Category Archives: BBC bias

BBC leading their news this morning with the contention that Brexit means no Marmite in Tesco. They deliberately conflate a trade cost price conflict between Unilever and Tesco with the direct consequence of the Brexit vote. I wonder why the BBC didn’t ponder why when the Pound was rising Unilever prices did not fall? Too obvious?

I don’t know if anyone else listened to the Today programme this morning? It was dreadful and this programme has now adopted a daily regime of “stories” that basically all pirouette around the following narratives.

1. Why Brexit was wrong and we now all must pay for the folly of daring to vote LEAVE.
2. Why Donald Trump is unfit to be President and Hillary Clinton is the safe pair of hands
3. Why Labour under Corbyn is holding the Government to account and uniting Labour
4. Why the NHS needs more cash
5. Why we need to let in those inhabiting the Jungle in France

I am sick of it. The bias is stunning and blatant.

The BBC notes all is not well in Sweden…but who is to blame?

How Sweden became an exporter of jihad

Sweden is a peaceful democratic state that has long been a safe haven for those fleeing conflict. Yet many young people whose families took refuge there are now turning their back on the country. More than 300 people have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq, making Sweden per capita one of the biggest exporters of jihadists in Europe.

Gothenburg is where much of the recruitment for jihad is taking place. It’s one of Sweden’s most diverse cities. A third of the population are from immigrant backgrounds, many of them Muslim, and in the north-eastern suburb of Angered, the proportion rises to more than 70%.

Sweden’s massive housing shortage and long waits for rent controlled apartments in the centre of town mean that many new arrivals end up here, and stay here. This includes some of the 160,000 people who sought asylum in Sweden last year.

Angered has become a tough area to police.

Parts of it are classified as “vulnerable”, which in Swedish police terminology indicates a breakdown of law and order, among other things, and the emergence of a parallel society.

I am told that religious enforcers attempt to control the community to ensure Sharia law is adhered to. They allegedly harass and intimidate people – mainly women – for the way they dress and for attending parties where there is music and dancing, which they consider haram.

So the problem in Sweden is that of a massive lack of resources compounded by a large flow of immigrants allowed into the country regardless of the availability of resources…sounds familiar.  Still…let ’em all in anyway.

The immigrants stay together and form ghettos, and due to their lack of education and unwillingness to integrate they become ever more separate from mainstream society and even if the majority do not want to be fundamentalist they are persuaded to be so by ‘religious enforcers’…it only takes a small hardcore of violent and determined fanatics to cow a community….a few beatings of individuals, a few bricks through windows and all the people get the message…conform….or it might be you next.

But it is Sweden’s fault for not making migrants feel at home….despite I’m sure, massive resources being pushed their way…

Suburbs like Angered have become pressure cookers of discontent.

You see this built-up resentment mainly with the second-generation “non-ethnic Swedes”, as they’re known here.

Many of their parents fled war-torn countries in search of safety and found it in Sweden. They appear grateful for what the country has offered them. Their children, however, often feel they’ve been discriminated against and left out of the system. Many young people I spoke to said they felt disconnected from the country where their parents came from – but didn’t feel they were Swedish either.

The reality is that right now young people from immigrant backgrounds are being radicalised.

Why would someone raised in Gothenburg want to leave one of the most peaceful and progressive countries in the developed world to join a violent extremist group in the Middle East?

With so many of them saying they don’t feel Swedish, perhaps the bigger question is: has integration and Sweden’s experiment with multiculturalism failed?

Who’d have thought?

Slate magazine gives us a good insight into the BBC’s/Left’s mentality…

How you feel about Muslim migration depends, to a large degree, on your moral instincts. Consider one of Trump’s more cutting remarks in his Fox interview: “That’s the problem with the liberal policies of this country and this world, it’s acting like it’s our fault. It’s not our fault, OK, it’s not our fault. It’s their fault.” Those who believe Europe ought to welcome Muslim migrants in large numbers might reply that it is our fault, at least in part. You could reasonably argue that the chaos spreading throughout the Arab world is a consequence of the Iraq invasion and the bloody conflicts that have followed or that the market democracies that have profited from capitalist exploitation are to blame for poverty and violence everywhere. It all depends on your particular ideological bent.

That is exactly the BBC ‘analysis’…Iraq and Western foreign policy are to blame…the same narrative peddled by the terrorists.

Importing massive numbers of people with an ideology, mentality and way of life that is radically different from that of European countries was always an experiment that was doomed to failure….nothing to do with moral or ideological bent…it’s pure, and very obvious, fact…the outcome was never in doubt for anyone who didn’t bury their head in the sand due to their ‘ideological bent’.

This is all tied into the events described in the previous post about Syria and the resultant mass migration of Muslims from the Middle East and beyond…

The wave of refugees will increase, and the price will be paid by the Europeans, already faced with legions of refugees and no plan for dealing with them. Eventually Gaddafi’s prophecy will come true: Islam will conquer Europe without firing a shot.

The Hoover Institution spells it out...the future is not bright as we fail to stand up for our own culture and values…..

We American should not indulge the schadenfreude aroused by watching our sometimes-condescending older cousins slip farther and farther behind us in global importance and power. Europe is still collectively the world’s largest economy, and its travails will impact the whole globe. More importantly, many of the trends weakening Europe today are active in our own country. The scorning of national pride and American exceptionalism, the decline of Christianity in the public square, multiculturalism and its ethnic separatism and divisive identity politics, and the preference of many Americans for greater social welfare spending, redistribution of wealth, and dirigiste economic policies all point us to a fate like Europe’s. 

Self-doubt about the goodness of one’s way of life and living just for today’s pleasures are luxuries a great power cannot afford. In a world of violent ideologies and aggressive autocrats, a free people must have something beyond this world that they believe is worth killing and dying for. Europe seemingly has lost those ideals and beliefs that made it the nurse of freedom, democracy, and human rights. America has taken on that global role, but if we go the way of Europe, if we too no longer know what we believe, who will take our place? 

The Today programme interviewed the former head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, today.

What is the only thing of interest the website has taken from that interview and indeed the Today programme itself as it headlines the interview…Ex-MI6 boss rebuffs Johnson demo call…?  That Sawers criticises Boris Johnson for suggesting people protest outside of the Russian embassy about Syria.

He’d be better having them protest outside the BBC for what is happening in Syria and in Europe as it is flooded with refugees as the war is as much to do with the BBC’s actions as it has with Russia.

Sawers goes on in the interview to say that ‘What we are seeing in Aleppo today are the direct consequences of Britain’s decision not to engage ourselves, we vacated the theatre and the Russians moved in…it was a mistake…as chemical weapons were being used in Damascus….’

He means of course the chemical weapons like the ones that the BBC had a film of before the vote in Parliament on military action against Syria but which the BBC didn’t release until after the vote had happened….thus denying the MPs the most recent example of Assad’s use of weapons of mass destruction.  You must conclude a deliberate choice by the BBC to not release the film because they didn’t want military action to happen and they believed this film might sway the MPs.  Such an important decision could conceivably have been sent all the way up to the top, Lord Hall Hall, to decide.

Labour claim they didn’t have enough evidence…

The defeat comes as a potential blow to the authority of Mr Cameron, who had already watered down a government motion proposing military action, in response to Labour’s demands for more evidence of President Assad’s guilt.

…..the evidence that the BBC withheld.

You have to ask now why the BBC is so shy about highlighting Sawers’ comments about the failure of British foreign policy which has resulted in so much death and destruction and disorder.  Sawers notes that it was the vote in Parliament that was instrumental in influencing Obama to back away from military action as well.

Very serious and important points raised by Sawers and yet you find no mention on the website.  Why?  Possibly because what he says is in direct oppostion to everything the BBC believes in regard to the causes of the war in Syria, what can be done about it and of course the fact that the BBC always opposes any kind of military action…which brings us back to that vote.

Ed Miliband was of course the man who marched his troops up to the top of the hill and then ran away, backing out of supporting military action and betraying those millions of Syrians who now pay the price for his cowardice.  But why was he so keen not to go to war and why was Cameron so eager to accept the vote as absolutely final?  Because Media pressure, especially from the powerful and influential BBC, made politicians terrified of committing themselves to a course of action that they knew would be portrayed as illegal, disproportionate and probably as a war crime with every civilian death being laid at their door in graphic detail.

The BBC has spent over a decade attacking the politicians for the Iraq War and also even more disgracefullly attacking on their own behalf and in coordination with the wretched ambulance chasing lawyers [How little we hear of them now from the BBC as those same lawyers are being brought to book and their businesses taken down] the British troops that they hunted down and happily smeared with any and all claims of wrongdoing that were mostly baseless and without evidence.

Any wonder that politicians would think twice before taking any military action however justified and necessary.

Even now the BBC is aghast at the idea of confrontation as Andrew Mitchell compared the mass slaughter, the chemical weapons, the barrel bombs, the starvation, the bombing of schools, hospitals, aid convoys and welfare workers, with the Nazi support for the Fascists in Spain.  For some reason the BBC thought this was all too much…Adrian Chiles suggested that we shouldn’t use such language as it might only inflame the situation and that any action to contain Assad and the Russians would only be provocative and result in more fighting…and that would be bad…worse than the alternative presumably…. the BBC’s answer is to allow Assad and the Russians free reign to do as they like….the same BBC that relentlessly chases down British troops for the slightest misdemeanour.  Apparently we have to look at what happened last time we confronted Fascists who were set on taking over the world…we had a world war…can’t have that…so carry on Putin…where do you fancy next?  Poland, Hungary, Finland, maybe Sweden?  The BBC won’t object…too loudly.

In that comment by Chiles you have the very essence of the BBC thinking on so much…such as Islam and the Muslim community…don’t criticise them or they will get angry and discontented and become radicalised…and it will therefore be your fault….so look away and pretend it isn’t happening as they set up a parallel Islamic society….or the Russians annex country after country.  Rather have a Caliphate than take forceful action to prevent mini-Pakistans being set up across the UK and Europe.  Better red than dead.  Do not, whatever you do, ever stand up for your own culture, beliefs, values and society.  This only makes ‘them’ angry…be they Russians or Muslim fundamentalists.

Surrender is the basic BBC creed.

Trouble is the result of that surrender is hundreds of thousands dead, millions of refugees and a Europe being torn apart by the pressures heading their way in a seemingly unstoppable flow.

The irony…the ever so humane BBC helps cause one of the biggest humanitarian disasters since the second world war.

I see Theresa May has ordered Royal Mail bosses to explain themselves as Posties unwittingly shove scam letters through pensioners’ doors…perhaps she could have a word with another communication company’s top brass and suggest they stop supporting terrorists and mass murderers and start getting a grip on what is really going on in the world instead of continuing to live in a fantasy world where ‘diplomacy’ and refraining from confrontation is the only answer.   If the Russians know you have no intention of using force to back up your fine words then they will just laugh in your face….as Assad has for the last 4 years.

Even the leftwing Der Spiegel is seeing the light on Syria:

How Syria Became the New Global War

Obama put his eggs in the diplomatic basket, but without the threat of military intervention. The US hoped that Russia would be prepared to drop its support of Assad, an approach which has proven erroneous. Now, the strategists in the White House and in the State Department don’t know what to do.

The “red line” that Obama once drew — the use of chemical weapons by the regime — was transgressed by Assad without consequences. “That robbed US foreign policy of any deterrent effect,” says Thanassis Cambanis, an expert on the Middle East with the Century Foundation. America’s hesitant strategy, he says, encouraged Putin to test out a more offensive-minded approach in the conflict — and to actively intervene militarily a year ago. “Putin waited until he was certain that the US would not intervene and then he did so himself.”

After the vote in Parliament Paddy Ashdown was ashamed…

The result of the vote was condemned by former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown, who tweeted that in “50 years trying to serve my country I have never felt so depressed [or] ashamed”.

He later told the BBC that by doing nothing President Assad will use chemical weapons more “those weapons will become more commonplace in the Middle East battlefield” and “we will feel the effects of that as well”.

Now in 2016 Der Spiegel notes he was right:

This war isn’t just destroying Syria. It is changing the entire world. Leaders around the world who are interested in crushing uprisings among their populations will take a close look at how the world reacts when the rules of the international community — as weak as they may be — are completely ignored. Such leaders will be pleased to note that nothing is beyond the pale. Huge, bunker-busting bombs can be dropped with impunity on schools and hospitals, as Putin is now doing. Sarin and chlorine gas can be deployed, as Assad has done. And as long as you have a powerful ally, preferably one with a seat on the Security Council, nothing happens.

A few days ago, there were a few — but not many — newspaper reports that Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir had, according to Amnesty International, used chemical weapons in Darfur. The story wasn’t worth much more than a brief blurb. It has, after all, become normal once again.

If there is anything worse in the world than the BBC it is Ofcom, which seeks to help regulate the BBC! I was talking to James Whale about this story last night…

The BBC is “falling short” on serving older women and minority communities, the head of Ofcom has said. Media watchdog chief Sharon White said the corporation is “not doing as good a job as it should be” in these areas. “There is a gap there and it is a gap I would like to see closed over time,” she told the Financial Times.

A BBC spokesman said: “We don’t think any broadcaster does better in representing older women than the BBC.”

Here we have Ofcom actually encouraging the BBC to discriminate in favour of preferred groups, in this case older women and ethnic groups. As if the BBC does not already overly pander to these areas. Surely the person to get the job should be the best person based on their ability to do the job? I oppose discrimination on any grounds but it appears Ofcom, and now the BBC, will happily discriminate to ensure that Ms White’s wish is granted. Pathetic.

From Guido…

“The BBC has guidelines about journalists mouthing off their left-wing views on Twitter, guidelines ignored by Danny Carpenter of BBC Look North, who has rip on Facebook about the government in a comment on a post by Caroline Lucas of the Green Party:”

Is there any doubt that Mr Carpenter speaks on behalf of more than a few of his BBC pals? Sack him.

Continue reading →

Time for a new Open thread! Please detail the bias here.

It is increasingly difficult to distinguish this strife from a war of religions or a conflict of civilizations.

Interesting what informs and interests Clinton’s foreign policy [much the same as what informs BBC journalism in fact]….not Israel friendly at all…and Islamophobia is apparently a plot by a ‘cabal’…have a look at this email sent by her referencing a piece by Max Blumenthal…..

Erupting so many years after the September 11th trauma, this spasm of anti-Muslim bigotry might seem oddly timed and unexpectedly spontaneous. But think again: it’s the fruit of an organized, long-term campaign by a tight confederation of right-wing activists and operatives who first focused on Islamophobia soon after the September 11th attacks, but only attained critical mass during the Obama era. It was then that embittered conservative forces, voted out of power in 2008, sought with remarkable success to leverage cultural resentment into political and partisan gain. This network is obsessively fixated on the supposed spread of Muslim influence in America. Its apparatus spans continents, extending from Tea Party activists here to the European far right. It brings together in common cause right- wing ultra-Zionists, Christian evangelicals, and racist British soccer hooligans. It reflects an aggressively pro-Israel sensibility, with its key figures venerating the Jewish state as a Middle Eastern Fort Apache on the front lines of the Global War on Terror and urging the U.S. and various European powers to emulate its heavy-handed methods.

And this from an ex-US Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. that blames all the world’s ills on the creation of Israel and the US support for it…

There can be no doubt about the importance of today’s topic. The ongoing conflict in the Holy Land increasingly disturbs the world’s conscience as well as its tranquility. The Israel-Palestine issue began as a struggle in the context of European colonialism. In the post-colonial era, tension between Israelis and the Palestinians they dispossessed became, by degrees, the principal source of radicalization and instability in the Arab East and then the Arab world as a whole. It stimulated escalating terrorism against Israelis at home and their allies abroad. Since the end of the Cold War, the interaction between Israel and its captive Palestinian population has emerged as the fountainhead of global strife. It is increasingly difficult to distinguish this strife from a war of religions or a conflict of civilizations. For better or ill, my own country, the United States has played and continues to play the key international part in this contest. American policies, more than those of any other external actor, have the capacity to stoke or stifle the hatreds in the Middle East and to spread or reverse their infection of the wider world……Its concept of a “peace process” has therefore become the handmaiden of Israeli expansionism rather than a driver for peace. 

For more than four decades, Israel has been able to rely on aid from the United States to dominate its region militarily and to sustain its economic prosperity. It has counted on its leverage in American politics to block the application of international law and to protect itself from the political repercussions of its policies and actions. Unquestioning American support has enabled Israel to put the seizure of ever more land ahead of the achievement of a modus vivendi with the Palestinians or other Arabs. Neither violent resistance from the dispossessed nor objections from abroad have brought successive Israeli governments to question, let alone alter the priority they assign to land over peace. Ironically, Palestinians too have developed a dependency relationship with America. This has locked them into a political framework over which Israel exercises decisive influence. They have been powerless to end occupation, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and other humiliations by Jewish soldiers and settlers. Nor have they been able to prevent their progressive confinement in checkpoint-encircled ghettos on the West Bank and the great open-air prison of Gaza.

Absolutely no doubt whose side Freeman is on….let’s hope Clinton’s interest in his thoughts was merely academic.

As Jews are fleeing Europe due to mostly Muslim terrorism [as Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, admits], if Israel is wiped out as so many wish, where will the Israeli Jews flee to?

In the Banlieuerepublik Deutschland, a Jew runs into the US Embassy, grabs the Ambassador by the lapels and yells, “You’ve got to help me escape!” “Calm down,” replies the diplomat. “Here’s a map of Europe. Just pick any European country without a sizeable Muslim population, and I’ll make sure you can go there.” The Jew turns the map around and back, studying it from close by and from afar, finally asking the Ambassador, “Would you have another map for me?”

Euroweenieland is rapidly turning into a continent-sized no-go area for visibly Jewish Jews. Little wonder that former EU Commissioner Frits Bolkestein has warned them to get out now they still can. The vast majority of anti-Jewish incidents and attacks are attributable to Western Europe’s Muslim population – despite all the maliciously obfuscating MSM efforts to somehow pin the blame on the Far Right. The same goes for gay-bashing http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/ezra_levant/2010/10/08/15630946 .html.

Gay-bashers thrive in modern-day Netherlands

If you think Amsterdam is the gay capital of Europe, you’re half-right, but 10 years out of date. Today it’s the gay-bashing capital of Europe.

Because Amsterdam isn’t just gay. Now it’s Muslim, too. A million Moroccans and Turks have immigrated to the Netherlands, and sharia law rules the streets.

If you doubt it, then you haven’t been paying attention. Actually, that’s not fair. Gay-bashing is front-page news only when it’s committed by a straight, white male.

The media is terribly uncomfortable writing about gay-bashing by minorities. It’s the same reason why Canadian feminists are so eerily quiet about honour killings of Muslim girls.

According to an “offender study” by the University of Amsterdam, there were 201 reports of anti-gay violence in that city in 2007 – and researchers believe for every reported case there are as many as 25 unreported ones. Two thirds of the predators are Muslim youths.

Have to laugh at the BBC’s massive hypocrisy.  Trump makes one of his brash, crude statements that after age 35 it’s ‘check out time’ for women and the BBC are shocked by this sexism and ageism.  The same BBC that is renowned for its own sexism and ageism as it dumps older women for the dolly bird presenters….and by coincidence today Ofcom criticises that BBC for the very same….

BBC ‘falling short’ by failing to put older women on screen, says Ofcom chief

Sharon White, the chief executive of Ofcom, accused the broadcaster of “not doing as good a job as it should be” in its treatment of older women, after widespread complaints from viewers about a lack of mature female presenters.

The BBC has long faced criticism for its treatment of older women, and lost an age discrimination case brought by Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly, who was sacked in 2009, to make way for younger presenters.

The BBC’s hypocrisy is not confined to women but race as well as it slams the Tories as racist [some might say] for their ‘British jobs for British people’ statement and the, now watererd down, policy that firms should state how many foreign workers they have.

Hmmm…the same BBC that has its own quota system for race and which sacks white people to make way for more ethnically diverse ones.  I noted in a previous post that an Indian caller to 5Live who needed a visa to work here made the point that in fact there is a policy of ‘European jobs for Europeans’ as the EU laws give preference to EU nationals…something which the BBC is quite clearly campaigning for as it supports freedom of movement for EU workers.

Guido notes that America operates a similar, if even stricter, policy of having firms notify how many foreign workers they have.

And who else is making waves and the usual close to lunatic claims?  Newsnight’s James O’Brien who has compared Amber Rudd to Hitler……

Amber Rudd’s Conservative Party Conference speech has been likened to passages from Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf.

In her speech, the Home Secretary said firms should declare the percentage of foreign workers they employ as part of a drive to employ more local people.

The speech sparked fierce criticism and the Labour party said it would “fan the flames of xenophobia and hatred in our communities”. [LOL…the same Labour that said ‘British jobs for British people?!!!]

The Home Secretary defended her proposals to employ more British workers, saying “don’t call me a racist” for suggesting foreign people are taking British jobs.

But LBC Radio host James O’Brien has gone somewhat further, likening Ms Rudd’s address to the rhetoric found within the pages of Hitler’s autobiographical treatise on political ideology Mein Kampf. 

Mr O’Brien read out a passage of Hitler’s book on his radio show, telling listeners he was reading out part of the home secretary’s speech.

Completely fascile of O’Brien to compare what Rudd said with something Hitler wrote and thence say she is basically a Nazi….Hitler said many things in Mein Kampf that made sense along with many things that were clearly outrageous.  The outrageous stuff could and has been compared to what is written in the Koran…by Churchill….I await O’Brien making that comparison.  Naturally he won’t because he is too scared to do so….he picks the easy targets he thinks will get him the cheap applause from the loony left that fête him.

Change the countries and Hitler could be making the case for the EU in his opening passage to Mein Kampf….the same case the EU makes…regardless of the economics the EU countries will be forced together….

IT HAS turned out fortunate for me to-day that destiny appointed Braunau-on-the-Inn to be my birthplace. For that little town is situated just on the frontier between those two States the reunion of which seems, at least to us of the younger generation, a task to which we should devote our lives and in the pursuit of which every possible means should be employed. German-Austria must be restored to the great German Motherland. And not indeed on any grounds of economic calculation whatsoever. No, no. Even if the union were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, still it ought to take place.

O’Brien’s comparison is a nonsense as Rudd was merely sayng that firms should make every effort to employ and train British workers before importing cheap labour from outside and leaving the Brits on the ‘scrapheap’…she was not saying that the British nation depends upon having a pure race of Anglo-Saxon workers becoming joyous through work.

O’Brien is his usual über excitable lefty shock-jock making up cheap fantasy fascist connections where there are none…as he did with Farage…an interview that the BBC thought was so good they gave him a job on a supposedly prestigious Newsnight.  He continues the good work.  A valued BBC journalist.