Category Archives: BBC bias

Fill Yer Boots!

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No surprise the BBC favours this….From the Independent:

End of the licence fee: BBC to back radical overhaul of how it is funded

The BBC will back a radical overhaul of the licence fee, paving the way for the end of the current system of funding the state broadcaster, the Corporation’s head, Tony Hall, is expected to say today.

In a speech to staff at Broadcasting House, Lord Hall is expected to indicate the Corporation’s backing for a broadcasting levy that would apply to every household, regardless of whether they have a television.

Last week the parliamentary Culture, Media and Sport Committee said the £145.50 annual licence fee should ultimately be replaced by a German-style “broadcasting levy” that would apply to every household. The change would allow the BBC to collect funds from the estimated 500,000 households which claim not to have a television or only watch programmes on-demand through platforms like the BBC iPlayer.

However MPs believe the earliest that a levy could be introduced in the UK would be 2026.

The system, introduced in Germany in 2013, would do away with the need to detect and prosecute those who avoid buying a TV licence. It is estimated that licence-fee collection costs £120m, with the BBC losing £250m to those who evade paying the charge.

 

Not a bad little earner….500,000 new ‘subscribers’ providing £73 million…plus £120 million not spent on collection costs, plus £250 million it claims it now loses from evasion….nearly half a billion extra in the BBC kitty all paying for….

“….a strong BBC helping bind the country together at home and championing it abroad. A British creative beacon to the world. Providing a universal service for a universal fee. An internet-first BBC which belongs to everyone.”

A household levy would future-proof the BBC since it reaffirms the concept that its contribution to public service broadcasting ought to be funded by a universal tax.

 

A BBC that ‘binds the country together’?  Or a BBC intent on tearing it apart…remember this is the BBC that tells you there is no such thing as an English identity.

As for its ‘contribution to public service’…this is the BBC that has totally corrupted politics in this country and is working to gerrymander the general election in favour of one political party.

 

Robin Aitken has his own views on the BBC’s merits…

Why the BBC doesn’t deserve to have the licence fee increased

Among the BBC top brass there is a perennial anxiety about a perceived threat to its funding. And who could blame them? Consider this: unlike any of its media competitors the BBC is able – give or take a few million – to predict what its income will be next year and the year after that. Now think how much of an advantage that gives the Corporation. While other broadcasters, and all newspapers, must fight tooth and nail to maintain an income stream, BBC strategists can plan their future operations at leisure. That hefty wad of banknotes comfortably insulates them from immediate financial worries and allows them to plough money into new ventures where start-up costs can be intimidating for competitors. It is why the BBC has been able to develop its world-class website: the Corporation threw money at it until it worked properly with the result that it is now a global leader in online news.

So no wonder the BBC takes any threat to cut down the licence fee money tree seriously. Their salaries – and the status and success of the Corporation – depend on its continuation.

If – God-willing – there is a Conservative government next year when the BBC’s Royal Charter comes up for renewal, a bargain could be struck. The licence fee could be maintained – but not increased (it will be salutary for the Corporation to live within its means).

In return the BBC should renew its vows to impartiality; no more fixing the agenda to suit the Left; no more old pals appointments like that of Director of Strategy James Purnell (ex Labour minister); no more left-wing rants masquerading as ‘comedy’ (viz The News Quiz). A BBC fair to all, one we can all be proud of.

Well…. we can but hope.

 

 

Not Us Gov!

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Extraordinary excuse from the BBC that it claims allows it to broadcast programmes that are explicitly biased….it’s OK as long as they aren’t made by the BBC itself…(H/T George R)

A BBC spokesman responded to the accusations over EU funding and bias saying:

No EU money was used in the making of the programme being aired on the BBC. Impartiality is of paramount importance for the BBC.

This fictional programme reflects the author’s vision. BBC editorial guidelines do not prevent the acquisition of independent programmes which approach subjects from a particular perspective. ”

 

That gives the BBC an extraordinary freedom to broadcast basically what it likes under the guise of it being ‘independent’ regardless of any ‘message’ being embedded within such programmes.

Did like that  ‘ Impartiality is of paramount importance for the BBC.’

 

 

 

 

As Robert Peston Said….. ‘Bollocks’

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'Faction': The BBC describes The Great European Disaster Movie as an 'authored documentary', but the film has been criticised as a hyped-up piece of pro-EU propaganda.

 

 

What on earth will the BBC do with all its time if Labour wins the election?

‘The Casual Vacancy’ is continuing on its merry leftwing way whilst BBC News brings us the Truth when the Legend becomes the Truth.  Tomorrow we have Panorama bringing us a whole series of programmes on the state of the Nation…the description doesn’t  give you much confidence that it will be a programme that is in any way uplifting….any doubts that the ‘rich will be getting richer whilst the rest are getting ever poorer’ under the Tories and a new economic system or plan must be implemented…preferably a 5 year one?….

With the General Election fast approaching, reporter Fergal Keane investigates whether modern-day Britain is up to the task of delivering on the things that have traditionally defined `good living’ for generations. In the first of four programmes, Keane asks if owning a family home, having a good job, feeling part of a community and retaining hope for the future remain realistic aspirations for today’s Britons.

As the standard of living, or ‘good living’ as the BBC terms it, is a Labour meme it might be thought that the BBC is feeding us a line that ties in with the Labour election campaign.

 

The BBC receives millions of pounds from the EU to pump out pro-European propaganda.  What does it get for its money?

The BBC is  bringing us something that is outrageously biased and should result in an immediate referral to Ofcom for gross failure to comply with its legal duty to be impartial….or in the words of the BBC something…’Sombre, thought-provoking and witty, the film frames Europe through the eyes of those who have most at stake – the Europeans themselves.’

BBC’s apocalyptic drama about the tragedy of an EU break-up is condemned as ‘scaremongering propaganda’

An army of Islamic State terrorists has advanced to the outskirts of Vienna, Spain has cut off routes to Gibraltar and Nigel Farage – prime minister of ‘Great England’ – has deported all immigrants who have arrived in the past ten years.

This, according to the BBC, is what the world would be like if the European Union were to collapse.

The apocalyptic vision of a continent in which social order has broken down – to be screened on BBC4 tonight at 10pm – has been condemned by Eurosceptic critics as ‘scaremongering’.

The 75-minute film shows what the supposedly impartial broadcaster suggests might happen should the EU implode, and depicts the final days of the European dream as it turns into a nightmare of worthless currencies and predictions of even darker days to come.

The BBC describes The Great European Disaster Movie as an ‘authored documentary’, but the film – which features comedian Angus Deayton as an archaeologist struggling to explain what the single currency was to a young girl sitting next to him on a plane – has been criticised as a hyped-up piece of pro-EU propaganda.

Horrifying images of concentration camp victims are interspersed with wartime footage of devastated cities, while commentary is provided by former Economist editor Bill Emmott, who made the film with Italian journalist Annalisa Piras.

  • In the film, Mr Emmott warns: ‘Our worry is that if Europe continues on its current path, the EU will collapse and that that would have catastrophic consequences for all of us.’ Viewers see a glimpse of a post-EU continent in which:Visas and landing cards are required for travel between European countries;
  • A power crisis in Germany has put Berlin airport out of action.
  • The new president of France, far-Right leader Marine Le Pen, has declared a state of emergency.
  • EU chiefs, meeting in Berlin, have abolished the euro.
  • Looters are rampaging through Rome after the shooting of protesters by police.
  • Fierce fighting erupts in Vienna as the ‘unstoppable’ advance of IS fighters continues.

The terrifying sequence of events ends with Angela Merkel resigning as European Council president and overseeing a vote to abolish the EU. In his commentary, Mr Emmott admits immigration imposes financial burdens on nations but insists that in the long term it creates the resources needed to maintain a welfare state.

In the film, the girl – apparently being deported from Britain because she has an Italian mother – asks Angus Deayton about pictures of bridges on an old euro banknote.

He tells her: ‘They were supposed to symbolise unity, unification, all the countries being connected. It was a great idea but unfortunately it didn’t work.’

Son of a Labour Peer, Robert Peston, will be ‘debating’ the film on Newsnight…

The Great European Disaster Movie: Newsnight Debate

Robert Peston presents a discussion in which a panel of guests debate the issues raised by Bill Emmott’s authored Storyville documentary on the problems facing the European Union.

 

 

 

A Fairhead’s Pay For A Fairhead’s Work

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Back at the beginning of February the BBC carefully picked its target, chose the perfect time and let loose hoping to mix things up for the Tories in the run-up to the election.

When the BBC and the Guardian fired a broadside at HSBC earlier this year the target was not in fact HSBC….after all HSBC’s tax avoidance story was over 5 years old and well known.  To be sure one of the biggest and most successful banks in the world would be a famous scalp for the anti-business BBC and Guardianistas but they had their eyes on targets closer to home.

They knew that Stephen Green’s history as head of HSBC and his position as a Tory Peer, elevated to those dizzy heights after the HSBC tax evasion story broke, would be toxic for the Tories and fed directly into Labour’s narrative of the Tory Party protecting its Big Business friends in the City whilst cutting the benefits of the poorest and most vulnerable in Society.  And so it turned out, that was exactly what happened as the sinking Miliband clutched the lifeline thrown to him and launched his own attack…

Miliband attacks ‘dodgy’ PM in HSBC donor row

Ed Miliband has called David Cameron a “dodgy prime minister surrounded by dodgy donors”, in a row over party grandees with Swiss bank accounts.

 

The story was more about Stephen Green and his Tory connections than HSBC and the hoped for damage that this could do to perceptions of the Tory Party as the party of City financiers.

 

Which brings us to a report in the Sunday Mail…

Revealed: Tax scandal-hit HSBC is paying an astonishing £513,000 in fees to BBC Trust chairman

The woman who leads the BBC is being paid a staggering £10,000 a day by the scandal-hit bank accused of helping millionaires to avoid paying tax.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Rona Fairhead – chairman of the BBC Trust – was paid more than £500,000 last year by HSBC for non-executive roles carried out working the equivalent of one day a week.

Last night MPs said the astonishing payment from the bank raised questions about her priorities, as it dwarfs the £110,000 salary she is paid to work the equivalent of three days a week to oversee the BBC on behalf of licence fee payers.

 

If the Tories were so inept or careless to make Green a Peer and employ him as a Tory minister after revelations about HSBC broke, and note it was an appointment welcomed by Labour at the time, how much more difficult must it be for the BBC to have  Rona Fairhead appointed as head of the BBC Trust especially as she was chairman of HSBC’s audit committee for a long time?

Now the BBC claim ‘ “she had not taken part in any discussions about its coverage of the bank.” But the tax evasion claims have been discussed at board level within HSBC. And if the bank complains about the BBC’s reports, the Trust could be asked to adjudicate’ .

So Fairhead would be compromised in any situation where HSBC, or I suppose the Tory Party, complained about the BBC’s coverage of the story, but it also shows the BBC’s hypocrisy in attacking the Tories for making Green a minister when the BBC, so many years later and with Fairhead still employed by HSBC, and considering her actual position at HSBC as chairman of its audit committee, the BBC has her at the helm of its own regulatory body overseeing its strategy and dealing with complaints.

It’s no wonder she admitted she didn’t think the BBC was biased in the run up to her appointment…it looks like she would never have the time to watch, listen or read the BBC’s output with so many lucrative jobs under her belt.

 

 

 

 

 

Islam’s Very Own ‘Charlie Hebdo’

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The Russians and the Islamists crushing the civilised man in 1907…how relevant for today.

 


How Muslim Azerbaijan had satire years before Charlie Hebdo

By Konul Khalilova Editor, BBC Azeri service

An Azeri woman points to a building with windows, which is a prison, while on their right is a house of Muslim women with none. Picture: Courtesy of the Azerbaijan National Library.     In this cartoon, the magazine depicts a prison with windows and a house of Muslim women with none

More than 100 years before militant Islamist gunmen murdered journalists at France’s satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, another magazine very similar in style was playing an important role among the Muslim populations of both the Russian and Persian empires.

Azerbaijani weekly magazine Molla Nasreddin was revolutionary for its time, bravely ridiculing clerics and criticising the political elite as well as the Russian Tsar and the Shah of Persia.

Founded in 1906, it pulled no punches in tackling geopolitical events and also promoted women’s rights and Westernisation.

The editor-in-chief of the magazine was Jalil Mammadguluzadeh (known as Mirza Jalil), a famous Azerbaijani writer, who was also a well-known novelist.

In his book, The Dead, the main protagonist is a drunken atheist, treated as a madman for telling the truth about his backward society, where girls as young as nine are forced to marry 50-year-old men.

The magazine’s title, Molla Nasreddin, came from the name of the naive but wise mullah, famous throughout the Middle East for his anecdotes.

First issue of Molla Nasreddin magazine. 1906   First issue of Molla Nasreddin magazine. 1906

 

On the cover of the first issue, Molla Nasreddin is shown waking “the sleeping nations of the East”.

For more than 20 years, the magazine bearing his name would present the world to its readers through the medium of cartoons and text.

“The magazine’s first issue exploded like a bomb,” renowned writer Ebdurrehimbey Haqverdiyev recalled in his memoirs.

“Mullahs were saying that the magazine should not enter the house of any Muslim. If it does, they said, grab it with tongs and throw it down the toilet.”

“Keep the Holy Koran in a clean place” – the cartoon was describing a child, dogs and other creatures treated as dirt vs Koran in peoples' hands.    The cartoon describes a child, dogs and other creatures treated as dirt unlike the Koran in people’s hands.

 

Molla Nasreddin addressed uneducated Azerbaijanis, unlike other publications of the time, which were heavily influenced by Anatolian Turkish, Russian or Persian.

The texts were in simple language and the cartoons were easy to understand, often targeting clerics, which the magazine’s writers saw as the enemies of education and a secular society.

This cartoon from 1909 had a pretty short explanation: “Pilgrimage to Hajj”.     This 1909 cartoon, Pilgrimage to Hajj, had a pretty clear message

 

Mirza Jalil said his magazine was a product of its time, when the majority of the population was illiterate, ruled by the Russian and Persian empires and directed by religious leaders.

It was published in the Azerbaijani language (initially in Arabic script but later in Latin, with the start of the Soviet regime) but occasionally in Russian, too.

The following two cartoons are particularly forthright in the way they compare negatively the product of education at religious, “Asian schools” with the results from secular, European institutions.

The Asian school   Students enter an “Asian school” and leave as donkeys
The European school   Students enter a European school and leave as educated adults

 

 

Women were seen as having no rights in society or within their own families, and subject to oppression and beatings from their husbands.

The magazine clearly opposed the intervention of religion in the individual freedoms of a secular state.

In top cartoon a boy is born, in bottom a girl is born   In the top cartoon a boy is born, while below the father responds to the birth of a girl (1909)

 

But mocking clerics and campaigning for women’s rights came with its own risks.

Mullahs in Persia issued a fatwa calling for Mirza Jalil’s death. He was attacked in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where the magazine was published, and constantly threatened. The city was then the cultural capital of Russia’s South Caucasus.

“Had I published the magazine not in Tbilisi but in Baku or Yerevan [capital of modern-day Armenia where Azerbaijanis made up the majority of the population at the time], they would have destroyed my office and killed me,” Jalil explained.

For many of its readers, the magazine opened a window on world politics, but in satirical language.

The cartoon below shows the Ottoman sultan, who was fighting to recover the island of Crete from the Greeks, being given a shower by the “Great Powers”.

"The Crete issue. No need to get too hot."   “The Crete issue. No need to get too hot.”

 

 

Mirza Jalil was influenced by Russian writers, including Gogol and Chekhov.

He had a team of great cartoonists, such as Oskar Schmerling, a German who lived in Tbilisi, and an Azeri, Azim Azimzadeh.

There were also satirical poets, including Mirza Alakbar Sabir, who would promote education and women’s rights in his poems, and many other bright minds.

The magazine played an important role in the foundation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918, which lasted just two years before the Bolshevik victory.

“Most of the ministers of the Democratic Republic were readers of Molla Nasreddin,” says Azerbaijani media expert Zeynal Mammadli.

1929 cartoon showing British Consul   This 1929 shows the “English Consul and his wife: in England (L) and in Iran (R)

 

 

The magazine campaigned for women’s rights and played an important part in women in Azerbaijan being granted the right to vote in 1919, at around the same time as women in the UK and US.

Sifting through old copies of the magazine in Azerbaijan’s National Library, it becomes clear how daring the writers and illustrators of Molla Nasreddin were.

In a 1929 edition, a cartoon was published of the Prophet Mohammad, although without depicting his face.

By this time Azerbaijan was a Soviet state and publication was taking place in the capital, Baku. Nevertheless, the majority of the population were still conservative Muslims.

The cartoon features a dialogue between Jesus and Muhammad and shows people drinking at Christmas.

It clearly poked fun at Muslims who drank, despite their religion prohibiting consumption of alcohol.

But the magazine was not to last.

By the early 1930s, the authorities told Mirza Jalil to change its name to Allahsiz (Godless) and follow the principles of Soviet ideology.

Unable to accept Soviet censorship, his relationship with the magazine came to an end.

The Ayatollah’s Feminist Streak

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How soon the BBC forgets…

Execution of a teenage girl

On 15 August, 2004, Atefah Sahaaleh was hanged in a public square in the Iranian city of Neka.

Her death sentence was imposed for “crimes against chastity”.

The state-run newspaper accused her of adultery and described her as 22 years old.

But she was not married – and she was just 16.

In a town like Neka, heavily under the control of religious authorities, Atefah – often seen wandering around on her own – was conspicuous.

It was just a matter of time before she came to the attention of the “moral police”, a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, whose job it is to enforce the Islamic code of behaviour on Iran’s streets.

Secret relationship

Being stopped or arrested by the moral police is a fact of life for many Iranian teenagers.

Previously arrested for attending a party and being alone in a car with a boy, Atefah received her first sentence for “crimes against chastity” when she was just 13.

Although the exact nature of the crime is unknown, she spent a short time in prison and received 100 lashes.

 

 

 

Who knew?  The Iranian Islamic Revolution has freed women from their enslavement.

Craig at ‘Is the BBC biased?’ has a look at our old friend FOOC…

From this morning’s From Our Own Correspondent:

Kate Adie: Has the Ayatollah’s revolution in 1979 eventually helped Iranian women rather than hindered them?
The answer from FOOC was ‘yes’, it has helped them.

‘Quite apart from overthrowing the corrupt and brutal regime of the Shah, the revolution introduced education reforms which have been of particular benefit to women. Amy Guttman’s been underground in the Iranian capital to see what can be learned about the lot of women in Iran today.’

 

Having to go ‘underground’ says quite a lot about Iran doesn’t it!

Did education help these women?

 

The Bahai Martyrs

 

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, teaching school may be hazardous to your health, if you are of the wrong religious faith. One would hope that in the modern world the horror stories of Christians being fed to the lions and Jews and Muslims being tortured on the rack would be a thing of the past. In Iran, the nightmare world of religious persecution is alive and well.

These young women of the Baha’i faith were convicted of the crime of teaching in a Bahai religious school and hanged in Shiraz Iran on June 18, 1983.

The women, ages 17 to 57, were led to the gallows one after the other. As there is “no compulsion in religion” under Islam, it is interesting that authorities were apparently hoping that as each woman saw the others slowly strangle to death, they would renounce their own faith. A rather persuasive argument of the superiority of Islam. But according to eyewitnesses, the women went to their fate singing and chanting.

 

 

How about this?….

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Iranian Women Do Not Have the Right to Control Their Bodies

Since President Hassan Rouhani assumed office in August 2013, there has been a marked increase in state policies by hardliners in the government directly infringing upon the most basic rights of Iranian women.  These hardliners, who dominate Parliament and are ensconced in the security, intelligence, and judicial branches of government, have focused in particular on two issues, both of which concern women’s bodies: the observance of “proper” hijab (Islamic dress) and the availability of family planning and women’s reproductive health services.

 

Possibly reliable Wikipedia suggests the BBC isn’t being totally honest either…

 

Women’s rights for Iranian women and their legal status has changed during different political and historical eras.

The Persian Constitutional Revolution

Iranian women played a significant role in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11, which became a turning point in their lives. They participated in large numbers in public affairs and held important positions in journalism and in schools and associations that flourished from 1911 to 1924.[1] Prominent Iranian women who played a vital part in the revolution include Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi, Noor-ol-Hoda Mangeneh, Mohtaram Eskandari, Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, and Qamar ol-Molouk Vaziri.

 

Shah’s era

The shah’s government began its “White Revolution” in 1962 and ratified important women’s rights measures, including suffrage and the Family Protection Law of 1967, later amended more heavily in favor of women in 1975, which ended extrajudicial divorce and restricted polygamy.[3][4] It also raised the minimum age of marriage of girls to 18 that had been 13-15.

 

Women and the Iranian Revolution

Women participated heavily in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that toppled the shah.

Not withstanding this, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini severely curtailed rights that women had become accustomed to under the shah.[5] Within months of the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the 1967 Family Protection Law was repealed; female government workers were forced to observe Islamic dress code; women were barred from becoming judges; beaches and sports were sex-segregated; the legal age of marriage for girls was reduced to 9 (later raised to 13); and married women were barred from attending regular schools.

Almost immediately women protested these policies.[5][8] The Islamic revolution is ideologically committed to inequality for women in inheritance and other areas of the civil code; and especially committed to segregation of the sexes. Many places, from “schoolrooms to ski slopes to public buses”, are strictly segregated.

 

The BBC is right that women in Iran have more access to education now but that comes not from the ‘Revolution’ but from reforms to the regime of the Revolution.

The BBC is being disengenuous here and is trying to paint the Islamic Revolution as a glorious thing for women when it wasn’t.  Previous eras provided just as much momentum for women’s rights if not more…and the Shah’s regime was not merely a ‘corrupt and brutal regime’ as the BBC painted it….and it’s not as if the present regime is any better.

 

How happy is this woman to be under the protection of the Islamic Republic as she is about to be stoned to death for adultery?

stoning

 

 

And what about gay rights?

Sistas Doing It For Themselves

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The BBC are very concerned about the welfare of three Muslim girls heading off for a spot of Jihad.  You just wonder how sympathetically concerned would the BBC be if they were heading off to join, ooh say, a ‘Fascist State’ war machine in central Europe.

Actually we might have the answer as yesterday I heard one BBC presenter (was it Campbell?) suggest that going off to join ISIS to ostensibly fight Assad might be compared to those going to Spain to fight the Fascists….Fascists of course being the bad guys in Spain

So ISIS are like cuddly friendly Communists…those Communists who killed so many millions and caused so much terror and misery around the world with their political, social and economic policies?  Maybe Campbell had a point.

I imagine not a lot of sympathy for Nazi war brides.

 

The BBC though, as said loves the Jihadi brides….their correspondents almost in tears..

In a few months’ time, perhaps even weeks, you might remember the story, but will you remember the names? Kadiza Sultana, 16; Shamima Begum, also 16; and Amira Abase, 15.

All three London schoolgirls said they were going out for the day and now it is thought they have left the UK, gone to Turkey and slipped across the border to join Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria.

Their names are important to me, because they focus my mind on them as individuals, as young girls, with a promising future ahead of them, with friends, siblings and parents.

 

I alughed at this even more…

Building a state

We should, I suppose, remember it’s a “state” that is being created. And it needs loyal subjects, not just fighters.

 

What ever happened to the joys of immigration and the benefits that open borders and freedom of movement brings to the world?

Surely Muslim girls should be free to elope with an extremist and breed for Allah and his warriors.

Isn’t the Islamic State everything that the BBC journalists tell us would lead to a better world?…..no nation state, no borders, a society based on an ideology of peace, tolerance and love not on the colour of your skin, a society that puts God before all else, one in which materialism and degenerate behaviour like singing and dancing is frowned upon, one in which an authoritatarian communalism is enforced and everyone is equal in the eyes of God.

I’m sure Justin Webb is packing his man bag right now and heading off to the desert to be a Jihadi Bride.

 

 

 

 

Ancient Hatreds, Modern Delusions

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Things you wish you’d never asked.

Mishal Husain on the Today programme took a direct hit this morning that seemed to put her completely off her stroke.

Husain was interviewing Sir John Sawers, ex head of MI6. (08:36)

She asked him a question about radicalisation…

There’s a lot been said about how people are radicalised and we hear a lot about the internet.  A lot less is heard about why people are radicalised.  Why do you think young British Muslims appear to be vulnerable in this way?

 

Interestng word that ‘vulnerable’.  Are the extremist headchoppers sad ‘victims’ in her mind, unable to make informed, conscious decisions?

Sawers’ answer wasn’t what she expected….

There are two main answers.  One, people in this country are not as integrated as we would like them to be.  Other religions, whether Hindu, Sikh or Jewish, are very well integrated into this country.  Muslims are less well integrated and there are a number of social and economic factors related to that.

The second problem relates to Islam itself.  There are many competing branches of Islam, there are schisms, Shia and Sunni, different branches of Sunni Islam, many of these going back to doctrine and interpretations of doctrine in the first century of the religion.

The Islamic religion as a whole is not well geared to reviving and modernising itself so that it meets the values and needs of a 21st century society.

 

Paradoxically Sawers then swerved in the usual kneejerk genuflection that people make towards political correctness and claimed that Islam was perfectly compatible with other religions.  Note his claim about the lack of integration….due to social and economic factors.  He is contradicting himself there as Hindus, Sikhs and Jews integrate and must have faced the same problems…the defining difference is Islam.  Most Muslim ‘radicals’ are in fact highly educated and from comfortably well-off families…Jihadi John being a computer studies graduate, the pro-ISIS ranter on the internet the other week being a first class honours graduate with a good job at a successful law firm. Again the defining characteristic is that they are believers in the teachings and doctrines of Islam which have very particular commands about Jihad and ‘defending’ other Muslims and Muslim lands. Muslims may be ‘integrated’  in a limited sense in that they have jobs or go to university but Islam teaches them that they are separate…Islam creates the ‘Them and Us’ attitude that is so dangerous….I’m certain you remember Mehdi Hasan preaching about the Kufar, those immoral, ignorant cattle.

Sawers goes on to say that there is a big political challenge that can only really be taken up by leaders in the Muslim world.  Husain then goes off the tracks it seems and makes some confusing points by mentioning the BBC survey that said 20% of Muslims believed Western Liberal Democracy was incompatible with Islam….Husain seemed to suggest that the problem was with the Democracies, that it is up to the liberal Western World to deal with that incompatibility and not Muslims.  In other words the West must adapt to Islam not Islam adapt to the West.  Very Tariq Ramadan.

Husain then wanted to know if the three ISIS recruits were victims or intelligent people making informed decisions.  Sawers again made the swerve and to Husain’s quiet delight proclaimed them ‘victims’.

 

After the interview, which was quite wideranging and covered more ground than just radicalisation, we had the news bulletins and their take on his words….and note that immediately following the news about Sawers’ comments there came a report on Pegida in Newcastle.

What we were told was that Sawers believed that Russia posed a growing threat to Britain, not a word about his very significant answers to the question about why people are radicalised and no link at all to Pegida and its demonstrations.

That question about radicalisation is after all the one that is on everybodies’ lips…why are Muslims being radicalised?  And yet when the ex-head of MI6 gives us what he believes to be the answer the BBC omits to headline it.

Here is the BBC’s headline for the interview…

Sir John Sawers, ex-MI6 chief, warns of Russia ‘danger’

 

In a long report the overwhelming part of which was spent on discussing Russia they tacked on a small bit at the end that mentioned his comments on Islam in the UK.

Islamist terrorism and efforts to enforce the Islamisation of British Society are clear and present dangers and yet the BBC downplays the problem and doesn’t like the answers that Sawers gave as it put the blame squarely where it should be.

Here is another headline relating to the same interview..

‘Jihadi John’: Ex-MI6 chief defends security services

 

Again nothing about radicalisation and Islam.

And another headline..

Former MI6 chief: ‘Russia always an issue of concern’

 

All Russia and no Islam.  Where is a similar report that singles out his words on Islam?

 

And then we have then news reports on Pegida using odd language that seemed to celebrate the counter-demonstration…the BBC telling us that Pegida was ‘dwarfed’ by the UAF.

Craig at ‘Is the BBC biased?’ has noticed the same in the BBC reports of the demonstration.

The BBC’s opening lines tell the tale of the BBC’s preferred narrative…

More than 1,500 protesters have demonstrated against the first rally in Britain by a group opposed to what it calls the “Islamisation of Europe”.
Supporters of the UK branch of German group Pegida gathered at Newcastle city centre’s Bigg Market.
Critics claimed they were anti-Muslim and had come to “promote expression of hatred”, which they denied.

 

Submission

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“In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands with which we shall no doubt be invited to comply. Those demands may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty. I foresee and foretell that the policy of submission will carry with it restrictions upon the freedom of speech and debate in Parliament, on public platforms, and discussions in the press, for it will be said–indeed, I hear it said sometimes now – that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticized by ordinary, common English politicians. Then, with a press under control, in part direct but more potently indirect, with every organ of public opinion doped and chloroformed into acquiescence, we shall be conducted along further stages of our journey.”

— Sir Winston Churchill

JIHADI JOHN – BLAME MI5

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Well then, the BBC is a curious one. Firstly it names the Islamic State decapitator-in-Chief, Mohammed Emwazi. Fair enough. It then proceeds to ponder is he really a victim of a bungling MI5. It also calls him a “militant” when he is by any definition a terrorist – cutting the heads off innocent people IS terrorism, dear BBC. The BBC have taken the same approach with the three teenage Jihadi brides from the East End of London who legged it to hook up with Islamic State. The question was how had the State failed. where were the Intelligence services. At no point does the BBC choose to ask the most penetrating question of all – why do some Muslims living in Britain appear to have a greater loyalty to our enemies than to our country? I guess that might open up all sorts of tricky issues so better say nothing and just blame MI5?