Search Results for: John Humphrys

John Humphrys explains 9/11, Terrorism, and Where We Went Wrong

We don’t know whether the BBC has chosen its position on 9/11 and Islamic terrorism because the hierarchy sincerely believes in it or because it’s strategically pertinent, but John Humphrys set it out loud and clear in his 8:30 spot on the iconic Today programme. Tony Blair was also present.

  • 9/11 was a crime.
  • Islamic extremism is a separate phenomenon from Islam proper.
  • We exacerbated the problem with our ‘War on Terror’.
  • We should have concentrated on the criminals in Afghanistan and stayed out of Saddam’s Iraq
  • Eliza Manningham-Buller agrees.

In other words:
Islam is fundamentally peaceful.
Fundamentalist Islamism is a distortion of Islam.

9/11 and similar acts of ‘terrorism’ are crimes perpetrated by a minority, who have distorted (fundamentally peaceful) Islam.
These crimes have nothing to do with the peaceful religion known as Islam.
We mistakenly blamed the peaceful religion, Islam, for crimes which were unrelated to true Islam.
It was this mistake of ours, which radicalised fundamentally peaceful Moslems, turning them away from true, peaceful Islam, towards a distorted, ‘separate-from-Islam’ criminality, (which has nothing to do with Islam.)

‘Terrorists’ are straightforward criminals who have distorted the fundamentally peaceful religion of peace. We call them militants.

The BBC is impartial and non-judgmental. We don’t call them militant criminals.
We refer to ‘Militants’, or ‘militant Islamists’, meaning
‘militant ‘nothing-to-do-with-Islam-ists’.’

Earlier, someone said the glorious ‘Arab Spring’ is proof that we’ve won an ideological battle.

The news headlines state that ‘post-glorious Arab Spring’ Egyptians have attacked the Israeli Embassy in Cairo because of their anger at the killing of six Egyptian policemen by Israeli security forces. This apparently motivated their democratic decision to destroy the Israeli Embassy and its occupants.
It ignores the boiling hatred that has been driving the Arab World since the year dot, a hatred which was released and allowed to flourish and blossom as soon as dictator Hosni Mubarak was deposed. A hatred alluded to vaguely by the BBC itself in its own statement here:
”There have been protests outside the embassy for weeks amid a downturn in Egypt-Israel relations.” but in a statement further down in the same article, ‘for weeks’ has turned into ‘since 18th August
“There have been protests outside the embassy since the deaths on 18 August of five Egyptian policemen.”

So, the anti Israel protests are merely because of Israel’s recent provocative, unexplained aggression? Or perhaps, since the glorious Arab Spring?

The glorious Arab Spring doesn’t prove any ideological sea change whatsoever. The Arab world does not love us. 9/11 was not an isolated criminal act by distorters of a fundamentally peaceful ideology. Nor was it supported by a mere minority. It was celebrated throughout the Arab world, on September 11th 2001, and as acts against the West still are, to this day, September 2011.

Tony Blair gets it, but nobody likes him, nobody listens to him, and the BBC marches on.
Meanwhile the Any Questions panel drones on predictably. “The whole world was behind America after 9/11!” “We saw Yassir Arafat giving blood on television!”(wasn’t he supposed to have had aids?) “It was our foreign policy that turned the Arab World against America.”

Heaven help us.

In the Guardian John Humphrys justifies a great social evil

In the Guardian John Humphrys justifies a great social evil:

“Independent journalism is too ingrained in the BBC. It is our lifeblood. It is the main reason for the BBC’s existence. It is by a mile the most important thing we do”.

Really? Not as important as presenting Mastermind, surely?

Jihadi John (Humphrys)…Useful Idiot.

 

 

 

 

‘Under the Conservative and then Labour governments, radical preachers toured Britain trying to rally and isolate Muslim youth. They said that to be a Muslim you had to sympathise with your Muslim ‘brothers’ anywhere in the world. What you should not do was to feel any of that gratitude or desire to assimilate which had existed in their parents’ generation.

Everywhere, this madness was allowed to spread. Religiously segregated areas were accepted, separate values were allowed to thrive and, eventually, even separate rules of law tolerated and encouraged. All the time, we pretended to ourselves that this was simply ‘diversity’.

Many Muslims came to this country precisely to leave their religion’s medievalists behind. It would be a tragedy if we stood by while their children — British children to whom we have a duty of care — were indoctrinated by a reconstituted version of that medievalism here.’

Douglas Murray in the Spectator

 

The Islamist advance  upon our society continues unabated, storming ahead ever faster as people in the Media, politics, academia and the Institutions cower before the Islamic blitz, the ‘soft jihad’ launched against them in a battle of ideologies that the Islamists are winning as they either silence the media or force them to adopt the Islamist narrative….the BBC itself ‘groomed’ and recruited to the cause.

The BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet has won the Sandford St Martin trustees’ award for her work in raising the profile of religion in the media.

The BBC director of news and current affairs, James Harding, said: “This award recognises the profound influence of religion on the world we live in and Lyse has fearlessly brought us greater understanding of religion from some of the most perilous places on the planet.”

Anyone who has any experience of the BBC’s approach to reporting anything about Islam the religion, or anything connected to it, knows that ‘fearless’ is not a word that would commonly be associated with their reporting.  To suggest that the BBC brings a greater understanding of Islam to the British people is laughable….the BBC knows that such understanding would lead to extreme and justifiable concerns about a religion that is so intolerant that it preaches unbelievers should be killed.

The BBC boasts of its accurate and trustworthy journalism...’ “In times of crisis and in countries lacking media freedom, people around the world turn to the BBC for trusted and accurate information,” said Fran Unsworth, director of the BBC World Service group.’

Let’s have a look at just how trustworthy and accurate some of that is in regard to religious issues that the BBC so  ‘fearlessly’ explores……

 

We’ve had a Muslim presenter on the Today programme telling us that the Protestant DUP have views that are ‘deeply unpleasant and backward’.…would the BBC allow such sentiments to be expressed about Islam? Probably not as the presenter, when she joined the Today programme, said that she intended to use the programme as a platform to improve people’s perceptions of Islam and we know that the BBC has held secret talks with Muslim activists to shape the news so that Islam and Muslims are presented in a favourable light.

Then on Friday we had John Humphrys on the Today programme (08:49) doing the Jihadist’s work for them as he declared that a questionnaire sent out by Waltham Council to primary schools as part of its programme to build an integrated community was racist…..saying ‘It was racist wasn’t it?’  So little doubt he believed that.

Humphrys was shocked that such a questionnaire could be sent to primary school children and that they could be ‘tested on how extreme they were’ as he claimed.

This us what the council intended…

What is the BRIT project?

Being and Belonging’ is a free education resource for primary schools designed to equip teaching staff with the means to discuss the complex issues of multiple identities and social exclusion. It encourages children to reflect on themselves, the communities in which they live and any challenges or grievances they may be experiencing.

Whilst these topics may feel far removed from your day to day classroom conversations, the consequences of social exclusion are far reaching and are apparent in today’s society in many forms. Whilst action itself is often limited to a small minority of individuals, the effects are felt by everyone in the community – including our children and young people.

Education is seen as key by various stakeholders in tackling these social problems and we believe this package goes some way in addressing this within your school setting.

 

Waltham is in East London and one of those celebrated diverse and multi-cultural communities and clearly there are issues that need addressing especially in areas that are less well off than others.  The council’s actions seem reasonably sensible and inline with action recommended by others.

Of course Humphrys never mentions why he thinks the questionnaire is racist…..it is because many of the pupils are Muslim…..note to Humphrys…Islam is not a race….it’s an ideology that has some serious problems….were the BBC and Ofsted ‘racist’ when they raised a similar issue with schools?…..if not why  is Waltham ‘racist’?….

Pupils at private Muslim school in east London did not know difference between Sharia and British law, Ofsted says

 

In 1999 the BBC  had no concerns about ‘racism’ when  examining the attitudes of white pupils…..not Christian, or Jewish or Buddhist but ‘White’….so clearly based upon race…..

Schools serving predominantly white communities are not responding adequately to the problems of racism, claim researchers.

In the week that the Stephen Lawrence inquiry report called for a greater awareness of ethnic diversity in schools, researchers from the Children’s Legal Centre charity at the University of Essex have claimed that teachers are failing to recognise the extent of racism in schools.

The researchers carried out a confidential survey of 15 secondary schools in East Anglia, all with a majority of white pupils, to see how racism was addressed in lessons and how it was tackled as a problem among pupils.

In conclusion the researchers say the schools “did not adequately prepare pupils for life in a multicultural society”.

In the report’s recommendations, they call for “guidance and support” for teachers to help them prevent racism in schools. This could involve the Commission for Racial Equality setting up a code for good practice in anti-racist education.

Other proposals call for training for teachers in multicultural awareness, the inspection by the Office for Standards in Education of school anti-racist policies and the involvement of representatives from local ethnic minority communities.

There is also a call for a European Union-wide project to encourage schools with a small number of ethnic minority pupils to do more to counter racism.

 

You can see there is a direct parallel between that 1999 survey and its intentions and Waltham’s, race or religion aside…..so why is Waltham ‘racist’?  Does it not also have to  “adequately prepare pupils for life in a multicultural society”?

Maybe if we had a look at who is making those claims of racism things will become a little clearer as to what is driving this ‘protest’.

John Humphrys doesn’t tell us who the complainants are, and indeed doesn’t tell us that it is the fact that the pupils are Muslim that is at the heart of the problem, but it doesn’t take any work at all to find out that it is the usual suspects from the ranks of the Islamist media storm troopers that are behind this….step forward one Mo Ansar….

 

Buxton Primary School, East London. Flushing out 7 yr old extremists. We DON’T want to get these wrong !

Abu Hudhayfah….a very active Islamist who favours the BBC’s goto Islamist group…Cage....

And Asghar Bukhari...who is he?  He heads MPACUK….a very unpleasant Islamist group that encourages Muslims to become Mujahadeen and tells them that Islam demands they go on Jihad….. ‘for the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “He who dies without having fought in the way of Allah or without having felt it to be his duty, will die having a trait of hypocrisy” ‘….and another Cage advocate…that’s him on the right with his mates from Cage….

Embedded image permalink

   Asghar Bukhari@AsgharBukhari May 22

Even the term to me is white supremacy dressed up as something moral

 

And of course the Islamic Human Rights Commission expressed its outrage about the survey….the IHRC that is well known to be extremist and an Iranian front.

Other Muslim organisations also expressed their horror……

UK Muslim Pupils Survey Rejected as ‘Racist’

A ‘counter extremism’ survey by an East London borough council directed at Muslim young students has sparked criticism from British Muslims, accusing the local council of trying to profile Muslim children.

The questionnaire was “clearly racist and Islamophobic” and accused the local council of trying to profile Muslim children, Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, told The Telegraph.

 

Curiously just a week before the same publication had no qualms at all about a survey that said British school pupils were Islamophobic….

What else has the BBC been misrepresenting?  The bombs that went off in Boston were another headache for the BBC….the obvious suspicion was that this was an Islamist attack but the BBC in a fit of wishful thinking declared that all the evidence pointed to it being a white supremacist attack…..as we all know now it was two Muslims who carried out the attacks but that doesn’t stop the BBC from trying to downplay the role of Islam in the attack.

Last week they invited on Masha Gessen to discuss her new book about the bombers...the BBC introduced her as  ‘Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author and activist.’

Gessen pronounced that the bombings had nothing to do with Islam, nothing to do with radicalisation, there is no such thing as radicalisation and no large international organisation (like Islam?) that attracts recruits….they killed because they were disenfranchised immigrants locked out of the American dream after being driven from their Russian homelands.

Apparently the terrorism was a rational decision by people who didn’t like US policies….but no mention of what policies and why they felt so particularly aggrieved.  Terrorism is a crime and not a war we also hear.

What the BBC doesn’t tell us is that Gessen’s whole narrative is really an attempt, not to downplay Islam’s part in the terrorism, but to implicate the Russian leader, Putin, as the catalyst for the bombers’ actions.  She is an ‘activist’ alright….an ardent anti-Putin one.

Gessen hates Putin and is trying to link him to, and blame him for, the rise of ‘Islamist’ terrorism….

  May 28

In which Putin = poison via

 

Then we have the Muhammed cartoon competition in the US.  The Today programme invited on Simon Schama to give us his two pennithworth (08:49)  about freedom of speech in the US.

So we must have great repsect for Islam’s great figure and its teachings…..Never mind that Muhammed himself destroyed all other religions’ idols and iconography, just as ISIS does today.

Why should a non-Muslim respect the ‘dignity’ and alleged sacred nature of religious symbols when Muhammed himself set the example of how to behave and the Koran teaches Muslims not to make friends with unwashed, dirty, ignorant non-Muslims and indeed such non-Muslims can be killed with impunity?

 

So we have had a story fed to us by Islamist activists courtesy of John Humphrys, we have had the Boston bomber’s history conveniently rewritten as an anti-Putin saga which had nothing to do with Islam and we’re left with the knowledge that if you don’t love and respect Islam you’re a detestable and loathsome bigot.

The BBC at its best bringing us that ‘trusted and accurate’ information we all crave.

Islam is the problem…said Boris Johnson

 

Boris told us that terrorism in the UK was due to Islam…he said this in the same article that Corbyn’s fans use to defend Corbyn’s policy of outsourcing Britain’s foreign policy to Al Qaeda or its branch office IS…naturally that part of the article does not get quoted.

 

Corbyn and his supporters, the BBC as well, claim the Iraq War was the catalyst for British Muslims to become radicalised and that we should therefore alter our foreign policy to suit these terrorists…they use the words of ex-MI5 chief, Eliza Manningham-Buller, to back them up as she made the assessment that the Iraq War did give British Muslims a pretext to attack Britain.  What the likes of Corbyn don’t say is that that pretex was based upon an entirely false narrative…that the West was  attacking Islam completey ignoring the reality that Saddam was a secular dictator that nearly all Iraqis wanted removed. [and most Iraqis hate the foreign Jihadis who have invaded their country…they like Sykes-Picot thanks very much] They also conveniently forget to mention that Manningham-Buller made no judgement on the rights and wrongs of going to war, merely warning government of a potential threat….a threat which she said did not mean we should change our behaviour….something Corbyn ignores as he seeks to do just that…..

You could say that even if terrorism increases, that shouldn’t stop you doing what you believe, as the government believed, to be right.

She also stated that even if we had not gone to war it is likely we would have been targeted anyway as looking on ‘favourably’ at a US invasion of Iraq…

I think even if we had supported the United States in sentiment but not militarily, we would still have been seen as supporters so it probably wouldn’t have altered it.

She states the obvious about the root cause…Islam…and the narrative of Muslims under attack…and of course that it pre-dated not just 2003 but 9/11 as well….back to the 1990’s….

A few among a generation who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam.   An increasing number of  British-born individuals living and brought up in this  country, some of them third generation, who were attracted to the ideology of Osama bin Laden and saw the west’s activities in Iraq and Afghanistan as threatening their fellow religionists and the Muslim world.

It is part of what we call the single narrative, which is the view of some that everything the west was doing was part of a fundamental hostility to the Muslim world and to Islam, of which manifestations were Iraq and Afghanistan, but which pre-dated those because it pre-dated 9/11, but it was enhanced by those events.

It is important to say that threat from Al-Qaeda did not begin at 9/11.  My Service was already engaged in concern about the threat posed by Al-Qaeda from the late — mid- to late 1990s; after all the fatwa by Fawwaz from Osama bin Laden was issued in London in 1996.  We had various operations at that time, some of which had connections to Afghanistan, and well before 9/11 we were anxious and worried and doing investigations.   We were far from relaxed about the threat from Al Qaeda, which again, if I can refer to that open document, said back in 2001 the UK was a target.  There was increasing information around the world of that.

Now of course the narrative is that the Iraq War caused terrorism in the UK…but again that’s not true….in 2000 British Muslims were arrested and jailed for a plot…and plenty of Muslims were being ‘radicalised’ in the UK pre-2003….Siddiq Khan of 7/7 infamy was radicalised before the war.

 We had had a operation to which David Omand referred in his evidence, which was a case in Birmingham in 2000,   where we retrieved and prevented the detonation of a large bomb.  David Omand said he thought that was  related to Al-Qaeda.  That was the case at the time I thought I retired.  We now think, I gather from my colleagues, it probably wasn’t.  But those were British citizens of Bangladeshi origin planning an attack.

Certainly the Iraq War was used by Al Qaeda as propaganda, helping them create a narrative of Islam under attack, but that is a narrative that should be easy to dispel.  However it was one adopted enthusiastically by many, including the BBC, who added fuel to the fire by claiming we went to war on a lie.

The BBC has run an anti-Iraq War campaign from the start, it was John Humphrys and Andrew Gilligan on the Today show that really gave an impetus to the terrorist narrative though as they falsely declared that Tony Blair had lied in the Iraq Dossier and thus Humphrys and Co gave the terrorists a pretext to attack us.

The BBC has maintained that attack after being brought to heel, Greg Dykes removed from office and the Gilligan/Humphrys story shown to be false, fake news, very dangerous fake news.  The BBC has never forgiven this chastisement and has spent the last decade rewriting history so that now you will hear BBC presenters telling us that ‘Blair lied’ without any thought that they are themselves lying.

We had Marr yesterday adding Libya into the mix blaming Cameron for the terrorist attack in Manchester and going  on to attack May for having the nerve to criticise Corbyn’s speech on foreign policy…a narrative Marr himself supports as his words on Libya show.

‘And of course it has to be said Libya collapsed into a failed state on David Cameron’s watch.  It was our intervention there that knocked out the Gaddafi regime and unfortunately left a failed state.’

[on May’s criticism of Corbyn]

‘It’s very difficult to accuse someone in the middle of an election after Manchester of supporting terrorism…it’s a matter of good taste, what’s appropriate and reasonable to say is hard for people to get right.’

Eliza Manningham-Buller gives us a more rounded picture...the threat eminates from around the world due to a huge number of ’causes’….no matter what you do or don’t do they will find an excuse, a ‘pretext’, to blame and attack you…

There has been much speculation about what motivates young men and women to carry out acts of terrorism in the UK. My Service needs to understand the motivations behind terrorism to succeed in countering it, as far as that is possible. Al-Qaida has developed an ideology which claims that Islam is under attack, and needs to be defended.

This is a powerful narrative that weaves together conflicts from across the globe, presenting the West’s response to varied and complex issues, from long-standing disputes such as Israel/Palestine and Kashmir to more recent events as evidence of an across-the-board determination to undermine and humiliate Islam worldwide. Afghanistan, the Balkans, Chechnya, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Kashmir and Lebanon are regularly cited by those who advocate terrorist violence as illustrating what they allege is Western hostility to Islam.

The video wills of British suicide bombers make it clear that they are motivated by perceived worldwide and long-standing injustices against Muslims; an extreme and minority interpretation of Islam promoted by some preachers and people of influence; and their interpretation as anti-Muslim of UK foreign policy, in particular the UK’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Then we have the other defence of Corbynthe fine words of Boris Johnson in the Spectator in 2005….what those who quote him do not do, for obvious reasons when you see his article complete, is to provide a link to that article so that you can judge his words in the round, something that would give a completely different picture of what he intended to say….from the Guardian’s report….

Yes he said:

“Isn’t it possible that things like the Iraq war did not create the problem of murderous Islamic fundamentalists, though the war has unquestionably sharpened the resentments felt by such people in this country and given them a new pretext?”

And:

‘the Iraq war did not introduce the poison into our bloodstream but, yes, the war did help to potentiate that poison. It is difficult to deny that they have a point, the ‘told-you-so’ brigade.”

But note how, in this case C4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy, dodges the two big stand-out points in the first quote….that the Iraq War did not create the problem of murderous Islamic fundamentalists and that the Iraq war merely gave those who wanted to attack Britain a ‘pretext’..that’s a pretext, not a credible, authentic, rational, informed reason.  Yes the war may have stirred up the anger, but was it reasonable or rational anger?  No says Boris, not ‘noticed’ conveniently by those who partially quote him….

To the paranoid Muslim mind, the evident bogusness of the ‘war on terror’ — in so far as it applied to Iraq — suggested that the war was really about something else: about oil, about humiliating and dominating the Islamic world; and because they make no separation between religion and politics, the bogus ‘war on terror’ seemed to imply an undeclared war on Islam.

The ‘paranoid Muslim mind’?  Hardly gives the impression that Boris thinks they are making rational, informed decisions…more that they are the subject of hardcore anti-western propaganda…a lot coming from the left-wing media itself…such as the BBC.

That second quote misses out the first part of the paragraph which indicates Boris has his doubts about the theory..

In groping to understand, the pundits and the politicians have clutched first at Iraq, and the idea that this is ‘blowback’, the inevitable punishment for Britain’s part in the Pentagon’s fiasco. George Galloway began it in Parliament; he was followed by Sir Max Hastings, with the Lib Dems limping in the rear. It is difficult to deny that they have a point, the Told-You-So brigade.

‘Difficult to deny’ but possible in truth.

And why miss this out?:

Supporters of the war have retorted that Iraq cannot be said to be a whole and sufficient explanation for the existence of suicidal Islamic cells in the West, and they, too, have a point. The threat from Islamicist nutters preceded 9/11; they bombed the Paris Métro in the 1990s; and it is evident that the threat to British lives pre-dates the Iraq war, when you think that roughly the same number of Britons died in the World Trade Center as died in last week’s bombings.

What do these folks want? Do they really want British troops out of Iraq, when most people I met in Baghdad secretly or openly want them to stay and help fight the insurgency?  There are plenty of people in Iraq who think Britain did a wonderful thing in helping to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and it is still too early to reach a final verdict on the success of the Iraq war. 

There’s absolutely no doubt why they miss the last bit out…it says the real problem is Islam and the Muslim community’s ghettoisation….

We have a serious and long-term security problem, not in Iraq but in this country, among young men who speak with Yorkshire accents. This is a cultural calamity that will take decades to correct.

We — non-Muslims — cannot solve the problem; we cannot brainwash them out of their fundamentalist beliefs. The Islamicists last week horribly and irrefutably asserted the supreme importance of that faith, overriding all worldly considerations, and it will take a huge effort of courage and skill to win round the many thousands of British Muslims who are in a similar state of alienation, and to make them see that their faith must be compatible with British values and with loyalty to Britain. That means disposing of the first taboo, and accepting that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem.

To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia — fear of Islam — seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture — to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques — it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers. As the killer of Theo Van Gogh told his victim’s mother this week in a Dutch courtroom, he could not care for her, could not sympathise, because she was not a Muslim.

The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s mediaeval ass?

 

TYSON KNOCKS OUT HUMPHRYS

It’s a tricky moment for the BBC as the US stock market drops even lower than Obama’s approval ratings, so what to do to try and bolster their hero? How about inviting one of his advisers, Laura Tyson, on to Today for an inspirational interview with a simpering John Humphyrs? What amused me was that Humphyrs came across as more upbeat about the prospects for the US economy than even the Obama apologist, which tells you all you need to know about how the BBC views things. I believe it just cannot understand why S&P downgraded the US, and may indeed give it a further downgrade. Through the prism of Obama-worship, the only explanation must be the reckless Tea Party folks who insist on cutting the Debt in the same way as..erm..S&P recommend!

HUMPHRYS: EUROSCEPTIC?

John Humphrys writes for the Daily Mail about the EU and claims – with breathtaking arrogance that oozes from every condescending sentence – that the corporation might have been guilty of not recognising eurosceptics enough. Pardon? Which parallel BBC universe does he live in? He and his cohorts have ignored and poured scorn on euroscepticism for years; they have also made bias by omission (i.e not properly reporting EU affairs so that the public is unaware of what is actually going on)into a fine art.

First, though, in his mock mea culpa, he wheels out the oldest canard in the BBC armoury; that the reporting of the EU by the corporation over the years must have been pretty much balanced because coverage has come under fire from europhiles too. The Wilson report into the BBC’s coverage of the EU (published after an inquiry in 2005, but subsequently totally ignored by smug news executives) comprehensively demolished that line.

Second, he claims disingenuously that it was Margaret Thatcher who signed the Single European Act in 1986, thereby paving the way for “ever closer union”. His point here is clearly ludicrously contrived to suggest that everyone, including Mrs Thatcher, supported the expansion of the EU; thus the BBC was right in giving weight in its coverage towards that process.

What he fails to mention, of course, is the bull elephant in the room; that Margaret Thatcher almost immediately regretted that signing, and it gave birth in subsequent years to the powerful growth of the current eurosceptic movement (in the country at large as well as among the Westminster elite) which the BBC has disgracefully under-reported and ignored (again as pointed out by the Wilson report), while characterising those who dislike the process of integration, as right-wing nutters. Humphrys himself, with his sidekick, the execrable James Naughtie, have been among the ringleaders of those at the BBC who systematically deride and denigrate anyone who dares to express the idea that Britain should leave the EU.

Third, he claims in his preposterous analysis that eurosceptics might finally be proved right by the pressures on the euro triggered by the recent financial problems in Greece. But why on earth has he only woken up to this now? When the euro was launched, almost a decade ago, Today devoted an entire programme to a virtually unqualified eulogy supporting its importance. In the intervening years, the programme has massively under-reported, ignored or ridiculed those who have warned that the vile currency is a Trojan Horse; another wedge designed principally to further more integration and to isolate those who oppose it.

When it comes to the EU, John Humphrys and every man jack of them at the BBC know only how to misrepresent and to grossly insult those who oppose the jackbooted fascists of Brussels; those sinister forces who today, as I write, are engaged in calling for further “economic government” (i.e. more powers). Surprise, surprise, there’s no mention on the BBC website of this latest blatant power grab. Mr Humphrys’ article only serves to underline the corporation’s euro-fanaticism.

HUMPHRYS IN FART SCARE

Lord Stern, a self-appointed expert on ‘climate change’ who in reality is nothing but a jumped-up economist wrote, back in 2006, a deeply flawed report that contained a tissue of extremist political untruths – dressed up as scientific ‘truth’ – about what he claimed were the threats facing mankind. His work was comprehensively debunked at the time by the doughty economist Ruth Lea, who rightly observed that like all the outpourings of greenies, this was in reality yet another call for higher taxes and more central government oppression.

For the BBC, though, his lordship is still a figure of worship. So when he makes the loony suggestion that we all become vegetarians because farm animals fart too much ‘dangerous’ methane, he’s invited on the Today programme and treated with fawning reverence by John Humphrys. To be fair, Mr Humphrys did acknowledge there were “deniers” out there who disbelieved his scare-mongering, and also suggested that his climate change beliefs were only based on computer models, but when Lord Stern persisted that the science was proven, simple and definitely settled, the supposed Torquemada of the BBC rolled over and purred in agreement. Not only that, Mr Humphrys just sat back and listened as Lord Stern spouted nonsense about moves to “zero carbon electricity”. And he concluded by suggesting that Lord Stern was not being tough enough in pursuing his loony agenda.

HUMPHRYS IN BASRA.

I see that the BBC have flown the intrepid John Humphrys over to Basra (Never mind those pesky carbon emissions, eh?) to report on the current situation there. I caught his first report this morning interviewing a senior army officer who in true blue military form showed a tenacity to finish the job by getting the Iraqi army up to speed. Humphrys zeroed in on those British soldiers who had lost their lives during the past few years in Basra wondering if their sacrifice had been in vain. How delightful for the next of kin. Why does the BBC have such a defeatist and pessimistic mindset? I always find that BBC interviews with Armed Forces personnel demonstrate the best and worst of British – with our military showing courage and vision whilst the BBC shows unrelenting gloom and doom. The beat of surrender is always close to the surface…

Humphrys too eager for answers to hear any reply

* is an interesting article by Philip Webster in The Times today about John Humphrys radio interview with Tony Blair yesterday (as also covered by Melanie Phillips in her diary). Here’s an excerpt of the relevant bits:

IT WAS the interview he had been seeking for three years. But when John Humphrys finally got the Prime Minister in front of him for a Today programme grilling yesterday, the country got slightly more Humphrys than Blair.

The former seemed so determined to pose the questions on Iraq that he has been dying to throw at Mr Blair all this time, that sometimes it appeared he did not really want to wait for the answers.

At least twice he told Mr Blair that he wanted to “move forward” as Mr Blair was spluttering to get his response out. Virtually all the 20-minute encounter was about Iraq.

It was civil, mutually respectful, completely lacking in any personal animosity. But it was mainly about the past as the BBC man took Mr Blair through questions about the faulty intelligence on which the war was based and the legality of the conflict. Mr Blair gave mantra-like responses to several questions, saying: “The war was justified legally because Saddam remained in breach of the UN resolutions.



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