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):

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.

Two events that seem eminently pointless and one sided discussing BBC bias but only its ‘pro-Israeli’ bias…all the speakers being the ‘usual suspects’….’sold out’ indeed:

Due to high demand this event will be held at the Shaw Theatre, 100-110 Euston Rd, London, NW1 2AJ.

First Wednesday: Reporting the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict – Emotion, Bias and Objectivity

The latest chapter in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has again highlighted the difficulties of covering this complex and deep-rooted conflict that provokes such a strong emotional response from the general public.

The BBC has faced accusation that it is not critical enough of Israel’s actions and that its reporting is one-sided, where as Channel 4 News has been accused of crossing the line between journalism and campaigning. Is there a middle ground?

In the face of such devastation should we expect correspondents to offer an objective view devoid of emotion? If we encourage correspondents to show more emotion do we risk compromising the credibility and standard of journalism in this country?

Join us as we take a view of the coverage we have seen, talk to the journalists that have produced it and ask what we can learn.

The panel:

Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East Editor.

Jon Snow, Channel 4 News anchor.

Addition speakers to be announced.

and this:

Date
28/08/2014
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Location
Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre
17-25 New Inn Yard, EC2A 3EA
London

Jeremy Bowen gives a fair assessment of the consequences of the vote not to help the FSA against Assad…..the FSA now has to fight both the ISIS and Assad and the West is caught between a rock and a hard place having been out-manoeuvred by Assad and the likes of the BBC:

What if the West had intervened in Syria?

The BBC’s Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen assesses the events of the past year in Syria and how they have shaped the Middle East region.

The problem is he misses out one crucial element (never mind the BBC not revealing it had evidence of a chemical attack on a school on the eve of the vote)…..Assad was central to the rebirth of ISIS:

Why Assad is secretly helping his ISIS enemies become most powerful rebel force in Syria

How Syria’s Assad Helped Forge ISIS

That is now crucial because of the discussion on how to tackle ISIS, or IS as it now calls itself,  and who is to blame for the rebirth of ISIS….the BBC usually points the finger of blame at the invasion of Iraq in 2003….despite ISIS actually having originated in Afghanistan as part of Al Qaeda….and now we know ISIS is due more to Assad than Bush and Blair, it having been crushed by the Americans in 2006/7 with the ‘Surge’ in Iraq against them.

The grotesque alliance that has been allowed to carve up Syria

Assad has forced us to choose between supporting him, or watching the very jihadists whom he has empowered advance across the Middle East. Lord Dannatt and Sir Christopher Meyer have duly urged us to sign up the arsonist as a fireman, hoping that Assad can be trusted to refrain from picking up the petrol and going back to his old career.

In truth, this is the bankrupt choice which the House of Commons made – perhaps unwittingly – a year ago. By deciding against striking Assad even after he had gassed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people, Parliament effectively resolved to leave events in Syria to take their course. And that meant allowing Assad and Baghdadi, the two most powerful warlords, to carve up the country between them. The non-Islamist opposition was duly ground to dust between these two millstones.

Parliament sent a signal that Western power – the one factor that could have tipped the balance of the conflict – would never be deployed. The result was to leave the field to our twin nightmares, Assad and Baghdadi, the arsonists-in-arms.

Who would be a moderate now?

The BBC played its part in that…first by helping to generate the fear of military engagement with its constant anti-war message and second by hiding the evidence of that chemical attack, only showing it on Panorama after the vote ensuring MP’s consciences weren’t pricked.

With ISIS and its British recruits dominating the news we are also bombarded with ‘messages’ that parcel out the blame for radicalisng these Jihadi warriors….Western foreign policy being the favoured, default, unthinking but sometimes Machiavellian option.

The BBC has always accepted that assertion without challenge…thereby adding to the credibility of the cause for potential recruits to the Jihad…it after all fits in with the BBC’s own agenda about the Iraq war and it will promote any line that makes Blair’s ‘illegal war’ the trigger for all the evils in the world.

However because the subject is very involved and complex before we take a look at whether there really is a justification for that claim let’s look at a sample of the rhetoric expressing such a narrative so that any post about foreign policy can be kept as short as possible.

Mehdi Hasan is always fun to read….guessing how long it will take before you realise he has completely contradicted himself on a subject having previously said something  totally different always makes it worth the effort to read the double-dealing dissembler’s dodgy prose.

Hasan has many lines to spin but few scruples.  One day he’ll be saying this, the next day that…it’s hard to take him seriously…unfortunately many people who should know better do swallow his guff whole and regurgitate it for their own readers giving Hasan an unwarranted veneer of respectability and credibility and his words an undeserved authority.

Daniel Hannan, for example, unfortunately references a Hasan article that misleadingly tries to  separate Jihad from Islam…and Hannan is not the only one to pick up on Hasan’s article, it has spread far and wide on the Web which is why I think it is worth looking at his claims in detail.

Here is Hannan’s reference to it:

What makes some British Muslims become jihadis?

Mehdi Hassan has a fascinating piece in the Huffington Post, in which he reveals the books that two Brummie Muslims had ordered from Amazon before heading out to join the insurgents in Syria. Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed, who pleaded guilty to terrorism offences last month, had not bought works on politics or advanced theology, but Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies. Dummies indeed.

Daniel Hannan is no doubt well meaning rather than wilfully naïve as many are who want to brush the subject under the carpet and do so by proclaiming Islam is the religion of peace and that the Jihadists aren’t Muslims.

What did Mehdi Hasan say that caught Hannan’s eye?  Hasan tries to ridicule the Jihadists as ignorant of Islam because they bought books about the religion…he concludes this proves they can’t have a true knowledge of Islam that would provide a credible intellectual and theological basis for their Jihadi adventure…..and we, on that basis, presumably can’t be considered democrats because we don’t know every law in the statute book and need lawyers (God bless ’em) to represent us …Others, less intent on trying to mislead readers, might conclude that buying such books showed a commendable desire to become more conversant and knowledgeable about their own religion and might indicate that they did take their religion seriously. But Hasan has a political point to make…Islam has nothing to do with Jihadis…..which is a hard sell really….Jihadis being ‘Holy warriors’ with an intent to set up an Islamic caliphate.

It might be noted that the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is theologically qualified having a degree in Islamic theology and having been an Islamic cleric in a Mosque….therefore just like the Pope, his ‘flock’ need only listen to his authoritative judgements to know the ‘correct’ path to follow.

Below is Hasan’s piece from the New Statesman…..but consider this first:

One former hostage, who was held for a year by the [Islamist] group in Raqqa, told the Guardian that the British executioner [of James Foley]  is “intelligent, educated and a devout believer in radical Islamic teachings”.

Who do you believe…a slippery, dishonest Islamist who will say anything to further the cause of Islam or someone who has had close contact with the actual Jihadists and has no axe to grind?

What the jihadists who bought “Islam for Dummies” on Amazon tell us about radicalisation
Pretending that the danger comes only from the devout could cost lives.
Sarwar and Ahmed, both of whom pleaded guilty to terrorism offences last month, purchased Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies. You could not ask for better evidence to bolster the argument that the 1,400-year-old Islamic faith has little to do with the modern jihadist movement. The swivel-eyed young men who take sadistic pleasure in bombings and beheadings may try to justify their violence with recourse to religious rhetoric – think the killers of Lee Rigby screaming “Allahu Akbar” at their trial; think of Islamic State beheading the photojournalist James Foley as part of its “holy war” – but religious fervour isn’t what motivates most of them.

Islam isn’t to blame for the behaviour of such men

So that’s Hasan’s pitch….Islam isn’t to blame for the Jihadist’s behaviour.

Perhaps he should consider the words of Bertrand Russell who compared Islam to Bolshevism… ‘Practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of the world’.  

Note that word….’unspiritual’.

To buttress his argument Hasan quotes from a leaked MI5 document obtained, and interpreted, by the Guardian…….

In 2008, a classified briefing note on radicalisation, prepared by MI5’s behavioural science unit, was leaked to the Guardian. It revealed that, “far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could . . . be regarded as religious novices.” The analysts concluded that “a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation”, the newspaper said.

Instead they point to other drivers of radicalisation: moral outrage, disaffection, peer pressure, the search for a new identity, for a sense of belonging and purpose.

Religion does, of course, play a role: in particular, a perverted and politicised form of Islam acts as an “emotional vehicle” (to quote Atran), as a means of articulating anger and mobilising masses in the Muslim-majority world. But to pretend that the danger comes only from the devout could cost lives.

Whatever the Daily Mail or Michael Gove might have you believe, long beards and flowing robes aren’t indicators of radicalisation; ultra-conservative or reactionary views don’t automatically lead to violent acts.

What is wrong with Hasan’s reasoning?  Firstly he has no idea as to the extent of the Jihadist’s knowledge of Islam….in one BBC radio interview with a Cardiff Imam talking about youths who had gone to Syria the Imam stated that the youths had been acting very strangely…they were far more devout than usual, wanting to follow their religion far more strictly….strange indeed…following their religion! Most Imam’s would be pleased…but here it is a reason for suspicion!

That might indicate, if not any particular level of knowledge, at least the desire to learn and practise the religion undermining Hasan’s claim that they couldn’t be religiously motivated.

Secondly Hasan tries to pull a fast one hoping the reader knows nothing of Islam, or indeed what the MI5 document actually said.  From the Guardian….

The MI5 authors stress that the most pressing current threat is from Islamist extremist groups who justify the use of violence “in defence of Islam”

That ‘violence used in defence of Islam’  is a crucial conclusion by MI5 and gets to the heart of the problem….

Islam imposes an obligation upon all Muslims to defend Islam and Muslims when they are perceived to be under attack.

The Obligation of Jihad “Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). …Those that neglect Jihad will be disobeying something God has commanded us all to partake in; they have not aided in protecting the Religion of God, they have not defended the Book of God, its messages and His law, they have not helped the Ummah against the enemy who wants to destroy them.

“He who dies without having fought in the way of Allah or without having felt it to be his duty, will die having a trait of hypocrisy

Hasan refrains from mentioning that obligation and instead tries to claim that anyone going on Jihad requires a deep knowledge of the Koran and Islamic law….that’s just not true….the only requirement is that you be a Muslim, practising to whatever degree, and that other Muslims are under attack whom you must defend.

This is from Luton Mosque’s information website:

Honour, victory, and strength will only come to this Ummah when we return and unite upon the pure religion as it was brought by the Prophet (alayhis salaam) and practiced by the Companions. Only when we single out Allah, alone, in worship and give obedience to Him and His Messenger, will the Help of Allah come.

You might ask just how much can you trust MI5’s report on the causes of radicalisation and its belief about the lack of religious influence on radicalisation (seemingly in contradiction to its final conclusion)?  The government makes tremendous efforts to play down any link between Islam and Jihad in the interest of community cohesion.  Some suggest this might have been a deliberate leak in order to spin that line:

To our suspicious minds, this makes it more likely to be a cynical bit of Whitehall propaganda spin and media briefing, rather than a principled leak by a courageous whistleblower.

The Telegraph has a more realistic view of the MI5 document than the Guardian….one that backs up the ‘conspiracy’ theory that the government is downplaying the link to Islam…….

People in MI5 tell me that denying the connection between Islamism and terrorism derives from the belief that if you accept it, there’s no hope for a multicultural society in Britain: we would just have to recognise that part of the population is permanently liable to become terrorists.

Of course you have to trust the Guardian’s interpretation and emphasis on certain parts of the document.

And what of that ‘Islam for Dummies’ jibe from Hasan?….‘Sarwar and Ahmed, both of whom pleaded guilty to terrorism offences last month, purchased Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies. You could not ask for better evidence to bolster the argument that the 1,400-year-old Islamic faith has little to do with the modern jihadist movement.’

You may remember Mehdi Hasan made an infamous speech where he denounced non-Muslims as ignorant cattle …but the speech had much more in it than that….here(19 mins in ) Hasan explains the importance of knowledge and the obligation to keep learning for Muslims, especially as most Muslims have little knowledge of their own faith and are therefore unable to defend it from critics……

Our holy Imam said that one hour spent in reflection, in contemplation, in thought, is worth seventy years of worship…think about that…one hour of thought…..how can that be?……because worship is worth nothing unless we have first put our thought into it, unless we have engaged our intellect, Allah is not asking us for blind worship, faith based on our brains, they are based on our minds engaging with Allah
How much do you understand what he is praying and why you are praying…do you blindly pray?….if so you benefit very little……the benefit from that worship is based exactly on your understanding and intellectual engagement with that worship.
We are not told only  to engage intellectually with the argument, to use our reason to find Allah, no we are also called upon to acquire knowledge…Islam says don’t give up on that intellectual pursuit, there is no point thinking if you have nothing to think about, if you have no knowledge to go with those thoughts.
Islam orders us that to go with those thoughts you need some basic knowledge…..it may not be common to our community but it is common to our holy book.
Our Holy Prophet said seek knowledge your entire life from cradle to grave…the most learned of the learned has to acquire knowledge till he dies.

We Muslims everyday embarrass ourselves by our lack of knowledge….when challenged about our faith we don’t defend it because we don’t know our faith…we haven’t bothered to study and understand it so we have no response and embarrass ourselves.

Knowledge is the twin of action, knowledge goes hand in hand with action.  He who is knowledgeable must act for knowledge calls out for action, if it is not answered that knowledge will depart.  We must use that knowledge to improve our lives, our families, our Umma….do not act just on emotion but with knowledge.

Hasan preaches that Islam demands you learn, that you continue to learn about Islam, and that you use that knowledge to further Islam’s cause.

From that you might conclude Hasan’s recent outburst against the Jihadis who bought the ‘Dummies’ books is dishonest and highly political, an outburst designed to deceive people by steering them into a particular, and mistaken, way of thinking about Islam, that is, that it is a ‘religion of peace’.

What you have to remember is that Hasan himself is every bit an Islamist as these Jihadis…the only difference is that he doesn’t advocate violence to spread Islam.

As said  from the beginning Hasan has a habit of saying one thing one day and the opposite the next…here’s a couple of examples…..

Hasan attacks Muslims for being too concerned about foreign policy:

British Muslims have too long defined politics by the Middle East. We have an obligation to engage with the national debate.
Why is it that most British Muslims get so excited and aroused by foreign affairs, yet seem so bored by and uninterested in domestic politics and the economy?

And yet here he is himself complaining that Muslim complaints about foreign policy are ignored…..

Extremists Point to Western Foreign Policy to Explain Their Acts. Why Do We Ignore Them?

He accuses David Cameron and others of trying to “zealously police the parameters of the debate, pre-emptively warning off those who might dare connect the dots between wars abroad and terror at home”.
Foreign policy is purportedly a recruiting sergeant for terror yet it has become “the issue that dare not speak its name”….establishment figures continue to denounce those of us who cite the radicalising role of foreign policy
The inconvenient truth for Rubin, Johnson et al is that Muslim extremists usually cite political, not theological, justifications for their horrendous crimes.
[disingenuous…as it is based upon Muslims defending Muslims as instructed by the Koran]
The point is this: terrorism may indeed be a criminal political act but it is a political act nonetheless. It is not, contrary to the conventional wisdom, theologically motivated; according to a leaked MI5 study in 2008, most violent extremists are “religious novices”.

In another example Hasan shows just how slippery he can be….and paradoxically, considering his comments about the Jihadists not knowing about Islam, he himself deliberately misquotes a passage from the Koran in order to make the Koran appear merciful and forgiving…….Hasan says:

‘Whosoever killeth a human being…” says the Koran, in the 32nd verse of its fifth chapter, “it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.”
Thus, the two supposedly Muslim men suspected of killing and mutilating an unarmed, off-duty soldier in the middle of a London street, while shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great”), were violating the injunction of their own holy book

However when a Muslim quotes that verse (5:32) to you in that manner you know immediately you are being spun a line and  it seems Hasan has been ‘cutting and pasting’ to suit himself for the actual, full quote reveals that verse refers to Jews and not Muslims:

We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land – it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors.

The verse was not telling us that God told Muslims that killing another human was like killing all mankind, it was merely telling what God had said to the Jews, not Muslims.

The ‘peaceful’ Koran goes on in the next verse (5:33):

Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment.

Which conveniently brings us back to Hasan and the Jihadis…going on Jihad to defend Islam against ‘those who wage war against Allah’.

Just another verse in the Koran justifying what they do…..guess they have read the Koran.

Actually no Haggis were spotted( rare and nocturnal) but this was:

Glacier-like hazards found on Ben Nevis

Hazards common in arctic and alpine areas but described as “extremely unusual” in the UK during the summer have been found on Ben Nevis.

A team of climbers and scientists investigating the mountain’s North Face said snowfields remained in many gullies and upper scree slopes.

On these fields, they have come across compacted, dense, ice hard snow call neve.

Neve is the first stage in the formation of glaciers, the team said.

The team has also encountered sheets of snow weighing hundreds of tonnes and tunnels and fissures known as bergschrunds.

The large, deep cracks in the ice are found at the top of glaciers.

Just curious perhaps that this report didn’t appear on the BBC’s science and environment page….lurking instead quietly on the Scotland sub page  ‘Highland and Islands’…from which it seems to have disappearedjust a few days on…..

…though we do have this as a main story on the Scotland page:

Salmond does ice bucket challenge

Alex Salmond takes the ice bucket challenge, along with his deputy Nicola Sturgeon, after being nominated by actor James McAvoy. .