Amused to hear that 5Live sports presenter, George Riley, wasn’t wanted at a ‘posh’ BBC radio station (presumably Radio 4) because his accent wasn’t good enough.(10:09)
‘When I first started here someone from another station, another BBC network, which has a number slightly lower than 5, said I didn’t sound right so they wouldn’t have me on their station.’
So much for celebrating diversity.
Though not all found him so unattractive apparently:
The BBC sets out to defend its Latte drinking acolytes:
It comes to a conclusion….
‘At a time when there is seemingly a Starbucks on every street corner and latte is sold in truck stops, there is something rather archaic about representing latte as the beverage of the elite.
Instead, the reality is that “it’s a form of industrially produced, high-calorie, low-cost, high-profit, non-nutritious food”, says Kyla Tompkins, an expert in food studies at Pomona College, California.’
A form of industrially produced, high-calorie, low-cost, high-profit, non-nutritious food?
Strnagely that sounds an awful lot like the BBC’s news output….industrially produced without love or thought at low cost regurgitated from Press releases and innate group think and yet paying themselves a hell of a salary whilst producing little of value…no ‘food for thought’ you might say.
I was listening to Tony Livesey castigating Sky News journalist Martin Brunt and explaining that the internet troll, Brenda Leyland, who has killed herself after being investigated by the police and interviewed by Brunt for Sky News, was in fact merely expressing an opinion in her Tweets and Livesey asks are we now unable to express opinions without the Press doorstepping, hounding and exposing us?
An interesting take on ‘opinion’ and freedom of speech by the BBC which is very quick to pillory anyone who steps over the BBC imposed line of ‘common decency’…..
#BBCtrending: The racist video that’s shocked Australia
Followed up by this report…
Australia train rant: Is racism getting worse?
Never mind theBBC’s hounding of the EDL leader Tommy Robinson who held the same views as our esteemed PM who recently told us that we must destroy this ‘poisonous ideology’…you know the one, brought to us by the ‘enemies of the UK’.
I guess Robinson was white and working class and therefore not entitled to an ‘opinion’ if it jarred with the Latteratti.
Yet to see the BBC being so eager to show Black people racially abusing whites.
Essentially this is just another ruse to attack Murdoch and his media empire.
Yesterday the Independent headlined with this story which concentrated its attack on Murdoch and the Mail:
With Alan Henning’s death, the media finally stops playing the terrorists’ tune
No surprise there, the author was Joan Smith, executive director of ‘Hacked Off’
And why no mention on the BBC of this from the Mirror on Saturday…the day Brenda Leyland took her own life:
Madeleine McCann internet trolls are devoid of humanity – much like the people who abducted her
One of these trolls, Brenda Leyland, is a church-going 60-something divorcee who lives in a pretty village in the Home Counties. She looks like a perfectly respectable woman. But of course she isn’t.
She’s a cowardly bully who hides behind her smart front door and spews her bile in secret because she doesn’t have the guts to do it in public.
This piece of work was sending up to 50 texts a day to the McCanns. But when Sky News cameras approached her she wasn’t quite so brave.
She looked like a frightened rabbit (typical). But as she was running away (also typical) she said she thought she was entitled to do what she’d done.
Really? She thinks she’s entitled to threaten, hound and bully the innocent? Is that because her own life is so lonely, so miserable, so poisoned that she wants others to suffer the same. Or is she just a twisted, fecked up bitch who gets her kicks from hurting people.
Well, newsflash for these sickos – you guys aren’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to Kate and Gerry McCann. The very worst thing that could ever happen to them already has. And they will for ever have to live with that. I truly hope all the people in that dossier are prosecuted and I hope Sky continue to confront and identify every one of them. We should all know what a black heart and a twisted mind looks like.
Let’s see how brave and opinionated they are when their evil is made public alongside their names and their faces.
Quite vitriolic…and yet not a peep from the BBC about the Mirror’s piece.
Nor indeed is there any criticism of the BBC’s own interview with Gerry McCann when he said
on Friday “Clearly something needs to be done about the abuse on the internet. I think we probably need more people charged.”
John Humphrys asks what should happen to the woman who trolled the McCanns saying ‘This woman was pretty vile about you and your wife….’
McCann stated that “I’m glad to see the law around this area is being reviewed, but I do think we need to make examples of people who are causing damage.”
So he wanted an example to be made of people like Brenda Leyland.
And yet it is Martin Brunt from Murdoch’s Sky that takes the blame for the death of this women…not the police investigation which she knew about, nor the Mirror, nor the BBC itself.
In her Tweets Brenda Leyland says ‘outing’ trolls, or shills, is a good thing….
516506719313473536|Mon Sep 29 08:36:12 +0000 2014|#mccann Outing Shills who have threatened others, is no different to FBI releasing name of Jihadi John, 4 good of safety
She also wants to see Oscar Pistorious ‘shamed, ruined and alone’….
512966679706746880|Fri Sep 19 14:09:21 +0000 2014|#justice4Reeva The : Rip tide ” is indeed Global, Oscar is reviled in Europe and the USA, we hope he is shamed, ruined and alone
Here she attacks the McCanns, wishing the worst upon them….
512142957022302208|Wed Sep 17 07:36:10 +0000 2014|I fear, that we are in this 4 long haul, up to all of us to a) Bang home the facts b) make #mccann s live in shame for years
483234259252310016|Sun Jun 29 13:03:20 +0000 2014|#mccann To Kate and Gerry, you will be hated by millions for the rest of your miserable, evil, conniving lives, have a nice day !
In this Tweet she complains that the site moderator is telling her to stop the abuse…..
516692353130967040|Mon Sep 29 20:53:51 +0000 2014|#mccann Mod says ” Stop, people will get hurt ” He never ONCE said that when Shills were busy threatening, outing and stalking others
Her opinion of the moderator….
516694945034698752|Mon Sep 29 21:04:09 +0000 2014|@siamesey Mod is a total Fucktard, I despise him
It is very sad that events had such a tragic end but pillorying Martin Brunt for doing his job in a responsible fashion merely because his critics hate Murdoch is unjust…and ironically is doing the same, in fact far worse, than they are complaining that Brunt has done…what if Brunt were to commit suicide because of the trolling?
Bizarre hypocrisy from his critics…and the usual double standards from the BBC happy to park their ethics and standards when a Murdoch ‘target’ hoves into view.
Hi folks! Just back from a week’s holiday and apart from enduring the occasional BBC World Service broadcast, managed to avoid the ‘world class” journalism so beloved of the Beeb. Ah, bliss. Now, back to reality…
‘A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others?’
The BBC has a long history of pandering to Islamist extremists and presenting them to an unsuspecting audience as credible, authoritative and moderate Muslims whose words and beliefs are given all the more weight by the unquestioning platform afforded them by the BBC to push their ideology.
Recently we had Nicky Campbell allowing someone from CageUK to promote his Islamist cause which we looked at here…Jihadi Jock.
It’s not as if CageUK, or Cageprisoners as it used to be, is not unknown for its views….Statement by Gita Sahgal on Amnesty International and Cageprisoners
The tragedy here is that the necessary defence of the torture standard has been inexcusably allied to the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right.
Note that line ‘the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right. ‘
That is what the BBC does, deliberately and knowingly…it is impossible for the BBC, a news organisation with huge resources, to claim it does not know the nature of the organisations and individuals it engages with in debate on its programmes.
With its constant tales of Christian Crusaders launching assault after assault, ancient and modern, on the Muslim world the BBC has provided the Islamists with the material to give credibility and authority to their narrative that Western foreign policy is essentially a war against Islam and Muslims and all Muslims must join the fight against the West.
John Humphrys on the Today programme continued to provide such a service to the extremist Islamists this morning when he spoke to ‘charity worker’ Majid Freeman. From his photograph you might be able to work out his allegiances….considering he is from Leicester born and bred and not the Yemen.
Instagram, for some reason, decided to close down his account, twice….
Majid Freeman *NEW ACCOUNT* Instagram disabled my accounts @Majstar7 AND @MajstarsBack without any reasons Help me push this new account pls #OneUmmah #OneLove https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/WalkForShaam7
Here he is (On the left) doing his ‘charity work’:
Who is ‘AAfia Siddiqui’? A convicted terrorist….Who Is Aafia Siddiqui, The Woman ISIS Wanted In Exchange For Journalist James Foley?
Before ISIS militants executed journalist James Foley in a grisly video posted online this week, they made several demands of the United States in exchange for his freedom. One was the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist who is currently in prison in Texas for 86 years.
Why would Freeman be demanding the release of such a woman?
And he’s still at it even now:
And note the raised single finger…ring a bell? One God, one Islam, one Caliphate…
What else can Freeman’s Tweets tell us, and the BBC, about his beliefs and intentions?
From this retweet you can see the intent and wish to re-establish the Caliphate, without which there will be no peace for Muslims…make of that what you will…
Here he clearly implies that he is anti the airstrikes against ISIS……
And here Freeman manages to carefully select the one tweet from analyst Charles Lister that has ISIS doing a ‘Hamas’, blaming airstrikes for hitting schools and civilians….
Freeman also seems pretty keen on reconquering Jerusalem for the Muslims…..
Freeman has a very close association with Moazzam Begg, a long time favourite Jihadi poster boy for the BBC which campaigned relentlessly to get him released from Guantanamo….here he retweets an interesting comment from Begg who tells us that he wasn’t on charity work in Syria but aimed to undermine MI5….
The BBC suggests his arrest was a result of a government conspiracy to stitch Begg up:
There are many people in positions of authority who do not like Moazzam Begg – but he has been a tireless campaigner for what he says have been injustices in the “war on terror”.
This entire affair has therefore damaged relations between the British security services and some Muslim communities. Moazzam Begg’s supporters have said for months that he did nothing wrong when he went to Syria. They will feel vindicated by today’s formal acquittal.
The BBC peddling such myths merely adds to the credibility of the Jihadi narrative and gives more ammunition to the Muslim grievance industry.
The BBC has a long history of serving that Islamist narrative and looking away from inconvenient and difficult facts about such groups….
The BBC is providing the perfect background noise for the Islamists to keep the evergrowing stream of new recruits flowing.
Cameron et al state quite clearly ISIS has little to do with the invasion of Iraq and yet the BBC persists in linking the two, never mind the Crusades and ‘Sykes-Picot’.
The BBC encourages the radicalisation of Muslims with its rewriting of history and provision of the BBC seal of approval for their narrative.
And as the working week draws to an end, a new OPEN THREAD to see us off into the wide blue yonder of the weekend. Detail the bias.
‘Although you may tolerate Islam, Islam might not tolerate you.’
Yesterday Nicky Campbell asked ‘Would you support an amnesty for Jihadists?’
This was the day after David Cameron denounced such people as ‘enemies of the UK’ and repeated his intention to tackle not just violent Islamists but those who support such Islamists.
Last month he told us that…
“the root cause of this threat to our security is clear: it is a poisonous ideology of Islamic extremism that is condemned by all states.”
A shame then that Campbell’s guest speaker to guide our thoughts on whether extremist Islamists should be welcomed back and treated as ‘vicitims’ or not was one Asim Qureshi, Research Director at CAGE whom Campbell described as a ‘former extremist’.
You could perhaps refrain from using the ‘former’ part of that description.
Here he is speaking on behalf of Cage:
“We’ve been a bit politically naive,” he said. “We haven’t questioned some of the underlying assumptions about who Muslims are and what they believe in.”
PREVENT strikes at the heart of the transnational identity that Muslims have, and confuses or shrouds the core principles of Islam which offer genuine alternatives to an aggressive global neo-liberal system.
Note that ‘transnational identity that Muslims have’….in plain language that means Muslims owe no loyalty to the country they live in, their loyalty is to Islam….and Islam that ‘offers a genuine alternative to…..?’ well, to Western democracy.
Qureshi speaks the same language as the ‘extremists’ of ISIS when it comes to Islam and its values.
Here he openly supports the idea of the Caliphate, Shariah and Jihad…those ‘conservative Muslim values’:
The concepts of jihad, shariah and khilafah are not the exclusive possession of ISIS but core Islamic doctrines subscribed to by almost one third’s of the world’s population. It is telling that the government’s treatment of ISIS is similar to its treatment of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb-ut Tahrir, and the Taliban, despite the enormous differences of belief and methodology between the groups.
Witch-hunts such as the Trojan Horse hoax and the mass hysteria over issues of the niqab, halal food and conservative Muslim values demonstrate that the criminalisation is spreading beyond Middle Eastern politics.
Join CAGE at this series of events around the country to unite the Muslim communities against this criminalisation of our faith, our beliefs, our mosques and organisations, and our leaders.
No surprise that back in June the Muslim Council of Britain, instigators of the infamous Islamist ‘Trojan Horse’ plot, should have said that Muslims could not be school governors if ‘conservative Muslim’ beliefs were deemed incompatible with British values.
The MCB now seeks to prevent action being taken against radicals:
“They need to be talking to us and others to understand what it is that’s leading these boys down this route,” Khan told the Guardian. “Part of the problem is the constant talk of legislation, harassment and monitoring, stripping people of their passports. This is what’s leading young people towards radicalism.”
The last thing the government needs is to be talking to, and taking advice from, a extremist group like the MCB….despite the MCB’s claim that ‘They would love to help rather than obstruct.”
Similarly the last thing the BBC should be doing is bringing on a man whose group supports the ‘extremist’ ideology and presenting him as a ‘moderate, reformed Muslim extremist’.
Has Campbell learned nothing from his mistaken love affair with Mo Ansar?
Harry’s Place reminds us of Ansar’s politics:
…..it seems Mo’s ‘extensive experience in countering extremism‘ involves promoting and defending the work and goals of what every right-minded person regards as an extremist organisation…..Mo’s twitter feed of full of links to and endorsements of leading extremist groups and individuals. And therein lies the real tragedy. British Muslims have been let down again and again by self-styled leaders who abuse their position to espouse a regressive and reactionary agenda. In the case of Mo, actively promoting the work and ideas of an organisation that gave birth to Anjem Choudary, Omar Bakri and a whole host of other extremists that have inspired many terror attacks in the UK.
The same Ansar who predicts the takeover of the West by Muslims….
The BBC, in promoting the views of Asim Qureshi, is providing a platform for the extremists, if that is, we are defining ‘extremists’ as those who wish to impose ‘conservative Muslim Values’ upon the world rather than limiting the label to those who are violent.
From what Qureshi says about Jihad, the Caliphate and Sharia it is quite clear he supports such conservative Muslim beliefs. It would have taken the BBC 10 minutes to check his beliefs, he doesn’t hide them.
Qureshi’s own words are a perfect description of the BBC’s failure to do the legwork and find out those beliefs:
“We’ve been a bit politically naive,” he said. “We haven’t questioned some of the underlying assumptions about who Muslims are and what they believe in.”
But was it ‘naivety’ or stupidity or a deliberate move to promote Qureshi and Cage’s views in the full knowledge of what they are?
If so Cameron has a much harder task than he thinks if he wants to tackle the ‘poisonous ideology’ of Islamist extremism when the national broadcaster is itself, once again, promoting it.
Theresa May thinks she has the answer…..
Radical Islamist extremists and neo-Nazis could be banned from making public appearances including on television under a gagging order proposed by the Conservatives with echoes of the broadcast ban that once applied to the voice of Gerry Adams.
Theresa May will announce the measure as part of a widely drawn counter-extremism strategy that is intended to catch so-called hate preachers such as Anjem Choudary, who was released on bail last week after being arrested on suspicion of encouraging terrorism.
The home secretary’s new orders would be aimed at those who undertake activities “for the purpose of overthrowing democracy”, a wide-ranging definition that could also catch a far wider range of political activists.
The BBC, as with the IRA, will seek to still give voice to the terrorist/militant/extremist/reformed extremist.
It is, after all, so easy to tolerate what does not immediately affect you, and it’s nice to feel that one is liberal about Islam. But the lesson I’ve learnt is that we’re going to have to fight for our progressive democracy, because although you may tolerate Islam, Islam might not tolerate you. When it lives in your house, eats your food, sleeps under your roof, enjoys all the comforts you provide, all the while despising you, then you will be forced to make a choice.
The BBC has made its choice.
If you oppose Islamist extremism you are not just racist and Islamophobic but paranoid:
New month and a new Open thread for your attention. This is where you detail the bias!
The BBC has been caught feeding lies and misinformation to children….
First glance and this is just a story about a mistake, an over eager attempt to improve the image of an historical figure ‘forgotten’ by history but it is far more than that. It is a perfect example fo the BBC’s world view and how they attempt to manipulate the audience, and quite sinisterly, especially young impressionable children who don’t have the ability to question what is put in front of them. It is a huge political project of the Left that aims to change history, change how a nation sees itself and ultimately to make people feel less inclined to value that identity…all the more easier then to sell them the idea of handing over their ‘nation’ to the faceless rulers in Brussels.
A conspiracy…but so very real. And the ‘British’ Broadcasting Corporation is playing a big role in that project.
The BBC has been accused of “insulting” the achievements of Florence Nightingale, after inaccurately showing her racially discriminate against fellow nurse Mary Seacole in a Horrible Histories children’s programme.
The show, a comedy aimed at primary school children, showed Nightingale rejecting four applications from Jamaican-born Seacole to join her nursing corps, saying it was only “for British girls”.
Viewers complained the show was “insulting to Nightingale”, debasing the memory of her achievements in order to bolster the reputation of Seacole.
The BBC Trust, which examined the complaint, has now partially upheld the accusations, confirming Horrible Histories portrayed Nightingale’s actions inaccurately.
In fact, it said, there was no sound evidence to suggest she had rejected Seacole’s application, nor that she had acted in a “racially discriminatory manner” towards nurses.
It’s a very serious finding.
Saying a charge of racism was “very serious”, it added the severity of “any imputation of racism” against Nightingale should have made it “incumbent on the programme makers to ensure that there was sound evidence”.
“In the Committee’s view, the programme makers had provided no such evidence,” it said.
The BBC’s actions are more than just a mistaken reading of history. This was a deliberate, calculated attempt to manipulate what children think, to brainwash them, to make them look at Florence Nightingale as a racist and to downgrade her achievements and character in order to improve the image and standing of Mary Seacole.
It isn’t the first time the BBC have maligned Nightingale’s name and reputation….
It is all par for the course for the BBC…it has long made it its aim to undermine and debase British history in order to disparage ‘Britishness’ and thereby hopefully make the audience feel embarrassed and guilty to be British rather than proud. The BBC, and the ‘Left’, work hard to try and erase the national identity which is grounded on that history…rewrite the history and you can destroy that national identity and feeling of belonging and unity.
The ‘Nation State’ is the enemy of the BBC.
Mary Seacole was ‘Black’…or at least that is what the BBC and her supporters want, need, you to think, and is the reason fo their ever growing desperation to strip Florence Nightingale of her reputation and replace her with Seacole…who was in fact a store keeper with a canteen providing meals…for officers….she did indeed help the wounded and sick but not in any way comparable to the professional care of Nightingale.
And Seacole wasn’t ‘Black’…..she was more Scottish than black, 3/4 white….describing herself as ‘Creole’…
Now celebrated as a “black Briton” and black heroine, Seacole never described herself as black: “I am a Creole, and have good Scotch blood coursing in my veins,” she states on page 1 of her memoir, further describing her father’s status as being “of an old Scotch family,” Her mother was Creole, or of mixed heritage (WA 1), but she was swift to explain that her “energy and activity” came from her “Scotch blood,” characteristics “not always found in the Creole race” (WA 1). The “lazy Creole” description “applied to my country people,” while she did not know what it was to be “indolent” (WA 2). Roughly one quarter African in heritage, Seacole described herself as being “only a little brown–a few shades duskier than the brunettes whom you all admire so much” (WA 4).
Seacole frequently referred to “blacks” in her memoir, always for other people, often her own servants–her maid, her cooks (WA 12, 21, 36, 37, 39, 45, 58, 113, 138, 180). There are references also to “good-for-nothing black cooks” (WA 141), a “grinning black” (WA 38) and “excited nigger cooks” (WA 20). When she described, the roasted monkey which was “natives’ fare” in Central America, Seacole found its “grilled head bore a strong resemblance to a negro baby’s,” while in “a stew made of monkey meat” was a piece that “closely resembled a brown baby’s limb” (WA 69).
The pro-Seacole campaign is self-evidently highly political and intended to provide an inspirational role model for the Black community as well as to alter White people’s perceptions of history trying to downgrade ‘British’ achievements while attempting to give the credit to a ‘minority’ figure.
It is racial propaganda that the Nazis would have been proud of….the ‘rubbishing’ of White history in order to create a myth of racial superiority of Black people in Britain.
The Nightingale Society has long had to deal with these attempts to defame her name and reputation.
And it isn’t only on CBBC that the misinformation is peddled...however…but if you don’t complain within 30 days the BBC refuses to alter the material even if proven misleading…just too much effort apparently:
Re: BBC School Radio. History–The Victorians. 9. The Life of Mary Seacole. BBC 2010. Still available.
‘Clause 2.3 of the BBC’s complaints framework clearly states that complaints about content currently published on a BBC website should be made within 30 working days of the date when it first appeared online.
The notes and activity you refer to have been online continuously since 2010. Therefore we do not feel that it is practicable and cost-effective to investigate this part of your complaint.’
That’s Okay then…4 years of misleading information and ithe BBC will keep pumping it out.
The BBC also dismisses complaints about the veracity of dialogue…it may be fictional but as there was a Crimean war at the time and Seacole was there we can pretty well guess what Seacole might have said if we put ourselves in her boots…..we don’t want to be ‘shackled by the lack of documentary evidence’ do we?….
‘The dialogue and the specifics of events are of course fictional but that is in keeping with the nature of the content which is, as I’ve stated above, clearly presented as a dramatised account of history.’
Of course we have heard all this before:
The BBC’s Lisa Jardine gives us her point of view…..
Fiction has the power to fill in the imaginative gaps left by history, writes Lisa Jardine.
In my search for understanding the motivation of those who joined the race to produce the bomb whose use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki appalled the world, I eventually decided to turn from fact to fiction. If historians could not fill the gaps in the record that made the knowledge I was after so elusive, perhaps storytellers less shackled by documented evidence might do so.
The BBC is having a crisis. It hasn’t been able to settle on a position yet on how to report the case for military action against ISIS.
Its natural stance would be to oppose any military action as it did with Afghanistan and Iraq but with ISIS displaying unhelpful signs of being out and out evil and a vast majority of MPs voting in favour the BBC has had to hold its tongue.
That of course will only last until the first civilians get killed by allied bombs or ‘boots’ appear on the ground and ‘mission creep’ sets in.
For now the BBC settles for making sure there is no definitive answer as to whether military action is the correct course to take by continually raising ‘for and against’ questions. keeping the waters muddy. Good job the same bunch of BBC people weren’t around in WWII…Hitler would have his own show to justify his actions.
However the BBC does still like to keep up its own mantras that it nurtures and propagates, mentioning them as often as possible…..
All of those claims by the BBC, stated frequently by its journalists, can be disproved with very little effort. Which might go to show that the BBC’s position is more political than journalism based on integrity.
John Humphrys many years ago scoffed at the idea that we could have a ‘war on terror’ claiming…‘The ‘War on Terror’ is a misnomer isn’t it? How can you have a war on an idea?’
This was a frequently repeated bit of semantics trotted out by opponents of that ‘War on Terror’.
On Saturday he repeated that claim that you can’t fight an idea with a bullet….and it was the first question on ‘Any Questions’…..‘Can you bomb away an ideology?’.
The trouble is of course you can…..if you don’t fight the ideology it will only become more established and will grow ever stronger.
And the Jihadists don’t have a problem propagating that ideology with a bullet…after all they are only doing what Bin Laden said they should do….
‘The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates…Platonic ideals…nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine gun.
…Islamic governments have never and will never be established through peaceful solutions and cooperative councils.’
We spent 40 years fighting Communism with hundreds of thousands of troops based in Europe facing off the Soviets. Diplomacy and fine sentiments didn’t keep the Russian hordes at bay….tanks, guns and nuclear weapons did.
An ideology is only an idea when it is in someone’s brain…put a bullet in that brain and that kind of puts a stop to things….at least to the people with intentions to impose that ideology using violence.
So you can fight an ideology. It’s really very simple in concept unless you’re a smart arse journalist with an axe to grind because you’ve been caught lying about what Blair said.
Of course you have to remember that the BBC once claimed Al Qaeda didn’t exist, it was a ‘nightmare’ dreamt up by the American government, and therefore it was only an ‘idea’, a figment of the imagination…the ‘war on terror’ was therefore based on a lie fighting an imaginery foe.
The BBC might like to revisit that claim and whilst there they might like to think again about declaring ISIS ‘unIslamic’… even Muslims realise this isn’t true:
The current US strategy negates the cultural and social underlying causes for the rise of terrorism in the Middle East. The US decision-makers should realise that IS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra Front and similar groups are not just a terrorist group but also an ideology coming from the heart of the Wahhabi-Salafi-Hanbali doctrine.
This school of thought enjoys a deal of support amongst Sunni-Arab countries. From their perspective, the US is practically re-launching the post-9/11 “war against Islam”. The fact is that the US cannot fight an ideology through air strikes.
So the religious ideology of Al Qaeda et al is one happily embraced by many Middle Eastern countries….what a surprise.
Shame the BBC doesn’t read its own material.
Speaking of which today we had this from the BBC:
Karen Armstrong argues against the notion that religion is the major cause of war.
Listening to this programme you hear many facts that you can agree with but then there comes the interpretation, an interpretation which is often distinctly at odds with the facts the same person has just laid out before us….the problem, as with the BBC, is that they allow their own prejudices and views to colour that intepretation.
Armstrong seems to have a particular dislike of Israel…she claimed the Jews for a thousand years had a taboo against going to the Holyland and setting up a state [Clearly a claim intended to undermine the existence of an Israeli state]…..and that peace for Israel means others being subjugated with merciless violence.
She also blamed the West for all the ills in the Middle East…the humiliation of Muslims subjugated by the colonialists practically overnight leading to their desire to fight the world.
She of course doesn’t even consider that Islam conquered, colonised and subjugated the populations of the Middle East and that that colonisation has been the ultimate cause of all this upheaval….as well as the medieval backwardness of those countries.
We also heard that Iraq 2003 is the cause of the Shia/Sunni rift…according to Armstrong a modern phenomenon….never mind 1400 years of conflict…or indeed the Iran/Iraq war.
Also that Iran is the key to defeating ISIS….so we must join forces with them.
Oh, and suicide attacks were invented and exported by the West.
Only 25% of Muslims really understand the Koran Armstrong suggests…curiously Armstrong tells us that it is only when Muslims go to prison that they have the time to get to know the religion in depth…and whent hey do they realise God is good and wants you to be good…hmmm…does she mean as with fundamentalists Qutb and Maududi, and oh yes , Hitler who wrote ‘Mein Kampf’ in prison…. “the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.”?
So that kind of nullifies her point that Jihadis don’t know their scriptures…. so many having come out of prison radicalised even more so.
The programme was in many respects quite surprising in its admissions about religion and violence…..however, as said, they seemed to rush back into the safety of the ‘narrative’ that the BBC also likes….Islam the religion of peace, The West the cause of all the evil in the ME, and Muslims as the victims of Western oppression, their violence merely a reaction against that oppression and humiliation.
Another surprise might be this clip on 5Live Drive [whole report from 2 hr 22 mins] the BBC played of George Bush in 2007 predicting the rise of terrorism if there is a failure to completely deal with the Jihadists in Iraq…as when Obama chose to withdraw the troops……but listen to Anna Foster trying to blame both Bush and Obama for the rise of ISIS whilst the ‘expert’ clearly blamed Obama….Bush pumped in 30,000 troops in a surge that successfully cleared out Al Qaeda….the troop withdrawal by Obama gave the Jihadists room to come back….along with Assad helping them.
Here is the Telegraph’s take on Obama:
Given how completely Barack Obama’s foreign policy has been upended by the rise of Isil in Syria, it is not surprising that the president should try and gloss over the scale of his own miscalculation when it came to the threat posed by the jihadists – but that doesn’t mean he should be allowed to get away with it.
This weekend Mr Obama had the cheek to blame his intelligence agencies for the fact that the White House was “caught by surprise” by the sudden rise of Isil.
Some spooks are already challenging the basic truth of this, but intelligence aside, what Mr Obama conveniently glosses over is that it was his decision to let Syria burn that created the chaos – and that a good many people, from his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton downwards, warned him loud and clear of the risk he was taking by doing that.
It was Obama’s decision to let Syria burn.…and Ed Miliband’s…who influenced Obama.
It is curious how Miliband rarely seems to get a mention in all of this. Just how much blame can be attached to him for the rise of ISIS?
The BBC doesn’t ask.
Others do…..
