“The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.”
This post is just something to suck on and give you pause for thought before I look at the BBC’s recent bit of climate propaganda…Is there a Green Hush?
The BBC has maintained a constant narrative that climate scientists are ‘under attack’ from sceptics and therefore such pressure explains the scientist’s refusal to explain their actions or indeed their ‘science’.
The trouble is it is in fact the sceptics who are under the worse attacks, led it might be said by the mainstream media…such as the BBC and the Guardian.
In the absence of any formal inquiry, trial by internet will continue. For better or for worse.
The BBC has been at the forefront of attacks on climate sceptics….and is still at it. Roger Harrabin is the BBC’s environmental correspondent who has helped orchestrate those attacks.
In any future reporting of Gore we should be careful not to suggest that the High Court says Gore was wrong on climate…….
We might say something like: “Al Gore whose film was judged by the High Court to have used some debatable science” or “Al Gore whose film was judged in the High Court to be controversial in parts”. The key is to avoid suggesting that the judge disagreed with the main climate change thesis.
Please pass to presenters because this issue about Gore will arise again.
“I’m not sure whether I should shake your hand. I want to punch you.” He sounded jolly cross indeed – and ranted that I was utterly irresponsible and had disseminated lots of lies – though he later apologized to me saying he was jet-lagged and had confused me with Christopher Booker.
Over two decades I’ve spoken to mainstream scientists who are sick of hearing their work attacked and their motives questioned. In this world, climate science extends beyond arguments about trend-smoothing to become a matter of life and death for millions of people, according to the mainstream projections on temperatures.
Can there be much doubt that such sentiments lead to this type of thinking from the Green Lobby?:
With high probability GW will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers.
Below is a selection of voices articulating what measures should be taken to silence or punish climate sceptics….if you think calls for death might be a little extreme you might ask why the BBC’s favourite ‘caring’ activist, Richard Curtis, also ‘jokingly’ implies that might not be a bad idea in his climate video for the 10:10 campaign.
In June 2009, former Clinton Administration official Joe Romm defended a comment on his Climate Progress website warning skeptics would be strangled in their beds. “An entire generation will soon be ready to strangle you and your kind while you sleep in your beds,” stated the remarks, which Romm defended by calling them “not a threat, but a prediction.”
This video highlights the Green’s campaign of vilification against climate sceptics…by terrorizing children…as someone put it, an ‘eco-snuff movie’.
And…all lovingly written by the man who is is allowed by the BBC to use its massive broadcasting platform to pump out ‘poverty porn’ and when he’s not doing that filling the airwaves with Green hype and misinformation..Richard Curtis:
There will be blood – watch exclusive of 10:10 campaign’s ‘No Pressure’ film
Here’s a highly explosive short film, written by Richard Curtis, from our friends at the 10:10 climate change campaign
“Clearly we don’t really think they should be blown up, that’s just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?” jokes 10:10 founder and Age of Stupid film maker Franny Armstrong.
Why take such a risk of upsetting or alienating people, I ask her: “Because we have got about four years to stabilise global emissions and we are not anywhere near doing that. All our lives are at threat and if that’s not worth jumping up and down about, I don’t know what is.”
“We ‘killed’ five people to make No Pressure – a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change,” she adds.
Jamie Glover, the child-actor who plays the part of Philip and gets blown up, has similarly few qualms: “I was very happy to get blown up to save the world.”
Here the ‘Tallbloke’ reveals the thoughts of another eco-fascist who wants to punish sceptics by killing them, though he thinks freedom of thought is a ‘very valuable thing’!: The opinions of everyday GW deniers are evidently being driven by influential GW deniers who have a lot to lose if GW is taken seriously, such as executives in transnational oil corporations. I have always been opposed to the death penalty in all cases, and I have always supported the clear and consistent stand of Amnesty International on this issue. The death penalty is barbaric, racist, expensive, and is often applied by mistake.
Even mass murderers should not be executed, in my opinion.….[but]…….GW deniers fall into a completely different category. They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate. With high probability GW will cause hundreds of millions of deaths.
For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers. More generally, I propose that we limit the death penalty to people whose actions will with a high probability cause millions of future deaths
Does that make me crazy? I don’t think so. I am certainly far less crazy than those people today who are in favor of the death penalty for everyday cases of murder, in my opinion. And like them I have freedom of speech, which is a very valuable thing.
You must understand climate scepticism isn’t a result of intelligent thought or informed debate, it’s because climate sceptic’s brains are wired wrong:
The authors drew on dozens of studies into people’s reactions to news about climate change, some of which suggest that certain types of people are more likely to find the evidence for human-induced climate change less convincing than others.
More in a similar vein: David Roberts is a blogger over at the green website Gristmill. On September 19, 2006, evidently fed up with climate change deniers, Roberts made an interesting suggestion for how to resolve scientific issues. To wit: “When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards—some sort of climate Nuremberg.” Roberts is far from alone. As Brendan O’Neill over at spiked points out, “climate change deniers” are now being likened by some activists to Holocaust deniers or even Nazis themselves. Apparently, it is no longer acceptable to question in polite company the hypothesis that humanity is causing catastrophic climate change.
Global warming: the chilling effect on free speech The demonisation of ‘climate change denial’ is an affront to open and rational debate. ‘David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial’, she wrote. ‘Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all.’ The message is clear: climate change deniers are scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be silenced, or criminalised, or forced beyond the pale alongside those other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around.
Of course the BBC is at the forefront of the attacks on climate sceptics, orchestrated by Roger Harrabin who runs the Green’s ‘Black Ops’ misinformation campaign…CMEP.
When the CRU emails were released into the world, after a months silence from the BBC, we finally got a response from Harrabin and Co…a response that was obviously an organised one being exactly the same from several BBC journalists and some of their allies:
Harrabin…The UEA’s CRU is one of the most respected centres in the world and its data set is like others around the world. Hackers stole private emails that climate sceptics say manipulated the data…if it were true it would be extremely serious but scientists behind it absolutely reject the allegation…I have spoken to a lot of scientists and they are very confident that the science behind the CRU data will be upheld. Obviously this was a bid to sabotage Copenhagen…millions of dollars are spent by American business trying to discredit AGW and this is the background as to why researchers have behaved in a defensive way.
But speaking to my source at the CRU, it is also clear that the unit has been dragged down by what it considers to be nit-picking and unreasonable demands for data – and that there is personal animus against their intellectual rivals.
Now this sort of hostility is nothing new in academia – but the revelations come at a sensitive time as the world’s nations gather for the climate meeting in Copenhagen.
In the absence of any formal inquiry, trial by internet will continue. For better or for worse. Tom Feilden….this shows how difficult it can be to remain objective when scientists are subjected to concerted attacks by those who will do or say anything to win a wider political argument. The CRU emails are taken out of context….are they the result of exasperation by someone who has been subjected to constant harassment by an orchestrated group of campaigners?
Seems that BBC correspondents and climate alarmists are ‘orchestrating’ a campaign…..the themes are all consistently the same….out of context, stolen, scientists under attack and being forced to be defensive, climate sceptics orchestrate.
Curiously climate misinformation campaigner, Bob Wade from the Grantham Institute at the LSE, uses the same excuses…political motivated theft and harassed scientists.
In 2008 Harrabin was involved in a controversy after he altered a BBC Online report on climate forecasting report following complaints by an environmentalist and the World Meteorological Organisation. Conservative critics accused Harrabin of caving into pressure.
Abbess: “Several networks exist that question whether global warming has peaked, but they contain very few actual scientists, and the scientists that they do contain are not climate scientists so have no expertise in this area.” Harrabin: “No correction is needed. If the secy-gen of the WMO tells me that global temperatures will decrease, that’s what we will report” Abbess: “Personally, I think it is highly irresponsible to play into the hands of the sceptics/skeptics who continually promote the idea that ‘global warming finished in 1998′, when that is so patently not true. “Please do not do a disservice to your readership by leaving the door open to doubt about that.” Harrabin: “We can’t ignore the fact that sceptics have jumped on the lack of increase since 1998. It is appearing reguarly now in general media. Best to tackle this – and explain it, which is what we have done.” (still no mention of the WMO…) Abbess: “When you are on the Tube in London, I expect that occasionally you glance a headline as sometime turns the page, and you thinkg [sic] ‘Really?’ or ‘Wow !’ You don’t read the whole article, you just get the headline. “It would be better if you did not quote the sceptics. Their voice is heard everywhere, on every channel. [Even the BBC? – astonished ed] They are deliberately obstructing the emergence of the truth. I would ask : please reserve the main BBC Online channel for emerging truth.” “A lot of people will read the first few paragraphs of what you say, and not read the rest, and (a) Dismiss your writing as it seems you have been manipulated by the sceptics or (b) Jump on it with glee and email their mates and say “See! Global Warming has stopped !” “I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. You may appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics.” Harrabin: “Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier. We have changed headline and more.”
Harrabin has a little job on the side, using his BBC job as a platform to launch his lucrative public speaking career:
Many of today’s environment/equity themes became issues of public concern following Roger’s reports on Radio 4’s “Today” programme. They include climate change, biodiversity, carbon footprints, population, over-fishing, green taxation, road pricing, global inter-connectedness, 3rd World debt, and many more. He was years ahead of the pack in showing how the environment links to energy, transport, farming, government aid, foreign policy, planning
The first installment with my own mission statement is here. Zurcher’s next topic was inevitable, so here goes. Again, I’m doing this without having read any of it other than the title and the first sentence.
Somebody has leaked or stolen some emails by the popular and prominent New Jersey Governor detailing and gloating about deliberately blocking traffic on a vital commuter conduit in order to retaliate against a local politician who didn’t endorse Christie in the last election. The deputy chief of staff – whom Christie has now fired – seems to have made no bones about what they were doing, and even expressed pleasure in doing so in emails between her and the the Port Authority official in charge of running the George Washington Bridge, who’s a high school friend of the Governor and was appointed by him. It does have all the appearances of being very cozy.
It’s ugly business, not because it’s a national incident but because it’s a clear case of using government power to harm a political opponent, which is a major issue on its own thanks to the IRS scandal, never mind the negative affect it had on ordinary citizens, apparently simply because most of them voted the wrong way. As this editorial from Investor’s Business Daily says, “What’s infuriating is how this kind of politics is becoming the norm.”
This is a major national story also because Christie has a national profile not only because of his public image as a straight talker and a caring, competent administrator after the devastation of parts of his State from Hurricane Sandy, but because he’s been considered by many in the media and political wonk class to be the front runner for the Republican candidacy for President in 2016. Anything that calls his integrity into question is going to be big. It’s especially going to gain legs regardless of the facts because at the moment he’s the number one obstacle to President-in-waiting Hillary Clinton. So Christie now has the biggest target on his back of anyone in the country.
He’s going to get the vetting that the media never did for the Junior Senator from Illinois in 2008, or even during Obama’s first term as President. It’s no secret that the mainstream media knows they didn’t do their job properly, and that they really did use the power of the press to support him and attack enemies. There’s been a little pushback in the last couple of months, and it was probably always going to be inevitable that they were going to overreact in order to reestablish public trust and prove that they really do want to hold politicians accountable and speak truth to power.
The Big Three networks, in a frenzy over New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s traffic headache dubbed “Bridgegate,” have devoted a whopping 34 minutes and 28 seconds of coverage to the affair in just the last 24 hours.
By comparison, that’s 17 times the two minutes, eight seconds devoted to President Obama’s IRS scandal in the last six months, according to an analysis by the Media Research Center.
“While routinely burying new stories on the IRS scandal, the media practically fell over themselves to start taking shots at the potential 2016 Republican presidential nominee,” said the conservative media watchdog.
It’s important to keep this background in mind when considering the media coverage now, regardless of the facts as they come out. Opinion on the validity of the IRS scandal can be viewed as a metric. So, naturally there’s noise in both the Left and Right echo chambers. Christie says he didn’t know the truth and was misled by his staff about the whole thing. Naturally, some won’t trust him and are asking “What did he know and when did he know it?”, while others are taking him at his word. While it’s impossible to prove a negative, many are pointing to his known brusk, tough-talking, and at times aggressive behavior as evidence that this attitude was endemic in his administration, and thus he shares blame.
A good example of this comes from the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart. Just his blog title says it all:
During his 107-minute me-me-mea culpa over the traffic fiasco that plunged his national political fortunes into chaos, Gov. Chris Christie said something that was LOL funny. It came in response to a question from NBC News’s Kelly O’Donnell: “Your critics say this reveals that you are a political bully, that your style is payback,” she asked the New Jersey Republican known for his love of rhetorical fisticuffs and penchant for retribution. “Are you? And does this compromise your ability to serve?
Capehart then cites a couple of instances of Christie making snarky retorts at people asking him challenging questions. Those responses are part of what made independents and people on the Right like him, while it tended to anger those on the Left. To Capehart and those in his echo chamber, it’s proof that Christie is a bully, and proof that he either knew or his style encouraged the corrupt behavior.
There are plenty of questions that Mr. Christie and his aides, current and former, need to answer.
First, is it plausible that officials as high up as Ms. Kelly and Mr. Christie’s top appointees at the Port Authority, which controls the bridge, would decide to seek revenge and create this traffic chaos on their own?
Did Mr. Christie know in December, when Mr. Baroni and Mr. Wildstein resigned, that these two members of his inner circle had taken part in the scheme? Did he ever ask them what happened?
The echo chamber from the other side is obviously more willing to give Christie the benefit of the doubt. But they’re certainly not just accepting his side of the story and drawing a line under the incident. Charles Krauthammer is taking a wait-and-see attitude. He even suggests that if Christie’s toughness image comes across after this as “a petty toughness”, he’s “toast”. That and the IBD sentiment I mentioned above are echoed by Red State’s Eric Erickson (writing for Fox News here):
I’m ambivalent on his run for the presidency . But I don’t see him getting that far for the very reasons underlying this issue — he and his staff operate as divas.I have had congressmen, governors, and the staffers of congressmen and governors tell me horror stories about dealing with Christie’s people.
All of them seem to dread it.
It seems that even if Christie comes out of this with clean(ish) hands, the bully label is going to stick. Of course, nobody in either echo chamber is comparing that to Hillary Clinton’s own horror stories about how she treats people, but it’s only a matter of time if Christie does eventually declare.
So is it going to doom Christie’s presidential hopes? It’s too soon to tell, of course, but there are plenty of guesses out there. Lisa Schiffren in the National Review Online’s “The Corner”, thinks this too shall pass and Christie the (eventual) candidate might even come out of this the better for it. The other echo chamber, here in the form of Jason Linkins of the HuffingtonPost, thinks there’s always the possibility of a “Comeback Kid” story, as the media likes to create these Narratives.
There’s one other facet to this story – particularly the coverage and the opinion-mongering – which goes back to what I said about how opinion of the IRS scandal can be a kind of metric. The same people on the Left who defended the President on that saying he couldn’t possibly have known, and his behavior had no influence on the IRS going after his political enemies, are now certain that Christie’s behavior influenced and led to everything, and of course he probably knew.
Before closing, we must also consider the other, other echo chamber: Twitter.
Christie has taken responsibility within a day of learning of the scandal. That’s more times than Obama has in 5 years of scandals.
It’s too early to know how this will turn out, but the various opinions have been far more revealing of the attitudes and politics of the people making them than about anything in the story itself.
An invitation to Mark Duggan’s aunt from the BBC’s Nicky Campbell:
‘I’m going to give you two minutes to be open and honest about the cancer in our society…say honestly from the heart what you want to say….say anything you want.’
There are some dangerous myths being propagated in some communities….one is that radicalisation is caused by ‘western’ foreign policy……today we hear the excuses for Black radicalisation….Black youths are more likely to die in police custody than any other segment of the population, and that police community relations are failing because of police actions such as stop and search.
I have heard these mentioned again and again today but not a word of dissent from the BBC, as with Muslim callers or commentators who suggest foreign policy causes radicalisation the BBC seems unable to challenge anyone who wraps themselves in their flag of convenience….that being their race or religion.
There is no mention of the real figures of deaths in custody nor the reasons for stop and search..no look at the numbers of black youths killed by other black youths, no looking at Trident in relation to all this.
The narrative does seem to go just one way…the police are to blame for all the problems….they don’t understand the community, they don’t communicate with them and they persecute them.
No thought that maybe the Black community brings it upon themselves….or rather a segment of the black community brings it upon the whole….all to be taken advantage of by the race hustlers.
Having caught quite a bit of the BBC’s coverage of the response to the Duggan verdict I can only conclude that the BBC would be quietly sympathetic to anyone who decided the best reaction would be to riot, burn down homes and businesses, and if innocent people are killed, then so be it….that’s the price of injustice when Democracy fails you and injustice stalks the streets.
David Cameron said that ‘the judicial process has to be respected.’
The BBC’s response was to say bollocks to that, asking instead….’Should the police guidance on the use of lethal force be changed?’
That question from the BBC tells you a lot about their thinking. It immediately suggests that though a jury has found the shooting legal the BBC believes that the police guidelines on the use of lethal force are wrong…and therefore the verdict, based upon those guidelines, is wrong….and therefore…
The killing was unjustified…in other words the BBC are suggesting Duggan was murdered by the police.
Just a coincidence that the BBC’s broadcast this by their tame Black activist, Alvin Hall, on the day after the verdict is given:
Alvin Hall on Motown’s Black Forum spoken word records with the people behind them
The Sound of The Struggle
If you think it’s about music you’d be mistaken…once again Hall is glorifying Black political activism and promoting the victim status of Black people.
‘Amazing how timely some of the lyrics are’Alvin tells us….as black youths are being killed in the streets….no Honkys though?….and in the UK most black youths are killed by other black youths…go figure.
When he tells us that the death of an unarmed black boy, Trayvon Martin, at the hands of a neighbourhood watchman, gives the recordings ‘a painful contemporary resonance’ you get the message he is peddling…no matter that George Zimmerman, who shot Martin, was Hispanic and not White.
That message? Black youths are still being murdered by whitey. Excellent choice of programme and sentiment on the day following the verdict on the killing of a black man by police officers.
Coincidence? Sure.
This is the BBC which frequently postpones broadcasting programmes at ‘sensitive times’ if they are deemed to have an unfortunate relevance to current events….but no one at the BBC thought that a programme which glorifies the Black power movement and brings us quotes like the one below might be ill judged and ill timed:
‘If you do not think he is capable of wiping us out check out the white race, wherever they have gone they have ruled, conquered, murdered and plagued, whether they are the majority or the minority they have always ruled, they have always ruled!’
His show of course is a phone in about the Duggan verdict.
The BBC has in the past frequently given Duggan’s mother airtime which she used to say that Duggan had been executed or assassinated by the police.
Somewhat inflamatory but the BBC never challenged that…and indeed today Campbell gave Duggan’s aunt carte blanche to say what she liked as the ‘heat and anger is understandable’
However Campbell was told that it was people like him and the BBC who misrepresented what Black people were like.
Campbell grovelled and responded…..‘This is why it’s so important to hear from people like you.’
‘I’m going to give you two minutes to be open and honest about the cancer in our society…say honestly from the heart what you want to say….say anything you want.’
So she let rip……Mark Duggan was executed.
We were also told that black youths in custody are being killed at a murderous rate by police…a highly emotive claim but one that is far, far from the truth…. but not challenged by Campbell:
Deaths in or following police custody show that 84% of those who died were White, 11 % (n=2) were Black and 5% (n=1) were of mixed ethnicity. o N=322 (63%) were natural causes; o N=104 (20%) were self-inflicted deaths; o N=58 (11%) were cause of death ‘unknown’. 55 of these deaths were of patients detained under the Mental Health Act, which accounts for 19% of the 273 recorded deaths in this setting; o N=12 (2%) in which prisons were awaiting further information before classification; o N=11 (2%) were other non-natural deaths; o N=4 (0.8%) were Other; o N=2 (0.4%) were homicides (both in prison) and; o N=2 (0.4%) were Other – Accidental
Whilst giving Duggan’s aunt the freedom of the airwaves to say what she liked Campbell later (09:59) felt the need to say this after a caller suggested that the Black community needed to apologise for the riots…..
‘And of course we need to counter the caller who said the black community should apologise, that was an appalling generalisation…strong feelings and strong words this morning [from Duggan’s family & Co], understandably…thank you for listening.’
He felt no need to counter the explosive accusation of ‘execution’ though…or indeed that the Black community are persecuted by the police.
Curious how the feelings of outrage and anger and the EDL’s march (No violence, no rioting, no looting, no deaths) on the murder and near beheading of Lee Rigby were not so ‘understandable’….no invitations to talk ‘from the heart, openly and honestly about the cancer in our society’ then.
“My loathing of McDonald’s is intense. There are advantages in development provided it is the right sort, but there are already too many take-away restaurants in Hampstead.”
But if you have a problem with a culture that advocates killing non-believers, promotes homophobia, declares that women are second class, that endorses multiple marriages…and of course anti-Semitism…it is you who are the problem.
Let’s remember Duggan’s aunt’s reaction to the verdict, repeated today……
Outside court the Duggan family solicitor expressed the family’s dismay at the verdict telling reporters: “On the 4 August an unarmed man was shot down in Tottenham. Today we have had what we can only call a perverse judgement.
“The jury found he had no gun and yet he was gunned down – for us that’s an unlawful killing. The family are in a state if shock and we ask that you would respect that shock.
“They can’t believe that this was the outcome. No gun in his hand yet he was shot. Murdered. No justice. No peace.”
However just a few hours later she’s changed her mind…..
Toxic and detrimental to society…in fact it is worse than tobacco as tobacco isn’t introduced into food.
The BBC tells us that:
Nearly two thirds of people in the UK are overweight or obese – leading to other health problems such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Really? You have to ask firstly is that true? Not sure I believe the figure….looking around most people look pretty average to me. Secondly who sets the parameters to make that judgement…how do you define ‘obese’?
Of course there are official guidelines, but you kind of suspect that many people so categorised would not accept the label…and would say if this is ‘fat’ then I’m quite happy being ‘fat’…so get lost!
The BBC have been banging on all day about this ‘major’ news story….a bunch of arrogant, not to say verging on fascist, doctors have yet again decided to dictate what we can and can’t eat ‘for our own good’.
There doesn’t seem much of a challenge to their claims from the BBC….this report is wholly from the doctor’s point of view save for the inset interview clip.
Dr Victoria Burley, a senior lecturer in Nutrional Epidemiology at Leeds University, said the group’s claims were alarmist and misleading.
She said: “It is nuts to claim that sugar is as dangerous as alcohol. It’s total hyperbole, quite crazy.”
Here is some more of that hyperbole from the campaigners:
Action on Sugar says children are a particularly vulnerable group who are targeted by marketers of calorie-dense snacks and sugar-sweetened soft drinks.
Professor Simon Capewell said: ”Sugar is the new tobacco. Everywhere, sugary drinks and junk foods are now pressed on unsuspecting parents and children by a cynical industry focussed on profit not health.
That’s just rubbish….fizzy drinks, sweets, biscuits, crisps and whatever were all around in my youth and I wolfed them down as much as anyone when I could…..thing is I was limited in the amount I could eat……and was far from being anywhere near obese….conclusion…it’s not the amount of sugar in the products it’s how much of those products you eat…eat too much lettuce and you will also suffer problems.
As to ‘pressed on unsuspecting parents and children’….well as above..the same foods were available when I was young and yet my parents managed to avoid having cynical industrial types peddle their wares to them ‘unsuspected’ fleecing them for sugarcoated profits.
The doctors seem to think everyone else are stupid and ignorant, and incapable of making their own informed decisions about the food they eat…..and the BBC doesn’t seem to be disabusing the doctors of that opinion.
Listen to the tone when they do bring on an industry spokesman…it’s entirely negative and suspicious of the capitalist exploiters of children.
Shame that once again a fanatical pressure group gets given so much credibility and airtime by the BBC without a proper challenge to their claims.
On 9 September, two of three traffic lanes to the George Washington Bridge, which connects New Jersey to Manhattan, were shut for several days.
Emails and texts made public on Wednesday appear to link Ms Kelly to the move.
The move caused traffic chaos in the New Jersey borough of Fort Lee, whose Democratic mayor had declined to back Mr Christie in last autumn’s gubernatorial election.
Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich said the alleged skulduggery was “appalling”….”It’s the example of the pettiest and most venomous side of politics,” he told the Bergen Record newspaper.
No such concerns about ‘petty, venomous politics’ when Labour opened the borders and imported millions of immigrants purely to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’.
Hundreds of sets of traffic lights at some of London’s busiest junctions are being secretly altered to increase the time motorists have to wait, according to The Independent on Sunday (p5).
The changes affect as many as 300 traffic lights. After months of suspicion, the body in charge of traffic lights, Transport for London, has now admitted that many have had their red phases increased and the green phase reduced.
Motoring groups say London mayor Ken Livingstone has intentionally created traffic chaos now in order to make his congestion charging scheme more popular when it is introduced in nine months time.
Just how many ambulances and police response vehicles were delayed by Ken’s little games?
Well then, who would have thought that the BBC would have found a new icon to worship after the death of Mandela, and who would have thought it was a London “gangsta”? BBC coverage has been extensive and very pro Duggan, and the comrades also seem disappointed there has not been a riot! Thoughts?
Last November, the BBC website created the “Echo Chambers” feature, and assigned one of their experienced editors and journalists, Anthony Zurcher to curate it. The mission statement as he originally stated it is this:
Welcome to Echo Chambers, a new blog about opinion and commentary in the United States and around the world.
The purpose of this blog is to discover and present quality opinion journalism wherever it may be – to find value amid the noise. We’ll unearth interesting material and underreported views from the BBC, on the world’s newspaper opinion pages, and in think tank reports, magazines, blog posts and scholarly journals. The venue isn’t important; the content is.
A condensed version of this is permanently in the upper right corner of the Echo Chambers page.
Unscrambling the noise of the global debate, from social media to scholarly journals, Kansas City to Kathmandu.
As has been pointed out many times, I’m not a professional journalist and so cannot understand the arcane arts, but to me, this means that the blog is meant to make some sense of the chatter on both sides of an issue. After all, we’ve been told countless times by journalists and defenders of the indefensible that this blog is just a Right-wing echo chamber, and we often complain that the BBC functions as a Left-wing echo chamber. We all know the drill about Fox News or the Guardian, each often described as an echo chamber for their own side of the political spectrum, and intellectually lazy people who want to stifle debate simply dismiss any point made or evidence offered from either as invalid, simply due to the source, relieving the accuser of the need to address the actual point itself. Media in both the US and UK have become highly politicized, from local newspapers and obscure blogs all the way up to national papers and network and cable news. There’s far more opinion-mongering going on everywhere these days than actual objective newsgathering and reporting. In fact, even the top outlets like the Washington Post and the BBC are moving more and more towards opinion journalism.
One would think it’s a good idea to try and sort through the noise and attempt to distill it down to some semblance of reality, to point out merits or flaws in arguments coming from each side of an issue. The question for the BBC’s Echo Chambers feature, then, is does it meet its remit?
Zurcher’s opening mission statement was that he intends to “find value amid the noise”, and the permanent mission statement is to “unscramble the noise”. In practice, it seems that, with the exception of a weekly list of links about various topics, the installments are mostly an exercise in Left-wing editorializing. Much of the time, Zurcher is basically presenting stuff from the mainstream Left-wing echo chamber as value in reaction to an issue which seemed to be momentarily gaining traction from the Right. His choices of who writes quality opinion is revealing. One has to give him credit for being one of the more industrious BBC journalists. He sure cranks out a lot of these in a short space of time. A list of links to my analyses of several of his pieces can be found in the comments section of this post about it by Daniel Pycock. Personally, I’m sick to death of opinion journalism, and I think it’s done far more damage to public discourse than help crystalize any ideas. But again, I’m not a professional journalist, so not qualified to judge the priest caste.
With this in mind, I’m going to try a little experiment. For the next five Echo Chambers installments (not including the next simple list of links), rather than do my usual long-winded parsing and complaining, I’m going to attempt an alternative version of what I think it says on the tin. That is to say, I’ll try to actually present a few opinion pieces on whatever topic catches Zurcher’s fancy. I won’t read his piece, just check the title and the opening lines to see what the issue is. I’ll even use his title. Then I’ll curate my own collection of “value”, adding my own brief (I promise) comments so the reader gets the idea of what I think is going on. Each one will include a link to the BBC Echo Chambers piece, and everyone can view them side-by-side and judge for themselves not so much if I’m doing a great job, but whether or not Zurcher is really doing his properly, and just how much of a Left-wing echo chamber he lives in. I may or may not link to the same things he does. Without reading it in advance, I’ll have no idea. If I do, it’s purely coincidental. This whole thing is nothing more than opinion journalism on that level anyway, and anyone who has read two or three of these things will know in which bubble Zurcher lives.
So, below is my first installment. Four more will follow as and when.
One of the most prominent politicians on the Right these days is Ted Cruz, the Republican junior Senator from Texas. He was elected on the strength of Tea Party backing, and in these days of desperation for a fresh face is already being touted as a possible presidential candidate in 2016. Many on the Left see him as a possible threat because he is Hispanic, and identity politics is a very important tool for them. So he’ll most likely get more attention early on than a junior Senator with no experience would otherwise. Sounds familiar, somehow. Cruz is also hated on the Left because of his support for last year’s government shutdown. In other words, there’s a big target on his back.
So it was inevitable that people would start looking for something on Cruz. As it happens, he was born in Canada. His mother was a US citizen at the time of birth, so US law says he’s a citizen at birth, regardless of where he was born, even though his Cuban father was not. Cruz claims he didn’t know because he was told in his youth that he had to make some official affirmation to finalize his Canadian citizenship, and since he never bothered, he forgot all about it. It’s actually automatic, no need for him to do anything. Of course, it’s impossible to prove he’s lying.
The noise first started, really, back in March 2013, after he introduced Sarah Palin as keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). One of her main topics was gun control and the Obama* Administration’s press for more and stricter background checks in the aftermath of the mass murder of children at a school in Newtown, CT. At one point, she made quip about maybe we should have started checking his background first.
You can guess what happened next. Rick Ungar in Forbes saw support for Cruz as “Birther Hypocrisy”.
While Palin’s return to birtherism accomplished the intended laugh from the appreciative crowd, there was someone in the room who was likely not laughing.
That would be Senator Ted Cruz—the man who so glowingly introduced Ms. Palin and a man who clearly views himself as being on a populist track to the White House. He’s not alone in that regard as four percent of the votes registered in the CPAC straw poll were cast in support of Mr. Cruz, the man often referred to as the Republican Barack Obama.
Ironically, there can be little doubt that among those who expressed their support for a Cruz presidency at CPAC were attendees who continue to question the current president’s constitutional right to hold the office.
While there is no legal question about Cruz’s eligibility, it was quickly revealed that he was also a Canadian citizen, which is what happens when one is born there. So there was a call for him to renounce his Canadian citizenship, partially to make a point, and partially because many would consider it a little odd for a President to be a citizen of another country. As Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News explained in August:
What’s a birther to do? After years of haranguing Barack Obama as a non-citizen, what about Ted Cruz, who acknowledges he was born in Canada? He isn’t just a U.S. citizen. He has dual citizenship as both an American and a Canadian. Cruz says he’ll renounce his Canadian citizenship, but it’s not clear whether that’s enough to satisfy the birthers in his party who have long claimed at President Obama was born in Africa and therefore ineligible to be president. Obama was born in Hawaii. But most constitutional scholars agree that even if he had been born in a foreign country, he’s still a natural-born citizen under the terms of the Constitution because he is the child of an American parent.
Slater goes on to say that true Birthers claim – erroneously, of course – that nobody even born in a foreign country can be President. Cruz quickly promised to renounce his Canadian citizenship by the end of the year.
Only one of Ted’s parents was a citizen when he was born (his father is a Cuban émigré who did not take U.S. citizenship until 2005), and he therefore falls under a special section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that applies to “Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent.” Under that provision, Cruz only qualifies for American citizenship if his mother was “physically present” in the United States for 10 years prior to his birth, five of which had to be after she reached the age of 14. The only definitive way to prove Eleanor Cruz’s 10 years of physical presence would be with documents such as leases, school registration, utility bills or tax records.
Of course, we don’t know how rigorous the Canadians are about evidence of citizenship, but we do know that they will not be willing simply to take Ted’s word for it. Their form is very specific about requiring documentary proof, and that might be hard for Ted to come by. Could that be the reason for Cruz’s delayed renunciation? It would be pretty embarrassing to have his Application to Renounce Canadian Citizenship denied on a technicality.
In other words, in order to renounce Canadian citizenship, Cruz first has to go through a laborious record-collecting process to prove his US citizenship. This was picked up in the Left-wing blogosphere and other outlets, and the Left thought they smelled ironic birther blood. It’s now the new year, so naturally those who seek to undermine him are going to check up on it. It turns out he hasn’t officially done it yet, hence the noise this week. Why hasn’t he followed up on his promise? It should be a straightforward process. So are the Left-wing birthers on to something? Kelly McPartland from Canada’s National Post seems to think so.
Some immigration experts are wondering why it’s taken Mr. Cruz so long to complete the paperwork for his renunciation. “It’s not complicated at all,” said Stephen Green, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, according to the Associated Press.
Richard Kurland, a Vancouver-based immigration attorney, agreed: “Unless there’s a security issue that hasn’t been disclosed, unless there’s a mental health issue that hasn’t been disclosed, there’s no reason for anything other than a lickety-split process to occur.”
Hmmm. Well, something must be holding up the works, which is why Mr. Alexander should seize this opportunity to get involved. Ted Cruz is an American caught in the talons of Canadian citizenship. We need to set him free.
Yes, the Left-wing echo chambers like the Daily Kos are getting excited over this, but I’m having a hard time finding actual opinion pieces on it. Rather than seeing a lot of noise in the echo chambers which must be unscrambled, I’m seeing that almost everyone is pretty much reprinting the same Canadian Press/AP piece over and over, or quoting the relevant bits like McPartland has done. Wayne Slater in the Dallas Morning News is doing the same thing in his opinion piece. Is there anything in the Right-wing echo chamber about this? Not that I can find. I haven’t spent hours searching, and at this point it’s pretty clear that anything will be more speculation or a simple dismissal, repeating what’s already been said.
I suppose one way to look at this is that if the Right is silent, that means they’re afraid of the truth. Alternatively, they could simply feel that it’s already been proven that Cruz meets the definition of a natural born US citizen, especially since nobody is doubting that his mother didn’t live in the US for ten years before he was born, and don’t care about this. In other words, it’s exciting for the Left, who have only speculation to go on, and that’s about it. There’s nothing edifying either way other than the one supposition quoted by the AP. We’ll have to wait and see.
* I’m refraining from my usual formulation of “The Obamessiah” and the quasi-religious capital H in “Him”, etc., because I do that to make fun of the BBC’s reflexive worship and near religious devotion, and it’s not appropriate for what I’m trying to do here.
Aw, bless ’em. The BBC must have been so upset by the revelations from former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates indicating that Obama did not have faith in the merit of the administration’s strategy, despite his decision to order a “surge” in troops to the region, that it is buried in the main news portal today! See if you can find it; Hint, it’s below a Schumacher story….
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