Author Archives: David Preiser (USA)

The BBC’s ‘Altered States’ – Painting A Picture

By | | , , , , ,
15 Comments

The BBC continues its ‘Altered States’ series of reports to convince you that the US has somehow become more divided and racist since the election of a black President in 2008. It wouldn’t be called ‘Altered’ if it wasn’t somehow different from before, right? The last installment also featured race and pushed a “Racist US” Narrative. I won’t go so far as to say the reference to the movie was deliberate because of the ugly, base, primitive nature of the proto-human to which the star reverted, and the BBC is making a subtle accusation that whites who will vote for the eventual Republican candidate want to turn back the clock to the days of Jim Crow laws, lynching, and real oppression of minorities. I’m sure the BBC editor in charge just thought it was a cute turn of phrase. But you can all draw your own conclusions.

The latest installment by digital media Beeboid Franz Strasser uses the racially divided city of St. Louis, Missouri to help paint that picture. The rich whites get the south side, while the devastated blacks suffer and are left to rot in the north. This selectively-portrayed microcosm is supposed to reinforce the notion that the US is racially divided, laying the groundwork for the idea that opposition to a black President is based on racism, rather than genuine, honest opposition to His policies. The city is clearly racially divided, and I don’t mean to denigrate the plight of African-Americans in this obviously failed city. I’m concerned here only about the biased reporting.

Strasser has previous on dishonest reporting for the BBC. His first series of reports were about immigration in the US (middle of pg. 4 of the open thread). The dishonesty lay in the fact that the word “illegal” was censored from every single report, even while he was reporting from two ‘Sanctuary Cities’, which openly flout immigration law and harbor illegals. It was especially dishonest to omit the term because this report was conceived and produced when the illegal immigration issue was at the top of the news cycle. This latest report for the ‘Altered States’ series is no different.

Spot the Missing Political Party.
The Democratic Party has dominated St. Louis for more than 60 years. There hasn’t been a Republican mayor since 1949. All the policies which have contributed to the current sad state of affairs in the city have been enacted by Democrats. Yet Strasser fails to mention the political scene. If this had been a Republican-controlled city, you know the BBC would have made sure to point that out.

The first black Alderman (the Board of Aldermen is the equivalent of the City Council in other cities) was elected in 1943. Today, no fewer than 13 of the 28 Aldermen are African-American, including the Board President. Now, does this sound like a city where whites oppress blacks and keep them down? It sounds more like Democrats and Democrat policies failing them than anything else. Yet the BBC doesn’t want you to know any of this, as it doesn’t help the “Divided, Racist US/Racist Republicans” Narrative they want to create in your minds in this re-election year.

(Coincidentally, another Democrat-controlled city and home base of the Community-Organizer-in-Chief, Chicago, also has the Alderman system. Funny how that works, no?)

As it happens, the Tea Party movement, which the BBC often portrayed as racist, and US President editor Mark Mardell believes to be driven by crypto-racism, began in St. Louis, when a white woman started her own little protest against high taxes forced on the region by Democrats. This was weeks before Rick Santelli’s famous rant which gave the movement its name. Strasser missed an opportunity for race-baiting there because he, like all of his ill-informed colleagues at the BBC, simply didn’t know. Of course, everyone here knows of the BBC’s ignorance on the Tea Party movement.

In any case, there’s something else Strasser left out of his sad tale of one city divided. While showing you street after street of empty, boarded-up houses and dead commercial blocks, he deliberately left out the fact that those buildings are empty because the African-American population has been leaving the area in search of better schools. They left to seek out a better life for themselves and for their children, because the Democrat-controlled city has failed them repeatedly for decades. Instead, you’re left with a racially-charged story without a single mention of the politics which led to the situation, with no information whatsoever given to help you understand it.

As always, don’t trust the BBC on US issues. Especially, it seems, when it comes to one of their themed series of reports.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

The BBC Sides With Illegal Immigrants While Pretending Otherwise

By | | , , , ,
12 Comments

Before I even get into this, I have to call attention to what appears to be the title for a series of reports: “Altered States”. This is bias right up front, as it’s a theme we keep hearing from the BBC and the Left-wing media in the US, that the US has somehow suddenly become more divided and vicious since 2008. I wonder why that is, BBC? Could it be that nothing has really changed except the occupant of the White House? Have we forgotten the constant outrage about Bush, and before him Clinton, and before him (skipping a Bush), Reagan, and before him….well, you get the idea.

In short, this is a BS Narrative being pushed by the BBC, in the long run-up to November, just to reinforce the notion that opponents to the President have made things worse. Not Him, mind you. It’s the fault of His enemies, those who want to tear Him down. Of course, that’s really about racism, right? So, with that in mind, let’s examine what’s sure to be a story involving a racial angle.


Illegal immigrants take taxis to avoid deportation

Here’s the blurb to this in the Top News Story featured links on the main news page:

Illegal immigrants take taxis because to avoid getting pulled over while driving and having their papers checked. “The BBC investigates why.”   I’ll tell you why, BBC: they broke the law. In other news, bank robbers avoid the police because they don’t want to get arrested for heroically redistributing wealth.



“They have their life blocked because of the immigration issue.”

And there you have it. No need to listen further, really, unless you just want to get hit over the head with it repeatedly. Their life is ruined because they broke the law, BBC. They all deliberately broke the law, in many cases repeatedly. Even if we’re to sympathize with the heroic idea that they’re just looking for a better life, I have to ask the BBC why Hispanics are elevated above my own family, who came here legally. There is no embargo, no blockade stopping these people from entering legally and going through the correct process. They don’t because people with whom the BBC sympathizes – and whom the BBC is abetting with this report – enable this illegal behavior.

In the tiniest possible gesture towards balance, we also hear from a white person who tells us about people from Kosovo, who had to go through the legal process. So that’s one voice on the side of the law. Next up, a man who is against the law. Then – the classic trick – a child, to appeal to your sympathy. Then another Hispanic who is against the law.

We next hear from another Hispanic taxi driver, who also shares his concern. And so on.

The blurb accompanying the video report itself says this:

But critics call it a civil rights issue and warn it stokes a climate of fear and division. Ironically, all eight of the cab companies in Gainsville are operated by Hispanics.

Ironically? And there’s the race angle. The fact that they have brown skin and speak Spanish is irrelevant to the legal issue. But that’s the real agenda here, the real Narrative from pro-illegal activists: that it’s about race. Typically, the racialist-minded Beeboids see ethnicity before they see a person’s character. There is a racial angle here, though: brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking people helping other brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking people to break the law. I’m not sure that’s ironic at all.

By the way, BBC, where are all the hand-wringing stories about illegal Chinese immigrants who get deported? Or don’t we care about them because they don’t have the same powerful activist base, and Chinese people don’t get the same sympathy about race discrimination?

Does your head hurt yet? Did you get the message? In case you didn’t, and that lone voice in favor of the law out of ten against somehow held your attention, the closing line is “We just gotta learn how to do it the right way.”

This is a propaganda piece, full stop. Paid for by you.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Revealed: The President Lied About Burying Bin Laden At Sea. BBC: ZZZZzzzzzzz

By | | ,
16 Comments

So the hacking of Stratfor’s emails by Anonymous and published by WikiHacks has revealed that, contrary to what we were told, Osama Bin Laden’s body was not buried at sea but was in fact flown to a military facility in the US for examination. I remember well when the BBC reported what they were told by the US, and nobody questioned it. Of course, we were told, they needed to get rid of the body as soon as possible lest it become a target for fanatics, and to deny his followers a shrine. As of his writing, silence from the BBC. I’m not ready to label this one “BBC Censorship” just yet, as I understand it takes time for BBC producers to figure out how to react to reality in cases like this.

When they discussed Mohammedan burial practices after Ghaddafi’s death, the BBC took great care to remind us that the US bent over backwards to follow the religion’s customs with Bin Laden’s body. We were reminded that his body was washed and wrapped in white linen before being tossed to the fishes. Mark Mardell wrote a blog post explaining how wise the President was for not making a big speech about the targeted assassination and instead flying up to Ground Zero for a highly publicized laying of a wreath. Laura Trevelyan’s analysis made it appear triumphant:

Caricatured as a foreign policy wimp in the 2008 election campaign, Barack Obama is now a warrior president. Americans who gathered here feel their sense of national pride, which was so damaged by Bin Laden, has now been greatly restored. It took almost 10 years, but America kept her word.

No sneering or rolling of the eyes when The Obamessiah has somebody killed and is feted with chants of “USA! USA!” No quotes from angry Muslims complaining about the illegality or threatening revenge.

The BBC even fretted over some salvage diver who wanted to find the body. Of course, he was really questioning whether Bin Laden was actually dead, and wanted to find the body as proof. Heaven forbid anyone assume the President might not be telling the truth, eh?

So now we know that the President lied to the world about what happened. Will the BBC follow up on this? Will they even care? According to their own explanation of Islamic burial rights, this is a violation, an offense to all Muslims everywhere.

And if any defenders of the indefensible complain that Russia Today isn’t a reliable source, how about NBC or the Telegraph or the Toronto Star?

I’ll be updating this post as the BBC gets around to dealing with this. If they dare. All I’ve seen so far is a link appearing in the “Elsewhere on the Web” section. And that was a link to a Pakistani paper. So somebody at BBC News Online knows about this.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Justin Webb Reveals His Bias And Dishonesty

By | | , , , , , ,
7 Comments

Justin Webb (Mark Mardell’s predecessor as BBC North America editor) has written a little piece about the current state of the Republican Party. He’s not pleased, of course, which is no surprise to those of us who remember him looking down from on high and declaring that the US had “moved on” from social conservatism. Now that there’s a struggle for control of the Party between – I generalize a bit – the recently ascending Tea Party-inspired small government/fiscal conservatives, and the Santorumite, Republican establishment, who love big government and spending out their ears, and see nothing wrong with legislating personal behavior, ol’ Justin simply does not know where to turn.

And so he sticks his head further up the ivory tower. His goal here is to show you how the Republican Party is simply not ready to lead the country, because they’ve become too extremist.

Right up front, we can see Webb trying to frame the Narrative, eliding facts to create the context he needs. When Henry Olson from the American Enterprise Institute says that the Republican Party is united in its opposition to “government”. He means the current Government’s far-Left policies, as in those of The Obamessiah. Spend a few minutes at AEI.org and decide for yourselves exactly what’s being opposed.

Rick Santorum is still close behind Romney because of all the social conservative/big-government types left trying to take control of the Party back from the Tea Party movement, who gained the momentum in 2010. Santorum is not a fan of personal freedom, yet he’s still getting quite a bit of support from Republicans anyway. Anybody trying to tell you that the whole Party is united against “government” is either lying, or is actually saying something else.

What really angers ol’ Justin is what he perceives to be how the Republican Party is being driven to the extreme right by the “deep south”. And – what a shock – he dishonestly describes the authority to whom he appeals for this.

Political writer Michael Lind left the party because he sees its modern unity as toxic. Too much based on the values of the deep south of the USA – and in particular a visceral and unquenchable dislike of any government by anyone, of anyone.

“The thing that holds together the modern Republican party is opposition to the government,” says Mr Lind.

Lind indeed left the Republican Party: in 1996.  The following year, he published a book entitled, “Up From Conservatism: Why The Right Is Wrong For America”.  In 2002, he published a book about George Bush and the “Southern Takeover of American Politics”. Does this sound like someone who’s talking about “modern unity”?  Yet ol’ Justin is using Lind’s decade-old song to prove that this is a new problem.

Of course, this also denies the fact that Texas is not part of the “deep south”, nor are Arizona and Utah. But I guess that’s beside the point, as he’s probably sort of referring to the fact that the agrarian southern Colonies were concerned about too much government power back when the US was founded, and that legacy continues to this day. Perhaps I’m giving him too much credit for having a clue about US history.

Even so, Bush’s Republican Party was big-government to the max. That’s why the Tea Party movement went after the incumbents in 2010. They were, and those still left are, social conservatives and not much else. But ol’ Justin hated them for that, and was happy about the “strange death” of that movement in the US. Except, of course, it that movement is very much alive, which is why Rick Santorum is still going.

To further support his argument, ol’ Justin points to Sen. Olympia Snow (R-ME) who has decided not to seek another term. He describes her as “moderate”, which means big-government, Republican establishment, exactly the kind of pol the Tea Party has been trying to get rid of for the last couple years. To those of us who get our news from outside the bubble, it’s no surprise that she’s decided not to accept a challenge for her seat from within her own Party, not because she’s unhappy that the Party has moved too far to the Right for her taste (which is a stupid reason to quit anyway), but because her husband is facing a major corruption lawsuit. Even the far-Left FireDogLake blog knows that Justin’s story is complete and utter BS. Snowe isn’t really facing a serious challenger yet, but has decided to drop out anyway.

So this is pretty much a total lie from Justin Webb.

Next he speaks with Matt Kibbe of Freedom Works, a major organization supporting the Tea Party movement. He really does talk about shutting down a few enormous, bloated government agencies, some of which have nearly the sacred cow status that the NHS has in Britain. Naturally, this frightens Webb, as his visceral inclination is that the State is All.

This is supposed to be the final proof that there’s something seriously wrong with the Republican Party. The thing is, the Party’s move to the right on this issue is a bad thing only if one is on the Left, and views small government as some sort of extremist position. Ol’ Justin is definitely making a value judgment here, and his personal political bias is on full display.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

The BBC Celebrates WikiHacks Again

By | | , ,
8 Comments

Check out how the BBC reflexively sides with WikiHacks and their publishing of stolen emails from Stratfor.  Stratfor is not a government agency, and has not been accused of any crime, yet the BBC opens the piece by describing WikiHacks as a “whistleblowing website”. Of course, anyone who is aware of boss Julian Assange’s open declaration that his intent is to harm US geopolitical goals will know what his real agenda is here.

In any case, in stark contrast to their treatment of the leaked CRU emails (there is still not a single scrap of evidence that they were stolen), the BBC sees nothing wrong – declines to editorialize against, really – with the fact that WikiHacks got the Stratfor emails from the hacker group, Anonymous, who admits to illegally obtaining the emails, along with credit card numbers and other data.

Notice also the accompanying photo of a gently beaming, serene St. Julian. Selecting photos is an editorial decision, one which can influence the readers’ interpretation of a story.

St. Julian is on record, we’re told, as stating that some of the far-left activist groups on which Stratfor was gathering information are “fighting for a just cause”. So it’s not so much whistleblowing as it is an attempt to undermine a political enemy. But never mind, he’s still a hero to the BBC for doing it. To further cast aspersions on Stratfor – the victim of a crime here – we even get a quote from Barron’s that the organization is a kind of “shadow CIA”. Just so you all know who the real bad guys are here, and to re-inforce the false description of WikiHacks as whistleblowers.

Then comes the outrageous bit:

Despite the new disclosures, Wikileaks is still facing difficulties on several fronts.

Despite? Despite releasing stolen information from an organization not of the Left, BBC?  In other words, the Beeboid who wrote this – and an approving editor – believe that releasing stolen emails from Stratfor should go a long way towards rehabilitating WikiHacks in the public eye. This is the BBC taking sides against Stratfor and in favor of WikiHacks.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Is The Occupy Movement Racist Now?

By | | , , , ,
5 Comments

A while back, the BBC followed the lead of their brethren in the Left-wing US media and tried to get you to think the Occupiers were similar to the Tea Party movement. This was done because – to the media’s dismay – much of the country failed to hate the Tea Party movement and buy into the demonization promoted by the press. So, having resigned themselves to that fact, the media luvvies tried to gain acceptance for the Occupiers by trying to promote the idea that they had similar ideals to the Tea Partiers. The BBC even played a little game of “Who Said It” to help drive home this notion.

Now it appears the two movements do have something in common after all: their opposition to The Obamessiah.

Tea Party and OWS Protest Side-By-Side Against Obama in San Francisco

The unthinkable finally happened last night in San Francisco: the Tea Party shared a protest with the Occupiers, both groups angry with the same person.

And who was this unifier, the only man who can bridge the divide and bring together all sides of the political spectrum? Why, President Obama, of course.

I don’t need to remind anybody here that the Narrative from the BBC has been that opposition to the President is not so much policy-based as it is steeped in racism. They simply refuse to acknowledge that people can be genuinely opposed to His policies for legitimate reasons. See the video of Mark Mardell’s appearance at the BBC College of Journalism for a reminder of his mocking of a Southern woman whom he describes as a racist, as well as his opinion that the Tea Partiers are really, deep down, under the skin, concerned about the Government spending money “on people not like them”.

So, one has to ask now: Is the Occupy Wall St. movement racist?

Over to you, BBC.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

The BBC Will Not Be Discussing This Republican

By | |
38 Comments

Here’s one for you. Spend a moment or two studying the “Issues” page of the Mia Love for Congress website. Ms. Love is a Republican candidate for the US House of Representatives from Utah.

Issues – Mia Love

Notice the issues listed, and her positions on them. Note especially the ethnicity of all the people in the accompanying photos. Also notice how close her positions on certain issues tie in with those of the Tea Party movement. Now, try to guess Mia Love’s background.

Once you have a good guess, check out the main page. How well did you do?

Does anyone think the BBC US President editor will be discussing Mia Love’s candidacy any time soon? He’s all about politics, you know, a well-traveled, experienced political junkie, finger on the pulse of the country. The BBC expects you to trust his take on US politics and the feelings of the people. If Mardell doesn’t find a moment to bang out a short blog post about her in the next few months from the hotel bar while on the road following a Republican joke candidate for President, he’s useless and biased.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Responding To A Defender Of The Indefensible

By | | , , ,
33 Comments

This is regarding a comment from Dez on an open thread which had already dropped off the main page by the time I noticed it. I haven’t had time to put together the response his comment deserves, and since I think there is an important point to be made here, I’m making it a main post rather than continuing the discussion in the middle of an old thread.

A week ago on a previous Open Thread, John Horne Tooke commented in response to a criticism of BBC reporting by “As I See It” that the BBC’s biased coverage of the US had convinced his college-educated daughter that Republicans “do not believe in science”. It was on Page 7 of this Open Thread (Js-kit/Echo won’t allow linking directly to a comment).

That’s obviously about either Creationsim or Warmism, or both, on which the BBC has form. Basically this is based on the assumption that all Republicans are “climate deniers” and Christians who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. The BBC has declared that skepticism that human activity is the driving factor in Global Warming is “anti-science”,  and so all Republicans get tarred with that epithet, even though there are plenty who buy into Warmism. As for Creationsim,  people like Justin Webb and Nicky Campbell (R5L Sept. 8, 2011) have conflated a belief in God as Creator (a very broad term) with the belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old, and suggested that, for example, both Sarah Palin and Rick Perry are unfit for high public office because of it. In the case of JHT’s daughter, she got it from Chris Evans. There’s probably also something there about opposition to embryonic stem-cell research being anti-science. It’s easy for the BBC audience to assume that this is the case for all Republicans, since the Beeboids themselves keep reinforcing that opinion. In short, biased BBC reporting, along with constant partisan attacks from BBC Light Entertainment personalities, forms incorrect opinions.

So I extrapolated from that to a pet peeve of mine, and replied that if JHT’s daughter also thought that the Tea Party movement was driven by crypto-racism, he’d know whom to blame. I was of course referring to the BBC US President, Mark Mardell, along with the fact that the majority of BBC reporting about the Tea Party movement has suggested that opposition to the President was based more on the color of his skin than on any policies. There’s plenty of evidence for this, which I’ll get to in due course. Dez disagreed with me. His comment in full is below the fold.

Hell Yeah! Because it can’t be anything to do with the idiots pictured here:
http://snotrockets.net/politics/tea-party/the-tea-party-are-a-bunch-of-racists-there-ive-said-it/
And it can’t be anything to do with The Patriot Freedom Alliance:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073094/Racism-row-erupts-Tea-Party-calls-Barack-Obama-skunk.html

Or Marilyn Davenport:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378380/Official-apologizes-Obama-chimpanzee-email-Tea-party-member-fired.html

No! It’s all the fault of Mark Mardell because he told the BBC College of Journalism that; “I’ve been to lots of Tea Party meetings and I honestly don’t think most of them are racist… I think for them it is about the Government spending their money…”

Bascially, Dez’s argument is that since others besides the BBC have pointed to fringe elements and isolated incidents, the BBC cannot be blamed for influencing public opinion on this matter. I won’t put words in his mouth and say that Dez also believes that the Tea Party is driven by racism. I think he does, although I’m happy to be corrected if he chooses to explain himself. Furthermore, he’s also misrepresenting what Mardell actually said at the BBC  CoJ.

First of all, let’s discuss who influences public opinion. 50% of the UK public watch the BBC for their news. The BBC has far more influence there than any other television news organization. BBC News Online is Britain’s most popular news website, especially seeing a 109% boost in visitors during the last two years from that desirable 18-24 year old demographic. Nobody has as much influence in online news as the BBC. Outside of that, while Radio 4 has lost some of its audience share, Chris Evans has nearly 9 million listeners. So when he says the Tea Party is racist, he reaches more people at the same time – including JHT’s daughter – than just about anyone else in Britain who isn’t an athlete, royalty, or on X/Strictly whatever. Then there are all the Left-wing comedy programmes and news quizzes, on both radio and tv. The Beeboids at the Today Programme believe they set the agenda for the nation’s news each day. No other media organization has anything like the number of channels or online presence or audience figures of the BBC. It’s not even close. The BBC has by far more influence on public opinion than the rest of them.

The Daily Mail may have passed the New York Times as the top online news source, but how much is that due to celebrity gossip and photos of women in bikinis, never mind the fact that the NY Times has a pay wall which cuts readership short?  The Mail got 45.3 million unique visitors in December,  Those figures are worldwide, not only British readers. The BBC suggests that’s more about “popular journalism”, big photos, an search engine optimization than the quality of the actual hard news, so it’s difficult to claim that the Mail has more influence on public opinion than the BBC.  Sure, the Mail can raise a fuss sometimes and affect a tiny bit of change, as Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross found out. But do 50% of the public get their serious news from the Mail, or do more of the British public read their website for news than BBC? Clearly not.

So I think it’s fair to say that the BBC has more influence on public opinion than any other media outlet. Does the BBC overwhelmingly try to tell you that the Tea Party movement is racist, inspired by racism, or is filled with racists? Yes. The list is seemingly endless.

Jonny Dymond recently made a dishonest report about how hate groups are on the rise because there’s a black President. This was part of the BBC Narrative which began in 2008, that opposition to The Obamessiah can be due only to skin color and not policy.

In one of his earliest blog posts since taking over for Justin Webb, Mark Mardell was openly asking if opposition to the President was driven by racism. He said that, considering how important racism has been in US political history, “it would be strange if it now mattered not a jot”. In his first weeks on the job, Mardell was already ignoring the main economic policy points of the Tea Party movement and Republican opposition to a Democrat President, and focusing instead on a suspicion he has, based on small evidence.

Not long after that, Kevin “Teabagger” Connolly was pushing the same Maureen Dowd article from the NY Times that Mardell waas. In that same post, David Vance also tells us about Gavin Essler in the Daily Mail scowling at those Hitler signs, and whipping up fear that someone might assassinate the President. So even if the Mail does have a negative influence on the public, we can partly blame Beeboids for that, too.

There have been plenty of comments on this blog about Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire pushing this same Narrative, never mind all those edgy comedians who make a good living working the Left-wing tropes.

The next issue is whether or not Dez is correct that the outliers his examples highlight are enough to convince someone that the Tea Party movement is, in fact, racist. I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog trying to show that, contrary to BBC reporting, the movement is actually driven by people’s unhappiness with the President’s and the Democrats’ economic policies, and there’s no need to get into all that here.

The short answer is that every large gathering and movement is going to have its parasitical fringe element, people who ride the coat tails of the larger movement to push their own issues. It’s become a cliché that every Left-wing protest march will feature someone with a “Free Palestine” sign or a “Troops out of Iraq” placard or a hoodie with that “A” for Anarchy symbol, regardless of the issue of the day.  But we don’t say that the student riots protests against tuition fees were driven by support for the Palestinian cause. The same thing goes for Right-wing gatherings and pro-life supporters or similar. So there are obviously going to be some racists somewhere who see protests against the President as an opportunity to bare their own racist grievances. It can’t be helped. Hell, there might even be people who actually are racist, but are also legitimately concerned about the destructive economic policies.

However, I’d say that it’s impossible for a grassroots movement which grew into a national phenomenon to be largely driven by racism if Herman Cain and Col. Allen West got so much support from them. The second Tea Party protest I attended back in 2009 was hosted by a black man. And how racist can people be who vote for Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio? Or are there actual racists who hate black people but have no problem with Indians or Hispanics?

But I think it would me more informative to instead answer a question with a question.

If we’re supposed to accept that the Tea Party movement is driven by racism based on a few outliers and isolated incidents, would Mardell and Connolly and John Horne Tooke’s daugher and Dez equally say that the Occupy Wall St. movement is driven by anti-Semitism if I provided several examples? Would they do what we’re so often instructed not to about Muslims and extremism or young black men and crime, and stain the majority for the behavior of the few?  Would, then, the following be enough evidence to declare that anti-Jewish sentiment does matter a jot in the Occupy movement:

Anti-Semitic Protester at Occupy Wall St LA


Occupier shouting “Go back to Israel” to a Jew

The Hate in Zuccotti

Pete Sutherland traveled to Zuccotti Park all the way from Georgia Friday, shivering as he wielded a handmade sign that read, “The Reason the Arabs Hate Us.”

“Jews are the smartest people in the world,” said Sutherland, 79. Not in a good way.

“They control the media.”

But no one tells the truth about the Hebrew people, as he sees it, because “the media doesn’t want to commit suicide by losing the Jewish advertisers.’’

“I’m not anti-Semitic,” he finished.

The New York Times thought the Occupy movement was getting such a bad reputation that they went out to make a story defending them. The Times instructs us not to smear the majority for the acts of a few.


Occupy Wall Street Has an Anti-Semitism Problem

A quick sampling of the anti-Semitism on display among the Occupy Wall Street set yields the flamboyant and aggressive protester who yells,“You’re a bum, Jew” at his yarmulke-wearing interlocutor; the conspiracy theorist who laments that “Jewish money controls American politics,” and warns the Russians not to let the Jews take over Russia too; and  the self-described Nazi with the swastika tattoo who regrets that America has been handed over to “other people.” Ah, people power.

I could go on. So do we declare that the Occupy movement is mainly anti-Semitic, or that it’s fair for people to get that idea?  I didn’t say so after my encounter with the Occupiers at Zuccotti. In fact, I said that, despite the videos I’d seen and reports I’d read, I hadn’t seen any real anti-Semitism there, and so wouldn’t declare the entire movement tainted. Which brings me to my final point: Dez’s misrepresentation of Mardell’s CoJ appearance and misunderstanding and mischaracterization of my comment.

You can watch Mardell speak for himself here. (@ around 54:20 if the link isn’t direct)

Mardell mocks a Southern white woman while confirming his off-camera colleague’s opinion that racism was certainly a factor in the 2008 election. “You knew exactly what it was,” he chortles. He then says that he doesn’t think “most” of the people at Tea Party protests he’s been to are racists. “Certainly not in a straightforward sense.”  Dez conveniently elided that bit. Which leads to his error about what I said. Mardell isn’t saying that most of us aren’t racists, he’s saying that it’s there underneath the surface of the economic issues. “Deeper than that, it’s about the Government spending their money on people who are not like them.”  Dez conveniently elided that bit as well. Dishonesty? Or a simple mistake? Only Dez can tell us.

I said at the time, and have repeated many times since, that Mardell believes the Tea Party movement to be driven by crypto-racism. His own words tell you so. Now, I’m not blaming Mardell’s appearance at the CoJ for people being misinformed. That’s a misunderstanding on Dez’s part. What I am saying is that Mardell, the BBC’s top man in the US, believes it to be true, and that it influences his and his fellow Beeboids’ reporting. The question from his colleague presupposes that racism is a factor, and Mardell confirms it. This tells us the editorial opinion of and the conventional wisdom at the BBC, which informs all their reporting on the issue. In other words, they already thought that, long before Mardell’s appearance at the BBC CoJ. This is a problem. Aside from the smear factor, it also causes them to ignore or play down the real economic issues behind the opposition to the President’s and the Democrats’ agenda. Mardell can acknowledge that excessive government spending is a concern, but deep down it’s driven by racism. Even when writing about Herman Cain’s popularity, he actually thinks it’s important to ask if the man’s black skin would “bother any right-wingers”. So Dez’s portrayal of Mardell is absolutely false.

Of course there’s no memo going out telling everyone to push the racism angle or anything. It’s just groupthink, reinforced from the top. They read it in the Washington Post and the New York Times and the HuffingtonPost, and they hear it from their Left-wing associates and friends, and laugh at it with their favorite Left-wing comedians. It’s visceral, and is spread throughout the BBC.  That’s why you hear it not only from Mardell and Dymond, but from Bacon and Campbell and all the rest of them.

And that’s why 50% of the public who watch BBC News, as well as heavens knows how many more who rely on BBC News Online – who combined make up the majority of the population – think the Tea Party movement is driven by crypto-racism.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

The BBC And the President’s ‘State of the Union’

By | |
15 Comments

It’s time for the President’s third ‘State of the Union’ speech, in which He addresses the masses from on high, laying out His latest Plan For Us. The BBC will surely be right there to tell you what to think about it. To prepare for the propaganda coverage, a review of the previous SoU speeches and BBC reporting should help set the proper perspective.

His first SoU was greeted with lavish praise and much coverage. Understandable up to a point, I suppose, because it was the first one by a non-white. I have yet to figure out how His policies were supposed to be different or even superior due to skin color, but never mind. At the time, the BBC highlighted His Jobs Plan.

This was in January 2010. Unemployment was already a problem, the economy was in the tank, and yet the President wanted to ramp up the spending of money we didn’t have. The BBC noted that Republicans were concerned about that, but made sure to tell you how important His Plan was anyway.

Richard Lister had the gall to tell you that the President was all about job creation and deficit reduction, and his BBC News Online colleagues helpfully pointed out that $20 billion in savings had already been “identified”. As we all know, this was utter nonsense, as unemployment is even higher now than it was, as is the country’s debt. No savings, no jobs came as a result of his historic speech, or any alleged plans laid out. The BBC did fret, though, that Sen. Kennedy’s death and the loss of the Democrat super-majority was an obstacle for the President’s “sweeping legislative agenda”.

More ridiculous was the way Lister told you the President was trying to be a uniter, to get both political parties to work together. How convenient after losing that super majority, eh? No mention ever on the BBC of His “I won” dismissal of a Republican objection to His Plan. Some Presidents choose bi-partisanship, others have it thrust upon them, I guess.

US President editor Mark Mardell said that, aside from all that, the success of His economics plans would be what “really drive the voters’ perception of him.”  Of course, now that we know His plans have only made the economy worse, Mardell keeps telling us that none of this is His fault. Any lack of progress was due to Republican intransigence, which is basically the Narrative the President set up in His speech.  Mardell also enthused to his colleagues at the BBC College of Journalism last September that the President was “the last Keynesian standing”, and that he and the British public felt this was the way to go. How’s that working out now, Mark?

In the 2011 SoU, we got the same story.


State of the Union 2011: Obama urges co-operation

The anonymous Beeboid who wrote that article could have copied and pasted much of the talk about debt and spending from the 2010 reporting, so little had changed. The only difference was that Congress was now horribly divided thanks to the evil Tea Party pushing the Republicans to take control over the House of Representatives. So of course everyone must work together to advance His Plans For Us, right? Remember, His Plans are correct, and the Republicans just want to block them. You’re not permitted to wonder if maybe they’re right and He’s wrong.

The bit about how He was going to spend money on green energy to boost the economy is particularly aggravating, considering how He actually threw billions down the Green toilet to failed or failing companies mostly run by His Democrat moneymen. The BBC has censored all of that, of course, so those who trust the BBC for their news on US issues have no idea that anything has gone amiss since last year.

Mardell, though, was not inspired. And it made him a little sad. He acknowledged the President’s staunch defense of His economic plans, even going so far as to say that the President wasn’t really calling for bi-partisanship but was actually throwing down the gauntlet. That’s not the kind of soaring rhetoric Mardell was hoping for, so he was disappointed in the speech even though he agreed with its underlying theme. No surprise that the President has since spent the last year attacking His enemies and trying to spend even more money we don’t have, with precious little to show for it.

How long, BBC, before we’re allowed to blame Him for the economy instead of the excuse that He inherited a bad situation, and it takes a long time to recover? The UK economy is pinned squarely on David Cameron, even though he’s been in office only half as long, and also inherited a bad economy. The double standard is glaring.

By the way, how is ObamaCare working out, BBC? Any thoughts on how small businesses are being strangled by the looming cost burden, costing us more jobs? ZZZzzzzzzzz.

As a setup for tonight’s SoU, we get another dishonest attack on Mitt Romney’s wealth and tax payments.


US Republican hopeful Mitt Romney pays 13.9% tax

Once again, no mention whatsoever that the majority of his earning is from capital gains, which are – by federal law, whether one agrees with that law or not – taxed at 15%. Which is what he paid in 2011. The figure in the headline is from 2010, and he paid a slightly lower rate because of legal tax exemptions. Sure, they link to his tax return document, but all that shows is income, not the rules. Most people who read this will see only that Romney made an enormous amount of money. But if you don’t know the law, the perception you get – the one the BBC wants you to have – is that he’s getting away with blue murder. The reason those tax laws exist is a topic for another discussion. Romney, though, is not paying low taxes on regular wage income, which is taxed at a different rate. It’s very dishonest for the BBC not to differentiate between the two.

This is all a setup for what they know will be in tonight’s speech.

President Barack Obama is expected to highlight economic inequality in his annual State of the Union address later on Tuesday.

Typical BBC. The myth of income inequality is BBC dogma. Is Mark Thompson’s enormous salary part of the problem as well, I wonder? Still, the BBC wants to remind you that the President believes that Romney’s situation is unfair.

But the issue has reignited the debate in the US over how investment income – in particular carried interest, the profits that private equity managers make – is taxed.

President Obama has said such income should be taxed at a higher rate, and that wealthy Americans and corporations should pay more tax to help trim the country’s deficit.

The issue hasn’t reignited anything, as we’ve only been talking about it all over the damn place for the last six months ever since the Occupy Wall Street crowd started their noise. Perhaps the BBC means that it has reignited the Occupiers’ message? Either way, it’s just a useful cudgel with which to bludgeon His opponents.  It has nothing to do with Romney’s ability as an administrator or his policies on anything at all. But that’s the point of this Narrative, isn’t it?  By the way, do the President’s opponents ever point out that even if we taxed the super-rich until they bled, it wouldn’t even put the tiniest dent in the deficit? No, of course not, because taxing them even more isn’t really about fixing the economy: it’s about revenge.

Will the BBC discuss how the President’s Plans haven’t worked? Or will they continue to blame others and hope you forget all about the past? Watch out for tonight’s speech. And watch out for the BBC Narrative.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

BBC Bias And Wisconsin – Again

By | | , , , , ,
12 Comments

So the Union-led petition to force a recall election against Republican Gov. Scott Walker has gathered 1 million signatures. That’s nearly twice what’s required to force the recall. Of course, that’s only if the signatures are valid. If you get your information on this story from the BBC, you’d have no idea there’s even a hint of impropriety. The BBC news brief sanitizes the whole thing, spins it to make Walker look bad, and even misleads the reader about the result of the recall elections from last summer.

Let’s start with how the BBC spins it to make Walker look bad.

The governor has become a conservative hero and put the Midwest state at the centre of the US labour rights debate.

The BBC News Online sub-editor decided to leave it as an anti-Unions thing, and censor the news that Walker balanced the state budget for the first time in ages. That’s actually what has earned Walker respect from conservatives. Curbing public sector union powers helped him do that, sure. But it’s about fixing the state economy, not just attacking unions. The BBC leaves out how this is about fixing the economy, leaving Walker looking like a villain. They do it again a couple sentences later:

The governor’s opponents are also angry at the $800m (£521m) in budget cuts to schools passed under him.

 But they leave out the fact that this actually improved things. Of course, the BBC has form on censoring news about this issue in Wisconsin. What the BBC didn’t want you to know at the time is that schools have saved well over $100 million since Walker cut down union power and passed his budget. In fact, one school district went from a major deficit to a budget surplus thanks to Walker’s plan. Instead, the BBC spins it so you think he hurt the schools. Does that sound familiar?
The BBC says this about the previous round of recalls:

Two Republican state senators were recalled in earlier elections.

What the BBC censors because it hurts the Narrative is that the other five Republicans kept their seats, and the Republicans kept their majority – albeit just barely – in the legislature. But that fact won’t help lead you to think that this new petition means the people of Wisconsin want the Republicans out, so the BBC leaves it out.

One last bit of anti-Walker spin is where the article mentions that he’s raised over $5 million for the fight, taking care to point out that half of it is from out of state. What the BBC doesn’t want you to know is that out-of-state Unions and other partisan PACs are pouring money into it for the Democrat cause. In last summer’s recall elections, Democrat-supporting groups from out of state even outspent Republican groups from out of state, to the tune of $23.4 million to $20.5 million. Does anyone think this time will be any different? So it’s grossly dishonest for the BBC to mention only Walker’s out-of-state money. But that helps the Narrative of “the hard-working innocent lambs against nasty Republicans and their moneymen”.

Now let’s look at the worst part of all this: the 1 million signatures. What the BBC doesn’t want you to know is that there’s most likely a massive amount of fraud going on.  The state board overseeing the whole thing has already admitted there’s going to be a problem with duplicate signatures. It sure doesn’t help matters that the far-Left group, One Wisconsin Now, actually encouraged people to sign multiple petitions, knowing that they won’t all be caught. One guy has even proudly claimed to have signed 80 times. Not a word about this from the BBC.

Then there’s the fact that the Government Accountability Board (GAB) is admitting they won’t be trying to dismiss all those Adolf Hitler and Mickey Mouse signatures if they have Wisconsin addresses and are dated properly. So there’s voter fraud built into the system, to help Democrats. But remember, kids, according to the BBC, only Republicans engage in voter fraud.  In fact, things are so bad that the GAB is hiring a bunch of temporary staff to sort through all this crap. The GAB, however, is an independent group. So when the BBC reports this:

Supporters of the governor are being trained to spot any duplicate or falsified signatures.

You have to say they’re lying. Only supporters of the governor are being trained? No, BBC, it’s the staff of the independent GAB. This is meant to create the suspicion in your mind that it’s only a Republican plot to disenfranchise honest Democrats, nothing to do with massive Democrat fraud. There isn’t even a hint of suspicion raised here, not a single eyebrow raised. Why do you think it’s going to take 60 days to sort this out?

Sure, it’s only an unsigned news brief, no time to mention all the details, right? So why are the details the piece does mention so dishonest? You can read about previous examples of BBC censorship and dishonesty about the goings on in Wisconsin here, here, and here. Don’t trust the BBC on US issues.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.