Thanks to Guest Who for pointing me in the direction of Newsnight where (Labour supporting…apparently) Kirsty Wark trashed Andy Burnham, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister.

A fascinating interview that tore Burnham to shreds and showed him up as a one hell of a bluffer unwilling to commit himself to putting a figure on how much of NHS work could be contracted out to the private sector….Burnham stated that the ‘Market experiment was over…and the NHS was now the preferred provider’.…which is very slippy and disengenuous in its abstract non-committal.  The NHS might be the ‘preferred provider’ in theory but if efficiency or quality of care can be provided better by the private sector those in the NHS who are contracting the services will choose that…so it’s an open ended non-commitment to the NHS by Burnham…the private sector, in theory, could provide all the NHS services even if the NHS itself was the ‘preferred provider’ as Burnham will not say just where, at what percentage, he will stop further NHS work being contracted out.

Wark then holed Burnham below the water line with a BBC study of knee and hip operations in which the patients said that they received better quality of care and outcome from private providers.

The King’s fund also told us that Labour’s proposals were very radical which would lead to a fundamental change of the NHS….Wark didn’t take that any further but perhaps should have as it is another one of Labour’s attack lines that the Coalition’s reforms have been unnecessary and highly damaging….just the fact that they happened, not necessarily because of the reforms themselves.

Wark made a significant point that Labour’s electoral position was dependent on differentiating themselves from the Tories based upon the level of private provision they were willing to accept.

That’s very true, and very important to note because it is such an emotive and controversial issue with so many half truths and so much wilful blindness…. on any phone-in dancing around the subject of the NHS you will hear strident voices calling in to shout about the alleged  privatisation of the NHS…by the Tories….Interviews like Wark’s on Newsnight should dispel such myths about privatisation and remind people that Labour had a big hand in privatising the NHS as far as it has been.  However it is the usual story with the BBC…..did I hear a mention of this interview on the news today?  No, not a word…I had no idea Burnham had been roasted by Wark until I saw Guest Who’s comment….and yet it is utterly damning for Labour and highly damaging to their election strategy based on the NHS….why is the BBC not making this headline news?

As with Panorama’s investigation into ‘British Islam’ when the time comes to disseminate the information from such programmes out to the wider BBC, its call-ins, presenter led programmes and news bulletins, you find that all that good work is ignored and discarded, the presenters carrying on in their own little worlds ignoring anything that conflicts wth their world view…or so it seems.  The news bulletins either ignore the findings of the likes of Newsnight or so truncate a story and edit it down so much that the essence of it is lost and the real thrust and important points are completely lost…or worse, they actually change the whole story and totally alter our perception of what actually happened.

Yesterday the BBC interviewed Alan Milburn.  His critical comments in that interview about Labour’s health policies were plastered over other news media…but not on the BBC as I noted yesterday…and that’s despite it being a story broken by a BBC programme in an interview on The World at One, on Radio 4!

Wark did mention Milburn’s comments on Newsnight and stated that Labour was torn internally on this issue…so of significant importance…and yet otherwise ignored by the BBC with no major report based upon that revelation at all on its web site.

Guido suggests it might have been a highly relevant issue…one the BBC might have taken a deeper interest in perhaps?:

Perhaps Burnham’s bad mood was something to do with this morning’s front pages, which report Labour figures have responded to his big speech yesterday by laying into the party’s NHS strategy.

As Miliband centres Labour’s election campaign on the NHS, public satisfaction is at an all time high…

And today we had another example of how BBC News can transform a story and turn it into something, that by using subtle changes of wording, can create a whole different perception leading listeners to the wrong (or right) conclusion.

The BBC claimed to have broken this story…

NHS guidelines for ‘major incidents’ spark political row

Mr Miliband pressed the prime minister on the news that the West Midlands NHS region has issued guidance to hospitals, GPs and Ambulance Trusts in their area – which includes Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton – on declaring major incidents.

But Mr Cameron insisted that ministers had had no involvement in the guidelines.

 

As you might have noted it was the West Midlands NHS region that issued this new guidance to hospitals as to when they can declare a ‘major incident’….not the NHS as a whole, nor the Government.

However what we got from most news bulletins was the news that ‘new guidelines have been issued to parts of the NHS….’

Now that is highly misleading…there is no indication as to who issued those guidelines, you would naturally assume it was the Government, and ‘parts of the NHS’ could be taken to mean anything…most likely that it is a nationwide issue of relevance to certain major hospitals or medical centres.  Again misleading as it was only hospitals in the West Midlands….and the issue had nothing whatsoever to do with the Government.

The BBC’s Norman Smith loudly broke the story this morning….

On the radio he proclaimed that there was ‘an almighty political ding dog over health’ and went on to talk about the political arguments…however he failed to inform us of anything useful…such as what the guidelines said and what the overall effect of them would really be and why.

Norman sent most of the time revealing the contents of emails sent between NHS staff discussing these changes…emails that suggested this was a government plot to stop hospitals declaring ‘major incidents’ and that was intended to ‘manage the news’.

Question…how did the BBC get these emails?  Let’s have a guess…a Labour supporting staff member saw these guidelines and decided to write an email that damned the government…and then sent the emails to Labour and the BBC.

Not as if NHS staff aren’t highly political….

“This isn’t privatisation by the back door, it’s privatisation by the front door, and it is really putting patients’ lives at risk”   Dr Jacky Davis Keep Our NHS Public

The BBC, whilst pretty much ignoring Labour Big Beast Alan Milburn’s critical comments, then mobilises its resources and launches this half-story into the stratosphere…just in time for Prime Minister’s Questions.

Then it spends the day giving it plenty of coverage,  somewhat misleading coverage, and stirs the pot relentlessly.

All this perfectly illustrates a major problem with the BBC’s news management that I have frequently noted…the disconnect between information that comes into the BBC and what is then filtered and disseminated out  into the mainstream BBC system where reports such as Panorama get conveniently ‘forgotten’ and interviews such as last night’s  Newsnight are ignored or downplayed with any reports that do cover such stories deciding to emphasise, for example,  Burnham’s ‘stout defence’ of Labour’s policies and how he intends to change the NHS for the better whilst battling the Tories’ NHS sell off plans.

How many people watch Newsnight, Panorama or listen to the Today programme?  Not that many in the scale of things. How then do they get a full insight into events?  Watching the late night news is just as subject to the vagaries of the likes of Norman Smith’s initerpretations as his work on the radio was as he puts the emphasis on eyecatching ‘scoops’ such as the emails which are irrelevant and posssibly suspect but which make ‘good copy’ rather than trying to explain the complex ins and outs of the issues.

It’s a big problem that disconnect between what investigative journalism on the BBC turns up and what actually gets reported…rarely do those specialist, indepth reports change the ‘conventional wisdom’ of the institution that is the BBC.  Which means you and I don’t get the truth from the BBC…..whether that’s by design or is just a case of bad journalism, inept editing and a failure to recognise what is important in a story I’ll let you decide.

Time for a new one of these. Do detail the bias please!

The Submarine Service used to be called the ‘Silent Service’ using stealth and skill to evade detection and sink the enemy.

Seems that the BBC might well take on that nickname for its ‘silent’ support for Labour in its effort to sink the Tories….its silent support being its bias by omission as it avoids reporting or highlighting unpleasant news for Miliband.

Miliband yesterday launched his bid for election glory based upon his 10 year NHS plan…listening to the Today programme and it was hard to tell if I was listening to a BBC journalist (Hugh Pym) or a Labour politician giving us his spiel.

Pym has followed up with a piece on the web which follows the same route painting a wonderful picture of Labour’s plans with minimal criticism of them…

Labour, the NHS and social care integration

Pym opens with an admission that the NHS is important in the election race…

The NHS always has been a totemic issue for Labour and, in recent decades, has often been seen as a key election issue.

But this time there seems even more determination by Labour to make the state of the NHS the defining issue of the campaign.

 

The BBC admits this…

NHS ‘most important issue’ suggests BBC/Populus poll

So you might wonder, considering how important the NHS is to Labour’s election strategy, where are the headlines on the BBC such as this from the Telegraph?….

Labour election chaos over NHS as Ed Miliband accused of running ‘comfort zone campaign’

Ed Miliband’s attempts to make the NHS his key election weapon have descended into chaos after he was accused of running a “comfort zone campaign” and refused to endorse the shadow health secretary.

Or this from the Guardian, prominent on its front page:

Ed Miliband’s NHS plans risk losing the election, say Blair supporters

Ed Miliband is facing a backlash by Tony Blair supporters who have warned that his plans for the NHS risk playing into Tory hands and could lead to repeating the campaign mistakes of 1992 when Labour lost the general election.

In a sign of unease about Labour’s prospects, the former health secretary Alan Milburn said the party was running a pale imitation of its losing 1992 general election campaign, as it retreated to its comfort zone over the NHS.

Or this from the Huffington Post?

Alan Milburn Slams Ed Miliband’s NHS ‘Comfort Zone’ Campaign

It seems they all think this is a major story worth putting on the front page in bold…the NHS being ‘totemic’ and the ‘most important issue’…and yet the BBC has hidden a major criticism of Miliband and his policies almost at the bottom of this long report with barely a comment:

Ed Miliband and David Cameron step up election battle

And former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn has questioned the opposition’s focus on the NHS as a “comfort zone campaign” and warned the party is ill-prepared to carry out the necessary reforms to the NHS if elected.

 

Loose lips sink ships but the BBC’s tight lipped reporting is doing its best to keep the rickety old hulk of Labour’s election on course and afloat.

Some links to peruse at your leisure that may help you form an opinion of the BBC’s coverage of world affairs:

How Marine Le Pen is winning France’s gay vote

How will the Guardian and the BBC cover the Trinity Mirror phone hacking?

Steerpike is curious to see what coverage the trial will get in the papers and from the BBC. Both the corporation and the Guardian have taken glee in the past at resting the phone hacking crimes firmly in Rupert Murdoch’s court. Giving the impression, of course, that the sin of hacking came straight from the blackness of Murdoch’s heart – rather than a sin that was spread right across an industry.

Pakistan dares to ask: will school attack finally end myth of the ‘good Taliban’?

Decades of state support for jihadis has led to national confusion over who the real enemies are. But the latest attack might be a watershed

Viewpoint: Confrontation key to tackling violent extremism

The challenge for societies is to react and respond to terrorist communications in a different way.
Terrorists do and say things they believe will be successful.
When journalists and analysts comment on terrorist communications they unwittingly serve the terrorists’ purpose.
Discredited ideologies
The most positive new development in terrorism has been that its veneer of championing a noble cause has been stripped to reveal its vulgar lust for violence.
By targeting children, education, sympathetic journalists and aid workers it has exposed its inherent ignorance, its absence of humanity and its innate cowardice.

The invention of Islamophobia

Islamophobia was invented to silence those Muslims who question the Koran and who demand equality of the sexes. By Pascal Bruckner

The term “Islamophobia” serves a number of functions: it denies the reality of an Islamic offensive in Europe all the better to justify it; it attacks secularism by equating it with fundamentalism. Above all, however, it wants to silence all those Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and doctrinaire.

Phew!!!  What a relief eh?  The barbarians have been defeated, the  takeover of Greek politics by the nazi scumbags of the Far Right hasn’t happened…the BBC’s warnings from history about Hitler’s ressurrection as an Ouzo drinking, plate smashing immigrant basher were just so much paranoid delusion.

Instead we have the delightful prospect of a radical far left group in charge…and in charge of that group…

Alexis Tsipras, “the most dangerous man in Europe”

….which must come as a bit of a surprise to anyone who has watched the BBC over the last few years since the big crash.   Who knew eh?   Whatever happened to that neo-Nazi group that was set to storm, according to the BBC, the Greek parliament and take Europe back to the Golden Dawn of a new Dark Ages?

We’ve seen the BBC’s flexible moral relativism when it comes to defining what is or isn’t terrorism when carried out by adherents to the religion of peace but when it comes to anyone who even gives a hint of having dubiously unacceptable thoughts about limiting immigration suddenly the gloves come off, the moral relativity goes out the window and the firm smack of the liberal intelligentsia’s very own Inquisition is felt far and wide as they mobilise to stop the thought crimes before they can ‘pollute’ the public conversation, the very one sided public conversation, about immigration.

The BBC that won’t call a spade a spade or a terrorist a terrorist, the BBC that refuses to acknowledge that Islam is the divine guide and sanction for those terrorists,   is the same BBC that has absolutely no problem labelling UKIP as the ‘Far Right’ or even associating them with Nazis purely on the basis that they want to control, not stop, immigration…and today we have further evidence of that attitude…mention immigration and you’re of the ‘Far Right’….Syriza in Greece have formed a coalition with the Independent Greek Party…the BBC tells us ..…

What unites Greece’s new coalition partners is fierce opposition to budget cuts. Alexis Tsipras and Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos are anti-bailout to the core.

Earlier, he [Tsipras] formed a coalition with the centre-right Independent Greeks.

 

The ‘centre-right party’? Sounds almost moderate and progressive.  However all day on the radio we’ve heard that they are the next closest thing to having the SS marching into Greece again…and indeed a few sentences down we’re told that they are ‘hardline right-wingers’…..and just for good measure they throw in ‘conservatism’….

a hardline right-winger on issues such as immigration….The problem for Mr Tsipras is that many of his own supporters revile Mr Kammenos’s conservatism

 

Remarkable that the BBC is so ready to denounce anyone who does not follow its own agenda on immigration as the ‘Far Right’ or ‘Hardline Right -wingers’…or subtly associate them with Nazis…..even when they have quite moderate immigration policies…..just wonder how they describe Labour’s Frank Field when he too reveals he wants immigration to be controlled.

But this has been the story we have been fed by the BBC since the crash…the Far Right are set to make overwhelming gains in Europe bringing back the prospect of ethnic cleansing, Nazism and worse.

The BBC has steadfastly refused to accept or admit there is any threat from the Islamisation of Europe or indeed from the Left….and has often not just looked away but actively attempted to persuade you that there is no threat, that it is all an illusion dreamt up by racists, Islamophobes and ‘right-wing’ politicians ‘capitalising’ on tragedies such as Charlie Hebdo.

There are , thankfully, more reliable, more honest sources of news, sources of the truth, than the BBC.

Muslim attempts to subvert and undermine the democratic, secular nature of Europe are well known and don’t need re-running here at this time but a few examples of the Left’s dark underbelly might be in order.

The BBC has invested a great deal of time and money in warning us of the dangers of the growth right wing movements and has expressed great fear of their success in elections across Europe….going so far as to air ‘The Nazis: A Warning From History’ just before the European elections…the message obvious…the EU is good…it keeps the peace….vote UKIP and leave the EU and the Nazis will rise again.

On the other hand the BBC has also invested a great deal of time and money in promoting the interests of left wing revolutionaries and radicals….going so far as to employ them, Occupy’s radical priest, the bigoted and ‘Christian’ fraud Giles Fraser, or give them so much airtime as if they were ‘employed’ on the BBC shilling…such as Russell Brand.  The BBC devotes little if any time to exposing left wing violence and the consequences of their ideology being implemented.

Such  left wing extremism and violence is deliberately ignored…where have you seen the BBC investigating the UAF in a similar way that it did the EDL.  The UAF is, despite its name, a Fascist organisation led by an extremist Muslim paid at the behest of its paymasters the far left Unite Union….which also pays for a certain Ed Miliband & Co and has expressed a belief that ’non-democratic’ methods should be used to further its political aims.   Surely a tangled web of extremist interests that should be investigated.

Looking the other way when it is politically convenient is a habit for those on the left and in government especially when events involve certain communities who have been given a special status and immunity from political and social censure by virtue of their race or religion…

In the US a black man executes two police officers in a racially motivated attack….apparently he is ‘mentally unstable’.
In France there are many attacks by Muslims on the Public…again dismissed as not being terrorist events but the result of ‘mental instability’.
In Australia the hostage taking Muslim was also labelled ‘mentally unstable’.
Jihadis heading off to Syria or those generally attracted to fighting for the cause of Islam are often labelled ‘mad’, ignorant and not real Muslims.

Everyone knows the truth…and official attempts to deny the real motives of these people fool no-one…..even the BBC has raised a sceptical eye:

The French authorities are reluctant to say anything to encourage the idea that there is any kind of pattern behind the three attacks.
This was not terrorism, is the official line. Similarly in Nantes, there is a strict embargo on speculation about the motives for the attack.
All of which is perfectly understandable. But many people will be asking themselves if there is not some copycat effect being played out. Also, even if it is established the car attacks were the work of unbalanced individuals, might not Islamist propaganda have played some role in pushing them to the act?

However that doesn’t stop the BBC which, as well as denying any link to Islam, is conversely more than ready to make spurious speculative links to the Far Right for any attack on Muslims or other such ‘victims’ as the BBC sees them.

The Boston Bombs were, according to the BBC, the work of right wing white supremacists….as ‘all the evidence pointed to’ according to Evan Davis and Mark Mardell.

Similarly a mosque is allegedly firebombed in Sweden and the culprits are ‘far right, anti-immigration, neo-nazis’…never mind no one had been arrested and there was absolutely no evidence yet that indicated this….and what is more the BBC refuses to investigate the well known violence of the left in Sweden…or that of Muslim immigrants…instead we have one sided, and highly inaccurate, reports such as this:

Swedish mosque hit by arson in Eskilstuna, injuring five

An arsonist set fire to a mosque in the Swedish town of Eskilstuna on Thursday, injuring five people, police said.

The incident comes amid a fierce debate in Sweden over immigration policies.
The far right wants to cut the number of asylum seekers allowed into Sweden by 90%, while mainstream parties are intent on preserving the country’s liberal policy.
Police are treating the incident as arson but no arrests have been made so far, Mr Franzell added.

 

And this…..

Sweden protest after three mosque fires in one week

However the Mosque fire was in fact an accident…but that didn’t stop the BBC leaping to the conclusions it wanted to about Muslims under attack from Far Right extremists….

Swedish police: mosque fire was an accident. Muslim leader: threats comes from other Muslim groups, “not from extreme right”

The BBC continued to concentrate on the ‘threat’ from the Far Right in Sweden…..

Swedish neo-Nazis: Moves to de-radicalise amid far-right rise

Sweden is still home to an active and at times violent neo-Nazi movement, and there are fears that rising popularity of the Sweden Democrats will also benefit the extremists.

 

This is the BBC that brought us Muslim propaganda in the shape of cartoons...hope you didn’t find them offensive…if you did perhaps a bit of ‘non-terrorism’ might be in order! The BBC seems to think it is just fine to do so.
Back in the UK Mark Mardell tells us that certain sectors of the population are unhappy with politics as they are now….but who does he concentrate on?…the Right…….comparing UKIP to the Tea Party who are apparently ‘malcontents’…a dismissive term of abuse from Mardell……

Disconnected generation ready to make Westminster pay

And in the south of England it is the rise of UKIP that has forced Team Westminster to examine what the future might hold.
It is a situation that has been reflected by events in the US.

The Tea Party, which is not a party, but a hydra-headed movement of like-minded malcontents.
Far right
In Europe the far right are on the march. They have increased their vote, most recently in Sweden.
But it is France that worries many in the political centre, not only in Paris, but even more in Brussels and Berlin.

 

Ah yes, the Far Right eh!  No mention of Muslim terrorists and extremists subverting democracy.

No, no Muslims….but there is that looming Far Right threat again……

France shaken up by Zemmour and ‘new reactionaries’
By Hugh Schofield

There is a new intellectual force in France – giving shape and weight to ideas that challenge the disastrous post-1968 left-wing consensus.
That at least is the hope of the so-called neo-reactionnaires (new reactionaries) – a loose group of writers and thinkers who want to shake up debate on issues like immigration, Islam and national identity.
Of course others see the group rather differently.
For their enemies they are rabble-rousers, providing spurious philosophical cover for the extremism of the National Front (FN).

Surely abit of left wing violence can’t be all that hard to find……and you know what, it isn’t….so let’s have a look at some examples of the Left and its violent, militant tendencies….

Violence Flares in Hamburg

“Red Flora”, as Hamburg’s leftist community centre is named, sticks out like a sore thumb in the city’s hip, alternative yet increasingly upmarket Schanzenviertel district. Last week it prompted police to declare the centre of one of Europe’s richest port cities a “danger zone” and caused the US embassy to issue travel warnings to citizens contemplating a visit.
“If stopped without proper identification, persons may be detained by Hamburg police without further justification,” Berlin’s American embassy cautioned last Wednesday. The draconian measures would appear to have turned posh Hamburg and its famous if less smart Reeperbahn red light district into the Teutonic equivalent of Belfast during the Troubles.
The entrance to the Reeperbahn’s Davidwache police station was festooned with police barricades last week. Police helicopters circled above the city. Uniformed officers conducted stop-and-search operations. Last Wednesday, police were involved in skirmishes with left-wing protesters who pelted them with fireworks. “Many people who live here are fed up with the violence and destruction,” was how Hamburg’s police trade union president, Joachim Lenders, justified the new measures.

Jump in left-wing violence in Germany ‘alarming’

Black-clad crowds stormed past closed and boarded banks, businesses and stores, shouting anti-fascist and anti-capitalist slogans in Berlin’s trendy Kreuzberg district.
But leftist protests like this one on May Day have for many years ended not in song but riots, car burnings and broken shop windows.

leftist crimes rose 40% to 8,673 acts in 2013, nearly half of which were property damage. Violent crimes by leftists rose 28% to 1,659 – largely altercations with police and right-wing groups during demonstrations.
“The increase in politically motivated crimes is alarming,” said Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, earlier this week.
“Violence by extreme left-wing offenders increased and the number of anti-foreigner crimes increased last year, too,” he said. “More people were injured through politically motivated crimes than in previous years.”

The Return of the Radicals: Crisis Fuels Rise in Left-Wing Extremist Violence

Following the 2007 protests at the G-8 meeting in Heiligendamm, the number of attacks by leftist extremists has risen dramatically in Germany. The government is increasing its focus on the autonomists, but authorities know little about a new generation that is torching cars, and worse, in its fight.
German Interior Ministry crime statistics for 2009 show a 53 percent jump in the number of left-wing attacks, the largest increase seen in many years. Police recorded a total of 1,822 left-wing acts of violence in all of Germany, considerably more than those committed by right-wing extremists.

 

Leftwing Acts of Violent Extremism

 

lol…..

Left-Wing “Stop The Violence” Organizers Arrested For Nearly Beating Roommate To Death…

Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) in India

It has become almost a cliché to say that the LWE situation is the most serious internal threat facing the country.

 

 

And never mind all that old fashioned Communism in the USSR and Commie China.  How many millions died, were killed, casting off their chains?

Yep…the threat is definitely from the Far Right and Nigel Farage.

Watch out.  You have been warned.

Something to add to the general debate on free speech and which can inform our judgements on the BBC’s reactions to pressure from Muslim activists and its subsequent approach to ‘free speech’.

A Channel Four debate from 2012 on freedom of speech in relation to Muslim demands on British society…asking

‘Is free speech under threat in Britain?’

The very fact that they need to ask that says everything…….

Note that the arguments used to defend the Muslim right to silence critics of islamic ideology are the same that the BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones used in his article “Blasphemy, jihad and victimhood“….powerless, marginalised, weak, under attack, angry, frustrated and so on.

Here you go, a new Open Thread. BBC in a bit of a spot – they are delighted a hard left bunch of communists and other assorted leftists have won power in Greece but then concerned this could lead to the unravelling of the EU! Anyway, the floor is yours…

Paris attacks: Do not call Charlie Hebdo killers ‘terrorists’, BBC says

Tarik Kafala, the head of BBC Arabic, the largest of the BBC’s non-English language news services, said the term “terrorist” was too “loaded” to describe the actions of the men who killed 12 people in the attack on the French satirical magazine.

Mr Kafala, whose BBC Arabic television, radio and online news services reach a weekly audience of 36 million people, told The Independent: “We try to avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being terrorist. What we try to do is to say that ‘two men killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine’. That’s enough, we know what that means and what it is.”

Mr Kafala said: “Terrorism is such a loaded word. The UN has been struggling for more than a decade to define the word and they can’t. It is very difficult to. We know what political violence is, we know what murder, bombings and shootings are and we describe them. That’s much more revealing, we believe, than using a word like terrorist which people will see as value-laden.”

That’s just utter nonsense….there is a basic definition of terrorism…as defined by the Oxford Dictionary…one that most people would agree with:

The unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims

‘Political aims’ can of course encompass ‘religious’ ones as religion is just as political as it is supposedly spiritual.

The UN’s problem with defining terrorism isn’t a definition of what acts are ‘terrorist’ in nature but with who could be defined as terrorist…a different thing altogether…

The search for an agreed definition usually stumbles on two issues. The first is the argument that any definition should include States’ use of armed forces against civilians. We believe that the legal and normative framework against State violations is far stronger than in the case of non-State actors and we do not find this objection to be compelling. The second objection is that peoples under foreign occupation have a right to resistance and a definition of terrorism should not override this right. The right to resistance is contested by some. But it is not the central point: the central point is that there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians.

 

What happened in Paris is a clear case of terrorism carried out by people affiliated to known terrorist organisations and the questions raised at the UN have no bearing on whether this is terrorism or not…it clearly is.

And of course the BBC has no problem using other people’s language when it comes to Israeli ‘war crimes’…

Amnesty: Israeli strikes on Gaza buildings ‘war crimes’

And as BBC Watch points out…

BBC’s Bowen promotes accusations of Israeli ‘war crimes’

That’s despite Kafala reporting that the definition of a ‘war crime’ is always evolving and never static…despite that the ICC manages to not only come to a working definition of a war crime but also to prosecute and sentence ‘war criminals’.  Funny how that works and yet the BBC Kafala wants to dodge the uncomfortable truth about an act of Islamic terrorism…..

Anyone reading Kafala’s statement would have to assume he has some sympathy with the terrorist murderers judging by his attempt to downplay the nature of their crimes.

It is a fairly blatant attempt not to ‘upset’ Muslims and go with their narrative….in other words as they don’t see it as a crime perhaps…..adopting their language and definitions.

The BBC is introducing a parallel system of reporting news, one news for non-Muslims, another narrative for Muslims…never mind the truth, just report what the most violent sector of a community want to hear and have a peaceful life.

Or as said once before…..

In a wide-ranging interview about faith and broadcasting, Mr Thompson disclosed that producers were faced with the possibilities of “violent threats” instead of normal complaints if they broadcast certain types of satire.

“Without question, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms’, is different from, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47 as I write’,” he said. “This definitely raises the stakes.”

 

The BBC’s guidelines, questionable in themselves say:

We try to avoid the use of the term “terrorist” without attribution.

Note that ‘without attribution’….well as pretty much everyone was quite clear that this was a case of terrorism there is an abundance of ‘attribution’ to fall back on should the BBC lack the backbone to make the call themselves.

The BBC guidelines go on….

We should not adopt other people’s language as our own; our responsibility is to remain objective and report in ways that enable our audiences to make their own assessments about who is doing what to whom.

 

By not using the word terrorism they adopt the language of the terrorist and those who wish to whitewash what has happened….Kafala himself isn’t shy about using language that is very definitely the preferred line for Palestinians when he calls the IDF the ‘ Israeli occupation army’.

Terrorism isn’t some abstract word that has no meaning, it has a specific meaning that most reasonable people would agree on….the BBC has introduced an element of relativity into how it should be defined when there isn’t any….and it has introduced that relativity in order to downplay the nature of the act and to assuage the feelings of those who support such acts however obliquely and quietly.  Terrorism is terrorism however good and noble the cause is.

Killing 10 cartoonists is neither good nor noble.  Killing four defenceless Jews is not good nor noble.

Just the act of cowards and terrorists in the name of Allah and the furtherance of his ideology across Europe.

About time the BBC called a terrorist a terrorist and stopped self-censoring and pandoring to those who ‘complain in the strongest possible terms and are loading their AK47s as they write.’

Not had a great deal of time to look at this but you might have heard the BBC plugging the IFS research that tells us that:

Benefits cuts ‘cost average family £489 a year’

Lower income families have been hit the worst as a percentage of their income the BBC insist on telling us….

Low-income working-age households have been hit hardest, losing the most as a percentage of their income.

And only halfway down the report do we get nearer the real truth…

James Browne, a senior research economist at IFS and co-author of the report said: “Whichever way you cut it, low-income households with children and the very richest households have lost out significantly from the changes as a percentage of their incomes.

 

But that is not what the BBC has been highlighting or making any attempt to explain.

What the press release from the IFS actually says is:

Taking these tax and benefit changes as a whole, they have reduced the incomes of low-income households with children and the very richest households by the most as a percentage of income.

 

Now I listened to the BBC reports on this and they were saying that the poorest lost the most as a percentage of their income whilst the richest lost the most in cash terms….that is clearly not the whole truth and doesn’t represent what the IFS said.

Unremarkably the leftwing New Statesman also peddled that line:

The report, by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), suggests that the coalition’s tax and benefit changes have cost the average family more than £1,000 a year. It also adds that the richest tenth have lost out significantly in cash terms, though not as a percentage of income.

 

In one way that is true but only if you selectively omit certain facts and the picture changes if you note that the Coalition tax and benefit changes would have calculated in the effects of legislation by Labour that kicked in just prior to them taking power when working out how to change the system…as the IFS report tells us….

Low-income working-age households have lost the most as a percentage of their income from tax and benefit changes introduced by the coalition, mainly as a result of benefit cuts. However this changes if we include in our analysis the tax rises introduced immediately before the coalition came to office (the first element of the fiscal consolidation that began in April 2010): the richest households have lost the most both in cash terms and as a percentage of income from the overall tax and benefit changes that have taken place since the beginning of 2010.

 

If the richest are already being hit hard then there is less need to put the boot in even more…they have lost the most both in cash terms and as a  percentage of income.

The BBC’s reports are true up to a point and yet not the whole truth…it is an important omission that distorts the effect of the government’s tax and benefits policies completely, and in favour of Labour.

And as this subject, inequality, the poor suffering more than the rich, we’re not in this all together, is one of the main planks of the Labour election campaign it is important that the BBC doesn’t make such careless ‘mistakes’ when reporting such stories…or it might look as if they are just a PR outfit paid and bought for by their Labour chums.

Champagne already on ice?

A very telling reaction from a Pakistani ‘heritage’ Sunni Muslim MP, Khalid Mahmood, on the Today programme (08:50) to suggestions that it was inappropriate to fly flags at half-mast on the death of King Abdullah.

Mahmood supported Saudi Arabia,  in denial about the malignant effect of Saudia Arabian values on the world.  He expressed surprise that we should have any concerns at all about those values, suggesting that there were far more unpleasant states in the world which had a far worse record on human rights for minorities including religious ones….India for instance….I suppose one surprise is he didn’t suggest Israel.

Remember this is the same Mahmood, that champion of human rights, who wanted to ban the EDL from expressing their views in Brimingham.  He is Sunni, Saudi is Sunni.  (Mehdi Hasan is Shia…and opposes Saudi.)

Now India isn’t perfect but in no way could it be compared to Saudia Arabia…unlike say Mahmood’s birthplace, Pakistan, where religious minorities live in constant fear and are the subject of vicious attacks both legal and vigilante, often backed by the State.

What this illustrates is how conservative Muslims in the UK are in thrall to the Saudi Islamic doctrine backed up by billions of petro-dollars pumped around the world to spread their fundamentalist ideology and in denial about the detrimental effects of the ideology.

The BBC et al are also in deep denial about some issues whilst being prepared to single out a particular country for its hostile reporting….Israel.

The BBC is more than happy not to challenge any Muslim who defends anti-Semitism, even the killing of Jews, on the grounds that Israel’s actions make such ‘retribution’ on European Jews justifiable…the BBC’s Tim Wilcox even promoting that savage narrative himself.

But such Muslims, and Wilcox, seem to ignore far worse suffering around the world, suffering at the hands of other Muslims….the victims being not just non-Muslims but Muslims themselves….the heroic Jihadis going to rescue their Muslim brothers from the Western oppressors are actually killing more Muslims, and prolonging the wars far beyond their natural span, than any Israeli or Western soldier.

Then there is Pakistan…a country created in the same way for Muslims as Israel was for Jews…but Pakistan has far less legitimacy…after all there are many Islamic countries around the world that can provide safe havens for the ‘Ummah’…there were none for the Jews.

The creation of Pakistan has created a storm of violence around the world, its own ‘malign influence’ spreading terrorism and war far and wide.  Millions have died because of Pakistan’s actions…..so why are UK Pakistani Muslims so concerned about little Israel and not their own place of origin?

Nearly a million died and millions more were ethnically cleansed from the newly created Muslim state of Pakistan…but that’s not the whole picture….what about Bangladesh, or East Pakistan as it was once called?  How many died in the war for its independence from Pakistan and how many millions fled in to exile?  And why is no one interested in Bangladesh and Pakistan’s murderous actions?….

The genocide is still too little known about in the West. It is, moreover, the subject of shocking degrees of denial among partisan polemicists and manipulative historians.

Perhaps if this history was better known we could have some genuine perspective on Israel and its actions…..we could also look at the UK’s and the USA’s ‘collateral damage’ figures for Iraq and Afghanistan….Israel would be well ahead of those countries in the efforts it makes to prevent civilian deaths….and then there is Syria…200,000 dead reportedly.  Killed by other Muslims…again those ‘heroic Jihadis’.

The BBC and responsible news providers should be making every effort to change the narrative…both for Israel and for UK foreign policy…so often the excuse for Muslims attacks on UK citizens……as you can see below even some ‘moderate Muslims’ say such a narrative is ‘dishonest and dangerous’...and yet it is the one that the BBC enthusiastically embraces, not just reporting others making such claims but making the connections themselves…thereby supporting the terrorist’s own jusitifications and feeding their narrative which makes for fertile recruiting grounds for an ever increasing amount of Jihadis.

It is a paradox that the BBC and the likes of the Guardian will defend such conservative Muslims and their values in the UK whilst doing their utmost to destroy critics of the same fundamentalist doctrine such as the EDL….and yet they also will denounce Saudia Arabia’s own laws and values which are the basis for many British conservative Muslims’ faith.

Here is the Guardian…

King Abdullah embodied the wickedness of Saudi Arabia’s regime

Saudi’s influence on the outside world is almost wholly malign. The young men it sent to fight in Afghanistan turned into al-Qaida. The Sunni jihadis whom Saudis have funded in Iraq and Syria turned into Isis. It has spread a poisonous form of Islam throughout Europe with its subsidies, and corrupted western politicians and businessmen with its culture of bribery. The Saudis have always appealed to the worst forms of western imperialism: their contempt for other Muslims is as great as any American nationalist’s.

 

Can you imagine them saying that about conservative Muslims in the UK?  And yet Saudi ideology is mainstream in UK Muslim communities.  You know the BBC’s reaction to the Trojan Horse plot….one of denial and cover-up, downplaying it and then, when it could no longer be denied,  suggesting that if that is what Muslim parents want for their children’s schooling then perhaps they should be allowed to have it in the interests of community cohesion.

Just who are practising that ‘poisonous form of Islam’ in Europe then?

You may rightly say hold on!  What about Panorama?  And of course that was one of  the very few times the BBC has dared to be open about the problems of not just violent Muslim extremists but the Muslims who push by other means for the greater influence and dominance of Islam in the UK.

Here is John Ware in the Independent backing up his Panorama programme….

The British Muslims not afraid to fight extremism

A British version of Islam that embraces British culture, rather than seeking to eradicate it, will need to dispel the perception among Muslims that western foreign policy is the root cause of violent extremism. This is “dishonest and dangerous” says Deen. The fact that Islamist terrorism pre-dates Iraq and Afghanistan and that there are many millions of non-Muslims just as aggrieved at foreign policy who do not resort to violence, points to toxic theology as the real culprit.
Forging a British Islam will also require reversing an apparent trend towards more segregated Muslim communities in places such as Birmingham, London and northern mill towns. This is the decades-long consequence of a weakening collective identity, once celebrated as “multiculturalism”, now lamented as sleepwalking our way into segregation.
“I’m not afraid to confront this mafia now,” says Deen. “Before I had a fear that I would be ostracised from the community – it was an unspoken rule that you don’t have a different opinion because you will be shut down. It’s a bully force.
“But I know now that my position is cogent. I know that irrationality will not stand in the way of rationality.”
For all the abuse heaped on them for speaking out, they offer the only credible answer to forces within this country that threaten to divide us in the most dangerous way imaginable.

 

Do they, those ‘moderates’,  have any chance at all against the Saudi, or Deobandi, inspired ‘mafia’?  Not a chance in hell…especially when UK politicians, businessmen, academics, Sports, Royalty and some in the Media are so closely tied to the Gulf Arab States and their royal families.

Conservative Islam threatens to ‘divide us in the most dangerous way imaginable’….that’s not from Tommy Robinson, not from the BNP, not from some Islamophobic racist…..it’s from a BBC journalist.

But here’s the thing…Panorama is a one off, it’s conclusions don’t get followed through into the BBC’s general programming where Muslims must not be upset by having a few home truths spelt out to them in the interests, ironically, of ‘community cohesion’…which if John Ware is right is far from being the actual result of the BBC’s policy on Islam….the result being not to bond us toegther in one harmonious society but to  ‘divide us in the most dangerous way imaginable’.

Here is the face of Islam in the UK that the BBC really works hard to promote in an article by Owen Bennett-Jones:

Blasphemy, jihad and victimhood

Of course, most people still accept that the vast majority of Muslims are just as horrified and upset by militant Islamist violence as anyone else. But Muslims are under increasing pressure.

That is the most telling line in the piece…the essence of all BBC programming….the ‘vast majority of Muslims’ have no interest in actually practising their religion, fundamental Islam, as it should be practised, and no interest in violent propagation of Islam,  and, they are just as much victims of that Islamist violence as non-Muslims as they become subject to Islamophobic attacks.   But how true is any of that?  How many cheered 9/11?  How many secretly admire ISIS and will it to succeed?

Owen Bennett-Jones has been reading a few blogs after Panorama and didn’t like what he saw saying…

Right-wing, media-monitoring blogs are celebrating the shift, praising any programmes and articles that hint that Islam is regressive.

 

I imagine he means the likes of this site which may or may not be ‘right wing’ but is always right!

He goes on…

For years, they have routinely been asked by journalists to condemn violence. Now questions are also being asked about mainstream Muslim opinion on doctrinal issues such as blasphemy.

Many Muslims find now themselves described as extremists not because they support violence but because of their religious views.

 

That again pinpoints a problem with the BBC…in its eyes it is only the ‘violence’ that is extreme…it refuses to accept that Islam, in itself, is extremist when compared to a secular, democratic, liberal state.

He goes on…

While the Charlie Hebdo management sacked a cartoonist for anti-Semitism, it did not hesitate to publish anti-Islamic cartoons.

 

But there is a difference between anti-Semitism and cartoons that criticise Islamic values…or as he calls it…‘anti-Islamic cartoons’.

Anti-Semitism is a hatred based purely upon a racial identity whilst criticism of Islam is criticism of an idea, an ideology…not the same thing at all…it is not a hatred of Muslims as individuals.

You can be anti-Zionism or anti the teachings of the Torah or the Bible without being irrationally anti-Semitic or anti-Christians.

What Bennett-Jones doesn’t tell is is that the sacked cartoonist in question once said this:

‘Yes, I am anti-Semitic and I am not scared to admit it… I want all Jews to live in fear, unless they are pro-Palestinian. Let them die.’

Essentially Owen Bennett-Jones is trying to damn anyone who criticises Islam whilst excusing Muslim extremism as the result of ‘Islamophobia’ or racism…his final sentence summing up the general drift of the piece…

Others reckon the brothers were in fact using the blasphemy issue as a vehicle to express the frustration, anger and powerlessness that come with being the sons of Algerian migrants, alienated and unable to get a fair chance in the society they were born into.

 

That’s OK then….they aren’t to blame for the mass murder of journalists, police officers and Jews.  Bit frustrated about life, not got a job?  Go out and kill someone….stamp of approval from the BBC.

Such denial is rampant at the BBC….When the new King in Saudi Arabia took over the BBC reported on the web only that he said this in his speech:

Within hours of acceding to the throne, King Salman, 78, vowed to maintain the same policies as his predecessors.
“We will continue adhering to the correct policies which Saudi Arabia has followed since its establishment,” he said in a speech broadcast on state television.
The new king wrote on his official Twitter account: “I ask God to help me succeed in my service of the dear [Saudi] people.”

 

Now that one sentence, “We will continue adhering to the correct policies which Saudi Arabia has followed since its establishment,”  is also very telling but rather cryptic for most people especially as the BBC has excised most of the parts of the speech that expand on that statement giving it its full meaning and relevance…..here are those missing, relevant,  parts….

The following is the text of Saudi King Salman’s nationally televised speech Friday following the death of King Abdullah at age 90:
With hearts that believe in God and destiny, and are filled with sadness and grief, I go to the loyal Saudi people and the Arab and Islamic nations condoling the precious loss of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, may God have mercy on him.
God Almighty chose him to be close to Him after having spent his life seeking obedience of his Lord and to uphold His religion, then to serve his country and his people and defend the Arab and Islamic nations.

We will continue, with God’s grace and strength, committed to the true approach which was followed by this state since its inception.…… We will never deviate from this approach since our constitution is the book of Allah and the Sunnah (deeds and saying) of His Prophet, peace be upon him.
Brothers:
The Arab and Islamic nation is in dire need today to be united and maintain solidarity. We will continue in this country, that God has honored by choosing it as a platform for His message and as the direction Muslims must pray. Our march is to undertake everything possible to keep the unity of our ranks and the unity of word and in defense of our nation’s issues, guided by the teachings of our true Islamic religion which was favored by the Lord to us, the religion of peace, mercy and moderation.

I imagine you can spot the difference…….the Saudis are committed to the ‘Arabs’…not Pakistani Muslims then?  Islam was, after all, revealed to the Arabs as one Arab said rather pointedly…. and the ‘Islamic nation’…hmmm…that’ll be some form of Caliphate then ala ISIS…

They will never deviate from the True Religion and its teachings and will act to spread them around the world bringing peace, mercy and moderation to one and all.  Bless.

Curious someone at the BBC didn’t want you to see that…surely a fairly major part of the speech that indicated exactly what Saudi Arabia intends to do….carry on as before spreading its ‘malign’ message and influence around the world….and our politicians, media, academics, royalty and businessmen will continue to look the other way as long as the money keeps flowing into their pockets.

The narrative has to change….the narrative on Israel must be put into perspective with the mass murder by Muslims of Muslims being a priority…..as well as the various ethnic cleansings and mass exodus of peoples forced out by Islamic nation’s wars….reminding people that the Palestinian refugee’s problems pale into insignificance in the light of such revelations.

The West’s foreign policy must be examined more closely and the preferred lazy and agenda driven narrative that terrorism is purely the result of an anti-Islamic attack by the West proven wrong.  The West has long supported the Islamist cause…that was its mistake…we gave them safe harbour in Londonistan and they turned on us, we supported them in Afghanistan and they turned on us, we got rid of Saddam as Bin laden wanted to do, and they turned on us, we supported the Arab Spring and they turned on us, we refused to go into Syria as politicians bowed to the Muslim communities’ demands that we end ‘western intervention’ in Muslim countries and they turned on us for not intervening.

The BBC has a responsibility to lay out the facts, the history, the realities of who is doing what to whom and yet it fails to do so….it has taken the decision to side, in effect, with the terrorists, with the Jihadis, with the conservative Muslims.

The BBC’s discourse is dishonest and dangerous.  The absolute refusal to tackle the ingrained Muslim narrative of victimhood and the refusal to recognise the Koran’s insidious influence on the minds of the extremists means that the problem will never be tackled other than by continued massive surveillance and arrests in the Muslim community as the pro-Jihadi undercurrents continue to flow and swell fed by the BBC itself….a couple of programmes like Panorama will do nothing to stem this tidal wave of Islamism sweeping through Muslim communities as the BBC’s daily programmes continue with their diet of denial and their reports from the Middle East, and its Jihadi outpost in Australia, continue to justify and cheer on Hamas and ISIS  who are tearing up the maps drawn up when ‘France and Britain carved up the Middle East between them’ as so many BBC journalists like to provocatively, and falsely, claim….things were a lot more complicated than that.