Category Archives: Uncategorized

With global warming having stopped some years ago, the eco-cultists have been a bit down in the mouth so the BBC and our pal Roger Harradin have given them a bit of a much needed boost by leading the rising levels of carbon dioxide is bringing about the end of the world charge, without any sense of a need for balance.

Yesterday I praised Paul Danahar for his realistic and reasoned analysis of the situation in Syria and compared it favourably against the efforts of Mark Mardell whose reports seem coloured by his admiration for Obama.

But I was looking at this which was published on the 3rd of  May on ‘Jonathan Spyer’ (A well known blog that analyses the Middle East):

Is Assad Winning?

What is striking about it is just how similar it is to Danahar’s report…or rather how similar Danahar’s is to this one….as Danahar’s came out on the 9th.   The similarity is even more striking when you compare Danahar’s radio report which is almost word for word, or idea for idea, the same….Danahar on 5Live Drive  (18:36)

Facts on the ground of course are the same for everyone but how they interpret them is something else…especially for BBC journo’s who often have their own view of the world….could Danahar really have come up with this himself..or has he taken a ‘shortcut’ and borrowed a few thoughts on the Syrian situation?

Talk of ‘vacuums’ being filled, fragmented  forces and command and control, Assad supported by Iran and Russia  knowing he will survive because the West still refuses to take action and the picking off of a divided enemy one by one….and of course that possibly very telling concept, the ‘big idea’ of the piece…that if Assad hasn’t lost he has won:

Spyer:  ‘So Assad isn’t winning, despite the new bullishness of his supporters. But right now, he isn’t losing either.’

Danahar:  ‘Now, by hanging on this long, the regime in Damascus increasingly thinks that by not losing it is winning.’

Could just be coincidence…as I said, the facts are the same for everyone….but its a very close fit.

If you tuned in to today’s ‘More or Less’ looking for an impartial broadcast spiced with facts then you had more chance of being run over by a yak. Radio 4 gave over the first ten minutes of the program to the subject of EU withdrawl. One of the main points we were asked to take away was an apparent validation of Clegg’s claim of 3 million job losses if we leave. Podcast

The unchallenged ‘impartial expert’ they used to assess the pros and cons of withdrawal and the accuracy of the figures was Professor Iain Begg of the LSE European Institute. The same Begg who is stridently pro-EU and sits on the advisory council of The Federal Trust for Education and Research which campaigns for the UK to be part of a federal Europe. Who wrote a paper for the LSE in 2009 stating that the economic crisis created compelling reasons for the UK to join the EU single currency [how’s that theory working out for you, eh?]

This wasn’t pointed out or his impartiality challenged as a single contributor. Of course this happens all of the time these days and this is merely another example. But as Scottish and EU referendums draw nearer we need to know more than ever who is paying the wages of the so-called “impartial experts” on our screens.

An investigation into a child sex ring in Telford has concluded.

Around 100 white girls were abused by British Pakistani ‘heritage’ men…Muslims.

The BBC tells us that: (11:27:30)

‘It’s a case that has echoes of Rochdale and Derby and other cases…the offenders all being British Pakistani Muslims and the vicitms generally being white British teens.

No one is suggesting this is something endemic within that community…but obviously one can’t deny that these are similar cases and I know people within the Muslim community saying that they’ve got to deal with it, they have got to stand up and recognise that within that community there has been a problem.’

Later on Shelagh Fogarty’s show (13:09) Eleanor Oldroyd deals with the same question and states that:

  ‘Clearly there is a cultural implication to all of this.’

So it seems that even the utlra PC BBC has been forced to recognise  a link between religion/culture and the abuse….most especially the choice of victim.

The Police attitude is interesting, and not unusual…they deny that there is any racial element at all to this case.

Victoria Derbyshire is in full on ‘Grandstanding’ mode today (10:40)…having a go at the Coppers as usual.

West Yorkshire Police have published their internal investigation into its relations with Jimmy Savile…and given themselves a clean record.

Derbyshire isn’t impressed and asks ‘How they can investigate themselves?’.

She asks ‘Don’t you think this is odd that the Force is investgating the Force…how can anyone trust the report?…there is a conflict of interest…how can anyone see it as independent, impartial and fair in anyway?’

Now of course those are perfectly legitimate questions..although an IPCC investigation is aslo possible and any organisation would naturally run an internal review of its own performance.

What is such a cheek though is that the BBC ran its own internal review…of its coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict…and spent £300,000 hiding the  final report.

At least West Yorkshire published theirs…imagine the BBC’s cries of outrage if they had hidden it away from prying eyes.

Why did the BBC spend £300,000 to keep the Balen Report under wraps?

What does it say?

Does the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East incite anti-Semitism?

Does it say ‘BBC News kills Jews’?

Any independent observer might conclude that that was the suspicion and the BBC were trying desperately to cover something up.

What does the new Director General have to say? 

Interesting report from the BBC here on the dead Boston bomb suspect Tsarnaev.

Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev already held extreme views when he visited Russia, Islamists in Dagestan have told US media. Tsarnaev’s cousin Magomed Kartashov, a local Islamist leader, reportedly spent hours trying to dissuade him from becoming a militant Russian anti-terrorist police have interrogated Mr Kartashov, who is in custody over an unrelated offense.

So, he was an avowed jihadist, a militant Islamist who favoured violence. Plus ca change. But if you read on into the BBC report you then come across this…again from Kartashov.

“Don’t understand me wrong, but Sept. 11 led many Americans to convert to Islam. It’s another question that people died there, sure.

Huh? Those pesky Americans, dying by the 100o in NYC and all so many could convert to …erm…Islam? The BBC seems unable to accept that Americans were the innocent VICTIMS on 9/11, that militant Islam was the aggressor, and so it likes to run these kind of below the headline story that somehow implies that America is always to blame.

Here is a new Open Thread to take us all off into the wild blue yonder of the weekend.

 Trying to close down debate by defining  someone as racist, homophobic or Islamophobic is a favourite trick of  those who want to avoid talking about certain issues…we get the race card etc deployed regularly on this site…so it is interesting to listen to 5Live’s Tony Livesey show  (from about 2300) which had a fascinating little spat between someone named ‘Kate’ (didn’t catch her full name), and Brendan O’Neill from Spiked magazine…subject… ‘Freedom of Speech’.

The aggressive and opinionated ‘Kate’ I think you may agree, might persuade us of the need for curtailment of the right to free speech, which was the subject of this discussion….as she railed violently against O’Neill.

It didn’t help that she seems to have made up a ‘fact’ to enhance her argument. She claimed a barrister suggested we ignore the law and don’t prosecute men who have committed sex crimes in the past and was therefore unfit to do her job..and should be sacked.   Having read the article (see below) that she was ranting about it doesn’t appear to have said anything quite so dramatic…merely saying that there should be a statute of limitations on prosecutions….that is, don’t prosecute people for minor crimes committed so long ago that genuine evidence must be well nigh impossible to find and that would anyway have resulted in little more than a ‘slap on the wrist’ at the time had they been then prosecuted.

Spiked published an article by barrister Barbara Hewson in which she talked about what she likened to a Soviet style justice system putting celebrities on show trial for sexual misdemeanours acted out many years previously.

It has raised a bit of a stink…especially as one of her recommendations is that the age of consent be lowered to 13 years.

The age of consent issue aside the rest of the article seems pretty much common sense, certainly nothing of a utterly scandalous and abhorrent nature that good old Kate seems to suggest, though Stuart Hall’s crimes were not just ‘low-level misdemeanours’…there was an allegation of actual rape. 

What she is certainly right about is that many of the rights and safeguards incorporated into our legal system have been abandoned…..unelected judges able to dismiss Statute law in favour of  subjective ‘human rights’, hate crimes defined as such by the ‘victim’ rather than an objective definition and the legal system used not to provide justice or a legal solution but to fulfil a social or political objective:

‘It is depressing, but true, that many reforms introduced in the name of child protection involve sweeping attacks on fundamental Anglo-American legal rights and safeguards, such as the presumption of innocence. This has ominous consequences for the rule of law, as US judge Arthur Christean pointed out: ‘Therapeutic jurisprudence marks a major and in many ways a truly radical shift in the historic function of courts of law and the basic purpose for which they have been established under our form of government. It also marks a fundamental shift in judges’ loyalty away from principles of due process and toward particular social policies. These policies are less concerned with judicial impartiality and fair hearings and more concerned with achieving particular results…’

‘When will the Syria crisis end? God knows.  

God knows because this crisis is increasingly not about freedom but about religion.’  Paul Danahar BBC

Mark Mardell has long supported Obama’s dithering, sorry, masterly inactivity..no….cautious, wise, diplomacy over Syria.

‘It is clear Mr Obama doesn’t want to go to war in Syria. He regards it as too complex, too difficult, too uncertain.

American action there would have a huge impact on the perception of America in the region – confirming every image he wants to change.

Yet the US is, perhaps, moving slowly and cautiously toward taking action. There is no sense of a time scale and no real certainty about what might be done. This is very Obama: the caution, the desire to bring allies along, the reluctance to rush to judgment.

Enemies call it dithering. Even allies are sometimes impatient. I doubt whether any of that worries a president who says sending young men and women into action is the hardest thing he has ever had to do.’

Unfortunately the real world has intruded into Mardell’s Obamian utopia, oddly, in the shape of the BBC’s Paul Danahar who has introduced a full dose of realism into the debate on Syria.

Mardell,  no doubt through gritted teeth, has even linked to Danahar’s web article:

@BBCMarkMardell via Twitter thoughtful, gloomy take on Syria’s lengthy conflict http://t.co/x9dZJU8H9z

Why through gritted teeth?  Because the article essentially damns Obama for his inaction over Syria…two years into the conflict and still no support for the anti-Assad rebels.  Danahar is honest about the West’s failure, honest about the need for military action if we want to get rid of Assad, honest about a few other things not normally admitted on the BBC….such as the malign influence of Saudi Arabia and the divisive effects of religion.

I first heard Danahar on 5Live Drive  (18:36) on which he poured scorn, diplomatically, upon the ‘West’…which really means Obama.  The web article is pretty much as the live chat but the 5Live report is blunter and more to the point.

What is Danahar’s conclusion?  

That as soon as it became apparent that the anti-Assad movement was serious, long term and capable of sustained action it should have been supported with funds and arms.

What are the consequences of not doing that?  The original, secular freedom fighters, the original revolutionaries, have lost authority and influence because they have no funds or arms.

Into that vacuum have moved the Islamists funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and who are luring men away from the more secular forces and are now dominating the opposition ranks.

The opposition forces are fragmented with no overall command and control…this could have been put in place from the start if the rebels had been supported and helped to form  such structures at the beginning.  A ‘regular’ army could have been formed and the incursion of the Islamists limited.

Having no overall commander and therefore no overall plan of action means that there is no strategy to beat Assad who can survive lots of single attacks and beat them off individually.

That old phrase ‘divide and rule’ is as apt as ever here.

Iran and Russia are supplying Assad with weapons…and of course should he win will retain the influence over the region that they had before.

Assad has survived, he thinks he can, and will survive long term.  He sees his enemies are divided and without funds or arms whilst he is resupplied by Russian and Iran.

He has no incentive to head for the negotiating table or to cut and run.

The war continues and thousands more lose their lives….all because  Obama hasn’t supported the creation of an army capable of making unified decisions and one that is powerful enough to conduct decisive battlefield  operations capable of knocking out Assad’s forces. 

I disagree with Danahar about this statement which seems at odds with the rest of the report:

‘America is not acting because it does not know what to do or whom to do it with.  Neither do the European countries.

Having spent the last few days in Beirut and Damascus, talking to the international community, Western diplomats, FSA activists and Syrian regime supporters, it is clear that nobody knows how to end this crisis.’

The answer is quite apparent, his whole article pointed to the answer….either let Assad win or pile in arms and money….targeted at the secular rebels, but the Islamists if necessary as well….they are a problem that any post Assad regime would have to tackle.

Here are some notable sentences from Danahar’s web article:

• The vacuum created by Western inaction has been filled by two of the Gulf states – Saudi Arabia and Qatar…..These are both sorely undemocratic states, they are not champions of democracy either at home or abroad.
• Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia hates Shia Iran, so it is using the war in Syria to try and weaken it.   The Saudi interest in the conflict dates back 1,300 years to the split within Islam. That is where its ambitions over the outcome of the civil war begin and end.
• When will the Syria crisis end? God knows.   God knows because this crisis is increasingly not about freedom but about religion.  The Syrian war is turning into a sectarian conflict whose influence will spill beyond the country’s borders.There was the chance at the beginning to stop that being the case. That chance has been lost.

Whilst Danahar’s article and report are examples of how the BBC can provide us with intelligent, informed and unbiased news and analysis you know that this will soon be forgotten.

As soon as the US starts to arm the rebels and fighting breaks out on a larger scale the BBC will change that tune and the normal service of anti-war rhetoric will crank into action with demands for ceasefires and negotiations…thereby just prolonging the war…as we find with Israel which is constantly restrained from winning a decisive battle against Hamas or Hezbollah who survive to fight another day and keep pounding Israel with missiles and any other means of attack they can muster.

If nothing else though, it has shown Mardell how to gauge a situation with an honest appraisal rather than checking first to see how things reflect upon the best beloved Obama’s reputation.

It’s a long overdue welcome back to the Question Time LiveChat.

We’re going to try a new application instead of CoverItLive, which now charges heavily. Please try out the new software on a Test chat session here. The session for the Question Time chat this evening is here.

Question Time comes from Coventry; a city which dates from 1945.

On the panel we have former Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis MP; Business minister, Jo Swinson MP; Shadow Education Minister, Tristram Hunt MP; the hideous Germaine Greer; and Jerry Hayes, criminal barrister and former Conservative MP. Don’t let that fool you – self confessed “on the independent left of the Conservative Party” he was described as Ken Livingstone’s favourite Tory and said that he couldn’t be a Blairite because New Labour wasn’t right-wing enough.

We’ll kick off at 10:30 over here so please make sure you’ve created an account and had a practice if you want to here.