciousness.‘

From HERE.

‘How strange must our system of politicks appear in future ages, when it appears, that while we were carrying on offensive wars in all quarters of the globe with vast fleets and armies, that an enemy rode triumphant in our own harbours.’

The BBC steadfastly refuses to engage in any meaningful debate about the dangers of importing an ideology that is totally at odds with that of the host nation…in fact  of a whole ‘Civilisation’ ….and consider that that ‘civilisation’ is one that acts as a defender of last resort of the freedoms and human rights that are so often crushed by various regimes.  If this ‘Western civilisation’ falls or neuters itself who will there be to help those subject to the most violent oppression.  It seems ironically that the BBC and the Left are happy to see the rise of a militant religious tyranny that will introduce such oppressions and police them with a violence that is somewhat beyond ‘waterboarding’  that life becomes but a sterile desert in the name of some sort of twisted belief in ‘human rights’ of those who would take great pleasure in stripping you of your own human rights.

Hayek said:

‘…Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism and sincerely hate all its manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realisation would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.’

Who can doubt that the BBC agenda and the policies of politicians all lead to the eventual ‘triumph’ of an ideology that is no more than an ‘abhorred tyranny’?

Maryam Namazie said:

‘Freedom of expression matters. It is not a luxury, a western value and it’s

certainly not up for sale (though obviously governments and the UN mistakenly

think it to be so).

Sometimes – actually more often than not – it is all we have.

But like many other rights and freedoms, it becomes most significant and finds

real meaning when it comes to criticising that which is taboo, forbidden,

sacred.

Freedom of expression matters most, therefore, when it comes to criticising

religion.

Freedom of expression is one of the only means we have at our disposal to resist both camps of reaction and to protect humanity.

We have to defend it unequivocally and unconditionally.’

Churchill said this about the defeat of tyranny  after the war (abridged):

‘This noble continent, comprising on the whole the fairest and the most cultivated regions of the earth; enjoying a temperate and equable climate, is the home of all the great parent races of the western world. It is the fountain of Christian faith and Christian ethics. It is the origin of most of the culture, arts, philosophy and science both of ancient and modem times.

What is this plight to which Europe has been reduced?

The vast quivering mass of tormented, bewildered human beings

Who wait in their cities and their homes

And scan the dark horizons for the approach of some new form of tyranny or terror with the sullen silence of despair.

But for the Great Republic across the Atlantic Ocean saving Europe from ruin and enslavement the Dark Ages would have returned in their cruelty and squalor.

They may still return.

 The salvation of the common people in Europe from war and servitude

Must be established on solid foundations,

And must be created by the readiness of

All men and women to die rather than to submit to tyranny.

Let Europe arise.’

Have we already seen the imposition of the Tartan Taliban?….Gordon Brown must be drinking whatever Muslims drink…he’s a very angry, irrational man:

‘Good evening, you’re watching ITV News. We go over now to Westminster, where our political editor Tom Bradby has just come from interviewing Gordon Brown. Good evening, Tom. How was the Prime Minister?’

‘Good evening, Alastair. Interviewing Gordon Brown is not like interviewing any other politician.

‘Most encounters with party leaders or MPs form a distinct pattern. We come in, we sit down, we chat pleasantly. We do an interview, which is probing, highbrow or a bit brutal, as circumstances demand.

‘Then we exchange a few more pleasantries and we go away. End of story. Tony Blair was like this, David Cameron is. So are Alistair Darling, Nick Clegg, George Osborne and just about every other front-rank politician I can think of.

‘Not Gordon. Interviewing him is emotionally complicated. He doesn’t seem to understand that we are here to ask difficult questions and test his arguments by establishing contrary positions.

‘He nearly always tells us we are wrong, both on and off camera, and that we have not done our research. He often gets angry, sometimes sulks and from time to time looks brutally hurt.

‘I really don’t know what to make of it. It’s not politics as we know it.’ ‘

Islam, a religion, but not as we know it?

Here’s Nicky Campbell talking about the Charlie Hebdo cartoons on BBC Radio Five Live’s Breakfast show this morning:

“The BBC has an edict – I’m not allowed to describe these images at all.”

(h/t Bodo in the comments)

Update.

The images the BBC won’t even describe.

The individual cartoons can be seen here.