This was mentioned by Klingon in the comments and noted by Craig at ‘Is the BBC biased?‘ and I think it goes to the heart of everything the BBC does and why it gets it so wrong, so it is worth emphasisng again and again.

Writer Kay Mellor is interviewed in the Guardian about her career when she makes an astonishing comment about the BBC’s attitude….

Kay Mellor: ‘Steven Spielberg rang me up in Topshop’

One of her regrets, she says, is a drama she wrote about Asian men grooming and sexually abusing underage white girls (“I was watching it unfold”). But a changing of the executive guard at BBC1 in 2008 meant it never got made. “I don’t think people believed it. One very senior person said to me ‘this does not go on’.”

That surely must have been purely due to a deliberate, wilful desire not to ‘rock the multi-cultural boat’ as Denis MacShane might say….Mellor must have made her case for the programme and laid out any experience and evidence she had to base such a programme upon….but they didn’t want to know.

The BBC sweeping uncomfortable truths under the carpet.

One other comment she made is also of note, this from only a couple of weeks ago:

Mellor made her name with Band of Gold, about prostitutes in Bradford. It was developed for BBC1, but Alan Yentob, then channel controller, did not want it. “No one knew who I was. I was a working-class girl from Leeds, writing about prostitutes. I used to harass [Yentob] at awards ceremonies, asking him to read it.” She adds that he “has since apologised”. The experience makes her wonder “how many young men and women are out there who could write something brilliant, yet they don’t get seen or heard?”

Just how many working class writers get through the privileged portico of BBC House?  I imagine, like presenter Stacey Dooley, they only succeed if they show the requisite amount of social conscience and compassion for the downtrodden…..if you write something that doesn’t fit the socialist, multi-cultural template you’ll be stuck in that garret for an awful long time.

Despite having left Gaza three weeks ago Donnison is still banging the drum for Hamas and looking to undermine the Israelis:

Curiously he doesn’t link to this:

Abbas blames Hamas for prolonged battle with Israel

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accused Hamas of needlessly extending the fighting in the Gaza Strip over the past two months, causing a high death toll.

Abbas told Palestine TV in remarks broadcast Friday that “it was possible for us to avoid all of that, 2,000 martyrs, 10,000 injured, 50,000 houses (damaged or destroyed).”

He does bring us this:

Which reminded me of this:

The Propaganda Power of Images

How the Nazis Used War Rubble as Propaganda

As the Allies marched inexorably northward through Italy during World War II, the Nazis set to work photographing the rubble of damaged historical buildings and artwork. The images were supposed to prove that their enemies were cultural barbarians.

The images bear witness to the slow shift away from art preservation and toward Nazi regime propaganda undertaken by the German art historians active in Italy during the war. Despite their efforts, many of the monuments and buildings they sought to protect were destroyed by the Allies. The Germans themselves were pushed ever further into northern Italy. Before long, the German military and the Nazi propaganda machinery recognized the potential of using the destroyed buildings to portray the Allies as culturally insensitive barbarians….

Before long the unit once responsible for protecting Italy’s cultural heritage began delivering images of emotional images depicting devastated palaces, churches reduced to heaps of rubble and shattered sculptures. Accompanying text ensured that the message of the images was not misunderstood. Often, the images were produced by photographers belonging to so-called propaganda companies and they would end up in brochures depicting sites both before and after their destruction.

The famous German art historian Ludwig Heydenreich also took part in the propaganda war in Italy. He had hundreds of pictures taken and wrote contributions for brochures on “the war against art” in which he spoke of the “enemy terror attacks.

I get the impression Donnison is a lightweight who just wants to be liked and, like George Galloway, is willing to sacrifice his integrity and professionalism, taking the lazy route to popularity by saying things he knows will get him the most plaudits regardless of who it is that is applauding him.

He knows that to publish anything that might make Israeli actions in anyway jusitified would be the kiss of death as not only would he be deluged by a torrent of left wing and Muslim abuse, his colleagues would surely cut him dead.  He certainly gets abuse from pro-Israel supporters but he can salve his conscience by readily dismissing them as nutters, racists and Islamophobes…as indeed he did.

Here is an example of his desperate, needy, cry for approval…proclaiming life is so #wrong  and it’s an #unfairworld:…

….BUT did he ever offer his body armour and helmet to anyone in Gaza?  No?  Life so unfair and wrong!…..

Little Boy In Gaza Dresses Up As A Journalist ‘To Survive’

One of the most incredible pictures to come out of the savagery in Gaza was posted on Twitter on Thursday. Taken by Swedish Radio correspondent Johan-Matthias Sommarström, the image shows a small Palestinian boy who had dressed himself as a journalist with a “home made flak jacket”.

Sommarström said he was approached by the boy as he returned to his hotel after a day of reporting in the beleaguered Strip. “I’m a journalist,” the boy told Sommarström, who loaned him his helmet to complete the look.

Speaking on Swedish Radio, Sommarström later said: “For me the picture is a powerful example of children’s strong will to survive. He has seen us journalists go in and out of the hotel, he has seen that we survive. I think that in his pretending play he wants to be like us, someone who survives.”

Absolutely nothing to do with BBC bias…..just some appalling examples of vigilante Britain…when democracy, media and police fail to protect this country’s values and culture.

The man who grovelled before Saddam and praised his indefatigability, the man who praised Jihadists  attacking British troops, the man who wanted to turn Bradford into an Israeli Frei zone has been punched in the face.

George Galloway taken to hospital after street attack

George Galloway has been taken to hospital with a suspected broken jaw after he was attacked on a London street, his spokesman has said.

The Respect MP was posing for pictures with people in Golborne Road, Notting Hill, when a man allegedly set upon him. Police were quickly at the scene and arrested a man.

The MP’s spokesman said he had bruising and was in “a pretty bad shape”.

He said the alleged attacker had been shouting something about the Holocaust.

And another example of thuggish, racist violence by the Kurdish ‘EDL’ presumably….

Police arrest two men after Kurds in Sheffield clash with Gaza demonstrators who were waving flag linked with Islamist extremism

Police arrested two men following clashes in Sheffield which were sparked by men holding up a flag allegedly linked to Islamic extremism.

The group were said to have been carrying a black and white standard – versions of which are sometimes used by the Islamic State – during a demonstration against the conflict in Gaza on Saturday.

Members of the Kurdish community are then said to have approached the men, who were reportedly of Pakistani-origin, before ripping up the flag.

Some interesting climate stuff via Bishop Hill that keeps us informed of the climate change media ‘environment’ putting much into context:

Richard Black has resurfaced, you can’t keep a good man down.

He is now running the ‘Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit’…an independent, impartial think tank (No sniggering) that:

 ‘supports informed debate on energy and climate change issues in the UK.’  (OK you can snigger)

Of course it does.  Richard Black being well known for his intelligent and impartial reports whilst at the BBC…any suggestion that he was a climate activist masquerading as a journalist would be very, very wide of the mark.  Really.

Who else is there at this august body bringing us informed debate?  The Team is made up of media, PR and communications specialists and someone who has worked for the UN advising it on climate.

So not looking too impartial, or scientific, so far.

Who funds this vital think tank might also give us a clue as to the  direction it really takes….

‘All of our funding comes from philanthropic foundations. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the European Climate Foundation, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, and the Tellus Mater Foundation.’

The European Climate Foundation (ECF)  is a supposedly independent body….but you might suspect it was a part of the EU……it

‘was established in early 2008 as a major philanthropic initiative to promote climate and energy policies that greatly reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to help Europe play an even stronger international leadership role to mitigate climate change.

The group of philanthropists who founded the ECF were deeply concerned over the lack of political action and the lack of general public awareness around the devastating future consequences implied by climate change. They formed the ECF – a ‘foundation of foundations’ – to collaborate in ensuring the necessary transformation from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy.

We do not consider applications for activities outside the scope of EU climate strategy.’

So presumably the ECIU is acting on behalf of the EU climate strategy?  Follow the money!

Tellus Mater was founded by Jamie Arbib who invests in renewable energy and wants to drive government policy in that direction:

He is interested in driving new business models that align incentives and reduce the barriers to adoption of resource efficient technologies.

He founded Tellus Mater out of frustration at the perverse incentives, regulations, business practices and behaviour that prevent adoption of these technologies.

The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment  needs no introduction and is a well known climate change campaigning organisation….home to the greater spotted Bob Ward, not a scientist, just another media PR monkey like Black.

‘Climate Resistance’ looks at this in more depth:

Does the UK Need Another Climate ‘Unit’?

Bearing in mind all those climate PR experts hammering away at the coal face of our ignorance the below from the BBC might indicate we should take everything the ‘Lobby’ communicates to us about climate with a large pinch of salt:

Everything We Know Is Wrong

The programme tells us that much scientific research and published findings may be ‘novel and interesting but not necessarily true.’

It tells us that financial and career incentives drive scientists to do research and claim results that don’t hold up to inspection.  The findings are hyped and distort the scientific process.

There are no results, we are told, that you can’t make seem plausible….and that is ‘close to fraud’.

Here is the blurb from the programme:

Every day the newspapers carry stories of new scientific findings. There are 15 million scientists worldwide all trying to get their research published. But a disturbing fact appears if you look closely: as time goes by, many scientific findings seem to become less true than we thought. It’s called the “decline effect” – and some findings even dwindle away to zero.

A highly influential paper by Dr John Ioannidis at Stanford University called “Why most published research findings are false” argues that fewer than half of scientific papers can be believed, and that the hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true. He even showed that of the 49 most highly cited medical papers, only 34 had been retested and of them 41 per cent had been convincingly shown to be wrong. And yet they were still being cited.

Again and again, researchers are finding the same things, whether it’s with observational studies, or even the “gold standard” Randomised Controlled Studies, whether it’s medicine or economics. Nobody bothers to try to replicate most studies, and when they do try, the majority of findings don’t stack up. The awkward truth is that, taken as a whole, the scientific literature is full of falsehoods.

Jolyon Jenkins reports on the factors that lie behind this. How researchers who are obliged for career reasons to produce studies that have “impact”; of small teams who produce headline-grabbing studies that are too statistically underpowered to produce meaningful results; of the way that scientists are under pressure to spin their findings and pretend that things they discovered by chance are what they were looking for in the first place. It’s not exactly fraud, but it’s not completely honest either. And he reports on new initiatives to go through the literature systematically trying to reproduce published findings, and of the bitter and personalised battles that can occur as a result.

As an example of that you might like to look at something Black and his ‘Black’ propaganda unit has produced as their initial offering to a sceptical world (and one snapped up by the Guardian, of course)…

Nearly half of the UK population (47 percent) think either that most climate scientists reject the idea that human activities such as fossil fuel burning are the main driver of climate change (11 percent), or that scientists are evenly split on the issue (35 percent). Several recent studies [ Cook et al, Tol, Verheggen et al] show that more than 90% of climate scientists agree that the main cause of climate change is human activity.

Interesting that Black references ‘Cook et al’….someone whose work Bishop Hill and others have been examining and found wanting for a long time..and yet Black uses him as proof for his conjectures….and not just Black…he’s in good company…despite the dodgy provenance of the ‘research’:

More on Cook’s 97%

Duarte is again openly referring to the paper as fraudulent. Yet this paper was cited approvingly by Ed Davey and Barack Obama. And the Institute of Physics is standing by it. Shameless, every one of them.

Not a good start for the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit bringing us duff intelligence that is famously wrong.

Still, good to see the BBC looking at science with the blinkers off for once….and so far nobody at the BBC seems to have referred to the Black propaganda unit yet…early days though, it only started life two days ago (still didn’t stop Guardian getting on board):

Right, I’m off to Stockholm for the weekend but here’s a fresh Open thread to detail the bias!

Radicalisation and what causes it is the big question of our age apparently and many people have the answer.  That answer, we are told, has nothing to do with Islam, and all to do with Western foreign policy.

They don’t want to talk about an Islamic link.

That sounds familiar….after nearly two decades of denial we are starting to get the truth as to why so many girls were abused and nobody in authority did anything.

The reason was because they didn’t want to talk about the race or religion of the offenders.

But now the denials and cover ups are being dragged into the light and we now know that great harm was done by allowing the abuse to continue because people were afraid to challenge the behaviour of racial or religious minorities.

In 10 years time will we be having the same conversations about how Islam and radicalisation was reported and the failure, due to fears of racism or ‘islamophobia’, to get to the real root of what causes radicalisation?

Douglas Murray thinks so:

We exacerbate the problem on all sides when we refuse to tackle or even address the problematic things in the Muslim faith in the same way that we would with any other faith. We assist the claims of the extremists by failing to provide any counter-narrative (ranging from the possibility that what Muhammad did then is not permissible now, all the way through to ‘this didn’t really happen – it is a kind of metaphor’). And we simultaneously heighten the suspicion from many non-Muslims who can see that there is a problem and become increasingly frustrated at the interminable effort to shut discussion down.

All very strange.

All I would add is that I suspect that in the years ahead the line ‘Another beheading: nothing to see here’ is going to become increasingly difficult to hold.

In a later post we will look at the BBC’s, and other’s, approach to reporting claims that foreign policy radicalises Muslims but first some more examples of the ‘Establishment’ attempts to downplay the Islamic connection to what is happening in the Middle East and around the world.

In Mehdi’s Muddle we started to look at the various attempts to put a gulf of separation between Islam and the so-called extremists or radicals.

In this post I illustrate that with some more blatant examples where the violent and cruel ISIS Caliphate isn’t compared by commentators to the original birth of Islam which swept violently across the Middle East 1400 years ago and is a pretty near perfect replay of that, but who, once again, deny any such connection to Islam, instead preferring  to compare it with European society….trying no doubt to say…look ‘we’ were just as bad once…so don’t judge Muslims.

Janet Daley compares ISIS not to Muhammed’s brutal conquests and colonisation but to European Anarchism:

Isil: the world must tackle this mass psychosis
Take away its success and the glamour will go, leaving only a rump of fanatics

We are not engaged in a religious war. This is not a confrontation between Islam and the West….the activities of these terrorist criminals hacking their way through northern Iraq have nothing to do with the Islamic faith.

It is more important than ever to say that this is not a struggle between “our values” and those of medieval fundamentalism, or Islamist extremism.
The contest is not modern liberal democracy versus the Dark Ages. This is to impose meaning on what is, in truth, meaningless. There is nothing coherent or comprehensible at the heart of the homicidal Isil frenzy. It is just what it looks like: psychopathic nihilism.

There is not even anything particularly Middle Eastern in the Isil mode of operation. In fact, the gratuitous violence and promiscuous mayhem of its onslaught resembles nothing so much as 19th-century European anarchism, whose objective was simply to create the maximum amount of indiscriminate chaos with the vague intention of undermining the existing order.
The infamous taunt of al-Qaeda, which it boasted would always guarantee its victory – “You love life, we love death” – was a widely held sentiment in the anarchist movement.

The BBC itself has a go at denial and once again links to the nasty Europeans:

A Point of View: Isis and what it means to be modern

Although it claims to be reviving a traditional Islamic system of government, the jihadist group Isis is a very modern proposition, writes John Gray.

Although it claims to be reviving a traditional Islamic system of government, the jihadist group Isis is a very modern proposition, writes John Gray……claims that it wants to restore an early type of Islam, leads many of us to see it as trying to bring about a reversion to mediaeval values. 

To my mind, this gives too much credence to the way Isis views itself. There’s actually little in common between the horribly repressive regime it has established in parts of Iraq and Syria and the subtle Islamic states of mediaeval times, which in Spain, for example, exercised a degree of tolerance at a time when the rest of Europe was wracked by persecution.

Isis shares more with this modern revolutionary tradition than any ancient form of Islamic rule. Though they’d hate to hear it, these violent jihadists owe the way they organise themselves and their utopian goals to the modern West.

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian does the same, denying an Islamic link to the urge to build a Caliphate and instead suggesting a comparison with European Barons:

This Islamic State nightmare is not a holy war but an unholy mess

It isn’t religious zeal but the collapse of state power that makes the clash in Iraq feel like a return to the dark ages.

It is tempting to believe this is indeed the curious fate of our supposedly modern era – that we are being drawn back to a medieval or pre-medieval world of holy war and wholesale slaughter in the name of religion.
Yet neat though it is to see return to holy war as the motif of our age, it might be wrong. The rolling advances of IS – brutal and laden with treasure, conquering one city or stronghold after another – may indeed resemble the world of several centuries ago but not in the way we’ve imagined. It is instead a story that is both ancient and very modern.
According to Toby Dodge, the scholar of Iraq at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), what’s driving IS, or at least making its phenomenal success possible, is not pre-modern religious zeal so much as a pre-modern absence of state power. The state structures of both Iraq and Syria have all but collapsed. The result is a power vacuum of a kind that would have been recognised in the lawless Europe of seven or eight centuries ago – and which IS has exploited with the ruthless discipline of those long ago baronial warlords who turned themselves into European princes.
Islamic State may wrap itself in the flag of jihad, but its success owes more to medieval lawlessness than medieval religious enmity – helped by the very 21st-century decline of the global behemoth. Our world is being shaken, but the persistence of religion is more a symptom than a cause.

Curiously in 2005 Freedland was emphatic that there was a link to Islam and the terrorist’s ideology…in fact it was the only thing that made sense of their actions:

It’s not only about Iraq

The animating ideology of the caliphate helps explain al-Qaida actions that otherwise make no sense

For those who opposed the 2003 conflict, it is tempting to cast Iraq and the whole panoply of US-UK actions after 9/11 as the decisive factor in the bombings. There is certainly no shortage of evidence.
Peter Taylor, the veteran documentary film-maker who spent decades studying Northern Irish terrorism, has just completed a BBC series, The New Al-Qaida, which starts next Monday. After a year spent talking to Muslims in Spain, Morocco, Pakistan, the US and the UK, he says: “The one word that comes out loud and clear is Iraq. There is no question that Iraq is the prime motivating factor.”

So Iraq is central. But it is not the whole story.
For, as Taylor explains, al-Qaida is not like Eta or the IRA
Its aims are rather different. Central to its ideology is the reintroduction of the caliphate, an Islamic state governed by sharia law that would stretch across all formerly Muslim lands, taking in Spain, Morocco, north Africa, Albania, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, as well as Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines. Plenty on the left tend to skim over this stuff, dismissing it as weird, obscurantist nonsense – and imagining it as somehow secondary to al-Qaida’s anti-imperialist mission.
That’s a big mistake. For it is this animating idea which helps to explain al-Qaida actions that otherwise make no sense.

In other words, al-Qaida has a programme that predates and goes beyond Iraq. It seeks to end all western presence in those lands it deems Islamic.

This is the ideology that defines al-Qaida and which explains why it was in business from 1993 and not just 2001 and after. Tellingly, those who monitor Islamism in Britain say the big surge in growth of extremist groups came not after 9/11 or Iraq but in the mid-1990s – with Bosnia serving as the recruiting sergeant. In the same period Chechnya, Kosovo and Israel-Palestine all came into play – again predating Iraq.
But that message is not only about Iraq, Afghanistan or even the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza – and we delude ourselves if we think it is.

The next post will examine the issues around foreign policy and try to untangle the rights and wrongs of the justifications for Muslims attacking the West…..the BBC’s failure to challenge such a narrative, indeed it being the cheerleader for that narrative being so opposed to the Iraq war and Guantanamo, means that it is important to ask questions about Muslims justifications based on foreign policy and ask whether the BBC’s approach has led to more radicalisation and terrorism.

Yesterday we looked at the Left mobilising to close down all talk of race or religion in regard to Rotherham and it is pretty much all I heard today from the talking heads on the BBC.

We’ve been told that those in authority didn’t really know what sex abuse was, they didn’t realise these girls were being abused…no, seriously.

We were told the girls were reluctant to talk about it….except for all the times they went to the authorities and were ignored.

We were told the girls themselves didn’t know they were being abused…they thought being raped by multiple numbers of strange men, beaten up and having petrol poured onto them was part of a normal loving relationship…seriously.

It was all the girls fault if you look hard enough.

And race…well race had absolutely nothing to do with anything.

A couple of weeks from now the truth will be out…it was the racist police setting up Pakistani men in a honeypot sting operation, entrapping them, unsophisticated, naive, trusting men enticed into taking drugs and drink by undercover, hardened 11 year old floozies on the police payroll.

They’ll be demanding damages next.

Dan Hodges in the Telegraph thinks we are being taken for mugs…as we said yesterday when the BBC produced a programme asking how to tackle this problem but seemed more intent on explaining away the real issue,  the fear of being called racist:

Rotherham child abuse: the liberal Left is circling the wagons over the race question

It’s happening again. It is happening in front of our eyes. The denial. The deflection. The deceit.

All of the toxic impulses that contrived to allow the systematic abuse of thousands of children in Rotherham are again being redeployed in the face of the damning, incontrovertible evidence of the nature and scale of that abuse. Hear that sound? That low rumble? It is the sound of liberal wagons again being circled.

We had a good example of this today from Nicky Campbell, (27 mins 45 sec) no surprise there I suppose.

A calller named Robert suggested that those people in authority charged with looking after these girls and responding to allegations of abuse, but who failed in that duty of care, should be investigated and dealt with.

Nicky Campbell didn’t think that was a good idea….

‘Witch hunts are unattractive.  What we need to do is get to the root cause of why this happened in the first place.   The worry is that the focus is too much on the people who were utterly incompetent, uncaring and indeed callous for whatever reason, not rocking the multi-cultural boat is what Dennis McShane said about it.

I’m just worried, and many people say this, that there is not enough focus on the men who are still free and the victims who are still suffering and this becomes a media circus about, well you know, ‘we want your head’.’

Robert gave Campbell a good earful and wasn’t having any of it, Campbell wasn’t happy but didn’t really have a come back.

Astonishing that Campbell thinks those in charge should not be held to account.  1400 girls, in one town, abused over 16 years.  And those in charge knew and did nothing.

Dan Hodges has noticed this tendency to try and divert attention from inconvenient facts…not investigating those in authority means you don’t have to explain why race was an issue here…….

Another popular line-to-take was deployed on Channel 4 News last night by Javid Khan, the chief executive of Barnardos. Confronted with the charge his charity and other charities had shied away from issues of ethnicity in this case he responded by attempting to shy away from the issue of ethnicity.

“Whether it’s been part of the problem in Rotherham or not, the issue here is the vulnerability of children,” he said. “The reason why this [focusing on race] is so unhelpful is that it takes attention away from the victim.”

It is not focusing on race that takes attention away from the victims of Rotherham. It is ignoring it that takes attention away from the victims. Race is the reason they were victims. The racial element of these crimes is the explanation for how they came to be perpetrated on such a staggering scale for such an unbelievable period. “How could this happen?” people ask. Because the victims were white English girls, and their abusers Pakistani and Kashmiri men, is the answer.

The name of the game now is defending cosy progressive preconceptions.

The cry “we must focus on the victims” is classic communications chaff. Don’t look to cast blame. Don’t look to find answers. And above all, on no account find answers that may challenge the liberal status quo.

The BBC is slowly taking control of all the media, inculcating new recruits with the BBC ethos…another university succumbs:

Former BBC news editor to lead new journalism degree

A former Editor of the BBC Ten O’Clock News has joined the University of Essex as its founding Professor of Journalism.

Jonathan Baker, who left the BBC earlier this year after more than 30 years in news, is the University’s first founding professor for more than 20 years in a new curriculum area.

Mr Baker has held a number of senior positions across BBC television, radio and newsgathering, including Executive Editor Radio News, World News Editor and Head of Newsgathering. He was Editor of the Nine O’Clock News when it moved to its present, later, slot.

Between 2010 and 2013 he was Head of the BBC College of Journalism, responsible for delivering all forms of journalism training to more than 8,000 BBC journalists in the UK and overseas.

At Essex, he will be responsible for developing an innovative curriculum for undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and seeking accreditation from the National Council for the Training of Journalists and the Broadcast Journalism Training Council.

Just another ‘friendly’ place to go to get an ‘independent’ report on BBC bias…or lack of?

The BBC is very concerned…it has just learnt that Arab leaders are being trained in oppressive and tyrannical techniques for suppressing public discourse and debate by the dictator’s training establishment of choice…RMA Sandhurst:

Sandhurst’s sheikhs: Why do so many Gulf royals receive military training in the UK?

Generations of foreign royals – particularly from the Middle East – have learned to be military leaders at the UK’s Sandhurst officer training academy. But is that still a good idea, asks Matthew Teller.

A critic might note that the third term of Sandhurst’s Officer Commissioning Course covers counter-insurgency techniques and ways to manage public disorder.

In March 2013, Sandhurst’s Mons Hall – a sports centre – was reopened as the King Hamad Hall, following a £3m donation from the monarch of Bahrain, who was educated at one of Sandhurst’s affiliated colleges.

Since tension between Bahrain’s majority Shia population and minority Sunni ruling elite boiled over in 2011, more than 80 civilians have died at the hands of the security forces, according to opposition estimates, though the government disputes the figures. Thirteen police officers have also lost their lives in the clashes.

I’m guessing Matthew Teller didn’t get the memo:

BBC admits errors in Bahrain unrest coverage
BBC initially underplayed the sectarian aspect of the conflict and did not adequately convey the viewpoint of supporters of the monarchy in its coverage of Bahrain’s unrest, said a BBC Trust report.
It also failed to mention attempts by Crown Prince His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa to establish dialogue with the opposition, according to the publication – which investigated the organisation’s “impartiality and accuracy” of its coverage of the Arab Spring.

No mention of all those universities that get funding and compromise their independence for Arab money:

‘Extremism’ fear over Islam studies donations

The BBC had no problem taking terrorists paintballing though:

BBC film ‘paid for paintballing terror suspects’

Terrorists were given a day’s paintballing for a BBC documentary called Don’t Panic I’m Islamic, a court heard.

And the BBC has no problem training the media in other volatile countries:

The Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB) was established under a Law on Broadcasting adopted by Parliament in 2004. GPB is publicly accountable to the citizens of Georgia with a mandate “to provide accurate and up-to-date information that is free from political and commercial bias and is shared without any hidden agendas.”

Absolutely not…no hidden agendas for a state broadcaster…just like in good old Blighty….not a chance in hell the new techniques will be used to close down  debate and suppress dissent.

Most Georgians depend on television as their main source of news and GPB has the widest reach amongst the population of nearly five million.

BBC World Service Trust supported GPB’s board of trustees in becoming representatives of the public and guardians of the station’s independence.

It also helped develop a human resources policy and, as the project developed, supported GPB in creating a second television channel devoted to parliamentary and political reporting, the Second Channel.

Support was also given to GPB’s television news operation in developing an independent agenda showing favour neither to the government nor opposition.

I believe.

And what interesting countries the BBC chooses to work with…

Media Neighbourhood

The Media Neighbourhood project brings together media professionals from across 17 countries bordering the European Union for training and networking.

Participating countries: Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, Occupied Palestinian Territory, The Russian Federation, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine.

‘Occupied Palestinian territory‘?

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (1997 – 2013)

‘From a political perspective, the approach of avoiding public discussion of the issues was ill-judged.’

You have to laugh at the cheek of the BBC as it moves quickly into damage limitation mode and attempts to downplay any racial or religious aspect to the various sex abuse scandals whilst at the same time claiming to be investigating the issues.

This morning on 5Live they were commendably asking ‘Why Do People Turn A Blind Eye To Child Abuse?’ ,  the problem was that the programme itself seemed to want to cover up the real reason for the cover ups….issues of race.

Certainly race was mentioned but always with a comment along the lines of ‘We must remember that the majority of child abusers are white.’

Why exactly do we need to remember that? What has that got to do with why these scandals were covered up?  No one is saying that Pakistani or Muslim men are naturally inclined to sexually abuse young girls any more than any other race or creed…..what is being said is that their race or religion led to the various authorities and other organisations, such as the BBC, to hold back on Investigations, prosecutions and reporting due to fear of being called racist.

That is the issue.

The culture of denial so prevalent around these issues was made all the more possible by the likes of the BBC also refusing to expose these cases for fear of appearing racist.  The authorities sought to keep these issues from the public eye and the media more often than not colluded in that leaving the victims to fend for themselves.  Tony Livesey on 5Live asked ‘Who were the council afraid would call them racist?’

Well the answer to that is the BBC for a start, then every other left wing media outlet, the race relations industry, Muslim activists and politicians like Keith Vaz who would prefer just not to mention such things:

‘It’s totally wrong to say that [the crime is carried out by a particular ethnic group], because you open up a Pandora’s box as far as race relations is concerned and I don’t think that’s necessarily what we want.’

Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, a think tank, also said that Muslim leaders needed to do more to question the attitudes of young Muslim men towards women.

He said: “Their views about women would horrify many people. They often regard women as second-class citizens, and white girls are regarded differently as acceptable prey in a way Muslim girls aren’t.”

Mr Murray added: “Of course this problem only relates to a minority of Pakistani men, but it is an issue that needs addressing and people like Keith Vaz are denying this.”

Race and religion did however play a part in the selection of target…..the vast majority of girls being white and non-Muslim as the Rochdale judge noted:

“All of you treated your victims as though they were worthless and beyond any respect – they were not part of your community or religion.”

That BBC reminder that the majority of offenders nationally are white (but it doesn’t tell you the ethnicity of their victims….also mainly white) tells you everything about the BBC’s approach to this issue……its nervousness about race/religion and its own reluctance to talk about it…..it illustrates the mindset that contributed to the failure to investigate and prosecute.  The BBC answers its own question.

However when do you hear the BBC issue a similar rejoinder when discussing sex abuse cases by the Catholic Church, or by politicians, or celebrities or by gay people?

It is well known that the likes of Peter Righton and PIE members were left untouched because they were gay and the police or social services were afraid of being accused of being homophobic.

Does the BBC when reporting these other scandals suddenly insert a reminder that ‘We must remember that the majority of sex gangs recently convicted have been of Pakistani heritage’?

No.  So why tell us that the majority of sexual abuse is carried out by whites?  It’s fairly obvious this would be the case from the demographics…but it’s irrelevant to the issue…that being why were these cases in Rochdale etc covered up?

Even the Guardian thinks the BBC’s approach is disengenuous…here’s Michael White noting that Pakistani men are ‘disproportionately represented in these scandals:

Well, yes, that would be likely in Britain, wouldn’t it? The Greater Manchester police and others concerned for public order make the same point: not all the perpetrators were Pakistani Brits, not all the girls involved were white. None of my Asian constituents in (prosperous) Leicester have complained to me that this is going on, says Vaz. They’re horrified too, they have wives and daughters.
This is surely true of most British Muslims as it is of the rest of us. But isn’t it also a little disingenuous? Isn’t Narey’s gentle use of “disproportionate” a better way of expressing it?

The BBC is elsewhere looking to downplay or ignore the race issue:

From the Daily Mail:

Don’t use the A-word: BBC accused of censorship over Rotherham child abuse by failing to mention that gangs were Asian

In its own reports we can see that insidious, stealthy attempt to avoid casting aspersions and spread the blame for child abuse to all parts of society….but once again that’s not the issue…the issue is exactly what the BBC is doing here…trying to dodge the race/religion issue for fear of looking racist.

We have this:

Real or imagined: Racism ‘fear’ over Rotherham child abuse

A report that wants to reassure us how seriously the Muslim community takes these events and how shocked they are…if only they had known eh….and anyway Muslim girls were definitely targeted as well.

The trouble is the ‘community’ did ‘bury its head in the sand’……

Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale says ‘We can’t ignore it’:
‘For a while now, I’ve had concerns about disturbing attitudes towards women shown by some of Rochdale’s Asian residents. It goes way beyond casual chauvinism to something far worse. In the two years I have been an MP, I’ve had to throw people out of my surgery because of their violent views on women.
If even Asian councillors were writing letters of support for people now found guilty of horrific sex crimes, it is clear we have a culture of denial.’

Ann Cryer also attempted to reach the Muslim community and persuade them to take action: “I went to a friend of mine, who was a local counsellor and happened to be a Muslim and therefore able to represent me to the elders, because I thought it was a good move to try to get those elders involved. I hoped that I would be able to persuade the elders to go knocking on doors and say ‘this behaviour is un-Islamic and I want it to stop because I’m going l tell the whole community about you and what you’re doing if you don’t’. Now they weren’t prepared to do that.”

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, accused elders of the Pakistani community of “burying their heads in the sand” on the matter of sexual grooming. He said that of 68 recent convictions involving child sexual exploitation, 59 were of British Pakistani men and it was a significant problem for that community. He said the actions of criminals who thought “white teenage girls are worthless and can be abused” were “bringing shame on our community.”

The Oxord sex gang
The novelist Bina Shah has criticised a culture of racism, misogyny, tribalism and sexual vulgarity among men “who hail from the poorest, least educated, and most closed-off parts of Pakistan”. Julie Siddiqi, the executive director of the Islamic Society of Britain, has called for a change in the male dominance at the top of many Muslim organisations which may have contributed to their community’s silence on grooming.

Mark Easton moves to disabuse us of any of our prejudices about sex abuse…its everywhere, and everyone’s doing it….nothing to do with race or religion…again, no one said it was….apart from it being a factor in which girls to target and the reason for the cover ups.

When we look, we find

The truth is that large numbers of children are and always have been sexually abused in this country….Whether it is dishonest MPs, corrupt bankers, abusive priests or schoolmasters, activities that would once have been quietly swept under the carpet are being exposed.

When we look, we find.

I don’t believe that people deliberately covered up what was going on. It has been about looking the other way, not asking questions or following leads because the subject matter is uncomfortable and scrutiny is potentially damaging.

The we have this:

Rotherham child abuse: Cases in other towns

This is a remarkable report from the BBC as it fails completely to mention the race or religion of any of the offenders…oh except for in Peterborough where it reveals they were ‘of Czech and Slovak Roma and Kurdish backgrounds.’

Here’s the other towns where the BBC fails to mention the offenders in that article……

BBC:  Oxford…The NSPCC said there had been a “systematic failure” by Oxfordshire County Council to stop a grooming gang that plied girls, some as young as 11, with alcohol and drugs.

The offenders were:
In June 2013 the gang received sentences totalling 95 years for what the presiding judge, Judge Peter Rook, described as “a series of sexual crimes of the utmost depravity”.[17] The brothers Mohammed and Bassam Karrar received life sentences, with a minimum tariffs of 20 years for Mohammed Karrar and 15 years for Bassam Karrar. The brothers Akhtar and Anjum Dogar received life sentences with a minimum tariff of 17 years. Kamar Jamil received a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 12 years. Assad Hussain and Zeeshan Ahmed were both jailed for seven years.

BBC:  Derby……Nine men were convicted over three trials of systematically grooming and sexually abusing teenage girls in 2010.

The offenders were:
Mohammed Imran Rehman,  Faisal Mehmood,  Akshay Kumar,  Romaan Liaqat,  Abid Mohammed Saddique,  Graham Blackham,  

BBC:  Telford…..Seven men were jailed after a series of court cases related to a child prostitution ring.

The offenders were:
Ahdel Ali, Mubarek Ali, Mohammed Ali Sultan,  Tanveer Ahmed, Mohammed Islam Choudhrey,  Mahroof Khan,  Mohammed Younis.

BBC:  Rochdale…In May 2012, nine men were given sentences ranging from four to 19 years after being found guilty of offences including rape and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child.

The offenders were:
Abdul Aziz ,  Shabir Ahmed,  Abdul Qayyum,  Hamid Safi,  Mohammed Amin, Mohammed Sajid,   Adil Khan,  Abdul Rauf, Kabeer Hassan

In a contrast with its reporting in the run up to the capture of the ‘Boston Bombers’ when it tried to rewrite history before it had happened telling us that all the evidence pointed to them being white supremacists, the BBC now actually does rewrite history and attempts to forget certain uncomfortable truths and emphasises other issues not relevant to the case…..Pakistani Muslim sex gangs preying on white girls…for the BBC that is a pandora’s box that as far as race relations is concerned and they don’t think is necessarily what we want to hear about…or should hear about.

The BBC does not see itself as merely a provider of news but acts in a way designed to enforce social control and to ensure the public only perceives events in a way the BBC thinks they should perceive them, to manipulate thoughts and actions, to alter behaviour.

How successful is it, or rather how successful are the consequences of its attempts at information management?

Immigration?  Schools, hospitals, housing in meltdown.

Multiculturalism?  Ever more segregated and divided communities….how many people do you know who thinks there will be major conflict between Muslims and the ‘rest’?  Quite a lot I’d wager….as studies show.   Trojan horses, sex abuse scandals, terrorism, cultural supremacy…..welcome to multi-cultural Britain.

Europe?  Ever more expensive, judges over-ruling Parliament under the guise of ‘human rights’, terrorists and criminals given free reign, borders flung open to all and sundry, businesses destroyed, democracy sidelined.

Climate Change?  Massive fuel bills, the country littered with unwanted wind turbines, cheap coal power stations closed down, an energy crisis and possible blackouts.

All good so far then.

The BBC is dangerous.