Confused

The Today website is no longer providing clips of every part of the programme. No explanation, but I assume it’s something to do with the cuts. Hmm.

More importantly, as stories about failed rogue states, Islamist wars, terrorism and piracy reach a crescendo, why doesn’t anyone publicly acknowledge there’s connection between them all? The only factor that determines whether the BBC sees Islamic terrorists as good or bad seems to be whether they are known to have links with Al Qaeda.Al Shebab, Boko Harem, Hizbollah, Hamas – all apparently a-okay. Until they’re ‘known to be linked with’ Alky Ada. Then – say no more. Quite puzzling.

The current violence in Afghanistan over these burnt korans.
I’m baffled as to why everyone accepts one of the most superstitious superstitions of all the Islamic superstitions as being the outrage it apparently is. When Evan Davis spoke to Jim Muir, his empathy with this preposterous sensitivity was baffling. Who makes a fuss when the same hyper-sensitive religious fanatics burn the American/Israeli flag? Who calls for riots when mobs shout “Death to Amerika/Britain?” Who turns a hair when they call Israel a cancer and vow to excise it from the planet? All people do is say “They don’t really mean it” with a knowing smirk.

Even more strange, there are certain acceptable methods of koran disposal, it seems.
A scholarly imam with an Islamic bushel of bushy beard has to chant the holy salagagoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo and throw it over his left shoulder into the Holy See.
Or it can be burnt.
See Evan? Burning’s okay after all! It must be burnt to a crisp. The mistake was leaving the fragments!
So the Afghanis who were ‘helping’ the Americans were so religious that instead of quietly whispering “look bud, finish the job properly,” they took the fragments and showed them to their mates in order to start a religiously motivated killing spree. This was helpful?

I’m baffled.

IRAN, ISRAEL AND SYRIA

Anyone catch this John Humphyrs interview with William Hague on Today this morning. What fascinated me was how a discussion regarding what could be done to help those people suffering under the Assad regime in Syria suddenly was switched by Humphyrs into trying to get Hague to say that the UK would never support military action against…Iran. And in particular, should Israel move against the Mad Mullahs, would the UK ensure no support whatsoever would be afforded. To be fair to Hague he did repeat the line that NO options are off the table but it’s the way in which the BBC seems to have linked Assad’s butchery of his own people to that of Israel seeking to prevent the annihilation of their people at the hands of the thugs in Tehran. As I recall there was a similar attempted “gotcha” last week using the same trick and it makes me think the BBC worry more about Israel defending itself than Iran attacking it. I’ve had an exchange in the past day with New Statesman Editor Medhi Hasan and he articulates a defence  for Iran that I believe will become the narrative for the BBC as conditions deteriorate.

Hungry Baker!

The BBC’s coverage of Khadar Adnan the Palestinian hunger striker closely resembles the extract from Al Jazeera highlighted by Elder of Ziyon, only the BBC’s version has been dumbed down, so that the public can understand it more easily. You know, large type and tiny paragraphs for those of us with poor comprehension.
To help the public absorb the heroic nature of this martyr more fully and stop us being confused by the unpalatable bits, they’ve left them out altogether.

It’s terrible what they’re doing to this principled man, is it not? Catherine Ashton will sort it out, I’m sure.
Discuss.

Non Story

The following probably comes into the category of ‘what the BBC won’t report’.
Admittedly, few outside the Israeli press have covered the story, but it merits a little mention by the BBC because ill-conceived references to the incident in question still rear their heads in the course of the day-to-day Israel-bashing to which we have become accustomed.

The news that the BBC ignores is that the French supreme court has acquitted an Israeli doctor named Yehuda David who had previously been convicted of slander. He had been sued in a French court by the father of the Palestinian ‘martyr’ Mohammad Al-Durah.The infamous Al-Durah incident in 2000 was very likely a Pallywood production, but this has not been conclusively proven. I have written about it in the past, and the intriguing background is extensively covered here, here and here.
Honest Reporting links to an article by a writer who seems pretty convinced that the Al-Durah case is closed, the evidence of Al-Durah senior’s dishonesty putting the final nail in its coffin. But on the principle that just because you lie about one thing it doesn’t automatically mean you lie about everything, I think it’s safe to just say the jury’s still out.

Doctor Yehuda David revealed that Al Durah senior’s scars – allegedly from wounds inflicted in the incident in which little Mohammad was allegedly killed by the IDF – were in fact from wounds inflicted upon him at a much earlier date by Hamas for the alleged crime of collaborating with the Israelis. The doctor was in a position to reveal this, because, dear reader, he recognised the scars. He was the very surgeon who had operated on Mr. Al-D. several years before the notorious Mohammad Al-Durah incident occurred.

Dr. Yahuda David gave an interview to this effect, which was published in a magazine. Someone stumped up for Mr. Al-D’s legal fees, enabling him to sue the doctor for slander, somehow managing to win damages to the tune of 30,000 euros. But the doctor fought back, and the court overturned the conviction last week; deep joy all round in Israel.

The case looks as though it is set to be one of those never-ending sagas, because it seems Mr Al-D and his backers intend to appeal.

For the information of anyone following the Al-Durah story, it seems that the legal procedure is still ongoing in respect of Philippe Karsenty’s conviction / overturned conviction for slander against Charles Enderlin of France 2.

The question of the Al-Durah footage itself has never been resolved, but there is still the mysterious extra bit of film which Mr Enderlin wouldn’t release to the French court, part of which (I think) can be seen via The Augean Stables. Many people feel this provides convincing evidence that the whole thing was a set-up.
But, with the help of massive press coverage, it sparked a deadly intifada, and that is why the BBC should at least pay their respects and acknowledge the tale.

JIHAD AGAINST EMPLOYMENT

The BBC is a strange beast. The past few days have seen it giving lots of publicity to those trade unionists/marxists/hard leftists who oppose the Coalition plan to allow unemployed people to gain unpaid work experience. I guess falling unemployment is unhelpful to the Left but am less sure why the likes of the BBC Nolan Show (both on 5Live and Radio Ulster) seem intent on persecuting TESCO for having the temerity to offer work experience.

I was on the Nolan Show yesterday debating this issue. You can listen here – go to 22 mins in. As you will hear, I debate with a Guardian journalist who quickly exits the scene and the rest of the debate is really me versus Nolan. I thought he was supposed to be impartial in debates? You will hear some unfounded allegations against the likes of Tesco and the whole bogus “slave labour” narrative is reinforced by Nolan at every turn. I took the opportunity to mention the fact that Tesco is not the ONLY large company to run such schemes…the BBC also offers unpaid employment. He briefly acknowledged that, in passing, and moved on to bear-baiting against Britain’s most successful private employer.

Then, this morning, on Today, the topic bounced up yet again. (7.53am) This time, the BBC found someone who had actually been on this scheme and gotten a full time job out of it! He was up against someone from “The Right to Work” campaign who despite the undeniable success of it as regards the chap who had managed to get a job, simply sneered at Tesco and repeated the “slave labour” meme. It struck me that the “Right not to Work” would be a more apt name for this leftist propaganda group.

The entitlement class out there hate the idea that they might have to be asked to work for their benefits and there are sections within the BBC that are quite happy to provide a soapbox for Big Sloth. I do not deny them that voice but there has to be balance in the debate. To my mind, that was entirely missing yesterday.

Balen 2

Who’d have thought that journalists who wish to investigate, uncover and expose scandals and injustices without compromising their freedom or exposing their pet whistleblowers, would be subjected to the whims and fancies of the Supreme court in the course of its earnest deliberations over such things as the meaning of the word ‘predominantly’.

Who knows what was on the minds of Lord Phillips and pals as they grappled diligently on behalf of the BBC with the tricky business of defining what is or is not in the public interest.

The Freedom Of Information Act is supposed to

“promote an important public interest in access to information about public bodies.”

But when the unstoppable Freedom of Information Act collides with the immovable Data Protection Act, there’s bound to be trouble.Thankfully, the judges know what’s good for you. For your own good the BBC and a few other bodies enjoy a special exemption
(safeguard) so that you, the public, can’t poke your snoopy noses in.The safeguards are there

“to prevent interference with the performance of the functions of the BBC in broadcasting journalism, art and literature.”

So in certain circumstances

“……………the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information”

And who decides whether disclosing information outweighs the BBC’s public accountability?

“……………the disclosure of which, in the reasonable opinion of a qualified person (which in the case of the BBC is the corporation itself, acting by its governors)…”

Eureka! The BBC itself is qualified to decide!
However, the judges are aware that this doesn’t look brilliant in terms of PR. They must rationalise the notion that concealment trumps transparency, and secrecy is more ‘in the public interest’ than accountability.

“ In this case, there is a powerful public interest pulling in the opposite direction. It is that public service broadcasters, no less than the commercial media, should be free to gather, edit and publish news and comment on current affairs without the inhibition of an obligation to make public disclosure of or about their work in progress.”

Excellent excuse! But his honour is still slightly apologetic:

“ I would add that I am conscious that this interpretation of the limitation may be seen as conferring on the BBC an immunity so wide as to make the particular statutory redemptions redundant, and leave the BBC almost free of obligations under FOIA.”

It certainly pans out that way, and sweet of you to notice.

“On a broad definition, it could be argued that all of the activities of the BBC are for the purposes of journalism, art and literature, as these are broad descriptions of a substantial part of its broadcast output . . .”

Go on. Why not make the BBC exempt from the FOIA altogether and be done with it? Even the the judge is wondering this:

“However, if a very broad definition was intended, there
would be little point in including the BBC in Schedule 1, Part VI of
FOIA. The BBC could have been omitted altogether from the scope
of the Act.”

However, here comes ‘the chilling effect’.

“The BBC submitted that disclosure of the Report (and any other information held for the purposes of journalism) would have a chilling effect upon their right to freedom of expression;”

The same phrase was uttered by a journalist in respect of the Leveson Inquiry. This monstrous chilling effect, this inhibiting, this compromising, this…..cramping the BBC’s style, evidently justifies concealing the contents of the Balen report for ever and ever. Does this apply to Murdoch’s journalists too?
The BBC’s desire for secrecy almost puts their internal workings in the same category as certain trials being beyond the reach of the open court for fear of revealing secret counter-terrorism information.

The appellant (Mr. Eicke QC,) has the temerity to think accountability is a reasonable request.

“(The appellant) not only disputes that the release of the Report would have a chilling effect on freedom of expression but submits that only the need to protect journalistic sources – or perhaps, indeed, more narrowly still, the need to protect sources who might otherwise be deterred from assisting journalists – would constitute an overriding requirement of the public interest sufficient to justify this interference with the citizen’s article 10(1)right of access to information.”

Quite so. since the Balen report was originally carried out in 2004, can the contents really still be for the purposes of journalism? Balen’s recommendations, if there were any, would surely have been implemented by now, if they were deemed worthy of implementing!
Despite the fact that during the period in question there was a reshuffle of BBC management personnel at the top, certain recommendations were put into effect, one of which is said to have been the appointment of Jeremy Bowen. Perhaps the Balen report concluded that they weren’t biased enough against Israel?

If the Balen report found bias against Israel in 2004 it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s biased in 2012. By this time surely the BBC could have got away with another of those ‘the-bias-was-all-in-the-past’ mea culpas and saved the £300,000. They must have thought it was worth spending the dosh to ensure they could continue to go about their business in any way they see fit, unfettered by scrutiny and without the threat of exposure.

Meanwhile, simmering away on the back burner is the detrimental effect the media’s self-interested or partial reporting has had on society. The BBC’s anti-Israel bias has consequences. One small example; the comments below an article about Iran’s nuclear ambitions on an official BBC blog by Robin Lustig, which boasts the strap-line ‘Trying to make sense of the world’ clearly demonstrates they’ve failed. They’ve only succeeded in making nonsense of it.

“And another thing, how is it that Israel is a ‘stabilizing’ influence on the region while Iran is a ‘destabilizing’ one? One of these countries is a theocratic violent terrorist state that refuses to abide by international law, while the other is a theocratic state that hasn’t invaded another nation in a thousand years? Satire cannot do justice to this hypocrisy”

The moral equivalence given to Iran and Israel elicits neither challenge nor counter argument, and is evidently deemed acceptable by the moderators.
This assumption reared its head on Question Time, which Melanie Phillips discusses here.
The BBC charter stipulates impartiality – not that such a thing is realistically achievable, but balance could reasonably be expected ‘over time’. If this is not happening, someone should intervene. Bias by omission, by emoting, and by overt propaganda are all against the rules, but who will enforce them? It’s not usual to trust bodies to self-police – not even the police – and especially the BBC who won’t or can’t recognise their own bias or admit they get anything wrong.

These legal appeals gather more and more moss the longer they drag on, and each time they’re re-appealed the entire legal history has to be reviewed and reconsidered. The procedure has to scrutinise previous hearings, till it begins to resemble that game where each player has to recite a shopping list from memory, adding another item one by one; as the the list grows longer, the harder and more tedious the task. The judges weren’t memorising shopping of course, they were seeking loopholes and cracks in previous hearings. Looking for hooks on which to hang excuses to keep the Balen Report in the family.

They seemed genuinely worried about creating a precedent that would fetter the BBC, and conscious that the Balen report’s qualification for exemption was tenuous. Did it really come into the category of “for the purpose of journalism art or literature? They admitted they were virtually gifting the BBC complete immunity from the FOIA. They saw that determining what was in the public interest could be stretched and squeezed, describing it as ‘elastic’.
In short they dallied over whether they liked the idea of civilians knowing the content of the Balen Report or not, and having pre-decided ‘not’, excreted copious verbiage in rationalising their fancy.

It boils down to a simple reality. The BBC, or the BBC Trust can continue as before. If there is bias, so be it. Like it or lump it.
The fear that ‘internal frankness’ would be damaged if ‘the public’ had ‘the right to know’ outweighs the fear that biased reporting has a corrosive effect on ‘the public.’ External frankness, external critical review and external analysis of output can get stuffed

On the BBC they refer to Israel as “Iran’s arch enemy.” Is that upside-down description even-handed, logical or accurate? What is the likelihood of an internal review correcting that?

I think I rest my case.

RICHARD BLACK – THE NEW HERACLITUS?


It’s not often a BBC correspondent invites comparison to figures from Greek antiquity but B-BBC contributor Alan notes;


“There will come atime when we have an answer to the climate change question. When that timecomes somebody may well sit down and write the history of this period intime…the history of the media coverage in particular. If they did what might they find?

They would find a world respected media organisation with a duty to providenews regardless of vested interests which has had its name and reputationdragged into the gutter by a cluster of senior journalists and presenters whofailed to uphold the high standards of impartiality and truthfulness that theBBC demanded of them. Climate change alone would be enough to tarnish the BBC’s reputation but addonto that its coverage of Europe, immigration, the Labour Party, Islam,terrorism and the Middle East and there is hardly an area of world events thatthe BBC has not mislead the British and world audience on.

It is unfortunate that no one can trust the BBC to give them the absolutetruth….any report from the BBC now has to be double checked and cross referenced…preferablywith the original source material or with other news organisations or expertcommentators. A recent example of this comes appropriately enough from their environmentcorrespondent Richard Black.

Here he tweets an attack on Bush….
@BBCRBlack via Twitter
Canada accused of ‘muzzling scientists’ http://t.co/I8iq2AO1@BBCPallab – another echo of US under George W Bush?

Bush was fully prepared to believe in man made climate change…he just wanteddefinitive proof…which we still don’t have. Read the Bush clean air speechbelow from 2002.

Black then goes onto attack the ‘new’ attempt to reduce emissions of othergases as short term …..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17073186
‘The US is leading a new six-nation initiative aimed at curbing climate changeby tackling short-lived warming agents including methane, black carbon andhydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).
(but)…according to the science, tackling short-lived climate pollutantsdoesn’t prevent global warming – it just delays it….. emphasising short-termwarmers in the absence of meaningful action on CO2, to some observers, smacksof short-term politics and an unwillingness to get to grips with the mainissue.’

 The ‘main issue’?

Here he is clearly still pushing hard for CO2 reduction policies as moreeffective…despite methane being a more powerful greenhouse gas….butnote….although global warming is such an urgent priority Black tells us thatCO2 reduction will only be effective from 2060….’tackling CO2 and not doinganything about the short-lived substances sees more warming in the next fewdecades – but beyond about 2060, it’s more effective than tackling theshort-lived agents.’

Logical incoherence?

Black’s logic fails spectacularly….because although methane may disappearfrom the atmosphere relatively quickly…it only disappears if you stop puttingmore up there….you don’t cut the grass once every summer….you have to keepcutting….keep putting methane into the air and its effects continue….it isdifferent methane but with the same effect.Guess you shouldn’t ask that old riddle of Black…is a river the same river aswater flows through it? 


According to both Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus held extreme views that ledto logical incoherence…..“Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things go andnothing stays, and comparing existents to the flow of a river, he says youcould not step twice into the same river”

Black, the new Heraclitus? ….’from the riddling nature of his philosophy andhis contempt for humankind in general, he was called “The Obscure”and the “Weeping Philosopher”.’

Compare that to this from Geoffrey Lean in the Telegraph who is a convinced climatechange advocate himself:

Then you may want to look at what George W. Bush actually said and did ratherthan the cheap jibes from Black and Co.

In 2004 Bush started the Methane reduction plan….and it carries on today….
‘Writer Rod Dreher laments that the media has not given Bush credit for pushingthe 2004 Methane to Markets initiative through Congress. Dreher stated thatmethane is “twenty-three times more potent a contributor to global warmingthan the carbon dioxide emissions the Kyoto treaty aimed at cutting”. Theinitiative plans to reduce global methane emissions, the second largestcontributor to atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, in order toenhance economic growth, promote energy security, improve the environment, andreduce greenhouse gases. Other expected benefits include improving mine safety,reducing waste, and improving local air quality.

This is the up to date website for this programme:
http://www.epa.gov/globalmethane/basicinfo.htm
Then look at this from 2002:
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/02/20020214-5.html