when too much of the real stuff has been tragically split in our capital, Marc, at USS Neverdock, makes a legitimate point on behalf of all those people who might have lowered their guard as a result of the undermining of the notion of a War on Terror by some BBC journalism. ‘The Power of Nightmares’ assured us there was no real organised Islamic movement bent on our destruction, yet the massive organisation behind the London bombings – the syncronisation, the planning – suggest quite the opposite. It suggests the BBC’s flagship programme of the last year, its main publicised recent claim to excellence, was in fact highly flawed. And as forewarned is forearmed, the BBC has in this regard, and others less well-known, certainly been unconducive to the public good.
‘“The BBC had the courage to put the series out and this shows they were right”‘, said the maker of the film… as it showed at Cannes. Though we salute freedom of speech – metaphorically – we tend to reserve our actual salutes for those who show they are right.
can you believe it, the BBC discovered the T word. In Israel, Iraq and elsewhere attacks are by ‘militans’, ‘freedom fighters’ ‘political activists’, and the victims are ‘bystanders’.Today, in London, the victims are victims and the attackers are terrorists.
What a double standard and hypocrisy.
Thanks for flagging this Ed. An excellent point made by USS Neverdock.
Also recently some Algerian guy was convicted of planning a chemical attack in London, but because the rest of the accused got off the ‘clever classes’ were scoffing at the idea of organised terrorism in being planned in the UK as a scam to justify the war in Iraq.
Frankly, the mind of the ‘Great British Public’ has been so addled by the likes of the BBC that it would take 10 7/7 attacks in short time and each ten times worse till it wakes up to the harm done by BBC subversives who think defeating Bush is more important than defeating Al Qa’eda terrorism. What the BBC does really is ‘The Power of Nightmares’.
I noticed that BBC1 was very slow out of the gate in switching to rolling news whereas ITV was on the case almost immediately. I wonder if the beeb were hoping that the whole thing would go away?
Ed
Good post. Spot on.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4661627.stm
scroll down .. read quote from
RESPECT MP GEORGE GALLOWAY
With luck those at the BBC will get a reality check.
I seem to remember the BBC’s fondness for a certain phrase ……….”the so-called war on terror”.
And the moaning about poor dear innocent people being kept in jail but not having a trial, and how disgusting that was …………. And how they were let out a few months ago (was it?)
Wonder what happened to them?……..
Hazel,
I have to admit, I do wonder if some of the “Tipton Taliban” etc. had something to do with this.
If so, I don’t even want to think about what that makes their media cheerleaders. . .
The Tipton Taliban. Indeed Susan. But dont worry, if it turns out to be the case, the same people who were condemning the United States for holding them will then be condemning them for releasing them. This people are without conscience or shame. And they control the media.
Good post, Ed.
James Taranto notes in Best of the Web Today:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006927
The BBC Calls It by Its Name
“London Rocked by Terror Attacks” reads a headline on the BBC’s Web site. This seems unremarkable, except that, as the Mediacrity blog points out, the BBC’s “editorial guidelines,” in Reutervillian style, state:
The word “terrorist” itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term, without attribution. We should let other people characterise while we report the facts as we know them.
The Beeb does apply this rule sometimes, such as in this timeline of attacks against Israel, which nowhere refers by name to terror, terrorism or terrorists.
Even Reuters is leaving out the scare quotes in some dispatches: “Police said they suspected terrorists were behind the bombings,” the “news” service reports from London.
Hal,
I wonder if we will even know if it does have something to do with released “detainees”? The best thing for our media/government overlords would be to simply bury that information. Well, no point in speculating.
I predicted several months ago that if a terorist attack occurred in the UK, the Beeb would use “terrorist” instead of “millitant”.
Awful circumstances in which to be proved right, of course.
Where, indeed, is Mr. Adam Curtis? I would love to hear his views on todays “fictitious” incident.
Come on, Mr. Curtis, speak up!
The way the police are saying, hilariously, that they still don’t know who was behind this is clearly a cover-up.
You do wonder whether something “embarassing” led to this.
I considered leaving an open letter to that prick Adam Curtis on this thread but I don’t think you’d appreciate the swearing. The comments section for the “Power of Nightmares” still exists on the BBC website but I doubt that it’s still active. (However, just in case, I left a moderately abusive email on it).
I hope this doesn’t sound callous to the bereaved but if the death toll holds at less than 40, as horrible as it is, this is not the “big score” that they were obviously hoping for — no doubt they were aiming at 200 or 300 dead as in Madrid, Beslan, or Bali, just like they meant to kill 40,000 in New York instead of just 3,000.
I am thankful the death toll is not as great as the terrorists obviously planned for. Kudos to the London authorities and emergency personnel, I suspect they saved lives today with their cool and prepared action.
Zevilyn, c’mon, the apologists are just going to say it was the work of Mossad or the CIA, that’s what they always say. “500 British Jews didn’t take public transportation today!” “Who benefits?” etc. Not in so many words but they’ll suggest, they’ll imply, they’ll infer.
The script’s already been written.
The usual apologists are being wheeled out from the muslim community to declare that their ‘religion’ does not permit such attacks as those in London. If only that were so. Read this dissection of islam and make up your own mind while you’re free to do so.
http://www.islamundressed.com/
ABC saying that unexploded devices have been found:
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=918193
I was right: they were hoping for a much bigger score, the bastards.
1. Paxman has just interviewed Tony Benn on Newsnight. Benn’s presence is obviously (yet another) instance of the extremist left being given airspace and, hence, respect by the BBC. To his credit, Paxman seems irritated by Benn’s appearance.
2. Benn is sitting next to an Islamic apologist for Islamic terrorism (I can’t even be bothered to remember man’s name). He doesn’t accept that muslims are respnsible for the attacks in London.
3. And the left says that the right is extremist?!
4. Is anyone else having problems with haloscan on here? Many of my posts aren’t appearing now. I’m beginning to believe that the Vichyists on john b’s site are editing here now.
Perhaps the puerile BBC and thier obsession with Afrika and Geldoff will be shocked into realising what really matters in Britain today, but dont bank on it.
Look for the “we deserved it” line from the tyrannical BBC.
Susan
It’s getting on for midnight now and although the murders have, of course held the media’s attention, the sites are still at lock down. Victims are still being taken out and secondary devices have been found.
It’s reminiscent of Palestinian attempts to wipe out the Jews: they soak bomb shrapnel in rat poison, apparently it stops blood from congealing and helps the wounded to bleed to death
I’ve been watching Newsnight as was Pete above. Benn has lost it completely and has absolutely no idea of the nature of the threat and what drives it. The Spanish Shadow Foreign Minister was on stating that ‘real’ islam is opposed to such attacks as those in London. Total BS! Islam is the threat. There will now bw a huge effort by the BBC to dissociate islam from the attacks and that they were carried out by ‘extremists’. All the apologists will be there – radio 4 with Jim Naughtie for example.
Allen
One thing you can count on and something that I’m so sure about that I’m willing to publicly offer a hard earned fiver to the contributor that refutes it, is that (An)Tony (Wedgwood-, The Viscount Stansgate) Benn has never been right about anything in his entire life.
never been right about anything in his entire life
Quite so. That is my hope for the Iraq adventure, but it is getting a bit too close to call.
Remember Harold Wilson claimed that Wedgie immatured with age – and that was 30 years ago!
I have to defend Wedgie Benn. I once saw him on Question Time around the time of Maastricht. To my utter astonishment I found myself agreeing with every word he said about the EU – essentially that it is a fundamentally bent and undemocratic organisation that we haven’t elected and can’t get rid of, and whose authority it would be unconstitutional to accept.
I claim my fiver. He was right about the EU.
Benn is dead against the EU, so fair play to him there.
Hang on, people… maybe Curtis was right and there is no terrorist threat. What if Mossad planted the bombs (or even the CIA)? I mean after all his documentary won a BAFTA among other things.
maybe Curtis was right and there is no terrorist threat. What if Mossad planted the bombs (or even the CIA)? I mean after all his documentary won a BAFTA among other things.
Precisely, there’s no way the BBC could have ever made a bullshit documentary and presented opinion as fact…..
If anybody is to blame, it’s America. 911 was their fault and so is this. The BBC just haven’t figured out a way to “prove” it yet.
Anonymous: I can see a real life BBC documentary showing Bush (and Sharon) with their Playstation consoles guiding the planes into the twin towers and the Pentagon. BAFTA’s here we come.
By the way… I’m also active as an “agent provocateur” on some German forums and the leftist, anti-US attitude 80 percent of the contributors show proves to me that I
a) am right to be ashamed to be German
b) got to get out of this country asap
Bastards! I sincerely hope there’s going to be some sort of terrorist attack in Germany that will wipe the smug grin off some people’s faces (I know this sounds tough but that’s the only way they’ll learn. And they’ll still blame Bush and Israel).
Not that I want to see it happen, but I believe that France, Germany and Canada are in for a similar attack in the future.
They all have a large pool of potential terrorists who are being fed a steady diet of hate and bile and are being actively recruited in their mosques.
StinKerr: And they’re also state sponsored because, at least in Germany, they’re usually refugees, don’t work and therefore live off benefits… on the other hand – which muslims does work? They all keep praying to their bastard god called “allah” all day.
Joerg
You know things are getting pretty bad when you have to hope for something bad to happen to wake people up. And you’re right. Bush and Israel will probably still get the blame. The moment I heard about these attacks today, I told a friend that we (the US) would be blamed for this for “dragging” Britain into the war in Iraq.
As Susan said, it could have been much worse and I, too, am thankful that it wasn’t. I am sorry that it happened.
Stinkerr
You said, “Not that I want to see it happen, but I believe that France, Germany and Canada are in for a similar attack in the future.” I wouldn’t doubt it either.
Denise…
I think all we insane (non MSM brainwashed) people can do is spread the word and warn them. Thankfully blogs like this one and websites like jihadwatch.org will help us raise awareness. People like Galloway, Livingstone et al have been ruling our lives (and subconsciously) our minds far too long. We demonstrate for World Peace, Food for Africa etc but when will we stand up and demonstrate for our own (and our children’s future)?
That was meant to have read “sane”, not “insane”… getting late here
Print this out and distribute it: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/LordNagash/islam_wil_dominate_the_world.jpg
I’ve seen demonstrations like that one in London ages ago and was wondering where we’d go from there. Now I know.
What happens when public service broadcasting, clearly, no longer serves the public?
what happens Ken, is that people turn to proper journalists like Mark Steyn in todays Telegraph
The quiet-life option ensures that attacks go on
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 08/07/2005)
One way of measuring any terrorist attack is to look at whether the killers accomplished everything they set out to. On September 11, 2001, al-Qa’eda set out to hijack four planes and succeeded in seizing every one. Had the killers attempted to take another 30 jets between 7.30 and nine that morning, who can doubt that they’d have maintained their pristine 100 per cent success rate? Throughout the IRA’s long war against us, two generations of British politicians pointed out that there would always be the odd “crack in the system” through which the determined terrorist would slip. But on 9/11 the failure of the system was total.
Yesterday, al-Qa’eda hit three Tube trains and one bus. Had they broadened their attentions from the central zone, had they attempted to blow up 30 trains from Uxbridge to Upminster, who can doubt that they too would have been successful? In other words, the scale of the carnage was constrained only by the murderers’ ambition and their manpower.
The difference is that 9/11 hit out of the blue – literally and politically; 7/7 came after four years of Her Majesty’s Government prioritising terrorism and “security” above all else – and the failure rate was still 100 per cent. After the Madrid bombing, I was struck by the spate of comic security breaches in London: two Greenpeace guys shin up St Stephen’s Tower, a Mirror reporter blags his way into a servants’ gig at Buckingham Palace a week before Bush comes to stay; an Osama lookalike gatecrashes Prince William’s party.
As I wrote in The Daily Telegraph last March, “History repeats itself: farce, farce, farce, but sooner or later tragedy is bound to kick in. The inability of the state to secure even the three highest-profile targets in the realm – the Queen, her heir, her Parliament – should remind us that a defensive war against terrorism will ensure terrorism.”
To three high-profile farces, we now have that high-profile tragedy, of impressive timing. It’s not a question of trying and prodding and testing and finding the weak link in the chain, the one day – on Monday or Wednesday, in January or November, when an immigration official or a luggage checker is a bit absent-minded and distracted and you slip quietly through. Instead, the jihad, via one of its wholly owned but independently operated subsidiaries, scheduled an atrocity for the start of the G8 summit and managed to pull it off – at a time when ports and airports and internal security were all supposed to be on heightened alert. That’s quite a feat.
Of course, many resources had been redeployed to Scotland to cope with Bob Geldof’s pathetic call for a million anti-globalist ninnies to descend on the G8 summit. In theory, the anti-glob mob should be furious with al-Qa’eda and its political tin ear for ensuring that their own pitiful narcissist protests – the pâpier-maché Bush and Blair puppets, the ethnic drumming, etc – will be crowded off the news bulletins.
But I wonder. It seems just as plausible that there will be as many supple self-deluding figures anxious to argue that it’s Blair’s Iraq war and the undue attention it invites from excitable types that’s preventing us from ending poverty in Africa by the end of next week and all the other touchy-feely stuff. The siren songs of Bono and Geldof will be working hard in favour of the quiet-life option. There is an important rhetorical battle to be won in the days ahead. The choice for Britons now is whether they wish to be Australians post-Bali or Spaniards post-Madrid.
That shouldn’t be a tough call. But it’s easy to stand before a news camera and sonorously declare that “the British people will never surrender to terrorism”. What would you call giving IRA frontmen offices at Westminster? It’s the target that decides whether terror wins – and in the end, for all the bombings, the British people and their political leaders decided they preferred to regard the IRA as a peripheral nuisance which a few concessions could push to the fringe of their concerns.
They thought the same in the 1930s – back when Czechoslovakia was “a faraway country of which we know little”. Today, the faraway country of which the British know little is Britain itself. Traditional terrorists – the IRA, ETA – operate close to home. Islamism projects itself long-range to any point of the planet with an ease most G8 militaries can’t manage. Small cells operate in the nooks and crannies of a free society while the political class seems all but unaware of their existence.
Did we learn enough, for example, from the case of Omar Sheikh? He’s the fellow convicted of the kidnapping and beheading in Karachi of the American journalist Daniel Pearl. He’s usually described as “Pakistani” but he is, in fact, a citizen of the United Kingdom – born in Whipps Cross Hospital, educated at Nightingale Primary School in Wanstead, the Forest School in Snaresbrook and the London School of Economics. He travels on a British passport. Unlike yours truly, a humble Canadian subject of the Crown, Mr Sheikh gets to go through the express lane at Heathrow.
Or take Abdel Karim al-Tuhami al-Majati, a senior al-Qa’eda member from Morocco killed by Saudi security forces in al Ras last April. One of Mr Majati’s wives is a Belgian citizen resident in Britain. In Pakistan, the jihadists speak openly of London as the terrorist bridgehead to Europe. Given the British jihadists who’ve been discovered in the thick of it in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia, only a fool would believe they had no plans for anything closer to home – or, rather, “home”.
Most of us can only speculate at the degree of Islamist penetration in the United Kingdom because we simply don’t know, and multicultural pieties require that we keep ourselves in the dark. Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of Britain’s Islamic Human Rights Commission, is already “advising Muslims not to travel or go out unless necessary, and is particularly concerned that women should not go out alone in this climate”. Thanks to “Islamophobia” and other pseudo-crises, the political class will be under pressure to take refuge in pointless gestures (ie, ID cards) that inconvenience the citizenry and serve only as bureaucratic distractions from the real war effort.
Since 9/11 most Britons have been sceptical of Washington’s view of this conflict. Douglas Hurd and many other Tory grandees have been openly scornful of the Bush doctrine. Lord Hurd would no doubt have preferred a policy of urbane aloofness, such as he promoted vis à vis the Balkans in the early 1990s. He’s probably still unaware that Omar Sheikh was a westernised non-observant chess-playing pop-listening beer-drinking English student until he was radicalised by the massacres of Bosnian Muslims.
Abdel Karim al-Tuhami al-Majati was another Europeanised Muslim radicalised by Bosnia. The inactivity of Do-Nothin’ Doug and his fellow Lions of Lethargy a decade ago had terrible consequences and recruited more jihadists than any of Bush’s daisy cutters. The fact that most of us were unaware of the consequences of EU lethargy on Bosnia until that chicken policy came home to roost a decade later should be sobering: it was what Don Rumsfeld, in a remark mocked by many snide media twerps, accurately characterised as an “unknown unknown” – a vital factor so successfully immersed you don’t even know you don’t know it.
This is the beginning of a long existential struggle, for Britain and the West. It’s hard not to be moved by the sight of Londoners calmly going about their business as usual in the face of terrorism. But, if the governing class goes about business as usual, that’s not a stiff upper lip but a death wish.
For the Nation’s premier news service they are remarkably slow in picking up and writing about the emerging news that the attack on the bus might have been perpetrated by a suicide bomber.
And that there might be links between what happened yesterday and the radicalised groups of muslims in the Midlands; those very same groups that the BBC was so keen to invite to their studios to comment on alledged mistreatment in Guantanamo.
Add this to the ‘Power of Nightmares’ crap and the BBC doesn’t come out of the picture very strongly.
Sorry Herr Commandant & Lurker no prizes. Benn is against the EU because he regards its policies of free trade and radical capitalism a threat to the progress of socialism. He had no such problem with ComEcon. Don’t forget that this is the man that regards the failure of the Soviet Union as one of the great tragedies of our time.
Benn is an excellent window onto the thinking of the far left because throughout his political career he’s always been transparently obvious about his support for anything that will bring the prospect of a Marxist utopia closer and his opposition to anything that will impede it.
He found his affection for radical Islam at the time of the West’s intervention in Afghanistan. He had no problem with the Russian invasion of the same country in ’80.
Before that he was a enamoured of Arab nationalism in the shape of Nasser Gaddaffi etc. He preaches a political philosophy that embraced Hitler when the wind blew in that direction.
Benn’s worth listening to because, his opinions are shared by so many at the BBC. Why else would they have been so obliging with air time to a politician who’s career has exclusively connected him to failure.
The Today programme has repeatedly raised the canard that the invasion of Iraq could be to blame. It is all the fault of Bush and Blair.
As people say above, Benn is a crazy on this issue. But so are several of the BBC presenters.
Here’s a map of 20 Muslim atrocities since 1993, so it can’t be duue to the Iraq invasion. These people HATE us. Period.
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010966.php
Yes, and now i’m enjoying their efforts to paint islam as the religion of peace on the Today Programme.
It just goes from strength to strength.
Incidentally, the BBC has been primping Galloway for the Benn role anticipating the old class warrior handing in his dinner pail. The problem with Gorgeous George is that he lacks Benn’s financial independence thanx to the potteries inheritence. It’s difficult to play the lion of the proleteriat when for litigational reasons lets just say that certain financial questions present themselves.
Humphreys really is living up to his reputation as a ferocious pitbull with this muslim chap he’s now interviewing.
The voice is soft, the underlying context is that islam is a religion of peace and that it might be possible that muslims are responsible.
Well if it does turn out to be Al- Watsit….
“Adam Curtis, who wrote and produced the series, …”If a bomb goes off, the fear I have is that everyone will say, ‘You’re completely wrong,’ even if the incident doesn’t touch my argument. This shows the way we have all become trapped, the way even I have become trapped by a fear that is completely irrational.””
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html
The Guardian has become a parody of itself, polly Toynbee seems to think that we would not have been attacked had Bush just signed up to Kyoto and Live8.
Jonathan Friedland (he of open borders and let `em all in) is convinced that Muslims have improved London no end (Allah be Merciful upon him).
The Left in UK today has stuck its collective head up its collective arse and discovered a “make poverty history” concert in full swing up there.
While the BBC’s ‘religion of peace’ blurb is in full flow, one can consider who was responsible for the atrocity and what it means. It boils down to two possibilities: either terrorists were here as illegals, or they are ‘homegrown’. The first possibility is a direct indictment of this government’s policy of no control of borders. It is a policy because governments are powerful instruments and are capable of securing borders if they have the will to allocate the resources and the means to do so. They are capable of ensuring that stadia for Olympics are buit on decayed brownfield sites (and they will be). Conversely, not securing borders must therefore be a policy otherwise the borders would be secure and there would not be upwards of 500,000 undocumented aliens within this country. (Q. Is this number greater than the total of the UK’s armed forces?)
And if they are homegrown? This would negate the Left’s multi-culti doctrine and the BBC won’t allow that to be queried.
Here’s something I posted on my own nascent blog (http://kasparsohn.blogspot.com/)/
The BBC: Brits Are Worth More Than Israelis
Terror has reached the heart of Britain. The BBC’s reporting on it is excellent, but the BBC’s reporting on it also demonstrates once and for all that a blanket condemnation of all Israelis lies at the heart of the BBC’s editorial policy regarding how to report on terror.
Below is a note I have written to the BBC in this regard. If I receive a reply, I may post it here.
Madam, Sir,
Yesterday’s bombing attacks in London have caused consternation and raised sympathy around the world.
Nowhere is this more true than in Israel, where random attacks in the midst of civilian life had until recently been a frequent occurrence and coloured the existence of every citizen.
However, a number of people have noticed that the BBC’s coverage of the London attacks hasn’t hesitated to use the word “terror”, in spite of the fact it is the Corporation’s stated policy Not to use this word and indeed the word has consistently been eschewed in coverage of attacks on, say, Israelis, because, to quote BBC representatives, it could appear “judgemental” and “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”.
Responding to queries yesterday and today in this regard, the BBC has said: “The blasts which have hit London have been described as terrorist attacks by a wide range of prominent figures, including G8 and other leaders, London’s police chief and the Pope…. In the context of these comments and the day’s events we feel the language used in our reporting has been justified and accurate.”
The language used in your reporting of the London attacks has indeed been justified and accurate. But that is not quite the point here. For it is equally the case that “blasts which have hit Israeli cities have been described as terrorist attacks by a wide range of prominent figures, including G8 and other leaders, police chiefs and the Pope.”
In other words, try as one might, there simply IS NO WAY to rationalise an editorial policy under which blowing up a bus in London is terror but blowing up a bus in Tel Aviv is not.
I would agree with you wholeheartedly that, equally, there simply IS NO WAY that the BBC could avoid calling the London attacks terror, and that is quite right, for terror is what they are.
But perhaps you now realise the utter impossibility of your policy with regard to attacks on innocent Israelis. For inherent in a policy under which blowing up a bus in London is terror but blowing up a bus in Tel Aviv is not is the astonishing value judgement that randomly killing Israelis is less bad than randomly killing Londoners.
This does not merely “look like a reflection of editorial bias”. This IS editorial bias. The BBC has not yet shown that it is otherwise.
Respectfully,
Michel Ehrlich
“I sincerely hope there’s going to be some sort of terrorist attack in Germany that will wipe the smug grin off some people’s faces.”
Joerg, this message could have been translated from Arabic on some terrorist’s website.
You are a disgrace
I think as everyone who’s pissed off with the Islamic Terrorist attack on London and appreciates the “unique” British response should buy this film…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00008YNFU/qid%3D1120824584/sr%3D8-1/ref%3Dsr%5F8%5Fxs%5Fap%5Fi1%5Fxgl/026-8893475-2056437
Tell your friends. Hopefully we can shoot it up the charts!