This is a screengrab of the Labour Party using a Telegraph report into the HSBC scandal from 2010 to back  up its attack on the Telegraph and the Tories…go figure!!!

 

The Sunday Telegraph reports that HMRC is investigating more than 200 “extremely wealthy” British taxpayers suspected of tax evasion totalling “many millions of pounds”. It adds that they are “believed to have failed to declare huge sums of interest from private deposit accounts with HSBC’s bank in Switzerland.” A HMRC source said the inquiry would continue for “quite a few months” and could lead to criminal proceedings in the courts.

Sunday Telegraph, 26 September 2010

 

An old, old story…HSBC and tax evasion…and of course it is only HSBC that did that?…even the BBC’s Nick Robinson admits this is an old story…

”This tax bombshell has been ticking since 2007” 

 

So why the interest from the BBC and the Guardian just before an election?

John Humphrys on the Today programme (07:50)  brought us comment on the Telegraph’s editorial in which it declared its position on the Oborne’s mischief making.

The Telegraph noted the hypocrisy of news organisations like the BBC and the Guardian which have their own very dubious practices when it comes to what they will and will not report and no doubt this had something to do with the BBC’s interest in this editorial…their interest being in undermining and dismissing it as fast as possible.

It is curiously pious and very selective of organisations like the BBC and the Guardian to attack the Telegraph in this way for they themselves shape their news to a political agenda and only give the Public a view of the world filtered through their own ideological prisms.  So why all the fuss about a paper that perhaps shaped its editorial, and it denies doing so, to suit a company that pays for its existence?  The BBC undeniably shapes its news to favour the Labour Party….hypocrisy on a grand scale?

There are ‘right wing’ papers and ‘left wing’ papers….they all provide a view of the world to their own agendas, we know that.  We know that owners of these papers can direct how they cover news.  Murdoch for instance directed his stable of papers to support the Labour Party for over a decade.  No complaints from the Guardian?

This was the BBC’s take on Murdoch once the hacking saga took off…

RUPERT MURDOCH – A PORTRAIT OF SATAN

There was a growing sense that Murdoch was now manipulating British politicians for his own personal gain. So the BBC decided to investigate Murdoch’s business and personal background.

 

But now he’s a saint?

The BBC famously ‘spiked’ Winston Churchill’ when he warned of the dangers of a Nazi Germany…the BBC, as this site notes day in day out, has a long and dishonourable history of manipulating the news to fit an agenda, a lot of agendas in fact.

For example….Who was the expert, neutral and impartial commenter that they brought in today?  Roy Greenslade from the Guardian who wrote this in that august publication a few days ago…Peter Oborne may be a maverick but his Telegraph revelations are dynamite..and he’s gone on in a similar vein since then attacking the Telegraph.

So are we likely to get fair comment from him?   I don’t think so.

His initial thought was that the Telegraph’s editorial was all ‘bluster and obfuscation’….presumably he meant the bits about the Guardian being just as unprincipled as any other rag.

Humphrys tentatively suggested that perhaps other papers might also have similar practises….Greenslade was adamant that never, ever,  in the history of the Free Press had the integrity of that Press been so imperilled, and democracy undermined, by the likes of theTelegraph’s actions….well what he actually said was……

‘I have never seen (in all my long career in the Press)  such a blatant example before where advertising has influenced editorial.’

Yeah right.

Hilariously he uses the disgraced Robert Maxwell as an example of probity and propriety in the news industry.

Of course he has no proof for Oborne’s claims.  He relies on bluster and obfuscation to make his attack.  The Telegraph’s lack of journalistic integrity may have happened but as yet it’s just the word of a man who unquestionably supports Ed Miliband for PM when the Telegraph clearly doesn’t…and as the Telegraph’s editorial makes clear they believe Oborne’s, and the BBC’s and the Guardian’s, motives in seeking to make an issue of this are highly suspect.

Here is an instance of Greenslade’s sleight of hand…he sets out a list of concerns about the Telegraph, one of which is this..

The Telegraph, alone among UK newspapers, failed to hold the Chinese government to account over its reforms to the Hong Kong electoral system that led to last year’s street protests. Indeed, on 15 September, it published a commentary by the Chinese ambassador, Let’s not allow Hong Kong to come between us, that sought to justify the electoral reforms.

Any Google search will show that the Telegraph has had many reports on the Hong Kong protests….and a search of the BBC’s coverage will show that they too have a similar timeline in how they reported events in Hong Kong..here the BBC lays out the timeline showing that the protests only began in late September….

28 September – Occupy Central begins

Frustration had been mounting since Beijing’s ruling in August that voters would only be able to vote for their chief executive in 2017 from a list of pre-approved candidates.

Students, led by activist groups Scholarism and the Hong Kong Federation of Students, stage a week of class boycotts culminating in a protest outside government offices at Admiralty on 26 September.

 

 

The Telegraph didn’t hold back at all in reporting those protests…

Why are there protests in Hong Kong?

Hong Kong protests spread as 80,000 take to streets

And its reporting didn’t start just as the protests started…they were revealing the problems well before that…

From July 5:

Lord Patten attacks Beijing over interference in Hong Kong

From August 30:

China warns against foreign meddling in Hong Kong

From September 2:

China ‘has breached terms of Hong Kong handover’

and ironically..and not a word from Greenslade about the British government’s ‘kowtowing’…from September 5….revealed by the Telegraph…

Hong Kong activist attacks ‘deferential’ Britain

So quite clearly Greenslade is ‘mistaken’ in his attack on the Telegraph in this instance. Well he’s allowing his own agenda to colour his reporting on people allowing their agenda to colour their reporting.

Greenslade is conducting an ideological attack on a commercial and political rival…of course not a lack of integrity highlighted by Humphrys…..some might suggest that it is a rather dubious practice by the BBC to use such a  person who is clearly antagonistic towards the Telegraph as a commenter on their activities.

Once again the BBC makes no connection between the stories and the various motivatioins behind the claims by various people…..unusual for the BBC to hold back on the speculation about motives and the behind the scenes realities.  Of course to do so would shine a light on a rather disturbing and probably corrupt agenda by those involved….the BBC itself being major player in this.

Let’s have a look at the timeline…

On February 7 Ed Miliband launched his attack on tax havens…

Ed Miliband issues warning to UK-controlled ‘tax havens’

 

On February 9 the BBC and the Guardian both launched their long planned attack on HSBC and tax evasion…

HSBC bank ‘helped clients dodge millions in tax’

On February 11 we had PMQs where Miliband had the perfect platform to posture grandiously and to link the Tories into the scandal….

Miliband attacks ‘dodgy’ PM in HSBC donor row

 

Can it be mere coincidence that the Labour supporting BBC and Guardian launched their attacks at that precise moment in time?  It seems all too perfect doesn’t it?

The HSBC scandal is over 5 years old…why did the BBC and the Guardian wait until now, just before an election and in synch with Labour’s election campaign strategy, to disinter this story?…..the BBC’s own Nick Robinson admits this is an old story…

”This tax bombshell has been ticking since 2007” 

 

And yet the BBC and Guardian only decide to investigate it at this precise moment in time when all the information they have now has been available since at least 2010 and has been extensively reported on since?

13 October 2011: HMRC officially announces that it is investigating some 6,000 UK-based Swiss bank account-holders

 HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will shortly begin writing to UK residents and organisations holding Swiss bank accounts with the HSBC in Geneva who may not have reported all their income and gains to HMRC.

 

David Keighly at ‘Conservative Woman’ also thinks it just a bit too much of a coincidence that the BBC’s output is timed to fit in with an agenda that seems set to influence the election…‘The BBC are attacking {The Tories] with planned, unrestrained glee”….

We are condemned to a solid six months of posturing, tub-thumping and `soap box oratory.

For broadcasters this is proving a bonanza beyond their wildest dreams. Most of those who work in the media, and of course, especially the BBC, hate the Tories, and now – for the first time ever – they have been able to plan on multiple levels and on an industrial scale how to rubbish them.

In the formal campaign period in April and May, they will still have to abide by the strict electoral law that requires public service broadcasters to achieve political balance – but not in the months of canvassing before that.

And so, this week we have had the debut of the first – and longest-ever – Labour Party election broadcast conceived, shot and put in prime time by the BBC. It’s a drama called The Casual Vacancy, it has cost £5m to make, and the first one-hour episode went out this Sunday.

Now we have the Ed Miliband supporting Peter Oborne jumping ship from the right wing Torygraph and laying into them for their coverage of the HSBC scandal which Labour is desperate to link to the Tories.

Just coincidence?  Just a coincidence that the news outlets making so much of this are the BBC and the Guardian?

That stinks of a grand political stitch up and an interference of a most serious kind in the democratic process…the Guardian of course is free to do as it likes, as is the Telegraph, but the BBC is legally obliged to be impartial and balanced.

Clearly it has not been so.

It is an irony I suppose that we have the two news organisations here that tried to shut down the Free Press now demanding that the Telegraph publish what they deem news….when they don’t like what you publish they try to close you down, when you don’t publish what their own agenda dictates they try to force you to publish it.

The BBC is corrupt as they come…it tried to destroy News International and now seeks to malign and damage yet another rival news organisation….having already crushed ‘local news’.

About time the Conservatives grew some balls and took on the BBC.

Back in 2010 the Mail ran this report about the man who is still Miliband’s head spin doctor, Tom Baldwin.  Baldwin originally worked for the Times where he was in essence a Labour Party stooge placing stories damaging to the Tories and beneficial to Labour.

Considering Baldwin’s vital role in Labour’s election campaign and Miliband’s pious statements about the Telegraph and compromised journalism should the BBC be asking questions about this?…especially as he was the man who tried to stitch up John Humphrys and get him sacked or as the Mail puts it was ‘ central to a dirty tricks plot to smear Humphrys as anti-New Labour and so not fit to be a BBC interviewer.’

The day Alastair Campbell appeared to give ­evidence to the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, he was given a good-luck hug by his friend Tom Baldwin.

Baldwin was the Times journalist who named the weapons expert as the secret source behind the BBC’s claim that the Blair government had ‘sexed up’ a dossier about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to justify going to war against Saddam Hussein.

Campbell was known to liaise with Baldwin in endless attempts to ­discredit the Labour government’s enemies, the results of which regularly ended up prominently in The Times — a paper once admired for its thundering independence.

‘Tom was a ruthless operator and obsessed by the power his friend Alastair wielded in Downing Street,’ says a ­colleague. ‘I think he envied him.’

Even so, who could have imagined, when the appalling era of mendacity that marked Campbell’s tenure in Downing Street finally ended, that a new one would start a few years later?

For now, enter Alastair Campbell Mark II — yes, his friend and collaborator Tom Baldwin, who this week was appointed by the faltering Labour leader Ed Miliband as his new director of strategy.

Like Campbell, Baldwin, 44, has a ferocious, emotional hatred of Tories.

No one doubted his abilities as a journalist, with ruthless energy when pursuing a story.

But as one  fellow political journalist puts it: ‘The common view in the Westminster Lobby was that he was a brilliant hack who let everyone down by allowing himself to be turned into a blatant propagandist.

‘His judgment was completely blinded by his hatred for the Tories and his fixation with Alastair Campbell, who used Tom as a stool pigeon to find out what other journalists were up to and as a cipher for stories he wanted to place.’

 

Yet another tale of a newspaper acting as a Labour government propagandist, the last being the Guardian…a lot more important than the Telegraph downplaying a commercial company’s activities.

Not important enough for the BBC to investigate Labour’s head spinner though….they are too busy concentrating solely on the Telegraph.

Frankie Boyle isn’t impressed with the Guardian’s commercial interests  (H/T  Guess Who)….of course the personalised adverts within the text are shaped

Sponsored by the Morris Dancers Collective.

to your own activities on the web….block the advertisers with ‘Ghostery’ and they don’t come up…The Guardian has a vast number of commercial ‘trackers’ that watch your every move…so much for its war on the ‘spy’s’…..commercial interests trump such principles…..looks like Boyle likes Heineken…

And travel…

Heavens knows where the BBC’s ‘self awareness’ is on Frankie’s scale….maybe it depends on whether he needs a gig with them or not!

Still, good of the BBC just to concentrate on the Torygraph.

Wonder why.

“As independent as resources permit”

The BBC is going all out on the Telegraph/Oborne story and remarkably shows no interest at all in widening its investigation to explore the likelihood of similar practises at other news organisations.

A familiar pattern of behaviour from the BBC which you may remember from the time of the phone hacking saga when the sole target was Murdoch and the BBC was seen to be acting in a way that was far from being neutral taking an active part in trying to close down a commercial and political rival.

The Telegraph, a Tory supporting paper, looks  set to be the BBC’s next target.

There must be many at the BBC who are laughing loudly at the damage they have inflicted upon their ideological rivals, the Tory Party and their media supporters, by the reinvention of a story that is over 5 years old.

Which, when you think about it, is an irony.  Here they are targeting the Telegraph for alleged practises that compromised their journalism and yet the BBC has been involved in one of the most blatant attempts to jerrymander an election, an attempt to undermine the democratic process, by manipulating the news.

Here the BBC gives Peter Oborne a platform to further castigate the Telegraph and demand an investigation into its practises…

Daily Telegraph’s Peter Oborne urges HSBC coverage review

“The Telegraph must now call an independent review.

“It can’t be done by the chief executive, he has been running the show, we need an independent outsider to come in and do a full assessment of the relationship between advertising and editorial.

“A fraud is being perpetrated on Telegraph readers who buy the paper expecting to get the news and instead get something that gives the impression it is vetted by the advertising department.”

 

The BBC then goes further and reports on its Newsnight ‘investigation’ saying…

More Telegraph writers voice concern

 

So that’ll be just the Telegraph that may or may not be involved in such practises then…the BBC has no interest in investigating just how widespread this is?

Hardly journalism on their own part is it?….they are doing exactly what they accuse the Telegraph of doing…limiting the scope of their journalism to reporting things that are in the interest of the BBC to highlight.

The Guardian has no such qualms, and in fact has allowed Simon Jenkins to criticise itself in a much more balanced and wide ranging look at the problem of advertising and its effects on the integrity of the Media’s journalism…

Yes, Peter Oborne, ads hurt press freedom. But the alternative is worse

Newspapers are institutionalised hypocrisy. They excoriate yet they cringe. They speak truth to power and then sup at its table. They stick their moral noses in the air while their bottoms rest on festering heaps of deals, perks, bribes and ads, without which they would not exist. The most amazing thing is that this murky edifice has delivered Britain a remarkably robust and free-spirited press.

Newspapers tend to downplay the scoops of others, as many did the Guardian’s WikiLeaks and Snowden revelations of 2011 and 2013. But a big story trumps such rivalry, as the Telegraph found to its advantage with its MPs’ expenses exposé in 2009.

 

Jenkins makes a remarkable claim about the Guardian’s own venality and lack of integrity…

Even the Guardian cannot be regarded as immune from such pressures.

In March 2007 Labour’s short-lived Pathfinder scheme, involving dire housing demolitions in the north, was inexplicably eulogised in a Guardian supplement in return for an undisclosed payment from the government.

Today its “branded content partner zone” is occupied by Unilever, “whose sources of revenue allow us to explore, in more depth than editorial budgets would otherwise allow, topics that we hope are of interest”.

The Guardian took money from the Labour government to promote one of its policies!

How much more damaging to the Media and a ‘Free Press’  than the Telegraph’s alleged actions is it when a news outlet dances to a government tune?

The BBC always prides itself on its supposed independence from government so where is the outraged shock that the Guardian, of all papers, has taken government money in return for favourable coverage?

Jenkins continues his wide ranging look at who compromises what for expediency’s sake in a harsh market….

Most serious publications have for half a century depended on subsidy, which leaves them at the mercy of their boards and benefactors. The Independent struggles under the generosity of an oligarch. The Times depends on some rich man craving its ownership. The Telegraph survives through staff cuts and deals with advertisers. The Guardian’s security has been bought at the expense of years of closures and job losses at its media subsidiaries.

Newspapers and broadcasters still have the resources and skills to digest, process and transmit masses of information in such a way as to hold the faith of readers. That is a vital democratic construct.

There is no question that the private sector is an insecure way of financing a free press that does not make money. But all other ways are worse. There are still as many daily newspapers published in Britain (nine) as there were 50 years ago, a continuous diversity available to no other western country. Online has not wiped out print. It has enhanced the penetration and prominence of both.

 

Evan Davis on Newsnight suggested that the Telegraph may have ‘prostituted itself for cash’ in a phrase that is purely perjorative and designed to be as unpleasant as possible…but then you have to ask what is the BBC’s own excuse for its compromised journalism?

The Telegraph may have altered its editorial to please its advertisers but then it is a commercial enterprise and the paper only exists because of its ability to make money from that advertising.  The BBC on the other hand has no such problems.  It has a licence to print money.

It’s coverage of the news and the way it allows its own bias and values to colour that news is far more damaging to democracy than the Telegraph’s actions.  The BBC has a vast audience that takes it on trust that the BBC is worthy of that trust and provides them with authentic, unadulterated news that helps to inform their decisions about politics and world events and therefore what the BBC tells them is more likely to be taken on trust than anything from a newspaper.

The BBC, as this blog exists to identify, abuses that trust and, as its HSBC story illustrates, seeks to change the political landscape and shape it to its own liking…preferrably with a Labour government ensconced at the next election…never mind the Middle East and climate change issues that the BBC interferes in rather than limiting itself to its job of reporting, not making, the news.

And on that subject, thanks to Guest Who in the comments, there is this…

Stephen Woolfe MEP: We must look at what a £22m bung from the EU has done at the BBC

“BBC bias in favour of the EU ‘project’ has been obvious for years. However, figures on the Financial Transparency website of the European Commission now indicate just how deeply the BBC benefits from the goodwill of the EU elite. Between 2007 and 2013 the BBC was paid more than £22m by the European Union.”

“These funds are not identified as EU money in the BBC’s annual report.”

“This is not the only fraud in BBC news coverage. Current affairs programmes often interview allegedly independent ‘experts’ on EU issues without mentioning the ‘experts’ receive funding from EU institutions.”

The BBC received from the EU, by year:
2007  €1,943,146
2008  €6,336,295
2009  €3,498,043
2010  €6,034,385
2011  €354,954
2012   €5,269,083
2013 €6,744,151

Total: €30,180,057 (£22,382,997 at exchange rate Feb 18, 2015)

 

Not forgetting that £15,000 Roger Harrabin received from a climate change propaganda centre..

A senior BBC journalist, acting on behalf of the BBC accepted £15,000 to fund seminars from an organisation including the university at the heart of the ‘Climategate’ scandal – and later went on to cover the story without declaring an interest to viewers..

 

MPs say BBC must reveal details of journalists’ commercial deals

MPs have demanded that the BBC reveals details of all commercial deals its journalists have with other organisations, amid fears of an increasing number of conflicts of interest affecting their work.

 

 

 

All that fuss about news content being  driven or influenced by sponsors eh.  Shocking revelations of shady dealings at the Telegraph by Oborne.

At least the Guardian is open about it….much of its news output is paid and bought for by its sponsors…..not just an advertiser withdrawing its account if it didn’t like one story but massive news coverage on world events brought to you courtesy of outside money and influence….

Sponsored content, advertisement features and content supported by foundations

Guardian News & Media produces a variety of content with funding from outside parties.

These sources of revenue allow us to explore, in more depth than editorial budgets would otherwise allow, topics that we hope are of interest to Guardian and Observer readers. The presentation of the content makes clear how the content has been commissioned and produced, and who has funded it.

 

Only it’s not quite so clear cut…remember the Guardian’s coverage of the riots in 2011?

It seems its reporting was shaped by a very left wing organisation …..

The Joseph Rowntree and the Open Society Foundations supported the award-winning Reading the Riots series

Funny thing is, the Guardian says it tells you that a sponsor is involved and yet I can see no sign of that on the page…just this hint that the reports might be driven by an outside agency and its data…

Reading the Riots

A data-driven study into the causes and consequences of the August 2011 riots

 

Then there is a huge amount of news that comes by way of the Bill& Melinda Gates Foundation…

The BBC approach to reporting on immigration has been to not report on immigration, or at least to brush the concerns about any problems that immigration may bring aside.  They do this out of a fear that any indication that immigration is not all rainbows and cupcakes will open the door to the army of jackbooted fascists that are just waiting in the shadows for any chance to take advantage of a change in Public awareness and mood on immigration and thence it will be a short skip and a jump towards deportations and…. worse.

The same mindset is perfectly illustrated by Dan Hodges in his latest hyperbolic gaspings.

Dan Hodges is normally reasoned and equitable…until the subject of race and immigration comes up whence he loses his marbles and all sense goes out the window

Thanks Chelsea fans. Now we know what proper racists look like…

This is where letting people get away with the odd remark about immigration leads

 

So we mustn’t talk about controlling immigration then?

Hodges tries to link UKIP with the Chelsea fan’s racism but somehow I doubt UKIP’s immigration policies had anything to do with their innate racist feelings.

They’ve been long in existence…

As a 15-year-old I attended most of Chelsea’s home matches. The fans of Stamford Bridge’s famous Shed knew me as ‘Crombie Ron’ in reference to the smart coat I wore in the winter. Crombies used to be uniform wear for self-respecting skinheads but for me, the thick, warm coat was mainly for practical purposes on the freezing terraces.

The Shed dedicated a song to me: “Oh Crombie Ron is colourful, Oh Crombie Ron is colourful. He’s a coon, he’s a wog, he’s a nigger. Oh Crombie Ron is colourful.”

It was the early 1970s and racism on the terraces was as normal as a half-time cup of tea.

 

Hodges dodges around the problem that UKIP’s immigration policy hasn’t the slightest hint of racism in it by saying that just mentioning in passing anything that links immigration to problems in the world must be fueling racism…

Hell, even Nigel Farage will take a break from attacking the Romanians, and the migrants clogging up the M3, and the people talking in funny languages during the rush hour, and condemn it.

Trouble is Farage was right as the BBC itself pointed out when it reported the concerns the Labour government had about Romanian immigration…

Ms Ryan put out another document saying that 45,000 “undesirable” criminal migrants from Romania and Bulgaria could settle in the UK next year.’

 

And a couple of million immigrants all wanting to use cars undoubtedly do help to clog up the roads…just common sense and numbers not racism….and why wouldn’t Farage feel uncomfortable when living in Britain and yet there being no British people around him?  The science backs him up saying people feel a lack of trust and there is a breakdown in civic health when surrounded by a greater diversity in a community….denying such feelings is disengenuous of Hodges.

Hodges said about Rotherham….

Those who tried to cover up the racial aspect of these crimes did so because they feared giving “oxygen” to racists. But what kind of perversion is that? You counter racism by covering up racism?

The children of Rotherham were abused racially, as well as sexually, physically and psychologically. We don’t just have a right to say that, we have an obligation.

Hosges seeks to cover up the problems associated with immigration for fear of giving ‘oxygen’ to racists just as the BBC does.

Surely we have an obligation to talk about immigration….mass uncontrolled immigration which itself fuels racism and conflict as people feel themselves under siege and put at a disadvantage as immigrants take their jobs, housing, and school places and cause them ever longer waits for NHS treatment.

Most people have no problem with controlled immigration and welcome it but to have it rammed down their throats creates anger and consequently antagonistic feelings about immigrants.

People like Hodges, and the BBC, who wish to kick any debate about immigration into the long grass, serve no one’s interests, least of all it might be said, the immigrants’ themselves, many of whom actually agree that immigration should be controlled.

This is UKIP’s policy on immigration…

Controlling and managing our borders 

– UKIP recognises the benefits of limited, controlled immigration.

– UKIP will leave the EU, and take back control of our borders. Work permits will be permitted to fill skills gaps in the UK jobs market.

– We will extend to EU citizens the existing points-based system for time-limited work permits. Those coming to work in the UK must have a job to go to, must speak English, must have accommodation agreed prior to their arrival, and must have NHS-approved health insurance.

– Migrants will only be eligible for benefits (in work or out of work)  when they have been paying tax and NI for five years and will only be eligible for permanent residence after ten years.

– UKIP will reinstate the primary purpose rule for bringing foreign spouses and children to the UK.

– UKIP will not offer an amnesty for illegal immigrants or those gaining British passports through fraud.

– UKIP will return to the principles of the UN Convention of Refugees which serves to protect the most vulnerable.

The BBC has a disturbing habit of using spokesmen for Islam and Islamic issues whom anyone who had done a bit of research might think twice about using….Mo Ansar,  Moazzam Begg and anyone from MPACUK come immediately to mind…..not to mention the MCB.

Here for example is how the BBC referred to Sheikh Haitham Al Haddad in 2010….

There is some difference of opinion among Muslim scholars whether make-up from a high street store or supermarket is allowed to be used by Muslim women.

Sheikh Haitham Al-Haddad, a leading Imam in the UK, says there are two schools of thought.

 

Only last September they referred to him like this…

Two high-profile imams in the UK have made a direct appeal to Islamic State to free British hostage Alan Henning.

In a YouTube video, Shakeel Begg and Haitham al-Haddad said there was no justification for holding the 47-year-old, who was captured in Syria.

And yet just a few months later he was in a BBC Panorama film about Islamic extremism as a ‘radical preacher’.

Not to mention Shakeel Begg…who in January decided to sue the BBC when Andrew Neil said he was an extremist…

Imam at mosque where Lee Rigby’s killers worshipped sues the BBC for calling him an ‘extremist who encourages religious violence’

 

What a difference a couple of months can make.

Harry’s Place has written up many articles about Haddad…and this is the latest…

Denial fans the flames

It is bad enough that the world is plagued by one terrorist atrocity after another.

Yet there are some things which can make it even worse.

Denial is chief among them. It is common amongst British Muslims. Oh no, it’s not Muslims who did that, it’s a conspiracy! The real culprits are usually the CIA or Mossad, of course.

This way horrific violence can be simultaneously disowned and used to fan the flames of hatred. It’s intensely perverse and disturbing as well as deranged.

Run this short clip of hate preacher Haitham Haddad to see a recent example. Ever so clever, he has figured out that Islamic State is all “a big conspiracy”.

Haddad’s conspiracy idiocy alone should make him a laughing stock, left to babble in a corner.

Instead it is part of his appeal, and it is considerable.

It is an appalling and deeply alarming state of affairs.

 

Denial isn’t just common amongst British Muslims but it has a good home at the BBC which turns a blind eye all too often to the real messages that such people preach as long as they say something agreeable to Western ears when on the BBC making Islam seem reasonable, peaceful and tolerant.

How long before Haddad is back on the BBC, just as Begg [Moazzem or Shakeel, take your pick] is and Ansar, even though he has been exposed…and by one of the BBC’s top investigative programmes at that?

Watch this space.

It’s that old ‘mindest’ thing again.

The good Robert Fisk, where would we be without him?  The Independent doesn’t need a cartoonist with such a man who can paint a scathing comic picture with a mere 10,000 words.

Fisk, you couldn’t make him up, and surprisingly he is real, a real, living, green ink splurging journalist, he’s not some comic character dreamt up by Private Eye to run as a spoof columnist ala The Vicar of St Albions.

Fisk, the man who thought the Taliban had every right to punch his lights out for all the wrongs the West has inflicted upon the world, now wants to talk to ISIS about peace…

Talking to Isis could lead to peace, yet for some reason we’re not allowed to do it

Not sure exactly what he would offer in return for that peace, but as Tariq Ramadan suggests (23 mins in), peace for Muslims is a world run by Muslims on Islamic lines, we must start growing beards at the very least, very soon.

I paraphrase his thoughts…

The question is ‘Is Islam a religion of violence’? but I’m not going to answer that, we shouldn’t talk about that.  For me there is no bad Islam and no good Islam. People are naturally violent and religion channels that violence to serve its purpose….[but he then turns it on its head]….the problem is not the book [Koran] but the reader….but the reader is reading a text that accepts people are violent and encourages people to use violence.
Use violence to move towards peace…[but what is peace in Islam?….the domination of Islam.]

 

See below for what he really thinks about how Islam should proceed in non-Muslim countries.

And as ISIS has made clear their actual intentions…

“All crusaders: safety for you will be only wishes, especially if you are fighting us all together. Therefore we will fight you all together…..The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama Bin Laden’s body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood.”

“We will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission.”

…who can doubt what any negotiations would entail?

Still it’s good to talk.  It’s the same mindset that the BBC promotes…don’t fight the terrorists, embrace them, talk to them, surrender to them.

BBC One – Al Qaeda: Time to Talk?

Peter Taylor, BBC journalist, wanted us to talk to Al Qaeda…

Rhetorical and actual violence indicates that many years of struggle lie ahead. Taylor, like everyone else, knows there are no quick solutions to all this, but he considers the question of whether talking can help.

Taylor shows how, even at the height of IRA activity, a channel of communication existed with London which even Margaret Thatcher allowed to continue.

 

The Independent concludes…

Partly because of such contacts, the Provisional IRA has now passed into history.

 

Really?  The war goes on.  From this Sunday…

The smoking gun: how cigarettes became the IRA’s new weapon

Labour’s Margaret Hodge laid about the head of the HMRC for having lost track of an email from the supposed HSBC whistleblower in which he claimed to have information on tax evasion that HMRC might be interested in.

He also sent one to other governments and intelligence agencies and our own Foreign Office, in fact to the private office of our very own Foreign Secretary, who was at the time, David Miliband, brother of Ed Miliband who is now leading the campaign against HSBC and tax evasion in his election campaign…awkward.

Question.

Why has the BBC paid absolutely no interest in this vital second email that would lay Labour open to very serious criticism in the same way that the HMRC has been eviscerated?

The BBC is one of the most powerful and richly resourced news organisations in the world and yet it pays no attention to this subject… any investigative journalist worth his salt would be burrowing away at this story with a great deal of vigour and relish.  It would be the scoop of the year to find that missing email.  A nail in the coffin for Labour.

A nail in Labour’s coffin.  An end to their election campaign based upon that very slippery ‘moral highground’ that they seek to occupy.

Maybe the BBC doesn’t want to look as it would be a shame to waste all that champagne that’s on ice at the moment waiting for a Labour victory.

Or maybe they’re just bad journalists…from the Independent:

Why is the BBC just so bad at TV news?

It’s quite a charge: that a mixture of cuts, caution and complacency has destroyed the corporation’s ability and will to report or analyse events with any rigour. But the distinguished critic Michael Church is sticking by it. As part of his personal mission to revive standards, he has been glued to the Beeb’s bulletins and current affairs programmes. And, in his opinion, the BBC could learn a lot from competitors such as Al Jazeera – once it’s got its balls back.