You know the annual round-ups we get in the media at every New Year? This round-up is of items from the last couple of days, just to indicate the direction the BBC is taking.
The interview with bushy-bearded Qasim Rafiq, the former best friend of the underpants bomber who swears that nice Mr. Abdulmutallab couldn’t possibly have been radicalized in the UK, or at the UCL, or in the Islamic Society or while he was president of the Islamic Society. So that’s alright then. That’s proof enough for the BBC. “The BBC has learned that the underpants bomber wasn’t radicalized here, and that’s official.”
I’ve read countless articles about University Islamic Societies that describe them as highly radicalizing, and saying that some are actively recruiting, preying on and pressurizing Muslim undergraduates to turn towards extremism. The BBC must have heard about these because they have to know everything. The BBC is always learning this or that, but it evidently hasn’t learned to challenge something that everybody else in the entire world must be wondering why on earth they unquestioningly accept.
Next, the Today guest editor chose some right-on items for us to wake up to. One of them was an alternative Thought for the Day, as though one wasn’t enough-already. This thought was a poem written by revered Palestinian poet, the late Mahmoud Darwish. I’d have preferred something from Nonie Darwish myself, but I won’t be holding my breath.
I’ve nothing against Palestinian poetry especially as this particular poet kindly says he doesn’t hate Jews, just Zionists and Israel. His poetry is rather political as one might expect, but apparently that was not his intention, so I wonder if he would have been comfortable with the intro by guest editor Robert Wyatt’s favourite writer John Berger.
“For 60 years now the Palestinian people have been forcibly separated and exiled from their land, and Darwish’s poetry is about their struggle to keep faith and not to lose hope. It’s a poetry of resistance but at the same time it’s a poetry that admits loss and vulnerability, and absolutely refuses political rhetoric.”
Good. Pity John Berger doesn’t refuse political rhetoric too though. After an ominous period of rustling, he commenced reading the poem. About the mirage; about hope; about the slight difficulty with pronouncing r. And about the wose.
The poem was okay, but John Berger I could have done without.
I was going to comment about the Media Show on Wednesday but they took ages to put it on the website I so gave up. There’s an interesting thread on CiFWatch by Israelinurse about Mehdi Hasan. Here’s what Adloyada says in her comment:
“Mehdi Hasan is increasingly being given a “voice of Muslim opinion” and a “let’s show we’re inclusive by fielding a media man who happens to be Muslim” slot on BBC talk shows, thanks to the position he now holds on the “New Statesman”.
He was on BBC R4 “The Media Show’ just a couple of days ago, on Wednesday 30th, in the latter capacity, part of a panel chaired by Steve Hewlett (Guardian writer), consisting of Simon Jenkins (Guardian columnist), Emily Bell (The Guardian), senior media person who happens to be a woman) and Trevor Kavanagh (ex the Sun and so presumably a Tory just for balance).
All highly balanced–if you happen to think the BBC/Guardian world view is the core median balanced position from which all other views deviate.”
Next. The repeated coverage on BBC news 24 yesterday of award winning footage of Israel attacking Palestinians sheltering in a UN school. It was one of the finalists in the 2009 Rory Peck Awards. Not the winner. The incomplete picture Frank Gardner gave us in his narration somehow brought to mind another iconic bit of film, that of Mohammed Al Durah.
Now here’s something I didn’t see at all. Mahmoud Abbas’s glorification of Dalal Mughrabi, perpetrator of a bus hijacking in Israel that ended with the deaths of civilians and children. As Robin Shepherd points out “There is nothing on the BBC – though there is plenty about Gaza, one anniversary they do seem to be taking notice of.”
If this represents some of what we get from the BBC over a couple of days, no wonder fings aint what they used to be.
An ALTERNATIVE Thought For The Day?
How exactly does THAT go?
The Usual Thought For The Day is your bog-standard LEFTY thought. But this has lost all shock value, even for critics of the BBC
So the Alternative Thought For The Day is the upgraded even more loony left guaranteed for EXTRA SHOCK VALUE.
Ha.
I’m always amused by the concept of individuals suddenly becoming “radicalised” as if by magic. Its as though one day Mr Smith can be a lapsed Catholic then suddenly “radicalised” that night in the pub the next day he blows himself up on public transport. A similar process happened to Nicky Reilly the c**p islamic bomber in Exeter where the police told us he had been “radicalised” by nasty foreigners over the internet. Yet despite the Police seizing Mr Reilly’s PC and the fact that Mr Reilly was a certifiable moron no one could say who these nasty foreigners are or when this had happened.
Incidentally having read the BBC article I would really like someone to ask UCL how an idiot how can’t even make himself go bang managed to get a degree from their engineering faculty.
No, not much of recommendation is it. Probably won’t be in the famous alumni section of the 2010 prospectus.
The BBC are spinning the “Brown to hold a summit on security” crap. Well since the one eyed idiot and Bliar were responsible for the flood of bushy bearded towel heads surging into England isn’t it a bit of an attempt to divert attention?
Isn’t he the ultimate proof that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed jock is King?
And if he is King then he’s Kind Midas In Reverse where everything he touches turns to crap.
A Brown summit on security?
Flee London for the hills because I expect an islamo van nuke to take out the capital.
He always holds “international” summits because he has no idea how to govern the country he was not elected to. Just like Blair before him. Trying to prance around upon the “world stage” to boost his own image. Brown is no statesman more like a facilitator.
You won’t be surprised Sue that Katya Adler is continuing along the same direction of travel this year as she was last year.
Her latest report, just now on Radio 4’s PM, was another piece of emotionally-manipulative anti-Israeli propaganda.
The focus of her report was Miriam, one-year old, born in Gaza on the very day Israel began its ‘assault’. The child is “still sickly”, having been born prematurely because of the Israeli attack , & Israel’s blockade is still making life hard for her. Voices from fellow Palestinians and the UN were heard. No-one else.
It’s Gaza, Gaza, Gaza all the way at the moment (& Crash Gordon calling the whole world to his side to help him save Yemen).
This was, of course, the same girl featured on News 24 throughout 30th Dec (which you posted on then.) Katya Adler is not going to let go of this story any time soon.
I also listened to the Toady interview with the best buddy of the underwear bomber. It reminded me of that sketch Monty Python once did on the Pirahnna brothers. When they interviewed a chap who described Dinsdale as “a lovely bloke who used to buy his mother flowers and that.”
Fortunatley comrade Brownstainvich is on the case and is keen to introduce X-Ray scanners….assuming our EU masters allow this of course!
Yes so they can x-ray every white woman whilst dark skinned men with big beards walk through security unchecked for fear of infringing their ‘uman rites’
Yes indeed – it has come to something when everyone has to be scanned to get on a plane. It does not have to be like this of course there is a time tested method its called “profiling”. But this is common sense to all but the PC brigade
There are high stakes here. Despite Obama’s perceived liberalism( an article of Beeboid faith) the American public will not tolerate a successful attack on any US plane where the attacker has links with, or is from the UK.
Air travel from the UK to the US will just simply end. With devastating consequences for this country. Already we are seen as the weakest link in the struggle .
So at any cost the Government and the media must deny any radicalisation happening in the UK. Again unreality rules.
It is the end result of a world view that refuses to deal with what is real rather than what is longed for or believed.
It is everywhere in our public life – in economics , in social affairs and most dangerously in matters of life and death.
I’m not a journalist, but it took me less than a minute to find this article about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who according to another friend of his, showed evidence of radicalization after 9/11, before he ever came to the UK.
“We were together in Lome when the twin towers crashed and we watched it on TV,” the friend said. “We used to call him “Pope because of the stately manner in which he carried himself. He was kind of quiet but anytime when there was an argument he would just come alive. After the 9/11 thing he actually defended the Taliban’s actions saying that they were provoked.
Everyone thought he was kidding but he stood his ground.”
But naturally, we don’t expect the BBC to question anything a Muslim says, or investigate further.
Could anyone imagine an alternate Thought of the Day with a Jewish or a Coptic poet poet writing about an Israel or Egypt stolen from him by the Muslims? How about a Sudenten or Prussian German Poet writing about returning to his homeland in Czechoslovakia or Danzig (Gdansk)? Greek poet re Istanbul or Smyrna (Izmir)? We could make up a long list of groups who would be excluded.
Does anyone have any idea why the BBC keeps running headlines about the Blackwater guards whose prosecution over deaths in Iraq in the US` has been halted ?
Why is this a top story for British listeners – being given more time (eg 6 full minutes on Radio 4 News at Ten) than the dozens kiled TODAY in a suicide bombing in Pakistan, which seems to be getting mentioned with virtually no context about the ongoing murderous tactics of the Taliban and other jihadists.
The Blackwater incident was relatively isolated, they claim to have been acting in self-defence. Yes, they may have gone over the top in retaliatory fire. But their action was not cold-blooded premeditated murder, which the jihadists are committing every damn day.
The BBC really does hate “our side”, it seems. How about focussing on the daily deaths caused by jihadists ? When does the BBC ever give any indication of the huge scale of these deaths, month by month – including the killing of many Muslims.
Oh – I get it. The BBC has just brought on an English spokesgirl from War on Want. Ranting against security firms operating in Iraq etc. “Privatisation of war”, and other codswallop.
Last cent War on Want ever get from me. Yet another politicised NGO, claiming charity status but really a political rant mob.
The Blackwater item got 13 bloody minutes of the BRITISH news programme !
JA
I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that War on Want probably qualifies as a fake charity. From its latest accounts
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/ShowCharity/RegisterOfCharities/DocumentList.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=208724&SubsidiaryNumber=0&DocType=AccountList
it received over 25% of its funding from taxpayers (UK, EU, Ireland).
War on Wants aim is clear.
“War on Want is leading the campaign for a new system to replace the failed ideology of free market capitalism. We believe that this new system must be based on principles of public benefit not private profit, achieved through democratic control and a redistribution of the fruits of globalisation.”
http://fakecharities.org/pages/posts/war-on-want116.php
Why the BBC think they are specialists in “judging” legal cases is beyond me. Maybe the BBC do not understand what the word “War” means in their title.
You know what’s really odd about the BBC’s coverage?
Normally this would be the PERFECT story for them to SUPPORT.
A United States judge in a 93 page judgment stares down the MIGHT of the US government bent on a totally political prosecution, based on NOTHING but a coerced “confession” hearsay and paid Iraqi liars; He clearly said NO, YOU CANNOT trample on the rights of the accused.
Maybe the BBC should cquaint themselves with the a few facts about things like “evidence,” “self-incrimination,” “Miranda rights.”
For instance, they could check the 5th Amendment. It’s part of the Bill of Rights, which is the first TEN amendments to the constitution enacted to PROTECT the citizen from outrageous prosecution from an all-powerful federal government.
The judge was unequivocal in his decision, dismissing the government’s case as ‘contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility.
I guess AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL didn’t care to defend five military contractctors from being railroaded. Not Politically Correct enough for them.
The Blackwater 5 can’t be prosecuted as the statements they gave cannot be used as evidence as they gave them under threat of the sack. Funny that the beeboids seem to love defending the rights of effing Muslims under the US constitution but not actual Americans.
To all beeboids I really hope you all get Cocaine laced with Cyanide this year.
How do you discredit an indisputable fact? You state it has someone, especially someone unreliable’s claim.
Smuggling fuels Gaza’s stalled economy
‘And larger items such as fridges, washing machines, cows, motorbikes, disassembled cars, and – according to Israel – weapons are also moved through the tunnels‘.
Also according to the Times-online, the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg and even the BBC in an unguarded moment! Common sense says that the tunnels transport arms. How else could Hamas restock weapons destroyed in Operation Cast Lead?
That’s one of the most striking examples of BBC bias. Further in the article we find this:
Cement is massively in demand for post-war rebuilding, but virtually none enters through legal channels. Israel says it can be used to build rocket launch pads and military tunnels.
Again, trying to deligitimise the Israeli position with the implication that only Israel believes this, whereas it is an obvious fact.
“Hamas doesn’t need cement, it has enough of it – whatever Hamas needs, it has,” says Ali el-Haik, of the Palestinian Businessmen Association.
His message to Israel is that “by maintaining this siege, you’ve actually lost control of what goes in and out of Gaza”.
I find myelf trying to imagine the BBC carrying a stern message from an Israeli businessman to Hamas. Somehow I can’t quite get my heaad around the concept.
The Blackwater case was played all New Year’s Eve on World Service radio, and has been played all day today – with a full 16 minutes of the 10pm news ! Of only marginal interest to British listeners – but it is main headline news ??? – and mostly without the full legal context or the doubts about what actually happened. I had to go elsewhere to find the proper context – indeed there has been more context here than on the BBC.
It starts in the privately funded schools like the one near me in Bradford…
Admissions Policy
The aim of the School is to produce total Muslim personalities through the training of children’s spirits, intellect, feelings and bodily senses. Education at our school caters for the growth of students in all their spiritual, intellectual, imaginative, physical, scientific and linguistic aspects, both individually and collectively, motivating all these aspects towards goodness. The ultimate aim of Islamic education is the realization of complete submission to Allah on the level of the individual, the community and humanity at large.
Then it moves on to the Uni’s.
In 2000 Omar Bakri claimed that when one student union reinforced the ban against Al Muhajiroun: “We use the names of societies, like the Pakistani Society, the Bangladeshi Society, etc, to get in. When a college like the London School of Economics bans us, we set up stalls outside the campus, where the students can reach us but the authorities can do nothing”.
In September 2003, Al-Muhajiroun was attacked for putting up inflammatory posters on university campuses. The posters said: “The last hour will not come until the Muslims kill the Jews”.
They also handed out a leaflet entitled “The only place is the battlefield between the Muslims and the Jews”.
From a 2005 report:
Zacanias Moussaoui: One of the Hamburg cell responsible for the September 11 attacks. Had completed a Masters at South Bank University.
Omar Sheikh: Currently awaiting execution in Pakistan for the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl. Had been a student at the LSE and an active member of the LSE Islamic Society.
Ferroz Abbasi: Captured in Afghanistan. Had attended Nescot College, Ascot.
Saajid Badat: Would be shoe-bomber. Attended university in London before travelling to Pakistan for terrorist training.
Ramadan Shallah: Studied for PhD at Durham University from1985-90 on Islamic banking and went on to be a lecturer at the University of South Florida (USA) and is suspected of the Tel Aviv terror attack.
Babar Ahmad: Worked in the IT centre at Imperial College and a committed Jihadist.
Azahari Husin and Shamsul Bahri Hussein: who studied at Reading University and Dundee University respectively, both wanted in connection with the Bali bombing.
Afzal Munir: Studied at Luton University and later killed fighting in Afghanistan
Asif Hanif and Omar Sharif: the 2003 Tel Aviv bar bombers were students in Britain.
Mohammed Sidique Khan, and Shehzad Tanweer: Both former Leeds Metropolitan University students and two of the 7 July bombers.
Now here’s something I didn’t see at all. Mahmoud Abbas’s glorification of Dalal Mughrabi, perpetrator of a bus hijacking in Israel that ended with the deaths of civilians and children. As Robin Shepherd points out “There is nothing on the BBC – though there is plenty about Gaza, one anniversary they do seem to be taking notice of.”
The BBC appears to have made an editorial decision some years ago that Hamas and only Hamas was the true representative of the Palestinian people. So it habitually ignores Abbas, and not only when he makes it clear that he supports terror against Israeli civilians.
The World Service, which is on as background noise where I work and which I therefore listen to a lot, virtually obliterates Abbas from its reporting – a quite extraordinary accomplishment.
Quite a while back Steven Sackur, that leftie shmuck who presents ‘Hardtalk’, interviewed PA spokesman Saeb Erekat. He inisted that the PA was selling out to the Americans and Israel by sidelining Hamas – and I don’t believe he was playing devil’s advocate.
We see the BBC becoming more and more indistinguishable from radical Islam.