Obama makes a blatant threat that if we vote for Brexit we’ll be at the back of the queue for trade deals.

So, let’s be clear…do what Obama says or else.  So much for a special relationship.

Back last year the US said there would be no deals…so ‘back of the queue’ seems like an improvement in some ways, however it is clearly a staged threat designed to get the headlines and scare people into voting to stay aboard the sinking ship….the US is in fact, like the EU, very, very keen to sign up countries to free trade deals…

Obama was sending a clear signal about strategic priorities. “His [Michael Froman] appointment is further proof that trade issues are front and centre for this administration.

And of course does much of its work through the World Trade Organisation whose rules are designed to free up trade and minimise tariffs…

Trade Agreements can create opportunities for Americans and help to grow the U.S. economy.

The United States has free trade agreements (FTAs) in effect with 20 countries. These FTAs build on the foundation of the WTO Agreement, with more comprehensive and stronger disciplines than the WTO Agreement. Many of our FTAs are bilateral agreements between two governments. But some, like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement, are multilateral agreements among several parties.

UNDERSTANDING THE WTO: THE AGREEMENTS
Tariffs: more bindings and closer to zero

The bulkiest results of Uruguay Round are the 22,500 pages listing individual countries’ commitments on specific categories of goods and services. These include commitments to cut and “bind” their customs duty rates on imports of goods. In some cases, tariffs are being cut to zero. There is also a significant increase in the number of “bound” tariffs — duty rates that are committed in the WTO and are difficult to raise.

The BBC seems remarkably sanguine about Obama’s threat and indeed seems to think it is worth repeating endlessly but without any critique of what Obama is saying….here the BBC randomly inserts the phrase into a report on other things Obama said but which are otherwise unrelated…

US President Barack Obama has urged young people to “reject pessimism and cynicism” and “know that progress is possible and problems can be solved”.  Speaking in London, he said: “Take a longer, more optimistic view of history.” 

Earlier, the US president visited the Globe theatre and watched actors perform scenes from Hamlet.  It came a day after he said Britain would be at “the back of the queue” for US trade deals if it left the EU.

No need for that, nothing to do with the report.

There’s scant discussion on Obama’s claims of the glories of the EU being the result of Britain’s membership..

“The UK is at its best when it’s helping to lead a strong European Union. It leverages UK power to be part of the EU.  “I don’t think the EU moderates British influence in the world, it magnifies it.”

The BBC suggests that the Brexit campaign needs to answer questions raised by Obama, curious that the BBC doesn’t similarly interrogate the Remain camp when they make sweeping claims of doom and anarchy if Britain goes independent and gave Osborne’s dodgy dossier from the Treasury a free pass with hardly a look askance.

What of the EU and security?  Does the EU make us safer?  Curiously Obama didn’t think so in March…

Mr Obama reflects on “what went wrong”, saying: “There’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up.”

Mr Cameron, he said, became “distracted by a range of other things”. He also criticised former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, saying he had tried to claim the spotlight.

He also criticised what he called “free riders” in the interview, saying European and Gulf countries were calling for action against Gaddafi, adding: “But what has been a habit over the last several decades in these circumstances is people pushing us to act but then showing an unwillingness to put any skin in the game.”

Hang on though…a few weeks later, a week before he is due to come to Europe to peddle Cameron’s script on the marvels of the EU, he sees it all differently…..

Asked for his worst mistake while in office, Mr Obama named the failure to plan for the aftermath of Col Gaddafi’s ousting as Libyan leader, which sparked years of instability that are only just showing signs of easing.

What can have changed?  Is he on the campaign trail for Cameron and any old cynical about-face will do? People will forget won’t they?….looks like the media has forgotten, so maybe he’s right and he’ll get away with it as the headlines are full of his dire warnings about Brexit.

What the BBC doesn’t point out is that the EU was always an American project as much as anyones with massive sums of money and support propping up the status quo from day one….

US officials trying to rebuild and stabilize postwar Europe worked from the assumption that it required rapid unification, perhaps leading to a United States of Europe. The encouragement of European unification, one of the most consistent components of Harry S. Truman’s foreign policy, was even more strongly emphasized under his successor General Dwight D.Eisenhower. Moreover, under both Truman and Eisenhower, US policymakers conceived of European unification not only as an important end in itself, but also as a way to solve the German problem.

The use of covert operations for the specific promotion of European unity has attracted little scholarly attention and remains poorly understood

The CIA admits as much itself…

Marshall suggested that European countries in need of aid should join in drawing up a program for presentation to the United States. Great Britain and France invited twenty-two countries to participate in a conference to draft a blueprint for European reconstruction. Sixteen nations responded, forming a Committee for European Economic Cooperation.

From the Telegraph…

Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs

DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement.

The documents confirm suspicions voiced at the time that America was working aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into a European state.

The State Department also played a role. A memo from the European section, dated June 11, 1965, advises the vice-president of the European Economic Community, Robert Marjolin, to pursue monetary union by stealth.

It recommends suppressing debate until the point at which “adoption of such proposals would become virtually inescapable”.

When reporting the words of Obama perhaps the BBC should be making more effort to put a bit of context into that and remind us that the EU is one of the Americans’ pet projects so that we can judge his words more fairly.

And remember just how much our ‘friendship’ with the US meant in 2010 when the sabres were rattling over the Falklands again…

So far, the mounting Falklands conflict has been met with deafening silence from Washington. …..[which] demonstrates an extraordinary level of indifference towards America’s closest ally.

Obama is keen to appease the likes of Hugo Chavez as part of his policy of engagement with dictatorial regimes, and does not want to rock the boat in Latin America. Thirdly, the alliance with Britain has been given extremely short shrift by the Obama team, who seemingly care little for the Anglo-American partnership or the broader transatlantic alliance.   It is at times of crisis that you know who your real friends are. 

Obama….Keen to appease dictators and those who run oppressive regimes…but quite happy to throw the democratic Brits to the sharks….and now keen to appease the EU and push the UK under a Euro-bus.

At 07:09 this morning on the Today programme we had a little heads up on the EU and Obama, and again no dismay or surprise at Obama’s blackmail but they did insist the Brexit campaign had to answer questions raised by Obama, though the BBC itself wasn’t bothering to tackle what he said in any critical way despite telling us that ‘controversy reigns over his words’.  The BBC seems to hold the Brexiteers to a higher standard than the EU’s fellow travellers when having to explain themselves.

We heard later on from Justin Webb that the US doesn’t want to make free trade deals with individual countries and prefers to make them with big blocs…..not true….

Free Trade Agreements Australia

The most telling statement againsts staying actually came from the pro-Remain Cahn as he admitted that the Euro single currency was a historic mistake that is at the heart of the EU’s problems.

No exploration of that major admission…..if that is the case what is the answer?  It can only be the reintroduction of national currencies and economic flexibility.  Which means that EU political and economic ‘ever-closer union’ would have to be halted and a more flexible approach adopted allowing countries to swiftly adapt to changing circumstances instead of being hog-tied to the German mega-economy that forces them into poverty whilst Germany reaps all the rewards.

The EU needs to reform massively, the ‘reforms’ that Cameron claims he got were laughable and nothing more than a political con-trick.  Without Britain leaving and forcing the EU to concentrate on the matter there will never be any genuine reform and the ideologically driven attempt to force so many vastly different nations into one ill-fitting Euro-empire will flounder on the rocks of the EU mandarins’ arrogance and ambitions.

Perhaps that is what is missing from the debate…just what is wrong with, and how badly wrong is,  the European Union?  Not only that but what are the risks attached to staying in the EU?  All the attention is on the so-called risks of leaving but of those of being ever more closely tied to that ‘sinking ship’ are generally ignored when they are very, very relevant as the EU heads towards ever-closer union and will inevitably try to drag Britain in with it along with signing up to that ‘historic mistake’ of the single currency….made all the harder to refuse with a ‘remain’ vote.

Below is the BBC’s Katty Kay’s little party political broadcast on behave of the Remain campaign…..

Something mysterious happened when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009.

Something vanished from that room, and no one could quite explain why.  It was a bust of Winston Churchill – the great British war time leader. It was a fine goggle-eyed object, done by the brilliant sculptor Jacob Epstein, and it had sat there for almost ten years.

But on day one of the Obama administration it was returned, without ceremony, to the British embassy in Washington. No one was sure whether the President had himself been involved in the decision.  Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President’s ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender.  Some said that perhaps Churchill was seen as less important than he once was. Perhaps his ideas were old-fashioned and out of date.

Well, if that’s why Churchill was banished from the Oval Office, they could not have been more wrong.

Boris in The Sun

Funny how all the pro-EU lobby pick out one remark out of many, and a remark that wasn’t one that Boris claimed to think himself, he was merely reporting various motivations for Obama, if it was him, and it was, to remove the Churchill bust.

The BBC isn’t too bothered with nuances or indeed truth….they just lay into Boris for his ‘racism’ as much as any other pro-EU, partisan, self-interested party.  The idea of course is to distract you from what Boris had to say about the hopeless EU regime…how many people just know about these claims of racism against Boris and never read the whole article in The Sun?  Any thoughts that this is just a highly politicised attack on Boris from the EU’s useful idiots? Shame the independent, honest and trusted BBC joins in with the anti-Boris slurs……

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg seems just a little too pleased at this…

Downing Street is cockahoop tonight, not just because of President Obama’s backing for the Remain campaign, but because of his elegant slapdown of Boris Johnson.

Mr Johnson raised eyebrows by referring to the president’s Kenyan roots, questioning whether that meant he had Britain’s best interests at heart. He also reminded Sun readers that Mr Obama had removed a bust of Churchill from the Oval Office, a story that didn’t escape the British press at the time.

Mr Johnson’s comments were branded offensive and insensitive by many but the president didn’t resort to even mentioning them. Instead, he spoke about how much he loved Winston Churchill, and why he had moved the bust of the former prime minister to his private residence, where he sees it every day.

The president didn’t just back the prime minister’s case, but smoothly and – without breaking a sweat – took the most well-known leader of the Leave campaign down a peg or two.

Kuenssberg is either in love with Obama or the EU, maybe both.  Boris is not in the race it seems.  Not much ‘journalism’ there…..just salacious tittle-tattle, inuendo and ‘smears’ of her own…note how Kuenssberg gets it wrong about the bust in the corridor…it was never in the Oval Office.

The BBC targets Boris even more obviously with this attempt to link Boris to racism and smears….

Obama hits back at Boris Johnson’s alleged smears

US president Barack Obama has hit back after Boris Johnson’s comments about his “part-Kenyan” ancestry.

Mr Johnson said the removal of a bust of Churchill from Obama’s office was seen by some as a sign of an “ancestral dislike of the British Empire”.

The comments in article for The Sun were branded “idiotic” and “deeply offensive” by Churchill’s grandson.

Mr Obama made clear his admiration for Britain’s wartime leader in pointed remarks at a press conference.

He did not mention Mr Johnson by name but said he had a bust of Churchill outside the Treaty Room – his private office on the second floor of his official residence.

Note the BBC only later admits that Soames is on the Pro-EU side and one of Churchill’s busts was removed from the Whitehouse……

A Churchill bust lent to President George Bush by Tony Blair was removed from the Oval Office along with other art lent to the Bush presidency after Mr Obama’s 2009 inauguration “as is common practice at the end of every presidency”, the White House said at the time.

Boris was right…the bust of Churchill was removed from the Oval Office and sent back to the British embassy…but a second one remains…in a corridor at the White House.  Boris only referred to the bust with pride of place in the Oval Office in his piece….a reference made by all the media when the bust was removed.

As for complete facts..is it Boris or the White House that got it wrong?…here’s the White House telling it like it isn’t….

Fact Check: The Bust of Winston Churchill

Summary:

The bust of Winston Churchill has a prominent place in the White House — in the Residence, outside the Treaty Room.

Lately, there’s been a rumor swirling around about the current location of the bust of Winston Churchill. Some have claimed that President Obama removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office and sent it back to the British Embassy.

Now, normally we wouldn’t address a rumor that’s so patently false, but just this morning the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer repeated this ridiculous claim in his column.  He said President Obama “started his Presidency by returning to the British Embassy the bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office.”

This is 100% false. The bust still in the White House. In the Residence. Outside the Treaty Room.

Hopefully this clears things up a bit and prevents folks from making this ridiculous claim again.

When the bust was removed from the White House the BBC of course sided with Obama explaining that Obama was “looking forward not backward”.  Which is why he put a bust of long dead MLK on his desk instead….perhaps that is why he titled his memoir… ‘Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance’.

When both the Guardian and the BBC report this tripe as if it were an honest comment you know we are being lied to..

Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell called for Mr Johnson to withdraw his comment, writing on Twitter: “Mask slips again. Boris part-Kenyan Obama comment is yet another example of dog whistle racism from senior Tories.”

The BBC and its fellow pro-EU travellers don’t want you to know what Boris said in full, rather distracting you with lurid and false claims of ‘dogwhistle racism’, so here is Boris’ article in The Sun in full…..

Something mysterious happened when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009.

Something vanished from that room, and no one could quite explain why.

It was a bust of Winston Churchill – the great British war time leader. It was a fine goggle-eyed object, done by the brilliant sculptor Jacob Epstein, and it had sat there for almost ten years.

But on day one of the Obama administration it was returned, without ceremony, to the British embassy in Washington.

No one was sure whether the President had himself been involved in the decision.

Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President’s ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender.

Some said that perhaps Churchill was seen as less important than he once was. Perhaps his ideas were old-fashioned and out of date.

Well, if that’s why Churchill was banished from the Oval Office, they could not have been more wrong.

What was he fighting for, in the Second World War? Why did he work so hard for the American entry into the war?

Yes, he was fighting for British survival; but he was also fighting against the dictatorships for democracy in Europe – for the right of the people to choose who makes their laws, and to kick them out at elections.

At the very heart of Winston Churchill’s political beliefs was what he saw as the supreme right of every voter, with his or her little pencil, to decide who governs the country.

And today it is a tragedy that the European Union – that body long ago established with the high and noble motive of making another war impossible – is itself beginning to stifle democracy, in this country and around Europe.

If you include both primary and secondary legislation, the EU now generates 60 per cent of all the laws that pass through Westminster.

We are are giving £20bn a year, or £350m a week, to Brussels – about half of which is spent by EU bureaucrats in this country, and half we never see again.

We have lost control of our borders to Brussels; we have lost control of our trade policy; and with every year that passes we see the EU take control of more and more areas of public policy.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg is now taking decisions about human rights of all kinds. In their desperation to prop up the euro, the other EU countries are planning a further lunge towards a political and fiscal union.

If we are stay in this system, we will find ourselves hauled inch by inch towards a federal superstate – with no proper accountability to the people.

Can you name your Euro-MP? Can you say what they are doing in Strasbourg?

It is a measure of the fatuity of that Euro-parliament that some of the bravest Euro-MPs, such as Sayeed Kamal and Daniel Hannan, are campaigning for Britain to leave.

This project is a million miles away from the Common Market that we signed up for in 1973.

It is deeply anti-democratic – and much as I admire the United States, and much as I respect the President, I believe he must admit that his country would not dream of embroiling itself in anything of the kind.

The US guards its democracy with more hysterical jealousy than any other country on earth.

It is not just that the Americans refuse to recognise the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, or that they have refused to sign up to the International Convention on the Law of the Sea.

America is the only country in the world that has so far failed to sign up to the UN convention on the rights of the child, or the UN convention on the emancipation of women.

For the United States to tell us in the UK that we must surrender control of so much of our democracy – it is a breathtaking example of the principle of do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do.

It is incoherent. It is inconsistent, and yes it is downright hypocritical. The Americans would never contemplate anything like the EU, for themselves or for their neighbours in their own hemisphere. Why should they think it right for us?

There are those who think that Britain has more “influence” within the EU than outside, and that therefore we can be of more value to Washington.

That is nonsense. The UK has been outvoted 40 times in Brussels in the last 5 years, and the total bill for those defeats – in extra costs for UK government and business – is put at £2.4 bn a year.

How can we have “influence” in the Brussels commission, when only 3.6 per cent of Commission officials come from this country?

Can you imagine the Americans entrusting their trade negotiations to a body that comprised only 3.6% Americans? The idea is laughable.

The truth is that the UK would GAIN influence outside. We would be able to speak up again in international bodies, rather than having our views represented – half-heartedly and imperfectly – by the EU.

Then there are those who say that we would be somehow more “influential” in Washington, because of our membership of the EU.

Really? We have been in the EU for 43 years, and we haven’t even been able to do a free trade deal with the US.

And then there are the defeatists who say that yes, the EU is anti-democratic, but that we are too small and frail to survive on our own.

I really don’t know what country they are talking about. The Britain I see is the fifth biggest economy on earth, a world leader in all kinds of 21 century sectors, with a capital city that is in many ways the capital of the world.

I think it is time to channel the spirit of the early Obama, and believe in Britain again.

Can we take back control of our borders and our money and our system of government? Yes we can.

Can we stand on our own two feet? Yes we can.

Can we build a new and prosperous relationship with the rest of the EU, based on free trade and intergovernmental cooperation? Yes we can.

Can we speak up for the hundreds of millions around the continent who also feel estranged from the Brussels project?

Can we once again be the champions of democracy? Yes we can.

And by doing all those we can thrive as never before – and therefore be even better and more valuable allies of the United States.

And so off into the wild blue yonder of the weekend! Detail the BBC bias here please.

A counter to the BBC’s endless pro-EU campaign propaganda……can we have a good free trade deal and no swarms of immigrants?

Cameron insists no-one will be keen to engage with an independent Britain and arrange trade deals with us, name-checking Canada as an example of why that is not a good idea, which is odd really as he himself was pretty keen for the EU to do a deal with Canada in 2012 as such a deal would bring enormous benefits to the UK and the EU…

Cameron urges EU to strike free trade deal with Canada. TORONTO STAR

27  Jan 2012 Toronto Star, page A4

OTTAWA— British Prime Minister David Cameron is urging his fellow European leaders to move quickly to sign a free-trade deal with Canada.

He said opening up export markets for the European Union’s 27 member countries is a key part of an urgently needed effort to strengthen the continent’s economies.

“Let’s get EU free trade agreements with India, Canada and Singapore finalized by the end of the year,” he said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

If these trade liberalization deals were in place, it could generate an additional $118 billion in economic activity in EU countries, Cameron said.

Government welcomes historic EU-Canada free trade agreement

Landmark trade deal between the EU and Canada will benefit the UK economy and businesses by over £1.3 billion a year.

The overall expected benefit to the EU is £7.9 billion and £5.6 billion for Canada each year. Canada will also gain greater access to a single market of 500 million people. The boost to Canada’s economy is C$12 billion and the equivalent to 80,000 jobs.

Hang on…free trade that’s very beneficial to the EU and Canada, amongst others?…and yet no freedom of movement of labour?  How can that be the BBC asks?  Was it the BBC asking or me?  Just me.

Would the EU lock the UK, the 5th largest economy in the world and an important trade partner with the EU, out of its markets?  Hardly seems likely when it is committed to open markets and free trade……import tariffs very low or zero…..

The EU benefits from being one of the most open economies in the world and remains committed to free trade.

• The average applied tariff for goods imported into the EU is very low. More than 70% of imports enter the EU at zero or reduced tariffs.

• The EU’s services markets are highly open and we have arguably the most open investment regime in the world.

• The EU has not reacted to the crisis by closing markets. However some the EU’s trading partners have not been so restrained as the EU has highlighted in the Trade and Investment Barriers Report and the report on protectionism.

• In fact the EU has retained its capacity to conclude and implement trade agreements. The recent Free Trade Agreements with South Korea and with Singapore are examples of this and the EU has an ambitious agenda of trade agreements in the pipeline.

And to re-emphasise that….. the EU is only 10% of world demand….there is a whole wide world of opportunity out there…..and the EU is very keen to make deals with non-EU trade partners……

Over the next ten to 15 years, 90% of world demand will be generated outside Europe. That is why it is a key priority for the EU to tap into this growth potential by opening up market opportunities for European businesses abroad. One way of ensuring this is through negotiating agreements with our key partners.

Remember why Cameron lost the 2010 election majority?…because he’s a slippery, untrustworthy supporter of the European Union who used every excuse under the sun to slip his ‘cast-iron guarantee’ for a referendum….

David Cameron U-turn denies Britain EU referendum

BRITONS have been robbed of the chance to vote on a power grab by Brussels despite promises of a referendum.

In the wake of the Lisbon Treaty fiasco, David Cameron vowed Britain would never again give away powers to Brussels without first holding a referendum.

In a spectacular U-turn, however, Mr Cameron has now backed plans to sneak changes into the Lisbon Treaty without triggering referendums across Europe.

It is a significant victory for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was last night dining with the Camerons at ­Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat in Buckinghamshire.

I imagine all Cameron’s twisting and turning on the referendum will leave the way open for a judicial review and a legal challenge as he undemocratically suppresses the Leave campaign and misuses the resources of government to campaign for what should be a lobby group interest and not a government one….the referendum is after all supposed to be a vote of the people not the bureaucracy.

And one last look at the sell-out Cameron’s untrustworthy judgement and nature…especially in light of his recent decision to make all schools academies…this is a bit ironic…from DV on ‘A Tangled Web’ in 2007

THE CON-SERVATIVE CAMERON…

Well now, hasn’t “Call Me [Dodgy] Dave” Cameron gotten himself into a real mess following his ever-so-clever idea to abandon English Grammar Schools in order to win plaudits for the left? Faced with a continuing revolt among MPs and grassroots Tories, David Willetts, the education spokesman, has announced that in some specific areas, new grammars could be built after all.  Two weeks ago Mr Willetts and Mr Cameron said selection by ability did not work and that no more grammar schools would be built under a Tory government.

Listen, I couldn’t be more pleased than to see Cameron swing on this. His betrayal of our Grammar’s is symptomatic of his more general betrayal of Conservative values. This man is a Vichy Conservative, and he has been destroying the Party that he leads. As if you needed any further evidence of Cameron’s true values, just consider the fact that he has appointed former editor of the “News of the World”, Andy Coulson, as their head of communications and planning. The “News of the World” is a scumbag rag. The fit with Cameron is perfect.

 

Natalie Rowe ‏@RealNatalieRowe 5 Nov 2015

The BBC used its own resources to attack and undermine its commercial Press rivals by claiming they knew about Whittingdale and suppressed the story in order to have some leverage over him in regard to Press regulation.

Logically that makes no sense….if they had published they would have reinforced the case against themselves in the fervid period just after Leveson and  although Whittingdale would have had to resign at the time his replacement would have been even harsher.  Rather than blackmail it was a straightforward calculation that to publish actually damaged their own case.

But the BBC has pressed on with the line that this was a blackmail scenario…and yet, as they try to attack the minister in charge of the BBC Charter review, you have to ask what did the BBC itself know?  It is inconceivable that they did not know in light of the widely known revelations on the internet and in the book by Natalie Rowe that spelt out in no uncertain terms that Whittingdale was damaged goods.

In June 2015 she published some of the photos and detailed the allegations….about a Tory minister and his drug addict, hooker girlfriend……

• Natalie Rowe ‏@RealNatalieRowe 15 Jun 2015

  Probably not the best Pic of #Whittingdale and his drug addict hooker, but I’m saving the best(and there’s a lot)

  
   

•  

  Natalie Rowe ‏@RealNatalieRowe 15 Jun 2015

  John Whittingdale TORY MINISTER & his Hooker, who he uses TAX PAYERS MONEY TO PAY HER RENT ON HIS EXPENSE ACCOUNT

  

  316 retweets 98 likes

The BBC knew about the scandal right from the start of 2014 and in the middle of 2015, nearly a year ago, there is perfect proof that the story was out there in all its glorious detail…and yet the BBC failed to report it and now hypocritically attacks the Press for doing the same.

The BBC couldn’t publish though it would have loved to do so as it would have been hypocritical in light of Leveson and the BBC’s support for that, and it would have looked a very obvious attack on someone with so much influence over the BBC’s future.  They had to wait until some other news source broke the story…and conveniently it was done so by Byline, conveniently with Peter Jukes, very much of the BBC, organising Byline’s workload…..but as it was a backwater publication it took the appearance of a press release on Hacked Off’s website reporting the story, referencing Byline, to give the BBC the real sanction to publish the story itself.   Note how Hacked Off avoided mentioning the lurid details of the allegations…was this principle or tactical?…..not wanting to appear like a sensationalist scandal mag and yet wanting to get the story out there to hit Whittingdale and the government were it hurts.   Not saying of course that Byline and Jukes, Hacked Off and the BBC, along with the BBC’s man, Hislop, were in any way in league with each other.

The BBC’s overboard reaction to this story was clearly a politically motivated, opportune attack on the man who has their future in his hands, and on the Press, which the BBC so looks down on and wishes to rein in so that it, the BBC, rules the media world and thus much of the real world, in effect.

Should there be an inquiry into the BBC’s reporting on this story so obviously is it targeted at getting a minsiter to resign and an attack on the free Press?

And why does the BBC not also target its old friend the Guardian?  It after all knew of the story themselves…and didn’t want to sign up to the new regulator…

Diane von Furstenberg: “I started my business to pay my own bills and sleep with whoever I wanted”

In fact, she’s the epitome of what you might call “a strong woman”. Von Furstenberg is dismissive of that term though. “I never met a woman who wasn’t strong” she declared, “but I think men and religion can make them hide it. It’s telling that when tragedy strikes it’s always the women who take over.”

Diane von Furstenberg started her business so that she didn’t have to rely on a man for a living and didn’t have to marry for security…she could do so, in the West, for love, even if the man was poor as a church, or mosque, mouse.

So women in the progressive West are pretty free to do as they like should circumstances permit…whereas in other cultures women maybe strong except when oppressed by men and religion.  And oppressed by other women….such as Anita Anand whose take on the world is naive and childlike and full of wishful thinking and wilful blindness.  Anand thinks religion plays no part in women’s oppression.

The BBC’s Anita Anand, in this 2002 article, is pretty unconcerned about the Burkha in Afghanistan and elsewhere because, you see, when the Taliban fell the women of Afghanistan didn’t all rush into the streets ripping off their veils, ipso facto, they are happy being clad in what amounts to a body bag…in reality they are in effect dead to the world, locked into that symbol of oppression.

The Taliban had been forced into the mountains. They had been bombed into the ground. They weren’t running the show anymore. And yet – and yet… women still didn’t take to the streets on mass and get rid of the veil. Sure some did. But not the majority. They still chose to wear the veil.

While the West was clapping itself on the back with such enthusiasm they lost sight of one point. The war against the Taliban can only make sense if we take into account the real truth. Their crime, as far as I am concerned, was not their belief in Islam – as my fellow speakers will tell you, women too voluntarily have that belief. The Taliban’s crime was that they didn’t give women a choice!

The Hindu Anand sticks up for Islam and the Taliban, not so bad it seems, as long as they give women a choice….well they do have a choice…being stoned or lashed.  Hurray for the good guys of the Taliban, so progressive.

She says she loves the West and yet criticises it as if it were the evil twin of the Taliban, the equal to its oppression of women.  She does that BBC trick of relativising everything and reducing the argument down to the point of sublime ridiculousness with single extreme points being used to represent whole swathes of culture, history and society…here she tries to suggest that all that suffrage is being presented as if it was purely to enable Jennifer Lopez et al to bare their breasts in public…

Let’s not indulge the idea that 1,000 years of women’s progress was achieved so Jennifer Lopez could display her breasts.

I don’t think any people do reduce the argument for women’s rights down to the right to go topless.  Somehow I think the argument is more rounded and grown up than that.

She reduces the criticism of Islam down to it being an argument solely about women’s rights, and even then she dismisses that as nothing to do with Islam.  In other words the Taliban aren’t so bad, they’re guided by Islam but it isn’t Islam that makes women wear the veil and  the Burkha …so the Taliban aren’t so bad really when compared to the West….the West that still oppresses women, secretly….

And OK – so we in the west have freedoms of choice and expression. Does that make the west a female-friendly place. Don’t kid yourselves for a second.

Ask yourself…if you were a woman where would you rather live…Afghanistan or any Islamic state, or the UK?

Anand then digs out some quotes from the Bible to show how despotic and misogynist Christians are….

We live in a nominally Christian country – and so (as George Dubya is so keen to remind us) do the Americans. Christianity believes that pretty much everything awful is the fault of Eve and her apple.

St Paul in the New Testament says: “ A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I don’t permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam wasn’t the one deceived. It was the woman was deceived and became a sinner, but women will be saved through childbearing.”

The reformer Martin Luther was even more blunt. Speaking of women and childbirth he said: “If they become tired or even die, that doesn’t matter. Let them die in childbirth, that’s why they are there”.

Words like this wouldn’t have been unheard of from the mouths of the Taleban a few months ago, would they? Perhaps the world of Kandahar and that of Big Brother really aren’t as different as we think.

So Mullah Omar [RIP] and Justin Welby…one and the same really, brothers under the skin, under the cassock?

A nonsense as Anand knows, the Christian Church has had its teeth pulled long ago and has been reduced to a ceremonial, ritualistic role that is more worthy godfather to the country than turbulent priest raving about hairshirts and damnation…those wannabe turbulent priests, such as Giles Fraser, have had to turn to Marxism to get their kicks these days, the Church has lost its bite…thankfully.  And that’s the point, Islam has not been neuteured so that it fits in with a tolerant, progressive, Western society.  It is still the ancient, barbaric, bigoted and intolerant ideology that stormed out of the desert 1400 years ago to imprison and colonise so much of the world at the point of a sword.

Which brings us to the latest of Anand’s anti-Western diatribes…for this she has linked up with the ‘Gone native’ William Dalrymple, who seems to have a preference for the Islamist to the Westerner.  This if anything is even more childish and infantile than the 2002 article…its language and use of simplistic and exaggerated representations of British actions as brutal or immoral are the stuff of naive teen essays thinking that sensationalism makes up for lack of argument….

Viewpoint: Koh-i-Noor – a gift at the point of a bayonet

The Koh-i-Noor was taken by the British, by force, from a frightened little boy, his son.

Therefore the diamond came to Britain thanks to dubious legality and very clear immorality.

Those untrustworthy, scheming, bullying British…

Despite signing treaties of friendship with Ranjit Singh, after his death the British began garrisoning troops around the border.

These were deemed acts of naked aggression by the Sikhs and provoked war. Having surreptitiously cut deals with leading members of his court, the British managed to persuade them to betray their King and weaken his army, leading to defeat in the first Anglo-Sikh War.

Inveigling their way into the Lahore Durbar in this way, they separated Duleep Singh from his mother, the Regent, dragging her screaming to a tower and contrived a second Anglo-Sikh war. What was left was a thoroughly weakened realm.

Alone and terrified, this small child was surrounded by grown British men, and told to sign away his future.

Alone and terrified?  Really?  In fact he was well served by his advisors as you’d expect any regent to be.  Anand paints a picture that is designed purely to attack the British, she makes no mention of the previous history of the diamond which would bring into the open the fact that it has changed hands, at the point of a bayonet, many times in its history and the ‘owner’ from whom the British took it was in fact only the owner due to it being forceably removed from a previous ‘owner’.

A previous BBC article makes this plain…

The Koh-i-Noor, meaning “Mountain of Light” in Persian, is the most famous diamond in the Crown Jewels. It has been the subject of conquest and intrigue for centuries, passing through the hands of Mughal princes, Iranian warriors, Afghan rulers and Punjabi Maharajas.

I guess Anand thought that might undermine the argument a bit too much…..winning it in battle is a perfectly normal and expected part of war….Nelson’s sailors were rewarded handsomely with money from the sale of captured ships.

Anand says….

Had the diamond truly been a gift, the Delhi Gazette, a British newspaper, would hardly have printed in May 1848: “This famous diamond (the largest and most precious in the world) forfeited by the treachery of the sovereign at Lahore, and now under the security of British bayonets at the fortress of Goindghur, it is hoped ere long, as one of the splendid trophies of our military valour, be brought to England in attention of the glory of our arms in India”.

But the diamond was not a gift and was never presented as such…it was taken in war as compensation for having to fight the war….as the man who arranged the transfer,  the Marquess of Dalhousie, explained…

The motive was simply this: that it was more for the honour of the Queen that the Koh-i-noor should be surrendered directly from the hand of the conquered prince into the hands of the sovereign who was his conqueror, than it should be presented to her as a gift—which is always a favour—by any joint-stock company among her subjects.

Anand finishes with this barb…..

I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of many “gifts” that are handed over at the point of a bayonet.

Can we have America back then from those violent, scheming Yankee rebels who took it from us at the point of a bayonet?…or how about Pakistan?  Can India have ‘Pakistan’ back as it was basically stolen at the point of a bayonet by the Muslims?

I note the article was originally titled…

Koh-i-Noor – a gift at the point of a bayonet

It was updated, and had some dates corrected, with this title…

Viewpoint: Koh-i-Noor – a gift at the point of a bayonet

Any thought that such an obviously one-sided article that painted the British in such a bad light without making reference to context and the broad sweep of history was eventually deigned slightly unworkable as ‘news’ and was reduced to a mere ‘viewpoint’ on consideration of its lack of merit as a factual piece?

Anand, despite professing her love of Britain, seems to have a few problems with the West…how soon she forgets the reason she is here in Britain….that her parents were driven out of what became Pakistan by the Muslim ethnic cleansing of the Hindus and Sikhs on Partition….the only reference to this was this uninformative comment which hardly gives evidence to the horrors that went on as nearly a million people were murdered and millions more driven from their homes and land in order to create a Muslim state…

 My parents were Hindus from India but before partition they came from the Muslim dominated North West Frontier Province

…and yet the BBC et al demonise Israel and demand its removal from the map and from its place in the world.  Why not then similarly Pakistan?  Anti-‘Zionism’?  Hardly.

Let’s keep the diamond and send Anand to the land of her fathers instead as she seems so enamoured with the culture of the Taliban….it must be terrifying for her to lie awake at night thinking that Justin Welby is planning to launch a religious war of conquest, a crusade, across Britain, teaming up with those extremists of the Catholic Church, expecting to hear the Inquisiton knocking at her door at any moment to test her faith in the one true God and to teach her to be a good Christian woman, quiet, submissive and obedient.

Cameron attacked Labour for supporting Sadiq Khan as their candidate to be the London Mayor….the Labour that ‘sympathises with terrorists’.

In his statement he said…..

“If we are going to condemn not just violent extremism but also the extremism that seeks to justify violence in any way, it is very important that we do not back these people and that we do not appear on platforms with them,” the Prime Minister said.

He told us that we must understand the problem of Islamic extremism within the Muslim community or we will take the wrong path to deal with it.

Well you could start with the MCB….the failure to understand their views and how those views are so very widespread within the Muslim community means that for years we have been failing to grasp the real problem behind ‘radicalisation’….it’s not poverty, marginalisation, discrimination or a war on Islam and Muslims…..it starts with an ideology that very clearly creates a very stark them and us divide within society.  The refusal by politicians and the media to admit that means it is left to fester…..and leaves us with a very uncertain future.

You may have noticed that the BBC has been doing some catching up on the subject of the Ahmadis after having refused to broadcast the fact that the murder of  Asad Shah in Glasgow was the result of mainstream Muslim hatred of Ahmadis.  However, you may also have noticed, that the BBC ascribes the hatred to the usual ‘small group of extremists who don’t represent Islam’ line.

Victoria Derbyshire took a look at the subject last week.  And yes, it’s just a small group of extremists to blame.  No mention of the views of the extremist, sorry, ‘conservative’, MCB which is by far and away the most representative Muslim organisation in the UK today…oh hang on, here’s the one mention we do get…a screen shot of the MCB’s mantra of peace and love scrolling by on a computer …the MCB ‘condemns violence or hatred towards any group’.…..that’s alright then…..

Others might disagree…from the Independent:

The Muslim Council of Britain has officially decided I’m not Islamic enough – but I never did anything wrong

Why should this even matter to an outsider? The MCB has for long been a credible organisation, representing several mosques and Islamic groups, and done a lot of valuable work on behalf of Muslim communities across the UK. But their recent statement has wider, and potentially dangerous, implications for us all.

When Muslims start playing God in this way, religious prejudice, bigotry and hate will inevitably rise – including here in Britain.

Why did the BBC put that screen shot front and centre in its programme and yet not mention the MCB’s real beliefs on the subject at all?  Not hard to find…here’s their latest pronouncement after the killing of Asad Shah…

Why does the BBC ignore the fact that this mainstream, powerful and influential Muslim group, lays the groundwork for the widespread Muslim beliefs about the Ahmadis that lead to such attacks, or indeed that such views are ddefinitely not the preserve of a small, unrepresentative, extremist segment of Muslims?

The BBC, as always ducking, the truth, scared of the real answer and what it means for Europe.

Always interesting those little comments that slip out and which reveal so much.

Peter Allen was discussing Northern Ireland and Stormont.  We heard how things may not be perfect now and people may not be happy with Stormont’s government but they forget how bad it was before…Allen piped up….‘A bit like Europe then’…..Yeah that’s right Peter, the EU, so unappreciated…it may not be perfect but let’s not forget that without it, that unelected, undemocratic EU regime that uses every trick in the book to force ‘ever-closer union’, submission and compliance to its demands, the Fascist dictators would be back in power.  The EU, we’re lucky to have it, you’re so right Peter…..better the devil you know.  Vote remain…tied to the Titanic.

We also had Cameron on PMQ’s attacking Labour for supporting Sadiq Khan who has very dubious beliefs and common purpose with some very dubious people.  Martha Kearney on World at One told us that the allegations against Khan were ‘disputed allegations’ which seems an odd turn of phrase clearly designed to throw doubt on allegations that are in fact very well founded.  She also told us that Labour MPs shouted ‘racist’ at Cameron…..now that is pretty well impossible to discern from the audio, I  heard one female voice shout it but only by listening very closely a couple of times, and it raises the question why the BBC would mention something so hard to hear….clearly just want to throw mud hoping it will stick [The Telegraph then picked up the story…but probably from the BBC…which shows how the BBC effects the whole media narrative and sets the hounds running]…no ‘disputed’ allegation of racism here though…..if you oppose Islamic extremism you’re a racist…..Labour playing the race card to close down democratic debate and ignoring the Islamism of its own Mayoral candidate and it’s Cameron that the BBC chooses to undermine.

Nicholas Witchell, still the BBC’s royal correspondent, had a sly dig at Prince Charles when discussing his own interview with Prince William.  Talking about his workload and how he decides what to give priority to, William said he was giving more time to his family.  Witchell decided this was the result of some deep, psychological trauma William had suffered …..ie he had been somehow neglected and he witnessed how his father had treated his mother…ie Diana and all that.  This was pure Witchell speculation and invention…nothing to do with Charles having called Witchell ‘That awful man’ once and William having snubbed him last year?….The man the royals love to HATE: So what HAS the BBC’s Nicholas Witchell done to upset them so much? 

No wonder Giles Fraser loves immigration so much….his flock doth increaseth so much….and as they probably don’t speak English too well it doesn’t matter that Giles speaks utter bilge most of the time….