Warning..some graphic photos

Heart warming tale from the BBC about converts to Islam…part of a series in which we will also see Muslims convert to Christianity…..as well as converts to Buddism, those becoming Hindus and Sikhs, and Jews ‘fleeing’ Judaism as they can no longer stand the Zionist oppression of Palestinians.

I might have made some of that up.

However the BBC programme on Muslim converts is very real:

The BBC only reported the antics of the racists of the ‘Muslim Patrol’ when forced to by ever increasing revelations and coverage by other news organisations.

The BBC has learnt its lesson and now rapidly publishes all such incidents of religiously inspired hate:

Family quits Bingham after anti-Muslim attacks

‘A Muslim family say they have been forced to move from their home after offensive graffiti and a cross wrapped in ham were left outside their house.

Murad Alam, 39, said his wife and two sons, aged eight and 10, had moved out of their home in Bingham, Nottinghamshire, to a “safe” place.

In a blatant day of pro-Labour political spin the BBC have been giving massive publicity to a report by what is almost, in essence, a Labour Party front  organisation, The Resolution Foundation,  which claims millions of the poorest will have whatever is left of their meagre income further shrunken by councils ‘forced’ to make cuts in council tax benefits to the poorest because of heartless Government cuts….

or as the Resolution Foundation puts it:

‘Low-income families will see their council tax bills rise by up to £600 a year from April.

As a result of council tax benefit reform, No Clear Benefit shows that three-quarters of local authorities are set to demand increased payments from the 3.2 million poorest working-age households who currently pay either no council tax or a reduced charge. Families are facing a hike of more than 330 per cent in the most severe cases.’

The Resolution Foundation are happy to join up with the IPPR ‘think tank’….Labour’s own propaganda unit….Beyond the Bottom Line, a joint report from the Resolution Foundation and IPPR.

Richard D in the comments draws this to our attention….a letter from the Tory Party condemning the BBC’s coverage of an issue to which even the BBC admits has a “highly charged, political context”.

The letter  from Grant Shapp’s aide Jack Berry states:

‘This morning BBC news outlets gave heavy prominence to a report on council tax benefit from the Resolution Foundation.

The report was highly critical of Government policy concerning changes to council tax benefit. In turn, it provided an easy hook for the Labour Party to voice its opposition. I am writing to register concerns about the corporation’s editorial integrity over this story.

Viewers, listeners and readers might therefore expect that the report was wholly independent of party political interests. However, this is clearly not the case.’

He’s not wrong.

If you had been listening to the BBC today you might have come away with the idea that £600 was the default figure to be imposed.

Here the BBC explains it on the web with at least a stab at the truth:

Millions of the poorest households face council tax rises because most councils in England will pass on a 10% benefit funding cut, research suggests.

A typical bill will rise from April by between £100 and £250 a year, but some could rise as much as £600, the Resolution Foundation think tank says.

But who are the Resolution Foundation?

The BBC says:  ‘The Resolution Foundation, is a not-for-profit research and policy organisation which says its goal is to improve outcomes for people on low and modest incomes.’

Listening on the radio I heard them described by the BBC as ‘an independent think tank’ and as ‘an independent research group’.

Which of course immediately caught my interest….

Guido beat me to the punch in revealing that the BBC  has blatantly lied about the Resolution Foundation.

The report’s author was one Matthew Pennycook….a Labour Councillor for Greenwich West and an ex advisor to a Labour MP, Karen Buck.

He is also, surprise, surprise, a Guardian columnist…here is a taste of his obviously pro-Labour thought.

He also served time with the ‘Fair Pay Network’…of which Labour’s Peter Kenyon enthused about:

‘We agreed that as the Labour Party we need to be pushing this as a campaigning issue of direct relevance to the majority of people we seek to represent. A twin-track campaign with the Fair Pay Network highlighting greed and inequality would do wonders for Labour Party morale. It might even improve Labour’s electoral standing.’

The BBC seems to have a similar idea launching its own ‘twin track campaign’ against ‘The Cuts’ with Labour…..it might even improve Labour’s electoral chances!

The Fair Pay Network…chaired by Karen Buck…Pennycook’s old boss…oh and look John Cruddas, and Polly Toynbee, Baronness Kennedy…and Guy Stallard – Director – KPMG Europe….just of interest because of course KPMG seem involved in a lot of these initiatives and were used by the BBC as an example of a company endorsing a ‘living wage’ when Miliband was trumpeting his latest brainwave…and are the BBC’s own accountants.

Not sure what the BBC’s idea of ‘independent’ is but here’s some help for them:

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The BBC was today accused of working with Labour to maximise ‘political damage’ of spending cuts in an escalation of tensions with the government.

‘Gullible’ BBC acting as backing band to Labour’s attacks on spending cuts, claims Eric Pickles in fresh attack on TV news

• Communities Secretary steps up criticism of the BBC reporting
• Claims Labour is behaving like a 1980s tribute act with local BBC acting as a backing band

Just hope the tribute band in question isn’t ‘Spandeau Ballet’:

A BBC radio announcer has apologised after accidentally saying that Nazi architect Albert Speer spent 20 years in the 1980’s new romantic band Spandau Ballet, instead of Spandau Prison.

The last Open Thread seems to be bulging at the seams so here we go again……

‘It’s surely not just me who, reading this, thinks of the BBC telling us, in the brazen untruth akin to O’Brien convincing Winston Smith that two plus two equals five, that we’re all going to fry and then drown. Perhaps 2013 isn’t so different from Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ 

Apologies to Stuart Jeffries of the Guardian….the irony of that.

Just as famous film stars such as John Wayne, Noel Coward and James Stewart were recruited by government during WWII to ‘The Cause’ and used in propaganda films, sometimes whilst serving in the military,  the BBC has mobilised its stars in the war against climate change ‘deniers’.

David Adam from the Guardian reveals the thinking that lies behind such decisions:….‘A short-term disaster is needed to guarantee coverage as people aren’t good at processing information about there being no ice at the poles in 30 years. Or get David Attenborough as the front man because everyone trusts him.’

In other words get a familiar, almost father-like figure, who is liked and trusted by the Public to ‘sell’ the idea of man made global warming….never mind the science…..use David Attenborough’s long established credibility, as a TV wildlife presenter, to beguile people into accepting this theory as fact.

The latest ‘honest, homely face’ to be mobilised by the BBC for the ‘frontline’ is Kate Humble, the bubbly, attractive and well liked presenter, probably best known for ‘Spring Watch’.

She is on our screens presenting ‘Orbit: Earth’s Extraordinary Journey’ along with the equally telegenic (No doubt a good reason for the BBC choosing a good looking scientist) Dr Helen Czerski as they ‘follow the Earth’s voyage around the sun for one complete orbit, to witness the astonishing consequences this journey has for us all. ‘

I haven’t seen the first episode, only catching this latest one, episode 2.  It’s an hour long and you can watch for a long time unaware of any agenda…..they relate the way in which the Sun influences the planet’s weather.

You could be easily fooled into thinking…what?  The BBC, so keen on man made global warming, is telling us how powerful the effect of the Sun is on the planet…..you can wait and wait and wait…and all you get is facts about the Earth’s orbit, the tilt of the Earth and the distance from the Sun of the Earth at different times of the year.

Forty minutes in and nothing on the radar really…but then you start to notice the trigger words and phrases slowly being slipped into the script….not a hint of ‘climate change’ though.

The scene is being set, the trap laid.

We get mentions of ice ages, tipping points and delicate balances as well as lags in warming and minute changes having devastating effects…not to mention sea levels rising….still no ‘climate change’.

Watch it and you will realise it has been carefully choreographed to bring you almost unawares to a certain point of credulity….it has primed you to be ready to accept their propaganda….you have been ‘groomed’ if you like….there should be a law against it….oh, there is…it demands the BBC be ‘impartial’. Never mind.

Part of the reason for this attention to the effect of the sun is paradoxically to persuade you that the sun has in fact no influence on global warming…or at least it has not been the main factor behind the recent rise in temperature over the last half century or so.

Climate change sceptics have long argued that the effect of the Sun is disregarded by the AGW advocates and that it plays a far larger part in global warming than is accepted by the ‘consensus’.  The BBC here is slyly attempting to discount that effect whilst acknowledging that the Sun is a powerful force that, although effecting  climate, its effects are now overwhelmed by man made causes.

So the mood music plays on and the programme rumbles on with Humble giving her bubbly best.

Finally the BBC makes its move and plonks Humble down in the Arctic.  You know what is coming but she keeps you waiting, even saying the sea ice is growing just to tease the Sceptics some more…..then she strikes.

She informs us that the existence of sea ice is a testament to the complex responses of the planet to the Sun…..BUT…it is a delicate balance…..and no one is more aware of that than the people who live there.

This year, she tells us, has seen less sea ice than previous years….part of a trend over the whole of the Arctic, the area covered by sea ice shrinking signifcantly over the last twenty years.

Warmer winters mean the sea does not cool as normal…

…And, there is little doubt that the cause of the warmer winters is US.

Finally she got there…but she’s not finished yet….

You may think, she tells us, that global warming feels like a myth in Britain where we have had a string of cold winters but  here on the frontline, in the Arctic,  it’s a reality.

The Arctic will continue to warm over the next century and we will generate the kind of climate change created in the past by changes in the Earth’s orbit.

Brilliant…she ties it all together…all that innocuous science about the Earth’s orbit and the powerful effects of the sun on climate suddenly coalesce into an attack on the sceptical, almost using it as a blunt instrument to bludgeon them into acceptance of the alarmist’s scare mongering….not only that but she discounts the cold winters here…they don’t matter at all.

However, all that subtle build up was wasted really, certainly on me, the supposed rapier denouement being too blunt, too obvious in the end but no doubt a clever ploy, however let down by a clumsy finish, that may have frightened a few people to sign up to  ‘The Cause’.

Fantastic that the BBC has such creative talent at its disposal who can sit down and actually craft a programme that is designed, not to inform and educate, but to persuade,  gull or sucker,  the viewer into believing a desired viewpoint.

The aim of the programme was not to give you information that could enable you to decide for yourself…it was solely a cynical exercise in manipulation, ‘manufacturing consensus’ if you like….telling you what to think not respecting your own views at all.

The BBC…producing propaganda worthy of any Stalinist regime.

Ironic really in a week when Orwell is the man of the hour so to speak.

Margaret Atwood  in her herogram to Orwell in the Guardian earlier this month: “People who run counter to the current popular wisdom, who point out the uncomfortably obvious, are likely to be strenuously baa-ed at by herds of angry sheep.”

The BBC fought a long war against the Iraq war and the ‘war on terror’, their fight began in fact by campaigning against the start of the Afghan war in 2001.

The fight continues.  Having taken a drubbing from Hutton the BBC never misses a chance to ‘correct’ history and to change your perceptions and views  of the various wars.

The latest piece of re-education is from ‘Book of The Week’, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan  in which, as mentioned before, one of the BBC’s favourite ‘whites gone native’ and Islamist supporter, William Dalrymple, gets his book about the First Afghan War read out and used, as he intended, as a warning from history…the real target of course being the present ‘war on terror’….opposed as he is to it…or rather the Western self defensive actions.  He is happy to justify Jihadist violence of course….

‘As long as the west interferes in the Muslim world, bombs will go off; and as long as Britain lines up behind George Bush’s illegal wars, British innocents will die in jihadi atrocities. But that does not mean we are about to be invaded, nor is Europe about to be demographically swamped, as North American commentators such as Mark Steyn claim: Muslims will make up no more than 10% of the European population by 2020.’

These are the opening words of the first episode which give the full flavour of what to expect and the real motivations behind the book….

‘Rawlinson’s chance sighting of a large party of Russian Cossacks was to the First Afghan War what the weapon’s of mass destruction were to the invasion of Iraq….a single piece of ambiguous intelligence was manipulated by a group of ideologically driven hawks into a reason to invade an independent country.’

Needless to say that paragraph is more indicative of Dalrymple’s own ideology and manipulation of facts than anything else….and of course speaks loudly of the BBC’s readiness to give massive publicity to this book and its poisonous narrative which correlates so closely with its own…or as it says in its own words:

‘The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain’s greatest military humiliation of the nineteenth century: an entire army of the then most powerful nation in the world ambushed in retreat and utterly routed by poorly equipped tribesmen.

Prize-winning and bestselling historian William Dalrymple’s retelling of Britain’s greatest imperial disaster is a powerful and important parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris, for our times.’

The so called ‘army’ consisted mostly of a mere 4000 or so troops, the majority of which were less well trained Indian units and which was withdrawing for weeks in the midst of winter through deep snow in mountainous terrain with hardly any food…..hardly a prospect any army would relish.  It is of course not good to ‘lose’ 4000 or so troops but the BBC seem to conveniently forget that British troops then swept back through Afghanistan capturing the Afghan rebel leader, crushing all resistance and taking control…before leaving.

The British were keen to have a stable and reliable ally on its frontier…

“To justify his plan, Lord Auckland issued the Simla Manifesto in October 1838, setting forth the necessary reasons for British intervention in Afghanistan. The manifesto stated that in order to ensure the welfare of India, the British must have a trustworthy ally on India’s western frontier.’.

Dalrymple compares nineteenth century British actions  with the present war in Afghanistan  but doesn’t make a similar comparison with the Taliban…which is a Pakistani proxy army sent into Afghanistan and designed to ensure Pakistan and not India controls or influences Afghanistan and its politics….and thereby doesn’t threaten Pakistan.

Dalrymple only sees what he wants to see…and the BBC only let’s us see what it wants us to see….happily that coinicides with what Dalrymple sees.

Whilst the BBC wouldn’t suppress ‘Jerry Springer’ after tens of thousands of complaints it does censor, off its own back, a play on the grounds that it might suggest that the beliefs and values of the Muslim Community are offensive…to the Muslim Comunity.

George R in the comments highlights this from the Independent:

‘A leading playwright has accused the BBC of an “extraordinary” act of censorship after the corporation told her to cut key lines from a drama about “honour killings” which will be broadcast by Radio 4 this week.

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti wrote an episode for Radio 4’s DCI Stone series, which will be broadcast in the Afternoon Drama slot.

Bhatti’s episode, called Heart Of Darkness, tells the story of an investigation into the killing of a 16 year-old Asian girl, whose dumped body is found after being stabbed to death.

When it emerges that the girl was a victim of an “honour killing”, DCI Stone is told by his bosses is to treat the case “sensitively” because of her Muslim heritage.

“A week before recording I got an email from the producer saying the BBC compliance department had asked them to take lines out.

Then another line is cut:

“At the end, a character says: ‘There is so much pressure in our community, to look right and to behave right.’

The compliance department came back and said ‘we don’t want to suggest the entire Muslim community condones honour killings.’

“It’s an extraordinary and awful situation. They said the lines were offensive but they absolutely were not. We live in a fear-ridden culture.

“Unbelievably, what the compliance department said was if you can find a factual example of community pressure leading to an honour killing, you can have the line. But it’s a drama, a story.

“It’s a crucial part of that story.”

A Radio 4 spokesman said: “This is a hard-hitting drama about the realities of honour killing in Britain. A single line in the script could be taken to infer that the pressure and motivation to commit such a crime in a family comes from the wider Muslim community, potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes to honour killing.”

‘…pressure and motivation to commit such a crime in a family comes from the wider Muslim community, potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes…’

Is that not the whole concept behind ‘Honour killings’?  That they are committed because the family believes that in the eyes of the ‘community’ a family member has acted dishonourably and brought shame on the family…and the community.

They arise from not just Arab and Muslim traditions and beliefs but in this case this is a play supposedly based on real speech patterns about a Muslim girl….no one would say ‘So much pressure on our community…oh, and the Sikhs, Hindus, and a few fanatical Christians, possibly the odd atheist community as well, to look and behave right’.

A white girl was recently beaten up by her family for going out with a black man….’A couple were jailed yesterday for a brutal attack on the daughter they felt had shamed them by dating a black man‘…..the BBC would have no trouble at all in a play that suggested that the family attacked her because they believed that the rest of the ‘white community’ would think this was a ‘disgrace’ to the White Race.  The BBC are more than happy to use language that equates being white with being racist….remember their reaction to Jade Goody in ‘Big Brother’….BBC presenter after BBC presenter told us that she showed the ‘real truth’ about White British attitude to black or brown skinned people…..the unthinking and ignorant BBC finger pointers not even realising Goody’s father was ‘black’.

The BBC spent a week pouring over this insignificant spat of ill- temper whilst it ignored the other C4 programme on that same week that revealed genuine racism and violent intentions of some Muslims in Dispatche’s ‘Undercover Mosque’…..‘an ideology of bigotry and intolerance’.…a message being spread throughout Britain by British Mosques.

Honour killings are a reaction often to behaviour that is seen to go against that of the Community…dressing or ‘behaving’ too Western for example.  Not behaving ‘Muslim’ in other words.

It maybe that not everyone in that community agrees with the concept, maybe not the majority…but there can be no doubt it stems from the cultural attitudes within that community, often predicated upon the ‘value’ placed on women by that culture….In the case of Muslim communities a value prescribed by the Koran which places women at a lower level of society and worth than men, which has consequences.

‘The lawyer and human rights activist Hina Jilani says, “The right to life of women in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions.”

Tahira Shaid Khan, a professor of women’s issues at Aga Khan University blames it on attitudes (across different classes, ethnic and religious groups) that view women as property with no rights of their own as the motivation for honor killings.  Khan also argues that this view results in violence against women and their being turned “into a commodity which can be exchanged, bought and sold.”

The 2009 European Parliamentary Assembly noted in their Resolution 1681 the dire need to address honor crimes. The resolution stated that: “On so-called ‘honor crimes,’ the Parliamentary Assembly notes that the problem, far from diminishing, has worsened, including in Europe. It mainly affects women, who are its most frequent victims, both in Europe and the rest of the world, especially in patriarchal and fundamentalist communities and societies. For this reason, it asked the Council of Europe member states to ‘draw up and put into effect national action plans to combat violence against women, including violence committed in the name of so-called ‘honor,’ if they have not already done so.” ‘

The BBC by hiding the issue, the source of the problem, turns what is a ‘protest’ play that highlights the social and cultural pressures that drive honour killings into mere entertainment, voyeurism…with no genuine take on why these killings happen.

The BBC brushes deaths, the causes of those deaths, under the carpet….but is happy to use them for the viewing Public’s edification and pleasurable enjoyment anyway.

I am horrendously busy so my apologies for the lateness in the provision of this! Off you go now, detail your concerns.

The Labour Leader’s ex-Moll Flanders makes a desperate attempt to make a case against Tory George Osborne……she asks him three questions and claims he would only answer one…shock horror…politician evades answering questions!….except, if she read her own piece, she would see that he did answer all three questions….just not giving the answer that Flander’s obviously wants.

Question 1:

I asked George Osborne three questions this morning, minutes after the latest GDP figures came out. He only answered one of them.

He made clear that there would be no change to the government’s strategy in response to this news. Quite the opposite.

“We can run away from our problems or we can confront them – and we’re going to confront them.”

That was the question he answered.

One answered.

Question 2:

In response to my second question, he did not take the opportunity to agree with Nick Clegg’s recent suggestion that the coalition (and Labour) had cut capital spending too fast in the early part of the austerity programme.

Mr Osborne did agree that capital investment was important, noting the extra capital spending that had been put back into the budget since 2011. But, he said, restoring confidence in 2010 was important too. In other words, he deflected the question.

Deflected the question?  No…he answered it…he told you that they cut capital spending at the given rate in order to restore confidence in the economy.

Two answered.

Question 3:

But his failure to answer my last question did surprise me.

I asked him whether he was going to follow the advice that the IMF’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, had given, in a BBC interview with Simon Jack – to use the Budget to rethink at least some of the austerity planned for this year.

Privately, Mr Osborne’s advisors insist that “the IMF’s advice for the UK has not changed”. That’s true. The Fund says that too. Their broad support for the government’s approach still stands.

Well, she answers her own question there….but Osborne had already made it plain in his earlier answer….his policy would remain unchanged.

Three answered.

There are quite a few questions Flanders needs to answer herself.