Oryem was abducted by the LRA for two days in 2003. They cut off his lips and ears with a knife and his fingers with an axe.

Stephanie Hegarty…just what is she good for?  What does she bring to the BBC other than trite, anodyne, derivative worthiness that we expect from Anglican priests?…somewhat ironic, as you’ll see….she’s not a fan of Christians.

DB on this site and Is the BBC biased? ( Yes it is whatever Cardiff Uni tells us) have been giving Stephanie the old one two for her ever increasingly partisan tweets…. such as this latest example which seems to suggest that the US jury are ‘extremists’ for imposing a death sentence on a mass murderer…

The extremists are winning.. 🙁 Death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev http://t.co/ftD7Q5IrUi

— Steph Hegarty (@stephhegarty) May 15, 2015

The Tweets unavoidably drew my attention and I thought she was worthy of a closer look…and when you see what she is interested in you can understand why the BBC snapped her up from the New Statesman as they did….she is a budding Paul Mason if ever there was one.

However there is one article that deserves a deal of attention, one which underlines her world view….or maybe she was high on dope or was it just uncut self-righteousness which fired her up and gave strength to her arm as she aimed her censorious brickbats at numerous targets….all the usual suspects for the Left?  It looks like she was working for the BBC when she wrote this tract in April 2012….yep, here she is in February and then in November 2012 on FOOC.

Here she defends the BBC World Service against the depredations of the Coalition government…

‘If the World Service is to survive it will only do so by becoming a tool of corporate colonialism exporting the ideals and propaganda of those with money on those without.

The coallition government will continue to thump about quashing every public institution it can, tearing apart the welfare state, selling schools, forests and anything they can feasibly attach a price tag to. The World Service is just another casualty in what is already an old but painful story.’

Anyway, back to her tract…

There is an organisation called ‘Invisible Children’ that was set up in 2004 to help the children caught up in the war in Central Africa involving the Lord’s Resistance Army, and to encourage governments to get involved to stop the war.

Part of that campaign was a film released in 2012 called ‘Kony 2012’ which set out their case and their desire for the leader of the LRA, Joseph Kony, to be captured and put on trial at the International Criminal Court.

The film was highly successful and generated huge support that influenced US politicians to agree to help defeat the LRA.

Stephanie Hegarty thinks the film maker, Jason Russell, is close kin to the Devil and quite possibly the love child of Hitler and Goebbels…..in 2012 she starts off a vitriolic and bizarre attack on him and the film like this…

‘Last week a video launched on to the internet with the aim of making a psychotic megalomaniac famous.’

Well, Russell did have a mental breakdown some time after the release of the film and was hospitalised for that…nice that Hegarty thinks his mental breakdown is grounds to attack him….an attack which she continues later on.

As for making him famous?  Does she have no idea of just what the film and the organisation actually achieved?

She goes on to launch an unrestrained and outlandish attack on Russell’s young (4 years old?) son…

Most of this particular film seems to be taken up by a very blonde and camera-friendly child purportedly of Jason’s own making. This puzzling creature seems to be as adept at using a smart phone as monitoring an arsenal of nuclear weapons. In the video he subtly demonstrates his skills with both.

For a second it seems this could be an infomercial for a new breed of toy soldier – a robot child made out of coltan maybe. Only the genius of Jason Russell could fathom making a small human out of the stuff – a precious Congolese mineral usually used for making mobile phone and missiles – and employing him like a small and loveable, sexless fembot.

Watch the film to see just how weird Hegarty’s interpretation is…..absolutely nowhere near what appears on screen.

Then we get to her own politics as she slips into Lefty speak…

‘These people are no longer in the jungle they are not invisible and most of them are not children anymore. They need all the things we need, jobs to get up for in the morning, schools to send their children to, family, respect, stability and peace. Not wristbands, posters and glitzy, irrelevant films or a raging neo-colonial war.’

Well if they need to go to school, need jobs, need stabiltiy and peace….that’s pretty hard to achieve when there’s an armed band roaming the country killing, mutilating, raping and kidnapping the children.  As for neo-colonial war….it was being waged by almost purely African troops.

Hegarty then criticises Russell for ‘supporting’ the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni whom she denounces as homophobic, a trait she then links to a Christian group in the US.  But is Russell supporting Museveni or just trying to stop the war?  Hegarty thinks the war should continue as that’s better than having an unpleasant homophobe in power in Uganda…

‘The real triumph here for activism and the power of youth.. and the internet. After all can motivating people to care about their fellow man be a bad thing, no matter how veiled, misguided, manipulative and  potentially corrupt the cause? Yes, I think it can.

Jason Russell and his army of internet-savvy minions and masters of the YouTube generation are a more hideous force than a clapped up, demented warlord hiding in a bush will ever be.’

Note that she thinks Russell is more dangerous than Kony and his band of murderous thugs….who have killed over 100,000, displaced nearly 2 million and abducted around 30,000 children to be used as child soldiers or sex slaves….the World Bank estimated as many as 66,000 children had been abducted.

Curiously she is quite enamoured of the ‘army’ of youngsters who rioted across the UK in 2011….

‘Whether it’s to do with anger against the police, a sense of general alienation or simply consumerist greed, this week’s rioters in Britain had a message, however incoherent, for their society.’

And not too bothered about denouncing Muslim homophobia in such declamatory, strident tones.

Hegarty finishes off with this ripe diatribe which lays out the real ‘enemy’ of civilisation….

Generally, when celebrities and movie stars, the entire US political right wing – along with most of the mainstream church and Fox News – launch upon an idea you can vouch for the fact that it’s not a very good one – experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam seems to be pretty solid on this one, but fuck experience.

The moral of this story is that its ok to peddle untruths, wreak war and masturbate in public, so long as you make nice films full of condescending bullshit about helpless Africans, are a Christian and preferably not gay.

White, Christian, Republican, Straight, work for Fox News…..all sound rather familiar as targets for abuse from the BBC…no wonder they gave Hegarty a job…she’s ‘one of them’.

In fact it was Obama who actually signed off on sending troops to Uganda and the campaign had cross party support in the US from both Democrats and Republicans.  So a black president, a Democrat, waded into the racist neo-colonial wars…..how did it go so wrong?

Hegarty, so full of remorse for being white, so full of guilt for living in a society that allows her to make a good living from writing nonsense, so full of bile towards those who would help others because she thinks they aren’t Left wing enough, or black enough, or gay enough…perhaps she should consider as she types away that others are not so lucky….such as this victim of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Oryem Kenneth, 42, who was abducted by the LRA for two days in 2003. They cut off his lips and ears with a knife and his fingers with an axe….

He’s lucky, he had someone to tell his tale and seek to put an end to the conflict that resulted in his mutilation.

If Hegarty had her way there would be endless people such as Oryem Kenneth.

The best leader Labour never had according to the immediate post mortem as Chuka Umunna ducks for cover having had a taste of the limelight.

Will the BBC be chasing him for his response to accusations that this shows that Labour is a shambles, the leadership contest a farce and him a dithering pathetic wannabe who couldn’t hack it?

Not so far….all very respectful and sorrowful that Labour has lost such a high quality (?) candidate….the BBC is quick to reassure us that ” there was no scandal that lay behind his decision to step aside.”  How very different to their response to Nigel Farage’s saga.

However the blame is already being apportioned…Labour’s Ben Bradshaw was given a platform on 5Live to blame the Press and the dreadful intrusions in to a politician’s personal life…….but it wasn’t ‘The Press’ that thrust Chuka’s girlfriend front and centre onto the political stage as he announced his leadership bid was it?

I imagine he is trying to blame Murdoch and the Mail….the Mirror and the Guardian never stoop to such levels of course.

Unlike Ben Bradshaw himself who proclaimed that Eric Pickles was too fat and launched an attack on Cameron and his ill son….one response to which was “using the death of a child to make a political point? Shame on you Ben Bradshaw.”

Nick Robinson has spoken to his sources, wonder who that could be, and he can reveal….“I am told that this includes reporters waiting outside the houses of relatives late at night.”  So following the Labour spin on this then.

Oh my aching sides. And it was ALL going so well with the BBC relentlessly focusing on UKIP conflicts when suddenly, the “British Obama” Chuka Umunna decides he is stepping down from the Labour leadership race, having announced he was entering on Tuesday! BBC in tears…..

Friday arrives and time for a new Open Thread. BBC seems determined to talk UP UKIP divisions whilst staying mute on the chaos in Labour ranks! Over to you!

The News Quiz is back for a new series this week:

We're back this Friday for the start of @sanditoksvig's last series, with @JeremyJHardy, @SusanCalman, @SamiraAhmedUK and @elisjames.

— The News Quiz (@TheNewsQuiz) May 11, 2015

Elis James is a new name to me. Apparently he does things on BBC3 and XFM. I wonder why they’ve chosen him to appear this week.

I'm starting to shit myself now. Not another five years of these cunts, please

— Elis James (@elisjames) May 7, 2015

We have given that cunt Cameron a mandate to be even more of a psycho , for the next five years. Oh Christ.

— Elis James (@elisjames) May 8, 2015

Ah, that helps explain why.

He’ll fit right in with Sandi, Jeremy and the rest. The braying seals in the audience will love his views too, no doubt. It must be especially baffling for these left-wing luvvies that there’s a majority Conservative government and that four million people voted for UKIP. Damn the electorate – it’s so unrepresentantive of the News Quiz audience.

(What would be the chances of a News Quiz appearance for a comedian who called, say, Yvette Cooper a cunt?)

Prince Charles’ communications with government have been published after a freedom of information request from the Guardian which reports…

The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, said: “We fought this case because we believed – and the most senior judges in the country agreed – that the royal family should operate to the same degrees of transparency as anyone else trying to make their influence felt in public life.

If the criteria is one of trying to influence public life……

I wonder if they will be pursuing the BBC with equal vigour to find out the contents of all its communications with government…especially as the BBC is so ‘right wing’.

Will they be demanding to see a transcript of the secret meetings held recently between the BBC and Muslim activists who were demanding that the BBC change how it reports on any events in which Muslims are involved?

Will they be demanding the release of all communications concerning climate change that have passed between the BBC, climate activists, the UEA and government?

Will they be demanding the release of all communications that the BBC has had with the Home Office concerning how it reports on immigration or the EDL or Muslim terrorism?

If not why not?  The BBC is far more influential than the prince could ever hope to be…so shouldn’t there be complete transparency in relation to who it talks to and what is said between them?

The BBC is straight on the story….no hanging about waiting for facts or details…essentially what they bring us is a headline with the words ‘Election fraud’ and ‘Farage’ in the same sentence….

Fraud probe in Nigel Farage-contested Thanet South seat

And that’s it…oooh hang on…there’s more…

Kent Police are making inquiries into a report of electoral fraud in the Thanet South seat, contested in the general election by Nigel Farage.

The UKIP leader failed to win the seat, losing out to Conservative candidate Craig Mackinlay.

Mr Farage secured 16,026 votes, with Mr Mackinlay achieving 18,838.

That really is it…except for this…

‘More follows.’

So the BBC are so excited about an allegation of fraud in the same constituency that Farage stood for election that they run the story with Farage’s name mentioned very, very prominently, implicating him by default, and very little else.  Why no mention of the Tory candidate who actually won the seat?

This rush to report from the BBC that hid the fact that a Muslim Mayor of Tower Hamlets was kicked out of office for actual electoral fraud deep down in its ‘England’ page…not on the Frontpage, or the UK page but the England page where you’d have to go looking for it…the Mayor in charge of a £1 billion budget who used it to buy votes and yet the BBC looks to downplay and ignore it as if it didn’t happen.  The reason?  Because he was Muslim and was voted in by Msulim voters and used claims of racism and Islamophobia to try and shut up those who were asking questions…the BBC is as always reluctant to highlight instances of practises that show Islam in a bad light and especially cases where claims of islamophobia are patently false and used to silence critics because it then raises the question about others who use similar tactics to silence people…..the BBC et al not averse to using the same tactics themselves.

A ’30-day trial’?  I’m sure we can hang him out to dry in less time than that……

It is a remarkable thing isn’t it just how much energy the Labour Party and its fellow travellers expend on defending the BBC….the BBC which they insist is in fact right wing and in the pocket of the Conservatives.

We had a look at some of this a while back and wrote that ‘What we have is a BBC reliant on a band of Marxist academic activists and ex-BBC employees to produce pro-BBC propaganda to cover up  the corruption, professional, political and financial, that lies at the heart of the Corporation.’

To that band of comrades you can add Labour’s villainous spin doctor Tom Baldwin who has just penned, in the Guardian, where else, a defence of the BBC which by no stretch of the imagination could nary a word of it be described as true.  But then again he was the man who placed Labour propaganda into the Times when he was a journalist there so professional ethics are possibly an inconvenience, or rather not an inconvenience, for him.

He claims that ‘The BBC was not in the pocket of Labour this election. Quite the opposite’  I note with interest that qualification ‘…this election’.…so in every other election?

He tells us that there is a ‘disturbing suggestion that a democratically elected government would seek to stamp on and silence dissent from an independent broadcaster, there is deep falsehood at the heart of this…..[that] the world’s most successful state-funded public service broadcaster is a giant leftwing conspiracy. ‘

This from the man who adds…‘ I write that with the certainty of someone who has spent this year making almost daily complaints to the BBC on behalf of the Labour party.’

So no attempt to stamp on the independence of the BBC by Baldwin in an effort to silence it or make it more pro-Labour than it already was?

He expands upon the reason for Labour’s complaints….‘Our biggest dispute with the BBC was over the prominence it gave to the idea of a deal between Labour and the SNP that was never on the cards……It was a scare story based on a false premise and some badly flawed polls. Britain was not heading for a minority Labour government but towards a Tory majority and we were all making the same mistake in believing the polls. ‘

Well yes….the BBC did give endless prominence to what the BBC presented as a ‘probable’ Labour victory and the prospect of having to deal with the SNP….. as the evidence shows such a deal was a very real prospect as Labour were never going to win a majority.  In fact that was the basis for this site saying the BBC was biased in favour of Labour…forever giving the audience the idea that Labour would edge the election.  Nice to see Labour actually confirm our view of the BBC’s stance on this.  Also Baldwin might want to talk to his boss, ex-boss, who made such a big play of not doing any deals or joining in coalition with the SNP…bound to attract attention.

Baldwin then spins his biggest line…

‘I suspect, however, that something else is going on too. BBC executives and journalists have told me that there were regular, repeated threats from senior Tories during this election campaign about “what would happen afterwards” if they did not do as they were told and fall into line.’

Really?  Name names.  Or is this just an example of the black arts of the Labour Party spin machine….a lie in other words?  Just put it out ‘there’ knowing that it will catch the headlines and eventually the legend will become ‘fact’ courtesy of the useful idiots like Owen Jones who as we speak is probably authoring his next exclamation of his outrage at Tory perfidy.

I too heard a similar tale from BBC executives and journalists who said that Baldwin threatened the BBC with severe repercussions should Labour win the election and its coverage not ‘fall into line’ and favour Labour.  See how easy it is to churn out some unattributed pap?

How credible is Baldwin?…well not much…even Labour thought he was a loose cannon wrecking their chances with his wild and reckless press briefings.

Even the Guardian thinks he’s wrong……

‘Yet even senior Tories seemed a somewhat taken aback at the way the appointment of Whittingdale – the veteran chair of the culture, media and sport select committee – was received. “I think there’s a debate to be had about all sorts of things to do with the BBC [during charter renewal negotiations],” said one, “but fundamentally will there be a public service broadcaster largely funded by the public? Yes.”

That debate – set to include an overhaul of BBC governance and the corporation’s impact on a beleagured local newspaper industry – could be had “without kneecapping the BBC”, he added.

So what’s going on? There is definitely a wing of the Conservative party happy to see the BBC humbled for perceived leftwing bias……And yet, in the runup to the election, when BBC bullying was de rigueur for parties that wanted to be seen in the best light, not one senior government member said that the universal licence fee should be scrapped. Indeed, in his interview with the Radio Times, George Osborne categorically said there were “no plans” to replace the licence fee, even if a future government would “look at all the options”.

Even the BBC itself poo-poos the idea of Tory war against the BBC blaming it on the Right Wing Press….the BBC getting its own attack in on them…….

Has war been declared on the BBC?

Does the new culture secretary pose a threat to the BBC, or are Tuesday’s headlines settling private scores?

The appointment of John Whittingdale as Secretary of State for Culture has been met with some fairly bold headlines.

However, the language from the government is rather calmer.

The former Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid, was asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if the government was “going to war” with the corporation.

“No, not at all,” was his response.

“I think there has been some over-excitement in those headlines,” he added.’

It goes on….

‘The charter renewal process is not expected to begin in earnest until the autumn, but the loyal Conservative-supporting newspapers are making very clear what they would like as a “payback” – a smaller BBC.

Will it happen?

For those who want a radical reshaping of the BBC – perhaps even scrapping the licence fee altogether – there is a hope Mr Whittingdale might be their man.

But their hope might be tempered if they read the recent report from his committee on the future of the BBC. Its conclusion was that there was at the moment “no better alternative” to the licence fee to fund an institution that was a “central presence in the life of the country”.

The MPs, though, were open to the idea that the BBC ought to make “bigger, braver decisions” about its services and “do less in some areas”.

However, exactly what, where and how those cuts would be applied, it was leaving to the BBC.’

I assume this Tory initiative is all about curbing the BBC in ‘Tom Baldwin World’…

New laws to target radicalisation

Here you go, a John Whittingdale approved OPEN Thread for your completion! Detail the bias here.