A quick poll for some feedback on the next step. We can start a live streamed chat over Skype or actual phone-in for the blog, but before making the next move I’d like to find out if enough people are interested to make it worthwhile, and time slots where enough people can listen or even be available to call in. It would all be available on demand afterwards.
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Well, well, well. After ten days, reality has at last forced the BBC to acknowledge the big joke about the President being fed dog as a child. How many of us here have noted that they’ve refused to touch this story? BBC US President editor Mark Mardell finally decided to address it.
Nobody is really taking it too seriously as a negative on the President, but it has been an effective counter against Democrat attacks on Romney for that one story about the dog on the car roof.
Two obvious examples of bias in Mardell’s post:
1. When acknowledging that the dog-eating story plays into the “larger Narrative” (a Beeboid knows a Narrative when he sees one, eh?) that the President is too foreign, he either doesn’t understand or refused to admit that this was the whole point of putting that anecdote in His autobiography. The intent was to make Him seem in tune with the whole world and not just a parochial, isolationist American. In fact, even the BBC told us that His world experience was a selling point. Mardell has either forgotten that, or just doesn’t want you to remember.
2. So it’s pathetic and biased for Mardell to then say, “But I fear more politicians may try to make dogs a touchstone of the American way.” He admits bias right there in the open. If you sell yourself as being Post-American, don’t blame someone else for pointing it out. Instead, Mardell tries to defend his beloved Obamessiah.
(UPDATE: See my comment below) I was going to comment about this in the open thread, but in the light of today’s noise about the housing benefit shuffle in Newham causing “social cleansing” and allegedly inspiring right-wing extremism, I thought it was worth a full post. I’m talking about the BBC’s revelation that immigration from Mexico into the US is being reversed.
Mexico-US migration slips after 40 years of growth
The rate of Mexican immigration to the US has stalled or maybe even gone into reverse, an analysis shows, ending a four-decade-long trend.
Not may, it has. The Pew figures (NB: pdf file automatic download) quoted by the BBC pretty much show that. The reason I’m bringing it up is because of the illegal factor. It’s important to remember that the BBC has generally taken the activists’ line and used their language in reporting on the issue in the US. Remember Mark Mardell’s jaunt to the Arizona border (page 4 of the open thread) and the other reports trying to tell you it was all about racism against people with brown skin and a Mexican accent? Then there are the other reports siding with illegals and playing the race game. The fact that these people are in the US illegally is somehow not their fault, but the fault of unfair laws which magically make them illegal ex post facto or something. The real objection wasn’t, of course, about immigration of non-whites, but about illegal immigration.
Activists – mostly Hispanic – always play that qualifier down, if not wipe it from the discussion entirely. And the BBC played right along. So it must have come as something of a shock to the BBC News Online producer who had to skim through the Pew report and discover that last year there were more illegal Mexicans in the US than legal ones: 6.1 million to 5.8 million. So why didn’t the BBC ever discuss that disparity last year when they were freaking out about the Arizona law and all those other states trying to stem the tide of illegals? The rest of us knew the problem was about illegals, and said so at the time. Yet the BBC tried to play it as racism anyway. When Mark Mardell tries to whip up a little anger by shoving in your face Pat Buchanan’s racialist diatribe about losing “white America” to the Mexicans, it’s all part of this Narrative. Forget about the illegal issue and focus on race. It ends the debate before it begins. But the BBC approves when Hispanics vote for their own kind based solely on ethnicity.
It must also come as a shock to those who rely on the BBC for the news on US issues to learn that the first black President has in fact been deporting record numbers of illegals with brown skin back to Mexico. How can that be racism, BBC? Is He a puppet or something on this issue? I’d love to know how they square this with their belief in Him. I remember when Mardell was actually for a moment trying to defend the President (page 8 of the open thread) against charges that He wasn’t protecting the border properly. Obviously He wasn’t, since there were more illegals than legals last year. Mardell is silent, of course.
It’s important to make this distinction when reporting on the US issue of immigration law, because, as the Newham article doesn’t show, the problem in Britain is about mostly quite legal immigration. There’s a huge difference in the cause and effect in the UK from what’s been happening in the US. Which is why it’s wrong for the BBC to conflate the two situations and play racialist games.
If xenophobia is (I’m speaking hypothetically for the moment) a primary factor in British objection to seemingly unlimited legal immigration of third-world Mohammedans, this still has nothing to do with US objection to illegal immigration of Mexicans. There is a world of difference between the two. Why has the BBC been unable to make this distinction? I say it’s because they’re viscerally opposed to restrictions on immigration simply out of reflexive fealty to the abstract notions of diversity and multiculturalism, as well as a reflexive opposition to any nominally conservative policy.
I’ve previously mentioned how the BBC hired German immigrant Franz Strasser (middle of page 4 of the open thread) to tour the country reporting on immigration in the US in all its various colors. The reason I criticized every single report in that series was because he and his editor dishonestly censored the word “illegal” (middle of page 7) out of the whole picture. Even when he was doing reports from two different “Sanctuary Cities” (middle of page 4 of that same thread), which deliberately flouted US immigration law to harbor illegals. He acted as if this didn’t exist. The whole series was conceived and design to whitewash (see what I did there) the illegal issue so that you’d all think any objection to immigration had to be based in racism. Now here are hard figures to show that there really has been a problem with illegal immigration.
The BBC article about the Pew study notes that “immigration” is going to be a big issue in this election year, but still cannot bring themselves to add the “illegal” qualifier, which is actually what it’s all about. The situation is not the same, yet they still pretend it is.
Now that illegal immigration is down, even seeing a negative trend, one has to suspect that the policies have been working. Too bad Britain doesn’t even have the level of sovereignty that Arizona does. Oh, and I guess this means that Global Warming won’t be driving all of them into the US after all.
Still, it’s nice to see the BBC at last revealing even the tiniest bit of truth about what’s been going on over here. But it’s a shame that they don’t make an effort to correct the false impression they’ve been creating about the concern over illegal immigration in the US.
I’m trying something a bit new and different here. After asking David Vance and the All Seeing Eye, I’m starting a real rebuttal to the BBC’s lame output about US issues. I can’t compete with the “bespoke” video magazine pieces, but I can provide a bit more information and analysis of real US issues that get spun by the BBC or simply censored out of existence. There’s much more to what’s going on over here than what affects the President or the latest racial issue or celebrity gossip, and there seems to be a vacuum which needs filling. So this is my humble attempt.
It’s not possible to provide a proper rebuttal in fifteen minutes, but consider this an opening salvo. If enough people agree, I’d like to expand this from just me providing some info to a live audio or video discussion, where everyone here can call in or whatever, beginning next week. But more on that later.
I’m also going to try and provide sources for everything I talk about, so everyone here can decide for themselves what’s going on. The BBC may not be held accountable for their actions, but the inhabitants of this blog deserve better. Hey, if you don’t want to listen to the audio, just check out these links instead.
Hmmm. Embed not working. Link to audio file on EyeTube below:
Listen to “Life In These United States No. 1” on EyeTube
Audio hosted on EyeTube. My thanks to ASE.
SOURCES:
BBC article on the President defending against criticism about Romney’s wife
USA Today/Gallup poll the BBC references without naming
April 12 poll showing Romney over the President
NBC/Wall St. Journal showing the President over Romney
Media Matters coordinating with the White House and feeding stories to the mainstream media
More on Media Matters working with the Administration – DOJ
Maldives/Malvinas Betrayal Gaffe
Mardell at Obamessiah Chicago HQ
Jake Tapper admits media influenced election
New York Times admits killing ACORN story
Joe Scarborough admits media in the tank
Time Magazine says bias was disgusting
Washington Post Publisher selling access
Poll showing it’s the economy, stupid
Wisconsin plus here, here, and here.
The President telling people not to go to Vegas
Sen. Hatch is forced into primary
Alternative States’ Rights health care reform
Romney at Philadelphia Tea Party
(UPDATE: See below) The BBC has posted a news brief about the recent seizure of more than 250,000 rounds of assault weapon ammo being smuggled from the US into Mexico. Not a single mention of the massive story of Operation Fast & Furious, the scandal involving the ATF and the US Justice Dept. deliberately allowing weapons to be sold to arms dealers working with Mexican drug cartels in order to create a body count with which they could inspire more interest in stricter gun control laws.
As this blog has shown, the BBC has barely touched on this scandal at all, and has in fact censored most news about it. Here they’re doing it again. The scandal is highly relevant to this story of ammo smuggling, because the ammo is for the kinds of weapons sold to cartel gun-runners on orders from the US Government.
The BBC even has the gall to mention that the Mexican President is calling for stricter US gun laws, but deliberately censors information about how this has come to pass. They even bring up the body count meme, which is exactly what the gun control advocates in the Government wanted. Yet they censor the actual story behind it all.
The Beeboids behind this know exactly what they’ve done here, and why. This was a deliberate editorial decision to censor news for ideological purposes.
UPDATE: Now the truck driver’s boss says it was a legal shipment to Phoenix, and the driver took a wrong turn. Apparently an ammo sales company in Phoenix claims they ordered the stuff and it’s their shipment. Presumably the ATF is no longer telling them to sell it to gunrunners, so it’s legal stuff going to legal buyers. We’ll see.
If this turns out to be true, we can fully expect the BBC story to “evolve”, right? They don’t go running off to report sensational stories without waiting to see if the facts are correct, right?
For the second year running, the US version of the BBC website has won the top award in the US for its international news coverage. Nobody else has the same 80 years of infrastructure, or can bring in content from other branches of their network, but don’t take my word for it.
BBC.com won the accolade for overall excellence, with its online operation described by the judges as “uniquely situated” to cover world events.
Quite.
In their citation, the Peabody judges highlighted the BBC’s global reach and long history of covering events in all corners of the world.
No kidding.
The award for BBC.com comes after a year of increased focus on news operations in the US.
Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website, said the Peabody Award was “fantastic news”.
“It is recognition of BBC News as a whole against very strong competition. Investment into BBC.com has helped us expand our operations in the Washington bureau to create an even better showcase for BBC News for audiences in North America.”
Well, that is part of their remit, bringing the UK to the world. But let’s face it: this is all done in the search for ad revenue – evil profit. Good thing the BBC isn’t as sacred as the NHS, for which no profit motive shall be permitted.
The best part: Continue reading
On Monday, the President made a pre-emptive attack on the Supreme Court because He’s afraid they’re going to vote to overturn ObamaCare on the grounds that part or all of it violates the Constitution. Needless to say, there’s been a huge outcry, and a lot of fuss in the press about it. I commented about it here yesterday to give everyone a heads up before the BBC came in with their spin.
Right on cue, realizing there’s a growing controversy, the BBC whipped up a quick article online laying out the White House talking points. Naturally, it contained the same bit of dishonesty – or, if I’m feeling generous, lack of understanding – as their previous reporting on the law:
The act’s requirement that all those eligible should have medical cover has been condemned as an assault on civil liberties by conservatives
Of course, in actual fact, the law requires people to purchase health care from companies. That’s what the “Individual Mandate” is, which is the key turning point of the entire fiasco. The BBC’s wording here is grossly misleading as to what exactly people are complaining about. No surprise there. BBC correspondent Steve Kingstone said that the President’s attack is “a sign of just how high the stakes are”, but it’s really sign that He doesn’t have confidence in a law He never even read before it was passed. Continue reading
ObamaCare, that most controversial law forced on the US by the former Democrat super-majority in Congress, and which was a main impetus for the meteoric rise of the Tea Party movement, is being challenged in front of the Supreme Court next week, and the BBC needs to tell you what to think about the domestic policy of a foreign country.
They open with a bit of dishonesty:
At stake is one of the most far-reaching US laws of the past several decades: President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare reform law, aimed at providing health insurance to the tens of millions of people who currently lack it and at curbing runaway growth in healthcare costs.
The bit in bold is false, as even the BBC’s own explanation tells you afterwards:
The keystone of the law is a requirement that Americans who lack health insurance from their employers or the government purchase it on the private market.
So it doesn’t actually provide anything, does it? Yet the BBC opened this with a bit of White House propaganda, claiming that providing health insurance is its intent. Why? Instead, it requires citizens by law to purchase a product, and fine them if they don’t. Come to think of it, that should sound familiar to you….
Don’t bother reading the rest of it, because there’s nothing about the law itself, but rather an explanation of the hearing process: how long will the arguments take, when does the Court decide, etc. Oh, and of course the President says He can force people to purchase a product if He sees fit because the Commerce Clause can, according to accepted interpretation, give the government broad powers to regulate commerce across state lines and tax people for the pleasure. Which is about regulating commerce, not forcing people to buy a specific product That’s all going to come out next week, and Justice Scalia will be the key to all of it, as the White House is cleverly gearing their defense along the lines of one of his past rulings on another issue. Don’t expect to get honest reporting on this from the BBC, though.
The BBC has form on misleading and cheerleading on this issue. You can read more about the BBC’s failed coverage of ObamaCare here, here, here, and here. (NB: Due to current Blogger/Google evil issues, comments on linked posts won’t appear for most people until the new site is up. Will amend at that time.)
Since Robin Horbury hasn’t gotten around to posting about this, I’ll bring it up. Richard Black recently expressed his dismay that an individual country can block UN resolutions regarding climate change. Specifically, he’s worried about yet another failed Warmist Synod outcome from the upcoming Rio Summit in June.Of course, being a cleverly-trained writer, he presents this as a question and not an outright statement.
In a nutshell: does the way humanity governs itself need a series of tweaks or a complete overhaul, in order to meet the broadest ambitions of improving the lot of the planet’s poorest, safeguarding nature and making the global economy more sustainable?
And people wonder why some of us say that Warmists have totalitarian tendencies. All your national sovereignty are belong to us.
To support this idea, Black brings up a recent study by the Earth System Governance Project. Cute name, no? A One-World Government by any other name….
Now, I’m a fan of science fiction, especially Star Trek, and am not automatically opposed to the idea, in the abstract, of a single united government for a planet. I grew up with my imagination filled by the likes of the United Federation of Planets. Nearly every single plant our heroes visited each week was ruled by a single government, and those which didn’t had conflict which needed to be solved by the benevolent guiding hand. Even planets at war with each other had single governments which simply needed to be brought together. It would be lovely if it were reality. But what these people want isn’t an abstract idea at all. And our world is nothing like these harmonious fantasies.
Rather, the Earth System Government Project, Black informs us, has spent a decade pondering whether or not we need a single government entity for the entire planet. He mentions how long they’ve been at it because that’s supposed to tell us they’re really serious about it, and whatever result they’ve come to can have resulted only from very long and serious study. So he sets it up as an appeal to authority straight away, to head off any doubts before they happen.
Before I get to the study, though, let’s take a moment to see if there’s any coincidence that he just happens to be talking about this issue now. But of course there is. Next week, he’ll be moderating a panel – “Innovative solutions for a planet under pressure” – at the “Planet Under Pressure” conference in London. Remember the word “innovative” for later. I do hope he’s not getting paid to promote this political agenda. Have a look at the speaker/panelist list, and notice a couple of names from the ESGP’s steering committee, as well as one of their lead faculty members. It’s a small world in this field, I know.
To show how serious they are, they’ve come up with a seven-point plan. Five of them are the usual stuff, using typical language we’ve come to expect, albeit slightly gilded for effect: reform the UN’s environmental agencies (I can think of other agencies they should do first), “deploy innovative technologies”, “support developing countries to ensure fairness” (that’s wealth redistribution when it’s at home), “reflect sustainability concerns” and so on. But Nos. 5 and 6 should give us all pause:
5. introduce qualified majority voting when making international decisions on environment and sustainability
6. strengthen the voices of citizens as opposed to bureaucrats in global decision-making
And there you have it. Let the majority override national sovereignty on desired issues, and give activists more power to control the agenda. Black then lays it out for us.
Some of these are already being addressed in the Rio process, especially the first two; although their CSD proposal contains the innovative element of adjusting the weight given to each country’s representation so that the G20 grouping accounts for 50% of the votes.
Note the positive qualifier, “innovative”. Could this be one of the “innovate solutions” discussed in that panel he’ll be moderating next week? According to the website of one of the organizations behind the whole event, Earth System Science Partnership, the conference “will provide scientific leadership towards the 2012 UN conference on Sustainable Development – Rio +20.” The very conference Black talks about here. So it’s all very much on his mind these days.
This might appear undemocratic; but actually it would ensure the voting reflects the size of countries’ populations more accurately than it does now, though also skewing things towards the rich.
It might appear undemocratic, but it seriously appears to do away with national sovereignty. This seems not to trouble Black at all.
The most radical idea in procedural terms is introducing majority voting in UN fora to prevent a few recalcitrant nations from blocking the will of the vast majority.
There have been many times in the past when just one or two countries held up progress in UN processes such as the climate change convention – and the same issue is now being raised within the EU, where last week Poland on its own managed to block the setting of tougher carbon emission targets.
You don’t want other countries to force you to alter your own domestic policies? Screw you.
On the other hand, some countries’ protests clearly matter more than others.
Guess who the big bad guy is in this story:
Whereas the 2007 UN climate summit in Bali hinged on whether the US would block the will of every other country on the planet – it eventually chose not to – the objections of Bolivia at the equivalent meeting in 2010 were basically ignored by everyone else, who decided in that case that a consensus could leave one nation out.
The horrible US – when Bush was President, naturally – ruined it for everyone back in 2007, while later on poor Bolivia had their own national sovereignty trampled upon in the name of consensus. Yet Black sees the former as a bad thing, and the latter as a good precedent.
As so often in environmental and sustainability circles, the plan contains no shortage of ideas on what should be done, and why, and by when.
The politics of how to make it all happen are a different matter.
In this case, how to get economic bodies to put Rio+20 notions at the centre of their decision-making, how to persuade governments to give up their right of veto, how to project the concerns of citizens through the blockage of bureaucracy – these aren’t in the prescription.
Black is writing this whole thing from the perspective that this is a desirable goal. His personal bias on the so-called climate change issue leads him to view national sovereignty as an obstacle which needs to be overcome. Citizens (read: activists) must be able to control the agenda.
(By the way, can anyone else think of certain other UN resolution votes which might be affected by this process? )
Here’s a thought: why not let them go out and get elected like everyone else, Richard? Or is that not the kind of democracy you’re looking for? Just like the BBC’s darling Occupiers, he defines “democracy” as shouting loud enough to get his way. This is a totalitarian agenda, being pushed by a highly-paid, high-profile, BBC journalist. At your expense.
Remember when the BBC told you that ObamaCare was going to give health care coverage to 32 million people and save us all? Well – surprise! – it turns out that lots of people will actually lose their employer-provided coverage, and costs will go up, not down, so many will not be able to afford getting it on their own and will have to go on taxpayer-funded Medicaid. Which, by the way existed for decades before ObamaCare was a twinkle in Hillary Clinton’s eye (it was called HillaryCare when she tried it on when her husband was President), so the whole story the BBC told you about millions of people magically getting care all of sudden was a lie as well. In any event:
CBO: Health reform could cause people to lose workplace coverage
The above is from the JournoList-infested and Media Matters (which is funded by Soros and coordinates with the White House) lapdog, Politico, which we know the Beeboids read. Sure, Politico is trying to spin it so that their readers don’t worry about it breaking the Treasury and hurting taxpayers, but that’s kind of beside the point.
Another BBC daily read, the HuffingtonPost, spins that up front, and then admits ObamaCare will cover fewer people than promised. Unlike those who trust the BBC for news on US issues, readers of this blog will not be surprised that this will hurt small businesses and ordinary workers.
BBC: We don’t want you to know about it. Instead, here’s some news about George Clooney and Rosie O’Donnell. News about some idiot getting convicted for making his gay roommate feel bad enough to kill himself is far more important, and worthy of remaining on the main US & Canada news page for days on end.
Maybe they’ll get around to the issue when the Constitutionality of ObamaCare comes up before the Supreme Court in the next few weeks.
