WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD

 

 

Paul Mason tells us that there is a ‘parallel world of ideas out there where millions are denied a voice.’

As activists come to the defence of a blogger in China who made the mistake of making a joke about the Communist Party Congress, Newsnight’s Paul Mason talks to three Chinese writers about what it is like working in a climate of censorship and repression.’

An alternate view comes from Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph where he notes the BBC’s hankering for censorship of unwelcome voices and opinions:

‘Dig around on YouTube and you will find a spoof of the Hollywood weepie It’s a Wonderful Life made in 1995 by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie for their BBC sketch show A Bit of Fry and Laurie. In It’s a Soaraway Life!, angel second class Clarence Cosy – Fry – shows Rupert Murdoch, played by Laurie, what Britain would have been like if he had never been born. He finds polite cabbies, ethnic minorities in pubs, no page 3 girls, and – to his horror – no satellite dishes dotting the façades of terrace houses. “Without your newspapers debasing people’s views of the world with every sentence they produce, people turned out to be interested in all kinds of other things,” Clarence tells him. “Newspapers haven’t taught people to sneer at others because they are Left-wing.” ‘

It has taken the Left years, but finally the press is at its mercy….[but maybe]the Left has overreached itself, and has been too naked in playing Leveson for political advantage.’

 

Ironically Mason uses China as an example when of course his  own organisation is a classic case of the suppression of ideas, values and beliefs that are troublesome to its own ideology….millions of Britains are denied a real voice by the BBC’s very narrow definition of what is acceptable……it is all the more ironic because of the BBC’s championing of ‘multi-culturalism’ and the ‘celebration of diversity’ that goes along with it…the only people who don’t get a say are the native Brits….unless you’re ‘approved’…or indeed those immigrants who ‘integrate’ and see that the things they came to this country to benefit from will be destroyed by the Left’s ‘open door’ immigration policy.

Maybe the BBC are waking up to this….it is 70 years since the Beveridge Report and the wholesale implementation of ‘Welfarism’….the BBC asks can it survive the ever increasing costs and ‘globalisation’?

 

You might think that yes it is the growing demands on the system that will destroy it…but what does ‘destroy’ mean…after all when the welfrae system was introduced it was not designed to cope with the massive demands we have now…such as imposed by a population, ever growing, but also living far longer…..what if the provision was just cut back to the original range of services and subsidy?  Is that destruction?

The BBC’s use of the word ‘globalisation’ is interesting.  What do they mean by that?  It seems, from the below, that they merely mean that competition from abroad lowers wages here…..‘wages at the bottom have been driven down by globalisation, requiring top ups from tax credits’.

In fact the real problem is the open door immigration policy….and one that is made very much worse by the EU which tells us to pay benefits to anyone who steps off a plane or train from Europe from day one.

Open door immigration, with anyone allowed to claim benefits, housing, access to free NHS service, use of the roads, demands on the police and overburdening schools is the biggest threat to the existence of the welfare system…..and the BBC refuses to recognise that…..once more denying the millions in this country who oppose such a policy their voice and say in the matter.

 

The BBC is examining the welfare system extensively on R4 today (27th) at 1000 am, The State of Welfare, but  if you look at this BBC magazine report which sets out to eulogise Welfare you might get an idea of the direction they will take:

‘Jose Harris, author of Beveridge: A Biography, says that even during the Hungry Thirties public suspicion of the scrounger existed.

But the war banished that with its sense of common purpose and social solidarity. High emergency taxes and rationing imposed a redistributive, egalitarian economic model. Above all there was work for everyone.

“There were no scroungers,” says Harris. “You were put to work in the Army, the pioneer corps or the factories.” ‘

 

Ironic that…‘put to work‘…imagine the BBC cries of ‘slavery’

Look at this highly misleading part:

‘The country was deeply indebted at the end of World War II to the US, bread was rationed and life austere. But there was less of a sense of division between those who worked and those who claimed benefits. Nearly everyone – or rather, nearly every working-age man – had a job. Full employment lasted for the following two decades.’

Why was there full employment?  There was National Service.…and full employment for two decades?  Because that was when National service ended, the last conscript demobbing  in 1963….it was a vastly expensive business.

The whole article has a narrative aimed at defending those on welfare…they are not ‘scroungers’ or ‘lazy’….and immigrants are workaholic wonders to be cherished.

Here the BBC tries to have its cake and eat it….quoting the Sun’s Kelvin Mackenzie saying Brits are scroungers but immigrants are great…then it quotes someone from a poverty charity who says it is rubbish to suggest people choose a life on the dole, they are not scroungers…..so we have ‘immigrants are great’ and then a negation of that  ‘myth’ of the ‘lazy scrounger’.  Tick two BBC boxes….in fact a third one as well…the BBC here raises the question of immigration destroying the welfare system…but then uses Mackenzie to demolish it…..with him saying it is the lazy scrounger that is milking the system and forcing businesses to import immigrants who want to work.  They hope you won’t notice the failed logic of the following repudiation of that by the charity.  It is a very muddled piece that wants to present immigration as a boon, the welfare system as an underfunded agent of redistribution and social equality and welfare claimants as angelic victims.

‘Immigration – rare in Beveridge’s day – may have played a role in the change of attitudes towards benefit claimants. David Goodhart, director of think tank Demos, has posited that as society becomes ever more diverse, the sense of shared values needed to sustain a redistributive welfare system is weakened.

Beveridge’s idea that welfare should reward individuals and families who have paid in to the system is undermined by the practice of giving council housing and benefits to newly arrived immigrants, critics like former minister Margaret Hodge have argued.

Mackenzie offers a different spin on migration. Many indigenous British people could work if they wanted to but are content to stay on benefits, he and others argue, whereas eastern Europeans arrive with little but are soon working.

“I love these people. They can travel thousands of miles from Budapest, get here with no money, can’t speak English but they have ambition. And they find work.”

The idea that people choose a life on benefits is false, says Imran Hussain, head of policy at the Child Poverty Action Group.’

 

 

The State of Welfare is a three hour programme……listen if you dare…Polly Toynbee is naturally on the side of those wanting to deport the scroungers to a rocky, barren island far far away….might have got that wrong.

 

First quote from the programme from a claimant….regarding the reform of the welfare system….

‘It’s scary, very scary’……

‘and it could get scarier‘ adds Julian Worricker.

 

Hmmm…need you really listen to the three hours?

Mason Carving A Rocky Future For Us









 

All sponsors of

Up The Anti: Reclaim the Future

‘Up the Anti is a one day conference to think about and discuss  how we lay claim to the future that we want and deserve.’

 

BBC’s Paul Mason was expected apparently to give a talk:

Simon Hardy@Simon_Hardy1

@paulmasonnews are you still coming to speak on journalism in the 21st century this weekend, Paul?

 

@Simon_Hardy1 not clear

8:48 AM – 26 Nov 12 · Details

@paulmasonnews the Up the Anti conference at Queen Mary’s university, http://uptheanti.org.uk

 

 

Mason has his own take on the Banks and who caused the financial crash:

 

Paul Mason@paulmasonnews

Dear Mark Carney – here is a visual signifier of our regulatory culture here in the UK: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kampupot/3820563952/ … – welcome

 

It’s the posh boys fault then….nothing to do with this bloke…..

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/05/09/article-1179911-04DB8FF6000005DC-492_468x454.jpg

 

BBC’s Mishal Husain Smirks As She Praises Hamas And Suggests Not Enough Israelis Have Died To Raise Concerns

http://tvnewsroom.co.uk/images/news-staff/mishal-husain/mishal-husain-Image-022.jpg

 

 

 “In war, truth is the first casualty.” Aeschylus

 

Via The Commentator:

 


BBC News Anchor Mishal Husain lambasts Jerusalem Post correspondent in pro-Hamas rant
by Media Hawk
“You could argue couldn’t you, that Hamas was also stopping worse happening all of this period, because although there was rockets being fired – they weren’t the.. the big rockets that have caused damage in recent days, they were mostly home-made contraptions.”
WAIT. WHAT?
By Mishal Husain’s logic, Hamas’s terrorist activity in firing rockets into Israel, they were ‘stopping worse happening’.
Watch this deplorable defence unfold as Husain interviews Gil Hoffmann, Chief Political Correspondent for the Jerusalem Post.
Husain argues, live on air, that the rockets being fired into Israel are irrelevant due to the fact that they have killed only ’20 people since 2005′. Even though the real figure is likely more than double that, Husain ignores the fact that these terrorist attacks are not specifically just designed to kill, but also to maim, destroy property, and generally bring insecurity and terror to the lives of the people of Israel.

 

 

Note than Husain is using the recent Economist casualty figures that Donnison used to mislead us in regard to casualty figures on either side….comparing Israeli casualties caused by rockets against Palestinian ones caused by Israeli military action….which misses out all those Israelis  killed by other means by Palestinians….over 1200 Israelis killed and 8000 injured in a decade….somewhat more than ’20’ that Husain peddles in order to mislead the viewer.

HAVE I NOT GOT NEWS FOR YOU

Three days ago a Palestinian was shot in an exclusion zone near the security fence between Gaza and Israel.

The BBC made a lot of noise about that ‘breach of the ceasefire’ as they put it…and it is still, three days later, on the website.

Gaza crisis: Palestinian ‘shot dead near border’

A Palestinian man has been shot dead by Israeli soldiers close to the Gaza border, Palestinian officials say.
It is the first reported killing since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into force on Wednesday evening.

 

What isn’t on the site is this story which tells you why the Israelis might not be so keen for Palestinians to be anywhere near the fence…and the BBC know the event happened..as Jon Donnison has Tweeted it, interesting use of ‘targeted’ though:
Jon Donnison ?@JonDonnison
MT @AvitalLeibovich Today, a Pal man infiltrated from #Gaza, broke into a house & stabbed a woman there. Targeted by #IDF soldiers at scene

Here is a report from Israel National News

Soldiers killed a suspected Gaza terrorist early Monday after he broke into a Jewish home and stabbed a girl before fleeing.
The IDF discovered a hole in the nearby Gaza security fence, and footprints from the area matched the shoes of the intruder, who had escaped to the Moshav Sde Avraham’s greenhouses after he tried to kill the girl.
Soldiers caught up with him and tried to arrest him, and then shot and killed him when he tried to escape.
The wounded girl is in fair condition. She was stabbed in her family’s home in Moshav Sde Avraham, originally named Yesodot HaDarom.

 

Never mind the Jews, the BBC though are still keen for you to know how the Gazans have suffered:

Aleem Maqbool reports:

Egyptian mediators have begun separate talks with Hamas and Israel to work out details of a ceasefire agreed last week that ended eight days of fighting in the Gaza Strip.

But it has come at a heavy price for other Gazans. People are still dying of the injuries sustained during the war.

By Their Tweets Shall Ye Know Them

As many people here will be aware, I’ve been collecting a list of biased Beeboid tweets, compiled largely from DB’s fantastic work on catching them, as well as contributions from several others. It’s now over 100, from around 50 different BBC employees from many departments, across the spectrum of BBC broadcasting. What follows is my attempt to explain what I see as the problem with BBC Twitter policy, and why all these biased tweets add up to a serious problem which needs to be addressed. This is ultimately intended to be read with and accompanying display of 100 tweets revealing bias from BBC staff. I have the list ready, but I want to get feedback on this first before making the full publication.

Once the content of this essay is finalized, I’m going to either make it a separate page on this blog with all the embedded tweets on full display, or make it some kind of epub for distribution. For now, please read this with the idea in mind that there are loads of examples to follow.

******************

The use of Twitter as a news tool has for many become ubiquitous. Media pros use it for both newsgathering and for pushing a story. Journalists use Twitter to track trending memes as well as to reach out to people to set up interviews and gather information on a story. Tim Weber from BBC News Interactive put it this way:

Audience engagement and interaction are equally important. Broadcasters know all about talk radio, and social media let us extend this expertise into the digital space. However, the size of our audience and the cost of curating their contributions – bearing in mind the UK’s stringent libel laws – present tough choices.

But arguably the most important use of social media, from a journalist’s perspective, is newsgathering.

Yes, we subscribe to text, picture and video feeds from news agencies, but selecting the right mix of sources for my Twitter stream provides me with a customised and curated news feed that complements, but does not replace, traditional sources.

Monitoring social media lets us gauge public mood, find case studies, and spot trends and breaking stories.

At times it can seem like Twitter is the first place people go to follow breaking news stories. Indeed, some have remarked that during the recent US presidential debates, they spent more time watching Twitter commentary than they did the actual broadcast. One might begin to suspect that many opinions people formed might have been more informed by what they read on Twitter than what they saw and heard themselves. Because users choose whom to follow, circles of like-minded people form naturally, self-selecting as with any social group. It’s quite easy to get caught up in an echo chamber. This raises the question of what opinions are expressed there.

The Twitter output of BBC staff reveals a significant contingent of Left-wingers. On their own, the tweets aren’t necessarily proof of biased reporting. However, there are enough examples of personal opinions that one can make a case that there is, in Andrew Marr’s words, a “cultural liberal bias”.

The official policy on employee use of Twitter is the part of the problem. Staff are encouraged / required to use Twitter as a way not only to promote BBC news stories, but to connect with their audience. They preach this at the BBC College of Journalism.

The courses offer guidance on how to use social media as a newsgathering tool. Services like Facebook and Twitter provide quick and convenient avenues of communication with both subjects of and sources for news stories. One often sees a BBC producer reaching out to someone on Twitter to discuss a story or arrange an interview.

This by definition turns their Twitter feeds into an extension of BBC broadcasting. The directive to then communicate directly with their audience enhances this. Which is, of course, the point. The BBC has specific guidelines on all of this, which can be read here (NB: pdf file). It’s for staff use of social media in general, including things like Facebook, although our focus here is on how it applies to Twitter. These guidelines break staff and their accounts and usage into three basic categories:

1. Your own personal activity, done for your friends and contacts,
but not under or in the name of BBC News
2. Activity for core news (eg breaking news), programmes or genres
carried out officially in the name of BBC News
3. Activity of editors, presenters, correspondents or reporters
carried out as part of official BBC News output.

“Personal activity” accounts seem to make up the bulk of the Twitter accounts. The guidelines for these accounts include the following:

a. You are not discouraged from doing any of this, but as a BBC member of staff – and especially as someone who works in News – there are particular considerations to bear in mind. They can all be summarised as: ‘Don’t do anything stupid’.
b. Remember that even though you are acting in your own personal capacity, you are on show to your friends and anyone else who sees what you write, as a representative of the BBC. If you are editorial staff, it doesn’t make much difference whether or not you identify yourself as someone who works for the BBC.
c. You are allowed to say that you work for the BBC, and you can discuss the BBC and your work publicly. But your name/title should not contain BBC in any form. And you should make clear that the views expressed are personal, and not those of the BBC.
d. You shouldn’t state your political preferences or say anything that compromises your impartiality. Don’t sound off about things in an openly partisan way. Don’t be seduced by the informality of social media into bringing the BBC into disrepute. Don’t criticise your colleagues. Don’t reveal confidential BBC information. Don’t surreptitiously sanitise Wikipedia pages about the BBC.

It couldn’t be more clear, really. As we’ll see, staff seem to have problems casually ignoring the instructions in Section “b”, and often violate “d”. This is very important, as former BBC radio head of future media and technology, James Cridland has said, “‘There are some people out to ‘get you’ on the web, so it’s important not to give them too much ammunition.’

Guilty as charged, I suppose, but it is a target-rich environment. It’s also important to examine staff output in order to hold them accountable for their actions, as the BBC doesn’t unless prompted by a complaint.

North America editor Mark Mardell admitted during an appearance at the BBC College of Journalism (@36:45 in) that he and staff in general believe that the BBC considers Twitter to be a free-for-all, and “doesn’t follow BBC guidelines”. This is clearly not true, but is illustrative of the attitude held by staff. It’s pretty obvious that the “personal” Twittter accounts are barely monitored at all, allowing staff to freely express personal political opinions until one of those people “out to get” them successfully registers a complaint. Morale and compliance is probably harmed by this hands-off approach, as staff do what they like for ages until getting a reprimand for something they thought they were allowed to do. The complaint must then seem petty, or just noise from haters. Lessons are most likely not learned in this atmosphere.

In fact, so easily and freely do BBC staff feel able to express personal opinion that the BBC recently had to issue a directive to stop them tweeting their grumbles about the Newsnight scandals and management problems.

This brings us to consider just how official or unofficial these Twitter accounts are. Officially, most of them aren’t.

Some BBC Twitter accounts are officially sanctioned, as understood in the above rules. The staff member gets approval to use the BBC logo, and it becomes an official outlet, required to abide by all the usual rules of professional integrity and impartiality. However, the majority of staff accounts do not have the logo and are not officially sanctioned. These accounts will necessarily have some form of disclaimer, generally some variation on “Views my own”. This makes it officially unofficial, a kind of “get-out-of-bias-free” card. However, as Section “c” shows, they are allowed to use these personal accounts to promote BBC reporting, which complicates matters.

The problem is, interacting with the audience and getting personal is built into the official policy.

The tweets by themselves aren’t necessarily proof of bias in the BBC’s output. Certainly the majority are the usual assortment of mundane personal activity, notices of their latest piece for the BBC, comments on sport or pop culture, brief conversations on a topic of interest, and casual exchanges with both friend and stranger alike. They are, however evidence of a shared worldview, an overwhelming tilt to the Left – at times further Left than others – among staff. It’s also evidence that the behavior is spread throughout the organization.

There doesn’t need to be an editorial directive sent from the top for there to be a form of institutional bias in the Corporation. There’s  no need for a conspiracy or a memo passed around or a secret cabal planning the day’s editorial slant. If they all think the same way, share the relevant perspective, the biased reporting happens naturally. Their tweets are evidence of this shared mindset.

This reflexive behavior can be reinforced when nearly all one’s colleagues approve, or one is rewarded for it. People feel quite free to express their personal political opinions without concern.

While the occasional expression of partisan opinion can be overlooked, when there are a lot of them over time, it adds up.  Contrary to conventional wisdom, sometimes the plural of anecdote really is “data”‘.

Some BBC staff are worse than others with the regularity of personal opinion or the enthusiasm with which it’s expressed. Others are more circumspect, only rarely letting their opinion on an issue slip through. The problem, however, is that nearly all those opinions are on the Left of the political spectrum, some much further Left than others.

It would be one thing, of course, if it was just a handful of people, say, regional pop music radio personnel, lightly passing on their liberal thoughts on an issue of the day every once in a while. Only it’s much more than that: BBC staff from many departments, both in Britain and internationally are tweeting Left-wing opinion.

A reader of staff Twitter feeds often sees a preponderance of Left-leaning voices. A person’s Follow list can also be revealing. While nearly all the News & Current Affairs people will be following political figures and media outlets on both sides of the political spectrum – as they should, in order to do their jobs properly – there are also plenty of things which betray personal opinion.

Tweets about favorite bands or football clubs, or outbursts about an X factor result are all about sharing personal opinion. It’s not a stretch at all to read tweets about politics or public figures the same way.

When one tweets only Left-wing opinions, it’s equally as telling as  tweeting about rock concerts one has just seen. Patterns emerge. Just as musical taste can be gleaned from the latter, political opinion can be from the former.

With this in mind, the public figures outside of politics – that is to say, aside from politicians, party officials, and the like – the commentators, pundits, and special interest advocates on a Follow list and in a Twitter feed can be can be telling. For example, BBC staff are more likely to be following Left-wing pundits and writers than voices from the Right.

Similarly, they’re more likely to be following something from Occupy Wall St than from any Tea Party group, and are far more likely to retweet something from a Left-wing perspective in a complimentary fashion than one from the Right. A number of BBC staff openly mocked even the most minor of slip-up of Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, but not a single one of them has ever laughed at or even lightly mentioned any error made by Barack Obama, either as candidate or President.

The Twitter activity of BBC staff is very revealing of their personal political and ideological leanings. When viewed as a whole, over a period of time, it’s clear evidence of a shared mindset, a kind of groupthink. There’s certainly a lack of intellectual diversity. If it was just a few of them, or was a more or less isolated phenomenon among light-entertainment on-air talent, it wouldn’t be an issue. But clearly it’s a problem in many areas of the BBC, across the spectrum of broadcasting as well as on the website.

BBC EXCORIATES NHS

I found THIS an interesting BBC report on the state of the NHS in Scotland;

“Hundreds of previously secret NHS reports into serious incidents, including 105 deaths, have been published by BBC Scotland. More than 300 reports into the most serious incidents in Scotland’s hospitals last year have been released. The reports include a person being blown up while on oxygen therapy after lighting a cigarette. They also detail deaths from fatal doses of medicine and missing equipment during a cardiac arrest.”

The BBC should be congratulated on exposing these massive failures within the NHS. I notice that blame for all of this is laid at the fault of the “bureaucracy” within the NHS, which may indeed be the case. I know this site throws many brickbats at the BBC over how it fawns over the appalling NHS but in this case it seems to have provided a public good and I will acknowledge it.

SOME JEWS DID DIE…JUST NOT ENOUGH

 

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/Invisible%20Palestinians.jpg

 

Note…Graphic photos of death.

The BBC Middle East crew are ratcheting up the propaganda that paints the Israelis as living in a safe haven of bomb shelters, protected  from puny and ineffective, makeshift Palestinian rockets by the ‘Iron Dome’ missile system and with a sophisticated, powerful,  savage army that brutally enforces the siege of Gaza and targets civilians…or cares less whether they become casualties or not.

The repeated assertion on most reports on the aftermath of Gaza are that the Israelis just didn’t really suffer, not enough dead, not enough wounded, not enough homes wrecked….the Palestinians are the ‘victims’ of an Israel murderous over reaction.

I wonder how Bowen & Co would react if  yobs started lobbing some form of explosive at his home and family and demanded to be allowed to live in his house….and kept it up for 60 years.  I’m sure he would just walk away and hand them the keys.

 

Jeremy Bowen (abridged) on the Today programme on Friday (2 hrs 49 mins) lays it on thick from Gaza…..and interesting choice of ‘witness’…Mads Gilbert….more of whom later….

Jon Donnison follows with a piece on the Website doing a similar job…interesting change of spelling of the name of his Palestinian colleague whose son was killed….all spellings I have seen have  been ‘Jihad’, Donnison spells it ‘Jehad’…..

Checking Donnison’s Twitter feed it was always ‘jihad’…why the change all of a sudden?

Jon Donnison@JonDonnison

Jihad Mashrrawi: And tell them I am okay & I have durability & have the patience. I hope to you and to everyone have peace & love. #Gaza 3/3

Jihad Mashrrawi: My regards to all your friends who ask about me and also to all the staff in the BBC. 2/3

A message from my friend & colleague Jihad Mashrrawi to all who sent best wishes after the killing of his 11month old boy Omar in #Gaza 1/2

 

 

Bowen:
‘A very peaceful scene…a modest, dusty park in the centre of Gaza…so different to how it was not so long ago.
This has been the first big clash between the Israelis and Palestinians since the Arab Spring started two years ago.

Israel still has its Western friends but Hamas, with its important allies, claims to be the real leader of the Palestinians instead of the Western backed Fatah and is looking much more credible.
[Good that Bowen thinks a murderous terrorist group set on destroying Israel and has just blown up a civilian bus in Tel Aviv is ‘credible’].

Every morning some Palestinian families had to dig through the ruins of their homes to find dead children or parents.  I spoke to a man who was watching cousins, nephews and neighbours, tearing through the rubble, some with shovels some with their bare hands….he said to me that when a boy’s mother or father is killed the boy will seek revenge for the killing.

I spoke to Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian surgeon at Gaza’s main hospital minutes after he tried and failed to resuscitate a 13 year old Palestinian boy who’d been rushed in with a shrapnel wound in the chest.

Mr Gilbert was infuriated by the way that Western countries tend to support Israel’s version of events… “I feel between rage and desperation, between screaming and crying.  This little Shabab is now dead….and the only crime in his life is that he was born Palestinian in Gaza, he hasn’t done anything wrong and nobody really speaks up for him.  I think this needs to be addressed in a way that the fundamental right of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza is being completely deserted by all these governments.”

Gaza has a lot more damage and a lot more casualties than Israel …..every death, every wound, every wrecked house is some bodies  tragedy where ever it happens.’

 

So Mads Gilbert?  A good choice of witness?  Even the Guardian recognises  he is somewhat pro-Palestinian and even pro-terrorist…

‘Gilbert, 61, and his colleague Erik Fosse, 58, recently returned to Oslo after working in Gaza for the first 10 days of the Israeli offensive [Cast Lead 2009].

The pair are high-profile pro-Palestinian campaigners and Gilbert, a far-left politician in Norway, is a particularly controversial figure, having been at the centre of allegations – which he says are “completely absurd” – of faking a TV report about the death of an 11-year-old boy during the conflict.’

 

Foxnews tells us a lot more:

A high-profile Norwegian doctor who has said the September 11 terrorists were justified in their attack is now treating patients in Gaza and is being accused of presenting “hard-core propaganda” to TV interviewers in his telling of the conflict between Hamas and Israel.
In addition to being supportive of the terrorist organization Hamas, Gilbert has voiced support for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“The oppressed also have a moral right to attack the USA with any weapon they can come up with.”
When asked if he supported a terror attack on the U.S., Gilbert said, “Terror is a bad weapon but the answer is yes within the context which I have mentioned.”

Dr. Mads Gilbert has become an unofficial advocate of the Palestinian cause, his critics say.
International media reports, including those from the BBC, CBS, CNN and FOX’s sister station Sky News, present Gilbert as an ordinary doctor.
But a look at his record shows that Gilbert, 61, is a political activist and member of the Norwegian Maoist “Red” party, and he has been involved in solidarity work for the Palestinians since the 1970s. He has criticized the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders for refusing to take sides in conflicts.
Israeli government officials have said Hamas hides weapons in the hospital where Gilbert works.’

 

Here the BBC’s Jon Donnison attempts to pile  on the pressure and tries to demonise Israel……no such stories for the Fogels…remember them:

http://commentisfreewatch.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/itamar11.jpg

They ended up like this:

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/Portals/0/110314_eladfogel2.jpg

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/Portals/0/110314_urihadasfogel.jpg

http://www.jewishjournal.com/images/itamar-fogel5.jpg

 

 

By Jon Donnison

(BBC Watch have also picked up on this report:  BBC’s Jon Donnison displays a professional and ethical conflict of interests )

Gaza baby ‘only knew how to smile’

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/64344000/jpg/_64344286_jihad_baby_ap624x351.jpg
‘My friend and colleague Jehad Mashhrawi is usually the last to leave our Gaza bureau. Hard-working but softly spoken, he often stays late, beavering away on a laptop that is rarely out of arm’s reach.

But on the Wednesday before last – only an hour or so after Gaza’s latest war erupted with Israel’s killing of Hamas military commander Ahmed al-Jabari – Jehad burst out of the editing suite screaming.
He sprinted down the stairs, his head in his hands, his face ripped with anguish.
He had just had a call from a friend to tell him the Israeli military had bombed his house and that his 11-month-old baby boy Omar was dead.

Jehad showed me a photo on his mobile phone.
It was of a cheeky, chunky, round-faced little boy in denim dungarees, chuckling in a pushchair, dark-eyed with a fringe of fine brown hair pushed across his brow.
“He only knew how to smile,” Jehad told me, as we both struggled to hold back the tears.
“He could say just two words – Baba and Mama,” his father went on.
Also on Jehad’s phone is another photo. A hideous tiny corpse. Omar’s smiling face virtually burnt off, that fine hair appearing to be melted on to his scalp.

Omar was not a terrorist.

Of course every civilian death on either side – not just Omar’s – is tragic. The United Nations says its preliminary investigation shows that 103 of the 158 people killed in Gaza were civilians.
Of those, 30 were children – 12 of whom were under the age of 10. More than 1,000 people were injured.
In Israel, too, there were fatalities: four civilians and two soldiers. There were also many injuries. But the fact the Israeli Ambulance Service was also reporting those suffering from anxiety and bruises is an indication of the asymmetric nature of the conflict.

 

 

The difference with the Fogel family and the Palestinian civilian casulaties is that the Fogels were murdered deliberately and in cold blood. The Israelis were not ‘targeting’ civilians in Gaza….every death is somebody’s personal tragedy….but  deaths caused as a consequence of otherwise legitimate actions happen all the time…in police chases, at work or on the roads….how many in Britain die from traffic accidents?  Three thousand or so?  And yet you jump into your car every day and think nothing of it….and yet, by driving, in essence you are that Israeli ‘tank commander’ or ‘pilot’ who has to fire a tank shell or a missile to deal with the Hamas military threat….you too could kill someone..by accident.  They are still dead, accident or not and you killed them.

 

I would suggest that the BBC correspondents are becoming far too emotionally involved in this conflict…especially when a colleague’s son is killed, to report in a balanced and impartial manner….the effect is to demonise Israel which is presented as the ‘aggressor’ whose intent is to wipe out the Palestinians and take their land.

I believe Bowen was promoted up to remove him from temptation and limit his direct involvement in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict after the Balen Report…clearly those limits have been breached and he has once again been allowed to air his own, partial take on events…and now ably assisted by Jon Donnison….the only mercy is that the ‘Angel of Death’, Orla Guerin, is kept safely out of the mix….‘They used to call war reporter Orla Guerin the Angel of Death because every time she went anywhere people started being murdered’.….except very often they weren’t…she invented or happily quoted reliable Palestian sources….see Jenin and the 3000 Palestinians ‘massacred’,  or not, by the Israelis.

http://honestreporting.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/bbc180402.jpg

 

Update:

Having had a look at previous notes on Donnison and the ‘asymmetry’ of this war as well as child deaths it looks like  Donnison is continuing a theme as this report from 2011 shows:

‘Militarily, Israel is far superior, a fact which is reflected in the casualty figures.
Israel, where casualties are rare, is under pressure from its border communities to punish militants in Gaza for any attacks.

 

It might also be as well to remember that the BBC fall over themselves to give a platform to Tariq Ramadan (‘one of the most influential voices on young Muslims’) the slippery Islamist…the man who claimed it was justifiable to deliberately kill Jewish children in a ‘war’.

Here is the full transcript (from Italian magazine Panorama in 2004) of his answer to the question of whether it is right to deliberately target and kill children and Israeli civilians because they are considered soldiers.

‘I don’t believe that an eight year old child is a soldier. These acts are condemnable; therefore one has to condemn them in themselves. But I say to the international community that they are contextually explicable, and not justifiable. What does this mean? It means that the international community today has placed the Palestinians in a situation where they are delivered political oppression, which explains (not justifying it) that at a certain point people say: we don’t have arms, we don’t have anything, and so we cannot do anything other than this. It is contextually explicable but morally condemnable.’

So in the context killing Jewish children is justifiable if morally wrong.

Ramadan is an Islamist….and just as the BBC do not explain Dr Mads Gilbert’s political ideology they choose not to explain the ‘real’ Tariq Ramadan….a hardline ‘Salafist’……

In a 2003 radio interview, Ramadan made clear his adherence to the salafist teachings: “There is a rationalist Reformism and the Salafist school, in the sense that the Salafist tries to remain faithful to the basic principles. I belong to the latter; that is to say, there is a certain number of principles that are for me, fundamental, and that, as a Muslim, I refuse to betray.”
The theoretical foundation for his concept of Europe as a space for the relatively unfettered propagation of Islam was developed in the 1980s by the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood activist Faisal Mawlawi

Mawlawi describes dawa as one part or aspect of jihad, which he defines in a comprehensive way as the overall struggle to expand Islam. From this comprehensive perspective, he argues that jihad may not be reduced to armed struggle simply (although he does claim this is permitted in certain contexts), and further argues that armed fighting should not be pursued if circumstances allow for the peaceful spread of Islam by dawa.
He emphasizes on the one hand that periods of peace are more conducive to the spread of Islam than fighting, and that it is preferable to spread Islam by peaceful dawa, on the other hand he declares that fighting is permitted when the order for jihad is given, and even may become a duty if the ‘message of Islam’ can not be spread other than by fighting against un-Islamic rulers.
Ramadan does not see Muslim identity and European identity as mutually exclusive. He claims that today Muslims are already Europeans and calls indigenous people “just older immigrants,” thus providing a way of introducing Islam to non-Muslims as something familiar, and not a foreign, alien element.