Monthly Archives: September 2013

MONDAY OPEN THREAD

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Morning all. I’m broken hearted to read that political giant Sarah Teather is to stand down and was pleased to hear BBC Today run a glowing political obituary for the hamster faced one. It appears one of her “proudest” moments was getting a “British” constituent out of Guantanamo Bay. She will be missed…!! Anyhow, here is a brand new and one time OPEN THREAD for you all to enjoy. Now off you go ..detail the bias!

THE HARRIET HARPERSON SHOW…

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When all is gloom and your left wing soul is weary, you can rely upon Harriet Harman to sent out some upbeat insubstantial drivel and the BBC to treat it as if it were the wisdom of Solomon. Yesterday, Hattie was pointing out that Miliband had nothing to apologise for over the utter debacle of Falkirk. That was a gem given that Miliband and those who advise him were bang to rights following the “investigation” into the allegation of Unison fixing the by-election selection process. Today, Hattie is off to tell the gathering of her paymasters in Bournemouth that “Labour is on their side”. Well, of COURSE Labour is “on their side” since Labour is a fully owned subsidiary of the Trade Unions, and Miliband is where he is because of the votes from the Union barons. As time goes on, and Miliband is exposed as a dithering lightweight, this is tough one for the BBC. It reminds me of Michael Foot days. You KNOW the BBC are backing Labour but you know that the own goals being scored by Miliband may yet end up giving us a Conservative led coalition again in 2015.

 

 

A&E Like Beirut….in 2006

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The BBC have come up with a clever ploy, a new line to change the way we look at the overstretched and under pressure services in A&E.

Previously the overstretch was due to too many patients… immigration and GPs not providing the proper service being to blame for too many people coming to A&E, many unnecessarily.

 

That of course placed the blame at Labour’s door on both counts…immigration and their reforms of the GP contracts.

 

The BBC has changed the rules of the game and decided that the root cause of the problem is not too many patients but too few staff…and therefore the blame can be shifted elsewhere.

Much as the Left have decided that the problem in the housing market is not too many immigrants flooding into the country and occupying the housing stock at the expense of the natives…no, the problem is too few houses….answer…build more houses…not sure who pays for them though…or indeed where they will be built…the 250,000 a year that we need.

 

A&E departments understaffed by nearly 10%, BBC survey suggests

 

Of course the new BBC line, ‘too few staff”,  tries to place the blame at the Government’s door…and we hear the Unions and Labour politicians telling us that NHS budgets are being cut or that resources are swapped away from where they are really needed.

But wait….half way through the article we get this:

More than three-quarters (79%) cited increased attendances at A&E as the reason for increased pressure, while 74% blamed inappropriate attendances at A&E where patients could have been treated by primary care services or by calling NHS 111.

 

In other words nothing has changed…the cause of overstretch is still the same…too many patients, and too many attending when they shouldn’t, GPs shirking their responsibilities,  not too few staff….not the cutting of staff or resources…there has always been a staff shortage at A&E…it has never been a popular place to work….so why the big headline…is it ‘news’ or just Labour scare mongering?

The BBC once again taking their narrative from the Labour press release?

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham “Labour has been warning all year about the intense pressure on Accident and Emergency departments…..What I’m saying to the government is they must urgently get a grip on the underlying causes of this pressure and particularly ensure that all hospitals in England have enough staff to provide safe care.”

 

Remember Stafford Hospital?…a major cause being staff shortages…Under Labour…

On Monday, the Inquiry heard evidence from a member of staff who worked on the Emergency Assessment Unit (EAU) 

Witness B told the Inquiry that in 2004, when the unit was opened, it had nearly 50 beds and staffing levels were adequate. The Inquiry was told that this changed in 2007 when the number of nurses was cut. As a result, witness B became responsible for 15 patients with high care needs as opposed to a previous maximum of nine. 

The witness told the Inquiry that the unit became known as “Beirut” throughout the hospital. She said that the low staffing levels made the unit dangerous from a safety perspective.

 

or this:

  • May 2006 – Peer review of critical children’s services and A&E department raises serious safety concerns

The peer review report highlighted the same concerns as an earlier review in 2002.

It described A&E as being “vulnerable” and warned there was “insufficient senior medical cover in A&E”, with two consultants and an associate specialist working a one-in-three rota.

The report also found “insufficient nursing staff”, with no nurse available to triage patients.

“It is self-evident there are not enough nurses and those few that are available are run ragged.”

 

 

Of course the BBC when reporting the Mid Staffs scandal tried to avoid mentioning ‘Labour’ at all in relation to this in any articles…..referring instead to the ‘minister for health’ or ‘the government’.

 

 

 

 

Great Scott!

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Selina Scott takes a great big running kick at the ‘golden balls’ of the ‘sexually corrupt’ BBC where the ‘often Oxbridge- educated powerful male elite behave in a predatory way towards attractive and ambitious women seeking to move up the Corporation’s greasy pole.’

 

Scott notices something that is the major problem when trying to reform the BBC and eliminate its bias:

 I wish Lord Hall success in his restructuring.

But the BBC has always been like a giant worm – no matter how much you cut off, it reforms in its old image.

 

As long as the BBC continues to recruit from the same ‘gene pool’ nothing will change….the sheer mass of likeminded people securely ensconced in their liberal bubble means any new incomer will soon find he or she has to ‘fit in’ or be ‘suspect’ and sidelined in one way or another.

 

 

In themselves the financial wrong doings and sexual politics have little to do with blatant bias but such goings on and the financial chicanery all makes it much more difficult for those working in the BBC to do their jobs and of course smacks of hypocrisy.

Every time they raise the question of financial misdemeanours or sexual misconduct of say politicians or businessmen the seemingly endless revelations from inside the Corporation will be thrown back in their faces.

 

For instance Rob Wilson, Tory MP on the same page lays into the BBC:

Snouts-in-the-trough bosses are just middle class benefit scroungers

The public deserves answers as to who was responsible, but more importantly, the public and the BBC’s hard-working, talented staff deserve strong and principled leadership.

It has long been a fear of some (and hope of others), that a Conservative Government would privatise the BBC.

That isn’t going to happen, but the BBC needs to stop trying to emulate the worst excesses of the private sector as seen in the City and return to its public service remit.

Pakistan…The Most Dangerous Country In The World

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“The road to Paris and London lies via the towns of Afghanistan, the Punjab and Bengal”  Trotsky

 

 A politician has woken up to reality:

LIAM FOX explains why Pakistan is the most dangerous country on earth

 

I’m not holding my breath but maybe the BBC will start looking to places in the world other than Israel for bad news stories, perhaps it will stop pandering to the likes of the PSC and other pro-Palestinian propagandists. Perhaps they will call the ‘Barrier’ what it is …a security fence to stop terrorists bombing, shooting and stabbing Jews….

The BBC uses the term ‘barrier’, ‘separation barrier’ or ‘West Bank barrier’ as an acceptable generic description to avoid the political connotations of ‘security fence’ (preferred by the Israeli government) or ‘apartheid wall’ (preferred by the Palestinians). 

 

I would suggest that the BBC not using the correct terminology, which gives the reason for the fence, is highly ‘political’ in itself as this not only hides the Palestinian’s terrorist activities but allows the Palestinians to make political capital out of the image of the ‘Barrier’ as an oppressive imposition upon them, vicitmising them for being Palestinian.

… perhaps the BBC will come round to using the term ‘terrorist’ in relation to such attacks.

The word ‘terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should convey to our audience the full consequences of the act by describing what happened. We should use words which specifically describe the perpetrator such as ‘bomber’, ‘attacker’, ‘gunman’, ‘kidnapper’, ‘insurgent’, and ‘militant’. We should not adopt other people’s language as our own.

 

‘Terrorist’ is a word which has a meaning….and once  again to hide that fact, that such actions are ‘terrorism’, hides the intent behind such attacks…..not to use the word hides the motivation, the politics behind the bloodshed.  Just to have a body count and an interview with a shocked eyewitness and a grieving mother or two means nothing in the big picture.

So no, not a barrier to understanding but a clear pointer to explain events and the reasons behind them.

 

Perhaps it will get round to examining Pakistan in the same light that it shines upon Israel…

The major charge levelled at Israel by those who wish to make it ‘disappear’ is that it is ‘illegitimate’, a creation of the West imposed upon the Arabs.

 

The BBC does little to dispel this…comparison with many countries in the world would find that they too are ‘created’….Germany is a creation, Belgium, Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, …well, every country in fact.

But there is one that was created in the exact same way that Israel was, at the exact same time for the exact same reason….only that country’s reason could be considerd to have far less legitimacy than Israel’s.

That country of course being Pakistan….a Muslim Zion, created to provide a homeland for Muslims.

Which is strange as there were already many ‘Muslim’ countries around the world that they could have gone to live in….but there was no ‘Jewish’ land.

 

For the BBC never to raise the question of Pakistan’s legitimacy whilst at the same time allowing Israel to be demonised and undermined itself raises a few questions.

If one is illegitimate then so is the other.

If using the term ‘security fence’ or ‘terrorism’ is political and to be avoided surely they should avoid the far more political implications of  suggestions that Israel is an ‘illegal’ state….the use of which gives a nod and a wink to the ‘terrorists’, sorry, militants, the brave resisters,  fighting to take back ‘their land’.

BBC Management Implodes

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The Government has waited a long time  but it looks like it will  take the opportunity to wield the knife and cut off the BBC’s head…the head that always looks the other way when difficult questions are asked of it.

Ther Sunday Times reports that they plan to hand regulation of the BBC to Ofcom  removing the BBC Trust from its double headed position of being both champion and regulator of the BBC.

A ‘senior source’ at the DCMS said ‘It is clear that the Trust, which is both cheerleader for the BBC and its regulator, does not work.  There are contradictions.’

‘Nobody could be left with any confidence in this governance structure.  It is just jaw dropping.’

 

Labour’s Ben Bradshaw also wants Ofcom to take over from the Trust which may bode well for such an eventuality happening.

 

It is perhaps an irony that it is ‘Money’ that has brought the BBC low….never mind the bias…just like Al Capone the BBC is untouchable for its real crimes but gets caught with its fingers in the till.

The BBC that lectures us so primly about the greed of  the Bankers, that sternly upbraids us for consumerism, that hectors us about saving the planet whilst flying to work.

I’d quote something from the Bible but no one at the BBC would get the reference…perhaps Giles Fraser could translate…then again perhaps not.

For the BBC troopers on the frontline bombarding us with its left wing, liberal cluster bombs not much will change….at least in their minds.

 

However that may change, though slowly, if Ofcom takes a more independent and rigorous view of the BBC’s coverage and forces change at the BBC with rulings that do challenge its imposition of its particular world view upon us all. 

 

Syria Crisis Raises Question of Mark Mardell’s Bias And Accuracy

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As the President of the United States continues to fail in drumming up international support for bombing Syria, and the failure to win now-vital Congressional approval looms on the horizon, the BBC’s Mark Mardell is having a crisis of faith in which he reveals personal bias on the US, war, and the President. He also makes serious factual errors which reveal either his incompetence as a journalist or that a deep personal bias has clouded his judgment.

Syria crisis raises question of US role in the world

Right away, Mardell spells out his dilemma.

The president is clearing his desk, going all-out to persuade for a vote that he has said is vital for America’s credibility.

It is also a critical moment for American perception of itself as a power in the world. But in the details of the debate over Syria, the biggest questions and the larger picture are in danger of being lost.

In essence, it’s whether the world needs a super cop. And whether the US should simply assume that role.

I laughed out loud at this point. A little more than two years ago, back when the President was dithering deliberating over whether or not to send some humanitarian missiles at Libya, Mardell was engaged in contemplation of what he believed was the President’s internal personal struggle:

  • The tug between not wanting to be the world’s policeman and being the only guy with the gun and the muscle to stop a murder.

  • The whole-hearted desire to act in concert with other countries, and the realisation that implies going along with stuff they want to do and you don’t. (Being dragged into a war by the French, imagine.)

  • Not wanting to be out front when many world structures are designed in the expectation that like it or not, America will lead.

  • Intellectual appreciation that the ghost of Western colonialism is a powerful spirit never exorcised, and frustration that an untainted liberal interventionism hasn’t grown in other countries.

It took a long time for Mr Obama to decide to take action, and the route he has taken, a genuine commitment to acting with other nations with the US in the lead, has made for the appearance of more muddle. Now it is time for clarity.

How’s that working out now, Mark? Guess who demanded action first, and who’s our only ally now. Remember when Mardell was worried that the President had accidentally painted Himself into a corner with that “red line” business”? Just the other day, the President, like a child being asked who scribbled with crayons on the wall, told the world, “I didn’t didn’t set a red line: the world set a red line.”  Now Mardell seems to have happily forgotten about his original concern and dutifully shifted blame away from Him. Trapped In A World He Never Made.

The BBC’s top analyst of US affairs has been consistent in his anti-war stance, his defense of the President, and in placing blame anywhere except on Him. Most recently, we saw Mardell in Ohio, reporting about a couple of town hall meetings held by a Congressman, where he found a way to blame George Bush, sort of. Hyper-partisan, intransigent Republicans currently in Washington also shared the blame. Any lack of trust in the President Himself seemed non-existent.

Notice that Mardell portrays Rep. Johnson as having been “unimpressed” by the Administration’s secret intelligence briefing simply because neither the President nor Vice President were there. He says that Johnson merely “had to wait a while to find out” about what the situation was with the chemical weapons, and solid evidence of an actual war plan. Mardell plays his skepticism as personal pettiness, not as a perhaps sincere objection based on legitimately reached opinion. In fact, here’s what Johnson actually said in a public statement, which Mardell would have been given:

“Given how important this Congressional briefing was for the President to make his case for taking military action in Syria, I was surprised that neither he, nor the Vice President, nor any cabinet level official was in attendance.  The decision on whether or not to commit American troops and risk American lives when the United States is not directly threatened is a difficult one, and the President has the heavy burden of convincing the Congress and the American people of its merits. I left this afternoon’s briefing with more questions and concerns than I had when I arrived.”

Sure, he was surprised that nobody of any importance was there. But this appears to be a case where the President and His Administration demonstrated the contempt in which they hold Congress. This wasn’t a snub just at Johnson, it was a snub at all of them. And the bit I’ve bolded is rather important, don’t you think? And it’s not just Johnson who came away skeptical. Congress didn’t actually get satisfactory answers, and even top Democrats say so. Why would Mardell censor that piece of information? No wonder the President is now “clearing His desk”, as Mardell put it today.

Back to the Top Cop thing. Mardell goes on to explain what he sees as the two justifications being used for dropping a few bombs on Syria.

The first is national interest. Mr Obama says Syria does not pose an immediate threat to the US, but its willingness to use chemical weapons threatens its allies and bases in the region.

Less frequently his administration has suggested such weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists who could use them against America.

It is pretty obvious, the bigger the world power the more its vital interests may be harmed by something happening a long way away. If the whole Middle East is in uproar, it might not make a whole heap of difference to Paraguay or Latvia.

The argument for national interest is pretty clear. The desire to intervene for what you might call ‘moral reasons’, is far more murky.

Much of this is fair enough. It doesn’t take a genius to grasp the concepts. But why are moral reasons more murky? Because China and Russia don’t agree. No, really.

Mr Obama and even more forcefully Secretary of State John Kerry have said that the world can’t stand aside and witness such suffering. Particularly not when it breaches, if not international law, then international norms.

It is noticeable that it is senior politicians in the US, France and the UK who are keen on this argument of liberal interventionism. It is not just Russia that won’t go along with it. China won’t either.

On a recent trip there, I became convinced that this is fairly genuine. Academics and ordinary people find it baffling that America wants to impose its values on the rest of the world.

China forcefully repeats that it wants the denuclearisation of its ally North Korea. But it is reluctant to force the issue.

So we’re supposed to question Western moral values in this case because China is baffled by US imperialism? Oh, my goodness. On what other issues are we now supposed to back off now, Mark? Looks like he’s suffering from a little going native syndrome having spent a few weeks in China working on that documentary of his on how deeply entwined our national interests are and how China’s awesomeness may very well rescue the US economy (coming next Tuedsay on Radio 4 – can’t wait!).

Pardon me as I wipe the tears of laughter and dismay out of my eye. Mardell’s also saying that we could be wrong because we haven’t heard particularly loud demands to stop Assad from Brazil, Nigeria, or Japan, either. Well, Mugabe has been pretty silent, too. That’s me convinced. Are we in the world of adult, serious political discussion, or in the proverbial university bar? Hold that thought for later, actually.

So, we’ve gone from the President “accidentally” boxing Himself into a corner and being forced to act to save face, to Him blaming the world for boxing Him into a corner and being forced to act because of our high moral values, to questioning those moral values because they don’t come from Sweden. No, seriously:

I once put it to Tony Blair that the Iraq war might have been more credible if the call for action had come from Sweden. He made the obvious point: “Well, they couldn’t do it, could they?”

Now here’s where Mardell reveals his true bias on the larger issue:

Which makes me wonder about that old saying, “to a hammer, every problem is a nail”. In this case, you have to wonder why the hammer was forged in the first place.

Mardell’s not really old enough to be a child of the ’60s, but he sure is acting like the dippiest of hippies here. Why is there war, mommy? For heaven’s sake, Mark, why not quit the BBC and go to the nearest military base and start putting flowers in rifle barrels. How can anyone take this man seriously at this point?

Speaking of the ’60s, some people here may remember this little journey down the rabbit hole when Mardell was holding session at the BBC College of Journalism. His first reaction on landing in the US after being assigned to replace Justin Webb was, “What happened to the ’60s”? His real bias is on display here. In an attempt to explain himself, he continues:

The British developed their military to defend a globe-spanning empire. The US developed its military might to intervene in Europe and then to challenge the USSR.

The absence of the original purpose has not eliminated an instinct to intervene.

Maybe the word “imperialism” makes you think of arguments “that it is all about oil” or crude land grabs.

But those Victorian imperialists really did think they were bringing civilisation and Christianity, order and the rule of law to people who couldn’t climb to such dizzying heights on their own.

America’s belief in its own mission is more universal and not driven by racism, but there is a similar zealous enthusiasm to remake the rest of the world in its image.

No, there isn’t. This is pure anti-American drivel. And notice how this is suddenly about “America” again. Seems like every time the President does something Mardell or the BBC doesn’t like, He’s not mentioned, and it’s all about “America” as a whole acting unseemly. Is the President not involved? Wasn’t He elected to cure us of this demon? Nobody ‘s making Him do this. In any case, is that what we were doing when Clinton bombed the Serbs? How about when we removed Manuel Noriega from power? Grenada? Nobody in their right mind thought we were going to make Afghanistan into a modern, Western society. Dumbing down such complex situations and issues is silly, and betrays an ideological bias. Disagreeing with policy isn’t the same thing as demonizing it, but that’s what he’s doing here. Having Mark Mardell report on the US is like having St. Mark report on the Pharisees.

Of course, stopping the horror of chemical weapons is not the same as introducing democracy at the point of a gun.

But it raises the same question of who has the authority to make the judgment that norms have been violated, and who deals out the punishment.

Oh, does it now? I don’t know about people here, but I question the wisdom of listening to Russia and China and Nigeria on the issues of human rights. So, who has the authority?

The UN is meant to be the body that can order global cops into action. But the US says the Security Council is broken, because of the Russian veto.

You mean the Security Council which includes such moral heavyweights as Azerbaijan and Pakistan?  The UN which for a while had Libya as the Chair of their Human Rights Council? With Venezuela and Qatar as members? These people are supposed to set moral standards for us all?

While the Russian action does look cynical, it is a bit like a prosecutor saying the jury system doesn’t work because he didn’t get a conviction.

You mean like so many Beeboids said after the Zimmerman verdict?

Or indeed, if David Cameron said parliament didn’t work because of the “no” vote.

Or indeed, if Mark Mardell said Congress didn’t work because they wouldn’t vote for something the President wanted.

President Obama understands how it looks to the rest of the world if the US goes it alone.

But, I thought…..

Mardell again:

It is why he was so reluctant to take the lead over Libya, why he was so slow to develop a Syria strategy.

No, it isn’t. This is where Mardell reveals not only his bias about the President, but even more of his own personal political beliefs. The President took so long to develop a strategy, and has been flailing around ever since He got caught up in His own smart-ass rhetoric, because He and His advisers actually had one all along – only it turned out to be completely, tragically, absurdly wrong.

Remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, on Syria at the Center for American Progress, Washington D.C.

You all remember Samantha Power, right? She’s the President’s former foreign policy adviser who blamed the Jewish Lobby for criticism about His policies, then had to resign when she called Hillary Clinton “a monster” in an interview. After working for George Soros for a while, she was brought back into the fold and is now our voice at Mardell’s voice of morality, the UN. Here’s what she had to say to the far-Left Center for American Progress recently:

We worked with the UN to create a group of inspectors and then worked for more than six months to get them access to the country, on the logic that perhaps the presence of an investigative team in the country might deter future attacks. Or if not, at a minimum, we thought perhaps a shared evidentiary base could convince Russia or Iran – itself a victim of Saddam Hussein’s monstrous chemical weapons attacks in 1987-1988 – to cast loose a regime that was gassing its people. We expanded and accelerated our assistance to the Syrian opposition.

In other words, the President and his super-smart advisers are, just like Mardell, as naive as your average angry student debating world affairs in the university bar. This is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. And remember that last line about stepping up the help for the rebels for later.

Now we see that Mardell has been accidentally right, but wrong all along. The President wasn’t taking so long to develop a military strategy because He was worried about what the world would think. He was taking so long because He was working on another scheme entirely and never expected to need one. And then He thought He could get away with it, because He usually faces no consequences for anything. Just like He thought He could get away with that “red line” statement. How can Mardell not know this? He’s supposed to have been following the President’s every move closely, considering it all deeply and dutifully, researching, talking with experts, getting insider info. How can he have blown this so badly? Especially since this kind of naive negotiation is exactly the kind of thing he supports.

His bias has been driving his analysis. As I’ve maintained from the beginning, the President doesn’t have much interest or deep understanding of realpolitik and international affairs at this level. His ambitions and concerns have always been about domestic policies, domestic transformation. All these foreign issues are nuisances, distractions, things which should be delegated to various minions and apparatchiks. Where He does have opinions, they don’t seem to be very profound. And so we see here that the people doing it for Him share the most naive, ignorant views possible, and have accomplished precious little.

Why do you think we have less allies now after four years of Hillary Clinton as Sec. of State? And here’s another unasked, never mind unanswered question: If so much of the opposition to this war is due to Iraq fatigue, what about Libya? Why was Libya okay and now suddenly everyone is tired of war? That was even (illegal) regime change, he didn’t use unapproved weapons, and this is supposed to be some “proportional” limited bombing campaign.

What does “proportional” mean, anyway? Mardell isn’t interested. All he cares about is how the President looks now, and how He’ll look next week. It seems that the BBC’s North America editor’s job is not to really inform you properly about US issues, or about how the country works or what’s really going on, but how things affect the President. That’s why I often refer to him as the BBC’s US President editor.

Mardell’s journalism over the last five years has shown that his personal political ideology is very close to that of the President. This war campaign – as well as the one against Libya – is the only issue on which Mardell doesn’t approve. So he works to shift blame away from the President at every opportunity. And now he’s not only trying to analyze the situation around Him, he’s trying to figure out what the President can do to be successful. Is that really what the BBC is paying him to do?

Now about what Amb. Power said about accelerating assistance to the Syrian rebels. It’s really starting to look like this is all smoke and mirrors. As is obvious to everyone except Mardell by now, it’s impossible to think that a limited strike on a few military facilities will be the end of it. The President claims He’s not taking sides in the Syrian civil war here. He’s been very clear that this is about sending a message about killing lots of people in an unapproved method. I bet Ghaddafi’s ghost is wondering why the hell all this Iraq fatigue didn’t set in when it was his turn in the spotlight. But I digress.

Doing any real damage to Assad’s military capability is a de facto game changer in the civil war. It’s simply not credible to say that the military installations supposedly used to launch a rocket with a chemical warhead have no other purpose. I don’t mean specifically the rockets themselves which may already be armed with them, I’m talking about the larger picture. It’s impossible to believe that there can be some sort of surgical strikes so accurate that only the chemical weapons and a couple of rocket launchers will be hit. Any attack will limit Assad’s military capability, period, and it’s outrageous that we’re expected to believe that it won’t, and that any military action the US takes won’t affect – or isn’t meant to affect – the civil war. Of course it will.

Where’s Mardell’s astute analysis about that? He’s still caught up in the emotional world of teenage existential angst to notice. I’m trying not to take a position here about the rights or wrongs about taking sides or stopping Assad or regime change or what we should do next. I have opinions, obviously, but that’s not what this is about. This is about Mardell’s personal opinions coloring all his reporting and analysis in a way that makes his journalism unworthy of trusting or given much credence at all.

He’s not wondering about any of what I’ve just mentioned because he’s still stuck in his belief that The Obamessiah really is concerned only about chemical weapons, and truly doesn’t want to force regime change. We can see from Power’s speech that this simply isn’t true, that the US really is working to increase the chances of his downfall. So the President is essentially lying, Sec. of State Kerry is lying, and any BBC journalist who says the President doesn’t want to is either lying or just seriously deluded.

It’s either that, or the President and His entire Administration are a bunch of idiots and shouldn’t be trusted to run a nursery. Take your pick. In the end, this is a massive failure of BBC journalism. At your expense.

PS: Still no mention of His Nobel Prize for Peace. Come on, Mark, even Sweden has called Him on it.

BBC AT WAR – WITH ITSELF.

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You would need a heart of stone NOT to chuckle at this;

Lord Patten faced demands to quit or be sacked last night as civil war tore through the BBC. The chairman of the BBC Trust was given an ultimatum after being accused of ‘fundamentally misleading’ Parliament over the scandal of excessive pay-offs to Corporation fat cats. But the defiant former Conservative Party chairman said he had ‘no concerns’ about the allegations made by former director general Mark Thompson.

What fun watching them tear themselves apart. It’s not just Patten that needs to go though – it is the entire rotten corrupt smug self indulgent empire of the BBC.