The feeding frenzy against the BBC, spurred on by Dacre and Murdoch, grows ever more threatening. It matters because politicians are afraid of both men. More sinister than the trip to Deripaska’s yacht was the less publicised visit by David Cameron to Murdoch’s yacht on that same holiday. Obligingly, Cameron wrote a piece in the Sun last week joining in the anti-BBC hue and cry.
Here she tells us that Dacre, and Murdoch, have an evil legacy for Britain:
Delicate Guardian readers may find it hard deciding whether Max Mosley or Paul Dacre is the more unsavoury character. But there’s no doubt which of them does most harm: Dacre – along with Rupert Murdoch in his different way – probably does more damage to the nation’s happiness and wellbeing than any other single person, stirring up hatred, anger, fear, paranoia and cynicism with his daily images of a nation going to hell in a downward spiral of crime and depravity.
She of course has no problem with the Marxist ideology of Ralph Miliband and thinks it ourageous that such an ideology should be called an ‘evil legacy’.
But then she is also a long time fan of George Bernard Shaw….so you might understand how Polly thinks….if not let’s take a peek under the bonnet:
What makes Shaw so likeable and readable is the odd blend of soaring idealism and no-nonsense realism
Shame about this newspaper article:
In 1927 Shaw published in the London Daily News a letter titled :
“Bernard Shaw on Mussolini: A Defence.”
or how about this:
“The Nazi movement is in many respects one which has my warmest sympathy.”
or what of his liking for Oswald Mosley:
He was well-disposed toward Oswald Mosley, Britain’s home-grown fascist demagogue, declaring Mosley “the only striking personality in British politics.”
or inconveniently for Lefty Polly:
Bernard Shaw, who, for some years at any rate, declared Communism and Fascism to be much the same thing, and was in favour of both of them.
Or how about his ‘admiration for the“great Communist experiment” which as it “spreads over the whole world” would prevent the “collapse and failure” of civilization.’ after his visit to the Soviet Union in 1931.
“The blunt truth is that ill-used people are worse than well-used people.” He adds: “I hate the poor and look forward eagerly to their extermination. I pity the rich a little, but am equally bent on their extermination.”
All classes are “each more odious than the other: they have no right to live”.
She tells us that:
The problem, Shaw says, is that the poor are kept ignorant, and without “trained minds capable of public affairs”, so they cannot see how “the evils of the system are great national evils”.
Shaw’s clarity of argument and caustic wit prod and question the weary old reasons why markets are immutable, the world must always be as it is and nothing can ever change. All it would take, he says, is enough people who want to change it. All writers can do is keep making the case for something better.
Fascinating how the mind of Polly Toynbee works…..how exterminating the Poor and the Rich is an ‘ideal’ to be considered…..interesting also that the ‘Capitalist system’ is Evil, Paul Dacre is evil…….but we can’t call Marxism Evil.
What else is there about Polly’s hero that we ought to know?:
Playwright George Bernard Shaw hailed Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini as the world’s great “progressive” leaders because they “did things,” unlike the leaders of those “putrefying corpses” called parliamentary democracies.
aaaahhh but the Left cry, that’s so unfair picking something from someone’s past to pillory them now (Daily Mail support for the Blackshirts in 1934 aside of course):
The problem with the right-wing use of Shaw to pillory moderate socialists and nonsocialist liberal progressives is not only that very few of the latter held such views, but that this kind of cherry picking is ahistorical. It doesn’t seek to understand how such now unacceptable opinions gained currency, or who held them and why. It is what Pascal Bruckner calls the sin of anachronism, which he contrasts to real history, which “forbids us to judge preceding centuries from the point of view of the present.”
But of course Toynbee is cherry picking the bits she approves of in Shaw’s writng and ignoring the rest, just as the Left cherry picks the Mail’s history without context or understanding.
Late in 1929, Shaw among other public figures had been asked by the BBC to give a talk in a series called Points of View. He chose “Democracy” as his subject and turned the term upside down by declaring, “Who can blame Signor Mussolini for describing it as a putrefying corpse?”.
The BBC love Mehdi Hasan. He is an everpresent presence on our screens, as much or possibly more than that other wretch Alastair Campbell.
I wonder why….of course he’s a Muslim but he wears a nice suit and he talks of reform of Islam…the BBC lap it up.
But really, what is it about this two faced, duplicitous, lying little toady of the Iranian regime who on our screens dresses in those western suits but when kicking back with his brethren changes into his Islamist garb…Mehdi being a Shi’ite lay preacher….as he lays into the Kufar, those ignorant cattle?
If you want your very own Mehdi Hasan they’re available now at Amazon…as seen on the BBC:
Low Prices on Mehdi Hasan.
Free UK Delivery on Eligible Orders
However there is more than one Mehdi Hasan, not just the BBC, Westernised version…if you would like the radical, preacher version or the devout Muslim who claims also to be secular and progressive version you’ll find them here, a huge selection, going cheap:
Yes there are many versions of Mehdi Hasan, one moment secular progressive the next radical Islamist preacher, the next Muslim reforming barnstormer, the next a vocal advocate for the advancement of Islamic influence in the West.
Hasan provides you with the version that he thinks you will believe in, the one that will get him on the telly and into print.
He knows that if he dressed as he does when talking to a Muslim audience and started preaching verses from the Koran he wouldn’t be taken seriously and his message would be lost.
His message is simple.
His sole aim is the advancement of Islam, to increase its influence and to eventually see that Islam is the dominant political and social ideology in this country.
That is not a message he knows he can put out openly and so he hides behind his reformist, progressive, secular image whilst all the time slowly, slowly pushing the message that inch by inch gains weight and influence.
He urges his fellow Muslims not to be doctors and engineers but to be journalists and media poppets…in order to ‘ help influence the industry’s coverage of issues such as terrorism and integration.…“I see people like myself – who happen to be both a professional journalist and a practising Muslim – as a bridge between the Islamic community and the media, and by extension between Muslims and wider society,”
In other words he means to get Muslims into positions of power and influence to push a media assault that presents Islam in a way they want you to see it, but not as it really is.
Think not?
Let’s have a look at the many faces of Mehdi Hasan.
My name is Mehdi Hasan and I’m the New Statesman’s senior political editor. My good friend Peter Oborne suggested I drop you a line as I’m very keen to write for the Daily Mail.
Although I am on the left of the political spectrum, and disagree with the Mail’s editorial line on a range of issues, I have always admired the paper’s passion, rigour, boldness and, of course, news values. I believe the Mail has a vitally important role to play in the national debate, and I admire your relentless focus on the need for integrity and morality in public life, and your outspoken defence of faith, and Christian culture, in the face of attacks from militant atheists and secularists.
I am also attracted by the Mail’s social conservatism on issues like marriage, the family, abortion and teenage pregnancies. I’d like to write a piece for the Mailmaking the left-wing case against abortion, or a piece on why marriage should be a Labour value, and not just a Conservative one. My own unabashed social conservatism on such issues derives from my Islamic faith.
I do hope you’ll consider me for future columns and features in the Daily Mail on political, social, moral and/or religious issues. I believe you once told sports columnist Des Kelly that he should “make them laugh, make them cry, or make them angry”. That’s something I believe I could do for you, and for your readers, on the pages of the Mail.
Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,
Mehdi Hasan
Senior Editor (Politics)
New Statesman
Well yes…certainly made this reader of the Daily Mail laugh.
Now most of you will know why that is so jarringly funny…you will have seen his performance on Question Time when he launched an all out attack on the Daily Mail asking:
‘Who hates Britain more…is it Ralph Miliband or the immigrant bashing, gay baiting, women hating, Muslim smearing, NHS undermining Daily Mail?’:
Nothing like a good old bit of dog whistle rhetoric.
Question Time is a fun show to do but I’d be the first to admit that it doesn’t lend itself to nuance or depth and doesn’t allow panellists enough time to unpack their views and opinions in any detail.
Here he writes in The Guardian about the British media:
“I grow tired of having to also endure a barrage of lazy stereotypes, inflammatory headlines, disparaging generalisations and often inaccurate and baseless stories.”
Quite so Mehdi.
So let’s unpack Mehdi’s politics and religious convictions and ask who is it that hates Britain more, the Daily Mail or the immigrant bashing, Gay hating, women hating, Kufar smearing, intellectually stagnant Islamic world?
You’re no doubt shocked…how could I say such a thing…well don’t look at me…ask Mehdi…he has said all those things about Islam as he presents his ‘secular, progressive’ face to the western media.
But….if this is a hatchet job on Mehdi Hasan then so be it.
Tom Holland @holland_tom12hAs ever, @NickCohen4 is very good on the tensions that can exist between progressive & religious ideals on the left:
As things stand, the world remains upside down. The left rather than the right defends reactionary religion, as long as the reactionaries do not have a white skin. You should never tire of pointing out that they are complicit in an enormous betrayal of progressive principles. Women, gays, secularists, liberals and socialists from ethnic minorities ought to be able to turn to British liberals and leftists for support against the patriarchal men, who seek to control them. Rather than fraternal greetings, they find indifference and hostility.
Hasan doesn’t agree with Cohen’s label of ‘religious reactionary:
Its going to end in the holocaust…‘…years ago when Europeans got concerned about a religious minority in their midst it didn’t end too well, so forgive me for being worried.’
Of course the Jews weren’t forcing their religion down people’s throats, nor were they attacking people across the globe driving Jews and Christians from their homes.
We have to put it on the table and be honest about it. Of course there are Christian extremists and Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu ones. But I am afraid this strain is not the province of a few extremists. It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal, open-minded societies.’
In our communities, groups and organisations led by young, dynamic leaders promote separatism by encouraging Muslims to define themselves solely in terms of their religion.
All these interactions engender a sense of community, a substitute for what the wider society has failed to supply.
You might say: as long as they’re not hurting anyone, what’s the problem with all this?
I’ll tell you why.
As evidence emerges about the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were initially influenced by what some have called ‘non-violent extremists’ and then took those radical beliefs to the next level by embracing violence.
And I say this is an indictment of our approach to these issues in the past.
And if we are to defeat this threat, I believe it’s time to turn the page on the failed policies of the past.
So first, instead of ignoring this extremist ideology, we – as governments and societies – have got to confront it, in all its forms.
At stake are not just lives, it’s our way of life.
That’s why this is a challenge we cannot avoid – and one we must meet.
Is the Mail unBritish or is it Mehdi Hasan that is ‘Dangerously unBritish’?
It’s when people are treated differently because they hold a different religious belief.
It’s when a country turns a blind eye towards that discrimination.
And it’s when we allow a perception of a people to become so entrenched that extremists are able to capitalise on it.
Because any form of prejudice, bigotry or discrimination is wrong.
It’s unBritish.
So….
what’s really dangerous?….what’s ‘UnBritish?
It’s when people are treated differently solely because they hold a different religious belief.
Well just have a look at this video of Mehdi Hasan denouncing the unbeliever, the non-Muslim…the Kufar…you know, the Jew, the Christian, You (You who clapped him so loudly on Question Time)…as ignorant cattle…animals….without morals…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijDRFusSZkU
Hasan says:
“In Islam we do not bend our Law…never…We know that keeping the moral high-ground is key. Once we lose the moral high-ground we are no different from the rest of the non-Muslims; from the rest of those human beings who live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfil any desire.”
One other point from that…’We do not bend our Law…ever…’
And yet this is the Mehdi Hasan who in the Guardian, the New Statesman or the Huffington Post or on the BBC ,wearing his slick Western suit, will insist he seeks to reform Islam.
If you never, never ‘bend our Law’ then you aren’t being honest about the possibility of reform…The Quran being the final unchangeable word of God.
From Jahiliya to Jahiliya’, given at the Al Khoei Islamic Centre in February 2009 (the speech has now been removed from the IUS website, but we have archived a copy):
“The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as; not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Quran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.”
Fairly clear what Hasan thinks of non-Muslims…..but is Hasan’s ‘them and us’ rhetoric harmful?
Is Hasan one of the ‘Young, dynamic leaders‘ that Cameron spoke of?….
In our communities, groups and organisations led by young, dynamic leaders promote separatism by encouraging Muslims to define themselves solely in terms of their religion.
Their cause is not founded on an injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such it can’t be moderated. It can’t be remedied. It has to be stood up to.
We must be clear about how we win this struggle. We should take what security measures we can. But let us not kid ourselves.
In the end, it is by the power of argument, debate, true religious faith and true legitimate politics that we will defeat this threat.
At the top I asked ‘Who is it that hates Britain more, the Daily Mail or the immigrant bashing, Gay baiting, women hating, Kufar smearing, intellectually stagnant Islamic world?’
So let’s have a look at if there is any legitimacy to those claims at all….
We’ve already seen the anti-Kufar language used by Hasan…but who else used such language all too recently? ’Kufar‘ of course being highly derogatory in itself.
What is the difference between Mehdi Hasan’s ramblings and that of the killers of Lee Rigby who make similar statements about the Kufar as he did…all based on the Quran?
Adebalajo said, in his speech, “We are not scared of Kufar … my brothers remain in your ranks and do not be scared of these filthy Kufar. They are pigs … Allah says they are worse than cattle.”
The language is the same..only the method is different….so you have to ask is it the beliefs from which their actions derive which are the real danger?
When you start using the language of them and us, when you isolate others, when you belittle and demean them, when you demonise them the result is that they become less human in the eyes of those who listen…..and the result is they are treated very differently.
Hasan in this article rejects any claim that the killers of Lee Rigby were influenced by Islamic teachings:
The two suspects in the Woolwich killing were violating the doctrine of their own holy book
To prove this Hasan quotes this from the Quran:
‘Whosoever killeth a human being…” says the Koran, in the 32nd verse of its fifth chapter, “it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.”
He goes onto say:
Some cut and paste verses from the Koran out of context; others unthinkingly demand “reform” of Islam. Few want to discuss the role of British foreign policy in helping to radicalise these young, disaffected individuals.
When a Muslim quotes that verse (5:32) to you you know immediately you are being spun a line and it seems Hasan has been ‘cutting and pasting’ to suit himself for the actual, full quote reveals that verse refers to Jews and not Muslims:
We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land – it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors.
But jump back a bit…Hasan also said he was happy to talk about foreign policy and its role in radicalising Muslim youth…and that Islam is not responsible…it is a religion of peace….
Fearful of backlash, most leaders of Muslim communities in the US, Canada, and Europe have responded in predictable ways to the Twin Towers atrocity. They have proclaimed first, that Islam is a religion of peace; and second, that Islam was hijacked by fanatics on the September 11. They are wrong on both counts. First, Islam – like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or any other religion – is not about peace. Nor is it about war. Every religion is about absolute belief in its own superiority and its divine right to impose itself upon others. In medieval times, both the Crusades and the Jihads were soaked in blood. Today, Christian fundamentalists attack abortion clinics in the US and kill doctors; Muslim fundamentalists wage their sectarian wars against each other; Jewish settlers holding the Old Testament in one hand and Uzis in the other burn olive orchards and drive Palestinians off their ancestral land; Hindus in India demolish ancient mosques and burn down churches; Sri Lankan Buddhists slaughter Tamil separatists. The second assertion is even further off the mark: even if Islam had in some metaphorical sense been hijacked, that event did not occur on September 11, 2001. It happened around the 13th century. Indeed, Islam has yet to recover from the trauma of those times.
Hasan tells us that:
I have been a Muslim all my life and visited mosques across Europe, North America and the UK. Never, not once, have I come across an imam preaching violence against the West or justifying the murder of innocents.
He clearly hasn’t watched the Dispatches programme nor read Harry’s Place:
Hasan tells us that Muslim terrorism is a result of politics not religion or culture, here he denounces Cameron’s Munich speech which condemned State Multi-Culturalism:
The Prime Minister’s provocative speech prompted this particularly odious headline in the Telegraph:
Muslims must embrace our British values, David Cameron says. (Why “odious”? Because it implies that the majority of Muslims don’t embrace basic “British values” and aren’t integrated, which, as Cameron knows, and I can attest, isn’t true.)
The English Defence League (see point five, below) is, in my view, made up of violent extremists and yet they are not a product of “multiculturalism”, failed or otherwise.
Terrorism is a political problem; not a cultural problem.
Gentleman in audience – “The root cause of terrorism is bad teachings in religious schools.”
Mehdi – “Rubbish”
Mehdi – “Terrorism is not a cultural problem, terrorism is a political problem”.
Douglas [Murray] – “And it’s a religious problem as well”
Mehdi – “In your view Douglas it’s a religious problem”.
Douglas – “I’m perfectly willing to talk about foreign policy as would David Cameron be, but you cannot pretend that there is no religious component to the terrorism because there is ”
Mehdi – “I thought you said it was cultural. Culture and religion is not the same thing”.
Dimbleby – “Mehdi, you’re saying there is no religious component?”
Mehdi – “I’m saying there is a religious component; I’m saying there’s not a cultural component”.
Hasan always uses the example of the 7/7 bombers and converts to suggest integration had nothing to with radicalisation, that being ‘integrated’ didn’t stop you being a terrorist….
Some of the most high-profile terrorists in recent years have been “integrated” Muslims. Take Mohammad Sidique Khan, the ringleader of the London bombings in July 2005. He was a teaching assistant who impressed parents, colleagues and pupils at the school where he worked. As a teenager, he called himself “Sid” and spent most of his time playing football with white kids.
Then there are the white, British-born people who convert to Islam and become terrorists, like Nicky Reilly or Oliver Savant – are they unaware of, or unfamiliar with, British values? Would teaching them to speak English help secure our airports or railway stations?
Of course Hasan always misses out the vital ingredient…the conversion or reconnection to Islam and the awakening of a devotion to the religion not previously there……a devotion which when inflamed by preachers who sow seeds of division and provoke apartheid can grow into something beyond mere devoutness.
Hasan goes so far as to utterly deny a religious element, despite, as shown above, admitting it exists:
Talking of 9/11 he asks…..What motivated them to do it?
No mention of religion. No mention of Islam. No mention of virgins in heaven, 72 or otherwise. For the lead investigators into the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, politics, not faith, was the key motivating factor. Terrorism, as even that notorious Islamist-baiter Martin Amis once conceded, “is political communication by other means”
And here is another dodge where Hasan tries to evade responsibility for previous smears:
On multiculturalism: I didn’t equate David Cameron with the EDL or “smear” him, as Tim Montgomerie and others have claimed.
Well, actually Hasan, yes you did, here tying Cameron in with the Neo-Cons and Quilliam ( Hated by Muslims who see it not unlike the EDL) and making a casual link to the EDL and BNP:
How is this new, original or different? As I said, much of the Cameron speech fits in with a pre-existing, long-standing Gove/Quilliam/neoconservative agenda. As Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadan Foundation points out:
‘On the day we see fascists marching in Luton, we have seen no similar condemnation or leadership shown from the government.’
The timing of Cameron’s speech is awful. It comes on a day on which the far-right English Defence League is marching in London in protest against Islam. As Nick Lowles, editor of Searchlight, writes, “What began as a street movement to oppose Islamic fundamentalism has broadened its target to the religion itself.”
Yet Cameron did not spare a single one of the 2,476 words in his speech for the EDL – or for other far-right groups such as the BNP.
Well calling for restrictions on immigration is hardly ‘bashing’…unlike of course what happens to Jews throughout Europe, under attack from immigrants to their land….Sweden, Holland, France and Germany have all seen a rise in anti-Semitic attacks with Jews being forced to flee their homes and country.
Attacked by Muslim immigrants.
So who is doing the ‘bashing’? Not the Mail.
Christians around the world are under threat, none more so than those within Muslim majority countries where their communities are being destroyed, their churches burnt and their clerics beheaded.
Even within Islam itself Hasan admits that problems arise…because of the religion…and yet he remains a Muslim.
It pains me to have to admit this but anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace.
And the real problem is that anti-Semitism is integral to Islam, it is part and parcel of it…and yet Hasan remains a Muslim for all his ‘angst’ about it.
‘You will find that the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans, and that the nearest in affection to them are those who say: ‘We are Christians.’ 5:82
‘The unbelievers among the People of the Book and the pagans shall burn for ever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of creatures.’ 98:6
Believers take neither Jews nor Christians for your friend. 5:51
‘Believers make war on the infidels who dwell around you.’ 9:123
‘Prophet make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them.’ 9:73
Hasan of course has little compunction about working for the Guardian (or as shown above for the Mail itself) which is well known for having anti-Semitic articles in its pages:
‘Somebody’ invented a ‘heroic past’……one of the great mistakes of history.
The whole of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, can be read as a record of people coming to terms with failure. In part this was done by the invention of a heroic past, in the empire of Solomon’s time, something that may have been one of the truly great mistakes of history
Who would that ‘somebody’ be?
The ‘Jews’ of course……the Jews invented their past…invented their existence as a ‘nation’ and invented their right to exist as such a nation.
The Guardian calls that ‘one of the greatest mistakes in history.’
In other words it would have been better if the Jews had never existed, then Israel would never have existed and the Middle East would be the land of milk and honey where everyone lives in peace and harmony.
Hasan says this:
I, for one, refuse to worship a God who is so weak and needy that he compels Muslims to worship him
And yet, he remains within the Islamic fold…he doesn‘t ‘refuse to worship’ such a God. He does so by living in denial or by turning a blind eye.
The Prophet Muhammad never had anyone executed for apostasy alone. In one case, in which a Bedouin man cancelled his pledge of allegiance to Islam and left Medina, the Prophet only remarked that “Medina is like a pair of bellows: it expels its impurities and brightens and clears its good.”
But again that’s misleading from Mehdi Hasan.
Islamic law is very clear, apostates can be killed. The Hadiths, which are an essential and integral component of Islamic law tells us so:
Bukhari (52:260) – “…The Prophet said, ‘If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.’ ” Note that there is no distinction as to how that Muslim came to be a Muslim.
The penalty of death for apostasy is repeated elsewhere in Bukhari: Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him (Bukhari 84:57). Another Hadith (Bukhari 83:37) holds that death is required in three cases: for a murderer, for a married person committing illegal sexual intercourse, and for one who deserts Islam.
Mohammed said that if an Apostate did not ‘attack’ Islam, that is, criticise it and disparage it, then they could live….if they did criticise Islam they could be killed.
And what of Homosexuals? Mehdi accuses the Mail of ‘Gay baiting’.
This from a man who supports the Iranian regime which hangs people for being gay.
This from a man who stays in a religion that insists gays be killed…you can throw them off mountain tops or stone them to death….watch Undercover Mosque….such horrors are being preached in the mainstream, major mosques…authorised by the most respected religious authority in Saudi Arabia.
Yes, I’m a progressive who supports a secular society in which you don’t impose your faith on others – and in which the government, no matter how big or small, must always stay out of the bedroom. But I am also a believing Muslim. And, as a result, I really do struggle with this issue of homosexuality.
As a believer in Islam, however, I insist that no mosque be forced to hold one against its wishes
So Mehdi pronounces himself ‘secular and progressive’…and yet he is also a devout, practising Muslim….the two things are complete opposites….you cannot be secular and religious, you cannot be progressive and live by a 6th century religion which teaches you to hate gays, kill Jews and apostates, treat women as second class citizens and non-Muslims as cattle.
He says he is forced to be homophobic because of his religion.
He claims he hates homophobia.
And yet, not only does he stay within the religion he is a lay preacher for that religion.
So all in all Mehdi Hasan has many faces, one which he presents to the ‘Western World’, the Liberal Media that he needs to access to spread his message and to win supporters, and the face he presents to Muslims where he preaches a fundamentalist and a very Islam Über Alles message….
He states that
There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, and yet Muslims have only 10 Nobel Prizes whilst 12 million Jews have 150 Nobel Prizes. There are 6 Jewish universities (note Jewish, not Israeli…does Israel not exist in Hasan’s world?) in the top world 200.…and no Muslim universities at all.
And then we wonder why we are losing battles…we’re not being out fought, we’re being out thought, we are not under armed, we are under educated.
‘Losing battles….outfought, under armed’…what sort of language is that, what can he mean?
Clearly Hasan thinks in terms of ‘them and us’, Muslims and ‘the other’. and it is a war out there….a clash of civilizations…he wants the Islamic world to over take the ‘West’….Why?
For a man who proclaims his secular, progressive, democratic loving philosophy…you have to doubt that somehow.
But then is there anything you can believe about Mehdi Hasan, the man who writes articles about anti-Semitism, about homophobia, about killing apostates….and why they are wrong…and yet, he remains a Muslim despite all those horrors being sanctioned by that very religion.
And we haven’t even got onto women….you know the other sex who don’t really need to be educated…but if necessary, well they can sit at the back of the class because they’re just not important in an Islamic Faith school.
Hasan isn’t exactly a pro-choice liberal on women:
You can’t keep smearing those of us who happen to be pro-life as “anti-women” or “sexist”. …You might assume that my own anti-abortion views are a product of my Muslim beliefs. They aren’t.
Wonder what he makes of Evolution….because Muslims, those obviously no longer in the Golden Age of Islamic Science, believe in Creationism.
He is quite liberal about nuclear weapons though…as long as you’re a Shia country…like Iran; Sunni Pakistan, or Israel, nah, not so keen (See above video for the anti-‘Islamic bomb’ comments):
If you were our mullah in Tehran, wouldn’t you want Iran to have the bomb…., wouldn’t it be rational for Iran – geographically encircled, politically isolated, feeling threatened – to want its own arsenal of nukes, for defensive and deterrent purposes?….of course, less than a thousand miles to the west, there is Israel, your mortal enemy, in possession of over a hundred nuclear warheads and with a history of pre-emptive aggression against its opponents.
Why is Israel Iran’s mortal enemy? Israel would not have any desire to attack Iran if Iran were to leave Israel alone.
And he’s not so keen on answering awkward questions about Iran and its brutal oppression:
I’d like to think we’d hear a bit less of him in future. But I doubt it. Since he first stormed into my e-mails many years ago, anxious to bombard me with his views of Israel, he’s grown, and grown and grown as a voice in our media. I think he will continue to do so.
But take it all with a pinch of salt. This article for example is given as an illustration of his urging Muslims to ‘integrate’. But why?
Hasan is a Labour man. He knows Muslims will mostly vote Labour…..but also the more they participate and take control of political processes the more they can influence laws and the ploitics that can be advantageous to the Muslim community, advancing the Islamisation of a small part of the UK, a mini-Pakistani state…..
British Muslims must step outside this anti-war comfort zone
British Muslims have too long defined politics by the Middle East. We have an obligation to engage with the national debate
How can Muslims complain about our rights, our freedoms, our collective future, if we aren’t engaged in the political process across the board as active British citizens?
Final word to Mehdi Hasan himself:
Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan6h@hina3661@alomshahaWhich principles was I selling? You cant have it both ways. Either I’m a secret reactionary or a principle-free zone
The BBC insisted that its coverage of what was a significant political story had been “appropriate, balanced and impartial”.
However, an analysis by The Telegraph found the story took up almost 49 minutes of the 12 hours of broadcasting by Today, BBC Radio 4’s flagship current affairs programme, over the four editions between Wednesday and Saturday, while there were 30 articles published on its website — including one in Farsi — by yesterday afternoon.
Ken Livingstone and Lord Glasman, both Labour figures, secured two of the week’s highest-profile slots on the Today programme at 7.10am on Wednesday and 8.10am on Friday, while Left-wing figures including Tony Benn were able to speak without opposing views being presented.
On Saturday night a government source entered the debate and said there was “certainly a question mark” over whether the BBC’s coverage had been proportionate and impartial.
The source suggested that the BBC may have given too much prominence to reporting the row, especially given that it occupies such a powerful position in the media.
What is often missing from the BBC reports is any context….Miliband’s Marxism is only ever fleetingly referred to whilst claiming the basis of the Mail’s article was solely the diary entry of the 17 year old Miliband….when it was clearly based upon his Marxist views.
The BBC has also used this as an opportunity to attack the Mail, quite happily labelling it anti-Semitic by association….and never refers to the Mirror’s own publication of similar articles praising the Blackshirts, nor indeed making any mention that the Left were as enamoured of Hitler and his Nazis as anyone on the Right….nor indeed to its own wartime anti-Semitism.
‘Have I Got News For You’ got in on the act going beyond ‘a joke’ you might say and taking a highly partisan, political approach….all the more effective at spreading its lie for its high audience and the much more receptive nature of the material.
Because he served not only in the British Army in the First World War but in the Royal Flying Corps as well.
The Westminster Gazette told us…‘He has human sympathies, courage and brains.”
So let’s have no more derogatory remarks condemning Oswald Mosley for his Fascist beliefs.
He loved Britain, he served in the Forces…and that’s good enough for the BBC.
Oswald Mosley in British Army Uniform 1918
If we are to believe the BBC having served in a country’s military is demonstration enough that you love a country….regardless of your political, social and cultural beliefs however much they are in contradiction to British political, economic and cultural values.
Emily Maitlis on Newsnight continually pressed this point of view…and flashed up a photograph of Ralph Miliband in uniform to emphasise her point.
But that is a very easy, lazy, unthinking route to go down as proven above with Oswald Mosley…and demonstrates, if any demonstration were needed, just how bad Newsnight is at handling anything more than a simplistic argument.
If past political positions inform us now how that same political institution thinks today what to make of this:
The Democratic party created the Klu Klux Klan.
Are we saying that President Obama is a racist, anti-Black Democrat?
Maybe he is…he didn’t serve in the US Army after all.
The Useless Idiots at the BBC are once again dancing to Labour’s tune…..as Peter Oborne noted:
“Rather than representing the nation as a whole, it [the BBC] has become a vital resource – and sometimes attack weapon – for a narrow, arrogant Left-Liberal elite.”
We could look at the BBC’s cover up of Labour’s immigration policy, its cover up of Labour’s deadly legacy in the NHS, its cover up of Labour’s economic incompetence, its cover up of Muslim rape gangs, its cover up of Palestinian terrorism, its anti-Israeli stance, its undermining of confidence in the economy and promotion of Labour’s ‘Plan B’…and of course its coverage of the War on Terror in which it has chosen to side with the terrorists.
We could look at all those things and ask if the BBC has been a force for good in Britain.
But not today.
Today we look at the BBC’s hypocrisy in trying to smear the Mail as anti-Semitic by using a headline from 1934 as possible evidence of today’s attitudes in the paper…attitudes which we are told include homophobia…evidenced by the Jan Moir article allegedly.
The BBC is using its massive power and influence to again attack a commercial and political rival and to aid the Labour Party in trying to impose political control over the Press.
Miliband claimed this ‘wasn’t about regulation…I’m not trying to censor the Press I’m trying to correct it.’
But of course that is a lie, that is a lie…as Ed Miliband might say….Miliband demanding that the paper’s owner Lord Rothermere investigate its culture and practices.
His interview with LabourList this morning betrays the real motivation for why Miliband and Alastair Campbell, who is at the centre of this, have gone after the Mail
…to curtail Press freedom and impose political control.
Members of the political class have been attempting to tame the press for decades. (The Spectator came out against such interference back in 1834.) Yet only now, when many of the public prints lie on their deathbed, do politicians have a reasonable chance of success. The pressure group Hacked Off is desperate to establish political control, and it sees its chance. It has, in Mr Miliband, someone keen to play David to the Goliaths of Fleet Street. As one Cabinet member puts it: “Miliband may very well push through the full Leveson regulation with Liberal Democrat support.
The BBC is certainly doing its best [to help Miliband], and is treating his spat with the Daily Mail as if it were a national emergency. The debate about press regulation is impossible to understand in Britain without considering the BBC’s interests. It loathes Sky, and was keen to stop Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to buy the broadcaster outright. Murdoch’s News Corporation had a $12 billion cash pile, and it fancied putting rocket boosters under Sky. Mark Thompson, then head of the BBC, signed a letter begging the government to stop Murdoch. The BBC brokeits own rules and became an actor in the drama. Even worse, it never admitted the fact.
Like a medieval army that believes it has to keep conquering or face defeat, the state-funded BBC has started to occupy new terrain and is now a hegemon in providing the printed word. More people get their news from the 18-year-old BBC website than from any newspaper, unfair competition which is crushing not just local newspapers but national ones, too.
its selling point is that it is seen as moral, and more balanced than the newspapers – so it has a vested interest in stories that present the press as being collectively guilty of a terrible misdemeanour. At times, it seems to delight in the discomfiture of the Daily Mail – and, make no mistake, the two are now rivals, battling it out for digital readers. BBC Online even has its own version of the Mail Online’s famous “sidebar of shame”, with stories headed “my Nazi blood” and “teenage exorcists”.
In support of that interest a vast wave of sympathetic coverage and ‘analysis’ in favour of Miliband has been streaming out of BBC portals…on the web, on radio and on Television.
This Newsnight interview by Emily Maitlis with the Daily Mail deputy editor, Jon Steafel, demonstrates the highly partisan approach whereby the Mail is wrong and has to defend itself whilst Miliband’s Marxist father is someone who loved Britain…we know because he served in the Navy…as Maitlis keeps reminding us as if that is a reflection of his politics. Of course this is the interview where for some reason, the completely unconnected to the story, Alistair Campbell, is brought in to have his say.
The Today programme told us its ‘lead story’ was the Mail and Miliband….and raised the subject of anti-Semitism which is the latest line of attack on the Mail….it also accused the Mail of continuing its campaign against Labour and Miliband by reporting that Labour covered up hospital failures. However the Telegraph was highlighting that report last night:
Labour has been accused of putting pressure on the NHS watchdog to “cover up” information about appalling standards of care at failing hospitals in the run up to last General Election.
A story curiously missing from…the BBC.
Miliband, the BBC reports on its website, said he did not agree with the Jewish Chronicle’s suggestion that there was “a whiff of anti-semitism” about the Daily Mail’s Ralph Miliband article….but of course both the BBC and Miliband know that mud sticks.
To help that mud stick the BBC adds this: Before WWII, Harold Harmsworth praised Adolf Hitler and in 1934 penned a Daily Mail article headlined “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” celebrating Oswald Mosley’s British fascists
No mention of the left wing Mirror’s own headlines supporting the Blackshirts…led by Labour’s Oswald Mosley….who served in the British Army during the First World War…so he loved Britain you know!…and as the Westminster Gazette told us…‘He has human sympathies, courage and brains.”
He raised the spectre of the Mail’s support for the Blackshirts in the 1930’s, but of course made no mention of the Mirror’s.
He connected this to claims that the Mail is anti-Semitic and homophobic.
Curious that so much is made of that past error of judgement and yet we are not allowed to examine Ralph Miliband’s…it is fine to label the Mail, and presumably the owners and journalists who work there, as ‘anti-Semitic’ but to say a man who loved Britain so much that he wanted to change it didn’t love Bitain is taboo:
But if we’re to delve back into the past in order to understand the present let’s also include the BBC…..and if the BBC is found to be anti-Semitic and homophobic tendencies in the past can we then accuse Campbell of being a Jew hater and Gay basher? Would that be fair?
Maybe we should ask Is the BBC Good For Britain? Let’s have a look through the archives:
ANTI-SEMITISM in the higher ranks of the Foreign Office and the BBC during the Second World War led to a policy which suppressed news about Germany’s attempt to exterminate European Jews, new research will show this week.
… both Foreign Office and BBC officials held a low opinion of Jews, and believed this was shared by the public.
They deduced that saving millions of Jews would not be seen as a desirable war aim by the British. At other times they justified suppression of details of the atrocities by arguing that they would not be believed.
News reports could only be carried if, in the view of the BBC and the Foreign Office, they were well-sourced. If the sources were Jewish, they tended not to be believed.
The BBC is “almost endemically” homophobic in its portrayal of gay and lesbians across a range of programmes, a report concluded.
The report also found “low-level homophobia” was institutionalised throughout factual and entertainment programming on the BBC. A monitoring exercise by researchers at the University of Leeds found that, during 168 hours of programming, only 0.4 per cent of the output tackled gay and lesbian issues and 80 per cent of that coverage was deemed negative.
Focus groups singled out the BBC as the worst broadcaster in terms of its portrayal of gay men and women and issues surrounding them.
And what about that ever present commentator on the BBC Mehdi Hasan…do they have nothing to say about his institutionalised homophobia?:
As a Muslim, I struggle with the idea of homosexuality – but I oppose homophobia
I’ve made homophobic remarks in the past, writes Mehdi Hasan, but now I’ve grown up
I’m a progressive who supports a secular society in which you don’t impose your faith on others – and in which the government, no matter how big or small, must always stay out of the bedroom. But I am also a believing Muslim. And, as a result, I really do struggle with this issue of homosexuality.
No Mehdi, you cannot be ‘secular and progressive’ and at the same time a devout, believing, practising Muslim, the two things are complete opposites.
Still the BBC likes him.
Whilst having a lot to say about the Mail and its alleged anti-Semitism it is curious they have nothing to say about events like this which are regularly highlighted by Harry’s Place:
This Sunday the Hamas supporters of the British charity Interpal will hold yet another conference featuring hate preachers. The venue will be the Edmonton Islamic Centre in London.
Abdullah Hakim Quick Quick is an American Islamist preacher. His line on homosexuality is as clear and chilling as can be.
They said “what is the Islamic position [on homosexuality]?” And I told them. Put my name in the paper. The punishment is death. And I’m not going to change this religion.
Murtaza Khan Khan is one of the worst British hate preachers.
I’m not homophobic. I believe in a natural way of life. I’m repeating you what your Bible tells you. In the hadith you find: “You find the people doing the action of Lot, kill the one who does the action and the one the action is being done to.”
Abu Usamah at-Thahabi Thahabi is an imam at the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham.
Do you practice homosexuality with men? Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain.
I expect it would be considered Islamophobic to challenge those views.
I’m going to be away for the next few days so I am putting this Open Thread up in a timely fashion and hope that it can sustain you in my absence. I will return on Tuesday.
Quite remarkably, the BBC leads is news coverage AGAIN with a pro Ed Miliband anti Daily Mail story. It seems to me that the BBC has lost all perspective on this non-story and had decided to run with it as hard as possible with the intent of a/Seeking the head of Paul Dacre b/Cowering the Mail from running future such stories on hardline Marxists c/Damaging the Mail in as many ways as possible d/Promoting Ed Miliband as the advocate of all that is noble and good. Alastair Campbell has not been off the BBC with his smearing of Dacre and the Mail’s editorial line. The behaviour of the BBC on this story has been breathtakingly BIASED and just as worrying, effective. The LibDems have put the boot in and the Conservatives seem embarrassed and unwilling to stand up and say that Ralph Miliband DID hate British values. The sanctimonious preening of the Left in general and the BBC in particular on this issue has been astounding. What say you, gentle reader?
A few times this week I’ve listened to John Pienaar intone in reverent awe that ‘The Boy done good….he’s on a winner’.
Of course I paraphrase, but Pienaar likes to tell us that Miliband is coping admirably, showing strength and principled leadership as he battles the pervidious right wing rag that is the Daily Mail.
Now you could take a less charitable view and interpret the situation maybe more realistically…that Miliband is a ruthless political opportunist who will use any trick to gain political advantage, even going so far as to use his own father’s death as a prop in his campaign for election, his father’s coffin as a soapbox from which to spread his message.
Naturally you are not going to hear the BBC even take a step in that direction despite it telling us that Miliband is quite obviously going to benefit politically from this….but they avoid suggesting he is using his father’s death for his own advantage, suggesting instead that it is his ‘principled’ stand against the Mail that will make people connect with him.
Labour are old hands at using family tragedy to garner sympathy and votes….remember Gordon Brown just before the election coming onto television to do an interview and crying about his son?….utterly ruthless theatrics for an audience.
Miliband’s own ruthless streak stands in stark contrast to the cowardice of Cameron and many on the government side, Gove aside, who cower on the sidelines attacking the Mail rather than taking a deep breath and their own principled stand to denounce Ralph Miliband’s politics and beliefs.
Whatever the upshot of electoral politics, working-class politics must grow and develop, based on the socialist education Ralph Miliband called for.
In the midst of an unending economic crisis, with what Ralph would have called a discredited ruling class at the helm, it is past time for the working class to step forward with its own vision and alternative.
Our values are eternal.
That speech backs up everything they said about Ralph Miliband and his dangerous influence on politics…note the ‘whatever the upshot of electoral politics’…..yeah, let’s just ignore the democratic process and use strikes and conflict to resolve things…or as Ralph Miliband said…’there is no Parliamentary road to Socialism.’
Here are some interesting reactions to the Mail article and the subsequent left wing barrage:
If George Osborne’s dad was as far to the right as Ralph Miliband was to the left, and this fact was reported (having read interviews with Osborne’s father, this might not be far from the truth), nobody would howl in anger that this was a smear, would they? The BBC and Channel 4 News would, instead, leap in and kick the living daylights out of Osborne Sr and think themselves entirely justified in so doing. Ralph Miliband may have been a lovely dad, but he was a damaging and unjustly revered influence. It should not be a crime to say as much.
Alastair Campbell treated politics with more contempt than any Daily Mail journalist
This protestation that he treated politicians with respect is so completely contemptuous of the truth that I feel a kind of moral obligation to correct it. No political journalist in my lifetime has treated politicians with such utter, total and complete contempt as Alastair Campbell did during his career for the Daily Mirror and Today newspaper (and later as a government adviser inside Downing Street).
His personal conduct was far, far worse and more demeaning than any Daily Mail journalist.
I have an old documents file somewhere where at the time I kept details of these smear campaigns, who the victims were, and exactly how Campbell’s New Labour publicity machine put their slurs and lies into the public domain. I am going to look out that old file now, but it will take a few days to get the material together and in a fit state to print. I intend to publish it by the middle of next week.
The Daily Mail may not realise, but Marxists are patriots
[Hmmm of course they are…they just want to dismantle the nation state, erase national identities and abolish ‘races’ as well as the family]
The traducing of Ralph Miliband is a reminder of how far we now are from understanding socialism
Whatever their views of him, most decent people backed Ed Miliband this week as he defended his father against jingoist attacks on him by the Daily Mail. The Labour leader angrily described Ralph Miliband as a British patriot, and correctly noted that he does not share his father’s principled commitment to socialism.
And here is the top comment…note as chosen by the Guardian staff themselves…on that article by Gopal:
This comment has been chosen by Guardian staff because it contributes to the debate
Recommend 444
As a socialist for all of my adult life and a public servant of a quarter of a century I fully agree. Those who wrap themselves in the flag never understand that patriotism is love of people first and country second and monarchy and privilege never.
Ed and his labour cronies are no more socialist than Michael Gove or Danny Alexander. However, his dad was. A socialist, who served in the military, loved this country and educated it’s children.
It seems that the BBC has decided that Alastair Campbell is the new champion for journalistic integrity and decency in public life. He hasn’t been off its’ major news programmes in the past few days, castigating Paul Dacre and The Mail in general. It is truly nauseating to listen to Campbell being given such prominence as he heads up a full on assault on The Mail. IF ONLY we all read The Mirror and The Guardian, and listened to the BBC. Right?
We Think the Earth is warming, Therefore it is a man made disaster.
It is incredible to think that the only journalist with any integrity in the climate debate at the BBC is not Harrabin, Shukman or McGrath but Sheila Fogarty.
On Friday Fogarty was raising those questions though still coming down on the side of the ‘settled science’ as any good BBC employee should.
However she is still holding the fort now…and holding Harrabin himself to account when he breezily asserts ocean warming is the cause of the pause. (Any coincidence this line of thought suddenly became popular shortly after Harrabin’s old mucker and AGW propagandist Richard Black joined the ocean research side of things?)
Today on her show at around 13:55 Fogarty, presumably reading from the script provided by the environment journos, said…‘Whilst they have been protecting us from climate change we’ve been taking them (the oceans) for granted.’
Harrabin then came in and told us that :
‘We’ve been dumping our problems into the oceans’ and that ‘global warming has paused on land but the oceans have continued to warm and we’re not going to get away with it forever.’
Fogarty jumped in with a ‘hang on….is that true?’ question making Harrabin squirm and come up with a fudge of an answer.
Very amusing.
But essentially that is the problem with the whole IPCC process…whatever you believe, whether global warming is happening, whether it is man made or not, the presentation of the IPCC’s case must make you doubt that case.
It seems more based on hope and hype, faith that events will prove them right in the end….let’s face it, they’ve just ‘discovered’ third world cooking fires produce soot, and they have no idea how much aerosols effect the climate, never mind explaining the ‘pause’.
There are so many inconsistencies and contradictions, so many obvious lies, so many obvious claims based purely on speculation, hypothesis, guess work and wishful thinking, like Harrabin’s dodgy assertion above, that you cannot possibly support the IPCC’s claims, still less the resultant, enormously expensive political action based upon them.
The post below takes a look not only at some of the BBC’s coverage but also those contradictions and claims made in bad faith by the Science fraternity.
It’s a long one so get yourself a big mug of something and pull up a sandbag.
The BBC liberally plastered its news bulletins after the IPCC release of its latest report with repeated assertions that we could suffer what it predicts would be a catastrophic 5° C rise in global temperature and a sea level rise of 1metre by 2100 even though these are the absolute, and unlikely, maximums…and all the while completely ignoring the massive increase in ice in the Arctic this year.
When they propagate such alarmist scenarios in order to scare people into accepting the ‘science’ is it any wonder the BBC is the least trusted news provider…..and unfortunately, perhaps paradoxically, the most utilised as a source for news…
The report said television remained by far the most important platform for news, used by 78% of adults against 40% who read newspapers, 35% who turn to the radio and 32% who look to the Internet.
The BBC website remains the most popular online destination, used by 52% of people who go online, against 19% of people who use Facebook and 10% who turned to Twitter for online news updates.
In total, 53% of people regarded one of the BBC’s news outlets, across TV, radio and online, as their most important source of news.
But while BBC TV was regarded as important, its viewers scored it marginally lower in terms of accuracy and reliability, and trustworthiness, than viewers of Sky News.
Asked whether it was impartial and unbiased, and offered a range of opinions, BBC TV scored less highly (among their respective viewers) than Sky News, ITV and Channel 4 News.
In the Guardian Will Hutton attempted a pre-emptive and emotive strike on the Sceptics who might find fault with the IPCC report:
Sceptics will rubbish a new report on climate change, dismissing calls for governmental action. Don’t be swayed
BBC attempts to broadcast its findings in as impartial way as possible will be portrayed as yet more evidence of BBC bias, even though the BBC will pack its coverage with lots of sceptical voices, notwithstanding their marginalisation by world science, to try to cover its back.
‘Packed with sceptical voices’? Well not so far…one or two given a couple of minutes, the BBC journalists certainly don’t show a shred of interest in questioning the orthodoxy, and are more likely than not to promote it.
Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the IPCC working group producing the AR5 report said:
‘We’re not here to make headlines but we’re here for the science.’
But of course, the politics and headlines, that’s precisely what they are here for…the point of the summary was to guide government policy…it’s in the title… ‘A Summary For Policymakers.’
The BBC wasted no time in making the IPCC headline news, in fact they turned over 5live for a day to the ‘reporting’ of the summary.
But when you start looking, thinking and comparing what they say with what is happening in reality what is being reported as fact just doesn’t make sense.
There are many apparent, to a layman’s eye, contradictions in the ‘science’, contradictions and quite obvious fabrications to make the science fit the desired policies.
The Climate Change bandwagon based on bad Maths?
We are told that the scientists are being open and transparent with their data…but it seems that they still don’t like questions that ask how they calculated their alarming predictions.
The Met. Office has refused to answer questions raised in the House of Lords about a figure upon which the whole basis of the IPCC’s venture is based…that the world has warmed by 0.85° C in just over 130 years and that this is ‘serious’ and indicates man made influence.
If that figure is wrong and the risk assessment based upon that is wrong…then the whole thing is a charade based upon a lie…no wonder the Met. Office doesn’t want to answer any questions.
Here is the Met. Office’s reply when asked to explain their data:
‘As indicated in a previous Written Answer given … to the noble Lord on 14 January 2013 (Official Report, col. WA110), it is the role of the scientific community to assess and decide between various methods for studying global temperature time series. It is also for the scientific community to publish the findings of such work, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.’
Thus, in the opinion of the Met Office, Parliament has no right to ask scientific questions of government scientists.
But perhaps they should be made to answer for some are questioning their conclusion:
‘The model used by HM Government should be rejected, in favor of the driftless model. With the driftless model, however, the rise in temperatures since 1880 is not significant. In other words, the correct Answer to the Question (HL3050) might be No.’
But just how reliable is the IPCC?
We’re constantly directed to understand that its findings are the result of hundreds of the finest scientific minds coming together, without sleep, examining, inspecting, evaluating and rigorously testing the science.
That might not be the whole truth…for example we know that the false claims that the Himalayas would disappear by 2035 were taken from a WWF tract….Spiked magazine investigates further:
‘…there’s the idea that the IPCC report is the product of the world’s top experts. But in reality, knowing a subject well is not nearly as important, it seems, as having a face that fits. So, leading IPCC contributors sometimes do not even have PhDs in their subjects, never mind being world-class experts, while other researchers in charge of chapters had expertise in a completely different area to the one they were working on. Meanwhile, the nature of the review process means that when leading experts are critical, they can safely be ignored by chapter authors.
In March 2010, Laframboise decided to take on the task of working out just how many references in the 2007 report were to non-peer-reviewed sources. With the help of volunteers from her blog readership, her audit found that 30 per cent of the references were from newspaper and magazine articles, unpublished masters theses, reports produced by green groups and even press releases.
Laframboise lists 78 people involved with the IPCC who are also members of WWF’s parallel climate panel. Of these, 23 are IPCC co-ordinating lead authors – the people in charge of individual chapters of the reports. ‘Ladies and gentlemen’, she writes, ‘the IPCC has been infiltrated.’
The BBC however isn’t interested in questioning the orthodoxy
…it never has been as this email from BBC man Alex Kirby shows, Alex Kirby who was very, very close with Phil Jones et al at the CRU:
So nice and cosy was the relationship that in 2004, Mr Kirby wrote to Phil Jones (email 4894) in the build up to COP-10:
Yes, glad you stopped this — I was sent it too, and decided to spike it without more ado as pure stream-of-consciousness rubbish. I can well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it clear that we think they are talking through their hats.
Once the ‘Summary for Policy Makers’ was released we then had a long line of scientists and commentators queuing up to promote the IPCC’s line on the BBC…which readily swallowed everything they said and faithfully regurgitated it almost without question.
Here is one statement that is meant to support that line, but which means nothing on its own:
We (Met Office) run computers with and without CO2 forcings….and when we include CO2 in the model, temperatures rise.
Of course they rise…..because they programme the computers to do that!
The IPCC are proclaiming increased confidence in their models, without explaining why they have increased confidence, (in the AR4 Summary for Policymakers, the IPCC admitted that the reported 90% confidence was simply based on “expert judgment” i.e. conjecture.) and all just at a time when the discrepancies between their models and realtime observations increase…..in other words they can’t explain the ‘Pause’.
Here is their ‘evidence’ related to us by a scientist on the radio that the world is warming and it is caused by man:
‘…evidence from the last 15 years… the, the warming ocean, the retreating snow and ice, the changing rainfall patterns, the continuing sea-level rise, and this evidence is so strong, of the dominant role of human influence on the climate system.’
That might be evidence of some changes in climate but it in no way indicates the cause.
But what is real is the pause (and they don‘t know the cause of that either)…the IPCC grudgingly admits there is a pause, Phil Jones in 2005 admitted it, but also gave a clue why many possibly sceptical scientists stay silent:
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”
Thomas Stock tried to wriggle out of the importance of the ‘Pause’ by claiming that a climate relevant period would be 30 years….in other words 15 or more years is not statistically significant.
‘Bottom line: the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’
I guess they are worried…but only because their careers, reputations and multi-million dollar grants are at risk if global warming is proven to be wrong.
So far there is no proof that it is CO2 that is the culprit, or the main culprit, causing any climate change.
Phil Jones admitted that temperatures show a rise 800 years before CO2 rises….so is the rise in CO2 now in fact a result of warming caused by something else?…Jones et al say whatever…a rise in CO2 even if caused by something else will produce undesirable ‘feedback’ and cause more warming.
The IPCC tells us that CO2 is at the highest level for 800,000 years, it has risen 40% since the 1950’s, and that there is a lag of 25 years between CO2 being emitted and its resultant effects.
They also tell us that CO2 is enormously powerful….one scientist, from the Met. Office I think, boasted that he had been asked by a government minister why CO2, if it was in such small quantities in the atmosphere, was so important?…he said well, if I sprinkled a tiny amount of arsenic on your dinner you would soon find out just how powerful a tiny amount is.
Well…if CO2 has risen a massive 40% why is it that temperatures have risen a mere 0.85° C since 1880 and have now stalled?
They tell us that it is a linear relationship…..the BBC’s Matt McGrath pushing the point backed up by the Met. Office‘s Peter Stott: ‘….and it is a clear linear relationship, so that the more you pump into the atmosphere, the more the temperature goes up, its… in a very complex system it is as simple as that?’
Stott: ‘There is this very clear linear relationship between the overall emissions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, and the global temperature rise, so the more we emit, the more the temperature increases.’
Well that is clearly not the case here, maybe in the science lab but not in real life…..both with the small scale of temperature rise compared to large, relatively, emissions of CO2, and the ‘Pause’ at a time when CO2 has reached its highest level for 800,000 years.
Clearly no linear relationship in real life.
And what of that ‘highest level of CO2 in 800,000 years’?
The IPCC now admits that the Medieval Warm Period, did exist, thank you very much.
Continental-scale surface temperature reconstructions show, with high confidence, multidecadal periods during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (year 950 to 1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the late 20th century.
How does the IPCC avoid the rather difficult problem, the inconvenient fact of global warming 1000 years ago, that the earth warmed to the same degree it has now, and all without the Industrial Revolution and the benefit of massive quantities of CO2?
The IPCC tells us it was warm but only in parts…unlike the earth now.
These regional warm periods did not occur as coherently across regions as the warming in the late 20th century.
The problem with that is they now tell us that though some regions of the world will warm, others, like the UK, will get colder.
So in other words there will be regional differences in temperature…just like the Medieval Warm Period…if that was indeed the case.
But they also tell us that 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30 year period of the last 1400 years.
Now maybe my maths is not up to it but 1400 years would take you back to the year 613 AD…whilst the Medieval Warm Period was from 950-1250 AD…..a ‘multi-decadal warm period’ at the least surely….300 years by my maths.
So once again the MWP seems to have gone missing.
Ocean Warming
What of those claims, the legend that has become fact, that the oceans are soaking up the heat?
Seems all of a sudden doesn’t it?
Only last week we heard from the BBC that the oceans, as proved by studies of Clams, had been warming for a long time, at least 100 years.
So how come, how come, suddenly, in 1998, the oceans are supposed to have started sucking up even more heat at a much higher rate than before…so much so that suddenly, the global warming stops? What caused the oceans to do that?
Answer me that.
Answer me this…..
The IPCC tells us that from 1971 to 2010 60% of the energy increase went into the oceans. OK….1971 (we’ll ignore the warming for at least 100 years claim)..not 1998 as a start point….so why didn’t the ‘pause’ start in 1971?
Here’s another thing….they tell us that ocean heat content on the surface increased more slowly from 2003 to 2010 than from 1993 to 2002.
Yes that’s right…..More slowly
…..so the oceans have been taking up less heat, not more…..so …well…you ask the question.
There is also the misdirection by scientists and BBC journos…they say well, the pause, hiatus, or as the BBC prefer, slowdown in warming, started in 1998, or that is the period that the ‘sceptics’ choose to base their calculations on…this is wrong they tell us…because 1998 was the hottest year and so distorts the figures….anything cooler than that is not necessarily cooler…and could still be warming.
That of course is a misdirection… 1998 was a result of El Nino and was an unusual high because of it…but the 15 years following that have been flat regardless of the 1998 temperature….there is no escape from that….Prof. Phil Jones told us that 15 years was statistically significant…they are now trying to move the goalposts to suit the politics not the science.
But on what data had this ‘ocean warming’ been based?
Harrabin and his cohort of scientists have been saying that it is the deep ocean that has been absorbing the heat….but the IPCC tell us that it is the surface that absorbs by far the greatest amount…not only that but the IPCC’s Thomas Stock told us (09:58) that the current warming hiatus could not be predicted because:
‘There are not sufficient observations of the uptake of heat, particularly into the deep ocean that could explain this hiatus.’
‘Likewise, we have insufficient data to establish a relationship between the causes of the warming….There is not enough published literature to allow us to study this.’
So no data.
But plenty of er, less than convincing facts from the BBC.
So there are some very major questions to be raised about the ‘facts’ presented to us by the IPCC and unquestioned by the BBC…Sheila Fogarty aside.
The IPCC has no proof that the oceans are absorbing the heat and yet the BBC has now started broadcasting it as fact, the IPCC cannot prove that CO2 is the cause of global warming, they cannot explain the ‘Pause’, they ignore the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period which completely destroys their argument, they do not explain the inconsistencies in the supposedly linear relationship between CO2 and temperatures rising when that doesn’t happen. They cannot explain why when CO2 levels are rising rapidly, at their highest level for 800,000 years temperatures are static.
At the end of the day it maybe that the earth is warming naturally as it continues to emerge from the last ice age….and that manmade particles from fires etc slowed that warming….and when clean air legislation was introduced those particles which reflected sunlight and kept us cool vanished…and the natural warming continued apace.
As they admit they have no idea how much effect aerosols have on temperature so you have to assume such a scenario hasn’t been properly investigated.
Ironically the reduction of fossil fuel burning and cleaning up of the air in order to reduce warming could in fact raise temperatures.
Well..maybe. It’s an amusing thought.
Quite a few questions any good environmental journalist would like to get his teeth into…unless of course he supinely rolls over and has his stomach tickled by the IPCC like any good little lapdog would.
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