Category Archives: BBC bias

Well so much for the new, inclusive, respectful of all views politics.  If you don’t all parrot Corbyn you’re out…unless you’re too big to sack in an obvious fit of pique.  Hilary Benn is no doubt on notice.

Two things about the BBC coverage…two very important and significant things.

One….where is any mention of Emily Thornberry, the new shadow secretary for defence, taking money from ‘thieving, ambulance chasing lawyers’?…as reported in the Telegraph...

Conservative MP Stewart Jackson said: “Will my Right Honourable Friend agree with me that it’s more than a matter of regret that the new shadow secretary of state for defence has seen fit to take a donation from the immoral, thieving and ambulance chasing lawyers Leigh Day, who together with public interest lawyers specialise in hounding our brave service personal in Iraq on spurious claims.”

As secretary for defence how can she possibly genuinely represent the forces when she is in the pay of lawyers who hound these same Forces personnel?   Not a question the BBC asks or even makes reference as far as I can tell…here’s the very latest BBC report...not a mention….

The only changes in the shadow cabinet see anti-Trident MP Emily Thornberry replacing shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle, who moves to culture to replace sacked Michael Dugher.

Kevan Jones …..described Ms Thornberry’s appointment as a mistake, saying it left the party’s defence policy “controlled by the North London Labour party”.

In an interview with the British Forces Broadcasting Service, she said she had “quite a lot more experience” than people were giving her credit for, pointing out she had family members in the military and a “regiment in my constituency”.

Second omission from the BBC’s reporting is the very relevant and current concern about the ‘narrative’ that feeds into the Jihadist’s propaganda…that the West is to blame for radicalising Muslims with a war on Muslims….a narrative that now sacked Pat McFadden opposed.

Now why would the BBC miss that out of its reporting?…a narrative that the BBC itself has promoted more times than I care to count.  Here’s the BBC’s reporting of Stephen Doughty’s resignation, done live on BBC TV…and yet they miss the crucial part of it……in fact despite having the video at the top of the page they don’t report any of his words on this matter saying merely that he was ‘singled out for punishment’….but why?…

Mr McFadden said Mr Corbyn had told him he thought his comments were “an attack on him and that he had come to the conclusion because of that and one or two other things that I shouldn’t continue”.

“He clearly feels that me saying terrorists are entirely responsible for their action, that no-one forces anyone to kill innocent people in Paris, to blow up the London Underground, to behead innocent aid workers, that when I say they are entirely responsible for that, he clearly interpreted that as an attack on him,” he added.

Shadow foreign minister Stephen Doughty – who announced his resignation on the BBC’s Daily Politics – said Mr McFadden had been “singled out for punishment for speaking with honesty and principle”.

They report that ‘terrorists are entirely responsible for their own actions’ but miss out the part that says it is unacceptable to blame the West….it’s a crucial point that plays into so many BBC narratives about the Iraq war, the rise of ISIS, the radicalisation of  ‘Young British Muslims’ and who is responsible for the subsequent refugees…no wonder the BBC wants to downplay criticism of its narrative.   The Guardian does report it…

However, he [Corbyn] decided to sack McFadden for what he saw as a variety of disloyal interventions, including a question to the prime minister in the House of Commons following the Paris atrocity.

McFadden asked David Cameron to reject the view that terrorist acts were always a response or a reaction to what the west did and to agree that such an approach risked infantilising terrorists when the truth was that they were adults who were entirely responsible for their actions.

Mcfadden finished the question with this…

“No one forces them to kill innocent people in Paris or Beirut and unless we are clear about that we will fail even to be able to understand the threat we face let alone confront it and ultimately overcome it.”

In other words the narrative of Corbyn, STW, Muslim fundamentalists and the BBC excuses terror and leads to a completely wrong-headed analysis and conclusion of cause and effect and hence the wrong solution…..ie the problem isn’t in the teachings and commands of Islam but in Western foreign policy…which must be changed to suit these terrorists and their sympathisers…..and note school exams are being changed to suit Muslims. Tail wagging dog?  Terrorism really does pay off doesn’t it as politicians et al run scared.

The BBC wants to keep on blaming the Iraq War for all the ills of the Middle East and also make the West to blame for the current wars and refugee migration.

The BBC has a lot to lose if politicians can successfully counter the BBC narrative which is all too apparently more concerned for terrorists, immigrants and Muslim provocateurs than it is for British troops, British interests, the British people, culture and national identity and society.

The climate change lobby was pretty insistent that the ‘Pause’ was non-existent or if there was any such pause it could only be taken as statistically significant if it was over at least 15 years…..however, one month of rain and apparently that is a sign that climate change is upon us again…..not only that but it doesn’t have to be global or even national…if it rains a lot into a bucket in your back yard the Met and the BBC will report that as ‘extreme rainfall’…never mind if it was a drought everywhere else.

The BBC and the Met. Office have been trumpeting ‘record rain in December’ as proof positive of climate change…man-made.

The BBC today repeatedly told us that the Met. Office said this was a record December rainfall in the UK…

Weather records: December was ‘wettest month for UK’

which is odd….

Matt Ridley in the Times on Monday said….

‘Finally, please resist the cheap excuse of climate change[for the floods].  It was Britain’s second wettest December.  The same month in 1929 was wetter’.

Now that caught my attention and so I looked up the Met. Office site...and indeed the latest news flash was this…..

It has been the wettest December on record for Scotland (333.1 mm), and for Wales (321 mm) and Northern Ireland is currently ranked 4^th wettest with 208.1 mm. North west England has also seen record breaking rainfall, but central and southern England have been much closer to average.

For the UK as a whole its currently the second wettest on record.

So the Met. Office confirmed Ridley’s point.

But hold on…. has it changed its mind 24 hours later?

5 January 2015 – The latest provisional statistics from the Met Office confirm December has broken records both for rainfall and temperature

The month was not only the wettest December on record, but also the wettest calendar month overall since records* began in 1910, while 2015 is the sixth wettest year on record (dating back to 1910).

So ‘the wettest December on record‘ but for which region?  Not the UK as a whole…so why did the Met. Office miss that out and why did the BBC decide to interpret it as meaning the UK as a whole?

The Met. Office goes on…

There has been a marked contrast in rainfall across the UK.  It has been the wettest December on record for Scotland (351 mm), and for Wales (359 mm) and the 2^nd wettest for Northern Ireland with 221 mm, just behind 1919 which recorded 224 mm.

What’s missing from the Met’s report is that important line that pulls the rug from their alarmist trumpeting….

For the UK as a whole its currently the second wettest on record.

And, according to Ridley, that record was set in 1929….apparently long before ‘man-made’ climate change began to happen.

Whilst December may be wettest for Scotland it is by no means the wettest year in the UK as a whole or in all its regions.

The BBC and the Met. Office are cherry picking not only regional weather and ignoring the bigger picture but also selecting a single month as ‘statistically significant’ evidence of climate change….If they want to do that then they should look at the records for England and Wales which show that the wettest years on record are mostly pre 20th century.

Here’s Harrabin proclaiming one month’s rain as the sign of things to come….did they say the same in 1929 then?

• roger harrabin ‏@RHarrabin 14h14 hours ago

  Is December weather the new normal? Is there a new normal? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35228779 … @ECIU_UK @CarbonBrief @eciu @Revkin @aDissentient

You just have to laugh at his nonsense……

•  

  roger harrabin ‏@RHarrabin Jan 4

  Are the BBC #climatechange deniers? Thoughts on #floods coverage on my new Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/roger.harrabin/ @ECIU_UK@CarbonBrief

So in summary, this was the 2nd wettest December on record but the BBC has been telling us that it was the wettest.

The BBC….Corrupt or incompetent?  Guided, misguided, by climate campaigner Roger Harrabin?  You decide.

There were massed attacks on women across Germany by groups of men of ‘north African or Arab appearance’…the BBC reports this and the appearance of the attackers and yet…and yet the BBC plays down that identity and the fact that they are almost certainly migrants.  The BBC seems a little too eager to tell us that some of the sites of the attacks were well known to be areas where pickpockets are operating or a street has ‘boisterous nightlife’…

….is the intention to suggest that the women perhaps had it coming being in such areas?…..erm like outside a train station and Cathedral….get raped or sexually assaulted..it’s your fault….

The pretty Christmas market and medieval setting may look idyllic, but at Christmas and New Year the area around Cologne Cathedral is a notorious danger zone when it comes to pickpockets and theft.

In Hamburg several women told police that gangs of men had molested and robbed them on New Year’s Eve on the Reeperbahn – a street known for its boisterous night life.

Some similar attacks were reported in Stuttgart.

Pickpockets?  Yes you may expect that, what you don’t expect is this…

Witnesses described groups of five to 15 men of who “hunted” women in the streets.

Nice of the BBC to play down the seriousness of such attacks.

And of course it shouldn’t be linked to migration…..

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas tweeted that “we won’t tolerate these abhorrent assaults on women – all those responsible must be brought to justice”.

But he also warned against simply linking the crimes to the issue of migrants and refugees.

A policeman who was outside Cologne station during the New Year’s Eve trouble told the city’s Express news website that he had detained eight suspects. “They were all asylum seekers, carrying copies of their residence certificates,” he said.

However, there was no official confirmation that asylum seekers had been involved in the violence. Commentators in Germany were quick to urge people not to jump to conclusions.

The Telegraph in contrast is more rounded and reveals that there is concern with immigration and a link to these attacks…

One MP from Angela Merkel’s party called for the numbers of refugees in the country to be reduced in the light of the attacks.

“It can’t go on like this,” Steffen Bilger wrote on Twitter. “Urgently needed: reduction of influx, secure borders, intensifying of deportations and meaningful justice. #Cologne.”

There were allegations of a police “cover-up” on social media after it took five days for the scale of the incidents to emerge, with some claiming the authorities wanted to hide the ethnicity of the perpetrators to avoid social tensions.

“The crimes were committed by a group of people who from appearance were largely from the North African or Arab world,” Wolfgang Albers, the Cologne police chief, told a press conference.

“It is intolerable that such offences are committed in the heart of the city,” he said.

In Hamburg, witnesses described groups of young men who followed women calling out “Bitch! Ficky ficky!”

The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Cologne lies, vowed to take action.

“We will not take gangs of North African men humiliating defenceless women with brazen sexual attacks,” Ralf Jäger, the state’s interior minister, said.

Love listening to Planet BBC, it is another world.

The 1400 year war between the Sunni and Shia?  The BBC asks will it become the 30 year war of our time on the Today programme (o8:50).

And apparently this  1400 year old war between two religious sects is not a religious war merely a ‘sectarian’ war….a 1400 year old war that started…guess when….in 2003 with the Iraq war when those multicultural Iraqis who loved each other and thrived in their mix of Shia, Sunni and Kurds (not the usual BBC narrative when blaming Sykes Picot for imposing an unwanted national identity on naturally antagonistic communities) were traumatised and turned into sectarian bigots by the invasion.

Kind of misses out the real history of the Sunni Saddam Hussein brutally suppressing the Shia and Kurds…hence them kicking off when his boot was off their throats….funny how the BBC can forget inconvenient history…

Who are the Iraqi Shia?

Shia Muslims were oppressed by Iraq’s Baathist regime for more than 30 years and excluded from the highest ranks of power.

They make up the majority of Iraq’s population – accounting for as much as 60% – and their support is seen as vital if any new Iraqi government is to have legitimacy.

Oh yes and you know what….how did our guest (Mary Kaldor…usual lefty academic) explain the problem of ‘extremists’ creating sectarianism?…people aren’t naturally sectarian apparently and you see children, ‘if UKIP were to use violence on our streets then the divisions between being British and not being British would be much more acute.’

Yes she really did compare UKIP to the terrorists in Iraq and John Humphrys said absolutely nothing to correct her.

Have you noticed the difference between how the BBC reports that the Swedes have started to control migration and the alarmed rhetoric we got when ‘Right-wing’ Hungary did the same?

No claims of fascism or Nazism or racism as levelled at the Hungarians….in fact the Swedish story has vanished off the BBC pages to be replaced by one about Denmark reacting to the Swedish actions.

The BBC isn’t resorting to the same abuse that it did with Hungary when we were told that the problem with East Europeans is that they are stuck in the dark ages due to their history and that their innate racism hasn’t been educated out of them yet, however Sweden is still treated to the glare of disapproval however moderately expressed….

Denmark has tightened its border controls with Germany, hours after Sweden imposed similar measures to deter migrants entering from Denmark.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said the decision was “not a happy moment” but Denmark “must respond” to Sweden’s restrictions.

Stojberg, Denmark’s integration minister, said the measures taken by Sweden meant Denmark was “faced with a serious risk to public order and internal security because a very large number of illegal immigrants may be stranded in the Copenhagen area”.

The move is expected to cause serious disruption to traffic flows from Denmark.

Danish Transport Minister Hans Christian Schmidt called the checks “extremely annoying”.

Holly Snaith, a British academic who commutes from Malmo to her job at Copenhagen University, told the BBC that the changes had added at least half an hour to her journey.

“We are all on tenterhooks hoping that the Swedish government will resolve things soon,” she said.

Nicholas Bean, who commutes from Malmo to his marketing job in Copenhagen, said: “Travellers aren’t happy about the Swedish government’s action… There has to be a better way to handle the problem.”

A similar set of border closures in eastern Europe in October left thousands of migrants stranded in poor weather conditions.

Apparently nobody is happy with Sweden which has taken such an irresponsible action…and oh those poor migrants ‘stranded in poor weather conditions’…should have stayed in sunny Turkey then…or one of the refugee camps provided at great expense but ignored for some reason as the migrants preferred to head for the land of milk, honey and free housing.

Oh yes…more BBC propaganda designed purely to push the line that we must accept refugees…nothing to do with ‘reporting’ in the slightest…you may have heard John Simpson’s attempt to persuade us that allowing millions of refugees into Europe is a good and humane thing to do, he used the fact that 250,000 Belgium refugees were allowed into the UK during WWI to bolster his case….what he didn’t mention was that as soon as the war was over the government forced nearly all of them out and sent them packing back to Belgium…Simpson should know that history as the BBC told it to us last year…..

“It was the largest influx of refugees in British history but it’s a story that is almost totally ignored,” says Tony Kushner, professor of modern history at the University of Southampton.

Syria might be in need of all those people itself when the time comes to rebuild…..but the BBC has decided that’s not a good idea.

Will the government send Syrians et al packing?  We know that ain’t going to happen with Syrians and others from the Middle East, or from wherever, today as once they get there feet across the threshhold they know they are here to stay…so the best thing is to keep them out from the start and care for them in locations closer to their own homes from where they can be repatriated when the time is right.

Simpson does admit to the real problem…Islam…

Yet there is one major difference between these waves of migrants in the past and the one we have seen in 2015.

Professor Alex Betts, director of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University, explains: “What’s dramatic about today is that this is the first time Europe has faced people coming in from the outside in large numbers as refugees.

“The fact that many are Muslims is perceived as challenging Europe’s identity.”

European societies are changing very fast indeed as a result of immigration.

Unfortunately he doesn’t go further and dodges the major conflicts that will ultimately arise from invasion of millions of Muslim migrants and instead blames bad government…

The influx of migrants reinforces people’s sense that their identity is under threat.

But how can the world deal conclusively with the problem?

The former UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Sir John Holmes, blames poor global governance.

We have endured an entire century of exile and homelessness and the cause is almost always the same – conflict and bad government.

Unless these are dealt with, the flow of migrants will never be stopped.

Actually the migrant flow can be stopped…Hungary proved it…you just shut the border.  The reason we get so many flooding towards Europe is because they heard Merkel’s siren call that all would be welcome…..when they start to realise the borders are shut they will stop coming in their millions….Turkey and other such transit countries will be lumbered with those ‘stranded in poor weather’ and will soon start to shut their borders…ala Denmark….a domino effect all the way back to the countries of origin.  Simples.

The BBC says we cannot stop them and we’d better get used to mass migration [Mark Easton™] but we can stop them if there is the will.  Just say no you’re not coming in.

Alright, 2016 has now really kicked in, Monday arrives and so does this NEW Open Thread. The floor belongs to you!!! Detail that bias here.

The BBC narrative on events in the Middle East has always been that Britain, and actions Britain has taken over the last century, have been to blame for events today….this narrative takes on more urgency for the BBC as the refugees flee the Middle East and head for Europe…the BBC needs to pin the blame for the war in Syria on Britain in order to induce guilt about the plight of the refugees and make them our responsibility…after all we ‘carved up the Middle East’ in a secret agreement with the French, didn’t we?  We’ve looked at this several times on this site, just two days ago the latest example, and the BBC’s remarkable ability to ignore the actual facts and make up their own account of history to suit their own agenda.

The Sunday Times by coincidence has published a similar correction to the BBC narrative, a narrative that serves only to recruit terrorists for ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups…..which is ironic really as the BBC is always telling us we need to change the narrative in order prevent the radicalisation of ‘young British Muslims’ as the BBC always likes to describe them. In fact only this Saturday we had the finest and most senior BBC journos giving us the benefit of their analysis of world events and the likely way they will unfold in 2016…they told us that this was a battle of ideas, that we need to battle the narrative that makes those ‘young British Muslims’ act out their religious duty for real.  We also  heard that launching a war against ISIS would only serve to make Muslims think that once again Muslims were the victims and would result in more recruits for ISIS.   This of course is the favoured BBC narrative in its effort to stop military action….unfortunately it doesn’t make the slightest sense….though that didn’t stop Nicky Campbell in an interview with Michael Fallon(39 mins) telling us this would be seen as ‘yet another example of a war against Muslims’.

Firstly you cannot leave an apocalyptic religious cult intent on murdering their way across the world in power.  Second why would ‘young British Muslims’ think attacking ISIS was an attack on Muslims?  Isn’t another BBC narrative that ISIS is not ‘Islamic’ and has no relation to Islam, Jihaids are not ‘Muslims’ apparently….and no right thinking Muslim believes they are?  If they are not ‘Muslims’ how can attacking them be attacking ‘Islam’?  And anyway, if they are ‘Muslim’, and they are, why would it be wrong to attack them when they are quite clearly committing horrendous crimes across the world?  Why would ‘young British Muslims’ get angry about such a group’s demise?

Back to the Sunday Times and the BBC’s anti-British narrative…..here’s what the Times said about that ‘infamous carving up of the Middle East’ narrative  favoured by terrorists and the BBC….

ISIS proclaimed itself as the Islamic State caliphate with two propaganda videos, one of which was entitled ‘The End of Sykes-Picot’.….a gunman in  the video said ‘This is the so-called border of Sykes-Picot.  We don’t recognise it, and we will never recognise it……Inshallah we break other borders also but we start with this one Inshallah.’

The Sykes-Picot agreement is thus an integral part of ISIS’s philosophy of hatred and resentment…..‘feeding people’s own narratives of themselves as playthings of outsiders.’

However, ISIS’s Sykes-Picot narrative is a myth, as the historian Sean McMeekein has persuasively argued in his book, The Ottoman Endgame.

ISIS’s propaganda ‘bears little resemblance to the history on which it is ostensibly based.  The partition of the Ottoman empire was not settled bilaterally by Britain and France in 1916 but rather at a multinational conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1923’.  Neither Sykes nor Picot played a significant role at Lausanne where the dominant figure was Kemal Attaturk, the Turkish nationalist leader.

‘Even in 1916,’ McMeekin points out, ‘Sykes and Picot played second and third fiddle to Russian foreign minister Sergei Sazonov who was the real driving force.’

‘None of the most notorious post-Ottoman borders were drawn by Sykes and Picot…even the ones they did sketch out were jettisoned after the war.’

In short, the ISIS myth about the Sykes-Picot agreement might animate its followers profoundly, but historically it is simply bunk.

Simply bunk….the ISIS/BBC narrative,  simply bunk.  Dangerous bunk but bunk.

Alan Kurdi’s aunt: ‘My dead nephew’s picture saved thousands of lives’

Why do BBC journalists insist on changing the name of Aylan Kurdi to Alan Kurdi?  Are they trying desperately to make the name more familiar, less ‘alien’ to Brits so that we feel more empathy for the boy?  Does the BBC really think nobody feels any empathy and that they have to manipulate us by disrespecting and exploiting the death of a child in order to make us feel anything?

The BBC journo even changes the name when written by others as ‘Aylan’….

Peter Bouckaert, Emergencies Director of Human Rights Watch, who wrote a blog post on why he felt it was justified to share the picture. “But in this case, I thought it was really important to share this image of a drowned boy because two Alan Kurdis are drowning every day on this journey.”

Here is what Bouckaert wrote…

I thought long and hard before I retweeted the photo of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi.

Not the first time the BBC has tried to manipulate the truth in order to persuade its readers of something…as when BBC reporters altered the name of the father of a child killed in Gaza from Jihad to Jehad….and of course claimed that he was killed by Israeli bombs when the truth was he was killed by an Hamas rocket.

The Iraqi army retook Ramadi and is in the process of finishing off the ISIS die-hards whom you may think have not a chance in hell of winning Ramadi back…..unless you listen to the BBC which downplays the hard-won victory and sees only more war, destruction and of course refugees coming out of more such attacks on ISIS positions.  The BBC’s reports following the main battle seemed solely concerned with the suffering of the civilians rather than the extraordinary victory of the Iraqi army which the BBC has always written off as undisciplined and lacking moral and at odds with the Sunni tribes.

That has now all been turned on its head…the Iraq army defeated ISIS forces in the hardest form of combat, urban warfare, and they did it with the help of Sunni tribal militia…who the BBC now admits were present…

Over the weekend Iraqi troops and allied Sunni tribal fighters helped civilians to safer places in Ramadi.

Listening to the BBC report on FOOC you knew you were being ‘groomed’ to be expected to accept more refugees due to the war and that the plight of the civilians was so awful that they had no choice but to flee to Europe….only as an after thought did the Iraqi army’s victory get a word or two of modest praise for their achievement.

The BBC’s unwillingness to ring the bells is nothing new of course…..it has spent years attacking the British army and doing everything it could to prevent it doing its job by making the politicians run scared of casualties both ours and civilians….

A former Army commander says there is a “real risk” that Britain could lose the conflict in Afghanistan.

Col Stuart Tootal, writing in the Sunday Mirror, said a lack of political will could damage the military campaign against the Taleban.

Col Tootal said that if the conflict was lost “it will not be in places like Helmand, but in the corridors of power in cities like London and Washington.

“Counter-insurgency conflicts are rarely lost by the fighting troops, but in the arena of domestic public opinion when there is a lack of the political will to make the right commitment to see them through.”

Col Tootal said he believed the campaign in Afghanistan to be “winnable”.

But he added: “Mounting casualties and an incoherent and under-resourced strategy paint a pessimistic picture.

“It will take statesmanship to put extra troops, helicopters, equipment and proper development programmes in place, but the benefits are considerable.”

The politicians are lacking the will because they know they will be hung out to dry by the BBC….a BBC already licking its lips at the prospect of British troops being dragged through the courts once again due to ambulance chasing lawyers drumming up allegations of abuse from any Iraqi they could get to make the claims.

David Vance said it all way back in 2009…

It must be awful to be a UK military family listening to the BBC for news of the campaign in Afghanistan. Radio Taliban would be less depressing than the State Broadcaster. The meme concerning Afghanistan has now morphed into the same one that prevailed when we were in Iraq. The cause is hopeless, we cannot win, UK lives are being sacrificed for no reason, we must get out. It’s defeatism, of course, and it is something the BBC excels at promoting.

Nothing has changed…here’s the BBC today trying its best to paint an entirely negative picture of British airstrikes in Syria……Are UK bombs making a difference in Syria?

Despite the vote, the focus of British military action has continued to be on Iraq. The RAF’s much lauded brimstone missile has not yet even been fired over Syria.

The prime minister’s claim that the RAF would make a “meaningful difference” there has yet to be borne out.

It is worth recalling that David Cameron argued for Britain to join the Syria air strikes.

Before the parliamentary vote, David Cameron admitted the situation on the ground in Syria was “complex”.

But his assertion that there were about 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters, who did not belong to extremists groups, still seems fanciful.

Britain’s very limited involvement in Syria, along with its limited number of aircraft, still raises questions and doubts.

Is the UK really making a “meaningful difference”? Or was the vote on 2 December as much to do with politics as military effect?

Note the sneering tone and negative language.  The reporter asks if the Syria vote had a political element….he asks as if this was some sort of secret…and yet we always knew that the US was the main provider of airstrikes and that we would be providing very few but it was important to have that option and to stand alongside our allies especially as the Russians were getting more and more involved…..

David Cameron set out the “moral” and “security” case for bombing Isis in Syria in the Commons last week, saying it was morally unacceptable to leave the US, France and other allies to carry the burden. “If not now, when?” he asked MPs.

Cameron also stated that…

I’m not saying that we will solve this problem simply by crossing a line from Iraq into Syria.

“We’ll solve this problem if we have a political strategy, a diplomatic strategy, a humanitarian strategy.”

It is an irony that the BBC, which complains so bitterly about airstrikes happening, is now complaining that there aren’t enough of them.  It seems that the BBC is solely intent on creating negative news about the war and about the government.  Also an irony that it is the BBC et al who always say that bombing alone cannot defeat the likes of ISIS…..and now complain impatiently as Cameron pieces together a political, diplomatic and humanitarian strategy as well as the necessary intelligence to complement and guide the military action…after all getting all those ‘moderate’ rebels to unite won’t be a quick  nor easy task.

And let’s not forget...the UN sanctioned action against ISIS….

The resolution unanimously agreed at the UN security council on Friday gives us a compelling mandate to act – legally and morally.

I’m guessing the BBC must be desperately casting around for as much negativity as possible in light of the UN approval pulling the rug from under their usual anti-war rhetoric.

The BBC was shut down for a while by hackers.  You wouldn’t put it past them to have organised it themselves in order to generate an ‘OMG!!!  Where’s the BBC?  What am I going to do with my life without the brilliant BBC, I miss it so much!?’ reaction in the run up to charter renewal…however of course that is conspiracy central nonsense….it was hackers practising their dark arts as they prepared to go to war with the Islamic State, its websites and social media presence.

Have to say the hackers couldn’t actually have started in a better place if they wanted to attack a news service and website that produces endless streams of pro-Muslim terrorist narratives.  That would definitely be the BBC.

The Guardian reports…..

Activists who say their goal is to disrupt online propaganda by Islamic State have claimed responsibility for a cyber-attack on the BBC website.

The New Year’s Eve attack took down the iPlayer and other services for a few hours, according to Joe Lynam, the BBC’s business correspondent.

Lynam told BBC Breakfast that the technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, had received a tweet from a group calling itself New World Hacking (NWH), claiming responsibility for a distributed denial of service (DDoS). It bombarded the system with 600 gigabits a second of messages.

Lynam said: “Their ultimate goal, believe it or not, is not to attack the BBC but to go for Isis, the group which often calls itself Islamic State, and all their servers so they cannot spread propaganda from various different websites.

ISIS, the BBC, The BBC, ISIS.  Yeah, I can definitely see why they’d start with a dry run at the BBC.