Monthly Archives: May 2013

Those pesky Jews. BBC Watch exposes some historical revisionism from the State Broadcaster. First the facts….

“In 1862 the population of Jerusalem numbered some 17,800 people, with the majority (eight thousand) being Jews. Two years prior to that date the first Jewish neighbourhood outside the Old City walls – Mishkenot Sha’ananim – had been built by Sir Moses Montefiore. Inside theOld City itself, restoration work on the Hurva Synagogue was in its advanced stages and the quarter boasted additional synagogues, schools and hospitals. The Mount of Olives had by that time been a Jewish burial ground for 3,000 years. ”

However, a listener to John McCarthy’s programme on Jerusalem from the series “In a Prince’s Footsteps” which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on May 8^th (available here for a limited period of time) would have no idea that any Jews lived in the city at all when Prince Albert visited it in 1862 – or indeed before or after that date.

McCarthy is just one more in a long line of BBC talking heads who seems to choke at the idea of recognising Jerusalem as Jewish. Remarkable really. But surely it is time for McCarthy to correct himself?

With global warming having stopped some years ago, the eco-cultists have been a bit down in the mouth so the BBC and our pal Roger Harradin have given them a bit of a much needed boost by leading the rising levels of carbon dioxide is bringing about the end of the world charge, without any sense of a need for balance.

Yesterday I praised Paul Danahar for his realistic and reasoned analysis of the situation in Syria and compared it favourably against the efforts of Mark Mardell whose reports seem coloured by his admiration for Obama.

But I was looking at this which was published on the 3rd of  May on ‘Jonathan Spyer’ (A well known blog that analyses the Middle East):

Is Assad Winning?

What is striking about it is just how similar it is to Danahar’s report…or rather how similar Danahar’s is to this one….as Danahar’s came out on the 9th.   The similarity is even more striking when you compare Danahar’s radio report which is almost word for word, or idea for idea, the same….Danahar on 5Live Drive  (18:36)

Facts on the ground of course are the same for everyone but how they interpret them is something else…especially for BBC journo’s who often have their own view of the world….could Danahar really have come up with this himself..or has he taken a ‘shortcut’ and borrowed a few thoughts on the Syrian situation?

Talk of ‘vacuums’ being filled, fragmented  forces and command and control, Assad supported by Iran and Russia  knowing he will survive because the West still refuses to take action and the picking off of a divided enemy one by one….and of course that possibly very telling concept, the ‘big idea’ of the piece…that if Assad hasn’t lost he has won:

Spyer:  ‘So Assad isn’t winning, despite the new bullishness of his supporters. But right now, he isn’t losing either.’

Danahar:  ‘Now, by hanging on this long, the regime in Damascus increasingly thinks that by not losing it is winning.’

Could just be coincidence…as I said, the facts are the same for everyone….but its a very close fit.

If you tuned in to today’s ‘More or Less’ looking for an impartial broadcast spiced with facts then you had more chance of being run over by a yak. Radio 4 gave over the first ten minutes of the program to the subject of EU withdrawl. One of the main points we were asked to take away was an apparent validation of Clegg’s claim of 3 million job losses if we leave. Podcast

The unchallenged ‘impartial expert’ they used to assess the pros and cons of withdrawal and the accuracy of the figures was Professor Iain Begg of the LSE European Institute. The same Begg who is stridently pro-EU and sits on the advisory council of The Federal Trust for Education and Research which campaigns for the UK to be part of a federal Europe. Who wrote a paper for the LSE in 2009 stating that the economic crisis created compelling reasons for the UK to join the EU single currency [how’s that theory working out for you, eh?]

This wasn’t pointed out or his impartiality challenged as a single contributor. Of course this happens all of the time these days and this is merely another example. But as Scottish and EU referendums draw nearer we need to know more than ever who is paying the wages of the so-called “impartial experts” on our screens.

An investigation into a child sex ring in Telford has concluded.

Around 100 white girls were abused by British Pakistani ‘heritage’ men…Muslims.

The BBC tells us that: (11:27:30)

‘It’s a case that has echoes of Rochdale and Derby and other cases…the offenders all being British Pakistani Muslims and the vicitms generally being white British teens.

No one is suggesting this is something endemic within that community…but obviously one can’t deny that these are similar cases and I know people within the Muslim community saying that they’ve got to deal with it, they have got to stand up and recognise that within that community there has been a problem.’

Later on Shelagh Fogarty’s show (13:09) Eleanor Oldroyd deals with the same question and states that:

  ‘Clearly there is a cultural implication to all of this.’

So it seems that even the utlra PC BBC has been forced to recognise  a link between religion/culture and the abuse….most especially the choice of victim.

The Police attitude is interesting, and not unusual…they deny that there is any racial element at all to this case.

Victoria Derbyshire is in full on ‘Grandstanding’ mode today (10:40)…having a go at the Coppers as usual.

West Yorkshire Police have published their internal investigation into its relations with Jimmy Savile…and given themselves a clean record.

Derbyshire isn’t impressed and asks ‘How they can investigate themselves?’.

She asks ‘Don’t you think this is odd that the Force is investgating the Force…how can anyone trust the report?…there is a conflict of interest…how can anyone see it as independent, impartial and fair in anyway?’

Now of course those are perfectly legitimate questions..although an IPCC investigation is aslo possible and any organisation would naturally run an internal review of its own performance.

What is such a cheek though is that the BBC ran its own internal review…of its coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict…and spent £300,000 hiding the  final report.

At least West Yorkshire published theirs…imagine the BBC’s cries of outrage if they had hidden it away from prying eyes.

Why did the BBC spend £300,000 to keep the Balen Report under wraps?

What does it say?

Does the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East incite anti-Semitism?

Does it say ‘BBC News kills Jews’?

Any independent observer might conclude that that was the suspicion and the BBC were trying desperately to cover something up.

What does the new Director General have to say? 

Interesting report from the BBC here on the dead Boston bomb suspect Tsarnaev.

Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev already held extreme views when he visited Russia, Islamists in Dagestan have told US media. Tsarnaev’s cousin Magomed Kartashov, a local Islamist leader, reportedly spent hours trying to dissuade him from becoming a militant Russian anti-terrorist police have interrogated Mr Kartashov, who is in custody over an unrelated offense.

So, he was an avowed jihadist, a militant Islamist who favoured violence. Plus ca change. But if you read on into the BBC report you then come across this…again from Kartashov.

“Don’t understand me wrong, but Sept. 11 led many Americans to convert to Islam. It’s another question that people died there, sure.

Huh? Those pesky Americans, dying by the 100o in NYC and all so many could convert to …erm…Islam? The BBC seems unable to accept that Americans were the innocent VICTIMS on 9/11, that militant Islam was the aggressor, and so it likes to run these kind of below the headline story that somehow implies that America is always to blame.

Here is a new Open Thread to take us all off into the wild blue yonder of the weekend.

 Trying to close down debate by defining  someone as racist, homophobic or Islamophobic is a favourite trick of  those who want to avoid talking about certain issues…we get the race card etc deployed regularly on this site…so it is interesting to listen to 5Live’s Tony Livesey show  (from about 2300) which had a fascinating little spat between someone named ‘Kate’ (didn’t catch her full name), and Brendan O’Neill from Spiked magazine…subject… ‘Freedom of Speech’.

The aggressive and opinionated ‘Kate’ I think you may agree, might persuade us of the need for curtailment of the right to free speech, which was the subject of this discussion….as she railed violently against O’Neill.

It didn’t help that she seems to have made up a ‘fact’ to enhance her argument. She claimed a barrister suggested we ignore the law and don’t prosecute men who have committed sex crimes in the past and was therefore unfit to do her job..and should be sacked.   Having read the article (see below) that she was ranting about it doesn’t appear to have said anything quite so dramatic…merely saying that there should be a statute of limitations on prosecutions….that is, don’t prosecute people for minor crimes committed so long ago that genuine evidence must be well nigh impossible to find and that would anyway have resulted in little more than a ‘slap on the wrist’ at the time had they been then prosecuted.

Spiked published an article by barrister Barbara Hewson in which she talked about what she likened to a Soviet style justice system putting celebrities on show trial for sexual misdemeanours acted out many years previously.

It has raised a bit of a stink…especially as one of her recommendations is that the age of consent be lowered to 13 years.

The age of consent issue aside the rest of the article seems pretty much common sense, certainly nothing of a utterly scandalous and abhorrent nature that good old Kate seems to suggest, though Stuart Hall’s crimes were not just ‘low-level misdemeanours’…there was an allegation of actual rape. 

What she is certainly right about is that many of the rights and safeguards incorporated into our legal system have been abandoned…..unelected judges able to dismiss Statute law in favour of  subjective ‘human rights’, hate crimes defined as such by the ‘victim’ rather than an objective definition and the legal system used not to provide justice or a legal solution but to fulfil a social or political objective:

‘It is depressing, but true, that many reforms introduced in the name of child protection involve sweeping attacks on fundamental Anglo-American legal rights and safeguards, such as the presumption of innocence. This has ominous consequences for the rule of law, as US judge Arthur Christean pointed out: ‘Therapeutic jurisprudence marks a major and in many ways a truly radical shift in the historic function of courts of law and the basic purpose for which they have been established under our form of government. It also marks a fundamental shift in judges’ loyalty away from principles of due process and toward particular social policies. These policies are less concerned with judicial impartiality and fair hearings and more concerned with achieving particular results…’