A couple of things of note in regard to Trump and Russia…as yet absolutely no proof of anything…

And from Breitbart:

Ex-CIA Director John Brennan Refuses To Say Whether Russia Holds Damaging Info On Hillary Clinton

In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, former CIA Director John Brennan refused to answer a question in an unclassified setting about whether the Russians possess damaging information on Hillary Clinton that was not revealed during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Brennan further testified that, in his assessment, the Russians favored Donald Trump over Clinton largely because they despised Clinton and would generally prefer dealing with a businessman.

This is a far cry from the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that the Russians possessed damaging information on Trump. Brennan did not even imply that this was the case. Indeed, the discussion about the Russians potentially holding negative information on a politician centered around Clinton.

Brennan’s assessment of Russia’s thinking is shared by Comey, who earlier this month confirmed in testimony that the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment that Putin allegedly wanted Trump in office was not because the billionaire was, as Sen. Al Franken claimed during that hearing without citing any evidence, “ensnared in” Russia’s “web of patronage.”

Instead, Comey provided two primary reasons for Russia allegedly favoring Trump over Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.

One reason, according to Comey, was that Putin “hated” Clinton and would have favored any Republican opponent. The second reason, Comey explained, was that Putin made an assessment that it would be easier to make a deal with a businessman than someone from the political class.

And remember…Comey said Trump himself was not under investigation…..probably because they think the russians do not have compromising information on Trump…and thus the ‘dodgy dossier’ is just that…dodgy….a creative pile of horse crap invented by a British ex-MI6 agent in an attempt to influence the election in favour of Clinton…but no one would say anything about that foreign interference in American Democracy…and certainy not the BBC.

Burnham was on the Today show this morning, admirably he refused to be drawn into making a political statement despite Mishal Husain trying to coerce him to do so.   However that’s where the good news ended as he went into a little rant about the bomber not being Muslim and that he didn’t represent the Muslim community.  Trouble is the bomber was a Muslim and his family was strongly religious…the bomber as a youth learnt the Koran by heart.  His family were also it seems very much into Jihad.  And we know that ISIS is nothing if not ‘Islamic’, indeed it is history brought to life as it pretty much replicates Muhammed’s own blitz across the Middle East…not to mention some of his less savoury dealings with those who opposed him.  As for representing the Muslim community?….maybe they do not like his methods but they certainly back what are his likely politics…let me guess…problems with British foreign policy [despite removing from power Gaddafi who drove his family from Libya], problems with Western culture, rampant Islamophobia and Israel…all the usual narratives that are the staple fare of the Muslim ‘dinner table’, Muslim ‘social media’, and peddled by the BBC as well.

Burnham has a long history himself, a history of being  a useful idiot for Muslim extremists as he worked to close down the Prevent anti-radicalisation programme and suggested Muslims could not trust the police….so it comes as a surprise to see him now telling us how wonderful the police are in response to the Manchester bomb…

I want to thank the hundreds of police, fire and ambulance staff who worked throughout the night in the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

This was Burnham not so long ago telling us Prevent targets Muslims, it encourages Islamophobia and drives Muslims into the hands of the extremists…

“If governments are doing things to almost legitimise things in some way by saying this community does need to be treated differently, it does need to be watched at a local level, because there’s danger here in terms of behaviour, that is highly problematic.”

Has he changed his mind?  I wonder if he thinks we should be watching anyone in particular now as so many young people lie dead because of fools like him?

Something of an irony, a sick one perhaps, that he expresses so much sorrow at the bomb when he has done so much to hinder the security services…

After our darkest of nights, Manchester is today waking up to the most difficult of dawns. It’s hard to believe what has happened here in the last few hours and to put into words the shock, anger and hurt that we feel today.

These were children, young people and their families that those responsible chose to terrorise and kill.  This was an evil act. Our first thoughts are with the families of those killed and injured. And we will do whatever we can to support them.

We are grieving today, but we are strong.

Burnham was quite happy to line up with Muslim radical group MEND…

A senior Labour MP vying to be the first elected mayor of Greater Manchester has shared a platform with a Muslim pressure group accused of being led by “extremists”, after implying Muslims should not work with police.

Andy Burnham, a former cabinet minister, appeared at a mayoral hustings organised by the “anti-Islamophobia” group Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) on Saturday, The Times reports.

MEND regularly works with members of CAGE, which has supported terrorists and called Jihadi John a “beautiful” man. The group is led by Azad Ali, an Islamist who lost a libel battle with a newspaper that said he was “a hardline Islamic extremist who supports the killing of British and American soldiers in Iraq by fellow Muslims as justified”.

MEND director Mr. Ali has also written on his blog of his “love” for Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda cleric closely linked to terrorist plots including the September 11 attacks, and described al-Qaeda as a “myth”.

Harry’s Place looks at his stance on Prevent…

Andy Burnham has come out with some pretty hysterical claims about Prevent, the Government’s counter-terror strategy. At a time when it has emerged that MI6 will be recruiting around 1000 new spies in light of the grave “lifetime threat” ISIS poses to our national security, this threat is obvious to most of us, but not to our shadow Home Secretary of all people.

In June this year, he called for Prevent to be scrapped and even compared the strategy – a strategy operating in the non-criminal space and which offers support to those most vulnerable to radicalisation – to “today’s equivalent of internment in Northern Ireland.”

The ridiculous and frenzied claims don’t end there. Burnham, giving Islamist anti-Prevent activists the best gift one could give, has even claimed that it is Prevent which “risks creating the very conditions for it (extremism) to flourish.” Let’s take a moment to think about that. A strategy which has successfully stopped people from travelling to Syria, including children, which has generated ISIL counter-narrative videos viewed millions of times, is what, Burnham is suggesting, is causing extremism to flourish in the UK. It’s not ISIS propaganda, or British pro-ISIS fanboys tweeting day in day out or even the plethora of extremist preachers operating on our campuses and communities as Harry’s Place has long evidenced that is causing extremism according to Burnham. No it is Prevent.

Conflating anti-Muslim hate crime with a strategy which seeks to counter radicalisation, Burnham now also claims Prevent “risks legitimising or inspiring Islamophobic hate crime” as opposed to the acts of Islamist terrorists which Prevent seeks to deter.

Good though to see him grandstanding and telling us how terrible this bombing and mass murder is…of course he is in good company in a BBC studio, the BBC which has also done so much to promote the idea that Prevent is ‘toxic’ and targeting Muslims…as if that were somehow wrong…‘not all Muslims are terrorists but’...Mishal Husain didn’t think it necessary to challenge him on his claims.

Which groups were the original driving force behind the campaign to attack Prevent?  It was Muslim extremist groups like Cage who for very obvious reasons wanted to shut down a programme that was designed to stop radicalisation and terrorism.  Why did the BBC think for one moment that promoting that narrative would be a good idea?  It is also notable that Baroness Warsi, the one who wanted to disarm Israel and arm the terrrorists of Hamas, was a very vocal opponent of Prevent…why would that be?

Useful idiots promoting Muslim extremist’s propaganda…one the Mayor of Greater Manchester, the other one of the most influential and powerful media organisations in the world.  No wonder people vote for the  likes of Trump.

It didn’t take long for the BBC to marshal the troops gathering together a veritable army of voices ready to spin us the usual platitudes and lies. The Today show rolled ’em out one after the other.

There was Richard Barrett, ex-MI6, who told us we need to understand and engage with the Muslim community and understand what the intention was behind the attack….really?  After all this time we’re still having to ask that? C4 just told us…ISIS is Islamic and want to Islamise the world.  Not hard is it?   He went on to say the answer was to let the Muslim community inform us on how to deal with the threat…yep, that’ll work.  Just who does he think in the Muslim community will be the credible voices we should listen to?  Mo Ansar, Cage, MPACUK, anti-Semitic Labour MP’s, or maybe the Muslim Council of Britain which, as the BBC tells us, is the most representative body of Muslims in the UK?…and yet it is an extremist organisation which in 2007 drew up what is seen as a blue print for the Trojan Horse plot and the man who drew that up, MCB official, Tahir Alam, was central to the actual plot…never mind numerous other concerns about the MCB such as how they portray Ahmadis.

The BBC insisted that the Trojan Horse plot was fake, a hoax….Phil Mackie declared it was the result of racism, Islamophobia and paranoia..

Trouble is it was real, all too real….and perhaps one fact, that Muslim pupils were being taught that non-Muslim white women were ‘prostitutes’, might help inform us as to why a concert full of what were mostly girls is deemed to be a suitable target for fundamentalists.

Today the MCB laughably suggest Muslims alone have been battling extremism…and that Islam has nothing to do with any of this…We Muslims can’t combat the poison of terrorism alone.

The BBC knows Barrett is a ‘reliable’ voice…but just why do the Intelligence Services spin us this lie about there being no connection between Islam and extremism?

The Telegraph tells us of the truth…

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.

We know the Establishment is lying to us about Islam, that ‘religion of peace’…nice to have it confirmed.

After Barrett we had Tessa Jowell and Nick Robinson doing a double act attacking social media for giving a platform to people who spread hate and division, people who have already decided who is to blame and know what should be done…er…the BBC has already admitted it was ‘Muslim’ and decided we should let Muslims get on with policing themselves….hmmm…perhaps we should really be looking at that other ‘social media’…the mosques, madrassas, faith schools and the ‘dinner table’ test where anger about British foreign policy, Israel and Western decadent culture is acceptable.

Then we were told that the real problem is the Far Right and the mythical ‘backlash’….apparently Le Pen welcomed such attacks and wanted to benefit from them…the Far-Right must be dealt with.  Perhaps we shouldn’t focus though on the identity of the attacker.   Hmmm….maybe, actually, we should be angry, enraged, furious, and not just with the bomber and those who peddle his ideology….maybe we should say we’ve had enough, we’re sick of this, we’re sick of being blamed, we’re sick of being blackmailed…sick of being bombed and told it’s our own fault…by the Muslim community and the BBC….

Brendan O’Neil in Spiked……

After Manchester: it’s time for anger

After the terror, the platitudes. And the hashtags. And the candlelit vigils. And they always have the same message: ‘Be unified. Feel love. Don’t give in to hate.’ The banalities roll off the national tongue. Vapidity abounds. A shallow fetishisation of ‘togetherness’ takes the place of any articulation of what we should be together for – and against. And so it has been after the barbarism in Manchester. In response to the deaths of more than 20 people at an Ariana Grande gig, in response to the massacre of children enjoying pop music, people effectively say: ‘All you need is love.’

As part of the post-terror narrative, our emotions are closely policed. Some emotions are celebrated, others demonised. Empathy – good. Grief – good. Sharing your sadness online – great. But hatred? Anger? Fury? These are bad. They are inferior forms of feeling, apparently, and must be discouraged. Because if we green-light anger about terrorism, then people will launch pogroms against Muslims, they say, or even attack Sikhs or the local Hindu-owned cornershop, because that’s how stupid and hateful we apparently are. But there is a strong justification for hate right now. Certainly for anger. For rage, in fact. Twenty-two of our fellow citizens were killed at a pop concert. I hate that, I hate the person who did it, I hate those who will apologise for it, and I hate the ideology that underpins such barbarism. I want to destroy that ideology.

Where’s the rage? If the massacre of children and their parents on a fun night out doesn’t make you feel rage, nothing will. The terrorist has defeated you. You are dead already.

Certainly no rage on the BBC….just attempts to cover the tracks and downplay the reality behind this terrorist attack.  Nothing to see, move along, we will survive.  So brave.

Then we had a Bishop on who blessed us with his insights…we must not be divided by this, we must not lose trust in each other, we must make sure there is no blame by association, no blame beyond the killers….any critic of Muslims is a racist troll who needs to be isolated along with their message of hate…oh…and love wins.

Then we had the politicians wth the same messages….we must not let them change our way of life.  May told us that ‘our country, our way of life, our values will always prevail’.  And yet that’s nonsense.  The real threat is not the violent Jihad but the cultural one that slowly forces Society to Islamise in order to accomodate and appease Muslims…our culture, our society, our values are being gradually erased and replaced….Islamised.

We keep hearing that the intent of the terrorists is to sow fear and division…well that may be a welcome side-effect for them but the real intent is to Islamise Europe…they know that the effect of an attack is to send politicians and the Media into angst driven narratives about Muslims, asking what could have driven them to do such things….‘One lesson well understood in both Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany was that propaganda is most effective when it is backed by terror’.    The answer?…discrimination, disaffection, marginalisation and Islamophobia…the solution…help Muslims integrate, feel more at home, feel more welcome.  How to do this?  By ‘Islamising’ society…making everything that ‘offends’ Muslims disappear, making society fit into Muslim demands and values rather than tell them that if you want to live here you change.

The MCB provides the perfect illustration of this with their 2007 Trojan horse ‘blueprint’ as it demands schools adapt to suit Islam….making Britons ‘virtual Muslims’…

The MCB’s contribution in publishing its report, Towards Greater Understanding, is wholly consistent with the government’s “Every Child Matters” strategy, and complementary to it. The result of meeting Muslim needs in mainstream schools is that Islam and Muslims become a normal part of British life and that we become fully integrated in this way.

Or as another Muslim group said…basically surrender or maybe angry Muslims will be radicalised and…..

“If you give us religious rights we will be in a better position to convince young people that they are being treated equally along with other citizens.”

Or how about changing our foreign policy to suit the bombers…who aren’t Muslims of course but somehow represent Muslim opinion…..

The group of prominent Muslims who penned an open letter suggesting Muslim youths are alienated by Britain’s foreign policy, so it should be changed.

Why exactly? To placate a handful of home-grown terrorists and terrorist sympathisers?

In other words the rest of us can only be safe if THEY get a foreign policy that suits them. The Mafia would call this extortion. Give us what we want and we’ll do our best to stop the baddies blowing you up.

The loud cries about the danger of such attacks being used to divide us are hopelessly off the mark.  The attacks don’t divide us, the attacks are a result of the divisions that already exist, divisions created by an ideology that puts a vast, unbridgeable gap between Muslims and non-Muslims…Trevor Phillips has already spelt that out..the Muslim ghettoes, the parallel societies growing bigger and further apart, the closed societies breeding fundamentalism which has been growing since the 1980’s.

Britain is well on its way to Talibanisation in many areas...as said, the violence is not the real problem..the intent behind that violence is an intent shared by the ‘non-violent’ as well…. Islamisation….

The rapid spread of rigid, diehard Islam [In the UK] is deeply worrying. Yet those in power, focused on terrorist cells, seem oblivious to this other peril…. our politicians and Muslim ‘leaders’  allow their twisted ideology to spread across Britain.

Make no mistake, Taliban devotees are in our schools, playgrounds, homes, mosques, political parties, public service, private firms and universities.

And if we are to have any hope of combating them, we need to stop this attitude of appeasement and understand why so many Muslims are attracted to the most punishing forms of belief, suppressing women and children.

If this was happening in any other nation, we would be condemning it loudly.

Yet here, curtailed and deficient education endured by many Muslim children is seen as a religious entitlement, which, if opposed, apparently confirms Islamophobia.

Why are we fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and indulging Taliban values here?

Even if it offends liberal principles, the powerful must find a way of stopping Islamicists from promulgating their distorted creed.

The Mirror way back in 2006 understood the problem and understood that ‘Community leaders’ were not the answer…indeed they were part of the problem…

WE MUST NOT GIVE IN TO MUSLIM BLACKMAIL

AS the country vexes itself over how to deal with the radicalisation of British-born Muslim youths, it’s revealing to know some of their leaders believe they have the answer.

The introduction of Sharia Law in Britain along with important religious days in the Muslim calendar becoming public holidays for followers of the faith should do the trick, or so claims the secretary general of the Union of Muslim Organisations in the UK and Ireland.

As Dr Syed Aziz Pasha says: “If you give us religious rights we will be in a better position to convince young people that they are being treated equally along with other citizens.”

This sounds perilously close to blackmail.

In the end if politicians and the media keep lying to people the people will take things into their own hands.

‘Backlash’ might not be a word that fully describes what might happen as the great experiment finally fails.

“Violence can only be concealed by a Lie, & the Lie can only be maintained by Violence.“

It can’t end well.

A probable terrorist attack in Manchester…if it turns out to be Islamic terrorism who ‘enabled’ them?

Nicky Campbell & Co are at the scene and sounding very concerned, talking to relatives and locals, giving out phone numbers…how long before that turns to condemnation…of the security services, of British foreign policy…the bomber a victim of racism, marginalisation and Islamophobia?  Remember these guys are the new Churchills, Mandelas and Ghandis  (© Mark Easton).

The BBC has fed into the terrorist’s narrative of Islam and Muslims under attack by the West.

Only a couple of days ago Jeremy Bowen was telling us that the ‘duplicitous British’ are to blame for everything that is going on in the Middle East today….words have consequences…perhaps the government should start looking at the words the BBC pumps out excusing and cheerleading for terrorists.

Oh yes…vote Corbyn…who loves the IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah and wants to negotiate with ISIS.   And of course would not shoot a suicide bomber.

A Labour Party shadow cabinet member tweets this fake image [h/t Guido]…I’m certain the BBC can spell compassionate even if Trickett can’t…..

And the BBC has its own failure of judgement…..on the same subject…..

BBC criticised for ‘shockingly insensitive’ Ian Brady playlist

A local BBC station has come under fire for their lighthearted ‘guess who it is from the songs’ game – in which the answer was Moors murderer Ian Brady.

On BBC Radio Leeds, listeners were told to look out for clues in the songs to see who they were about.

During the Sunday morning show, guest-hosted by BBC York’s Nathan Turvey, he played music including the theme song for The Brady Bunch, and The Smiths’ song Suffer Little Children.

They also played All The Young Dudes by Mott The Hoople and Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads.The post with the clip has been deleted from Facebook after outcry,  and has been removed from iPlayer.

A spokesperson from the BBC said: “This is clearly unacceptable and we apologise.”

Jeremy Vine on R2 gets away with similar bad judgement as he always plays music that is somehow linked to a news report he is covering….his choice of music is not far off the above when it comes to bad taste….he had one father on who lost a child and the music chosen just seemed to mock the father and make light of the loss.  I guess that sort of thing from Vine is ‘acceptable’ as it slips under most people’s radar and hasn’t been complained about as far as we know….and it’s not a one off or the odd day that he makes these sly connections…it’s every day so there must be many, many more examples of poor judgement and music choices that seemed funny to Vine and his producer but wouldn’t be to the subject of the report had they heard the music.

The BBC told us that Trump dodged the bullet after having criticised Obama for doing the same and avoided linking Islam and terrorism in the same sentence in his speech in Saudi Arabia….

He did not include the controversial phrase “radical Islamic terrorism”. In the past, he has criticised his predecessor, Barack Obama, and others for not employing these terms, considered offensive by many Muslims.

Clearly they weren’t listening to the speech as they’ve had to update their report trying to wriggle out of their mistake and then parse his words so that somehow it’s all a big cock-up by Trump…

His highly anticipated address did not include the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism”, which he had used before and is considered offensive by many Muslims. A transcript of the text published on his Facebook page included a mention of “Islamist extremism” and “Islamist terror groups”.

But in his speech Mr Trump said: “That means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamists and Islamic terror of all kinds.” It was not immediately clear if he stumbled over the word or decided to change the script.

Then again the BBC isn’t too bothered with the truth where Trump is concerned, they will report any old rumour or gossip as sensationalist fact no matter what the source.  Paxman was right…the BBC no longer does investigative journalism, it merely cuts and pastes news releases and news reports from other news providers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.  This could be a mistake…as both are ardently anti-trump and themselves have few scruples when it comes to the truth.

We’ll look at the media response in more detail but first a look at some points of interest.

The BBC et al claim the Russians were trying to influence the US election in order to get Trump into Office…and yet they also tell us that the infamous dodgy dossier, cobbled together by an ex-MI6 agent who doesn’t like Trump, was the result of information gleaned from…er..Russian agents….from the BBC’s Paul Woods in the Spectator not on the BBC…

Claims about a Russian blackmail tape were made in one of a series of reports written by a former British intelligence agent. As a member of MI6, he had been posted to the UK’s embassy in Moscow and now runs a consultancy giving advice on doing business in Russia. He spoke to a number of his old contacts in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, paying some of them for information.

So the Russians were both trying to get Trump elected and em, not elected.

The BBC originally used the phrase ‘shared classified information with the Russians’…now it uses ‘leaked’…both assertions, however phrased, are suspect….first no proof it happened, the Russians deny it as do US Officials present at the meeting, second the President can release whatever he likes legally…and it certainly wouldn’t be described as a ‘leak’…a very loaded term from the BBC….and as for ‘classified’…that can mean anything from merely ‘restricted’ [which can be applied to just about any government publication…such as Army basic training manuals] to the very highest security classification…so what classification was the information BBC?

The BBC peddled the Washington Post story about that ‘sharing’ of information as fact and as a sensational security breach when we know that the Washington Post itself had published detailed accounts of why security measures were being upgraded, listing the threat and technical details that would give away the source of the information just as they claimed Trump had done.

We also know that Russian officials apparently celebrated Trump’s election.  How do we know that?, because US intelligence released details of that…which gave away the fact that they were intercepting certain communications….but apparently that wasn’t a problem for the left-wing media as long as it took down Trump.

But then again the left-wing media has a long and dubious record of reporting fake news and indeed of revealing top secret information that puts the nation at risk, national security at risk, lives at risk, such as Snowden and Bradley Manning.

The Guardian is guilty of faking news to attack Trump via Assange [Justin Webb also attacked Assange on Saturday…so the attacks continue]…Glenn Greenwald tells all…

The Guardian recklessly attributed to Assange comments that he did not make. This article is about how those false claims — fabrications, really — were spread all over the internet by journalists, causing hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to consume false news.

The purpose of this article is to underscore, yet again, that those who most flamboyantly denounce Fake News, and want Facebook and other tech giants to suppress content in the name of combating it, are often the most aggressive and self-serving perpetrators of it.

Note well that last paragraph….hits the nail right on the head…the BBC and the Left want to stamp down on the internet and right-wing publications so that they can control the news, what people see and hear and thus what they understand of the world and how they then expect politicians to react…one way of doing this is to invent the crisis of ‘fake news’and target the Right as the main perpetrators of this crime….giving politicians the excuse to bring in controls.  Of course that will backfire on the Left as they too will become victims of the same draconian laws.

The Washington Post is just as guilty of peddling lies if it has an agenda it wants to push…

‘Fake News’ And How The Washington Post Rewrote Its Story On Russian Hacking Of The Power Grid

On Friday the Washington Post sparked a wave of fear when it ran the breathless headline “Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say.”

Yet, it turns out this narrative was false and as the chronology below will show, illustrates how effectively false and misleading news can ricochet through the global news echo chamber through the pages of top tier newspapers that fail to properly verify their facts.

From Russian hackers burrowed deep within the US electrical grid, ready to plunge the nation into darkness at the flip of a switch, an hour and a half later the story suddenly became that a single non-grid laptop had a piece of malware on it and that the laptop was not connected to the utility grid in any way…..the Post finally updated its article, changing the headline to the more muted “Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say”

The following morning, nearly 11 hours after changing the headline and rewriting the article to indicate that the grid itself was never breached and the “hack” was only an isolated laptop with malware, the Post still had not appended any kind of editorial note to indicate that it had significantly changed the focus of the article.

This is significant, as one driving force of fake news is that as much of 60% of the links shared on social media are shared based on the title alone, with the sharer not actually reading the article itself. Thus, the title assigned to an article becomes the story itself and the Post’s incorrect title meant that the story that spread virally through the national echo chamber was that the Russians had hacked into the US power grid.

This might be relevant for the BBC to consider as it rushes to publish the latest from the WP and NYT without doing the footwork to check the information..

“breaking news” is a tremendous problem for mainstream outlets in which they frequently end up propagating “fake news” in their rush to be the first to break a story. In a world beset by false and misleading news, do top tier news outlets have a professional responsibility to step back from breaking stories and only report on them after all details are known and they have had an opportunity to speak with all parties involved and understand more definitively what has happened?

And the Washington Post yet again spinning lies about its favourite conspiracy theory of Reds under the beds….

Then there was the episode in which the Washington Post ran that breathless story, Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,  about Russians aiding the spread of “fake news.” That irresponsible story turned out to have been largely based on one highly dubious source called “PropOrNot” that identified 200 different American alternative media organizations as “useful idiots” of the Russian state.

The Post eventually distanced itself from the story, saying it “does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings.” This was a very strange thing to say in a statement that isn’t an outright retraction. The idea that it’s OK to publish an allegation when you yourself are not confident in what your source is saying is a major departure from what was previously thought to be the norm in a paper like the Post.

The BBC seems to not want to bother with the details, the facts or anything resembling actual journalism, happy it seems to just cut and paste anti-Trump material from the WP and NYT verbatim leaving it for others to do the troublesome work of actually asking a few questions and raising a few doubts about the massive attacks on Trump….

Why the Russia Story Is a Minefield for Democrats and the Media

Russia scandals have bloodied the Trump administration. But it carries dangers for those reporting it

There are big dangers for the press. If we engage in Times-style gilding of every lily the leakers throw our way, and in doing so build up a fever of expectations for a bombshell reveal, but there turns out to be no conspiracy – Trump will be pre-inoculated against all criticism for the foreseeable future.

The press has to cover this subject. But it can’t do it with glibness and excitement, laughing along to SNL routines, before it knows for sure what it’s dealing with. Reporters should be scared to their marrow by this story. This is a high-wire act and it is a very long way down. We might want to leave the jokes and the nicknames be, until we get to the other side – wherever that is.  

 

Something About This Russia Story Stinks

Nearly a decade and a half after the Iraq-WMD faceplant, the American press is again asked to co-sign a dubious intelligence assessment

I have no problem believing that Vladimir Putin tried to influence the American election. He’s gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything. And Donald Trump, too, was swine enough during the campaign to publicly hope the Russians would disclose Hillary Clinton’s emails. So a lot of this is very believable.

But we’ve been burned before in stories like this, to disastrous effect. Which makes it surprising we’re not trying harder to avoid getting fooled again.

 

How Did Russiagate Start?

Amid the chaos of James Comey’s firing, new questions about the timeline of his fateful investigation.

Liberal thinkers have traditionally abhorred secret courts, secret surveillance and secret evidence, and in the past would have reflexively discouraged the news media from printing the unverified or unverifiable charges emanating from such secret sources. But because it’s Donald Trump, no one seems to care.

We should care. The uncertainty has led to widespread public terror, mass media hysteria and excess, and possibly even panic in the White House itself.

All of this is exacerbated by the constant stream of leaks and hints at mother lodes of evidence that are just around the corner. It’s quite literally driving the country crazy.

The public deserves to know what’s going on. It deserved to know before the election, it deserved to know before the inauguration, and it deserves to know now.

 

 

Journalists apparently are enthusiastic, work hard if not smart, and are dogged to the point of stupidity….

Journalists drink too much, are bad at managing emotions, and operate at a lower level than average, according to a new study

Journalists’ brains show a lower-than-average level of executive functioning, according to a new study, which means they have a below-average ability to regulate their emotions, suppress biases, solve complex problems, switch between tasks, and show creative and flexible thinking.

The study, led by Tara Swart, a neuroscientist and leadership coach, analysed 40 journalists from newspapers, magazines, broadcast, and online platforms over seven months. The participants took part in tests related to their lifestyle, health, and behaviour.

It was launched in association with the London Press Club, and the objective was to determine how journalists can thrive under stress.

Got to say that is a pefect description of the Liberal journo…just look how their emotions rule and shape their reporting on everything from Trump to Brexit and Islam.  Can’t regulate emotions, can’t suppress bias, can’t solve complex problems, are inflexible and non-creative.  Yep, pretty much outlines the BBC approach….unwilling to contemplate any information that undermines their fixed ideas on any subject, unable to suppress that bias, and completely unable to control that emotion….Jon Sopel for instance…nears meltdown whenever having to speak about Trump….where is Spitting Image when you need it?

Just look at this complete tosh from the BBC….reporting or student level trash-talk about Trump?  It’s nothing more than a long patronising list of sneers and jokes at Trump’s expense…Trump’s just an illiterate, uneducated, vulgar Redneck…imagine…Ketchup!!!!

Steak and ketchup: Homebody Trump ventures abroad

Donald Trump sets foot on foreign soil on Saturday for the first time since he was elected, marking the start of a nine-day trip fraught with pitfalls for a president known to depend on home comforts.

Wary of spending as much as a night away from his own bed, Mr Trump has kept even domestic travel to a minimum….the evidence suggests the 45th president has always been a homebody. 

“Trump is a man who likes to be on the couch with a good cheeseburger,” Roger Stone, a long-time friend and former adviser, told Reuters during the campaign. “He likes being in his own bed, even if it means coming into (New York airports) Teterboro or LaGuardia after midnight.”

But it’s a long way from the Vatican to the White House. So, unable to bring Trump back to the US, the president’s staff has made plans to bring the US to Trump. In Saudi Arabia he will be served steak with tomato ketchup – his favourite meal.

“This is an enormously complex undertaking, there are so many things that will be challenging for Trump it’s headspinning,” said Daniel Benjamin, who travelled extensively on Air Force One as Bill Clinton’s foreign policy speechwriter….” it requires tremendous energy and focus – not his strong suit.”

The president’s team has reportedly attempted to build downtime into his schedule wherever possible, and instructed foreign delegations that he prefers short presentations with lots of visual aids.

His limited attention span is said to have already affected preparation for the trip. Aides threaded the president’s own name through the paragraphs of a two-page briefing memo in order to hold his interest, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Mr Trump’s team will be expected to respond from the road to breaking news and political developments at home and abroad, as well as shepherd the president around any potential own goals or gaffes in front of his hosts.

“At these summit meetings you might have 28 heads of state and government and they all want to say something, and the president has to sit and listen to all of them. That will tax any world leader, let alone one who finds it hard to sit still.”

Ah yes, a rather stupid, narcissistic, unsophisticated, simple President who doesn’t do detail, can’t focus for long and needs ‘visual aids’ to understand things…not to mention he likes ketchup….FFS!!!!  Savage heathen.

I haven’t watched the BBC’s three part series on the events in Rochdale, I know what happened and why…and I know why the BBC has produced this programme as it comes so late to the party….Do we need pious, self-serving BBC shows to teach us anything?

The Authorities, and that includes the BBC, buried their heads in the sand for years as hundreds of white girls, maybe up to 2,000, were abused by mostly Pakistani men….the reason?  Maybe because first they just didn’t care about what they undoubtedly saw as ‘poor white trash’ and second they baulked at having to tackle something that had obvious undertones of race or religion….they would rather see these girls get raped and abused than have to ‘upset’ the Muslim community…this of course has resonance now in a parallel scenario as the BBC has a similar cultural cringe in regard to Muslim political violence and its connection to Islamic teaching.

Now the BBC has leapt nobly to the girls’ defence and has brought their plight to our attention…years too late.  What is the point of this programme now?  It is little more than some kind of perverse entertainment, a horror show exploiting the very real abuse and suffering those girls went through.  It is in reality a ‘political’ programme as the BBC presents itself as an exposer of abuse and Establishment indifference and cowardice, holding Power to account….neglecting to mention that the BBC was part of that itself.

The Sunday Times believes the BBC is ducking the issue of race and is indeed engaged in massaging the truth for the ‘good of the community’….it also doesn’t think the programme was particularly brilliant, ITV’s ‘Little Boy Blue’ being better….‘superior for having sharper pacing, more efficient use of characters and more obvious moral knots’.

As said not seen either of these but maybe you have…comment below.

The Times goes on…

‘As a document it was noble; as a drama, a little dull.   Three Girls left me morally uneasy…placing the story of the victims front and centre but the other key aspect of the case, the profile of the abusers, remained secondary.  Only at the end of the final episode did we see a somewhat stagy face-off between members of the local Pakistani community.   The reason this case was exceptional was because the culprits were exceptional too.  This was what made your eyes twitch, your mouth tighten, whenever you read about it, regardless of your political persuasion.  By sidelining the race issue the show also sidelined a whole community: the British Pakistanis, good and bad, remained peripheral yet agaiin.  I’m not sure this helps anyone in the long run.

This was very much Auntie placing a calming hand over proceedings.  She couldn’t stomach anything else, for now.’

Auntie always the same…Islam ‘The Religion of Peace’….ducking the issue….until it is forced upon you…and then what?  No good producing a programme showing how it all went wrong when the Extremists have won and now rule the roost.

There’s no evidence, no source, no documents…just phone calls in the night to newspapers that hate Trump and yet the BBC reports…

Evidence mounts – Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America reporter

Donald Trump called the ongoing Russia investigation a “witch hunt”, but reporters have just found a boiling cauldron and a closet full of broomsticks.

The key takeaway from these latest blockbuster stories – there have been so many this week it’s hard to keep count – is there’s now further evidence of Mr Trump’s intent to dismiss FBI Director James Comey because of his handling of the ongoing Russia investigation.

That this revelation came as a result of a meeting with Russian officials, one of whom is a key figure in the investigation, is just the icing on the cake.

What the BBC doesn’t report is that the Russians deny it all and say that the latest ‘sensational’ revelation is nonsense…

Comey’s dismissal not discussed at meeting with Trump – Lavrov

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has denied recent media claims that US President Donald Trump mentioned the dismissal of FBI head James Comey during their meeting in Washington DC.

“We did not touch upon this issue at all,” Lavrov said, speaking to journalists in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, on Saturday.

Lavrov already mentioned before that the issue of Comey’s dismissal was not discussed during the meeting with Trump.

“It is not our issue, it is his [Trump’s] prerogative,” he said during interview with Russian Channel One on May 14.

The Russian foreign minister met the US leader in the Oval Office on May 10. One day before the meeting, Trump fired James Comey.

The New York Times claimed on Friday that it obtained some quotations from the meeting provided by an unnamed official. According to them, Trump mentioned firing “crazy, a real nut job” Comey as he was speaking to the Russian officials.

Shortly after the Trump and Lavrov meeting, the Washington Post came up with a story claiming that Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian officials. Both the White House and the Kremlin refuted the report.

President Vladimir Putin described the US media claims as “political schizophrenia” and said that Russia could provide the transcript of the conversation.

So far the BBC is reporting what amounts to highly biased nonsense as fact.  Quality journalism…obviously gone out of the window.  The ‘evidence mounts’?……So far the evidence amounts to no more than a hill o’beans and Zurcher’s reporting is all piss and wind.

A better  late than never open thread…all yours……