The BBC’s reaction to the shootings in Germany by Ali Sonboly is fascinating….they absolutely avoided any mention of early reports that suggested an Islamic angle to the killings but did publish reports that he shouted he was German and that he also shouted racist abuse…failing to tell people of the context and that he wasn’t shouting racist abuse against foreigners….the BBC immediately going for the interpretation that this could be a Far Right attack.

Now it seems that the BBC is being rather circumspect when it comes to reporting his name….downplaying the fact that he is called ‘Ali’…even though pupils at his school called him that.  The BBC has history here as it frequently alters the names of Muslims to engender sympathy or to avoid links to Islam and radicalism.

The BBC’s pro-Hamas Jon Donnison changed the name of his Palestinian friend and colleague when a Hamas rocket fell short and killed his son [Donnison and Co reported falsely that it was an Israeli bomb], changing it from Jihad to Jehad in the hope the readers wouldn’t think the worse.

Then we Alyan Kurdi, the young boy drowned in the Med.  The BBC changed his name to ‘Alan’, not a bad name but it wasn’t the boy’s.  The BBC wanted desperately to make him seen less foreign so that people would connect more to him and thence other immigrants in a similar plight and so disrespectfully changed his name in an act of political propaganda intended to make people scared to criticise open borders in case they seemed heartless or racist.

Alan was not the boy’s name, Alyan was…a fine Arab name …

Meaning of Alyan

Alyan is an indirect Quranic name for boys that means “one who climbs upwards”, “one who ascends”, figuratively meaning “high”, “supreme”, “exalted”, “great”. Alyan is an ancient Arabic name used since before Islam. It is derived from the AIN-L-A root which is also the root for the common name Ali.

Utterly different to the Celtic, or is it French, name Alan.

The BBC now reports the Munich killer as ‘David Sonboly’ more often than not, missing out his name ‘Ali’ for some reason…

Munich shooting: David Sonboly ‘planned attack for year’

They do later admit he was also called ‘Ali’ but relegate it to his middlename…

David Ali Sonboly

Ahhh…Breitbart says the addition of ‘Ali’ was in response to its own story on this subject.

UPDATE 1520 EST: The BBC has now edited it’s article to add in the name “Ali” following Breitbart News’s expose. READ MORE HERE

The Telegraph calls him Ali Sonboly and when referring to his full name uses this…

Ali David Sonboly

Just why did the BBC swap his names around?

Even the Guardian calls him Ali Sonboly….

Bavarian investigator Robert Heimberger said Ali Sonboly had visited the scene of a previous school shooting in the German town of Winneden

On Saturday we had the ever more hopeless Frank Gardner, supposedly the BBC’s expert on security issues.  On the Today programme he gave us his analysis of the Munich shootings telling us that as the killer was an Iranian [so possibly Shia] there was almost certainly no chance that he was with the Sunni Islamic State.  He made no mention that a witness reported him shouting Allah Akbar nor that the Islamic State were praising the killings on social media.

As for the killer being Iranian and therefore not at all likely to be in ISIS…The Iranian population is around 20% Sunni….who are pretty well persecuted by their Shia rulers….and therefore one could surmise that the boy just might be from Iranian Sunni refugees.  It’s a possibility that Gardner just didn’t bother to consider as he determinedly tried to scrub out any perceptions that this may be a terrorist event telling us that there were no religious or political overtones [remember this was long before we had an official German briefing on their conclusions] and that there was no IS connection and that the boy clearly held a grudge, was probably mentally disturbed and this was more like the US than IS.

This was Gardner jumping to conclusions very early on, conclusions based as much on wishful thinking as much as fact and is pretty much the narrative that the BBC churns out every time we have an attack that looks like it may have an Islamic link.  Remember Nice?  No links to the Islamic State and a lone wolf who was mentally unstable and had become an instant Jihadi, quickly self-radicalised?  Turns out he has links to IS and had planned the attack for over a year with several likeminded fellows.  The BBC got lucky this time in Munich, their default narrative turned out to be true, but that doesn’t hide the fact that they failed to report all the claims which were just as credible as the ones the BBC did choose to report and that they now seek to scrub Islam from the killer’s name.

The BBC is possibly not the worst offender here though.  It started off with overheated claims of links to Breivik and added in long sections on Breivik and his crimes for good measure…turns out they were wrong….the killer was obsessed with mass murder not Breivik’s politics…and why would an Iranian, Muslim, son of immigrants, take up with someone who was against Muslims and immigrants?

The gunman who killed nine people in Munich was obsessed with mass shootings and had an obvious link to Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, German police say.

Police who searched the 18-year-old’s room say they found written material on attacks.

This changed today to…

Police had not found the manifesto of Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik when they searched the gunman’s room at his parents’ flat.

A day earlier, officials had raised the possibility of a link to Breivik, whose own attack was carried out five years earlier to the day.

However, there was no evidence of any political motivation.

Odd how keen the BBC were to publicise those ‘possibilities’ of a link to Breivik and yet didn’t report ‘possible’ links to ISIS.

The Mirror manages both…

Who’s to blame for Munich shopping centre massacre? ISIS gloat online but right-wing extremists also suspected

Some German news outlets have claimed right-wing nationalists are behind the incident while others have pointed the finger at Islamic State after a witness claimed the killer shouted “Allahu Akbar”.

Supporters of the Islamic State militant group have been celebrating the attack on social media.

“Thank God, may God bring prosperity to our Islamic State men,” read one tweet in Arabic on an account that regularly favours the radical Islamist movement.

A witness to the horror also claims the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar” – God is Greatest – as he opened fire after bursting out of a McDonald’s toilet.

Even the Times of India notes a possible IS link…

Islamic State supporters hail deadly Munich shooting on social media

Not sure how the BBC managed to miss all that.

The Telegraph is possibly worse though as it links the Munich killings not only to the Far Right as a whole but to nationalist groups as well…which can range from the mild UKIP to the SNP and the BNP and on…..

Munich shooting: link to Anders Breivik is reminder of rising tide of far Right anger

Nationalist and far-Right groups are enjoying a surge in support across Europe, propelled by the migration crisis, sluggish economic growth and waning confidence in the EU.

And although their ideas have moved into the mainstream, a violent hardcore remains on the fringes responsible for a string of “lone wolf” attacks.

The German police and politicians seemed all too quick to pronounce the killings in Munich as the work of a lone madman and to link it to a right wing mass murderer….any chance they were trying desperately to pull Merkel out the brown smelly stuff?

Here’s what the arrogant and dismissive German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière says about immigration…essentially saying Merkel and Co in their armoured cars, bodyguards and 24 hour protection, don’t give a stuff that the poor old public are open targets on the streets of Germany because of their immigration policies….

SPIEGEL: Was it a mistake to allow so many migrants to enter into Germany last year without knowing who they were?

De Maizière: We were shocked by the murders of the NSU. We have also seen young people commit massacres in schools. Such instances leave you stunned and asking yourself: Is it not possible to recognize this earlier? Can it be prevented? That there are such excesses of violence is, unfortunately, a fact of life. We do everything we can to prevent something like that, but to a certain extent, a society must endure it — as bitter a pill as that may be to swallow.

Do any of the BBC’s Journo’s that get the plum job of reporting from the good ole US of A actually like America?  It seems doubtful.

Katty Kay certainly has some reservations and Donald Trump is the lightning rod that draws her wrath.  Here she is slagging off the Trump and his supporters and declaiming their dislike for Clinton…all without a single mention of the siege that Clinton’s lefty stormtroopers lay to any Trump appearance, not to mention the attempt to kill Trump…made by a Brit who no doubt overdosed on BBC anti-Trump ‘journalism’ that paints him as the Devil.

Here’s a taste of Katty Kay….

I’ve never heard a speaker booed on the stage or a party this beset by internal strife or a wing of a party drag the rest out to the fringes of political respectability. It’s stunning and begs the question: Are we watching the death throes of the Republican Party?

Many people around the world may be surprised that the most vocal challenge to Donald Trump comes not from the American political centre but from the right of the Republican Party…….Ted Cruz.  {Yep I guess all those violent anti-Trump demos just passed Katty by….and limiting this to ‘vocal challenges’ of course misses out the one where someone tried to shoot Trump].

In some ways the delegates at this convention seem to have gone beyond even Mr Trump on politically extreme rhetoric.

The subject of their ire is Hillary Clinton.

I honestly don’t know if it’s because Mrs Clinton is a woman. It may be because she’s been around as a political figure for so long or because her email server makes her look like she thinks she’s above the law but the hatred of her here is vicious and visceral. This has become the “lock her up” convention. Ask individual delegates about Mrs Clinton and they get a glint in their eye – she’s “evil”, a “liar”, “dangerous.”

They really, really hate her. On that they can agree.

Oh yes..not once but twice in the article we heard that Trump and his crowd are  ‘on the fringes of political acceptance/respectibility’

  ‘A crowd that was willing to be pulled into the fringes of political acceptability.’

  ‘A wing of a party drag the rest out to the fringes of political respectability.’

And the end of the Republican Party?  Analysis or complete overheated bunkum…and she seems to have totally forgotten the Tea Party…once the object of so much BBC ire….it was apparently the future once…and yet the Republican Party is still standing.

I suppose all this Democratic Party internal  strife  just passes the Katty one by…

Bernie Sanders supporters find a new way to hate on Hillary Clinton

Bernie Sanders Supporters Attack Reporters Online After Hillary Clinton Declared Nominee

Bill Clinton shouted down by Bernie Sanders supporters in Boyle Heights

Video: At Hillary Unity Rally – Clinton Goon Attacks Sign Waving Elderly Female Bernie Sanders Supporter

The Republicans must be overjoyed because perhaps ‘we are watching the death throes of the Democratic Party’ [KattyKay©]

Vote Trump

One of the occasional off-route adventures we leaven the blog with…. here’s something to distract from the present black days in Turkey:

As with the axe attack in Germany the BBC is holding back on reporting eye-witness claims that the attacker shouted ‘Allah Akbar’….apparently, despite reports that ISIS have claimed the attack as one of theirs, the motive is still unclear.

Remarkable how the BBC can hold back essential elements of a story…the Mail brings us the reality:

‘Boom boom boom – he’s killing the kids’: Iranian gunman, 18, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ executed children in Munich McDonald’s before killing NINE in mall rampage and turning gun on himself

No mention of Allah Akbar,  no mention that ISIS have said it is one of their Jihadis.  The BBC wasn’t so restrained when it came to reporting claims that Thomas Mair had shouted ‘Britain first’ as he killed Jo Cox as they tried to associate the Brexit campaign with the murder.

One eyewitness told the BBC they heard her attacker shout “put Britain first” at least twice beforehand.

Why the refusal to report the initial eye-witness claims in cases of probable Muslim terrorism?  The BBC are prepard to take a punt on the truth when it involves what they think is a white far-right attacker but not when the attacker is probably a Muslim….one he’s Iranian and two ISIS have claimed the attack…so almost certainly a Muslim.

The BBC have a load of  Eyewitness accounts and yet not this one……

The BBC does manage to report this though…

22:50 22 Jul

The BBC is absolutely determined to blame all the ills of the world upon the Brexit vote.

Today it descends to the gutter with a highly misleading claim in this report in which even the heading is politicised linking all hate crime to Brexit….

Hate crime ‘still far too high’ post-Brexit – police

The opening paragraph is meant to deceive…

More than 6,000 hate crimes have been reported to police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the wake of the EU referendum, figures show.

So there have been 6,000 hate crimes because of the Brexit referendum then?  There’s no other way of reading that opening claim is there?

But it’s just not true…..6,000 is the total but hate crimes are only up 20% on last year…and one week’s worth of the figures was pre-Brexit…the BBC eventually goes on to reveal the truth after its dramatic opening…..

[The] overall level was up 20% on the same period in July 2015.

There were 3,192 alleged hate crimes reported between 16-30 June this year and a further 3,001 reports between 1 and 14 July – equivalent to more than 200 every day, updated figures show.

So 6,193 hate crimes in total, 20% of  which is 1238, say 40 a day hate crimes more than in the previous year…and the numbers are now going down…and note that 1700 or so of the crimes were committed pre-Brexit…not ‘in the wake of the EU referendum’.

40 more a day…and of those how many are ‘looks’ in the street, Tweets, other minor abuses, how many are in fact false, made up ones…quite a few I imagine….Was that arson attack on a Halal butchers that the BBC highlights really an attack or an insurance scam?  How many of those hate crimes were directed at ‘foreigners’?  How may were directed at whites and Jews?  Let’s have a breakdown of the figures BBC.

Essentially we have a few more hate crimes of varying levels of seriousness and an unknown number attributable to any post Brexit effect….and how many can be due to, as the police insisted on the Today programme a while back[and determinedly ignored by Mishal Husain], more awareness of the need to report and how to  report?  How much of the rise is due to Muslim ‘lawfare’ in which Islamist activists try to catch the headlines with tales of Muslims being abused?

The BBC is deliberately misleading us with its interpretation of the figures….of the 6,000 one week’s worth of that figure was from the pre-vote period and the remaining three week’s figures were not all ‘in the wake of’ Brexit…only a 20% rise in the figures might be attributable to a post-Brexit effect…and of that much could be down to a greater willingness to report and some politically motivated, malicious claims who opportunistically jump on the anti-Brexit bandwagon.

Some perspective that might suggest the BBC’s dramatisation of the recent figures is all about manufacturing an anti-Brexit atmosphere…so hate crimes went up 20% post-Brexit…what about this?….explain this away….

From October 2015…..

Hate crimes reported to police up 18% in England and Wales

And this…

Figures reveal a ‘shocking’ rise in homophobic hate crimes

Overall, there was a 15 per cent increase in reports of racially motivated crime, a 43 per cent rise in religious-motivated crime and a 25 per cent increase in hate crime targeting the disabled. Hate crimes involving those with transgender identity went up by 9 per cent.

And did you know that hate crime went up 700% in Cumbria?  From 2 to 16 crimes.  Statistics eh?

Oh yes…religious hate crime?  A mere 6%…and a good part of that [around 1000, over 30%] will be against Jews.  So why do we hear so much about Muslims?  How many Jews in the UK?  300,000 odd. How many Muslims?  Just under 3 million.  Even if the remaining 2000 crimes were against Muslims that seems somewhat disproportionate.  For every 300 Jews one crime, for every 1500 Muslims one crime.  So who is under attack?  And of course many ‘Muslim’ hate crimes are in fact intra-Muslim hate crimes….Sunnis, Shias and Ahmadis.

Is Trump the only candidate for the Presidency?  Seems to be as Clinton rarely gets a mention on the BBC in comparison to Trump….Trump who is, according to Jim Naughtie, a joke, an idiot, and ego maniac…or possibly any number of other things which the BBC freely slanders him with such as he’s a crackpot, simplistic, phoney, a tragedy, a bar room blusterer…importantly though, serious, sensible and grown up people must talk to him and guide him onto the right path as he ‘stokes fear and anger’ by suggesting terrible solutions such as bringing law and order to the streets, preventing terrorism and ensuring American interests are put first in world trade and by not indulging in ‘foreign adventures’ that result in much money spent, much blood spilt and those ‘helped’ somewhat less than grateful….would have thought the BBC would be onboard, sounds like their kind of man in many respects.

The Weekend Open Thread starts here…boogey on, the dancefloor’s all yours…..

From the Spectator…

That Brexit apocalypse? It just isn’t happening

Mickey Clark on Wake up to Money this morning said that ‘People must be very confused.’

No, not the usual BBC snide dismissal of ‘The people’, the rather uneducated and stupid people who don’t do as they are told, but a comment on the fact that so far Brexit has not produced the much trumpeted meltdown…having said that the BBC are busy touring the country seeking out anyone who has the slightest whinge about Brexit a mere four weeks in.  The BBC’s coverage is almost entirely negative in tone and based solely on the economics when the reasons for voting for Brexit had little direct connection to the economics….and yet we don’t hear about those reasons from the BBC and how they will benefit the country…naturally such benefits are long term rather than the immediate impact of exchange rates (which you may be surprised to hear can go up as well as down…wouldn’t know that from the BBC’s reports) that the BBC likes to highlight.  The BBC is on a mission to find Remainers who have the world’s biggest chip on their shoulder, Leaver’s who now regret voting leave and migrants who are not only now terrified of being deported but also suffer abuse ‘because of Brexit’.

But why might ‘The People’ be confused?  Perhaps it’s because the Remainer’s alarmist, doom-laden biblical prophecies of a forthcoming apocalypse seem to be somewhat so much hot air.

Refugee camps in Dover?  Not so much…the Telegraph headlines the news….

Theresa May and Francois Hollande agree that border controls in Calais will stay despite Brexit

For all the fuss the BBC made about the Calais border controls potentially disappearing they seem remarkably reluctant to tell us they are not now going to be dismantled….the BBC’s preferred headline…

Hollande urges UK to start Brexit talks as soon as possible

Why do they think that is the main story here when this is the reality…the headline is completely negated later in the report…

The prime minister seems to have won her way over the timing of article 50 – the French are not going to make a problem if it’s put off until early next year.

This is the real news relative to the Brexit narrative of the BBC…but it’s buried half way down the page and dismissed in a casual way as if it’s not at all important…..how times change…

But Mr Hollande reaffirmed his support for France’s Le Touquet border agreement with Britain, under which the UK operates immigration checkpoints in Calais and Dunkirk, while France has a checkpoint at Dover.

What of the economy crashing around our ears?  Not so much….and note that pre-Brexit the BBC always used the FTSE 100 as the yardstick to measure the economy, since Brexit it refused to do that (as the FTSE 100 stubbornly remained buoyant), instead they chose the FTSE 250 as more representative of Britain’s economy….seems even that domino hasn’t played ball…

BREXIT BOOST: Now FTSE 250 soars to post Referendum high despite Remain doom-mongering

The FTSE took a dive immediately post referendum but has bounced back since then….but you wouldn’t have known that listening to the BBC which has been consistently telling us that the FTSE 250 is showing signs of post-Brexit collapse…..here’s the reality (ironically a BBC chart…... the 5 year chart and note that the FTSE 250 has been falling gently since the general election in 2015)

The FTSE 100 is similarly up…and the Bank of England cannot divine any post-Brexit disasters yet….(they should ask the BBC who always manage to find something to whinge about)

FTSE 100 smashes 6,700 and pound breaks $1.31 as Bank of England survey shows ‘no clear evidence’ of sharp Brexit slowdown

And of course unemployment is at a record high…

UK employment hits record high: fundamentals of the British economy are strong says Chancellor Philip Hammond

So yes, people must be very confused and with good reason.  After the predicted economic implosion hasn’t materialised post referendum, and despite all those Remain politicians barking madly about Leave having destroyed Britain, it seems business as normal at least for now.  Good things take time and out of any possible ‘chaos’ will come order and a refreshed and reinvigorated Britain….no longer tied to the EU corpse.  It’s just unfortunate that the BBC seems intent on painting the direst picture of events and of a future beleagured, talking Britain down and talking their way to recession…how many times have I heard the BBC claim that Britain is on the brink in the last couple of days?  Many times, too many times.

Undoubtedly there will be ups and downs, winners and losers but just which of those can be attributed to Brexit must be very hard to ascertain….and over-all, long term, Britain will be a better place.

What you never hear the BBC ask is what the future would have been if we stayed in the EU as it morphed into a super-state and dragged us in as well.  Kind of important to hear that dark future as well as the doom-laden Brexit one from the BBC.

Listening to Nicky Campbell’s ‘Your Call’ today….about Corbyn’s ‘leadership’.

Amazed to hear that Corbyn is the ‘new politics’…..isn’t he kind of old hat, a disinterred commie who hasn’t realised his form of state sponsored bullying, intimidation and corruption doesn’t work…not even at the point of a gun (or bricks through windows)?  Strange that not one mention was made by Campbell of UKIP in response…the party that took 4 million votes, so many of them from Labour, at the General Election and took votes from Corbyn at the EU Referendum.  UKIP look to be the real ‘new politics’….and the joy is they have only one MP…so he won’t cause much trouble to the leadership unlike Corbyn’s unruly mob…oh hang on.

Amused to hear Campbell getting on famously with one caller who had a short poem to read out about Labour….the friendly atmosphere suddenly vanished, as did the caller as Campbell cut him off, when he said he thought Corbyn was sinister…I laughed…I am of the same opinion…others might think he’s lovely and friendly…He’s not, he is definitely sinister…Nick Cohen seems to agree….

I can make a fair case for saying that  Jeremy Corbyn is the most hypocritical and unscrupulous leader in Labour’s history.  His paid employment while he was an MP was nothing so elevated as corporate lobbying. It consisted of working for the propaganda stations of Russia and Iran. If you watch the YouTube videos of Corbyn in action, you cannot pretend that he is challenging his paymasters or even politely expressing an alternative point of view. He is a mouthpiece for his ugly employers. A willing rather than a merely mercenary mouthpiece, I grant you. Hatred of the West and the willingness to excuse any state as long as it is anti-Western animated him. He is a propagandist for the love not the money.

‘Jeremy is a decent man’. Really? No decent person is the flunkey of fantastically corrupt states. ‘Jeremy is left-wing.’ Is he? He has a funny way of showing it. Iran and Russia are self-proclaimed conservative states. Iran is the bastion of theocratic Shia conservatism. It persecutes ethnic and religious minorities – until Assad began his mass murders, Iran was the worst place in the world to be a Sunni Muslim – and jails trade unionists. Putin, meanwhile, tells the European far right to reject liberalism, and embrace his reactionary nationalism. From a Russian point of view, Corbyn and Seumas Milne’s most prominent comrade is Marine le Pen.

Owen Smith may hope that an honest critique of Corbyn will shift more away from him. Most Corbyn supporters do not, he may calculate, believe in excusing and indulging Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. They are decent people at heart motivated by justifiable fury at the rotten state of England.

Whether Smith goes with hope or fear will tell us much about him – but much more about the modern Labour Party.

How the BBC treats Corbyn and his sinister activities and ideologies will tell us so much about the BBC….so far it has seemed incredibly reluctant to do little more than scratch the surface of Corbyn’s pact with the Devil.

A caller, a hardcore Corbynista,  to Campbell’s show claimed that the BBC was biased against Corbyn….Campbell let her rant on uninterrupted and engaged in debate with her about the BBC’s ‘bias’.  How unlike the treatment any other caller from the ‘right’ who mentions BBC bias gets…they are instantly derided and shouted down and then cut off.

Campbell boasted that his new found tolerance for those who criticise the BBC shows ‘how we’re listening…that’s what ‘Your Call’ is all about’.  Didn’t last long this new found tolerance. Campbell actually asked for more ‘BBC bashing’…and when we had a couple of callers come on to say their piece he shut them down…one who criticised Pienaar and Kuenssberg, was rapidly told to go away…apparently the golden ones are untouchable and not to be criticised….even if you are an old lefty.

The ‘new politics’ of Corbyn just like the new tolerance of Campbell…illusory.

Twitter’s not the only way….as the BBC’s political correspondent, Chris Mason, uses the back of an envelope to draw up his reports……

Chris Mason put on the spot today as Peter Allen asks him about a hot topic currently hitting the headlines (31 mins)……

Peter Allen:  ‘I’m just reading something, I don’t know what it means…but you’re a reporter Chris…Jeremy Corbyn has won his bid to personally fight a legal action…do you know what that means?’

Chris Mason:    ‘Errrr…No I don’t….’

It’s only the fact that a Labour Donor was taking legal action to remove Corbyn’s name from the leadership ballot.

Why would the BBC’s political correspondent know anything about that?

Jeremy Corbyn has won the right to personally contest a legal bid aimed at taking his name off the Labour leadership ballot.

Labour donor Michael Foster had launched a High Court challenge against the party’s decision to automatically include Mr Corbyn in the upcoming leadership election.

Rarely does the BBC let a day go by without a mention of Boris’ ‘racist’ comment about Obama, his Kenyan heritage and Britain’s ‘special relationship’…never mind that Boris was actually referencing this Guardian article as the BBC knows full well….Could Obama’s dual colonial heritage spell the end of the special relationship?

The constant drip drip drip of comments labelling Boris as racist by the BBC’s finest naturally have an effect as the legend become established as fact.  Which no doubt suits the BBC fine.  Boris is one of those politicians marked down for special treatment along with Farage and anyone else who raise their heads above the parapet and suggest we control immigration.  Others, less brave, keep their heads down….which is the intended effect that the BBC et al seek to achieve as they silence their enemies.

Corbyn himself tried to use Boris’ comment about Obama as proof of racism on PMQs today without raising a comment from the BBC ‘analysts’.  Someone else who hasn’t merited any comment is the Today programme’s very own Justin Webb who writes in the Mail about Obama, the US and racism….what he says is no surprise in its conclusions, people have said it for a long time, what is surprising is his language and that he hasn’t been hung, drawn and quartered for it….here are the relevant and eye-opening thoughts from Webb…

JUSTIN WEBB: The tragic irony is, that under Barack Obama’s policy of not being black, America has become MORE divided by race 

As he prepares to leave office, there is so much anguish among some of his keenest supporters at the grim fact that race relations in the U.S are as bad today as they were when the world was marvelling at Obama’s rise.

In fact, incredibly, some think they are worse, as bad as they were during the Los Angeles riots of 1992.

The truth is that America did not actually elect a black man to the White House. You might just about be able to argue that this is true physically: Obama is of mixed race with a white mother, but psychologically, intellectually and politically, Obama is not a black politician.

And Obama never sought to hide that. This was not a black administration with black concerns at its heart, indeed in his first term he had one of the smallest number of black cabinet members in recent times — fewer than George W. Bush.

No, Obama never intended to be a black president. Remember the controversy over the Reverend Jeremiah Wright?

For some African Americans that is now a problem, because they feel let down. The Rev. Wright still preaches in North Carolina but now refers to his former friend as ‘our Halfrican-American president’.

It is difficult to avoid a sense that following the recent killings, Wright’s madcap anger rings more bells with black Americans than it did in 2008; in other words, Obama’s approach has lost ground in the nearly eight years he has been in power.

Barack Obama’s policy of not being black has served him well for most of his presidency.

The risk is that it is blowing up in his face in his final months in office.

So what Justin Webb is saying is that Obama isn’t black enough, both in thought and in actual skin tone….and that his policies should be shaped by his skin tone and that somehow black people have different needs to people of a different hue.  Webb probably thinks Bill Clinton was the first black President.

A quite extraordinary set of comments by Webb based upon Obama’s race…and yet….nothing from the great washed…not a peep, not a cry of outrage, not a Twitter terror attack, not a Facebook furore.  Nothing.

Guess the real bigots are those, including those in the BBC, who try to close down debate by labelling their enemies as racists and aim to frighten them into silence.

Elsewhere on planet President and the BBC’s explorations of it…..Trump’s wife may have been fed (sabotage by anti-Trump Republican’s?) Michelle Obama’s best lines to put in her speech but at least she didn’t call her husband’s campaign manager a ‘fucking Jew bastard’.

Who did?  Hmmm…that’ll be Hilary Clinton….(she denies it of course)….

Hillary Clinton is fighting a rearguard action to avoid further damage to her standing with the crucial Jewish vote in her campaign for a Senate seat after a claim that she once used an ethnic insult against one of Bill Clinton’s aides.

A book out today claims that 26 years ago she called Paul Fray, her husband’s campaign manager at the time, a “fucking Jew bastard”.

Funny…never heard the BBC dragging that one out of the archives.