WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE, FOUND WANTING…

“The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion.”

Biased BBC contributor Alan notes that the BBC is adopting its usual casual ‘Israel is the Devil’ stance in their report on Gunther Grass and his poem.

The BBC attitude adds immeasurably to the febrile anti-Israel/Semitic atmosphere that is being whipped up. The BBC continually says it does not have the time or space to put the Israel/Palestine conflict into any context for each report but it does find time to add on the casualty figures for two years after the Gaza conflict and in the recent report on Hamas executions manages to slot in an end piece explaining away Hamas’ actions by blaming Israel.

What the BBC does not tell us is that the Gaza assault came as a result of 10 years of missiles raining down on Israel….what they don’t tell you is that Israel suffered over 1000 dead in a variety of attacks against them in those years. So when the BBC says Israel only suffered 13 casualties in Gaza a real view of events would put the reason for the assault into perspective….not so much disproportionate but Just Retribution.

Their report is curiously uncritical and accepting in tone of the poem which says Israel is The threat to world peace, her nuclear weapons are somehow more unacceptable than the US’s or Britain’s or France’s or North Korea’s or Russia’s.

Curious that Grass picks on Israel and not Pakistan. Another nuclear power…and highly unstable…not long ago people were expecting a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

Is it not Iran, amongst many others in the region, that threaten Israel’s existence? Yes.

Strange Israel is endangering world peace by defending itself. Though how like the modern Western elite’s relative world view….just lie back and accept any indignity for a peaceful existence….and blame ‘The Jew’ for wars.

Churchill sums it all up, the moral equivalence, the cowardly sacrificing another country, a ‘people’ in effect, for ostensibly the delusion of peace but in reality Grass and his defenders don’t like Israel, its very existence jars with them…..and they would look the other way if it were ‘somehow’ to disappear. He says he likes Israel and wants it to exist, how kind, but his actions say otherwise……have a look at Der Spiegel and what is being said….’At the moment, Iran is feeling the pressure of sanctions. But the time has finally come to put some pressure on Israel, as well. Mind you, whoever says such a thing is not trying “to relativize the guilt of the Germans by making the Jews into perpetrators,” as Mathias Döpfner says.'(http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,826180,00.html)…and this is an article which wilfully ignores evidence from all sources including the IAEA that Iran looks to be developing a nuclear weapon capability.

What really gives away Grass’s politics is his attack on the “hypocrisy of the West” …whilst at the same time claiming to be a realist…if he was a realist he would understand ‘real politik’…and why most of the products in his house he imported from Communist China.

Back to Churchill….
“The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion.”

“All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. We have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been derailed, and these terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies, ‘Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting’.”
– Lamenting the abandonment of Czechosolovakia by Britain at Munich in 1938

This is the BBC report….although it gives views condemning Grass there is a lack of analysis of his comments…..something critical for a full and truthful view of what Grass claims. Especially as we are told that the Israel/Palestine conflict, if it can be solved, will bring world peace. Who am I to doubt…but you would think the BBC would therefore put more effort into its reports… in the interest of World Peace that is.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17650548
‘Grass, a Nobel laureate, recently criticised Israel in a poem.
In it, Grass condemned German arms sales to Israel, and said the Jewish state must not be allowed to launch military strikes against Iran. Grass attacks Israel’s nuclear programme.
“Why do I say only now… that the nuclear power Israel endangers an already fragile world peace?

But he has been defended by some sections of Israeli liberal opinion.

Writing in the Haaretz newspaper, columnist Gideon Levy criticised the ban on Grass.
“A situation in which any German who dares criticise Israel is instantly accused of anti-Semitism is intolerable”, he said, “after we denounce the exaggeration, after we shake off the unjustified part of the charge, we must listen.” ‘

Note the final words….’we must listen’…to Grass.

BBC having the final word there?

What must be said

Why have I been silent, silent for so long?,
Our generals have gamed it out,
Confident the west will survive.
We people have not even been considered.

What is this right to “preventive war”?
A war that could erase the Iranian people.
Dominated by it’s neighbor, pulsing with righteousness
Smug in the fact that it is they, not Iran,
Who have the Bomb.

Why have I so far avoided to identify Israel by it’s name?,
Israel and it’s ever increasing nuclear arsenal,
Beyond reproach, Uncontrolled, uninspected.

We all know these things
Yet we all remain silent, fearful of being labeled:
anti-Semitic
hateful
worse

Considering Germany’s past these labels stick
So we call is “business”, “reparation” take your pick,
As we deliver yet another submarine.
As we provide to Israel the means to deliver annihilation.
I say what must be said.

Why did I stay silent until now?
Because I’m German, of course.
I’m tainted by a stain I cannot wash out
I’m silent because I want so badly to make it right
To put my sins in the past and leave them silently there.

Why did I wait to say it until now?
And write these words with the last of my ink?
Declaring that Israel threatens world peace?
Because it is true and it must be said,
Tomorrow will be too late.

We Germans now carry a new burden of sin on our shoulders
Through the weapons we have sold
We are helping to carry out this foreseeable tragedy
No excuse will remove our stain of complicity.

It must be said. I won’t be silent
I’ve had enough of the hypocrisy;
Please shed the silence with me,
The consequences are all too predictable.
It’s time to demand free and permanent control
of BOTH Israel’s nuclear arsenal
AND Iran’s nuclear facilities
enforced with international supervision.

It’s the only way, in a land convulsed with insanity,
Israelis, Palestinians, everybody, will survive.
And we too, will survive.

SITE UPDATE

Just wanted to make you aware that thanks to the sterling work of All Seeing Eye there is now a CONTACT US tab for you to send messages/tips/suggested posts/guest posts to me. There is also an FAQ tab for questions you may have.

The new site is performing very well. I am pleased about all the new names commenting here and since we have switched over to this platform, there have been 110,000 views of the site, with over 10,000 in just one day alone. I hope you are liking it, it seems to speed along, and the debate seems pretty hot.

Thanks to you all.

TRANSPARENCY IS THE CRISIS CAN’T YOU SEE…

…(with apologies to Poly Styrene)

Did you read that BBC presenters and other senior figures in the public sector could be forced to publicly publish their tax returns under Government plans to increase transparency?

Dozens of BBC stars and executives are thought to be paid via private companies which has sparked speculation over their tax affairs. Several BBC presenters are currently embroiled in an HM Revenue and Customs investigation

My own view is that what a person earns is their own business and so I don’t really go with this jihad against income but on the other hand, some within the BBC have been to the fore in damning “the wealthy” “the bankers” etc  so a certain hypocrisy is in play and needs exposed.

UTLEY AND THE BBC

Did you read Tom Utley’s take on the Today programme a few days back?

“Does anyone believe that the Beeb, which bewails every cut and lauds every increase in government spending, would have made such a fuss about any other three-day clampdown costing less than one ten-millionth of the NHS budget? And is it remotely conceivable that, on any other matter, it would have expressed such sympathy for the grotesquely incompetent CQC — whose appalling record over upholding standards of care for the elderly and vulnerable the BBC, to its credit, has done so much to report?

Final question. Last year, BBC TV’s Panorama exposed the scandalous ill-treatment of patients at the Winterbourne View private hospital, which had been missed by the CQC. Does anyone remember Auntie accusing ministers of ‘chasing headlines’ when they moved swiftly to close down the rotten place?”

HARD WIRED TO A SOFT TOUCH…

Biased BBC contributor Alan suggests that we commence with a consideration the Pope’s words for Easter….

‘The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil.’ ‘The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general.’ ‘Today we can illuminate our cities so brightly that the stars in the sky are no longer visible,’ he said. ‘Is this not an image of the problems caused by our version of enlightenment?’ ‘With regard to material things, our knowledge and our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify,’ Benedict added, saying that faith was the ‘true enlightenment.’

Timely and relevant words that neatly illustrate what two books reviewed in the Sunday Times expound.

You may or may not agree with religion or Faith and whatever that may entail but whether you take an entirely secular view of the world, or one viewed through the filter of a religious scripture or are hedging your bets and offer up a quiet prayer to God like the atheist in a foxhole you may well have come to the conclusion that society has possibly lost its way. It still rumbles on in a recognisable form but is somehow indecipherably changing for the worse.

Kipling’s ‘God’s of the Copybook Headings’ prophetically (or not …perhaps society was really always thus?) describes a society in free fall as it ignores the lessons of the past and denounces the attacks on authority, deference and the virtues that once held a Nation and culture together.

F. Scott Fitzgerald sums it up even more succinctly….

‘My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.’

Now however we have two books that have been published and delve into this arena dragging out into the light things many on the Left, and BBC in particular, wouldn’t want on show.

The BBC are famously Leftie, no question, the senior staff were 60’s radicals, Marxists and Trots wanting to overthrow everything. Even Joan Bakewell , the thinking man’s crumpet, admits she was suspected of wanting to overthrow the government.

Their inheritance lives on and who can deny that attempts are being made to discredit the Cameron government right now.

But what other influences did such people and their avant garde attitudes have?…on society, on culture, on the very fabric of society?

Biologist E.O. Wilson has brought out a book, The Social Conquest of Earth, in which he reminds us that everybody belongs, and needs to belong, to a ‘tribe’…the need to form groups and to defend those groups not just physically but for their values and culture is innate and instinctive and is an important part of what makes us human.

This book illustrates the fallacy of multi-culturalism. It can never work. You can suppress conflict but eventually it will always break out. ‘Them and Us’ is Nature and natural. We’re all in effect ‘racist’….or ‘tribalist’ to be polite.

What it tells us is that the only way for a multi-cultural society to rub along is to have a great deal of suppression that could verge on oppression.

No? Well try wearing a crucifix to work these days. A small example but very telling. You can’t wear a crucifix in case it ‘offends’ another’s religious sensibilities. In a supposedly modern, enlightened, liberal and predominantly ‘Christian’ society you cannot wear a small crucifix on your person.

The second book is more revealing and devastating for the Left…but illustrates what we already know…Liberal, Left values destroyed the foundations of society and have brought us to the verge of collapse….where the unresolvable tension in our species between selfishness and altruism developed into a vast social experiment by the Liberals who took power and decided selfishness, masquerading as ‘Individualism’, was the road to happiness and self fulfilment only now to be dashed against the rocks of reality and inner city rioting, arson and looting for ‘bling’ trainers.

This book, The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion, by Jonathan Haidt (a liberal himself), is an indictment of Liberal thinking…although in their defence he claims they can’t help themselves it’s hardwired into their brains…..the Left cannot understand why ‘others’, Rednecks, Neocons or those in 4x4s, just can’t see what is good for themselves…how could they be so dumb as to not see the benefits of immigration, the iniquities of religion or the blessed freedom for women of abortion on demand.

Haidt says it is Liberals not Conservatives who are being blind…deaf to the real concerns of the vast majority of the world’s population. This vast group has the same concerns as the Liberal, defending the vulnerable and preventing suffering, but they weigh that against other issues…the need for authority, loyalty to a group, religion or society….all of which Liberals view as oppressive or irrational obstacles to equality and liberation.

He says it was a terrible mistake for Liberals to casually subvert all the structures that have developed over centuries to give purpose to people’s lives, to restrain their worst excesses and such mistakes risk destroying social order and moral constraints in pursuit of individual liberation….lowering the overall well being of the society and damaging the very victims the Liberals were trying to help.

The constraints are there because in the real world people will often do bad things if given the choice. Co-operation and cohesion depends on trust and knowledge in the others around you.

Liberals need to understand that most people are attracted by ideas of order, group identity and a desire to belong to something bigger than just themselves alone and until that happens they will continue to be baffled as to why most people do not agree with their world view.

It is not just a question of ‘education’ or the lack of. Nor inded are Rightwingers less intelligent.

The BBC needs to understand why people oppose mass immigration, even new immigrants see it is wrong, why dismembering a unified Britain and subsuming the remains into a manufactured, anonymous European identity is abhorrent, why allowing an alien religion to grow and smother our own culture is an utterly offensive.

The BBC needs to realise their views are the ‘extremist’ ones in reality….because they are held by such a small proportion of the population…as Haidt defines such Liberals, they are ‘WEIRD’…Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic……but out of touch with the ‘common man’.

(Under the moniker ‘Liberal’ I also include all levels of Socialists who don’t ‘casually subvert’ society but do so with a grim delight and malice aforethought.)

LEFT LEANING?

Is this progress? First the headline;

Some 100,000 more people will be without a job before the end of the summer, according to a new report.

And then, a few paras later…

The left-leaning IPPR said it expected 50,000 more men and 50,000 women to become unemployed this year as public sector jobs continued to be cut.

So, a Labour linked think tank spews out pro-Labour propaganda and it is taken and given huge prominence by the BBC. At least there is an acknowledgement that this is a biased source for the headline. But is that good enough? Thoughts?

THE QUALITY OF MERCY…

Hamastan. A few hangings and some tough challenges for the BBC reporter.

The Hamas-controlled administration in Gaza has announced that three prisoners have been executed. The Gaza interior ministry says the men were hanged at what it called a security centre in Gaza City. One of the men was accused of collaborating with Israel and the others had been found guilty of murder.

Mmm. The BBC’s Middle East correspondent Kevin Connolly says it is impossible to assess the quality of the evidence presented against the three men who have been executed.

True, however it is possible to assess the savagery of such actions. It is possible to ask where is the UN and EU and Quartet response or at least it should be since that is the case when Israel does anything controversial in BBC eyes.

THAT SINKING FEELING – 100 YEAR UPDATE

I was watching the BBC1 main news a few moments ago and in particular the rather fascinating coverage of the Titanic Memorial cruise reported here. ALL seemed fine until from nowhere,  came the pronouncement that “thanks to global warming” this memorial cruise will not encounter the icebergs and icefield that brought the Titanic to its icy grave at the bottom of the North Atlantic. Such a pity that an otherwise decent report had to be spoiled by a totally pointless piece of evangelising for AGW.

IS THE BBC INSTITUTIONALLY LEFTIST?

Further to David Preiser’s recent point ‘Imagine if one were to accuse the BBC of an institutional Left-wing bias.’  Another of our B-BBC correspondents, Alan, ponders…

The BBC are no doubt revelling in the latest allegations of racism against some police officers. This is the way the Liberal elite seek to whip in their arch enemy with constant politically motivated legal assaults. No doubt some officers are racist…claims that the ‘police’ are institutionally racist is a nonsense unsupported by evidence.

However those who live by the sword die by the sword. If the police can be institutionally racist in the eyes of the legal establishment then so can other organisations.

The BBC for instance.

Lawyer Stephen Sugar attempted to force the BBC to release the Balen Report by means of a freedom of information request. Perhaps that was the wrong approach.

What if it could be shown that Jews died because of BBC anti-Israeli reporting? What if the BBC were ‘Institutionally racist’ or even guilty of inciting terrorism?

Perhaps a call to the Equality and Human Rights Commission calling for an investigation into the BBC’s racism in reporting on the Israel/Palestine conflict might have not only forced the release of the Balen Report but put a few of the BBC reporters and their bosses in the dock.

The BBC are hiding something big. What is the definition of ‘Institutional racism’?

The Macpherson report;

“The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”

A. Sivanandan, Director, Institute of Race Relations “Institutional racism is that which, covertly or overtly, resides in the policies, procedures, operations and culture of public or private institutions – reinforcing individual prejudices and being reinforced by them in turn.”

The Commission for Racial Equality; “If racist consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs or practices, that institution is racist whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have racial intentions.”

What would constitute inciting others to commit terrorism?

Terrorism Act 2006

(2) A person commits an offence if—

(a) he publishes a statement to which this section applies or causes another to publish such a statement; and (b) at the time he publishes it or causes it to be published, he…..(ii) is reckless as to whether members of the public will be directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate such acts or offences.

Could the BBC’s coverage fall within those parameters?

If phone hacking a few celebrities almost takes down a company as big as News International just image what confirmation of the BBC’s coverage encouraging attacks on Jews and inciting terrorism would do. The BBC, quite a few senior journalists and their bosses would be toast.

What if Muslim terrorism could be shown to be a response in part not to the rhetoric of right wing politicians but left wing journalism….a result of encouraging, excusing and inciting Muslim anger, discontent and militancy.

What if the Jewish people and French soldiers died in France recently because Mohamed Mehra took his justification from the Leftwing media’s continual stoking of his ‘grievances’ and belief that he was a victim of the Western society and culture…because that is what some like the BBC told him…as John Simpson says….’the riots in France by the Muslim immigrants were due to Muslim’s fury and resentment, bitter grievances, ignored and demeaned, kept in poverty by a system which cares very little about them.’

What if?