General BBC-related comment thread!

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

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164 Responses to General BBC-related comment thread!

  1. Martin says:

    I see BBC News 24 have had that awful Caroline Hawley (Ms Sneer) reporting from some supermarket harassing customers all day.

    If the frigging bitch came up to me and asked about carrier bags I think I’d just tell her to F**k off and mind your own business.

    Haven’t the BBC got any proper news to report on?

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  2. Atlas shrugged says:

    Alan

    Agree with most of what you state, because it is mostly factual and based on common sense.

    However let me make some points that may clarify your thinking.

    Communism and fascism may seem to be not religiously based, but in reality they where both run or controlled by highly religious maniacs. Just not a religion you would easily relate to, or understand, and certainly would not like very much, if you did, I hope.

    Also please remember that nothing of any real consequence in this world happens with out years of careful planning and literally tons of finance. Very often in the past, in the form of GOLD reserves.

    Ask yourself why, after decades of fighting a so called Cold War after only 10 or so years the world is now involved in a slightly warmer one in the middle east again?

    Islamism as you rightly say is financed and promoted in SAUDI-ARABIA. Not some silly cave in the middle of nowhere, by some kind of crazy rich boy with a grudge.

    Just because the BBC is always telling lies hiding the truth when not propagating nonsensical equivalence.

    Does not mean that people that seem to oppose the BBC are right either. IMO they are both as wrong as hell and some of them know it.

    When reading history two things usually hits you between the eyes. One is that the reasons given for things happening at the time where hardly ever what the real reason turned out to be later. Far from being just bad luck or bad circumstances or plain inevitable events. They often turn out to be vast conspiracies planned and executed at the highest levels of financial, political and religious power. Ultimately for reasons which we as school children were indoctrinated to believe were worth it. Because it created the British Empire which was on the whole a reasonably good thing.

    (I make no judgment whether it was ultimately a good thing. Because I like you can not imagine a world without the British Empire. The world could indeed be a far worse place. Who could possibly KNOW for sure?)

    If you think about it. How could things like big wars happen and Empires be created and survive for long, it they where not?

    Because ordinary human beings ie The Cannon Fodder, have little to gain from WARS of any kind. But always end up losing even when their own respective Ruling class tells them they have won.

    The Cold War being a case in point.

    Since the end of the old USSR. We in the west have lost almost as much liberty money and freedom then we did during the whole of the second world war put together.

    AND FOR WHAT may I ask?

    If just a few buses blowing up in London every 5-10 years, causing the amount of deaths equal to an average motorway pile up, is only the price to pay. Then surly that is a cheap price indeed, for not being involved in an endless and endlessly expensive world conflict. Where the amount spent could save the lives of thousands of British and literally millions of third world people.

    Against a perceived enemy, we cant possibly beat, if what we have been told is true. That is they really do hate us that much they mostly all would gladly commit suicide just in order to destroy our free way of life. What ever that is these days ie draconian smoking bans not present anywhere in the Muslim world as yet.

    If Muslims where really our problem. Then why does our government deliberately let more and more of them into the country. Then tell us we need ID cards to help save our own lives?

    However as you correctly say it is not Muslims it is Islamism that is our enemy. But if you try hard to work out who is really promoting Islamism. Then you might be closer to knowing who the real enemies of a peaceful harmonious prosperous freedom loving world are.

    Here is a clue.

    The BBC helps as much as it can to promote Islamism not just here but around the entire Muslim world. As you know I am sure.

    Now why do you think they might want, or more importantly be allowed by the British and worlds establishment, to do that?

    There are two conclusions, you must come to.

    The BBC, which is the most expensive, influential and largest TV and Radio corporation on the planet, has been COMPLETELY taken over by suicidal left wing 6th form British born school children and Islamic spies.

    OR………..

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  3. NotaSheep says:

    From the BBC website comes an article about factional fighting within the Palestinian Ain al-Hilwe refugee camp in Southern Lebanon. The combatants are Jund al-Sham and Fatah, here’s the bit that caught my eye:

    “Formed in 2002, Jund al-Sham – literally the Army of Greater Syria – is a radical splinter group. Its name refers to the area covering the modern states of Syria and Lebanon and the Palestinian territories – which the group says form one Muslim land.”

    Hold on, can you think of another Country that might be in that area that Jund al-Sham could also want to form part of “one Muslim land”? Have the BBC forgotten about Israel or are they still trying to convince us that the Islamists only want Israel to retreat back to its 1967 borders?

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  4. Galil says:

    And I think you’ll find that most Muslims would say that the tactics of Al Qaeda are not acceptable to them and never will be.
    John Reith | 22.03.08 – 3:04 pm |

    We were talking about Israel/Palestine, Jews/Muslims, so let’s concentrate on that:

    Poll Shows Most Palestinians Favor Violence Over Talks
    RAMALLAH, West Bank — A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks.

    The survey also shows unprecedented support for the shooting of rockets on Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and for the end of the peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

    The pollster, Khalil Shikaki, said he was shocked because the survey, taken last week, showed greater support for violence than any other he had conducted over the past 15 years in the Palestinian areas. Never before, he said, had a majority favored an end to negotiations or the shooting of rockets at Israel.

    Mr. Shikaki’s poll also showed that the militant Islamist group Hamas, which Israel and the United States have been trying to isolate, is gaining popularity in the West Bank while its American-backed rival, the more secular Fatah, is losing ground. Asked for whom they would vote for president, 46 percent chose Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, the current president, while 47 percent chose Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

    Three months ago, Mr. Abbas was ahead 56 percent to 37 percent. After Hamas forces pushed Fatah forces out of Gaza last summer, Mr. Shikaki’s polls showed the Palestinian public to be disillusioned with Hamas, and in the subsequent months many argued that Mr. Abbas, with the support of Washington and Israel, had an opportunity to win public support by easing living conditions and advancing in negotiations. That has not happened.

    According to the poll, of 1,270 Palestinians in face-to-face interviews, 84 percent supported the March 6 attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, one of Israel’s most prominent centers of religious Zionism and ideological wellspring of the settler movement in the West Bank. Mr. Shikaki said that result was the single highest support for an act of violence in his 15 years of polling here. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

    On negotiations between Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel, and Mr. Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, 75 percent said they were without benefit and should be terminated. Regarding the thousands of rockets that have been launched on Israeli towns like Sderot and Ashkelon, 64 percent support it.

    Shikaki’s findings

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  5. Galil says:

    Further to the above:
    http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=290905719309261
    The message we get from this is very clear: The vast majority of Palestinians advocate such acts of terrorism against young innocents because the victims were Jews. Their version of the Final Solution may not entail gas chambers and concentration camps, as Germany’s National Socialists did in the last century. But it does apparently include murdering, at random, Jews because they are Jews. Not to say that there was not a clear political purpose behind the choice of target. The Mercaz Harav yeshiva is considered the flagship of the religious Zionist movement, the roots of which date back to a century and a half ago. Religious Zionism holds that Jews have an inalienable and permanent right to the land of Israel because God bestowed the Holy Land upon the ancient Israelites… The Shikaki poll shows that nearly an entire people support the murder of innocent kids because they’re religious Jews. The civilized nations once fought a world war to prevent the global dominance of that kind of hate.

    Via: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/569331/the-war-against-the-jews-11.thtml

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  6. Bryan says:

    I don’t think the World Service will be blaring the findings of this poll out for half a day on the hour and half hour on its newscasts as it did with the far left Israeli one that found most Israeli Jews were racist against Israeli Arabs.

    And it is not in the Middle East section of the website.

    After all, the BBC would never interfere with the Palestinians’ natural expressions of resistance. That’s hallowed ground to the BBC.

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  7. DB says:

    It emerged today that the employee who accessed the passport details of both Obama and McCain had worked for a company run by an adviser to Obama’s campaign. This fact has been known for hours and yet, as of writing, still hasn’t been added to the BBC’s online account of the story. Could the same have been said if the company had been run by an adviser to the McCain campaign? Emphatically not. No way. Not in a million years, not in this universe. It is quite simply inconceivable that the BBC would have chosen not to update the article if there was the chance of pushing a VRWC angle, however tenuous. (FWIW I don’t think there’s a conspiracy of any kind but I repeat – if the Republican party could’ve been implicated the BBC would’ve rushed to do so.)

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  8. Sue says:

    Galil | 22.03.08 – 9:12 pm

    Sue | 21.03.08 – 8:41 pm
    I linked to that yesterday. Do keep up chaps.

    John Rieith has excelled himself today. Easter must have gone to his head.

    “I happen to believe that both Judaism and Islam are wrong about a lot of things and that their moral systems are both inadequate.”

    Just out of curiosity, I was wondering, these wrong things about both Judaism and Islam, are they:

    a)The same amount of things?
    b) The same degree of wrong?

    Also,

    “I believe Christianity is the one wholly true religion and has the best moral system”

    Well, I can’t say I was surprised at that. But I do think ….

    “I see. You think Jews are ‘morally superior’. Superior to Christians too, I suppose?”

    …. is a bit – oooh er missus. a bit Carry On. A bit Frankie Howerd. Perish the thought.!! Stone the Crows! Stone the Infidels!! Righteous indignation!!!

    Just out of curiosity I was wondering, exactly what is superior about Christianity?
    Is it Pomposity? Piety? Pomp and circumstance? Is that where the superiority lies?

    Christianity isn’t a stranger to a bit of violence itself though, is it? So it can’t be that.

    The Forgiveness thing? Christians generously forgave the Jews for killing Christ. If a tad begrudgingly. Is that it?
    (perhaps J.R. personally may be lagging behind in this respect. )

    The Love thy neighbour thing? His esteem for Islam is a good start, but what about all the rest of us? He doesn’t seem to love us. I suppose if he hangs about a bit Muslims WILL wholly constitute ‘thy neighbour’ and the discrepancy will self-resolve. Time will tell. Is it that?

    The superiority thing? That must be it. Is superiority itself the Christian moral system?
    Someone help me, I’m secular. As Frank Gardner once didn’t say.

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  9. Bryan says:

    Sue, thanks for the laugh.

    Reith is definitely not a turn the other cheek kind of Christian. He is venomous and vitriolic, superior and condescending and yet tolerant of the anti-Christian mockery and submission to Islam of his very own beloved BBC.

    As a Christian he’s a very strange case indeed.

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  10. simon says:

    John Reith | 22.03.08 – 3:04 pm

    John Reith,

    If the British had wanted, hundreds of thousands to millions of Jews could have been saved from the Holocaust. They decided, instead, to block Jewish immigration to Palestine, when the rest of the world was doing very little to accommodate the possibility of a huge influx of Jews fleeing a mass-murdering killing machine.

    And re: this comment by Reith: “Since Bryan has glided insouciantly over these, I take it that he has no problem with the shooting-up of civilian buses, the bombing of girls’ schools and considers Baruch Goldstein’s Hebron massacre as entirely justified.

    Yet he presumes to lecture me on moral relativism!”

    You simply prove a previous point eloquently made on this post earlier–that you can name those attacks on ONE HAND. The number of terrorist attacks in which Israeli civilians were deliberately targeted for murder by Palestinians is orders of magnitude greater in number.

    Moreover, those attacks by fanatic Jews, every single one that you mentioned, were nearly universally condemned by Israelis of all stripes, as well as by government officials, as vile acts of terror. Sharon referred to the bus shooting in the Galilee as an act of terror. And these pronouncements were not just made for political expediency. It is deeply ingrained in Israeli and Jewish culture that deliberate attacks on civilians are repugnant and morally indefensible. On the other hand, massacres of Israeli civilians were often celebrated by not insignificant numbers of Palestinians. How can you possibly compare a recent poll by Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki that 84% of Palestinians approve the cold-blooded murder of children at a religious seminary (yes, 15 year olds are children, just as 17 year olds firing AK-47’s at Israeli soldiers are counted as “children” by human rights groups), with the fact that equally heinous attacks on Palestinian civilians were roundly condemned by probably 99% of Israeli society?

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  11. John Reith says:

    Sue | 22.03.08 – 10:48 pm

    I was careful to include this qualification in my comment on the superiority thing:

    I do not think that that means the average – or any given – Christian will be a more moral person than a random Jew or a random Muslim.

    You, I note, were careful to exclude it in order to misrepresent my position.

    Are you and Bryan related?

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  12. simon says:

    John Reith–

    Sorry, you have given up all right to make any kind of defense against charges of bias at the BBC–moreover, if you are employed there as a journalist, you ought to be fired for this: “I happen to believe that both Judaism and Islam are wrong about a lot of things and that their moral systems are both inadequate. I believe Christianity is the one wholly true religion and has the best moral system.”

    Did I really hear you correctly? You believe Christianity is the “one wholly true religious and has the best moral system”? Excuse me?

    Your answer to folks who claim Islam is “inferior” is to claim the Christianity is “superior”? Are you kidding me?

    And rather than recognize that both Judaism and Christianity have gone through enormous reformation in the last five hundred years while Islam has not undergone similar accomodations to modernity and modern political thinking, and rather than chalking up Islamist-based terrorism to a culture of hardline interpretation of an Islam that has never had the chance to benefit from a reformation similar to Christianity and Judaism, you simply lump modern “Judaism”, a religion in which 80% of the adherents are proponents of Reform or Conservative variety, in with the same brand of Islam that inspires that jihadi culture?

    You probably also believe that the only claim Jews have, and offer, for their right to live as a sovereign people in Israel is there “claim” that “God promised it to them”, as opposed to the fact that they have a historical, cultural, linguistic, spiritual, emotional connection to that land that spans 3000 years and is as valid a rationale without invoking “God” in the least.

    Your attitude reminds one of the kind of early 20th century, patrician Protestant bigot mindset at best, the sort that gave all sorts of high-minded rationales for why there should be quotas at Ivy league schools to keep Jewish numbers to a minimum. Those “Hebrews”, they’re of “morally questionable character.” Do some reading on it, Reith, you’ll see when you claim “Judaism is morally inadequate” that you’re in pretty unseemly company.

    Thanks for exposing who you are and what you believe in. We’ll keep it in mind next time you try to defend the BBC’s attempts at “not making judgments.”

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  13. John Reith says:

    simon | 22.03.08 – 11:32 pm

    those attacks by fanatic Jews, every single one that you mentioned, were nearly universally condemned by Israelis of all stripes, as well as by government officials, as vile acts of terror.

    yeah right. And the 7/7 bombing was condemned by the MCB………

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  14. John Reith says:

    simon | 23.03.08 – 12:06 am |

    Do keep your hair on. Naturally, if one chooses to be a Christian, one believes the Christian faith to be the true one and the one closest to the ideal.

    It would be very odd to remain a Christian while conceding that, say, the Zoroastrians were really right.

    Unless of course you think of religion as merely a ‘historical, cultural, linguistic, …emotional’ thing. Which
    is just another, religion-friendly, way of being secular.

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  15. simon says:

    simon | 22.03.08 – 11:32 pm

    I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but let’s say you are–then you are implying that Israelis and Jews overwhelmingly supported those attacks against Arab civilians, and their condemnation was simply a kind of lip service for international consumption. In that case, you are either deliberately spreading an outright calumny, in which case you are evil, or you are simply unbelievably ignorant about Jewish and Israeli culture. There is a miniscule minority of vile extremists who would have supported an act as evil as that of Baruch Goldstein. To everyone else in the Jewish and Israeli world, the act brought utter revulsion. I know, because rabbis on synagogue pulpits around the world and Jewish newspapers worldwide universally condemned that attack. To suggest otherwise is simply grotesque and about as wickedly false a claim as one can make.

    If you are not being sarcastic–and are saying that the MCB denouncing 7/7 somehow shows that Muslim organizations equally denounce acts of terror, the comparison is not a propos. Go find Muslim denunciation, en masse, of terror attacks against Israeli civilians, and I will grant you the comparison.

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  16. will says:

    Has it been noted that the BBC omit Pelosi’s party affiliation throughout the report on China/Tibet? Odd, or just the kind of thing that can be left out?

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7308169.stm

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  17. John Reith says:

    simon | 23.03.08 – 12:21 am

    Let’s just take the most recent attack on the Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

    Mr Abbas condemned the attack in a statement saying he “condemns all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinian or Israeli”.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7282269.stm

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  18. simon says:

    John Reith | 23.03.08 – 12:20 am |

    John,

    Unfortunately, Jews have suffered more than any other group for their religion in the last 20 centuries under Christian rule, under the operating assumption that their “religion” was “less moral” than that of the prevalent religion in which they lived. The suffering was perhaps not as horrible, but still real and substantial, under Muslim rule. You can try to separate “religion” from “peoplehood” and cast the debate as one of “personal beliefs” all you want, but the fact of the matter is that your attitude is commensurate with one that cost the Jewish people endless suffering.

    As to your claim that Christianity is the more moral religion, here’s a question for you: What’s more moral, to claim that one must believe in your religion or else face eternal damnation, or to state that those who don’t follow your religion (and commit to its attendant burdens) can still achieve eternal salvation as long as they observe seven simple rules, including no murdering, no theft, establishing courts of justice, and so forth?

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  19. simon says:

    John Reith said:
    “Mr Abbas condemned the attack in a statement saying he “condemns all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinian or Israeli”.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl…ast/ 7282269.stm
    John Reith | 23.03.08 – 12:25 am ”

    That’s why I noted that the Israeli commentators who condemned attacks on Arab civilians did not do so out of political expediency, but rather out of genuine revulsion.

    Now perhaps Mr. Abbas was genuinely sickened by the attack. The fact remains that, according to the AP and other news reports, THOUSANDS of Palestinians celebrated the attacks in the streets of Gaza. Excuse me if I say that it would be a cold day in hell before thousands of Israelis would celebrate Baruch Goldstein’s heinous act in the streets.

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  20. simon says:

    John R.
    Moreover, newspapers throughout the Arab world praised the Yeshiva attack, so much so that it was a shock to find a lone act of dissent, an editorial in the Kuwaiti paper Al-Watan, which condemned the attack in no uncertain terms. ( http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1205162820639 )

    You would never find the majority, if any, Israeli or Jewish newspapers condoning an attack such as Goldstein’s.

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  21. John Reith says:

    simon | 23.03.08 – 12:32 am

    Judaism has contributed enormously to Christian understanding of morality (and continues to do so). However, that moral understanding, Christians believe, can only reach perfection through the teaching, example and Incarnation of Christ.

    As for your false dichotomy – I do believe that individuals can achieve eternal salvation without being a member of any particular Church.

    You are now trying to do to Christianity what you do to Islam – to represent it only in terms of its most literalist or fundamentalist spokesmen.

    Which brings us back to where we began – that to regard Muslims as if they were all Jihadis is as daft as regarding Jews as if they were all Kahane Chai.

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  22. simon says:

    John R.

    We’re talking about the rule here, not the exceptions. Unfortunately, Abbas’ statement, and his sentiment, is the exception, and may likely be given for political expediency, to maintain his relationship with the U.S., which is keeping his regime propped up with regular infusions of cash. He may very well personally be revolted by the attacks, but certainly can’t afford NOT to condemn them

    Among Israelis and Jews, revulsion at similar attacks against innocent Arab civilians is the rule. It is nearly universal. To suggest otherwise is to dissemble greatly.

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  23. simon says:

    “Which brings us back to where we began – that to regard Muslims as if they were all Jihadis is as daft as regarding Jews as if they were all Kahane Chai.
    John Reith | 23.03.08 – 12:43 am ”

    I joined in this debate late.

    I no more regard Muslims as if they were all jihadis as I would regard Christians as if they were all members of the Christian Aryan Nation.

    So I obviously agree with you on that.

    I was simply responding to the absurdly hypocritical argument you made that it is unfair to state that Islam is morally inferior to Judaism while at the same time claiming that Christianity is morally superior to both.

    And that to even frame the debate in those terms is highly naive, and does not remotely take into account the deep political complexities involved, some of which I elaborated on in an earlier post.

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  24. simon says:

    “As for your false dichotomy – I do believe that individuals can achieve eternal salvation without being a member of any particular Church.

    You are now trying to do to Christianity what you do to Islam – to represent it only in terms of its most literalist or fundamentalist spokesmen.”

    Actually, the achievement of salvation through following the seven Noahide laws in Judaism IS the fundamentalist position. So even in the most fundamentalist position in Judaism it is possible for non-Jews to achieve salvation. Can’t say the same about Christianity, unfortunately.

    No judgment here. Just pointing out a fact.

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  25. John Reith says:

    simon | 23.03.08 – 12:46 am

    That doesn’t square with my experience of Israeli visitors to this blog.

    The general rule is to deny or seek to justify any atrocities if they are perpetrated by Israelis or Jewish militants during the Mandate.

    Even Today Bryan and others have sought to justify the bombing of the King David Hotel and the assassination of Lord Moyne, while remaining studiedly silent about the murder of Count Bernadotte. On another thread they seek to justify the planting of bombs in Arab cafes and market places and the exploding of truck bombs in civilian housing projects by the Lehi and the Irgun.

    Even you peddle the lie that the British failed to facilitate Jewish immigration into Palestine in line with its Mandate obligations. In fact, the Jewish population increased from
    60,000 to 500,000 during the period of the Mandate. In percentage terms- from 2% to 33%.

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  26. John Reith says:

    simon | 23.03.08 – 12:52 am

    I was simply responding to the absurdly hypocritical argument you made that it is unfair to state that Islam is morally inferior to Judaism while at the same time claiming that Christianity is morally superior to both.

    But I never made any such argument.

    What I did challenge was Bryan’s (later withdrawn) suggestion that Jews were morally superior to Muslims, which I hope you agree is rather different from denying that Islamic moral teaching has anything to learn from Judaism.

    Anyway, I won’t wish you a happy Easter but I do wish you good health and a long life.

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  27. simon says:

    I heard no one justify atrocities committed during the Mandate. I simply read an argument that there is no moral equivalence between walking into a pizza parlour filled with innocent civilians strapped with a bomb and phoning in several warnings to a military outpost to clear the area because there is a bomb planted there.

    Moreover, the perpetrators of “militant” assaults, such as the assassinations you refer to, during the Mandate were cast to the fringes by the mainstream Hagannah and Ben Gurion, their ship filled with weapons, the Altelena, was sunk by the mainstream authorities, and their modus operandi were widely reviled and denounced by mainstream pre-State leaders. It’s a question of what the mainstream believed and how they acted, versus the extremists.

    On the other hand, 84% of Palestinians approved of the machine gun attack of religious children in a prayer hall recently.

    Anyway, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t wish me a happy Easter, but I’ll wish you one.

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  28. simon says:

    Regarding your assertion in defense of British behavior with respect to Jewish immigration during the mandate, I offer you this article. If you read it in full, I submit you will be hard-pressed to argue that the British acted in a morally upright manner, especially during the war.
    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/mandate.html

    Here’s a sample: “The gates of Palestine remained closed for the duration of the war, stranding hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe, many of whom became victims of Hitler’s Final Solution. After the war, the British refused to allow the survivors of the Nazi nightmare to find sanctuary in Palestine. On June 6, 1946, President Truman urged the British government to relieve the suffering of the Jews confined to displaced persons camps in Europe by immediately accepting 100,000 Jewish immigrants. Britain’s Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, replied sarcastically that the United States wanted displaced Jews to immigrate to Palestine “because they did not want too many of them in New York.”1

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  29. FTM says:

    And I think you’ll find that most Muslims would say that the tactics of Al Qaeda are not acceptable to them and never will be.
    John Reith | 22.03.08 – 3:04 pm |

    “almost one in four British Muslims believe that last year’s 7/7 attacks on London were justified”

    NOP Research, broadcast by Channel 4-TV on August 7, 2006

    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/14/opinion/main1893879.shtml

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  30. smallheathen says:

    Surely, tonight’s “John Reith” is a troll?

    I cannot believe that someone who so emphatically espouses “BBC-Think” can morph so rapidly into an evangelical.

    Must be a wind-up.

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  31. Bryan says:

    Since Bryan has glided insouciantly over these, I take it that he has no problem with the shooting-up of civilian buses, the bombing of girls’ schools and considers Baruch Goldstein’s Hebron massacre as entirely justified.
    John Reith | 22.03.08 – 3:04 pm

    Fascinating to see the workings of a BBC propagandist close up. Note how the cunning Reith mentions the bombing of the girls’ school in the same breath as other attacks as if it actually was carried out. I tend to avoid bold type, but I’ll make an exception here: There was no bombing by Israelis of a Palestinian girls’ school. None. Not ever. On the other hand, since Reith is fond of going way back with his magnifying glass to find Israeli terror attacks on Palestinians, he might like to look at this page to see how Palestinians treat Israeli schoolchildren:

    http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_terrorism_1970s.php

    But of course, one doesn’t need to concentrate on the seventies to uncover Arab terror attacks on Jewish children. The murder of Jewish women and children has been a constant terror strategy of the Arabs since the 1920s up until the present.

    It is also particularly reprehensible of Reith to elevate a planned attack on a Palestinian school to fact in the aftermath of the terror attack on the Jerusalem Yeshiva earlier this month in which eight youngsters were gunned down.

    simon | 23.03.08 – 12:21 am

    Let’s just take the most recent attack on the Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

    Mr Abbas condemned the attack in a statement saying he “condemns all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinian or Israeli”.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7282269.stm
    John Reith | 23.03.08 – 12:25 am

    Reith, in the unlikely event that you really want to know what is going on in this conflict, don’t access BBC reports. Abbas has in fact elevated the terrorist to the status of a martyr. You’ll find that all over the Internet. Haven’t you found out yet that Abbas has a forked tongue? I guess your own hypocrisy prevents you from recognising it in others.

    By the way, when are you going to post the links I asked for to back up your list of Jewish terror attacks on civilians in the 1940s?

    http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/7489919930327707083/#390884

    I suppose you got it from a neo-Nazi site and you don’t want that revealed here. Wouldn’t that be a laugh.

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  32. Bryan says:

    Must be a wind-up.
    smallheathen | 23.03.08 – 3:36 am

    Nope, it’s Reith alright. Spreading the Gospel.

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  33. deegee says:

    Nothing new in the JPost article BBC admits inaccuracies in coverage. However the talkback is interesting.

    Can’t be the most pleasant thing to be a BBC correspondent in Israel – something like being a white South African in the era of Apartheid.

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  34. Robin says:

    The Mail on Sunday carries extensive claims this morning that former BBC World Service Trust executive Kari Blackburn, who committed suicide last year by walking into the sea, was driven to her death by a culture of bullying among her senior managers. The BBC, of course, has denied the claims, citing an internal investigation that found no substance in any of what was alleged.

    Whatever the case, Ms Blackburn’s sad demise underlines that only the BBC (or its so-called ‘independent’ Trustees)ever normally examine the conduct of its staff, and that in 99 cases out of hundred, the corporation is exonerated on all counts.

    I knew Kari quite well and find it astonishing that a woman so ebullient, enthusiastic and committed to her family should have killed herself in this way.

    I have also worked with the WST and found it to be fat, complacent, unimaginative and immersed in the government gravy train of so-called ‘aid’ to developing countries.

    A coroner will rule on the causes of Ms Blackburn’s death in eight weeks. In the meantime, any evidence that supports Kari’s husband in his search for the truth – and justice – would be gratefully received.

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  35. George R says:

    “Livingstone inspirational says PM”

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7307961.stm

    From this BBC headline, 20 March 2008, the article then includes: “The two Labour politicians” (Livingstone
    and Brown) “who have had widely reported differences in the past…”

    Perhaps the BBC piece is implicitly referring to this previously voiced condemnation of Livingstone by Brown, recalled here by Matthew Ancona, under the headline:-

    ‘Gordon Brown is scared of losing London’-

    “On January 19 2000, Gordon Brown wrote a passionate article in the London Evening Standard, headlined ‘LIVINGSTONE MUST NOT BE LONDON MAYOR’ (caps. added). It was an openly personal attack upon Ken…”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/03/23/do2311.xml

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  36. Galil says:

    Nothing new in the JPost article BBC admits inaccuracies in coverage. However the talkback is interesting.

    deegee | 23.03.08 – 9:13 am

    Actually the misquoting of the UN chief was new to me, although I submitted this complaint a month ago and still haven’t received a response:

    Your report concerning “Iran [is] urging the UN Security Council to stop Israel threatening military action against its nuclear programme.” Is not balanced by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s comments regarding Iran’s comments regarding Israel, which the BBC has completely ignored.

    http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1203518556526&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter “Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Wednesday to express “outrage” over recent statements by Iranian officials calling for the destruction of Israel. Ban agreed to meet on very short notice and said such statements were “unacceptable and unforgivable,” according to Gillerman, who also stressed the need for a “quick and strong” resolution to prevent Iran from pursuing its nuclear ambitions. In the hour-long conversation, Gillerman said it was “outrageous for a member state to use racist, Nazi-like statements against another member state.” In yet another verbal attack against Israel Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Jewish state a “filthy bacteria” whose sole purpose was to oppress the other nations of the region. “The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast,” the Iranian president told supporters at a rally in southern Iran. Referring to last week’s assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh, the Iranian leader said that Israel “uses terror as a threat every day, and afterwards is happy and joyful.” Ahmadinejad’s remarks followed similar statements last week by Gen. Muhammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, who wrote in a letter to Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrallah that he was convinced “that Hizbullah’s might is increasing with every passing day, and that in the near future, we will witness the disappearance of this cancerous growth called Israel.” Following a letter sent Tuesday to the president of the Security Council by the Israeli Mission to protest threats by the Iranian officials against another member state, Gillerman asked to meet with the UN chief to personally express his outrage. Gillerman also used the opportunity to express “grave concern” about the situation in southern Lebanon, where there is a continued flow of arms to Hizbullah, and over the fact that kidnapped soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev are still being held without any sign of life. Additionally, Gillerman discussed the incessant rocket attacks on Sderot and the “fear and plight of the people.” Several rockets fell in the area on Wednesday, but caused no casualties or damage. While Ban expressed concern over the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Gillerman said a distinction had to be made between a country defending itself and Palestinian attacks on civilians. ”

    As far as I can see it’s just one more of example of the BBC’s unbalanced and indeed biased reporting against Israel.

    Website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7256915.stm

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  37. backwoodsman says:

    Good spot, whoever it was mentioned the Toady progs decision to label the Chineese invasion of Tibet as ‘the Dalai Lama losing control of the government.’ It registered with me as well. The bbc really are manipulative c**nts aren’t they.
    Some of you are still getting dragged into arguing semantics with beeboid trolls over the Israeli issue. Point out the bias and move on, don’t respond, its clearly what they want.

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  38. Galil says:

    I happen to believe that both Judaism and Islam are wrong about a lot of things and that their moral systems are both inadequate. I believe Christianity is the one wholly true religion and has the best moral system

    John Reith | 22.03.08 – 12:22 pm

    Judaism has contributed enormously to Christian understanding of morality (and continues to do so). However, that moral understanding, Christians believe, can only reach perfection through the teaching, example and Incarnation of Christ.

    John Reith | 23.03.08 – 12:43 am

    Reith has obviously been to Easter Friday Mass and come away feeling good about the new version, same as the original.

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542872,00.html
    “Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord.”

    Thanks for all the fish, John!

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  39. Galil says:

    By the way, Ann Coulter expressed the same views as Reith:

    .

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  40. George R says:

    In all the reports like this one, from the BBC:

    “Drug-resistant TB case confirmed”

    no connection is made with the Labour Government’s policy of mass immigration, and its contribution to huge increases in social costs of many kinds, including health costs. (This case invovles a person from Somalia.)

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7308364.stm

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  41. Sue says:

    John Reith:
    Sue | 22.03.08 – 10:48 pm

    “I was careful to include this qualification in my comment on the superiority thing:

    I do not think that that means the average – or any given – Christian will be a more moral person than a random Jew or a random Muslim. ”

    Does that mean some are superior, some are more superior than others, others are mother superior, some are just average, and some are random.

    “You, I note, were careful to exclude it in order to misrepresent my position.”

    Shake it up Baby. Twist and Shout!
    ——————————————————————————————
    John Reith | 23.03.08 – 12:05 am
    “Are you and Bryan related?”

    I already told you about Bryan and myself, not that it’s any of your business.

    “Bryan,” I said, “what shall we call the baby?
    John?……..John Reith?”

    “No.” he said, firmly.
    “We’re calling him Abandon Ship!”

    please address letters of congratulation to:
    ‘The Lobby’
    Cabal Street,
    Zionist Entity.

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  42. Sue says:

    Hillhunt | 23.03.08 – 11:03 am
    “the vileness of all Muslims, do-or-die support for Israel.”

    See, I knew you hadn’t been listening.

    Vileness of all Muslims is quite, quite different from vileness at the core of Islam, a religion which demands whole/lifestyle commitment from ‘good’ Muslims

    You may know zillions of ‘good’ Muslims, probably the ones who work at the Beeb and write for the Guardian. But they can only be good in one sense.

    1. Good person/’bad’ Muslim,
    or
    2. ‘Good’ Muslim/ ‘bad’ person. (or ‘mad’ person.)

    Even John Reith said something that amounted to admitting that he categorised them that way.

    Do-or-die support for Israel.
    The irony of that remark. If you don’t see it I can’t help you.

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  43. Sue says:

    Hillhunt: Hillhunt | 23.03.08 – 11:03 am
    “Alex:

    None of this is rational. It’s emotional. ”

    You and Alex can sit there nodding sagely at our irrational emotional outbursts.
    You can dismiss Melanie P. as ‘Mad Mel’ and sneer at what she says, and you can shake your heads knowingly to each other at our irrationality when we express our fears. You can ignore all the evidence that points to a threat you refuse to recognise. You can bend over backwards to do all these things. You can bury your heads in the sand. In synch. You can go to Specsavers but they can’t fix this kind of shortsightedness. Ask for your money back.

    Carry on up Pompeii backwards with your earplugs in and your blinkers attached. In a basket.

    “B-BBC currently shrieks its visceral opposition to the BBC as if that alone were proof.”

    Same to you in reverse with brass knobs on. Being condescending isn’t enough to make you right and us wrong.

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  44. Hillhunt says:

    Sue, Sue, Sue:

    you can shake your heads knowingly to each other at our irrationality when we express our fears. You can ignore all the evidence that points to a threat you refuse to recognise.

    That’s not what I was saying at all. Here is something I wrote:

    (The BBC is) always going to face the fury of those who live in (sometimes understandable) fear of one group or another and those who long ago took sides in intractable disputes.

    I recognise the reality of your fears and the reasons for them. I just don’t understand why that has to translate into a cosntant demand for the BBC to use language it, for rational reasons, chooses not to use.

    It was a point on semantics; not a wholesale dismissal of ther people’s anxieties. I wouldn’t presume to patronise you; I recognise brains when I see them, which isn’t often around here.

    If, for the sake of argument, the BBC decided to name every assault by a Muslim on a non-combattant as terrorism-this or terrorism-that, would it make one iota of difference to the global threat which you feel Jewish people face? Would it affect the quality of news if the BBC went around labelling everything the way a slice of its audience wanted it to?

    Mel is mad. And bad. Her coverage of the Ainsworth assault shows very well just how nasty her brand of hackery is.
    .

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  45. joe bonanno says:

    Brian Matthew on Radio 2’s Sounds of the 60s saturday a.m said something like…’Ted Nugent, who espouses what some believe are offensive Republican views’.

    That old code ‘some believe’ for ‘we at the BBC believe’.

    Any BBC trolls on here care to recall for us any occasion where the phrase ‘offensive Democrat views’ has been used by a BBC presenter.

    Because, you know, ‘some believe that there can be such a thing as ‘offensive Democrat views’ such perhaps as ‘we should raise taxes’ ‘or we should leave genocidal dictators in place’.

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  46. Galil says:

    And I think you’ll find that most Muslims would say that the tactics of Al Qaeda are not acceptable to them and never will be.
    John Reith | 22.03.08 – 3:04 pm |

    More proof that it is not true:
    http://www.israellycool.com/2008/03/23/gallup-spinning-poll-numbers-of-extremist-muslims/

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  47. DB says:

    “The US plans to urge Britain to launch a “surge” in Basra to combat increasing violence in the southern Iraqi region, the Sunday Mirror newspaper reported.”
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080323/wl_mideast_afp/britainusiraqmilitary

    Get ready for the next report from Hugh Sykes saying what a terrible idea this is.

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  48. Disinterested Bystander says:

    Sue | 23.03.08 – 6:15 pm |

    I doubt if any of the apologists for Islam who post here have ever lived or worked in an Islamic country.

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  49. Susan says:

    I note that the Torygraph and the Times have both covered the high-profile conversion of the former Muslim Egyptian-Italian journalist Magdi Allam to Catholicism and his baptism by the Pope on Easter Eve. I searched for the story on Al-Beeb and could not find it. Has al-Beeb covered the story? If it had been a prominent Christian conversion to Islam of course, Al-Beeb would have trumpeted it on the front page of their website, and then left a link to the story for months on end.

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  50. WoAD says:

    In the Netherlands they are trying their best to ban a film about the Koran called “Fitna”. Apparently the film will quote the Koran and juxtapose these quotes with happenings from around the world.

    It is clear: Quoting from the Koran is so offensive it must be banned. Which tells you all you need to know about the Koran and old Uncle Mo’.

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