BBC tries to blur the lines over Boston bomber

David V has already blogged about the BBC report (and upcoming Panorama programme) on Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev reading “right-wing extremist literature… espousing white supremacy and government conspiracy theories”, but I thought this was worth a further post.

In the video report for the story the BBC’s Hilary Andersson is shown looking at publications Tsarnaev is said to have read. The narration is as follows:

Andersson: “When these ethnic Chechen brothers Tarmerlan and Dzhokhar were caught on camera near the bomb site it was soon put down to the work of jihadists. They had been reading militant Islamic websites and had links to the troubled Islamic republic of Dagestan.

But now the BBC has found out that Tamerlan, the older brother was also reading right-wing American literature months before the bombings.Articles about government conspiracies, gun rights, white supremacy, and about the minds of mass killers.”

For some reason the BBC has blurred the footage of the literature that Andersson is reading so that only a couple of headlines can be made out. Here’s a screengrab:

hiland3

The video, and the online article, go on to quote – unchallenged – the view of a member of Tamerlan’s local mosque that he was merely “a Muslim of convenience”. Andersson is clearly trying to play up the white supremacist angle (the type of people the BBC pointed fingers at in the first place) and downplay the Muslim angle.

Why, then, is the BBC be so reluctant to identify the publications that Andersson is seen reading? The clue could be in the top-right corner of the above picture where the blurry words “Close Gitmo” can be seen in part of a headline.

Close Gitmo Now” is the headline for an article in the American Free Press (AFP) published on April 10, 2013 (five days before the bombing). I’ll be amazed if it’s not copies of this publication that Andersson is seen perusing in her report.

The AFP is a vehemently anti-Semitic weekly paper which peddles all manner of conspiracy theory, usually linked in some way to the neocon New World Order that’s run by the Jews. The recent IRS scandal? The Jews were behind it, of course. And the above “Close Gitmo Now” article describes the 9/11 attacks as “false flag”. It’s that level of nuttiness.

What doesn’t quite fit Andersson’s narrative, and perhaps explains the reluctance to identify the publication, is that while the AFP is very anti-Jewish, it is also sympathetic to Muslim grievances. In one article which blames pro-Israeli propaganda for inciting Anders Breivik’s horrific murderous spree, the writer says Europeans should fear Jews, not Muslims:

“These Europeans ignore the fact that the Muslims they proclaim to be enemies of Christianity actually revere Jesus Christ as a beloved prophet, as did Mohammad himself. At the same time, they ignore the ugly hostility toward Christianity that is an article of faith in Israel…”

I’m sure the Christians whose churches have been bombed across the Muslim world feel very reassured by that.

AFP contributors such as Mark Dankof are regulars on Iran’s Press TV. Wikepedia offers this take:

In a May 2011 article Dankof protested the British government attempting to shut down Press TV, blaming it on “media outlets and correspondents with provable connections to the American Jewish lobby; Israeli intelligence; and Neo-Conservatives thirsting for a War of Civilizations with Iran specifically, and the Islamic world generally.” In a May 2011 article, Dankof also quoted from and wrote that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion accurately reflect the state of the world. He lauded PressTV as one of the few exceptions to the Jewish control of the media.

As I said in the comments under the earlier blogpost, I imagine quite a few young Muslims read the American Free Press. It spouts the same bullshit that Islamists do, and that is what will have appealed to Tamerlan.

Just for good measure, the AFP even says that the Tsarnaevs were probably framed for the Boston bombing.

It’ll be interesting to see if the full Panorama programme highlights any of the above information, because the teaser items certainly haven’t.

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56 Responses to BBC tries to blur the lines over Boston bomber

  1. Sir Arthur Strebe-Grebling says:

    Not the truth, not the whole truth, and everything but the truth. The bBBC’s view of justice, and journalism. All at our expense.

       36 likes

    • noggin says:

      Hilary Andersson …. “has pieced together a profile”?
      what with a dodgy “love in” with family and confidentes
      no doubt (shakes head!).
      oh i do hope they give lots of airtime to this lying bag of sh-te, great place to start … from the always hilarious
      Russia today

         3 likes

    • noggin says:

      “Panorama has spent months speaking exclusively with friends of the bombers to try to understand the roots of their radicalisation”
      read … months to build a fabrication of far rightery?
      look they wanted to be martyrs!, die for allah!,
      fight for islam! and became said “devout” muslims!.

      that’s all folks … another jihadi “religion of paeds”
      islamic mass murderer the usual … that’s it
      Just one of the 21, 356 murderous Islamic atrocities since 9/11, and too early for the ramadon bombathon
      official scorecard
      Terror Attacks 271
      Suicide Bombings 27
      Dead Bodies 1419

      take a fair few ribbons and bows to cover that

         15 likes

  2. Doublethinker says:

    How on earth can anyone seriously present a theory that this muslim terrorist was a white supremacist? Even in the rarefied atmoshpere of the BBC this must be seen as completely bonkers.
    This is just the latest of example of the BBC becoming more and more extreme in the way that it distorts and excludes news items. Infact things have got so bad that I am beginning to think that they smack of desperation and perhaps that the BBC realises that its decades long propaganda war to change the mind set of the British people and now the west as a whole , is not working?
    On the other hand perhaps the BBC have been following the path laid out in ‘ Mass Manipulation by State Propaganda’ by J Goebbels and J Stalin, and have now decided that stage 4 has been reached and ‘the ordinary people’ have now been reduced to such a state of credibility that they can be told any rubbish , no matter how ludicrous , and they will swallow it whole.

       57 likes

    • Span Ows says:

      ‘seriously’

      They are not really bothered whether it is believed, they are just putting it out their to
      (a) muddy the waters
      (b) deflect
      (c) justify their disgraceful presumptions immediately after the bombing
      (d) get their ridiculous bias and misleading headlines on top of browser searches
      (e) etc

         32 likes

  3. Leha says:

    panafrakingrama, in defense of the indefencible.

    more bBC bollox

    we, the British Public, see what you do, and we don’t forget.

       29 likes

  4. George R says:

    “Who We Must Blame For Boston”

    Robert Spencer, May, 2013.

    [Concluding excerpt]:-

    “The Leftist journalists and Islamic supremacist groups who pressured Obama (as well as Obama and his administration officials themselves) ought to be held accountable for the law enforcement and intelligence failures connected to the Boston jihad bombings. J’accuse.”

    http://frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/why-leftists-and-islamic-supremacists-bear-the-blame-for-boston/

       17 likes

    • George R says:

      “The Boston Massacre”

      by ALEX ALEXIEV.

      (April, 2013.)

      [Concluding excerpt]:-

      “The myth of the self-radicalized lone wolf, hollow as it is, unfortunately has staying power because it faithfully reflects the Obama administration’s mantra that the only terrorist enemy we have is al-Qaeda, and it is in headlong retreat. It will take more than another Boston massacre for Americans to realize that homegrown Islamist terrorism is a clear and present danger, and it will take a different administration to start doing something about it.”

      http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-boston-massacre

         16 likes

  5. Frank Words says:

    Would you trust a BBC report these days?

    Post Savile; post McAlpine?

    They have an agenda. I see no reason why I should finance that agenda of pushing a progressive left society and undermining anything that challenges its existence.

       19 likes

  6. Pounce says:

    What is it with the bBC and its mission statement of absolving all Islamic terrorists and somehow blaming the white Far right.
    This is an absolute disgrace and just proves to show just how pathetic the left have become in promoting the view that Islam can only be a religion of peace.

    Here is the current ‘Ramadan Death Toll’ taken from verifiable news reports which puts the figure at just under 4500 for the so called Islamic holy month, where peace for all mankind is apparently paramount in the minds of all Muslims. (Well so the bbC keeps telling me)
    The bBC, the traitors within out midst

       27 likes

    • DP111 says:

      Islam is the Religion of Peace that passeth all understanding.

      Yup. It certainly passeth all understanding, as no one can fully comprehend the peace of Islam.

         13 likes

  7. ember2013 says:


    The myth of the self-radicalized lone wolf, hollow as it is, unfortunately has staying power because it faithfully reflects the Obama administration’s mantra that the only terrorist enemy we have is al-Qaeda, and it is in headlong retreat.

    Yeh, Obama really has them on the run whilst US embassies spend a fortnight cowering from a possible attack by AQ.

    Jaw-jaw has obviously worked.

       21 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Yes, the enemies of the US shout “Jump!” over communication lines they already know are being monitored, and our supine State Dept. asks not only, “How high,” but “For how long?” Embassies and diplo stations will be closed for a full week now.

      I assume the BBC will find a way to blame Republican intransigence for our failed foreign policy.

         16 likes

  8. Alex says:

    Another great piece DB, if you don’t mind me saying. For some worrying reason the BBC has become overtly Islamic over Christian. Why, one might ask, do I say this? Well, not only because of the Islamic censorship, the likes of which we see in the BBC’s reporting of Muslim child rape gangs, and for the groveling we see on programs like The Big Questions and Sunday Morning Live but for the sheer frequency of Islamic topics saturating the BBC’s screens. Every night of the week in both the BBC News at One, Six and Ten and in Newsnight even more frequently, we are confronted with Islamic stories: democracy and riots in Egypt, fighting in Syria, debates on whether Britain and the US should intervene in Syria, Iranian presidential elections, talks with the Taliban, Islamophobia discussions, should the Burka be banned… and so on and so forth.
    BBC viewers are being gently indoctrinated so as to become immersed in news from the Islamic world, to the extent that news from other sources has become sanitized. Take, for example, the Lee Rigby murder: this is now forgotten about having moved on to the next story WITHOUT anyone even questioning whether parts of the Koran maybe behind such violence. NOT EVEN ONE DEBATE on this. The BBC and the Left are happy to debate possible links between Christianity and violence but never Islam. I wonder why? Surely it has to be more than the sopping wet cowardice of middle-class liberals.

       34 likes

  9. George R says:

    Preview comment from ‘The Times’ (£), (television and radio guide):

    ‘Panorama’s Hilary Andersson: “has pieced together a profile” (of Boston bombers) “which suggests that- rather than being radical Jihadists- they were simply disaffected young men who latched onto Islam.”

    […] “elder brother Tamerlan turned against America when he found that he couldn’t box for his adopted country because he wasn’t a US citizen.”

    Has Beeboid Andersson done research, apart from ” months talking to friends of the two Boston bombers”?

       15 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Well, that’s not exactly non-damning of Islam, is it? The writer may not have meant it that way, but surely the notion that disaffected, alienated young men looking for a way to lash out found this outlet for it isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Islam as a religion of peace and love.

         18 likes

    • Joshaw says:

      And Hitler was just a disaffected young lefty third rate vegetarian painter who latched onto Völkisch nationalism.

         10 likes

  10. DJ says:

    It’s not about making sense, it’s about muddying the waters.

    They just want plausible deniability to allow them to move these guys out of the jihadist column and into the psycho killers one.

       23 likes

  11. George R says:

    Robert Spencer (banned from U.K):-

    ‘JihadWatch’:-

    “BBC: Friends of Boston Marathon jihad murderer try to portray him as ‘right-wing extremist’ and ‘Muslim of convenience’

    Robert Spencer’s opening excerpt:-

    “It’s a good try, but it may be too late, despite the BBC’s best efforts. Far from being a ‘Muslim of convenience,’ Tamerlan Tsarnaev had vowed to die for Islam. He carried out the Boston jihad attack because he wanted to defend Islam. And previous accounts have Dzhokhar stopping his marijuana-smoking as he grew more devout in the run-up to the attack. This BBC piece is an egregious attempt to obscure the obvious motive for the attack. The BBC doesn’t mention any of the evidence that Tamerlan had become a devout Muslim — why not? Next they’ll be saying he was an ‘Islamophobe.’ ”

    http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/08/friends-of-boston-marathon-jihad-murderer-try-to-portray-him-as-right-wing-extremist-and-muslim-of-c.html

       17 likes

  12. Mark II says:

    So he looked at some right-wing sites – maybe he looked at some porn as well – I am sure that was to blame.

       5 likes

  13. John wood says:

    It looks as if the front page is a BOOK REVIEW read here but this is April 24th .

       5 likes

    • DB says:

      Yes, she appears to be studying April copies even though her narration states he was “reading right-wing American literature months before the bombings“. Perhaps that’s why they’ve blurred it out – couldn’t get hold of older copies so, for the cameras, they tried to pass off newer ones as the actual stuff Tamerlan had been reading.

         9 likes

  14. DB says:

    A blast from the past – Hilary Andersson was my main source of inspiration for Generic BBC America Correspondent:

       16 likes

    • John Anderson says:

      Your text is briliant DB – and so is your Generic BBC US Correspondent.

      More, please !

      Hilary Andersson seems a very bitter and twisted sort of person – determined to push her leftie views, as in her report on the Tea Party :

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8958084.stm. She said that the elephant in the room was race – no, the elephant in the room as far as the Tea Party was concerned was that Obama was pushing socialist policies, far further to the left than any recent President. And her report included a swipe at those who were criticising the plans for a mosque at Ground Zero.

      She said that Obama gad “captured America’s soul” in 2008. Rubbish – he won an election – but nearly half the country voted against him.

      Andersson’s deep and visible political pro-Obama bias is bad enough. But her attempts to blame the Right for the Boston bombings are really bad – she is some sick puppy if she cannot see that the root cause is Islamist teajhings.

      The British public has moved on from the Boston bombings anyway – so why this Panorama programme ? Is this really the best focus for the BBC’s supposed investigative flagship.

      DB – I think your piece should be passed round a few journalists here and in the US.

         20 likes

    • DJ says:

      ‘That’s certainly the impression I gave’

      Love it!

         1 likes

  15. David Preiser (USA) says:

    I do hope the Bomber Bros. didn’t get their inspiration for 9/11 conspiracy theories from reading CBBC Newsround.

       8 likes

    • Alex says:

      Newsround lol! What’s the old adage: ‘catch an Englishman when he’s young and much can be done with him’.

         9 likes

    • Span Ows says:

      Pity those old BBBC links don’t work, just the ‘no longer supported by Blogger page.

         1 likes

      • David Preiser (USA) says:

        All but the last one in the list at the end of the post do work, and now the ones in the post itself have been updated.

           0 likes

  16. stuart says:

    the left wing press and the bbc really need to make an appointment with specsavers,the boston islamic bombers were light skinned asians from the muslim republic of chechyna,george zimmerman was a browned skinned hispanic,why all of a sudden do the left wing media want to pretend these people was white,i smell a rat here.

       10 likes

  17. David Preiser (USA) says:

    A drinking game for teetotalers:

    For tonight’s Panorama special, take a drink every time the BBC reporter blames The Obamessiah by name for anything which angered/alienated the Bomber Bros.

       11 likes

    • Alex says:

      I’ve just bought a barrel of Adnam’s Best Bitter so best not watch!!! 🙂

         7 likes

  18. John Anderson says:

    If the BBC wants to have Panorama investigate something worth the candle in the US – as against grinding its own axes – how about taking a look at ObamaCare ? Obama’s signature legislation – hugely unpopular, and now Obama is cancelling or deferring chunks of it legally or illegally. Big insurers are refusing to play along, and the effect on the emplyment market has been dire. 97% of all the job creation recently has been for part-time work, employers are scrabbling to cut workers’ hours so they can avoid the ObamaCare net.

    Meanwhile Obama is still trying to say it is all good. Even though many Democrats are poimnting out the damage it is doing. At a meeting this week to hear arguments in support just one person turned up :

    http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/obamacare-event-attendance-virginia-95172.html?hp=f2

    Get you wretched head round that sort of important stuff, Hilary Andersson. Enough of the smoke and mirrors trying to deny the motivation of jihadist murderers.

       12 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Plus Congress got a waiver so they don’t have to sign up, and the President granted a waiver to His good Union friends. According to the BBC, though, only racists oppose it.

         10 likes

  19. will says:

    The Panorama programme is titled “The Brothers Who Bombed Boston”. Why not “alleged” like the blood soaked killers of Private Rigby?

       15 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Good point. No doubt A Journalist will be along any minute to explain.

         13 likes

      • A jurno-pist says:

        Well it’s very simple [bit like me ?] the one case is just about ripe to be used by the BBC [all hail]to purge any evidence of the R.O.P.s incitement and driven hatred but the the other isn’t yet [all that legal stuff !]so will be just a random none R.O.P inspired crime! so we will just be using the get out of s$%t free term ‘alleged’ until we can subvert the truth to a better more culturally acceptable truth !
        Now pay your TV tax minions!

           3 likes

  20. George R says:

    From Pamela Geller, banned by British Government-

    “BBC: BOSTON JIHAD BOMBING WAS A RIGHTWING CONSPIRACY”

    [Opening excerpt]:-

    “Here’s the thing — if the West continues to cover up for jihad or, as in this case, create a fiction out of whole cloth, then what hope have we of defeating it, or at the very least, containing it?

    “Today the treacherous BBC is blaming the right for the Boston jihad bombing. Despite the bombers’ own words, their call to jihad, twiiter pages, and you tube pages. There ought to be huge demonstrations aginst the BBC in the streets. Taxpayer funds should be cut off immediately.

    This is enemy fire. And just as fatal. ”

    http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/08/bbc-boston-jihad-bombing-was-a-rightwing-conspiracy.html#more

       17 likes

  21. AAB says:

    Typical Beeboids, always trying to promote the Anti-White meme by claiming every terrorist act is commited by White Supremacists. I’m sure they would try and make FARC into a White Supremacist group if they could!

       14 likes

  22. DB says:

    Coming soon from the BBC:

    Lee Rigby, the soldier who died under mysterious circumstances in Woolwich earlier this year, was a member of a right-wing paramilitary group, the BBC has learned. Rigby belonged to an organisation known as “The British Army”, and it is claimed by family members of the two young Muslims accused of his murder [insert photos of them as 12 yr old boys] that he deliberately provoked his own death in an attempt to discredit the Islamic religion…

       20 likes

    • Alex says:

      DB, you forgot the ubiquitous and obligatory BBC quote from Keith Vaz calling for ‘community cohesion’ and joint condemnation of Far-right groups.

         17 likes

  23. Jeff says:

    The Beeb are desperate to try any shenanigans to cover up for who is clearly responsible for this heinous crime and also to smear “the far right.” It’s called killing two birds with one stone.
    Using their version of logic I took a look at my bookshelf. There I can see a well thumbed bible but I have no particular religious belief, I’ve got literature about bee keeping and carpentry and don’t do either. I also watch French films but I’m English and I fork out for the license fee that supports our national broadcaster but I detest the BBC.

       10 likes

  24. DB says:

    I’m off out now so won’t see the Panorama when it airs. I’ll catch up on iPlayer tomorrow but hopefully someone will watch and give a few notes in the meantime.

       2 likes

  25. George R says:

    A Beeboid type of report:

    ‘It is understood that there has been a rise in anti-BBC political feeling after a ‘Panorama’ programme appeared to portray Boston ‘jihadists’ as misunderstood young men.’

       5 likes

  26. George R says:

    An announcement to be issued soon by BBC-Democrat?:

    “The BBC has decided not to report the Fort Hood-Major Hasan mass murder trial on the grounds that any such report may appear ‘Islamophobic’.”

       7 likes

    • George R says:

      American, Pamela Geller, banned by British Government has:-

      “VICITMS OF FORT HOOD JIHAD MASSACRE SUE U.S. GOVERNMENT FOR ALLOWING JIHAD MURDERER HASAN TO RISE THROUGH RANKS”

      [Opening excerpt]:-

      “Staff Sgt. Alonzo M. Lunsford Jr. was shot seven times by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan during an attack at the Fort Hood Army base in 2009. He will testify on the first day of Major Hasan’s military trial on Tuesday. A soldier whom Sergeant Lunsford recognized, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, walked in front of him. Moments later, Sergeant Lunsford said, Major Hasan twice shouted ‘Allahu akbar,’ Arabic for ‘God is great,’ and opened fire.
      “People fighting back the surrender of our government to jihad and Muslim Brotherhood operatives. This is spectacular news. There is a sickness in this adminsitration and if the decent and responsible elected officials won’t fight — the people will.”

      http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/08/vicitms-of-fort-hood-jihad-massacre-sue-us-government-for-allowing-jihad-murderer-hasan-to-rise-thro.html

         4 likes

      • therealguyfaux says:

        A dirty secret of the US Army is that Hasan was kept on, not only because to get rid of him might somehow smack of some sort of institutional religious bigotry (the officially-sanctioned view of why he was not shitcanned, one which serves everyone’s ideological purpose), but for a quite practical Heinlein’s Law (stupidity before malice) reason: he was an MD mental health professional, able to prescribe psych meds to wounded soldiers recovering at Damall Military Hospital at Ft Hood.

        In the weeks and months following a soldier’s having been wounded and medevac’d back to the States, and the completion of the treatment and rehab necessary to become fit for active duty again (possibly even in-theatre), soldiers are often quite perturbed with, among other things, “survivor guilt” and the feeling that they are somehow malingering and letting down their comrades. Mental Health professionals are supposed to intervene and tell these soldiers that they wouldn’t be normal if they didn’t think about these things, but that these things cannot be allowed to overcome them. The soldiers are prescribed anti-anxiety/anti-psychotic meds to get them through this phase as they recover from their physical wounds.

        As it happens, the US Army is quite understaffed with such professionals, who may somehow find the “dope ’em up and ship ’em out” mental health protocol a bit off-putting. Thus, the Army needs desperately to retain as many warm bodies with qualifications as they can manage. Hasan was in this category.

        60 Minutes, the US news mag show, did a story about this subject about a year or so after the Ft Hood shootings, in which the emphasis was upon the soldiers, and not Hasan, but his name came up in the context which I just recounted above.

           2 likes

  27. Louis Robinson says:

    BBC News – the first rewrite of history.

       6 likes

  28. dez says:

    Typical example of B-BBC nonsense.
     
    “In the video report for the story the BBC’s Hilary Andersson is shown looking at publications Tsarnaev [Tamerlan] is said to have read.”
     
    Erm no. Anderson said that Tamerlan had been reading “right-wing American literature”. Accompanied by a shot of Anderson reading generic “right-wing American literature”. There was no implication that Tamerlan had read those specific headlines (which is why they were blurred out, duh).
     
    But see that; the massive straw-man you’ve just constructed; for no other reason than to further your own lunatic conspiracy theory…
     
    “Why, then, is the BBC be so reluctant to identify the publications that Andersson is seen reading?”
     
    Or, in other words;
     
    “Why have the BBC shown me something that they don’t want to show me? Well obviously they want to keep it secret by showing it on screen but slightly blurred“!
     
    Plot lost DB.
     

       0 likes

    • DB says:

      See my reply to you in the other thread, dumbarse.

         2 likes

      • David Preiser (USA) says:

        I’m just enjoying the spectacle of Dez defending the notion that the guy was inspired to mass murder by his religious beliefs.

           1 likes