Egypt is proving to be a worked example of this: though it is highly likely things will spiral out of control, post Mubarak – as in all the colour revolutons – the dire warnings of the US right that this will lead to Islamism are a “meme” that has not taken off. Paul Mason said that…and this: Dictatorships rely not just on the suppression of news but on the suppression … Continue reading →

      Sound familiar?  Not a description of a musical version of the EDL but the rap group ‘Public Enemy’: ‘In the late 1980s Public Enemy were the biggest rap group on the planet. Their mission: to raise the consciousness of a generation. With a rebellious attitude to match their militant image they sold millions of records preaching pro-black politics to fans of all races, all done through a … Continue reading →

    The BBC flooded the airwaves and its web pages with ‘warnings from history’ about the rise of the Far Right in Europe.  It seems to have gone a bit quiet as Marine Le Pen’s Front National gains credible support in the polls in France…..much of it coming from ‘the Left’.   Before the French by-elections the BBC was willing to talk about the ‘fringe’ parties…what it dismissed as … Continue reading →

Reading about the demonstrations in Egypt reminded me of BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen’s attempts to sell the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderate organisation prior to the overthrow of Mubarak. Here was his original take in January 2011: This was the first update: And what you’ll see now: Journalism is sometimes called the first rough draft of history. More like the first attempt at spin, with later updates where … Continue reading →

    This couple of interviews illustrates the problem with the BBC and the Left’s worldview…that the solution to poverty is not creating a sound economy, a good education, hard work, innovation, entrepreneurship, adapting, improvising and overcoming …the Left’s answer is an ever increasing government spending spree….it is sitting in your state sponsored home waiting for government handouts that keep the recipients in a thought free comfort zone where they … Continue reading →

        Some comments from the BBC that perfectly illustrate the BBC world view:   “This is called progress….” Justin Webb tells us that blackouts are threatened (0810)because we ‘carelessly’ decommissioned power stations with nothing much to replace them. ‘Carelessly’?   Really?  Wasn’t it a deliberate plan set in place by Labour, in fact by the present Labour leader, to cripple the UK with CO2 reduction plans that no … Continue reading →

Better late than never, a new open thread.

After the fanfare given to the start of the George Zimmerman trial the BBC has gone a bit quiet on the topic. And I don’t just mean a lack of updated reports, I mean no tweets from its journalists or anything. The testimony of the prosecution’s surprise “star witness” Rachel Jeantel has been very poor to say the least. She told the court Trayvon Martin had referred to Zimmerman as … Continue reading →

   The final image of Dr Jacob Bronowski, in his “Ascent of Man”, standing in the mud at Auschwitz is implanted in my brain. He wept and said that Auschwitz and, by implication, all the other hell-holes constructed by Man, is the unavoidable destination reached by the denial and silencing of truth. ‘It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for … Continue reading →

‘ To open a discussion in the world about something which deeply concerns everyone, and of which it was previously ignorant, to prove to it that it is mistaken on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as important a service as a human being can render to his fellow-creatures. That the messengers of these ideas should be martyred, that their reward should be to be dealt with … Continue reading →