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Ultraviolence:
So the hot-topic is this : The BBC, is it BIASED?
I would say it is.
Look on the front page; they're still hammering global warming and renewable energy.
curzon:
The BBC's John Simpson has been favouring the readers of today's Daily Mail with his current reading matter. Simpo especially recommends a new book of essays, "Point to Point Navigation", by Gore Vidal. This is the same Gore Vidal who published an essay claiming that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington were part of a conspiracy instigated by the Bush Junta.
Simpo says: "I like Vidal's world view: he has a fierce, uncontaminated sense of what's right and wrong."
Perhaps this may help us to understand what's wrong with the type of people who run the BBC.
Socialism is Necrotizing:
Gore Vidal does not say that Bush did 9/11
watch here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1...h?
v=1gRqz6NGVfU
and here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8...h?
v=8OsnQSFlQ_g
Biodegradable:
More stupid use of 'quotes'.
Insurgent leader 'held' in Iraq
A key leader of an al-Qaeda linked insurgent group has been arrested in Iraq, according to media reports.
So, if he's been arrested he's held, not 'held'.
You're such a pendant!
I think you mean pedant
See what i mean!
will:
Gore Vidal does not say that Bush did 9/11
Earlier than the YouTube clips, Vidal was paving the way for the Michael Meacher stance, i.e. the US deliberately(?) failed to prevent the attacks.
Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11
Sunday October 27, 2002
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/
i...,819931,00.html
Michael:
Thanks so much guys for what you're doing, especially about the Anti-American stance.
I've written the Editors about bias against the Iraqi war several days ago regarding reporting only the attrocities of the terrorist against innocents.
For several days I watched as they did not report one positive story about American and British forces in Iraq either capturing or killing terrorist, insurgents, or Al Qaeda.
They finally added the story about the 'insurgents' captured as they put it in quotes.
I asked them what did the BBC report on WWII against the Nazi's? The only way people can be fully informed is to have the entire truth about the war.
I'd recommend reading http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/ for a look at two Iraqi brothers hoping for a new, free and democratic Iraq. They report a balanced look from an Iraqi perspective and are pro-victory for America, Britain and Coalition forces.
I sent the Military link to BBC as well showing them that daily our troops capture and kill anywhere from 20-100 terrorist, militia, criminals, Al Qaeda a day.
But that is not all they're doing. Our country has poured in up to 22 billion dollars for reconstruction efforts to supply clean water, electricity, thousands of schools, hospitals, medic emergency units around the country, and vaccines for every single child in the country.
Over 300,000 Iraqis have been trained for military, police, medics, nurses, civilian and government conract jobs.
Our country has done everything from building parks and recreation to installing sewage treatment plants and cleaning garbage off of streets. They've sponsored Civilian leadership councils in all the Iraqi provinces and leading cities, even down to the smallest of towns.
Many Iraqis even in the most hotly contested areas are now joining Americans in the fight against Al Qaeda and old Baathist regime holdouts.
Plus, the gloves were finally taken off on all sides. Forces now go after Shia and Sunni. This has made a huge difference and now sectarian violence is dropping, as a result so to are the daily kills in Baghdad.
Here is the US Multi-National Forces in Iraq page, that help shine light on what is truly happening.
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.html
Just a few days ago they had reports of you Brits helping us out!
Now here are the Press Releases:
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.ph...0461&
Itemid=128
In the last three days there have been 123 terrorist captured and killed.
Now imagine if the BBC were reporting this balanced information?
Look at all the pictures to from the Military side. Notice they're helping children, women, civilians get their lives back together. They're rushing to save lives of infants and Iraqis.
But this does not fit into the Biased BBC's anti-war position. Therefore they do not acknowledge we're winning hearts and minds of Iraqis. And we're also freeing a people long oppressed by Tyrants.
I asked the BBC do they think only Europeans have a right to freedom?
The BBC has only reported One single story that I've seen from our progress the entire week. That story is posted on the MNF-I press release above.
I am not sure if they posted it due to my nagging or not. But I hope they do more of it. Because people need to hear the whole truth.
Americans are not hateful, bloodthirsty and we surely do not want to rule the world.
Thank God Tony Blair has stood by us along with the Aussies and now the Canadians who recently elected a Conservative PM.
Thanks
Ten Wasted Years:
More Nonsense from a Dreadful Government
"Don't like ID cards? Hand over your passport"
Anybody who objects to their personal details going on the new "Big Brother" ID cards database will be banned from having a passport.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
pages...in_page_id=1770
nbc:
On the subject of Global Warming, this is interesting: http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2007/03/fraud-of-
global-warming-true-c02-record.html
Fred:
Throwing money around like confetti, Loaning money on ridiculously overvalued houses, values that have been only sustained by reckless lending..(same applies in the UK)
"New Century set to fail, analysts warn"
America's second-largest sub-prime mortgage lender New Century Financial has been thrown a $1bn (£520m) lifeline but its shares still slumped a further 20pc after analysts said bankruptcy was almost inevitable.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money.../
cnewcent10.xml
will:
A letter from those nice people at the TV Licensing bureau says
Without a licence it is illegal to use equipment such as TV sets, ....., PCs or mobile phones at this address to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV.
So if you don't have a TV, it seems you will have to be careful about the facilities available from your PC & mobile, as no doubt it will be assumed that you do watch TV programmes using those devices.
UK Daily Pundit:
Pompous Patten Tipped as next BBC Chairman
http://the-daily-pundit.blogspot...s-next-
bbc.html
Biodegradable:
Crowd miraculously doubles in size while listening to Chavez - next, water into wine!
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.../30942/diff/1/
2
Version 1
Chavez attacks Bush 'domination'
Sat Mar 10 01:30:34 GMT 2007
[...]
Mr Bush arrived in the capital of neighbouring Uruguay, Montevideo, as Mr Chavez addressed the crowd of 20,000.
Version 2
Chavez attacks Bush 'domination'
Sat Mar 10 04:40:20 GMT 2007
[...]
Mr Bush arrived in the capital of neighbouring Uruguay, Montevideo, as Mr Chavez addressed the crowd of 40,000.
The Fat Contractor:
will | 10.03.07 - 10:21 am |
I think it has always been the case that if you have equipment that is capable of receiving and displaying tv broadcasts then you are required by law to have a licence.
You can own a video/DVD recorder without a licence as long as you can't display the broadcast. There is a grey are over monitors attached to video recorders used just for displaying VHS video streams if they are also capable of receiving broadcasts. A friend of mine had some hassle years ago with the LA over this but 'got away' with it because he had no arial and the video was not plugged into anything but the monitor.
A PC that can receive broadcast signals and display, i.e through a tv card, them needs a licence. IIRC a PC that downloads content and displays them does not. Won't be long before it does though.
How exactly they plan to collect the licence fee from mobile phone holders is anyones guess. Hopefully the impossiblity of collecting these fees will cause the end of the licence. Yes, I know, it's a nice dream only.
archduke:
"Michael | 10.03.07 - 6:40 am |"
thanks for posting that Michael.
we get nothing but bad news from the BBC - nothing about the reconstruction or the elimination of terrorists.
just love the no-nonsense straightforward reporting of that mnf-iraq site.
have a look at this:
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.ph...0482&
Itemid=128
you would *never* see the BBC reporting that way.
archduke:
hys:
"Do some murderers spend too long in jail?"
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/...3642&
#paginator
oh dear. "bring back hanging" seems to be the overwhelming opinion.
therefore , why is the reintroduction of capital punishment not on the agenda of any major political party?
Biodegradable:
Hahahahaha!
Insurgent leader 'held' in Iraq has now been changed to:
Insurgent 'leader' held in Iraq
Standby for Insurgent leader held in 'Iraq'
archduke:
"US troops hold Iraq 'insurgents'"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
6434567.stm
they cant bring themselves to say "capture" , as that would imply some sort of American victory.
and they do it again here:
"Insurgent leader held in Iraq"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
6436569.stm
not captured or arrested. just "held".
"Fresh attacks hit shia pilgrims"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
6426579.stm
not only do that "attacks" self detonate all by themseles, they're "fresh" too!
"Many die in Iraq cafe bomb attack"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
6428451.stm
well, they do mention a suicide bomber in the first sentence - why not in the headline?
"Man dies in Gaza crossing chaos"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
6429967.stm
the first two paragraphs refer to the "police". so one would suspect that it might be the Israeli police?
its not until the final sentence in the article that you find out who the "Police" are:
"The Rafah border crossing began operating in November 2005 under Palestinian control with EU monitors"
pathetic.
GCcooper:
UK Daily Pundit writes:
"Pompous Patten Tipped as next BBC Chairman"
Well they were never going to pick a conservative, were they?
'Fat Pang' would fit the wannabe patrician mould to perfection.
Biodegradable:
Well they were never going to pick a conservative, were they?
Patten is a Conservative!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chr...ki/
Chris_Patten
Christopher Francis Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes, CH, PC (born 12 May 1944) is a prominent British Conservative politician and a Patron of the Tory Reform Group.
Anonymous:
yeah.....and Blair is a "CND loving Union Man"....lol.
Lee Moore:
Yes Patten is a Conservative. Not a conservative.
archduke:
Patten is also an uber europhile and transnazi.
he'll fit right in.
Bryan:
Standby for Insurgent leader held in 'Iraq'
Biodegradable | 10.03.07 - 1:47 pm
Yes, that's the way it's going. They'll justify the quotation marks by moaning about Iraq's borders being artificially drawn up by Westerners.
Jon:
"why is the reintroduction of capital punishment not on the agenda of any major political party?"
Because no party could bring back the death penalty under the European Convention of Human Rights. All the main political parties are not advocating leaving the EU and without full withdrawel, the British parliment cannot pass anything. 80% of all laws come from Brussels not London.
Biodegradable:
Bryan | 10.03.07 - 3:55 pm
Things are getting pretty whacky at the BBC Department of Funny Quotes:
US troops hold Iraq 'insurgents'
Insurgent 'leader' held in Iraq
Biodegradable:
I can hear the sound of yawning, or maybe snoring, in the BBC News Room.
From ynetnews.com:
Palestinian infighting breaks out, despite unity talks
Infighting between Hamas and Fatah continued Saturday afternoon when gunmen stormed the campus of the pro-Fatah Al Quds University, and shot and wounded a student council member from Fatah, a Palestinian security source said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Gaza shooting.
A few hours earlier, in the West Bank, Fatah gunmen had shot at the convoy of a Hamas minister, the first factional violence since Palestinian unity talks began a month ago.
Officials from both sides said Wasfi Kibha, minister of prisoner affairs, was unharmed in the shooting near Tubas, a town near Nablus. The incident sparked a gun battle in the area between Hamas and Fatah members in which one person was lightly wounded, Hamas sources said.
Meanwhile the BBC tells us how Olmert planned the war against Hezballah months ago, and how the IDF is using 'human' shields...
GCcooper:
Biodegradable rites:
"Patten is a Conservative!"
Oh dear. Irony is a bit lost in this medium, isn't it?
That was why I spelt 'conservative' with a lower case C.
Believe me, I am well aware of Chris Patten's miserable waste of space.
Ultraviolence:
If everybody pays their TV licence that means 100% approval!
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it's vapourized essence.
Biodegradable:
Oh dear. Irony is a bit lost in this medium, isn't it?
GCcooper | 10.03.07 - 6:48 pm
I'm not doing very well lately am I?
What with my ovine, bovine, pocine confusion, and all...
argent:
Everybody pays their TV licence because otherwise they would be fined or put in jail. However, the money raised from the TV licence only goes to the BBC, and not to any other TV company. Odd, isn't it?
By the way, your second sentence should read "its (not it's) vapourized essence". Whatever that may mean.
Little Black Sambo:
Insurgent leader held "in" Iraq.
Robin:
I listened to the Now Show again yesterday (the anger I get from it helps me drive when Im tired )
The main group that the sneering pinkos wanted to try to poke fun at were old people.
Actually it was rather boring.It didn`t irritate me much and of course it`s not funny.
Anonanon:
http://millenniumprojecttwo.blog...al-
warming.html
"In 2004 the BBC did a whole week of programmes on 'climate change is a greater threat than terrorism" by the UKs Chief Scientist. I contacted them, told them I was the original author, the BBC read the original work, agreed that I was the original author not Sir David. As I was not a media personality or celebrity they did not feel it was appropriate for me to take part. The BBC did a weeks programming on the work but did not have the original author.
What was not done was to read the other 200 articles I had produced. I did not think climate change was entirely man made neither do I think it is a problem, it is a symptom. Neither do I think it is the greatest environmental challenge. I just wanted to deflect some of the lunacy of the war against Iraq and try and get some focus on the environment."
Anonanon:
The film version of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300 will be out in the UK at the end of March (can’t wait). Miller is just the sort of guy the Today programme loves to interview nowadays - except he thinks terrorists, not right-wing Americans, are the real threat to world freedom. It’ll be interesting to see if his film gets a mention amdist all the usual anti-war stuff.
Anonymous:
Tories new campaign to Loose the next election:
Limp wristed Cameron panders to any minority:
"2,000 green air miles then you pay, say Tories"
"Radical moves to levy huge air taxes on anyone who takes more than one foreign holiday a year are planned by the Tories as part of a new campaign to save the planet from global warming".
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...70&
in_a_source=
"Greenhouse effect is a myth, say scientists"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
pages...in_page_id=1965
Jon:
Anonymous:
"Tories new campaign to Loose the next election:"
The problem with all political parties these days is that their policies are based on BBC news output.
Watching Robin Aitkin on 18 Doughty Street last night left me in no doubt that the BBC hold such power that they can destroy any politician that does not see their world view. David Cameron is another spineless leader, who does not listen to the public but prefers to take aboard any half witted control freakery policy which may get him sypmathetic headlines from the BBC.
Because of this "fawning" he cannot see that the public at large are begining to doubt all this "manmade" global warming hysteria. And most of all if the "middle classes" begin to suffer through high green taxes they will turn on him in droves.
What the "Conservatives" need is a leader who has the guts to have principles and stick by them. The writing is on the wall - but the politicians in their cosy world are blind. It will come back to haunt them.
Biodegradable:
Life in BBC La-La-La Land:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6426441.stm
[...]
Ever since Hamas came to power, some Palestinians have been concerned that the Islamic movement would enforce a strictly Islamic interpretation on the society.
However most people say there has been little discernable change.
Analysts say Hamas has been too busy dealing with the international community's economic embargo, imposed because of Hamas's refusal to recognise Israel, to impose an Islamic agenda such as banning alcohol sales.
But there are now fears that the book ban could be the beginning of a more radical programme.
[...]
Contrast and Compare with The Real World:
http://www.dailyherald.com/busin...y.asp?
id=287471
[...]
About 45 Internet outlets have been bombed since Dec. 1, according to figures from Gaza’s Central Police Office. The attacks are occurring against a backdrop of intense infighting between Fatah, the main faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Hamas, the Islamist party and militia that has grown into the Palestinians’ dominant political force. The street clashes have led to general lawlessness.
“Gaza society tends toward conservatism, and some people are suspicious of the Internet, but the attacks on Internet cafes come in the context of general chaos,” said Isam Younis, director of Gaza’s independent Al-Mizan Center for Human Rights. “Simply, there’s an absence of law.”
A group called the Swords of Islamic Righteousness has claimed responsibility for the attacks. In a leaflet distributed at Al-Azhar University last month, it said it attacked Internet cafes “which are trying to make a whole generation preoccupied with matters other than jihad and worship.”
The group also claimed to have blown up the car of someone who played his stereo loudly. And it has firebombed pharmacies it suspects of peddling narcotics and recreational drugs, police say.
[...]
Advice from the BBC:
"Put you fingers in you ears and sing 'La-La-La, I can't hear you'"
Ultraviolence:
[Taken from a BBC front page article caption]
SHIT IS GOOD :
"1985: Gorbachev is new Soviet leader
All change at the Kremlin"
All change at the KremlinAll change at the KremlinAll change at the KremlinAll change at the KremlinAll change at the KremlinAll change at the KremlinAll change at the Kremlin
GRAMMARE!
garypowell:
Please all be so kind if you will to reference my comments on the below post if you have not done so already.
Thank you
best wishes
Gary Powell
Anonymous:
Green tax won't help the planet or Tories
"Some of those dissenting voices were on display in The Great Global Warming Swindle, a powerful programme broadcast last week. Channel 4 is to be congratulated for not being intimidated or bullied out of transmitting the documentary: it is difficult to imagine today's BBC having the courage to assault a doctrine so entrenched in politically correct opinion".
Mr Cameron deserves more than the benefit of the doubt for his attempts to widen the appeal of his party and change perceptions of its motives. But he is running risks with these proposals: Labour may portray him as wanting to increase taxes on hard-working people by penalising those who spend their money on holidays for their families. Furthermore, there are now signs that the so-called "unanimous consensus" on climate change is disintegrating. Mr Cameron may be about to learn that the danger inherent in following political fashions is that they can change very quickly.
More
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opini...3/11/
dl1101.xml
Fred:
"Islamic extremists 'infiltrate Oxbridge'
"Leading universities including Oxford and Cambridge have been targeted by Islamic extremists who remain widely active on campuses, a prominent academic is warning".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...1/
noxford11.xml
Peter Pryor:
Heading up the "other News" on the BBC website is the story "Chavez launches biting US attack". Quite why this story is news completely eludes me. It seems it is just another opportunity to produce some anti US propoganda and praise Chavez to the skies. Even the pretence of balance is completely half -hearted. The BBC is really starting to sicken me.
argus:
"It is difficult to imagine today's BBC... challenging politically-correct opinion."
That is because today's BBC is the main mouthpiece for politically-correct opinion. The term means "correct by the standards of leftists and feminists." The current global-warming racket is just another means of promoting the leftist agenda. The fact that Cameron has decided to join in -- at the moment when the whole fad is becoming increasingly exposed -- is an indication of how weak the Tory leadership has become.
Alan:
Least we forget: Madrid, 11 March 2004.
"Three years after bombs ripped through four Madrid train stations, killing 191 people and injuring nearly 2,000, Spanish officials and experts say the country is probably in more danger now than ever as extremist groups re-organise just beyond Spain's southern coast.
"Even as the trial began here in February, more arrests and prosecutions were being announced, and senior officials believe that radicals in Morocco and other parts of northern Africa, many with ties to Spain, increasingly take their cues from al-Qaeda."
( Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, 11 March).
will:
Can't manage to spend all the licence fee income on broadcasting? Never mind throw some money at a US film maker -
Allen, who claims that he pays no attention to reviews or box office grosses, is running out of audiences and financial backing. He once scored regular critical hits with films such as Annie Hall, Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters, but in the past decade his movies have lost their cachet.
When Allen looked abroad for help the BBC came to his rescue and funded most of Match Point. The corporation also put up £500,000 towards the £2m needed for Scoop, but instead of a hoped for cinematic release last year it went straight to DVD.
http://
entertainment.timesonline...icle1497203.ece
max:
Peter Pryor,
Quite why this story is news completely eludes me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...cas/
4861320.stm
Exactly. It's the leading story on the international front page. Chavez throws a temper tantrum after Bush ignores him, as is expected from a grown-up, and the Beeb is all over the "firebrand lefty" moron.
Take a look at the ridiculous map they provide on the right hand side - "Latin America tours: Bush vs Chavez", the point of which is what exactly? It appears that Bush won't lower himself to the level of Chavez's childish rants. The BBC, however, try as hard as they can to elevate his position and to give space to his vacuous message.
Also, it seems that Bush is responsible for "losing" South America.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...cas/
4861320.stm
It is one of the most important and yet largely untold stories of our world in 2006. George W Bush has lost Latin America.
And..
For his part, President Bush even suggested that the United States had no more important ally than... wait for it... Mexico.
Maybe he has a point, but think of a BBC story about, say, global warming that contains the sneer levels reserved only to Boosh:
For their part, climate scientists even suggested that the global warming felt around the world is caused by... wait for it... CO2 emmisions.
Can you tell the difference between the Beeb and Liberal Larry anymore?
max:
emissions even. pimf.
Ten Wasted Years:
More Nonsense from a Dreadful Government:
"Government proposals to charge households according to the weight of rubbish they generate could cost families more than £1,000 a year, a senior council chief has warned.
Labour has drawn up plans for a pay-as-you-throw system in a bid to meet new recycling targets".
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...70&
in_a_source=
.:
Youtube Video
Channel 4 The Great Global Warming Swindle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u...h?
v=u6IPHmJWmDk
.
GCcooper:
TWY writes:
"Labour has drawn up plans for a pay-as-you-throw system in a bid to meet new recycling targets"."
No doubt we can now expect a string of hard-hitting, investigative programmes from the BBC, delving into the murky business of recycling, exposing the lies, corruption and incompetence that runs through the programme, like letters in a stick of rock?
This to be followed by a detailed examination of how 'Green' measures are used by politicians as stealth taxes?
No, I thought not.
Ralph:
'The BBC, however, try as hard as they can to elevate his position and to give space to his vacuous message.'
The BBC have their pets who they always report on or interview. Have they every had a week's broadcasting that doesn't feature Yasmin whatever Brown?
GCcooper:
Ralph wonders:
"Have they every had a week's broadcasting that doesn't feature Yasmin whatever Brown?"
Or Billy Bragg?
Alan:
"Has the BBC fallen down on the job?" by Tim Luckhurst, 11 Mar.
http://news.independent.co.uk
(go to 'Business').
First paragraph:
"From the General Strike of 1926 to Andrew Gilligan's 'sexed-up' dodgy dossier exclusive 77 years later, the BBC has struggled to define its relation with government. The corporation's most ardent admirers acknowledge that its independence has often been compromised by a reluctance to confront ministers."
Bodo:
Today (Sunday) the newspapers and Sky News and ITN are all reporting, and sometimes leading with, the appalling standards of health care available to returning injured troops -- some with severe mental problems are waiting 18 months for treatment, and despite Blair's promises several months ago, made after a soldier received death threats from Muslim patients, others are still being treated on public wards. The Times, the Observer, the Independent, the Telegraph are all reporting this, but there is not the slightest mention of it anywhere on the BBC. It's not on BBC 24, nor anywhere on the web site that I can see.
Once again, a classic case of censorship by omission from the BBC. They are extremely reluctant to report anything which reflects badly on the Labour government, and they have little time or sympathy for injured troops.
Jon:
Judging from the comments from the article linked to by Anonymous | 11.03.07 - 7:04 am Boy Dave is going to lead the “Conservatives” back into the wilderness for many years to come.
“Reading the comments on this proposal, it seems obvious to me that this is a real vote loser.
I say that as a lifelong Labour voter (sorry folks) who is considering voting Conservative at the next election.
Memo to Dave: alienating your core vote AND potential new supporters is A BAD THING.
Posted by Rob Miller on March 11, 2007 11:00 AM”
“Cameron really is doing his best to lose the next election.The conservatives must ditch him now to stand any chance.
Posted by Alan Bent on March 11, 2007 10:56 AM”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opini...3/11/ dl1101.xml
drunkenblogging:
Cringe over-drive
the BBC refer to black hip-hop group Pretty Rick as an "urban" band in regards to a shooting at a "music event"
http://drunkenblogging.blogspot.com/
Bodo:
Added to my post above concerning the standard of health care for injured troops;
I see now (2 p.m.) the BBC are featuring the story about the atrocious treatment troops have been receiving, except they are reporting it entirely from the government's point of view. The headline is; " The government insists that troops deserve the highest standard of medical treatment...". The brief interview with the Minister later in the bulletin is simply an opportunity for him to issue the rebuttal, consisting of "there is no problem, and if there is it is due to the Tories" -- the Minister is not challenged on any of the points he makes. And whilst every other news organisation in the country seems to have made the effort to track down and interview some of the people who are complaining about their treatment, the BBC obviously sees no need.
In other words, the BBC coverage of the story consists of little more than an opportunity for government minister to rubbish a story which the BBC didn't report on in the first place.
It is a joke and absolute effing joke. The BBC has become nothing more than the PR department of the Labour government.
Bodo:
Added to my post above concerning the standard of health care for injured troops;
I see now (2 p.m.) the BBC are featuring the story about the atrocious treatment troops have been receiving, except they are reporting it entirely from the government's point of view. The headline is; " The government insists that troops deserve the highest standard of medical treatment...". The brief interview with the Minister later in the bulletin is simply an opportunity for him to issue the rebuttal, consisting of "there is no problem, and if there is it is due to the Tories" -- the Minister is not challenged on any of the points he makes. And whilst every other news organisation in the country seems to have made the effort to track down and interview some of the people who are complaining about their treatment, the BBC obviously sees no need.
In other words, the BBC coverage of the story consists of little more than an opportunity for government minister to rubbish a story which the BBC didn't report on in the first place.
It is a joke and absolute effing joke. The BBC has become nothing more than the PR department of the Labour government.
Socialism is Necrotizing:
“Cameron really is doing his best to lose the next election.The conservatives must ditch him now to stand any chance.
Posted by Alan Bent on March 11, 2007 10:56 AM”
jon
I am delighted that Cameron looks like loosing the next election. He is a fraud and a Socialist and he rose to the position of leader by saying different things than he is saying now. Anyone interested in UK politics should welcome the fact that a pretty face and a pack of lies is no longer enough.
If it is to be the case that such a state of affairs throws up someone far, far worse than Cameron then so be it. The sooner the rout begins the better for us all.
The EURef blog has some of the best Cameron critiques going.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/
Socialism is Necrotizing:
Climate Change Swindle full version
http://terrorpets.com/index.php?...k=detail&
id=424
Ted S.:
Curzon wrote:
Simpo says: "I like Vidal's world view: he has a fierce, uncontaminated sense of what's right and wrong."
GWB has a strong moral sense of right and wrong, and he's pilloried for it.
will:
Michael | 10.03.07 - 6:40 am
I asked them what did the BBC report on WWII against the Nazi's?
The BBC & other Western media concentrates on
1 Our casualties
2.Muslim on Muslim attacks portrayed in a way that appears to allow the Western anti-war faction to regard the deaths as being by our hand, e.g. the Lancet 650,000 were all apparently killed by the US.
3.Civilian deaths caught in the cross fire.
As Michael notes, how on earth would we have succeeded in WWII with daily reporting only of our casualties & mistakes, with many, many dead French etc, let alone dead German civilians?
The Observer today reports how the Iraqi (& presumably Afghan) insurgents take advantage of our commanders fighting this war with one eye on the media.
Other officers said coalition rules of engagement were being used against the forces fighting the insurgency. 'They know when we can and cannot shoot, and use that against us,' said one officer, reflecting the comments of US soldiers in the field.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/
w...2031172,00.html
deegee:
GCcooper
No doubt we can now expect a string of hard-hitting, investigative programmes from the BBC, delving into the murky business of recycling, exposing the lies, corruption and incompetence that runs through the programme, like letters in a stick of rock?
It's interesting that given the BBC's compulsive reporting about Israel that they seem to have ignored the connection in Israel between bottle recycling and organized crime. Apparently without a Palestinian angle the Beeb isn't interested.
Let us never learn from Israel's experience in anything. AMEN.
Anonymous:
"“Cameron really is doing his best to lose the next election.The conservatives must ditch him now to stand any chance".
Your views are important. Make them count with the Conservatives.
Contact them by email
https://www.conservatives.com/
til...contact.us.page
GCcooper:
Anonymous writes:
"Your views are important. Make them count with the Conservatives."
You know, I'm starting to think the proper place to complain about Cameron is the BBC. He is, after all, the BBC Party candidate. Every policy he advocates seems designed to pander to BBC meejah dahlings.
Or perhaps 'The Newsnight Candidate' - that sounds about right.
dave t:
I quit the Tories last week. Cameron has been a disaster and the twits who run Central Office in Edinburgh are buffoons.
The problem is: who the heck do I vote for? None of the Above means that The Usual Suspects get back in.
Help!
archonix:
Vote for one of the minnows? The minor parties are starting to pick up rather a lot of votes in elections these days.
Jack Hughes:
Talking of Cameron. Yes I agree that his policies seem based around what the BBC will allow him to say without jumping down his throat.
He seems to have forgotten something, in his obsession with his Notting Hill focus groups. We have secret ballots. The idea of these is you can say what you really think in a ballot - you do not have to vote politely or vote for what is modish or politically correct.
Cameron has had an open goal in front of him for several months. But each time, he just trips over the ball instead of hitting the back of the net.
Ralph:
"“Cameron really is doing his best to lose the next election.The conservatives must ditch him now to stand any chance".
By getting to the best poll position for 20 years?
http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/ne...-
name_page.html
GCcooper:
Jack Hughes writes:
"Yes I agree that his policies seem based around what the BBC will allow him to say without jumping down his throat."
I genuinely believe that the blue rinses appointed Cameron largely because they believed he at least stood a chance against the BBC and the rest of the 'right on' media.
Previous Tory contenders had been routinely savaged by the BBC et al and rendered unelectable in all but a landslide caused by public revulsion at the incumbents.
Ironically, something of that sort might be about to happen, in which case they would have been far, far better off with David Davis.
These are dark times and the BBC has played much too great a role in them.
GCcooper:
Ralph writes:
"By getting to the best poll position for 20 years?"
See my comment, above. A sock puppet would stand a chance against ZaNuLabour at the moment.
That said, there's plenty of time yet for Brown to capitalise on Cameron's cluelessness. He seems intent nmaking it easy for them.
Fran:
OT but has anyone heard from our Tim in Baghdad recently?
Is he back in dear old Blighty and enjoying well deserved R & R - or taking a rest from commenting?
Are you out there Tim?
will:
That said, there's plenty of time yet for Brown to capitalise
Talking of capital, Brown will be looking for dramatic policy announcements on becoming PM - just like his 1 claim to fame with the BoE in 1997.
How about he sells off the BBC & Channel4 & cuts his debt figures at a stroke?
archduke:
the tories have lost the plot. completely off their rockers with their air tax proposals.
still waiting for their tax reduction proposals. i guess i'll be waiting and waiting on that one. i guess the uk now effectively has three socialist parties.
Jon:
"i guess the uk now effectively has three socialist parties."
Not icluding the greens, the snp, plaid cymru - It is how the BBC like it - the only race is now who can go the furthest to the left.
Ultraviolence:
Could anybody give a rough percentage estimate of the BBC's market 'penetration' (titter titter).
But yeah, a few months ago I just took it for granted that the BBC was sort of soft left.
Now I want it dead.
Jon:
Interesting fact about the Channel 4 documentary on global warming.
"Among those who attempted to prevent the film being shown at all was the Liberal Democrat spokesman on the environment, Chris Huhne, who, without having seen the programme, wrote to Channel 4 executives advising them in the gravest terms to reconsider their decision to broadcast it."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opini...3/12/
do1201.xml
It more than ever convinces me that the "science" on gobal warming put forward by these political parties is a sham. How can anyone, if they agree with the aledged man made global warming or not, seek to gag any opposing views, unless they are certain themselves that what they are advocating is deepley flawed?
archduke:
"Scientists with impeccable credentials, emeritus professors and acknowledged experts in the field being hounded and professionally discredited for their reservations about an established orthodoxy: not a pretty sight."
Carl Sagan warned about this in his 1979 documentary "Cosmos". It was a segment about a guy who theorised that Jupiter was spat out of the Sun. the scientist was vilified and hounded out of his profession. Sagan pointed out that hounding out folks is NOT science - we should argue, debate - but not ruin peoples lives. a hive mind is a bad thing for science.a nd if that takes hold, then you can say bye bye to real science.
decades later, his dire predictions are now coming to fruition with "climate change" hysteria.
Jon:
archduke: Just as a matter of interest is Cosmos available on DVD?
Jon:
Yep - I was right - Boy Dave is losing it.
"Will someone from the Tory party please get rid off this jumped-up little lunatic? I have voted Tory all my life but I don't think I can vote for this raving looney. He forgets that the "green" electorate are mainly bearded sandal wearing lefties. Climate change is not all about CO2 emissions. It is time for the Tories to talk to the "other" scientists and not the one the government wheels out and endorses. Our scientists are often being denied a democratic freedom of speech. Cameron out!
Ex Tory Voter, London
Recommended by 95 people "
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/...2223&
#paginator
And this is not the only dissenting voice.
Jon:
Another way to generate mony for the government?
"Dog lovers in Camden who walk more than four animals at a time face on-the-spot fines under a council crackdown."
"Fixed penalty tickets would mean we would not have to resort to the courts and people would not get a criminal record," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/engla...don/
6439581.stm
I wonder if Dave latches onto this one?
God how I hate this country.
Third World Britain:
.
"Patients risking MRSA in crowded wards"
Thousands of patients are at risk of contracting MRSA and other deadly "superbugs" because more than half of NHS hospitals are overcrowded, it is claimed today.
New figures show that 216 trusts in England - about 52 per cent of the total - have bed occupancy rates of 85 per cent or more - well above accepted safety levels.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/.../12/
nmrsa12.xml
Fred:
"The Tories are on about airfares yet again. This week, David Cameron and Gordon Brown will conduct a Dutch auction in how much to penalise you for environmental crimes. There is something oddly familiar about all this. Perhaps I am sceptical about the climate change campaign because its exponents remind me so much of the people I knew years ago on the Marxist Left: repressive, self-righteous, and inherently totalitarian".
"Green lobby must not stifle the debate"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opini...3/12/
do1201.xml
archduke:
bbc news bulletin on the radio.
cameron wants to tax us more. gordon brown perfers to educate us on ecofascism. so the Tories are the taxation party now. well, thats the impression i'm getting from the news headlines.
"archduke: Just as a matter of interest is Cosmos available on DVD?
Jon | 12.03.07 - 2:23 am "
i think there was a 20th anniversary edition that might be still available. but you can find it on all the major bittorrent sites.
the episode i refer to above is episode 4 - and the scientist in question is Immanuel Velikovsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Cos...ven_and_Hell.22
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Imm...nuel_Velikovsky
will:
Oops! C4 picked a bad title for their climate change programme. The programme makers seem as bad as the hysterics from the other side of the argument.
LGF has extract from The Independent
Professor Wunsch, One of the scientists who appears in the Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle now claims his views were misrepresented
“The movie was terrible propaganda. It is characteristic of propaganda that you take an area where there is legitimate dispute and you claim straight out that people who disagree with you are swindlers.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/...Cries_Foul&
only
Anonanon:
Another leftie gives the thumbs up to Adam Curtis’ The Trap - Mad Bunting in the Guardian. Good response from “pedrito” in the comments:
I haven't watched this latest one, but have watched and studied all Curtis's previous documentaries (the Power of Nightmares, the Mayfair Set etc).
Despite covering quite differing subjects, they're so similar that they end up revealing more about Curtis himself than anything else. He's obsessed with the idea of men behind closed doors/in labs/in bunkers in the 50s and 60s pulling strings. Their powerful concoctions merged with reality and confused us all, but there's hope because now we understand that we've been duped.
He also a master propagandist and manipulator himself. His use of imagery and sound is mesmerising, blinding the viewer to wildly simplified and exaggerated theories of influence.
Still, I'll watch it and see if this one is any great departure. Sounds like more of the same. I find the BBC's solid endorsement of his work troubling.
On the evidence of last night’s first part it seems to me that Curtis has wandered into the realms of self-parody. The use of foreboding music was laughable - I half expected Thatcher’s appearance to be accompanied by the screeching violins from the shower scene in Psycho. He may as well go the whole nine yards and flash up subliminal messages such as “Capitalism Evil” and “Socialism Good”. And as pedrito says, the BBC’s endorsement of this stuff is indeed troubling (but not surprising). No doubt it will be showered with awards by the leftie luvvie community.
The Fat Contractor:
Third World Britain | 12.03.07 - 7:54 am |
Private Eye has a good cartoon on page 12 of the 2-15 March 2007 issue.
A patient lies in bed with a sword above him labeled MRSA. The cartoon caption is 'The Ward of Damocles'
(sorry no link - can't find it on line)
Well I thought it was funny. IGMC.
BaggieJonathan:
'Insurgent' 'leader' 'held' 'in' 'Iraq' '.'
will:
His use of imagery and sound is mesmerising
Really! It was "The Day Today" cliche. E.g.
"Mr X went to the USA" (video of any old plane landing any old where)
"The results were analysed by computer" (video of old mainframe tape drives whirring)
etc etc
These stock images accompanied each (part) sentence. Terrible
Umbongo:
Cameron interviewed at length on the Tory green taxes by (an unusually non-confrontational) Naughtie on "Today". The only time Naughtie gets animated is when he tries to embarrass Cameron by quoting John Redwood's blog to the effect that global warming on Mars seems not to have an anthropogenic cause. Cameron laughs it off as a Redwood joke ("it's only a blog Jim!"). Naughtie refuses to go down the road of questioning whether the reaction to (possible) anthropogenic global warming is a bit, well, overdone. Instead, Naughtie indulges in a wankfest with Cameron over the invitation to the Great Hypocrite (Al Gore) to appear before Tory front benchers (Redwood would be welcome to come along and listen says Cameron).
The BBC - in the person of Naughtie - refuses to engage or even acknowledge that 1. there are respectable doubts about the anthropogenic cause of global warming (particularly the causality relationship between CO2 and climate change) or 2. even if the climate change Gestapo is correct, the possible destruction of UK-based global aviation might not be the most effective way to go.
Anonanon:
More on The Trap at Samizdata.
Guy Herbert's comment is particularly good. It includes this line:
"Why the BBC chooses to produce such tripe is more interesting than the tripe itself."
Ralph:
GCcooper,
Cameron's best policy at the moment is to be bland because everything he says will be misrepresented by the BBC et al. If the goal was as open as you claim Michael Howard would be PM.
Will,
Get past the Dependant's spin and you'll see Professor Wunsch's claims are specious in the extreme. He didn't like being shown on a programme that criticised Global Warming, that's all.
will:
Another thing about "The Trap" was the way in which Curtis seemed to treat the computer as an infallible, Big Brother machine.
The computer analysed responses to questionaires & came up with the answer that most of us are mad.
Were we, as an intelligent audience, expected to think, ah but the results only reflect the opinions of the programmer? Perhaps, but the ponderous Curtis never made that expicit & his repeated depiction of the machine itself (mathematical, cold reason etc) leaves one wondering.
Jon:
"Professor Wunsch, One of the scientists who appears in the Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle now claims his views were misrepresented"
Maybe he's been threatened - or applying for UN funding - I wonder if the BBC will pick up on this one?
archduke - thanks
archduke:
sweet jesus. talk about an own goal.
noon news and the bbc leads on the tories green taxes.
so , the end result is the impression that Tories are all in favour of even more tax than Gordon Brown.
wonderful. who are the dunderhead idiots running the Tory party nowadays? Brown must be laughing his head off.
Michael:
ArchDuke and Will,
Thanks for your response. It happens in America too ABC, CBS, NBC and cable CNN who I now call CutNruN. Fox runs stories of progress thankfully.
Another place to check out Iraqi progress is USAID and USACE:
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/accomp...ccomplishments/
http://www.grd.usace.army.mil/
Check out weekly from USACE.
It is boring reading. But it is so important to the future of IRaq.
You'll see a massive effort to rebuild a country from scratch. Its the new Marshall Plan of the Middle East.
We're liberating millions for the first time in their lives in over 35 years. Many grew up not ever knowing how to live free. Thank about that for a minute. Brainwashed to either live by what a Cleric tells them, or oppressed under Saddam.
Things are slowly turning around.
Medias irresponsible actions are costing lives. By essentially being a puppet of the left and associating more with terrorist than with free countries. They're playing with fire.
Report bombs. But report with the same disgust as with London, Madrid, Bali, and New York bombings. And then report the heroic actions of our sons and daughters who fight these murderous thugs.
Instead they twist it to be American's fault that terrorist are murdering innocent people.
We're at war.
What did they expect, pudding and pie? Tea for two with crumpets? We're winning and the terrorist run from our soldiers, then blow up innocents about 90% of the time to either strike fear into our media or public, or to create a larger war between Sunnia and Shia.
Check out Ralph Peters column. He rips apart the Saudi and Islamic leaders hypocrisy.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/
0308...alph_peters.htm
We need more Churchills, time to put the Chamberlains back in their appeasement box. They can all "come out" again after the wars are over.
FedUpWithBritain:
"Four-year-olds will get gay fairytales at school"
"Schools are teaching children as young as four about same-sex relationships to comply with new gay rights laws, it emerged yesterday.
They are introducing youngsters to homosexuality using a series of story books in preparation for controversial regulations coming into force next month."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
pages...in_page_id=1770
Michael:
Oh and he rips the Left as well:
"American leftists, who raved that Abu Ghraib was another Auschwitz, didn't offer a single word of pity for the Muslim victims of Muslims."
He nails them for their utter sniveling hypocrisy. Out of millions of soldiers, a few bad ones misbehave, making fun of prisoners and some people, even in our own Congress compared them to Nazi's.
I think its time Conservatives join hands across the pond and around the world. I'm tired of the leftist mentality and especially the fact that the Media is largely run by the left.
NewsCorp is doing OK. But there's need for a more indepth, serious, conservative News Program that attacks all these issues head on.
All the best! By the way... Been to your lovely island during the week old Saddam's rule fell! Stayed in London, went to a wedding in Hereford, then toured the Lakes, up to Scotland and back down again, staying in a hotel evidently owned by Muslims near Hyde Park.
They were glued to the Tube. And the day Saddam fell, I was saying a happy Good Morning to them from Texas!
I'll never forget we went to Buckingham later that day and they played several American march tunes in honor of our victory from Suza. Wow, what a feeling to be part of history.
And yet today, because of our media. The people don't even realize how important this battle is.
Hang together guys. Write your leaders. Tell them they'll lose your votes! Find those leaders who will listen and support them. It actually works if you make it a concerted effort. The days of complaining are over... Time to fight back on all fronts. Just like this Blog.
Thru Media, Education, business and politics. We've allowed the left to infiltrate all areas, teaching our children, and then rule the Media airwaves of our society for too long. People trust media without questioning its bias, unless it is extreme. They certainly do not question "omission" of truth.
As a result, people fear global warming more than they do Islamic radical terrorist groups. The ones who actually murdered our people. In a million years, maybe our offspring will die from global warming.
By printing, TV, or internet. If the whole truth is not told, if there is no other source to look at, people follow like sheep.
I know I did until 9/11, 2001.
.:
Islamic Terrorists warn Austria, Germany
"CAIRO, Egypt - Islamic militants threatened to attack Germany and Austria unless the two European nations break ranks with the U.S. and withdraw their personnel from Afghanistan, according to a Web statement.
A video posted by the group calling itself the "Arrows of Righteousness," shows the abducted woman, identified as Hannelore Marianne Krause. She was wearing a blue scarf over her head and eyeglasses and is shown seated on the floor, next to her grown son.
"I am here threatened by these people, they will kill my son in front of my eyes, then they will kill me if the German forces do not pull out of Afghanistan," she sobbed, speaking in German as an Arabic translation scrolled over the screen.
The woman appealed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel to respond to the kidnappers' demands.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/
20070..._militants_tape
Anonymous:
"I think its time Conservatives join hands across the pond and around the world. "
Hear Hear......
Quick before we end up in an Islamic State run by gay lesbian socialist fascist EU Paradise........christ what a mess they are making...do they even realise this will all lead to war......
Socialists...Hitler, Stalin...now the BBC......bloody morons who will cause the deaths of millions.
.:
France and the UK reinforcing security measures after the defection of Iranian Vice defense minister
http://counterterrorismblog.org/
archduke:
Scientists receive death threats for doubting global warming hysteria:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...1/
ngreen211.xml
scientists who doubt superstring theory, dont get death threats.
scientists who doubt global warming theory, do receive death threats.
yes, its all becoming vastly more clear to me now. this really has gone beyond the pale into the realm of religion. it is not science.
archduke:
thanks for that Ralph Peters link Michael. sure is hard hitting, but true.
"The Saudis, not the Iranians, are the worst anti-American hate-mongers in the world today"
damn right. its not the Iranians who are funding "kill the kuffars" hate speech in UK mosques - its the Saudis and their virulent brand of wahabbism.
and yet, Britain sees nothing wrong with selling that corrupt and evil regime armaments worth billions.
max:
Re: Adam Curtis. The History of Darkness.
http://normblog.typepad.com/
norm...istory_of_.html
Anonanon:
Ali Dezai of the National Black Police Association is doing very well out of the BBC today. He was interviewed about his new book "Not One of Us" on the Today programme, he’s being interviewed about it again on Simon Mayo right now, and it’s also Book of the Week on Radio 4.
Someone else has just written a book about being an outsider in a major public organisation but for some reason he hasn’t been rewarded with the full PR treatment. Maybe Robin Aitken is just the wrong colour.
BaggieJonathan:
Global warming is being increased by man, I have no doubt. The fossil fuels and the destruction of the rain forests are bound to have an effect. That is a scientific given - cause and effect. The question however is much more importantly of how much. If in fact these are only a tiny proportion then how important is it.
Global factors such as vulcanism, proximity of the sun, continental drift and meteorite activity are far more important than anything man's activity can do.
The earth has gone through dramatic periods of warming and cooling.
In fact globally speaking we are in a very cool time for planet earth. We have had numerous ice ages in our recent past and the time we are in now could rightly be described as merely being one of the respites in the greater ice age that covers the few hundred thousand years.
When the last ice age ended 12,000 odd years ago sea levels rose 300 metres!
Perhaps some warming would be no bad thing if it fought off the possibility of the return of the ice age, which unless something intervenes would otherwise be extremely likely for future generations to endure.
This country was essentially uninhabitable during the last ice age.
The whole thing needs to be seriously looked at with these facts in mind, only then can a proper conclusion be made to the importance and necessity of action be made. Of course nothing of the sort has happened and don't expect anything to be said of that sort on Al Beebzera above all. Instead they will support Brown's flight tax and praise and applaud Dave's suicidal massive tax hike on flights from ignorance not knowledge.
Ultraviolence:
Robin Aitken isn't an eternal righteous victim we can wring the right political capital out of.
A quote (on global warming)
"I'm so dissapointed the end of the world isn't coming. Its time to get on now. But why? I want it all to end! My last good hope is peak oil."
Anonanon:
Max - thanks for the link. Nice piss-take.
Realist:
B-BBC fantasy world:
Jon | 12.03.07 - 2:30 am
Yep - I was right - Boy Dave is losing it.
Cameron really is doing his best to lose the next election. The conservatives must ditch him now to stand any chance.
Posted by Alan Bent on March 11, 2007 10:56 AM
I am delighted that Cameron looks like loosing the next election
Socialism is Necrotizing | 11.03.07 - 2:58 pm
Real world:
The Conservatives now have a record poll lead over Labour and would stretch it even farther if they were facing Gordon Brown or David Miliband. A Populus poll for The Times, taken last weekend, shows that Labour support has fallen this year and the Tories are eight points ahead
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle1475404.ece
David Cameron's leadership received a further boost today as an opinion poll showed that the Conservatives had doubled their lead over Labour.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
uk_new...2027700,00.html
BaggieJonathan:
'Realist' - polls taken BEFORE the massive tax hike announcement.
It is not just that announcement but the growing realisation that New Dave 'conservatism' means much higher spending and higher tax than even Brown could dream of.
As the song goes meet the new boss, same as the old boss - they think we will all get fooled again!
I wonder what the polls will be saying if taken today;
or worse still after the inevitable annihilation of them in the media and by Labour, Lib Dems, Plaid, Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all...
BaggieJonathan:
Additional...
Blair and "New Labour" had 20+% leads over Major's Tories over a long period of time in order to oust them in a general election.
Before that Labour had bigger leads than the current Tory one during previous governments but fell back to abject defeat each time.
I will believe your 'real world' when I see the evidence.
Ralph:
'polls taken BEFORE the massive tax hike announcement.'
What 'massive tax hike' would that be considering the policy is tax neutral?
BaggieJonathan:
My apologies I should have included this before, poll evidence for my statement above
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/polls/...ll-
trends.shtml
BaggieJonathan:
How is taxing something out of existence 'neutral'?
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/ne...ghts/
article.do
What are the offsetting tax breaks elsewhere proposed?
I have hunted but can't find them.
Considering the myriad Dave proposals for spending increases: health, education, border police force, prisons, defence, married couples allowance, scrapping share stamp duty, police salaries, scrapping inheritance tax, drug rehabilitation, etc. Am I the only one to suspect that either tax is going to increase or that politicians are being economic with the truth in their promises?
Anonymous:
BBC's Alan Johnston kidnapped in Gaza?
http://www.irishexaminer.com/bre...937z&
n=91139450
Anonanon:
Above anonymous was Anonanon.
K:
Isn't the BBC accountable for all their staffers who comment here, seemingly, in order to discredit this site?
I mean the BBC staff leave IP trails (like Mr.Bungluwalla at lgf), don't they? Can Natalie or someone compile a list of the unpleasant comments they're making on our pay roll and send it to doughty st. or the Telegraph so that the story of what they're upto gets out?
Biodegradable:
BBC's Alan Johnston kidnapped in Gaza?
It does look that way, so far it's all over the Israeli media, but nothing from the Mothership:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Sat...icle%
2FShowFull
I predict he'll be free within hours saying how well he was treated by these romantic characters with their flashing white teeth.
He'll tell us that it's a reaction against the 'occupation' and kidnapping is one of the few options of resistance left to the poor "Palestinians" who don't have tanks and Apache helicopters to fight back with. Then again I could be wrong.
Martin Belam:
>> Isn't the BBC accountable for all their staffers who comment here
As far as I recall BBC staff guidelines for the use of the internet at work allow for a small amount of "personal use" during the day. Unless somebody was being really offensive on here, I'm not convinced it would breach those guidelines.
Also, given that some of the BBC people who comment on here, like Nick Reynolds, take some of the points raised back into the building and have sometimes got changes made to BBC News web output, isn't it a good thing that some BBC staff read these threads?
Martin Belam:
@Ralph - "What 'massive tax hike' would that be considering the policy is tax neutral?"
I rather presume that all the people like me who have to fly a lot because of their work won't consider it personally "tax neutral", and therefore see it as a bit of a vote loser.
Biodegradable:
K:
Isn't the BBC accountable for all their staffers who comment here, seemingly, in order to discredit this site?
They're probably paid out of petty cash, or called something like 'sundry disbursements'.
Jon:
"It's very clear from the Stern Review, from the latest scientific information, from the impacts we're already seeing in places like Kenya, that we need very rapid cuts in carbon emissions, and we need the negotiations to start next year and finish at the latest in 2008," said Andrew Pendleton, climate analyst with the charity Christian Aid.
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/s...ech/
6158022.stm
Here's the Ex BBC Andrew Pendleton (an "expert" on climate change) again quoting a flawed report by Stren. The BBC never seem to put both sides to this.
"The theme was echoed by other campaign groups."
"Ministers are simply not reflecting the urgency which is being felt in the real world," said Catherine Pearce, international climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth UK. "We are still not seeing the bold leadership which is needed here."
Who the hell are these "camapign" groups? Where do they get their mandate to represent the people of Africa?
The only "bold leadership" we need to see is someone who will tell these "camapign groups" to sod off interfering with things they have no idea about.
archduke:
weird. still nothing about the kidnapping:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
default.stm
but its on the front page by jpost.com
http://www.jpost.com/
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Sat...icle%
2FShowFull
the bureau chief in Jerusalem , Simon Wilson has confirmed that they've lost contact with Johnston.
Martin Belam:
Sorry, just to clarify, when I said earlier "Unless somebody was being really offensive on here, I'm not convinced it would breach those guidelines." I hadn't read the latest bit of the ding-dong on the "Nobody even mentioned it" thread.
I have now, and I don't see any point to anyone who is a genuine member of staff at the BBC being downright rude to people on here like 'jb' was/is
Alan:
Just an observation on two different 'styles' of reporting of the same story (Mar 12). Which do you prefer?:
1.)"Bomber wounds three in Casablanca"
http://news.bbc.co.uk
(go to 'world' then 'Africa').
2.)"Morocco: suicide bomber strikes internet cafe"
http://www.jihadwatch.org
(scroll down).
Martin Belam:
>> weird. still nothing about the kidnapping
Yeah, but then again, BBC mistakenly announces 'capture' of own reporter and gets it wrong would make them look pretty stupid - I expect like most news outlets reporting about themselves they will want to be scrupulous about getting what they report right.
Anonymous:
Another opportunity to watch The Great Global Warming Swindle (repeated tonight on the digital channel More4).
"Some of the dissident voices on climate change were rounded up for last week's polemical Channel 4 documentary made by Martin Durkin, The Great Global Warming Swindle (repeated tonight on the digital channel More4). Whether or not you were persuaded by their articulate doubts, you could not help being struck by the McCarthyite persecution (up to and including death threats) which their non-conformist opinions had attracted.
Scientists with impeccable credentials, emeritus professors and acknowledged experts in the field being hounded and professionally discredited for their reservations about an established orthodoxy: not a pretty sight".
archduke:
kidnap story is on Haaretz. P.A. officials have confirmed it, but the BBC have not.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spa...ges/
836350.html
Anonanon:
Biodegradable | 12.03.07 - 4:09 pm
There could be a quick release when they realise they've got an ally, but don't discount that he might be forced to convert at gunpoint. That supremacist bullshit plays well in the Arab street.
Biodegradable:
BBC mistakenly announces 'capture' of own reporter and gets it wrong would make them look pretty stupid - I expect like most news outlets reporting about themselves they will want to be scrupulous about getting what they report right.
Martin Belam | 12.03.07 - 4:20 pm
I'm more inclined to think that right now the BBC is busily negotiating with the kidnappers and calling every high level contact they have in their little black books to secure his release, and don't want to say anything publically that could harm those efforts.
There could be a quick release when they realise they've got an ally, but don't discount that he might be forced to convert at gunpoint. That supremacist bullshit plays well in the Arab street.
Anonanon | 12.03.07 - 4:38 pm
They do have a history of kidnapping their allies. They know they won't put up resistance, won't try any heroics like attempting to escape, and are more likely to speak well of the kidnappers on their release. I wouldn't be surprised if Johnstone hadn't already converted á la Frank (Don't Kill Me, I'm A Muslim!) Gardiner.
Biodegradable:
Why does the BBC show the Israeli flag on its side here?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
default.stm
http://thumbsnap.com/v/mQ7A6pcm.jpg
Because they cropped it out of the pic on this page:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6441461.stm
If they just wanted to use the Israeli flag as a link why not do it right - or don't they know how to use an image editing program to rotate the image 90º?
£3billion per year for this sort of 'quality'!
Anonanon:
One thing the BBC can’t do is issue a public plea along the lines of “Alan Johnston has always been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.”
Biodegradable:
The BBC is now covering it, scare quotes and all:
BBC Gaza correspondent 'missing'
Also:
Subject: BBC concerned over Gaza reporter
From: BBC Breaking News Alert
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:55:47 +0000 (GMT)
The BBC says it is concerned over the safety of its Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston after losing contact with him.
For more details: http://www.bbcnews.com
------------------------------------------------
This e-mail is never sent unsolicited. You have received this BBC Breaking News Alert because you subscribed to it or, someone forwarded it to you. To unsubscribe (or subscribe if this message was forwarded to you) go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/email
Alan:
Some reading for Cameron, Greenpeace and, (forthcoming TV series, 'Save Planet Earth') BBC:
a new book, by Christopher Horner entitled -
"The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism)" Check article of this title (12 Mar) at:
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com
max:
Re: Alan Johnston
Also here:
http://www.ynetnews.com/
articles...3375563,00.html
And from the Hebrew version there's this (which doesn't appear somehow on the English edition, not that readers of BBBC wouldn't know it by now):
Johnson is well known by many Gaza residents. He's one of the few foreign reporters who actually live in Gaza and even speaks Arabic. Furthermore, he's known to be sympathetic by most of the Palestinian Organizations and therefore the circumstances of his kidnapping are still unclear.
Martin Belam:
I know people make mistakes when rushing to break news, and hopefully Alan Johnston will be fine, and I shouldn't laugh, but the Daily Mail has got a fantastic typo on their homepage at the moment - "BBC journalist kidnapped the Gaza Strip". That is quite some achievement for a lone journalist, even if they do have a 3bn budget behind them
Biodegradable:
Furthermore, he's known to be sympathetic by most of the Palestinian Organizations and therefore the circumstances of his kidnapping are still unclear.
I can't help but think of that scene in Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles" where the black sheriff holds a gun to his own head and says something like, "Don't nobody move or the nigger gets it!"
I'm sure Johnson will be fine, he's probably sitting having tea with his pals right now, having a good laugh.
"BBC journalist kidnapped the Gaza Strip"
Why not?
The BBC has certainly hijacked the history of Israel and "Palestine".
By the way, I still haven't received a response to the complaint I lodged last week about the BBC claiming that the Yom Kippur war was a "counterattack" by the Egyptians.
jones:
michael moore gets the michael moore treatment
http://www.townhall.com/blog/g/7...4c-
3e5ae34da020
An amusing read for BBBCers
ij
Anonanon:
See how the Guardian’s Conal Urquhart refers to the gunpoint religious conversion forced upon the Fox journalists:
The two-week kidnapping of two correspondents from the Fox television network last year led some security analysts to conclude that some Gaza kidnappers were becoming more serious and treating their captives less well than before.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
israel...2032227,00.html
Whitewashing dhimmi bastard.
Biodegradable:
The mask slips:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6442663.stm
"It is his (Johnston's) job to bring us day after day reports of the Palestinian predicament in the Gaza Strip," said the BBC's diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, himself a former Middle East reporter.
Not even a pretence of impartiality then.
Biodegradable:
On the page carrying the report on the missing stooge:
LATEST NEWS
BBC Gaza reporter 'missing'
Hamas militant shot dead in Gaza
PM 'says Israel pre-planned war'
Israeli army 'used human shields'
Fair and Balanced?
deegee:
Surely to keep with the pattern?
LATEST NEWS
BBC Gaza 'reporter' missing
Hamas militant shot 'dead' in Gaza
PM 'says' Israel pre-planned war
Israeli army 'used' human shields
BTW No matter what my feelings about the quality and impartiality of Alan Johnston's reporting, I wish him a quick, safe return.
Jon:
Worthy only of contempt
"More to the point, on a personal level, I simply will not take my science or guidance as to the response to it from a man who is wholly unqualified to give it and, for whom environmentalism seems more of a fashion statement than a considered philosophy. His posturing is worthy only of contempt."
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/
EU Referendum also quotes Janet Dailys opinion piece in the Telegraph - which I highlighted earlier.
Anonanon:
Just discovered this interesting website - the National Tidal and Sea Level Facility.
Pick any town around the UK and check the annual tidal predictions until 2025. As far as I can tell the sea level around our coast shows no sign of increasing.
sicktodeathofit:
'BTW No matter what my feelings about the quality and impartiality of Alan Johnston's reporting, I wish him a quick, safe return.'
deegee | 12.03.07 - 7:27 pm |
I second that.
Biodegradable:
I wish him a safe return too.
But what's the hurry? >;->
Biodegradable:
deegee | 12.03.07 - 7:27 pm
I think the BBC would really prefer PM says 'Israel' pre-planned war
archduke:
hard hitting documentary on C4 dispatches - about Prince Charles - just finished.
there's so many of these hard-hitting documentaries coming out of channel 4 nowadays, that you just wonder why the BBC needs its license fee. its gone so downhill and dumbed down , it might as well be privatised for all i care.
Anonanon:
"Just discovered this interesting website - the National Tidal and Sea Level Facility."
Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd read to myself and think, "Bloody hell, you wrote that you boring twat."
Bryan:
Michael | 12.03.07 - 12:26 pm,
Thanks for the link to that New York Post article by Ralph Peters. It's excellent. The Saudis are the biggest terrorists in today's world. It's so refreshing to read someone who doesn't flinch from telling the truth. And his writing has the perhaps unintended consequence of highlighting the fearful, blinkered, PC "journalism" of MSM like the BBC.
GCcooper:
Absolutely shameless "Green" tosh on BBC 1's news at ten tonight. Having run wall to wall scare stories on supposed anthropogenic global warming for the past few years, they now feign surprise that 20% of the population put "Green" issues as the most important for them (compared with 5% at the last election).
You don't say!
They then switch to the 'human interest' angle by showing Happisburgh in Norfolk, which has been disappearing into the sea for decades (if not hundreds of years). The BBC's conflation of coastal erosion, a perfectly natural process, with 'rising sea levels' and GW was deliberate, scaremongering rubbish, designed to skew the debate in favour of the tofu-eaters.
Mr and Ms average watch this nonsense and, knowing no better (and why should they?) simply lap it up as if it bears some vague resemblance to the truth.
So, under this relentless barrage of lies and distortions, what will the 'Green issues are the most important facing us' contingent be the next time the BBC asks? 25% 35%?
When on this website we accuse the BBC of bias, too often its minions pretend we mean the party political kind (which, sometimes, we do). But by far the greatest source of bias spewing out of the Corporation today is its "Green" agenda. It is naked, deliberate and without an ounce of counterbalance.
The BBC's output is violently skewing British mainstream politics in a "Green" direction (witness the witless - Cameron) and constitutes the grossest abuse of its position in a long and increasingly sorry history.
Roland Deschain:
The BBC 10 o'clock news has just had a long article about a Channel 4 programme being broadcast tonight concerning Prince Charles.
Yet there is still complete silence about the "Great Global Warming Swindle" broadcast by that same channel which covers a subject they never cease to ram down our throats.
Why the difference?
Bryan:
I heard on the radio today - not the BBC - that Johnston's business card was found at the scene of his abduction. Looks like he had the presence of mind to drop it there. Then again, things seldom stay secret in the Middle East for long.
I agree with Biodegradable that the BBC is being extra cautious re its reporting on Johnston's abduction while they try to get him back. Strange that he's due to complete his Gaza posting in a few weeks. Come to think of it, maybe that's why he was kidnapped. The Palestinians want to keep him in Gaza. They probably know it wont be easy to find a more sympathetic BBC propagandist for their cause.
dai:
Just listening to the BBC Ten O'Clock news and there was some reporter on there blaming coastal erosion in East England on rising sea levels caused by global warming. Am I living in a madhouse. The sea has always eroded cliffs in East England and deposited matreial further down the coast. This has nothing to do with global warming. I can't make up my mind if the reporter is an idiot or just a very brazen propagandist.
Ayayay:
I had to get up and leave the room when the Norfolk thing was on the Ten O Clock News otherwise I would have had a coronory. I was so angry. GCCooper is right, the Norfolk coastline has been changing for millenia. To claim it is anything to do with climate change is a disgusting lie.
Guy R:
Regarding the BBC 10 o'clock news item, the south and east of England has been slowly sinking, and the north and west correspondingly rising, since the Loch Lomond stadial came to an end over 10,000 years ago! That anyone can wilfully conflate this empirically verifiable process with the theory of anthropogenic global warming really is cause for despair.
Dong:
In the global warming Newsnight debate tonight concerning the Channel 4 film (I think this is BBC's first reaction) a pro-warming Reading University physicist was pitted to debate the film against an expert on tropical diseases from Paris. Who said that the BBC is not impartial?
Jon:
"I can't make up my mind if the reporter is an idiot or just a very brazen propagandist"
If its the BBC I think you will find he is both.
Jon:
"The wooden sea defences built in the late '50s at Happisburgh, North Norfolk have been failing over the last few years, and large chunks of the sandy cliffs are regularly falling into the sea. Homes and businesses are at imminent risk.
Starting in February , limited works are being carried out by North Norfolk District Council to build on the emergency works carried out in 2002 - this is a temporary measure designed to buy time while a more sustainable solution to the situation is sought.
The next few weeks presents a unique opportunity to make a real difference to the protection of Happisburgh's cliffs - by donating to Coastal Concern Ltd's Buy a Rock for Happisburgh appeal, all monies raised will be added to the amount commited by NNDC to put more rock on the beach at Happisburgh. "
http://www.happisburgh.org.uk/
Also read the history of that part of the shore
"Happisburgh has lost land to the sea throughout the centuries. The rate of erosion has been erratic - at times large areas have disappeared overnight, and at others the cliff has remained virtually the same for some years."
http://www.happisburgh.org.uk/ca...ampaign/
history
The BBC reporter and his editor are idiots.
GCcooper:
Jon writes;
"The BBC reporter and his editor are idiots."
I think it's worse than that. They are liars.
Funny how the BBC posse (Reith et al ) falls silent when something like this hapens, only to reappear to nit-pick some trivial point, a few days later.
Biodegradable:
a pro-warming Reading University physicist was pitted to debate the film against an expert on tropical diseases from Paris. Who said that the BBC is not impartial?
Dong | 13.03.07 - 12:09 am
The tropical disease expert, Prof Reiter, spent most of the time alloted to him explaining that he wasn't a climatologist and therefore wasn't qualified to reply to Esler's questions about climate change. He wasn't allowed to finish even one of his replies, even the one about him asking for his name to be taken off the IPCC report.
Prof. Reiter appears in the Channel 4 documentary to denounce the myth that global warming will mean malaria and other diseases will invade more northerly areas - he points out among other things that mosqitoes are very common in the Antartic and can survive at very cold temperatures. He quite rightly had not much to say to a physicist who waffled on about CO2 causing global warming. It's not his field and no, the BBC is not impartial.
Anonymous:
The BBC is just hysterical whingers...screaming banchees trying to create fear....
Shame for them that people are waking up to this lie now......
Bye Bye BBC.....you are obsolete now. A joke.
Market Participant:
Alan Johnston kidnapped in Gaza
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Sat...icle%
2FShowFull
This personal experience will probably not remove the blinders.
And of course I wish no harm to Mr Johnston and pray for his speedy unmolested release.
-----
In Gaza City, a spokesman for Hamas, condemned Johnston's abduction.
"We call on these criminal groups to stop this destruction of our reputation and to let this journalist free," he told The Associated Press.
-----
Martin Belam:
I don't have my nit-picking hat on today chaps - sounds like the report from Norfolk was a bit bobbins - I mean, even I learned about coastal erosion in the UK, and I went to school long after the education system had apparently come crashing around our ears.
D Burbage:
One compliment, one complaint to the BBC
Compliment - I actually heard a Today presenter ask a question from the 'right'. Humphrys actually asked Andrew Lansley this morning what business it was of Government whether we got too fat or not, surely it was down to the person to decide that?
Complaint - Comic Fame does Relief Academy (or whatever) the phone calls cost 50p and "at least" 34p goes to the charity. Why is the BBC accepting/running a 30%+ tax on donations?! Doesn't the operator make it possible to pass on all 50p of the 50p to charity?!
GCcooper:
The BBC "News" website currently has three stories about "global warming" on its front age.
Yesterday, Radio Bloke (ie 5 Live) was receiving text messages and e-mails from listeners pleading with it to shut up about the subject.
Just as the BBC swings into a phase of manic overkill, is the great British public finally starting to say 'enough!'?
Martin Belam:
>> Complaint - Comic Fame does Relief Academy (or whatever) the phone calls cost 50p and "at least" 34p goes to the charity. Why is the BBC accepting/running a 30%+ tax on donations?! Doesn't the operator make it possible to pass on all 50p of the 50p to charity?!
The short answer to that? No, the operators don't make it possible. I used to do quite a lot of work on interactive voting, and it was always a topic of much debate about how much could or couldn't be charged. The BBC doesn't own their own telephone voting infrastructure, and so someone has to be paid to do it for them
will:
O/T, but isn't there a question here to be raised by our BBC journalist?
Cannabis farms uncovered 'treble'
Druglink said over 60% of cannabis sold in the UK was grown here, compared to 11% 10 years ago.
The charity said analysis of police raids showed up to 75% of cannabis farms were run by Vietnamese gangs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/64.../uk/
6444357.stm
So just how many Vietnamese are there in this country, that Vietnamese gangs can operate cannabis farms? Shouldn't the police have an easy job to identify Vietnamese gangsters & close down their operations?
Ralph:
dai: 'Just listening to the BBC Ten O'Clock news and there was some reporter on there blaming coastal erosion in East England on rising sea levels caused by global warming.'
What is so scary is I'm sure they know it's caused by glacial rebound but are so desperate to preach on GW that they lie to themselves and us about it.
Martin: 'The BBC doesn't own their own telephone voting infrastructure, and so someone has to be paid to do it for them'
Not 'has to', 'is' paid for it.
A telecoms company like BT et al would jump at the chance to have 'phonelines provided free by BT' displayed every time they put the pledge number up.
GCcooper:
Martin Belam writes:
"The BBC doesn't own their own telephone voting infrastructure, and so someone has to be paid to do it for them"
But the BBC chooses to use these swindlers. I think you will find that hiring a hitman makes you legally as culpable as being one.
Robbiekeane:
Swindlers? So charging a price for services provided is evil now?? Capitalism's in trouble then. Obviously flashing up 'provided free by BT' signs would effectively be a 'payment' for advertising (just cutting out the cash flow) which the BT ain't allowed to partake in.
Jack Hughes:
The quote saga continues...
BBC news headlines right now:
OTHER TOP STORIES
Cannabis farms finds 'treble'
Have they trebled or not - it should be a simple sum?
BBC in urgent search for reporter
Scrap women's prisons, peer says
Direct speech - surely this merits quote marks ?
UN nuclear chief in North Korea
UN 'progress' over Iran sanctions
Why the quotes ? At work something is still a "progress report" - even if there has been no progress at all
Stallone charged over hormone
Its becoming more and more bizarre.
Martin Belam:
@Ralph and GCooper
"Product placement
We must never include a product or service in sound or vision in return for cash, services or any consideration in kind. This is product placement. It is illegal to make any such arrangements in the EU."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/
...tplacemen.shtml
GCcooper:
Robbikeane writes:
"Swindlers? So charging a price for services provided is evil now??"
Yes, swindlers. The 'premium rate' phone business in the UK is a scam, with outrageous charges being levied on people, many of whom have no idea how much they are paying. Ask ITV viewers.
It's worth taking a few minutes out of your busy life to read the side of the next soap carton you find, where you will often see a list of contact numbers for the manufacturer. In most countries these are free calls - as you would expect when companies are actually looking for feedback. In the UK they are almost always charged at premium rate (and 0870 is a premium rate number).
The same is true of the number of commercial organisations whose only published telephone number (even for placing orders with them!) is charged at a premium rate. That is a swindle and it is one that has been connived at by a tenth rate government and a toothless, supine 'regulator'.
The premium rate scalpers have been allowed to get away with murder in the UK and it is shameful for the BBC to be condoning their behaviour.
You can call it 'capitalism' if you like. I'd simply remind you that your friendly local smack dealer could claim the same defence.
GCcooper:
Martin Belam writes:
"We must never include a product or service in sound or vision in return for cash, services or any consideration in kind. This is product placement. It is illegal to make any such arrangements in the EU."
So use a freephone number, like they do in the USA. Or a conventional regional one. You are a 'public service' broadcaster, aren't you?
Martin Belam:
>> So use a freephone number
Erm, a freephone number to raise money for charity, that's a new one on me....
>> You are a 'public service' broadcaster, aren't you?
I'm not, no. I worked for one once, but that isn't the same thing
Martin Belam:
FYI from the BBC's Guidelines on telephone call charging:
"Telephone services
Telephone services are used for programme support, phone-ins, voting and interacting with game shows and competitions.
We should not use premium rate lines for help lines. Help lines should be offered as a free phone number.
We should not normally use premium rate lines for phone-ins.
We should normally ensure that premium rate calls are priced at the lowest tariff. They should not normally be used to generate a profit with the exception of BBC charity appeals.
With premium rate numbers we must tell people how much calls cost. With other numbers we should try wherever possible to tell people the cost.
We must prompt children to seek permission to call from the bill payer."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/
...oneservic.shtml
will:
We must never include a product or service in sound or vision in return for cash, services or any consideration in kind.
So if the BBC receives no benefit, why do everyday the BBC newsreaders give us a good look at the Apple logo on their notebooks? How about a bit of masking tape? Or does Apple show its appreciation????
GCcooper:
Martin Belam writes:
"
Erm, a freephone number to raise money for charity, that's a new one on me...."
Yes, a freephone number so that people can make credit card donations.
It really is that easy. And it's a lot more honest.
Biodegradable:
Honest Reporting's Backspin blog raises some interesting questions about the Alan Johnston kidnapping.
Amongst them is:
Should UK license fee money be used to ransom Johnston?
http://backspin.typepad.com/
back...ton_kidnap.html
Martin Belam:
>> So if the BBC receives no benefit, why do everyday the BBC newsreaders give us a good look at the Apple logo on their notebooks? How about a bit of masking tape? Or does Apple show its appreciation????
Oh boy, remember the good old days when Blue Peter inked out the Kelloggs logos on Corn Flakes boxes. I haven't watched Blue Peter for years so I don't know if they still do that
Martin Belam:
>> Yes, a freephone number so that people can make credit card donations.
It is a vote
GCcooper:
Martin Belam writes:
"They should not normally be used to generate a profit with the exception of BBC charity appeals."
But they do make a profit - if only for the sharks and pirates who operate the "services".
">> You are a 'public service' broadcaster, aren't you?
I'm not, no. I worked for one once, but that isn't the same thing"
As you leap so consistently to the BBC's defence, it's a distinction without a difference.
GCcooper:
Martin Belam writes:
"It is a vote"
It is also a scam.
Martin Belam:
>> As you leap so consistently to the BBC's defence
And I do always try and be polite, and generally only post about things that I actually know about from the technical side of things.
Cross-platform interactive voting is one of the things I am a new media consultant on.
If you want a robust system that can handle peak voting load after a programme transmits, and accurately count the votes in time to have them live on air within minutes, then it costs money to run. That either meant the BBC investing considerably itself in infrastructure to handle it, which I think for regulatory reasons would be an area of the market they would not be allowed to move into, or paying someone to do it.
Umbongo:
Even Humphrys was getting bored with Miliband on "Today" this morning (join the club!). However, Humphrys actually mentioned the Channel 4 programme on the climate change swindle and asked for Miliband's comment. Miliband (refusing to engage as usual with any contrary argument) stated that we should put our faith "in the 2,500 scientists" who have signed up to this new religion. Yes, Miliband's ultimate, slam-dunk argument is the "appeal to authority" - the trademark of an intellectual bankrupt. No surprise there mind you. When I was at LSE I had to listen to the drivel spouted by his father - the marxist political "scientist". Like father, like son: both highly intelligent, both very fluent, both devoid of common sense, both devoted to telling the "little people" what's good for them.
Biodegradable:
"It is his (Johnston's) job to bring us day after day reports of the Palestinian predicament in the Gaza Strip," said the BBC's diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, himself a former Middle East reporter.
Which is why Johnston, or the BBC, doesn't report news like this:
IDF: 20,000 jobs created in Gaza
Jon:
Yes - but how many of the 2,500 scientists are actually climatologists, the professor who asked for his name to be removed from the report was not qualified to express his opinion on climate change only about maleria. Maybe I could be called a scientist as I have MSc after my name but it does not make me an expert on the weather.
archduke:
"stated that we should put our faith in the 2,500 scientists"
that would be the discredited UN backed IPCC report - which is a political, not a scientific report and which put scientists names on there without permission.
one of them appeared on the global warming swindle documentary.
Jon:
The BBC use the broadsweeping term "scientist" as if every one of them is an expert in every scientific field. Scientists specialise in narrow fields. A physicist and a political scientist (a social scientist specializing in the study of government ) are both classed as scientists, but they would not normally be expected to comment on each others field of study. The use of the term scientist is used as a smokescreen by the BBC.
Jon:
Andrew Pendleton, "climate analyst" with the charity Christian Aid. Is another case in point - the BBC know that Andrew Pendleton is not a scientist but they quote him as being a "climate analyst" - to fool peolpe into believing that he must know what he is talking about. He is in fact an exBBC journalist who has given himself this title. Its no different to the "community leaders" the BBC keep putting forward to represent ethnic minorities - in other words they have no legitamcy to thier titles.
TPO:
Activist loses court race appeal
'An anti-racism campaigner has lost his appeal against a conviction for the racially-aggravated harassment of two parking attendants.'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/engla...ire/
6443851.stm
I really don't know what to make of this.
(a) The style of reporting that the BBC has used.
(b) The obvious oxymoron which they choose to ignore.
(c) Labelling this clown an 'Activist' without putting quotation marks around the word.
(d) The speed with which the BBC website disposed of the story, having hidden it in the 'Oop North' section, like shit off a shovel really.
Of course it bears no relation to the hysteria that the BBC tried to whip up on this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/engla...ire/
6428865.stm
GCcooper:
Martin Belam writes:
"If you want a robust system that can handle peak voting load after a programme transmits, and accurately count the votes in time to have them live on air within minutes, then it costs money to run."
Indeed, I'm sure it does. It is also a massive profit generator - as any pornographer will tell you.
Once again, we are faced with the question why does the BBC feel the need to do this at all?
In the case of 'entertainment' programmes it is all part and parcel of the obsession with rivalling ITV ratngs, at whatever cost to quality programming. In other words, dumbing down.
In the case of 'Comic (sic) Relief' it is hard to see what the BBC's motives mght be - particularly in the light of Prof Niall Ferguson's excoriation of it in last Sunday's Telegraph (which I presume will be available on its website).
Whatever the excuses, the point orignally made by the commenter here, stands: that of the 50p charged, perhaps 16p is being filched by a premium line operator.
As I say, it's a scam.
Jon:
"The UN report by the IPCC was published in February. At the time it was promoted as being backed by more than 2,000 of the world's leading scientists."
"There are 2,000 people on the panel, not 2,000 scientists. Most are bureaucrats and politicians"
http://www.canadafreepress.com/
2...cover030607.htm
Now wouldn't it have been interesting if Humphreys had put this to Milliband?
Umbongo:
Jon
"Now wouldn't it have been interesting if Humphreys had put this to Milliband?"
You got it in a nutshell: this is just the kind of question which is never posed and certainly not explored on "Today". However, to be fair, I suspect JR could find a BBC site (beamed to Uzbekistan) where such a question was posed in 1976.
Ralph:
Martin,
Product placement is different to getting sponsership for a charity even.
Product placement involves putting a logo etc in a film or broadcast like Apple have done in a number of films.
The BBC are allowed to have a telecoms company sponser their phonelines but don't. It would be an interesting FOI request to see if they make money out of it.
Jon: 'the professor who asked for his name to be removed from the report was not qualified to express his opinion on climate change only about maleria.'
But that is not a one off case.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpo...31a1380121a&
k=0
archduke:
George Monbiot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo.../
George_Monbiot
not a climate scientist. majored in zoology.
first job after college? the BBC.
Lasch:
Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear.
Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world.../6441461.stm?
ls
Jon:
The BBC will scour the earth to sling mud at Israel. When is the last time you have heard any news from El Salvador?
Anonymous:
Results 1 - 10 of about 4,770 from news.bbc.co.uk for "el salvador".
http://www.google.co.uk/search?a...ts=&
safe=images
D Burbage:
Jon
or Thailand? or Sweden? or even the Republic of Ireland? good point!
back to premium phone charges, it does not "cost" per call, it costs for the infrastructure which is fixed. It would be right to hire the kit / lines /people for the going rate, but to tax N-million charitable donations like this is a ridiculous solution.
Quite apart from the diabolical programme itself - Exceedingly Low Quality Output that we sadly expect from the modern BBC.
Why is it Channel 4 that can make the Global Warming Swindle programme anyway and our "we must always tell both sides of the story" 3 billion pound megalump can't do anything of the kind?
It is good that this has been picked up by much of the media, actually. We might start getting some answers...
John Reith:
Jon | 13.03.07 - 3:23 pm
The BBC will scour the earth to sling mud at Israel.
Yeah, and not just the BBC, it seems. Those other notoriously biased-against-Israel outfits FOX News, Haaretz and the Israel Hasbara Committee too:
Israel Recalls El Salvador Ambassador Who Was Found Naked, Drunk ...
FOX News - 12 Mar 2007
JERUSALEM — The Israeli ambassador to El Salvador has been recalled after he was found drunk, naked and bound in sexual bondage gear in his yard
http://www.foxnews.com/story/
0,2...,258299,00.html
Israel recalls El Salvador envoy after reportedly found naked, drunk
By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
The Foreign Ministry recalled Israel's ambassador to El Salvador, Tzuriel Refael, after he was found in the back yard of his residence naked, drunk, bound and gagged,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spa...ges/
836258.html
Israel’s ambassador to El Salvador, Tsuriel Raphael, was discovered naked, drunk, bound, and gagged. The Post reports he was found on a street whereas Haaretz reports he was found in the back of his residence. Further details of this incident are that he was gagged with a rubber ball in his mouth and that “he was wearing some accessories that hinted of sado-masochistic acts.”
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-lo.../a/ix/
120320072
Biodegradable:
John Reith:
If the BBC is so keen to report stories covered by Israeli media why not this one?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Sat...icle%
2FShowFull
Stuart:
Last Thursday, the BBC ran a report that the Hamas-run Palestinian education ministry has ordered that an anthology of folktales be removed from state schools, sparking accusations of Islamic crackdown.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
6426441.stm
Ahh, but wait. They are not such bad guys after all, since today they report that the Hamas-run Palestinian education ministry has lifted a ban on a children's anthology of folktales following widespread public outcry.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
6445465.stm
But whenever did they report the considerably more shocking feature of Palestinian schoolbooks, denying Israel's right to exist and promoting jihad?
http://www.pmw.org.il/BookReport_Eng.doc
Biodegradable:
John Reith:
If the BBC is so keen to inform us of this story regarding "Palestinian" school books why have they never reported on the ones that brainwash children into hating Jews?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6445465.stm
http://www.pmw.org.il/
http://www.pmw.org.il/schoolbooks.html
http://middleeastfacts.com/maps/...ial-pa-
maps.htm
Biodegradable:
Stuart | 13.03.07 - 4:40 pm
SNAP! 
Biodegradable:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6444473.stm
Palestinian government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said the apparent abduction was a "brutal and criminal action, and a shameful action, done by irresponsible people who are trying to create more tension in our society".
http://www.pmw.org.il/
Bulletins_...007.htm#b120307
"Fathi Hamad, Hamas member of Palestinian Legislative Council, demanded the kidnapping of more Israeli soldiers in order to force Israel to free the [Palestinian] prisoners… Hamad said this at a gathering of the "Wa'ed" organization for prisoners and released [prisoners] in Khan Yunis ... Hamad stressed it was the responsibility of the government, the Legislative Council, the [armed] factions and military arms to dedicate all the efforts at their disposal to free the prisoners. He argued that the kidnapping of the soldier Gilad Shalit hit Israel very hard." [Al Ayyam, March 10, 2007]
Ultraviolence:
BBC peddles and spins more crap: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/64.../uk/
6446407.stm
Apparently the bomber went to all the trouble of making high explosives and travelling down to London, just to waste his time, just to scare people with harmless backpacks of inert material.
Ultraviolence:
FUCKING HELL
Look at what I say:
"Apparently the bomber"
The mind-control has worked on me.
DEATH TO BBC
DEATH TO TERRORISTS
DEATH TO BBC
DEATH TO TERRORISTS
DEATH TO BBC
DEATH TO TERRORISTS
John Reith:
Ultraviolence | 13.03.07 - 5:01 pm
Maybe it escaped your attention, but the story you linked to was a court report which was reporting the defence evidence in a trial.
I think you'll find, if you look more closely, that the BBC isn't arguing that the bombs weren't intended to explode. The defendants' barrister was.
An important distinction when talking about bias.
John Reith:
Biodegradable | 13.03.07 - 4:39 pm
I think we all know why reports from Gaza are thin on the ground today.
Biodegradable:
John Reith:
Rather than engaging with our latest pet troll why not reply to my questions?
Jon:
Ultraviolence - I would be grateful if you would modertate your language. It does not bring anything to the debate - but rather ditracts from some of the good points you made. I am no prude but I do believe that thoese at the BBC and their supporters will just jump on this language and ignore the substantial points raised.
Jon:
Sorry for "ditracts" read "distracts"
max:
Which is why Johnston, or the BBC, doesn't report news like this
Or this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...11/
whamas11.xml
Biodegradable:
JR, I see you did, while I was posting my last comment.
So are you saying that the BBC will not do an exposé of hate filled "Palestinian" school books, or mention the 20,000 jobs created in Gaza while Alan Johnston is being allegedly 'held' by unknown 'militants', but that once his release has been secured we will see more than his "... day after day reports of the Palestinian predicament in the Gaza Strip..."?
Biodegradable:
max | 13.03.07 - 5:16 pm
Yes, quite. And let's not forget that we were told that Hamas won the elections because the "Pretendistinians" were tired of corruption under Arafat's Fatah.
BTW, has anybody ever been investigated regarding said corruption, and while "Palestinian" spokespeople vow to track down and punish kidnappers have we ever heard of one being apprehended and brought to trial... in fact have we ever heard of any kind of trial in the Palestinian controlled territories other than summary and public executions for alleged 'collaborators'?
John Reith:
Stuart | 13.03.07 - 4:40 pm
Your link does appear to show that Palestinian schoolbooks do indeed envisage a world without Israel.
But then, it appears Israeli ones 'deny the right of Palestine to exist'.
Currently, schoolbooks show Israel's territorial conquests in the 1967 war - the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights - as part of Israel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
6210144.stm
But the BBC is nothing if not even handed:
For many Israelis the continuous Palestinian militancy, suicide bombing, the incitement in the media and in school textbooks against Israel and her citizens - such as depicting the Jews as arrogant and sly traitors, and Zionism as a racist movement and a "germ" - had served as evidence that the Palestinian Authority is less than genuine in its strategic intentions to end the conflict.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
2957145.stm
Ultraviolence:
"Ultraviolence - I would be grateful if you would moderate your language."
Well okay, [EDIT : Childish Name calling], maybe you should edit that post, replace "death" with "down".
Nevertheless, the article I have linked to is mega-spin Mr Reith, if that is your REAL NAME.
It does not mention how this terror defendants flimsy lie was quickly refuted in court by other experts (I watched the ITN report last night).
It is more likely that the explosives in the ruck-sack were from an old batch made up for 7/7 that had degraded in a few weeks and became inert.
That article does not in anyway give an accurate picture of what has already been said in the trial.
[EDIT: Childish insults removed]
will:
The BBC in hyperdrive telling us that the acquitals at the court martial were only achieved by omerta.
Outside the courtroom is the spiteful mouthed Hawley, getting a bit of R&R away from the ME, cueing in anti-military voices; then tonight we have a whole Panorama to condemn our troops for not acting more like social workers.
Ultraviolence:
"I think you'll find, if you look more closely, that the BBC isn't arguing that the bombs weren't intended to explode. The defendants' barrister was."
The facts don't choose themselves.
[Gently Caress]
John Reith:
Ultraviolence | 13.03.07 - 5:44 pm |
I hope you'll forgive me if I sound patronizing, but you're obviously new to this lark.
The BBC doesn't normally employ court reporters but uses shortened versions of agency copy.
The story you object to is from the Press Association. It will form the basis of most of tomorrow's press reports.
The Guardian website has posted it here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
uklate...6477325,00.html
It is - like most court reports - a running narrative of proceedings. This story relates today's proceedings so it's hard to know how you can know any better unless you were there.
Watching ITN news last night doesn't hack it. Sorry.
Biodegradable:
John Reith, true to form, quotes a BBC website article from 2003 and chooses to ignore the fact that the Oslo Accords and all those UN Resolutions that Israel is accused regularly of failing to honour call for the Palestinians to take steps to stop the indoctrination of hatred in their schools.
That Israeli maps show territories occupied in 1967 is neither here nor there, they were never part of "Palestine" because "Palestine" as an independent Arab state as such has never existed. It is quite valid for those areas to be shown as under Israeli control because that is what they are.
Biodegradable:
Melanie Phillips writes about ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, David Miliband on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme, and quotes extensively from one of last night's Newsnight guests, Professor Paul Reiter.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/d...m/diary/?
p=1468
.
Ultraviolence:
Are you questioning my memory Mr Reith???
I remember what I saw. I think you are lying. Your twisting and turning and making rubbish excuses for an article that is pure spin, I see your trying to shift the blame, but I don't believe you, I remember what I saw on ITN last night.
You cannot tell me that article is not spin, because it is, and more to the point, I think you approve of that propaganda. You approve of it.
" I hope you'll forgive me if I sound patronizing, but you're obviously new to this lark."
So you think your polite do you? Actually I think you are, your drunk on your self-important socialism. Your loved up, sexed up. To peopleism.
If you are the real John Reith, how do you feel about commanding an organization who funds it's existence on the basis of loot/tax stolen from peope on the pain of imprisonment?????
And why do you insist on calling terrorists 'bombers'??
Biodegradable:
But then, it appears Israeli ones 'deny the right of Palestine to exist'.
Currently, schoolbooks show Israel's territorial conquests in the 1967 war - the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights - as part of Israel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6210144.stm
John Reith | 13.03.07 - 5:39 pm
Read that report properly Mr. Reith and you will find that the real story is this:
Israel's education minister has said school textbooks should show Israel's pre-1967 borders, prompting a storm of criticism from right-wingers.
Yuli Tamir said changes were needed to give Israeli children a proper understanding of their history.
Where in the report did you find this quote?
'deny the right of Palestine to exist'
The BBC, its lackeys, and its insidious use of 'scare quotes'!
John Reith:
Ultraviolence | 13.03.07 - 6:07 pm
The reporting of court proceedings is subject to tight restrictions established under the law of contempt.
If, as you wildly claim, the Press Association has put any 'spin' on the story, you can be sure the judge will either lock-up the offending reporter or ban him from court.
The PA (and other agencies) tend to be scrupulous in sticking to the rules which permit only an uninflected and fair summary of what was said in court. It's their stock-in-trade. They have a (v good) reputation to protect.
Which is more likely - that the PA has spun the story? Or that you are wrong?
It's beyond reasonable doubt.
Your general manner in this and other comments suggests drug-use or mental illness of some sort. Still, no excuse.
BioD
The quotation - or should that be 'quotation'? - isn't from the story. It's an adaptation of what Stuart said in his original comment.
Fact is though - Israel's textbooks currently (as at December 2006) do what the story says they do.
GCcooper:
Meanwhile, back at the GWface, the BBC's lies and spin continue.
Take R4's PM this evening, broadcasting a 'debate' on the Ch 4 GW Swindle programme. And the participants in this 'debate'? None other than the "Science" editor of the Independent (a polemical Green" rag which abandoned any right to call itself a newspaper some years ago) and Robert May (one of the most hardline and alarmist proponents of the anthropogenic theory).
The most delicious bit in the 'debate' was where one of the twittering geniuses complained that the CH 4 programme hadn't allowed any opposing views.
Eye. Beam. Mote.
Go on Reith, just for once, shame the devil and admit your employer has lost the plot.
Jon:
Biodegradable: Thanks for the link - The professors long piece on the "experts" in the IPCC backs a up my long held suspicons.
It is obvious that IPCC panel is made up of "activists" and politicians. What the professor says is IMHO world headline news - why is the BBC not leading on it?
Jon:
GCcooper: "The most delicious bit in the 'debate' was where one of the twittering geniuses complained that the CH 4 programme hadn't allowed any opposing views."
I'm speechless!
Biodegradable:
The quotation - or should that be 'quotation'? - isn't from the story. It's an adaptation of what Stuart said in his original comment.
It's something you said, it shouldn't be in quotes at all. That's what I mean about the BBC's insidious use of 'scare quotes'.
Fact is though - Israel's textbooks currently (as at December 2006) do what the story says they do.
John Reith | 13.03.07 - 6:22 pm
Do they also describe "Palestinians" as animals, as a cancer? Do they encourage Israeli children to strap explosives to themselves and murder as many Arab children as possible?
Do yourself a favour and look at this web site, then please stop your pathetic attempts at drawing equivalences between "Palestinian" and Israel school books:
http://www.pmw.org.il/
http://www.pmw.org.il/schoolbooks.html
http://www.pmw.org.il/tv%20part1.html
Ultraviolence:
John Reith obviously wont answer any of my other charges because he knows he can't.
2+2 = 4
That article is extremely lopsided whatever you say MR REITH IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME.
"Your general manner in this and other comments suggests drug-use or mental illness of some sort. Still, no excuse."
After all, if I disagree, it's because there's something wrong with me.
No doubt you, being a left-wing creep, still approve of it. After all:
"Look at the pictures of Americans running from the 9/11 explosions. American bond traders, you may say, are as undeserving of terror as Vietnamese peasants. Well, yes and no. America has democracy; if it often seems a greedy and overweening power, that is partly because its people have willed it" - New Statesmen editorial
HURRAH FOR THE BLACKSHIRTS
That kind of thinking infests the BBC, that's why I want the BBC [gone].
"As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up, you are never going to make progress" Cherie Blair
Why should I even try to be reasonable with you??
"drug-use or mental illness of some sort."
Projection.
Biodegradable:
Quite amazing!
Within seconds of the start of the introduction to the interview with David Miliband we hear the following, "... it seems the man who almost certainly will be our next Prime Minister, Gordon Brown..."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/
toda...nd_20070313.ram
[speechless]
Ultraviolence:
""... it seems the man who almost certainly will be our next Prime Minister, Gordon Brown...""
By the time the BBC has had its way with politics, it wouldn't be surprising.
Biodegradable:
Which is why Johnston, or the BBC, doesn't report news like this
Or this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...11/
whamas11.xml
max | 13.03.07 - 5:16 pm
Or this:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spa...ges/
837063.html
Or this:
http://www.ynetnews.com/
articles...3376040,00.html
Dai:
I was interested in Mr Reith's comment "the reporting of court proceedings is subject to tight restrictions established under the law of contempt." I presume this also applies to potential court proceedings as well.
Anyone remember the BBC's ludicrous tabloid reporting of the recent Ipswich murders? I remember for example a BBC reporter, Esler?, even going to the trouble of timing the the journey from a suspects house to the murder scene. No doubt this is what counts as investigative journalism at the Beeb.
deegee:
Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear.
Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth.
I suspect that if the El Salvadorean ambassador to anywhere had been found in such an embarassing position it would still be news or possibly entertainment. It is IMHO it is a funny, embarassing story 
I also suspect that given the Beeb's connection with the Foreign Office similar shennanigans from a British ambassador would receive much less attention until forced by the News of the World or the Daily Mail.
Similar behaviour by diplomats from Arab states would be considered too trivial to report.
deegee:
More dubious science from the BBC homepage. DON'T MISS:
Dinosaurs in 2007
What would it be like if Earth had not been hit by an asteroid?
The BBC knows, for a fact, that this event finished the dinosaurs 
The linked article qualifies this with a 'probably'. Can we take a vote among scientists?
Bodo:
The police are coy and the Beeb ain't digging, but let me guess... it isn't racist because the victims are white?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/engla...don/
6444283.stm
Two teenagers remain in a critical condition and 14 people have been arrested following a mass brawl outside a college.
Officers say it is not being treated as a racially motivated incident.
archduke:
if the dinosaurs were wiped out by a single event , such as that asteroid, how come crocs, turtles and iguanas survived?
whilst the asteroid impact was a tipping point, the evidence points to factors such as the breakup of Pangea supercontinent into several continents. a gradual evolutionary decline in other words.
more evidence is coming to light that large numbers of dinosaurs actually did survive - they just evolved into birds.
having said that if dinosaurs had indeed survived, it is highly unlikely that humans would have even evolved.
Ultraviolence:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/busin...ess/
6445559.stm
Why is the bottom of that article all in bold?
10) Although The Wealth of Nations is by far the best-known of Adam Smith's works today, it was an earlier work - The Theory of Moral Sentiments - which made his name during his lifetime. A treatise which argued that people were born with a sense of right and wrong, and of how to behave towards others, it sold out in weeks.
archduke:
"Jon | 13.03.07 - 3:23 pm |"
admittedly that is a hilarious, albeit very strange story. and it has been covered by a lot of news outlets.
http://www.google.com/news?hl=en...&
ncl=1114379358
as for miliband - he got a grade D in physics. and he still hasnt blogged about the "swindle" documentary.
http://www.davidmiliband.defra.g...og/
default.aspx
the climate change bill is the stuff of Stalinism...
http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/200...007/
070313a.htm
it legally binds future ministers to its "targets" - or else they will be breaking the law.
thereby enforcing the "climate change consensus" IN LAW and making Britain the ONLY country in the world where it is legally binding on future elected officials.
welcome to Big Brother.
joe:
Bodo | 13.03.07 - 9:11 pm
If you want to find out facts, try Life Style Extra.
http://www.lse.co.uk/
ShowStory.a...outside_college
GCcooper:
atchduke writes:
"thereby enforcing the "climate change consensus" IN LAW and making Britain the ONLY country in the world where it is legally binding on future elected officials."
Did I miss something? I thought it was unconstitutional to bind the hands of a future government in this country.
When did this change? Or is it yet anther ZaNuLabour "improvement"?
archduke:
The BBC - lying by omission
have a guess whats missing from this story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/engla...ter/
6446757.stm
and wasnt mentioned on the 10 o clock news tonight.
a quick google and i find this:
http://
www.manchestereveningnews...ing_theory.html
quote:
POLICE investigating the deaths believe it may have been a so-called “honour killing”,
The “honour killing” theory is one of two suspected by detectives struggling to understand why a father would kill his own children.
and
"It had been an arranged marriage in Lahore, Pakistan, between beautiful Uzma and stocky Arshad, who were first cousins, in 1992."
and
"Arshad - British-born but of Pakistani origin – was infuriated when Uzma, from Lahore in Pakistan, started to wear western clothes - tight jeans and tops - and began to attract the attention of men."
Arranged marriage. Honour killing. Pakistan. Islam.
NONE of these aspects were mentioned on the BBC ten o clock news tonight - when even the POLICE themselves suspected that it was an "honour" killing.
pathetic. the BBC - lying by omission.
Allan@Aberdeen:
David Miliband got a 'D' in A-level physics, but he got a 1st in PPE from Oxford. The syllabus from the degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics includes large blocks of logic and reasoning amongst other subject areas intended to stimulate the young,developing mind.
Miliband said that he would demolish the case put by the Channel 4 program, which he had not seen and in a field in which he is neither qualified nor to which he is naturally suited.
He is the product of one of our best universities and this is the BS which I heard this morning. Can our universities not perform better than this?
archduke:
" GCcooper | 13.03.07 - 10:33 pm "
no you didnt miss something.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/200...007/
070313a.htm
quote:
A new system of legally binding five year “carbon budgets”, set at least 15 years ahead,
and enforced by:
A new statutory body, the Committee on Climate Change , to provide independent expert advice and guidance to Government on achieving its targets and staying within its carbon budgets.
and more:
a requirement for Government to report at least every five years...
thankfully, its only a draft bill at the moment. the Lords will hopefully rule it as unconstitutional.
Allan@Aberdeen:
It would be a piece of real investigative journalism if the BBC were to check on who the "2500 most eminent scientists" (said David Miliband on Radio 4 this morning) actually are: what are their credentials? I doubt that the BBC would dare to do such a thing because they must suspect, as I do, that the entire report is a fraud.
Where do I find their idents, CVs and qualifications? Any pointers?
archduke:
" Allan@Aberdeen "
the brightest youngsters end up working for the City, making a packet in options trading or derivatives. the brightest of the bright end up with those multi-million bonuses that ignoramuses like Peter Hain cant stand.
the not so bright students, end up in politics or the media. hence , you end up with the likes of Miliband and his £75,000 blog. (when it cost Guido Fawkes £0 to set up his)
archduke:
" Allan@Aberdeen | 13.03.07 - 10:51 pm |"
google around for IPCC. i dont think the report is actually out yet - May 2007 i think. what the EcoFascists are are taking as "gospel" is a SUMMARY of the non-published report.
GCooper:
archduke writes:
"thankfully, its only a draft bill at the moment. the Lords will hopefully rule it as unconstitutional."
Milliband really is an odious little Nazi, isn't he?
I was all ready to watch Newsnight this evening, but the mere presence of him and one of the programme's fatuous 'ethical man' segments convinced me it would be bad for my health.
A Lurker:
GCooper writes:
"Milliband really is an odious little Nazi, isn't he?"
And I take the Tory party doesn't have a huge swathe of right wing bigoted, racist and anti-semitic members?
Some folk on here use terms such as Nazi so willy nilly but don't really know what they mean.
Allan@Aberdeen:
I looked at an earlier report as here:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc...tar/wg1/
559.htm
Hopefully, the Channel 4 program will prime a blogswarm in the US to check up on who these "2500 most eminent scientists" really are.
There are some real possibilities if the IPCC report can have its credibility wrecked. The BBC will not check the basis of the report nor the credentials of the "2500 most eminent scientists", but the blogs will. And all credit to Channel 4. It may be the home of Jon Snow but who cares now.
archduke:
" A Lurker | 13.03.07 - 11:00 pm"
which bit of the National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party do you not understand? "right wing" my arse.
climate change: dug this interesting link. happened in 2005.
http://
sciencepolicy.colorado.ed...sea_leaves.html
Scientist leaves IPPC because it is becoming "politicised"
quote:
I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.
GCooper:
A Lurker writes:
"Some folk on here use terms such as Nazi so willy nilly but don't really know what they mean."
Concise OED: a person belonging to any organization similar to the Nazis.
I'd say that covers someone forcing unconsitutional legislation through Parliament, would't you?
Now, be a dear, and get back under your bridge where you belong, would you?
archonix:
Some folk on here use terms such as Nazi so willy nilly but don't really know what they mean.
Authoritarian left-wing statists? *shrug* Sounds like milliband to me...
4hero:
And I take the Tory party doesn't have a huge swathe of right wing bigoted, racist and anti-semitic members?
oh do shut the f**k up you boring sod,
he's using he term nazi as an off the cuff insult.
4hero:
Concise OED: a person belonging to any organization similar to the Nazis.
o.k maybe not.
GCooper:
Allan@Aberdeen writes:
"The BBC will not check the basis of the report nor the credentials of the "2500 most eminent scientists", but the blogs will. "
There is definitely something in the air at the moment, post the Ch 4 programme. While the usual halfwits are still phoning in to R4 programmes, asking which is better for 'saving the polar bears' washing and re-using milk bottles or buying milk in plastic ones (heard this afternoon), an increasing number seems to have started complaining about this idiocy.
In the past two days both 5 Live (sic) and R4 have read out listeners' complaints - albeit through teeth grinding so loudly you could hear them.
People are complaining and I am beginning to wonder if a tipping point hasn't been reached.
If, as you say, the blogs can deconstruct some of this nonsense and if sufficient MSM pressure can be brought to bear, we might, yet, save the day. The problem is that on blogs like this all anyone is doing is preaching to the choir and a handful of BBC sock puppets.
Anonymous:
I'm fascinated by how Alan Johnston if, as I hope, he gets out in one piece will in the future report the Palestine vs Israel issue and Islamic/Middle East matters in general.
Since even the barmiest moonbat probably realises his abductors are not some undercover Mossad agents, how will this experience colour his outlook?
Since he's a BBC employee my gut instinct is that he'll have a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome.
Ultraviolence:
Lately there seems to be a little meme going around to reclassify the Nazi party as a leftwing organisation. No doubt this is because they want to plaster the great Nazi epithet on leftwing opponents. Because after all if anyone can be presented as a Nazi, bearing in mind that Nazism is todays convenient moral anathema - the dark Nyarlathotep and Creeping Chaos - then that persons credibility can be immolated in a second.
Another form of Godwin.
Though the Nazis based themselves on racial inequality, it did indeed include socialistic altruism towards Germans (naturally), in the form of jobs, preferable treatment under law compared to racial enemies, and mercy killing/euthanasia (a significant form of altruism). But the Nazis still presented the Germans as superior to all others on a biological level.
The hallmark of Nazism will always be endogenous inequality, even among Germans (entry to the SS for example required recruits to meet certain levels of intelligence on IQ tests).
There's nothing leftwing about an actual enthusiasm for inequality.
The socialistic part of National Socialism is indeed important, but it will always be a right-wing phenomenon.
Libertarianism, I might add, because that's probably where this new enthusiasm for reclassifying Nazism has come from, still relies on the non-biological, almost religious idea of individual rights, as distinguished against the altruistic collectivism (basically left-wing) that it rails against.
Libertarianism accepts natural inequality in ability between individuals, but it doesn't say that this gives you permission to tyrannize and dominate over people who are either considered to be, or are indeed inferior to you in some regard; because that would be an infringement of an individuals rights.
I doubt this little post is the end of the matter.
archduke:
" Ultraviolence | 13.03.07 - 11:46 pm |"
no -your post is spot on. i would suspect that the reclassification of nazism as "left wing" stems from the growing libertarian movement , who are quite vocal on the internet. its also a symptom OF the internet as people naturally discover the ideologies of the various "-isms" and wonder why a statist ideology like Nazism could be classed as "right wing".
surely , a more natural progression would be from extreme left -statist- to extreme right - no state whatsoever.(i.e. Anarchism).
I've also notice the term "anarcho-capitalist" popping up a lot. thats a more extreme version of Libertarianism. but yet, "anarchism" has been traditionally lumped in with the "left".
maybe its also because the old labels dont seem to fit the political discourse nowadays, as the Tories , Lib Dems and Labour all move to statist big government policies. a similar thing is happening in the U.S. - the Republican Party, for example, has to all intents and purposes forgotten about the "small state" ideology of Reagan.
and with the climate change "control our lives" hysteria and the progressive reduction in civil liberties in the UK , then the left/right divide of the Cold War, doesnt seem to fit the modern discourse.
how else does one explain "left" wing socialists teaming up with "right wing" Islamists?
well, it quite obvious - the labels are wrong. left = more state, right = less state. simple.
archduke:
"Ultraviolence | 13.03.07 - 11:46 pm"
the other thing to consider is that the central tenets of Nazism - anti-semitism and racism - are beyond the pale for the vast majority of people nowadays - its as beyond the pale nowadays as someone advocating a return to slavery.
so people naturally look at the Nazis and ask things like - well if you get beyond those 2 points, what was their economic policy? was it less state or more state?
hence . you are getting the realignment.
even the term "conservative" has been affected by the end of the Cold War. in the run up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the BBC referred to "conservative" members of the communist Politburo in Moscow, opposed to the "progressive" Gorbachev.
nowadays you can be a "conservative" labour party member , still admiring Marx and Lenin.
or you can be a "progressive" (in new media speak) Conservative like Cameron or Chris Patten.
with the media dahlings making it so confusing for folks , its no wonder that a realignment of what is "left" , and what is "right", is happening.
and the realignment is happening because of us - us plebs - on the blogosphere or whatever the hell you want to call it. of course, it'll take another 10 years before the media chatterati cotton on to it.
archduke:
"There's nothing leftwing about an actual enthusiasm for inequality."
actually it is built into it - the class struggle. where the workers , through revolution , topple the higher classes. therefore - the higher classes are "unequal" - and are worthy of extermination.
in fact, the real "equality" is found in libertarianism - where everyone is treated as a human being. notions of "class" and wealth envy dont even come into the conversation. a libertarian doesnt see somebody richer than him as sign of an "unequal" society - he just sees that richer person as someone creating jobs and aspires to be that person.
of course, this hinges on notions like inherited wealth and monarchybeing abolished and a true free market being established. thats why libertarians equally oppose "one nation" patrician class tories as much as the socialists.
archduke:
"Since he's a BBC employee my gut instinct is that he'll have a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome.
Anonymous | 13.03.07 - 11:33 pm"
to be honest - and based on the furious Hamas response to the news- it was a pretty stupid thing to do. to kidnap someone who is an ally of the Pallywood theme park.
i'd go with the rogue criminal gang theory. money is short in Gaza. crime has rocketed.
doesnt take a genius to figure it out.
archduke:
"The problem is that on blogs like this all anyone is doing is preaching to the choir and a handful of BBC sock puppets.
GCooper | 13.03.07 - 11:28 pm "
send a comment in to the David Miliband blog. seriously.
i did. my line was not "f*** you, you ecofascist", but more along the lines of being more honest about moving away from fossil fuels.
its nothing to do with "climate change" - its more to do with our addiction to Saudi Arabian oil - a country that hates the West with a passion. and we're buying oil off the Iranians as well.
doesnt make sense strategically does it?
add into the mix increasing competition for oil from the Chinese and Indians, and Putins erratic "on/off" switch in Russia - well, all that says to me that it makes economic and strategic sense to be less dependent on fossil fuels, now that the North Sea reserves are running out.
thats basically what i said to Miliband. but of course, they cant be honest about it. say that to the Saudis and Kuwaitis and they'll withdraw their billions in investments in the Western financial markets.
hence - the "climate change" meme. perfect excuse. and you dont have to say to a Saudi Prince "screw you and your Wahhabist Islam" - you can dress it up in a much "nicer" climate change greenery weenery waffle.
decarbonisation is a good idea. a move to British nuke power is a good idea. but we cant piss the Saudis off too much while we're doing it - hence "climate change".
Biodegradable:
based on the furious Hamas response to the news- it was a pretty stupid thing to do. to kidnap someone who is an ally of the Pallywood theme park.
There are those who take whatever Hamas says with a large dose of salt:
http://backspin.typepad.com/
back...ews_for_jo.html
Jon:
Allan@Aberdeen: from my earlier post.
"The UN report by the IPCC was published in February. At the time it was promoted as being backed by more than 2,000 of the world's leading scientists."
"There are 2,000 people on the panel, not 2,000 scientists. Most are bureaucrats and politicians"
http://www.canadafreepress.com/ 2...cover030607.htm
The reason why you will not get the BBC to mention many of the so-called "scientists" on the IPCC is becaue there is not that many on it.
GCooper:
archduke writes;
"send a comment in to the David Miliband blog. seriously."
Sadly, Miliband, like almost every party politician I have encountered (and that's a few), already "knows" everything. It's why at the tender age of 13 (or whatever he is) he thinks he is in a position to rule our lives according to his mistaken beliefs.
Short of a length of piano wire and a handy lamp post, the only way of dealing with the little squirt (and the rest of his ilk) is to have them hurled from office. And the only way of doing that is to convince the voting public of the extreme danger Miliband and Co present to their future happiness and well-being.
Which, sadly, brings us back to the BBC, that great impediment to truth and common sense.
Jon:
"send a comment in to the David Miliband blog. seriously."
I think Ian Dale or Guido has mentioned Millibands blog - and they say that all messages are censored. Although I am not 100%sure on this.
But ...
"LibDem MP Chris Huhne has discovered that David Miliband's blog costs £40k a year to run"
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/200...tes-you-
to.html
Tax payers money no doubt.
Jon:
Just to add to the above:
"As predicted the Boy Miliband has started his blog and it is crap (as also predicted). Humourless, colourless and personality free - or maybe that is his personality. Things are all "brilliant", "effective" and full of New Labourspeak adjectives.
The comments don't appear till the next day, which will make the comment thread very unlively."
http://www.order-order.com/2006/...iband-
blog.html
archduke:
just finished an IM chat with a mate of mine who's signed a record deal with an italian techno label. he's irish, but now basedin spain.
deal entirely done - including music demos - over the internet. music will only be available via download.
yet another reason why the BBC is irrelevant to today's world. you never hear about the explosion in internet only record labels?
thought not. 3,000 journalists and they cant even report on the ENORMOUS seismic shift in the music industry thats going on right now.
Jon:
On the subject of Milliband - check out the Defra Wiki about an "enviromental contract" at -
http://www.jdavenport.plus.com/defra/
And read some of the comments. The arrogance of this government has no bounds. I like this one.
"Citizens will:" "In return government will:" ????
"You are there to reprsent, not rule. You do not instruct the population, we instruct you. It would appear you have forgotten this."
Ultraviolence:
"just finished an IM chat with a mate of mine who's signed a record deal with an italian techno label. he's irish, but now basedin spain.
deal entirely done - including music demos - over the internet. music will only be available via download.
yet another reason why the BBC is irrelevant to today's world. you never hear about the explosion in internet only record labels?
thought not. 3,000 journalists and they cant even report on the ENORMOUS seismic shift in the music industry thats going on right now."
Where can I listen?
Ultraviolence:
Archduke: I'm still not convinced that Nazism is leftwing, I suppose it depends merely on what your definition of left and right is. By inequality/equality the divide is pretty stark, but by individualism/collectivism Nazism and Communism go in the same box - collectivist. But I'm not completely disagreeing so yes.
And I meant enthusiasm for inequality as approving of it, not as in being motivated to destroy it as in socialism.
And as for Nazism being statist, what if I bought a hotel and used it as base for a kind of eugenicist lebensborn program? Nobody needs to forced into being "mercy killed", just a selective breeding program by consenting adults. Which would be basically Nazism in action, but so long as no ones individual rights were infringed, it's all okay right?
And wasn't Ayn Rand libertarian on all things except trade unions? But what if all the workers using their individual freedom agree to go on strike - and cripple industry?
What if a one-nation conservative decided to offer cheap schooling to poor people (because there will be no state-schooling) on the condition that the children learn tons of nationalism?
What if the Welsh decide, without a state to back them up that they want to remain really Welsh and really chauvenistic and nationalistic?
What if a multi-billionaire decided he wanted to use his individual freedom to pay people into carving a mountain into a giant penis!!?
Of course Libertarianism is hostile to states, but what about independent organisations? And what if an independent organisation were to become as powerful as the state is today? Who would curtail the strength of that organisation? Another capitalists private army?
What about culture? What if art goes into private collections and is never seen by anyone? In a hyper individualistic society is there any possibility of collective experience? In a crowd of individuals each with there own aims the only thing that can be agreed upon is the lowest common denominator - lethal for a refined culture.
Mass produced sliced bread is a good example, when bread is sliced it drys out quickly and loses its flavour, something you can't avoid when it has to be transported from a factory to a supermarket - as opposed to a a local bakery.
But what if? What if? Sorry for the grilling.
archduke:
"Where can I listen?
Ultraviolence | 14.03.07 - 2:20 am "
http://www.myspace.com/chymeramusic
and more stuff , including mixes, from
http://www.chymera.org
he's good. no banging BBC "pete tong" crap - just intelligent techno.
Ultraviolence:
"What about culture? What if art goes into private collections and is never seen by anyone? In a hyper individualistic society is there any possibility of collective experience?"
Internet music is a case in point. The timeless appeal of rock music is the whole collective freakout involved, with lots of sweaty moshing and shouting and so on.
But how can you have collective experience with an iPod? Or sat in front of your computer?
And if you go to a techno club: we all know how loud those places are; you can't talk to anybody. Of course nobody is forcing you to go, and you can never conclusively prove one piece of music is any better than any other piece of music.
I view this new form of music distribution with foreboding. Not with condemnation of course, but I no longer hope that the future will bring great new things in the way the previous four decades have.
Would it be unfair to say that the west is in a deep cultural slump?
With the BBC as a sympton!
archduke:
"Who would curtail the strength of that organisation? Another capitalists private army?"
true. the libertarian argument gets a bit ridiculous sometimes. eventually, you end up with a "state" enforcing individual rights.
"I'm still not convinced that Nazism is leftwing"
you need to study Nazism a bit more so. Read Mein Kampft, as i have.
the central tenet of Nazism is that the "Volk" - the German people - are superior to others. But that is a collectivist ideology. ergo - it is a form of socialism.
"What about culture?" - but why should the STATE tell a private collector how he should display his art, that he bought himself?
in any case, the lesson from history is that billionaires do like to show off their art - hence all the art galleries in New York.
archduke:
"I view this new form of music distribution with foreboding"
i dont - it gives the youngsters of nowadays a new outlet, bypassing the traditional druggie coke snorting chatterati class. you can bypass that and get your music released.
nowadays, its actually uncool to be a techno musician and to be on drugs.
for starters, you just end up making very crap music if you are on drugs. modern complex techno requires a clear head to make it.
archduke:
"But how can you have collective experience with an iPod? Or sat in front of your computer? "
you can with myspace. it not all doom and gloom as the BBC luddites with their woefull tech reporting make it out to be.
i would go as far as saying that socialising has actually improved enormously. for the tech heads and youngsters anyway. in my own case, i've lived in england for ten years now, and my friends in ireland are the same as when i left ireland - i havent lost touch. regular contact. that would just NOT have happened 20 or more years ago. if you emigrated it was bye bye to everything.. nowadays it isnt. you can keep in touch with your mates back home. tech is a great thing, no matter how much the bbc try to disparage it with endless "child porn" or "virus" stories.
of course they would do that - they dont want us discovering information for ourselves - they'd rather we all got it from the goggle box television a-la Big Brother 1984.
utter tossers, the lot of them.
Ultraviolence:
"in any case, the lesson from history is that billionaires do like to show off their art - "
The virtue of selfishness!
As for left and right, it's a case of definition, and I think this redefinition is rhetoric in the purest sense, as in, selling a point of view. I don't disagree or agree. Which wraps it up for me.
As for your friends music, I'm listening now, he's obviously quite competent and I can see why he's getting a little success. People need bar music!
" it gives the youngsters of nowadays a new outlet, "
Which is why didn't reflexively shout "IT'S CRAP!!11!"
"bypassing the traditional druggie coke snorting chatterati class. "
Which is why I don't live in London.
On the whole - let's wait and see.
Anonymous:
yeah - theres some interesting stuff happening right now. powerful laptops plus broadband access means that you can be nearly anywhere on the planet and still do your job. lets see how this pans out, but al i see is unbrindled optimism about the future, in contrast to the BBC's doom and gloom. the bbc has gotten so gloomy that i've given up on it entirely. "Today" is a joke that i just dive into in 30 seconds segments. more than that is too much.
archduke:
oops - anon above is me
Ultraviolence:
"they dont want us discovering information for ourselves - they'd rather we all got it from the goggle box television a-la Big Brother 1984. "
That could well be true!
"BBC luddites"
You can be a naturalist, the problems begin when you want to start smashing up the modern world, via "global-warming" and replace it with a morbid dream of agrarian socialism.
It has been suggested that the green movement and anti-globalisation protesters are in fact total misanthropes who want to punish all humanity. They often cite Adolph Hitler as a good example, as Hitler was a skinny vegetarian animal lover. Hitler didn't like all that fat muscle and hair, it reminded him too much of the adulthood that had destroyed him and taken him away from his mother or something.
India has a great tradition of Hindu hermits who take vows of silence, and live naked in the trees eating only berries. You don't see them leading genocidal movements.
--
I also think I heard David Milliband say on newsnight that companies should buy and sell "carbon credits", set by the state obviously. He also said that western companies would buy up the credits to prevent, for instance, Indian companies from burning fossil fuels and thus slowing down India's economy.
Pretty fiendish don't you think? Evil genius if it's true.
Jon:
GCcooper | 13.03.07 - 10:33 pm |
You are right.
"The doctrine of parliamentary supremacy may be summarized in three points:
Parliament can make law concerning anything.
No Parliament can bind its successor (that is, it cannot pass a law that cannot be changed or reversed by a future Parliament).
No body except Parliament can change or reverse a law passed by Parliament."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Par...#United_Kingdom
Ultraviolence:
GCcooper | 13.03.07 - 10:33 pm |
HOLY POO POO!
archduke:
"and replace it with a morbid dream of agrarian socialism."
google it. you'll find that the first uber-eco nutcases were the Nazis
"Pretty fiendish don't you think? Evil genius if it's true"
yeah right miliband - try imposing that on the Chinese red army...
as i said above, its really all about energy indepedence. once we have that then we can nuke meccah next time a muslim terrorist blows up something.
Ultraviolence:
That's not precisely true, I remember reading about it in the New Statesmen magazine.
There was a naturalist movement in Germany before the Nazis. Probably based on disatisfaction with modern-architecture and factorys. I think the two coincided and merged.
You can be a naturalist/hermit without being a psycho, which is why I brought up Hindu holymen.
I can see environmentalists getting a real panning over this, being called Nazis and stuff, in the near future and I don't think it's very fair.
You will be able to separate the (perfectly amicable) Ray Mears types from the wackos based on how much trouble they have in giving up the apocalyptic global warming meme.
But anyway, nature? A non-human non-social organic reality is completely intolerable. Anybody who perfers nature to people is suspect .There is no world but the human world. Social activities are the most important. If you do not socialise then we must pathologise.
Alan:
Al Beebers claim to have successfully studied their journalism 101 courses; but what about their 101 courses in Islam?
They're in luck. Jihadwatch has just posted (13 Mar.) such a course.
It's an excellent educational reference for non-Muslims.
See "Islam 101" by Gregory M.Davis,PhD, at:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archiv...ives/
015638.php
deegee:
The Political Compass
Political Survey
What a pity there is no search mechanism in this blog because I have written about this before.
The two dimensional left/right analysis of the political system is long obsolete as the discussion here shows. Why don't you (collectively) take a look at the two competing sites above that attempt a four dimensional analysis. Either approach would avoid sniping which IMHO is lowering the standards of this blog.
My late father who lived in Germany until immediately before the invasion of Poland told me that the NAZI party only adopted the Socialist Workers tag because they were in direct and violent competition with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands known as SOZI) for the disaffected German lower and middle class (Yet another debatable distinction, I know).
They were never ideologically socialist although just what that means has changed dramatically since the fall of the Soviet Union and I believe varies from country to country and period to period.
deegee:
SPOILER:
Please do one or both of the 4D analysis' before looking at this picture so as not to affect your answers.
Basic Compass
BTW I landed in exactly the same place on both analysis.
On another issue every B-BBC reader should be well aware that the English language is flexible enough to admit multiple meanings. The expression Nazi can refer to the German political movement but just as easily to 3. Sometimes Offensive. (often lowercase) a person who is fanatically dedicated to or seeks to control a specified activity, practice, etc.: a jazz nazi who disdains other forms of music; tobacco nazis trying to ban smoking.
A Lurker:
Deegee I too have posted about the political compass before to try to explain the model it adopts. But as ever, most on here just chose to igniore it and continue fulminating over their Daily Mails.
Archduke - I will check out the link to your mate's techno track, soinds interesting. As to Pete Tong's show on the BBC it is indeed utter tosh but that is just programme that is catering to the generally more popular commercial and mainstream dance music.
The BBC does do other good music shows, Gilles Peterson, Annie Nightingale, Rob Da Bank etc.
Techo (and by that mean the intelligent stuff) - now is that a right wing or left wing musical artform?
Little Bulldogs:
A look into why the BBC is refusing to report Alan Johnston's "disappearance" as a kidnapping:
http://littlebulldogs.blogspot.c...ng-in-
gaza.html
If you have any ideas please let us know.
Anonymous:
Little Bulldogs has a good point. Anyone reading the Beeb's reporting about the disappearance of their own employee in Gaza might think he'd done a Reggie Perrin or John Stonehouse.
Bizarre.
Martin Belam:
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/busin...ess/ 6445559.stm
Why is the bottom of that article all in bold?
A quick 'view source' reveals incorrectly nested <B> tags in the HTML
archduke:
"Techo (and by that mean the intelligent stuff) - now is that a right wing or left wing musical artform?
A Lurker | 14.03.07 - 8:53 am"
"right wing" possibly - if one takes the extreme right to be anarcho-capitalism & uber-libertarianism.
for example Guido Fakwes, ex-M25 rave organiser , i would class as being on the right. busybody Statist interventionist Tories (like Cameron), i would just place on the left. with New Labour.
if you reclassify the right/left divide into less state/more state you suddenly find that the lib dems/labour/tories are all clustered on the left, and arent even on the supposed "centre". its how you frame the debate - for example, during the Soviet Union the political debate was between "conservative" communists and "progressive" communists (like Gorbachev. a "right/left" divide, even though the entirity of the debate was taking place on the extreme left.
TPO:
A pinch of salt required for this one, especially when you see the byline.
When troops nearly took over the BBC
By Andrew Marr
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 14/03/2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opini...3/14/
do1403.xml
Now what’s the motive for peddling this.
Umbongo:
Not that this really has anything to do with B-BBC or the climate change swindlers but as a matter of fact
1. There were always two intertwined strands in the NSDAP - the "nationalist" and the "socialist". I believe the title of the party pre-dated the arrival of Hitler.
2. The power struggle within the party between the two elements was (more or less) finally resolved in 1934 in the Night of the Long Knives when the "socialist" SA leadership and many of their followers were murdered
3. Notwithstanding the victory of the nationalist element, Nazi rhetoric right up to the end always had a pop at the "plutocrats" (not necessarily Jewish ones) and the evils of capitalism
So, yes, the nazis were both right-wing (nationalist) and left wing (socialist) but, whatever they were, they were definitely anti-democratic in the sense that we understand it. However, despite their recourse to "the streets" (along with their communist opponents) they achieved power by democratic means under a constitution which was a beacon of democratic rectitude. Calling the climate change swindlers "nazis" is an insult and an exaggerated one at that. However, the suppression of free discussion on the BBC, the propagandising in elements of the MSM, the political stich-up across the 3 main parties and the bullying of some scientists opposed to the "consensus" are things of which Goebbels would heartily approve.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Good Morning.....
I've really enjoyed reading this thread,so I thought I would throw in my tuppenny bit:
-"Right" and "Left" wing Nazi's.
It is very difficult to explain what Nazism is because by it's very nature the Nazi "State" was infact unlike any other political body in history,as I hope I can illistrate.
To my mind the Nazi (and Communist) party has different "wings" to it ranging from "Left" to "Right",taking a snapshot in the '33 election you could say that the "party" was made up of:
-The original "founding fathers" from the days of the Frikorp and violent nationalism.They later split when Gregor Stasser formed the Black Front against Hitler,but are the most "Hitlerite" (ie Mein Kampf is gospel).From this group Ernst Rohm (Head of SA untill murdered),Alfred Rosenberg and Hess emerge from this collection of misfits.
-A closley allied extream right-wing individualists/libertarians mostly doctrinaire racists who joined in 1925-29 like Himmmler Goering and Goebbels.
-A third group who joined in 1930-33 were from the youth movements, the Volkish "Blood and Soil" (the forerunner of todays Green movement)groups and petty bourgois "Socalism" from in the middle class's.They came from those who had lost there savings in the depression and were without direction.Speer,Walter Schellinberg,Werner Best and Heydrich joined about this time.
-The largest group were the ordinary citizens who voted the Nazi's as a "Party of National Revival" These included the military,the Civil Service and the buisness world fearful of a Communist takeover and yearning for a "proud and strong" Germany
Some like Meuller, Head of Gestapo never voted for the NSDAP.
After the election until '45 the German "State" was a just groups of competing beaucracies and fiefdoms,each battling for the attention of Hitler.There was never any formal Cabinet meetings (too politcally dangerous for Hitler),no unified policy but a series of vague asperations and ideas brought to life by "yes" men.Hitler's basic doctrine of Government was always "divide and rule" and "survival of the fittest".
It is a paradox,but by carrying out the "Final Solution" Germany doomed itself to defeat simply by wasting resources which could of served her better,but was brought about because of an outburst by Hitler on how he wanted to dispose of his Jewish problem.
Witness the battles between Himmler (of the SS) and the Army,Speer (Minister of Production) and Bormann (Sec of the Party).The idea of a monolithic ldeaology is a creation of Gobbels propaganda (like Triumph of Will), and historians trying to explain the Second World War just after it was written.
The other thing-Mein Kampf was read by more people outside Germany than in-Hitler always relied of his mastery of PR that Mein Kampf was never a central plank of political text in terms of electioneering.
Saddam run a very similar set-up,although the ideaology was different.
Allan@Aberdeen:
The insults are flying now because the debate has now kicked off, thanks to Channel 4's documentary and the oppressive tendancies of the leftist global-warming lobby.
Energy efficiency is obviously desirable and anyone who is not should be made to pay, and does, through taxation on consumption. What rankles is the big-brotherism of the eco-fascists. The science is heavily flawed but the argument for energy efficiency is reasonable: why could they not use that and get of our backs? Naturally, the BBC recognises one of its own and supports the eco-loons.
Bryan:
i'd go with the rogue criminal gang theory. money is short in Gaza. crime has rocketed.
doesnt take a genius to figure it out.
archduke | 14.03.07 - 12:35 am
Agreed. No conventional Gaza terrorists would have kidnapped their resident BBC propagandist, and he's been strictly neutral on the Hamas-Fatah fight.
Echoing the sentiments of others on this blog, I hope Johnston is soon released safe and sound. It must be one helluvah ordeal.
Umbongo:
An interesting insight into Naughtie's thought processes: he castigates Des Browne for recommending the spending of £15-20 billion on Trident on the grounds that the threat to the UK is in the unforeseeable future and, in any event, uncertain. Yet, his belief in the climate change swindle and the cost to the UK which will run into untold billions (evidenced at the very least by his lack of energy or indignation when questioning a supporter of same) is unshaken despite the threat being "in the unforeseeable future and, in any event, uncertain". "Go figure" - as they say.
laosuwan:
How we dispise the BBC here in Thailand as they continue to try to spin a pro islam point even to massacres of civilians. Look at these two headlines and leading paragraphs
Bangkok Post BREAKING NEWS
Insurgents kill 9 in shuttle bus attack
- Southern extremists opened fire on a shuttle van loaded with passengers in Yala's Yaha district Wednesday morning, killing nine Buddhist civilians including two teenage girls.
Now look at BBC
Eight killed in southern Thailand
Eight people have been killed in an attack on a minibus in southern Thailand, police have said.
To try to spin it away more, look at what BBC says next:
In contrast with the rest of Thailand, the south is predominantly Islamic, and most of the people living there have more in common with Malays, who live over the border, than with Buddhist Thais.
What is the point of that sentence? Any psycholinguist will tell you it is to try to create doubt that the action is unjustifiable in defense of the indefensible. In other words, to defend islam even when its adherents are executing children in cold blood.
We in Thailand would welcome the shutting down of BBC if it could be made to happen. They are committing an act of agression against our country with their biased reports every day.
Islamic BBC, we dispise you.
Archonix:
The thing is, by and large, hitler's policies were considered to be socialist by his peers, and inf act if you were to adopt those policies today, removing the overt racial elements, you would be hailed as a paragon of the socialist movement. In fact, I recall an experiment someone tried quite recently, taking excerpts from hitler's speeches and policies and sending them as recomendations and letters to modern politicians. They were received very favourably on the whole.
Ing Soc (Etc) probably has it described best, though. First and foremost Hitler was a bastard.
Martin Belam:
Ooh, BBC Trust in "with teeth" shocker - they've announced that the BBC is to suspend the BBC Jam digital curriculum project because of effect on the market
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/
ne...14_03_2007.html
gordon-bennett:
On this nazi:left or right thing, why not take their own word for it.
In their 1933 manifesto they said: "We are socialists and mortal enemies of the Capitalist system".
Also see this site:
http://www.tfp.org/what_we_think...nk/
fascism.html
IngSoc is doublethink:
Electronic Music and Politcs.
First of all-forget the mainstream for any political content as they embody the New Left principle of mass marketing limp wristed libralism (BTW I'm not saying these are crap-I'm only pointing out there "political" content).
Thom Yorke/Radiohead,Massive Attack,Faithless,The Orb,The Prodigy,Mody,Orbital,The Shaman, etc.....
For a more "radical" left of centre view Electro has a plethora of groups:
Underground Resistance,Jeff Mills,Mad "Mike" Banks,Dopplereffeckt,Drexcyia,Ectomorph,Cybertron,
some Wax Trax label stuff (Lard,Ministry,Rev Co),Alec Empire/ATR.
For a more "right-wing" (although more libertarian than anything) view point then the older industrial stuff might be down your street:
NON/Boyd rice,Current 93,Whitehouse,Sutcliff Jugend,Laibach,some Position Chrome label,Clan of Xymox,Wampscut.
(WARNING:Some of the above is very very hard to stomach so approach with caution!!!)
Most electronic acts don't have "personalities" per-se (an idea that came from UR) and very rearly mention politics directly (although Autechre did release the Anti EP against the Criminal Justice Bill in 1992) but there are always oblique references to political issues (and sometimes you find tracks ending up on "issue based" comps as well).
One act that is worth mentioning is Boards of Canada and there fixation with the Branch Davidian....?
The best place to hear good music on the BBC isn't on Radio One but Top Gear-They are always useing BoC,Aphex Twin,Autechre and other Warp Record goodies....
The Fat Contractor:
I caught the BBC early morning News magazine show this morning ('Breakfast Time'?). Don't usually watch TV at this time of day ...
In the 15 minutes I watched it:
1. An article of the way people walk. English people apparantly aren't sexy like Italians and 'don't walk propah' English people are horrid aren't they, can't even walk properly?
2. 50th anniversary of the 'Great Thames Flood'. Pictures of Reading under water. Apparently caused by heavy snow falls which, when they melted raised the Thames water level by three times it's normal level. Not helped by the ground not thawing as quick as the snow. So it was cold.
But Beeboid couldn't help adding that Global Warming would make this worse in the future. Erm..?
3. Trident. No attempt at putting the argument just a trail of anti-nuke POV with interviews from protestors only. The 'fact' that the government will have to rely on the Conservatives to pass this evil was stated with the usual disgust.
This was mentioned at least three times during the 15 mins ending with and interview with that reknown expert on nuclear weapons - Bianca Jagger!
4. The NHS in rural areas is not coping with demand. Really, living in rural Oxforshire I wasn't aware of that. Sarcasm mode off. We have a local lottery. First person to spot an ambulance wins. There has been a roll over for the last 2 years ...
So the BBC troll down to Cornwall. Why not closer to home? Why not up North? Well because in Cornwall it is a private company that is failing to provide the NHS with what it needs and not just the NHS.
Two hits in one private medicine and not enough funding for the NHS. No alternative view point given yet again.
I despair.
will:
Now what’s the motive for peddling this.
TPO | 14.03.07 - 10:03 am
Because Andrew Marr is desperate to link Suez & Iraq. He interviewed Robert Lyndsay on his BBC1 Sun AM programme, & he did get Lyndsay to give him a quote that he relays in the Telegraph column
The Entertainer captures the anger and disillusion about Suez brilliantly. So much so, according to its star Robert Lindsay, that some people who have been to see it in the past few days assumed it had been rewritten to make points about Iraq.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opini...3/14/
do1403.xml
But this was in an interview which was introduced by Marr saying c. "An illegal war, vast marches through London, but this was 50 years ago ..."
Marr then got the above quote from Lyndsay by repeating illegal war etc & the play still relates.
Leaving "The Entertainer", Marr claimed that Lyndsay was "haunting the PM", with Suez & Iraq (i.e. The Trial of TB).
At this stage it all got too much for Lyndsay who said "I don't get the link between Archie Rice & Tony Blair.
Marr, what a creep, pushing his agenda by seeking to extract the appropiate words from anyone else he can.
Third World Britain:
A man whose wife died after a series of NHS blunders following childbirth yesterday gave a harrowing account of his family's suffering. Ben Palmer said his children, Harry, five, and Emily, two, still cry every night for their mother, Jessica, nearly three years after her death...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
pages...in_page_id=1770
Martin Belam:
Bad day at BBC towers - not only is BBC Jam suspended, but now Blue Peter has admitted faking the results of a competition. And they were in a such a tizzy about covering it they've accidentally filed it under Middle East!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
6449919.stm
Wouldn't have happened in my day, mutter mutter, etc etc.
Umbongo:
"Illegal" war?
Could someone enlighten me about the "illegality" of Suez. Certainly the proximate pretext for launching the attack on the Canal - the invasion of the Sinai Peninsular by the Israelis - was pre-arranged by France, Israel and the UK but the cause of the war was the nationalisation of the Canal by Nasser. Grabbing British assets (ie the Canal) was a good and (probably) legal excuse for military action unless, of course, any military action in pursuit of national interests or to protect legitimately acquired national assets is illegal. Funny: the French don't seem to have any hang-ups about Suez.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Gordon:
"We are socialists and mortal enemies of the Capitalist system"
Good point.
But seeing as the "socalist" element was dropped quickly there after (due to the "compromise" that Hitler made with Hindenberg in'33 on resumption of power) which lead to the split between Rohm and Hitler leading to Night of the Long Knives,to impliy the Nazi's were "socalists" is incorrect.
The Nazi's never had a strong idealogical background in economics like Communisum but in the more esoteric arguments regarding "blood and soil" and "race politics".
Hitler economic policy was Keynesian "tax and spend" not to far away from the policies that being used in Britian and France.This is not surprising since Hitler had little interest in economic policies so giving the Riechbank carte blanche to run Germany.Hitler was only interested in was re-arming Germany,public works projects to increase the prestige of lasting "triumph of the 1000 year Riech" and welfare programmes designed to strengthen the German "Volk" (for example the child support payments to women to increase the birth rate).At no point was the private sector excluded,but what was set up was a kind of "corporate" state of private/public companies ensured to run the different sectors of the economy under Goerings Four Year plans.
Note that this is the same Goering who spent his whole time in the Karinhall being the "Forester of the Riech" when not playing with his trainset,which might give some hint of the state of German economic planning by 1940.
IG Farben is a good example of the sort of companies running the economy,a kind of crude PPFI.
The "socalist" element refered to is not of global equality but of equality based on race-so only "Aryans" are treated equally and get all the benifits of health,welfare and education.This is totally different from the "one world socalism" based around "class" espouced by Lenin and Trotsky,although the outcome was misery and suffering in both cases.
As the Polish officers in the Katryn Forest found out-A 7.62mm Tokarev bullet from an NKVD guard has the same effect as a 9mm from a Walter from an SSer...
.:
Muslims Murdering Muslims?
BAGHDAD - Suicide bombers struck a market in northern Iraq and an Iraqi military checkpoint in Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people, while an Iraqi general warned extremists that they will be "smashed under the foot of the Iraqi people" if they resist efforts to end the violence in the country.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/
20070...ccDIti_bErMWM0F
archduke:
"IngSoc is doublethink | 14.03.07 - 10:58 am |"
good summary there of the internal workings of Nazism. the Nazi state was at times almost chaotic in organisation - far from the propagandised notion of a Prussian style centrally controlled regimented state. it was really a load of fiefdoms competing for Hitlers attention.
i would recommend reading "third reich: a new history" by Michael Burleigh for further info on this.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Third-Re...73875220&sr=8-
4
another one on this theme would be "Hitlers Willing Executioners"
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitlers-...73875435&sr=1-
1
Biodegradable:
archduke:
a mate of mine who's signed a record deal with an italian techno label. he's irish, but now basedin spain.
His web site says he lives in Costa Rica - maybe you were getting confused with Costa Blanca, Costa Brava, Costa del Sol etc. 
max:
And they were in a such a tizzy about covering it they've accidentally filed it under Middle East!
After all the talk about quotes, tsk tsk. Should read "accidentally" no?
IngSoc is doublethink:
The Trident "Debate":
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
u...enew_march_2007
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/s...and/
6447855.stm
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/u...ics/
6449005.stm
So far all the narration has how this is splitting the Labour Party as well as the usual useful idiots from CND.......
Clearly Al Beeb has forgotten to tell the British public that these countries:
USA,Russia,China,France,Pakistan,India,Isreal and probably North Korea
have nuclear capability and these:
Japan,Brazil,South Africa,Iran,South Korea and Tiawan
Will have the means to produce or will have by 2024 nuclear capability,add and a whole host of nations who could develop in a short space of time CBR weapons and thats a lot of places.
So much for "No enemey in sight".....
If we are not going to have a deterrent will that mean a increase spending, because judging by our troops levels when compared to say Iran or North Korea, we have very very modest levels:
UK Armed Forces Overview
http://www.fas.org/main/content....7&
contentId=162
Iranian Armed Forces Overview
http://www.fas.org/main/content....7&
contentId=161
North Korean Armed Forces Overview
http://www.fas.org/main/content....7&
contentId=159
But hey seeing as we can't even provide air support for our troops,why not go the whole hog and hand over out stratigic responce to the "evil imperialistc Yanks"......
Unless of course we become we adopt nutrality and have to triple our defence spending to make up for the shortfall AND a massive civil defence programme a la Switzerland or Sweden.
But seeing as Thom Yorke is a student of Molke and Clausewitz I'm sure the TOTP brigade will be telling us how we are all wrong and we should be spening it on "hospital and schools".......
Ahh...so much for informed debate.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Archduke:
I've got Hitlers Willing Executioners,thats a great read....
I must pick up Burlieghs book, I've herd some good things about it.
I would also recommend "the Order of the Deaths Head"by Heinze Hohne
http://www.amazon.com/Order-Deat...y/dp/
0141390123
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich By William L Shirer
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Third...4930650-
7799938
The Dictators By Richard Overy for a good comparasion between the Nazi and Communist systems of Government.
http://www.amazon.com/Dictators-...73878713&sr=1-
1
And not forgetting the magestic The Last days of Hitler By Hugh Trevor Roper.
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-...73878377&sr=1-
1
Although the latter is now inaccurate (it was written in 1947 without the aid of the Soviet Archives) in itself it it a great peice of historical research in it's own right.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Which reminds me-
I'm going to be starting a project studying the role of Saddam's intelligence agenies both inside and outside of Iraq.
I'm after books detailing the IIS/Mukhaberat as well as more estoteric organizations such as Project 858 and Fayadeen Saddam.
I'm a member of the Federation of American Scientists and have loads of Janes/IISS.CSIS reports so on-line info is easy to get but a good publication........?
Can anybody help?
Little Bulldogs:
An update on the BBC's refusal to state that Alan Johnston has been kidnapped:
http://littlebulldogs.blogspot.c...ng-in-
gaza.html
Martin Belam:
@Max -
dmatr:
@Martin Belam:
Re: Blue Peter
A member of staff asked a child who was visiting the show to pose as a caller and answer a question live on air... An internal investigation discovered the error...
It wasn't an error, it was deliberate subterfuge. "Uncovered the deception" would be a more accurate description. Honestly, does the BBC really expect us to fall for this ass-covering guff?
tom atkins:
So Blue Peter has admitted that at least one of its phone ins was a fix.
Is that news mentioned on the front page of the BBC's news page?
uh.
from sky's news pages (who by the way have their own agenda in undermining ITV's phone line income):
But due to a "technical failure", a telephone caller was not selected.
Instead a member of staff asked a child who was visiting the studio to phone in and give their answer.
That child was then awarded the prize
I wonder if the child, who just so happened to be "visiting the studio" at the time, is a also relative of a member of staff of the BBC.
- We wouldn't want any prizes going out to the unwashed licence payers now would we?
Foxgoose:
Just got this extraordinary posting from Melanie Phillips.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/d...m/diary/?
p=1469
It appears that scientists leading the GW debate now believe that we're in a "post-normal" science era where GW is sooooo vital that we have to make the facts fit the dogma.
I must say I've had my suspicions for some time but it's good of him to "come out" and put it in writing.
Truly we're in the grip of a new religion.
Umbongo:
Alice in Wonderland (sorry - climate change) science
"sentence first, verdict afterwards"
Martin Belam:
>> So Blue Peter has admitted that at least one of its phone ins was a fix.
Is that news mentioned on the front page of the BBC's news page?
Erm, well, from where I'm viewing, it is the #3 article and the top entertainment story, and earlier was in the breaking news ticker strap-line, and "BBC suspends net learning project" is also the top story in the Education slot on the UK news homepage at the moment
Martin Belam:
>> It wasn't an error, it was deliberate subterfuge.
Nearly all live television is smoke'n'mirrors of some sort - I expect the whole phone votes issue and off-shoots from it will rumble on and on and on for weeks, and involve more BBC programmes too
max:
Re: kidnaping of AJ
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Sat...ticle%
2FPrinter
Palestinian Authority security sources told The Jerusalem Post they were looking into reports that the BBC journalist's kidnappers were aided by local Palestinian reporters.
According to the sources, Palestinian journalists working with the international media in the Gaza Strip were linked to previous abductions of foreign journalists.
"We have evidence that some local reporters helped the kidnappers of the foreign reporters," the sources said. "These journalists don't want the foreigners to come to the Gaza Strip because they are taking their jobs."
Grain of salt etc. Interesting if true.
Biodegradable:
Contrast and Compare:
BBC:
Israel 'must halt' Jerusalem dig
A UN report will call for an immediate halt to work by the Israeli authorities at a Jerusalem site holy to both Muslims and Jews, the BBC has learned.
[...]
However, Israeli newspapers have reported the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) will also say Israeli excavations comply with international standards.
ynetnews.com:
Israeli works did not damage Temple Mount, UN says
UNESCO report, which will be published Wednesday, states Israel adhered to international standards in Mugrabi Gate excavations, but calls for suspension of project until international monitors can arrive in Jerusalem
Israeli works near the Temple Mount did not cause damage to the historic site, a UNESCO report set to be published Wednesday states. However, the UN organization recommends that the excavations at the place be suspended in order to allow for international monitors to arrive in Jerusalem and supervise the project.
In the report, which was obtained by Ynet, UNESCO experts laud Israel for the transparency with which the works were being carried out, and note that the excavations conducted near the Temple Mount compound do not jeopardize its stability.
[...]
Sources in the Foreign Ministry expressed their satisfaction over the report findings, but not over its conclusions.
"The findings confirm Israel's claims that the works were carried out professionally and that nothing harmed the Temple Mount. However, the conclusions calling for an immediate halt of the works are inappropriate," a source said, adding that he was not certain the organization was authorized to issue such recommendations.
Slagging off Israel at every opportunity, it's what we do!
IngSoc is doublethink:
Foxgoose:
"It appears that scientists leading the GW debate now believe that we're in a "post-normal" science era where GW is sooooo vital that we have to make the facts fit the dogma".
Isn't this the sort of logic that the moonbats accused GWB and Tony of using over Iraq?
My my why do words like "sexing up" "group think" "over-egging" pop into my head everytime I hear the words Global Warming.......
max:
Re:Slagging off Israel at every opportunity, it's what we do!
Add this one to the list:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6385519.stm
Hamas still has not accepted the principles of recognising Israel, renouncing violence and accepting previous agreements made by Palestinians with the Israelis, and seems unlikely to change its mind if and when it enters a unity government with Fatah.
But it seems clear to most observers outside the Israeli government and sections of the Bush Administration in Washington that Hamas is moving towards the Quartet principles.
...
But Israel will not deal in half measures.
If Hamas will not do as it is told, it believes it should stay isolated - and noises are coming from the Israeli government suggesting that the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ought to be isolated too if he chooses, in their view, to sell out by joining Hamas.
Dai:
Nazis -Left Wing?
Mosley's British Union of Fascists and National Socialists had plenty of ex-Labour people in the leadership as did Beckett's pro-Hitler British Peoples Party. Anti-Semitism? Well it's a short jump from beleving the world is run by a clique of capitalist oligarchs to believing its run by a clique of Jewish capitalist oligarchs. The fact that so many on the left are in bed with the Islamofascists isn't a surprise.
Dear Lefties, I know you think you'rebetter than Joe Public but really you're not nice people you know.
Jon:
"Climate change is too important to be left to scientists - least of all the normal ones."
From the link by Foxgoose:
Honsetly - what is happening? Where are the sane people in this country - why is no elected representative in parliament questioning this ideolgy - its frightening to think that these "eco-facists" can get exactly what they want when the science is being debunked day by day (and from the very people who started the mad rush to blaming man on global warming).
There has to be somp MP or member of the Lords who sees the truth behind all the sham science.
Biodegradable:
BBC | Climate Change
Not a counter-argument or a dissenting voice to be found.
Even when the BBC talks about the Holocaust it introduces an element of doubt with the occasional 'alleged' or 'it is thought' or 'some believe', but when it comes to climate change it's presented as immutable truth - to dispute it is to be a heretic, an outcast, a mad person.
Biodegradable:
max:
Standby for the BBC to report this, again:
Hamas aide: Group to undergo ideological changes
Hamas will undergo ideological changes in the near future, according to Ahmed Youssuf, PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's political adviser, Army Radio reported.
In an interview with the London-based newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, Youssuf said that "diplomatic activity could achieve our demands, instead of armed resistance."
He added that "Hamas will accept the establishment of a Palestinian state with the 1967 borders, with the implementation of the Right of Return, in exchange for a 10-year cease-fire with the option of an extension."
Nil novis sub sol.
BaggieJonathan:
Sky reporting on Iraq today said that no insurgents had been reported killed and in the same breath reported civilians killed by suicide bomber.
So the suicide bomber was not an insurgent then?!
Their reporting of what constituted reported can only be described as a poor joke.
Its embarrasingly and ridiculously disingenuous - they clearly arent even bothering to listen to what they are saying.
Are they Al Beebzera in disguise?
Biodegradable:
Melanie Phillips: The ‘post-normal’ science of climate change
Biodegradable:
Ooops, didn't notice that Foxgoose had already mentioned that!
Alan:
More about their chum, TARIQ RAMADAN, for John Humphrys and Andrew Marr, in particular.:-
"Ramadan detained for insulting an officer" (14 Mar.) (Scroll down.)
http://www.newenglishreview.org/...og.cfm?
frm=1952
.:
What an admission! Let’s read that one again.. "Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking".. Of course not. The facts don’t support it. It’s not true. So, says Hulme, let’s abolish the need to establish the facts and the truth and impose the theory on the basis of — what’s that again — ‘values and beliefs’. In other words, climate change science has got to be anti-science. It’s got to be anti-truth. It’s got to be nothing more than an ideology.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/
Biodegradable:
@ John Reith:
Yesterday we were talking about "Palestinian" school books - see this clip from official Palestinian Authority TV then find me a comparable example from Israeli TV.
Go on, I dare you.
http://www.memritv.org/search.as...ACT=S9&
P1=1398#
.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Just a comment on B-BBC in general.
Never has the time for a centre-right voice been more needed than now.
We face an agenda of PC orthodoxy that even Stalin would be proud of.
Britian is creaking under the weight of multi-cultralism,EU regulated,unaccountable,eco-facist moonbat politics that is isolating Britain from its traditional allies and friends around the world,and yet embraces the nihilist view of neo-Salafist rubbish which is regarded as "Islam" by the media in the UK.
Never has the ordinary man in the street (white,brown or black) felt so excluded from the political process.Never has the temptation to vote for the likes of the BNP been so high.
With Mr Blair almost gone,the breaks on the socalist gravey train are now off and you can expect unadultrated Labour policies that wouldn't appear out of place in the 70's.
Although I'm only been a blogger on this site for a short period,I think there will come a time for the likes of Biased BBC et al to become a real voice for conservative thinking in the UK and outside.
I firmly believe that the centre-right needs to take notes from the leftist, and SUBVERT the media to our cause,to use the counter-culture and to distroy the leftist hegomony of "pop culture" that is necrotizing our society.
As Clausewitz observed when undertaking war you must seek out and distroy the enemies centre of gravity.In this case the Command,Control and Communications of the New Left lies within the Labour/BBC/Guardian/Independant axis.
I think it will soon be time to organize and USE this "intel" that we are blogging,along with the resources provided by Guido Fawkes,Newsniffer,Little Green Footballs etc and combined with other centre right groups we could start influence policy.
Am I wishful thinking here,or do we need to get mobilized?
John Reith:
Biodegradable | 14.03.07 - 4:54 pm
Appalling.
I'm not sure I need to trawl Israeli TV for an equivalent though.
B-BBC has produced its own - remember that post about a pregnant woman being shot dead in the West Bank?.. news that was greeted here by a commenter saying something like:
Boo Hoo. That's one less Palestinian baby to grow up to be a suicide bomber.
To be fair, Natalie came down hard on that one as I recall.
In most long-running conflicts there is a degree of hard heartedness and downright moral blindness on both sides. It was (is) true in Northern Ireland and is certainly true in the Middle East. And sadly it's true in the blogosphere. I've seen comment threads on LGF that read like a lynch-mob calling for genocide.
While I share your revulsion at the PA promoting this stuff, I can't say I'm as surprised as you often seem to be
at the hatred many Palestinians feel towards Israelis.
Ultraviolence:
John Reith is an apologist for infanticide, ban him.
archduke:
"IngSoc is doublethink | 14.03.07 - 5:06 pm "
its starting to happen in the States.
http://www.freestateproject.org/
already New Hampshire rejected smoking ban laws because of lobbying by NH libertarians. its small, but its a start.
IngSoc is doublethink:
JR-
"I've seen comment threads on LGF that read like a lynch-mob calling for genocide".
Funny but you could also say-
"Shame they missed the bitch" when remarking on the IRA attack in Brighton......
The last thing JR-Please explain why Anne Lennox and Vivian Westwood "know" more about stratigic military science:
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/u...ics/
6450339.stm
Such poltical heavyweights JR?
Ultraviolence:
Yeah but approving of Thatchers assassination is not like calling for mass-murder in the millions, with nukes and stuff.
Ultraviolence:
Also, I can't seem to access the LGF website. I bet NTL (my ISP) has banned it.
Could you cut and paste its writing onto this comments box?
Biodegradable:
John Reith:
Biodegradable | 14.03.07 - 4:54 pm
Appalling.
I'm not sure I need to trawl Israeli TV for an equivalent though.
B-BBC has produced its own
Say WHAT???
- remember that post about a pregnant woman being shot dead in the West Bank?
No I don't!
.. news that was greeted here by a commenter saying something like:
Boo Hoo. That's one less Palestinian baby to grow up to be a suicide bomber.
I asked you to compare "Palestinian" indoctrination of children to hate with the Israeli education system. What has been said or not said here is not relevant. B-BBC is not Israel!
To be fair, Natalie came down hard on that one as I recall.
Oh yes, do let's be fair old chap!
In most long-running conflicts there is a degree of hard heartedness and downright moral blindness on both sides. It was (is) true in Northern Ireland and is certainly true in the Middle East.
You can stuff your moral equivalence where the sun don't shine matey!
And sadly it's true in the blogosphere. I've seen comment threads on LGF that read like a lynch-mob calling for genocide.
B-BBC is not LGF, and neither are organs of the State of Israel - please deal with the point I raised - or rather you raised it yesterday regarding the PA's total failure to take steps to stop teaching hatred in its schools.
While I share your revulsion at the PA promoting this stuff, I can't say I'm as surprised as you often seem to be at the hatred many Palestinians feel towards Israelis.
John Reith | 14.03.07 - 5:30 pm
I'm not at all surprised, given the effort the PA, Hamas and all the other 'militant' organizations put into spreading hatred, and the help they receive from the BBC to spread that hatred and demonization to the rest of the world. The point is you fail to condemn it or even recognise that it is one of the most important conditions of past peace accords that the PA has continued to ignore.
The only thing that revolts me more is the failure of the BBC to ever adequately cover the real truth about the depth of hatred spread by the Arabs and their propaganda tools.
I am also equally revolted by your attempts to justify Arab Jew-hatred by comparing it with what's said in the blogosphere, or the occasional accidental shooting of an Arab civilian.
Alan:
"We try to fight Left-wing anti-Zionism both by tackling their arguments and by pointing out the racism, the bigotry and violence of anti-Israeli terrorists and their supporters. But if I'm right, this will have limited success because arguments about Israel aren't really the point. The real point is America."
'Daniel Finklestein on why so many on the left are unwilling to take antisemitism seriously'.
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/b...icle.php?
id=914
Biodegradable:
DEBKAfile Exclusive: The Sword of Islam (al Qaeda) kidnapped and is holding BBC reporter Alan Johnston
The only question now is will the BBC pay the ransom out of the licence fee or will the British government pay out of public funds?
John Reith:
Biodegradable | 14.03.07 - 5:55 pm
The point is you fail to condemn it
Uh?
I thought appalling and I share your revulsion would clearly express my condemnation.
But if that isn't clear, lets be in no doubt: I condemn it.
Pointing out that there is fault on both sides of a conflict isn't the same as drawing moral equivalence.
To a reasonable person, it shouldn't even be controversial.
You will have come across the 'Breaking the Silence' group of former IDF soldiers?
a former Israeli soldier named Yehuda Shaul has just begun a tour of the United States to give an inside look at how the Israeli military treats Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Shaul is a co-founder of Breaking the Silence - a group of former Israeli soldiers committed to exposing human rights abuses by the Israeli military.
Last year the group revealed that Israel soldiers had been ordered to open fire on unarmed Palestinians. The group has also gathered photographic evidence that proved Israeli soldiers have abused Palestinian corpses.
Biodegradable:
I thought appalling and I share your revulsion would clearly express my condemnation.
But if that isn't clear, lets be in no doubt: I condemn it.
Pointing out that there is fault on both sides of a conflict isn't the same as drawing moral equivalence.
Your condemnation is the same as the 'condemnation' we hear of suicide attacks from "Palestinain" leaders; they condemn all violence from 'both sides'.
Attempting to respond to the teaching of hatred in PA schools by saying 'the Jews do it too' is moral equivalence and it's false.
I have no problem blaming Israel for its real mistakes and laying blame where it's appropriate, but that is very different from accepting your premise that both sides are equally at fault.
To a reasonable person, it shouldn't even be controversial.
I am a reasonable person but as I've explained I don't accept there is equal fault on both sides.
I believe any reasonable person would accept that "Palestinian" violence is aimed at killing as many Jews (of any age) as possible and eventualy driving all Jews out of "Palestine" (from the Jordan to the sea), while Israeli 'violence' is a direct result of that Arab aggression and only used in self-defence.
I am aware of 'Breaking the Silence'. Is there a Palestinian equvalent?
thought not.
Now look at this and tell me honestly that these are people who care about a peaceful future for their children, people who want to live in peace in a 'two state solution' - people who deserve a state of their own.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/...nianChildAbuse/
.
Alan:
"How Many Jews Did Mama Kill?"
http://www.jihadwatch.org (14 Mar.)
Biodegradable:
Alan | 14.03.07 - 6:54 pm
John Reith, Jenny Tonge, and Cherie Blair all say that Israel shares the blame for that. Call me unreasonable, but I don't agree.
Rob:
I was going to post the BBC article on celebs advising the government on military procurement, but someone beat me to it. Strange, I thought the BBC was in the vanguard of 'serious' commentators bemoaning the 'celebrity culture'.
Still, when they support your views and aims let's get them on board - the proles are more likely to listen to Annie Lennox than some ex- (or not even ex-) Communists.
Anonymous:
"What do you have to do to be called "the Religion of Peace?" Well, killing a few thousand people apparently works wonders".
Islam on Trial: The Prosecution’s Case against Islam
http://www.gamla.org.il/english/...07/march/
g7.htm
sicktodeathofit:
'John Reith': '...yeah but no but yeah but..' quickly followed by '..and now the Chewy defence....'
Give it up.
Biodegradable:
John Reith;
Can you understand how, having read your recent comments, I don't give a damn whether Alan Johnson lives or dies?
He, and you, and Orla Guerin, and Jeremy Bowen, and Barbara Plett et. al. are all part of the problem and bear a large part of the blame for encouraging children to go to their deaths.
Biodegradable:
Anonymous:
"What do you have to do to be called "the Religion of Peace?" Well, killing a few thousand people apparently works wonders".
Current score:
http://
www.thereligionofpeace.co...ex.html#Attacks
deegee:
John Reith:
I can't say I'm as surprised as you often seem to be at the hatred many Palestinians feel towards Israelis.
I am also not surprised, as you rarely seem to acknowledge, at the hatred most Palestinians feel towards the West in general; democracy; woman's liberation; freedom to speak and criticise one's own government, institution, leaders and religion; the pursuit of happiness; art, music and cinema … in short just about everything that makes life in the West preferable to life in Palestine.
That of course doesn't stop them from taking advantage of every service Israel and the West offers them.
Anonymous:
Biodegradable,
"Most seem to believe that Islam needs to be “secularized” for peace and freedom to come to the Middle East. Frankly, this is just a politically correct way to say Islam is the problem.
Whether you believe Islam has to be “secularized” or eradicated, the simple fact remains that Islam is the problem. Until we are willing to prosecute Islam as a violent religion: our war on terror will never end".
The jury is out. May all those with a rational mind judge accordingly.
http://www.gamla.org.il/english/...07/march/
g7.htm
will:
Even when the BBC talks about the Holocaust it introduces an element of doubt with the occasional 'alleged' or 'it is thought' or 'some believe'
& as we know these caveats are very necessary in criminal matters.
But no beating about the bush for
Orla in her BBC1 6pm News report.
Tsvangirai WAS beaten by the police
Another protester WAS killed by the police.
Orla manages to spot this from hundreds of miles away in Johannesburg. Remarkable how certain can be the BBC when it so wishes.
.:
For decades, the Arab and Islamic worlds have at best sat silently and at worst given political and religious sanction to a campaign of terrorist violence waged against Israeli civilians. Suicide bombers hitting markets and cafes? Machine gunning civilians on a religious holiday? Dehumanizing people on the basis of religious or ethnic differences?
http://www.mysanantonio.com/
opin...tz.27346e1.html
Jon:
"And when Mr Mason got the chance to ask Mr Miliband a question he wondered if the government was ready to follow Australia's lead and ban, outright all energy inefficient, filament light bulbs."
"The minister spoke about the need to get EU agreements on things like this - leaving the youngster decidedly underwhelmed."
"He dodged the question really. I know this is a difficult situation and there are always going to be people who lose out from what you do, through job losses or lifestyle changes"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...ics/
6243803.stm
No he didn't dodge the question - he partly answered it - but if he had told the truth he would have said to Mr. Mason that "we cannot do anything without the permission of the unelected burecrats in Brussels"
The BBC commentator should have made this clear even if Milliband didn't
Alan:
"Stretching the Truth" (cartoon)
http://www.coxandforkum.com/ (13 Mar.)
Jon:
"I've just been to get my car out of the carpark and was listening to the 5 Live News. How about this for warped news priorities...
FIRST ITEM
Blue Peter presenters apologise for phone cock up
SECOND ITEM
MPs vote on Britain's independent nuclear deterrent
Bizarre."
http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/
archduke:
the backlash is starting...
http://www.sadireland.com
nice slogan:
"Freedom Of Choice Should Never Become A Radical Idea In A Democratic Society"
archduke:
the backlash part 2:
"lets smoke everywhere"
http://
sadireland.proboards46.co...read=1171891454
Richy:
25th anniversary of the Falklands war is coming up.
Came across a couple of choice quotes on the wikipedia history of the war.
"The destruction of Sheffield had a profound impact on the British public, bringing home the fact that the "Falklands Crisis", as the BBC News put it, was now an actual 'shooting war'."
"In his autobiographical account of the Falklands War[19], Admiral Woodward blames the BBC World Service for these changes to the bombs. The World Service reported the lack of detonations after receiving a briefing on the matter from an MOD official. He describes the BBC as being more concerned with being "fearless seekers after truth" than with the lives of British servicemen".
Suppose some things never change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fal...i/
Falklands_War
Anonymous:
Seen this yet?????????
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/.../14/
nbbc114.xml
"The BBC has announced plans to suspend its £150 million online education service, BBC Jam, following claims it is damaging the interests of industry competitors."
Odd in'it. I geus it's ok for the BBC to use Tax money to attack Sky and ITV ratings???....and distort the Radio market so that effectively all we have is the BBC or TalkSport?.......
Never...BBC destorts the real world? Using it's monopoly position to attack and even destroy UK business?....smart shopping Britain...LOLOLOL>...
Jon:
"Tuesday, March 13, 2007
MEP asks Scotland Yard to investigate BBC relations with EU
The Metropolitan Police have today (13 March) received a bundle of papers from Ashley Mote MEP, Independent, SE England, detailing the tens of millions of euros received by the BBC over recent years.
He has invited Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates, Director of Intelligence at Scotland Yard, to review the BBC's sources and application of funds, excluding the licence fee. The police have been asked to examine the evidence linking the EU as a source of these funds with the BBC’s open support of the EU in its editorial coverage, contrary to its obligations under the Royal Charter."
http://
libertyandlawjournal.blog...519323856625431
Biodegradable:
Compare and contrast.
BBC Wednesday, 14 March 2007, 20:22 GMT:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6451589.stm
The unity government deal, reached last month, contains a promise to respect previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements, but does not explicitly recognise Israel, as has been demanded by Western donors and the Israelis.
(obligatory anti-USA/anti-Israel bottom line follows)
A US-led ban on financial aid has crippled the Palestinian Authority since Hamas won elections in January last year.
New York Times February 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/
1...agewanted=print
As for recognizing Israel, Nizar Rayyan, a Hamas spokesman, was explicit. “We will never recognize Israel,” he told Reuters in Gaza. “There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination.”
The Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, pressed by Washington, wanted a new government to accept previous agreements on the basis of which the Palestinian Authority itself exists. But Hamas, which will still dominate the new government, agreed only to “respect” previous agreements, not to accept them.
Covering for the genocidal terrorists, it's what we do!
Biodegradable:
More on the UNESCO (not 'the UN' as the BBC would like us to believe) report I commented on earlier with a link to the full report:
The six page report has good background info, acknowledges Israeli transparency and notes that no holy sites are undermined by the work. However, it concludes that the digging should stop. Here's why:
http://backspin.typepad.com/
back...uve_been_w.html
archduke:
"and distort the Radio market so that effectively all we have is the BBC or TalkSport?......."
go over to Ireland. yeah, i know RTE has a license fee too, but its also advertising funded. but i swear to god , the radio selection is incredible.
where i was, i counted about 15 FM stations - not to mention the 10 other illegal pirate ones - in a town of about 100,000 people.
i'm in an southern English town now - similar size. and we have just the one local private radio station. one.
Biodegradable:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6168752.stm
More than a third of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are built on privately owned Palestinian land, an Israeli campaign group has reported.
Peace Now says nearly 40% of the land the settlements sit on is, according to official data, "effectively stolen" from Palestinian landowners.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Sat...icle%
2FShowFull
A military database released to the left-wing anti-settlement organization Peace Now under court pressure shows that very little private land was seized from Palestinians to build Israel's largest West Bank settlement, the watchdog group reported on Wednesday.
The new numbers are vastly smaller than numbers Peace Now issued in a November report based on leaked information.
In November, Peace Now claimed that 86 percent of Ma'aleh Adumim was built on private Palestinian land. After successfully petitioning the court to see the database, the group reported Wednesday that data show that only 0.5% of the settlement was built on private land.
Expect the BBC to publish a correction any time now...
some time soon...
I'm sure it won't be long...
...
Bryan:
Biodegradable,
Good rebuttals of John Reith's mealy-mouthed attempts to put the state of Israel on a par with the Palestinian terrorist nest.
Reith is typical BBC. As a contrast, a Johannesburg radio station run by liberal-left South Africans has opened an offshoot in Ramallah and claims to want to help bring Israelis and Palestinians together, eventually through the medium of talk radio. Even though its newscasts are heavily slanted towards the Palestinians, it's still capable of coming up with some refreshing honesty. This from today:
The BBC says it is urgently trying to find its reporter, Alan Johnston. There has been widespread condemnation of the abduction of the BBC reporter. Ultra-radical faction Islamic Jihad has expressed its "profound regret" over the kidnapping which, it said, "tarnishes the reputation of the resistance."
Though that still falls far short of calling them terrorists, I can't imagine the BBC ever describing Islamic Jihad in those terms.
The station then lets a Palestinian reporter, Amer Shelebi, have his say:
We appeal to these people who kidnapped the journalist to release him and not to do it again. It's not in any way helping their cause, if they have a cause, and not helping the Palestinian people.
Nothing, of course, about kidnapping being just plain evil.
Bryan:
I meant to add that I agree with comment s on this thread that the BBC, for some weird reason, is using bizarre terminology re the "missing" Johnston. The BBC is "trying to find him" as if he is a child who may have run away from home.
Biodegradable:
Bryan,
Do you think there's any truth in the Debkafile report I linked to suggesting that it's al-Qaeda that has Johnston?
if that is the case, and from what I've read about al-Qaeda actually declaring war on both Fatah and Hamas, then Johnston maybe in for a long wait, or even a beheading.
Jon:
"..then Johnston maybe in for a long wait, or even a beheading."
I honestly hope that does not happen - He may spout pro-hamas propoganda, but I would not like to see anyone harmed. There could be two outcomes (if he is realised _ and I do hope he is). 1. He may now understand that even trying to appease these terrorists is futile or 2. He just carries on as usual possibly with a Hamas bodyguard to look after him while he spouts his anti-Isreali clap-trap. I suspect the latter.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Sorry Rob that was me
Yes JR.....why do the great and the good get more of a say on national security and defence than say former NATO commanders,military historians or even your own (and excellent) Mark Urban?
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/u...ics/
6450339.stm
Obviously a disappointing night for you with the result
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
u...enew_march_2007
Oh I'am sure that you will be keeping this on the boil:
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/u...ics/
6451615.stm
Shoddy sixth form politics from CBBC.....You really think I give a phuq about Vivian Westwood or Bianca Jagger,they (thank the heavens) don't have to write little notes telling the sub commanders their last orders before we become an irradiated little feifdom.
The utterly soap oprea world that passes a "current affairs" is demeaning to the word "news".Brian Waldron would of had both the Soviet and US ambasadors on Weekend World to discuss the deployment of SS 20's or the SALT II treaty,now we are presented with the X Factor.
Thank Christ I have the option to stop paying you unlike the masses who you cheat money out of.
Next JR you will have us believing in soothsayer science......
Bryan:
Biodegradable,
I dunno, somehow I doubt that Debka report, but who knows? I have heard recently that Osama's motley crew is in Gaza, but I'm with Jon here in that I don't want Johnston to be harmed, even though it's almost certain that he will carry on business as usual, like Frank Gardner, if he is released. If the BBC couldn't learn from Gardner's experience, there's no reason why it would learn from that of Johnston.
There'll just be more talk of a "tiny minority" of Arabs/Muslims bent on violent jihad.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Hmmm....I fear for Johnston.
I have noidea about the situation inside Gaza,but if Al Quieda are there then it makes sence in terms of the overall security situation.Judging by the types of operations in Chechenya and Iraq they are very adapt in taking over networks and with the MB over the boarder in Egypt then things might get dicey in the future.....
I'm beginning to think that Hamas and Fatah are loosing control over there "security apparatus" or groups like the Al Aqsa Martyrs,who are now seeking support from those with an interest in taking direct action against the zionists.
BTW Here is a little toy that you might enjoy:
http://www.globalincidentmap.com...ap.com/
home.php
Biodegradable:
Bryan and IngSoc,
I'm certainly not wishing any ill on Alan Johnston, I simply don't care any more.
This is what led me to ask about Al-Qaeda:
http://www.debka.com/headline.ph...ne.php?
hid=3922
The way I see it is if somebody who can be influenced by Palestinian leaders has Johnston there's a good chance he'll be ransomed and released because (a) it's a source of income and (b) will favourably influence the infidels and Johnston will continue to effectively work for them (the Pals).
If Al-Qaeda have him they're not interested in money and would much rather use his grisly death for PR among their own jihadi supporters.
Basically one outcome will possibly gain support and sympathy from 'us', while the other will gain support for Jihad. Depending on who's holding him, or who he's sold to it's the hostage taker's choice.
IngSoc, that map is v. interesting - I didn't know about the Canadian arrested in Spain!
Peregrine:
An observation about the climate "chaos" debate (apologies if that should have been 'chaos').
Consensus, and subsequent research focusing on only one paradigm, is a feature of social sciences, which has accepted the research philosophy of Kuhn (which it was not aimed at) that emphasises struggling towards an agreed premise until it breaks down rather than speading a wide net.
However, the hard sciences tend to follow Popper and can cope with premises that may be wrong but accurately describe our immediate world.
This philisophical difference may seem insignificant to most but if we recognise that social scientists rarely view the world through a blue spectrum things start to make more sense.
When asking for research grants it is a nice safe option to follow the current paradigm. The amusing thing is that is exactly what the l*f*y **** **** **** [self censored] accused scientists working for the so-called military industrial complex (you know it by the firms that provide real jobs) as doing.
/Dull rant over/
Jon:
Peregrine - I quite agree - to me it is self evident that if you are in the pay of the politicians and they tell you to come up with "evidence" that GW is man made then that is exactly what you will get.
But think on this who has benefitted the "scientific community" - throughout the Industrial Revolution to the present day - it is of course business.
Were blast furnaces invented by government, or the steam locamotive, or the motor car?
Biodegradable:
http://
drybonesblog.blogspot.com...incitement.html
Biodegradable:
As it was then, so it is now.
A Lurker:
As matter of interest does anyone on this thread actually believe that there are any decent law abiding muslims living in the UK - or do you believe they are ALL hell bent on destroying you, your neighbour and the UK?
max:
Re:Lurker,
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I think the time is ripe for Godwin to be amended with gratuitous accusations of islamophobia.
archduke:
one thing i cant understand about the trident debate is - how come Australia doesnt need an atom bomb? or Germany? or Spain? or Italy?
what makes us so special that we need to spend 25 billion on trident? why not just pay the Yanks a bit of rent for protecton under their nuclear umbrella?
archduke:
" A Lurker | 15.03.07 - 1:59 am"
about 99 per cent are entirely law abiding and dont cause me any problems. they live here because of our freedoms - makes a nice change from the totalitarian hellholes that are most Islamic states.
its the one per cent nutcases that we should put up against a wall and execute. the other 99 per cent would thank us for doing that.
Anonymous:
More distortions by Matt Frei:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...cas/
6448133.stm
Then Ann Coulter, the leggy siren of the Republican right, told a Washington ballroom packed with GOP hacks that "you have to go into rehab if you use the word faggot".
It was a cheap shot but the audience lapped it up.
Of course, if you go to Youtube and download the video of her jibe you can see that the audience reaction was mixed to say the least. "Rabid" righties like Michelle Malkin and Littlegreenfootballs have condemned Ms. Coulter for it as well.
But I suppose Matt just hears what he wants to hear.
Lots of Fiskable stuff in that article.
deegee:
A Lurker:
actually believe that there are any decent law abiding muslims living in the UK - or do you believe they are ALL hell bent on destroying you, your neighbour and the UK?
I'm sure there are DLAMs* in the UK. I'm also sure their presence is as irrelevant as the majority of Germans who did not vote for Adolf Hitler.
As Edmund Burke is credited as saying, "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing."
Someone said that 1% of Muslims are willing to actively make violent Jihad, 10% are willing to support them short of participation and the rest are sitting on their hands 
--------------------------------------
*DLAM = decent law abiding Muslim. Pronounce it as an Irishman, "The lion lies down with the lamb".
Infection:
Want proof that the moonbats at the bbc don't know which end is up? Listen to the weather forecasters. All this week now they've been putting it about that it's early spring! Well in the rest of the world the equinox isn't until March 21st. I remember another famous instance of our loveable British "we're right, the world's wrong" thinking. Last year the Labour party held its "spring" conference in the middle of February, and the bbc never uttered a single word of correction.
Martin Belam:
>> in the rest of the world the equinox isn't until March 21st
Ah, that'll be global warming shifting the equinox probably
IngSoc is doublethink:
Archduke:
"how come Australia doesnt need an atom bomb? or Germany? or Spain? or Italy"?
Who says they don't need one?
The countries you mention above currently don't as they fall under the US/NATO nuclear umbrella (which you have eluded to) BUT they do have the means (like Japan) to get a crash programme up and running in a very short space of time.
Anybody who reads military or political history will also be aware that events can change rapidly.
What is to say in 20 years time the US will not be our enemy?
Or that China won't seek an imperialist policy or attempt to reincorperate the renagade state of Tiawan?
Or Russia won't go belly-up and have a new strong man with global ambitions?
Because military/political science hasn't developed the crystal ball to see what the future holds I personally think keeping the deterrent at least provides us with an insurance policy and some stability because carrying the big stick is still required when talking to some countries.
In the end of the day even Uncle Kim would think twice before "liberating" South Korea,knowing that Minutemen missiles are pointing at your house.
Alan:
On the climate change debate, Hugh Fitzgerald observes:
"Unless he is already well-versed in the field, a reader cannot possibly make much sense of what is written, and is most likely to have to contend himself with trying to detect or figure out what appears, by its presentation, to have written by sensible, measured, careful people, and what appears to be something else.."
Fitzgerald presents lots of information relating to Channel 4's documentary, for and against, at:
http://www.newenglishreview.org/...og.cfm?
frm=1952
(see entries at 14,15 March.)
IngSoc is doublethink:
Here is a good article from American Thinker
http://www.americanthinker.com/
2...ine_cracks.html
All is not well in the utopia of the Islamic Republic of Iran so it seems.
John:
"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a partial transcript from a closed-door hearing.
One would think that this confession, in and of itself, would be enough to put the tin lid on the affair. Oh no - not in the parallel universe of the BBC. Not even a stone-cold confession is enough to dispel the dreaded quotation marks:
"Key 9/11 suspect 'admits guilt'"
To the BBC, he's still a mere "suspect" - despite having admitted planning the whole damn thing!
Abandon ship!:
"KONNIE LIED
CHILDREN CRIED!"
The BBC report has been stealth edited to reove a picture of John Noakes with a swastika and Hitler moustache.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/enter...ent/
6449919.stm
Abandon ship!:
Beeboid thought processing:
"But surely he must be innocent, he's in Guantanamo."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...cas/
6452573.stm
Abandon ship!:
Anyone hear the beginning of PM last night?
For a minute I thought CND had taken over the BBC. Oh...of couurse...they have.
End to end coverage of the "rebels" that Beeboids love to love - you know, that list of t-----s that always has "Diane Abbott" at the top.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Abandon:
Would that list also include loyal British subjects like:
Jeremy Corbyn
Joan Ruddock
Dennis Skinner
Kate Hoey
Glenda Jackson
Frank Cook
etc.....
Clearly having lost last night,and not having the comforting shoulder of there Stazi handlers to cry on,Al Beeb now questions Tony Blairs position (seeing as he has a few months to go)....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...ics/
6452751.stm
Bad morning at Broadcasting House-with Trident going through and KSM spilling the beans on why we have Camp Delta.....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/
b..._transcript.pdf
GW,Trident,KSM,Blue Peter.....is the worm turning?
IngSoc is doublethink:
Sorry Camp X-Ray
Bryan:
A Lurker,
If UK Muslims spewing vitriol over the distant Iraq war can jump up and down behind Not in Our Name placards, and go into a violent frenzy over Mohammed cartoons, they should be at least as strongly committed to opposing home-grown Islamic terrorism.
Yet, with very few bold exceptions, all we see from them is mealy-mouthed equivocation and justification for terror.
Until such time as this situation changes, you shouldn't be surprised that non-Muslims see Islamic terror as simply the extreme manifestation of a widespread Islamic loathing of the West and the intention to colonise and subjugate the West through the Caliphate.
archduke:
actually bryan does make a point.
where are the "not in my name" protests after 911, Madrid and 7/7?
but they seemed to get all heated up about some Mo cartoons, and the Hez/Israel war.
D Burbage:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...ics/
6243803.stm
Take a look here. You will find some amusement if you look carefully.
Bryan:
archduke | 15.03.07 - 10:45 am,
In their case, silence could very well mean consent.
Alan:
Meanwhile, at AL JAZEERA:
"Al-Jazeea: 'the Muslim Brotherhood channel.'" (15 Mar.)
"The Muslim Brotherhood is, of course, the direct progenitor of Hamas and Al-Qaeda. This confirms what has long been known about Al-Jazeera."
http://www.jihadwatch.org/
See also: "The 'Project': Muslim Brotherhood blueprint for cultural jihad"
http://www.militantislammonitor....article/id/
2671
IngSoc is doublethink:
D Burbage:
That wouldn't be our very own Laban Tall who suggested:
"proactively reach out to broad sections of the community on a multi-agency basis, while empowering a cross-section of service providers with a raft of sustainable initiatives".
And while we are on the subject of humour note Al Beebs attempt at being "funny".........
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...ics/
6453165.stm
BBC-Bringing "news" first.
BaggieJonathan:
'Cash for Questions' and 'Cash for Honours' were so serious that they dominated the headlines for many a day.
Now we have 'cash for reporting'
A BBC crisis to boot.
If true its very serious.
I think it deserves its own thread here doesnt it?
The link was already reported by Jon above but here it is again.
http://
libertyandlawjournal.blog...519323856625431
I would say I look forward to seeing it on the BBC but I think we all know that is extremely unlikely. It will be interesting to see the BBC's competitors reporting of this however.
Using the BBC theory of the 'Cash for honours' affair that unproven alegations somehow constitute evidence and there is no smoke without fire then by their own standards the BBC has a lot to answer.
Oscar:
There's also the question of BBC cash for terror groups. Here is Debka's take on the Alan Johnston kidnap.
http://www.debka.com/headline.ph...ne.php?
hid=3930
IngSoc is doublethink:
Nice work Baggie and Jon!!
Hmmmm...Its turning into a bad week for Al Beeb.
"Cash for questions"
"Cash for terrorists"
And another little gem highlighted by our old friend Guildo Fawkes relating to the "cash for honours":
http://
business.timesonline.co.u...icle1511812.ece
"Mrs Justice Swift identified the material Mr Havers said should not be published as falling into three categories:
A Material relating to policy strategy in conducting their future investigations. As to that, the judge said that the real concern of the police was that they wished to put the document to several individuals who might be suspects. They considered that there was a risk that if information about the document was published, that would give potential interviewees the opportunity to frustrate the investigation.
B Material of a factual nature: The police regarded the document in question as a key document in the investigation into the perversion of the course of justice, whose deployment was a matter of real interest and concern and the police were for that reason concerned about it receiving advanced publicity in the media. The document was not an email, it ran to several pages and contained far more information. There was a real question mark as to whether Mr Powell, the addressee, ever received it and the investigating officers were very interested to discover whether he did so or not.
C Material related to Mr John McTer-nan, director of political operations at Downing Street."
So I wasn't an e-mail but a whole document!!
Is the BBC guilty of perverting the course of justice along with there NuLab friends?
Check the Al Beeb narrative and the above.
You spin me round baby right round........
archduke:
the bbc never fails to give Islam a plug, even if the story has got absolutely nothing to do with it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ope/
6451065.stm
"The general public, meanwhile, will be treated to a free open-air concert near the Brandenburg Gate by bands from all over Europe.
They include veteran English rocker Joe Cocker, Scottish folk band The Unusual Suspects, and Outlandish, a Danish-Moroccan trio, which has a wide Muslim fan base. "
will:
Heated exchange between C4 "GGW Swindle" programme maker & denier deniers; BBC's name sullied
C4’s debate on global warming boils over
Mr Durkin replied to both later that morning, saying: “You’re a big daft cock.” Less than an hour later, Mr Singh, who has worked for the BBC, intervened to urge Mr Durkin to engage in serious debate. He wrote: “I suspect that you will have upset many people (if Armand is right), so it would be great if you could engage in the debate rather than just resorting to one-line replies. That way we could figure out what went wrong/ right and how do things better/ even better in the future.” Mr Durkin replied nine minutes later: “The BBC is now a force for bigotry and intolerance . . . Since 1940 we have had four decades of cooling, three of warming, and the last decade when temperature has been doing nothing.
“Why have we not heard this in the hours and hours of shit programming on global warming shoved down our throats by the BBC?
“Never mind an irresponsible bit of film-making. Go and f*** yourself.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle1517515.ece
.:
"The young children of a suicide bomber discuss her act of mass murder in a video so heart-warming that it will give you heartburn".
http://switch5.castup.net/frames...1398wmv&
ak=null
John Reith:
Biodegradable | 14.03.07 - 10:37 pm
Expect the BBC to publish a correction any time now...
Your comment about the statistics on the percentage of settlement development built on private Palestinian land (i.e. land effectively stolen from legally registered title-holders) gave (me) the strong impression that the data released by the Israeli Civil Administration to Peace Now had seriously undermined PN’s November report, which was the subject of a BBC story.
That impression was magnified by the example you chose - Ma’aleh Adumim - where an original claim of 86% had been scaled back to 0.5%.
Looking at the released figures, however, I find that far from undermining the original Peace Now document - they very largely corroborate it. With, of course, the exception of....Ma’ale Adumim.
An exception you cited as if it were typical.
Yet, excluding Ma’aleh Adumim, the reports are within a percentage point of one another.
In fact, PN now claim:
Main findings:
According to official and up-to-date data from the Civil Administration:
∗ 131 settlements are completely or partially situated on private land.
∗ Only 31 settlements are “clean” of private land.
∗ Over 32% of the land dominated by the settlements is private land.
So - what would the implications be for the BBC story? Are huge changes required?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/ 6168752.stm
More than a third of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are built on privately owned Palestinian land, an Israeli campaign group has reported.
To be strictly accurate, this should now read: Approximately a third of the Jewish settlements...........
Peace Now says nearly 40% of the land the settlements sit on is, according to official data, "effectively stolen" from Palestinian landowners.
Should now read: More than 32% of the land settlements sit on........
Minor changes compared to the volte face required of you and others here who have long insisted that none of the land used for settlements was expropriated from private citizens, but was unused or State land.
http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/...i=66&
docid=2256
Biodegradable:
John Reith | 15.03.07 - 2:05 pm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6168752.stm
According to the report, 86.4% of the Maale Adumim settlement block, the largest in the West Bank, is built on private Palestinian land, and not on what the Israeli government refers to as "state land".
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Sat...icle%
2FShowFull
In November, Peace Now claimed that 86 percent of Ma'aleh Adumim was built on private Palestinian land. After successfully petitioning the court to see the database, the group reported Wednesday that data show that only 0.5% of the settlement was built on private land.
That's only a difference of 85.9%, or 85.5%, depending on which figure you use, so there's no need for a correction or an updated report to point that out?
BTW, 'Peace Now' is correctly described as a 'left-wing anti-settlement organization' by the Jerusalem Post while Al-Beeb calls it an 'Israeli campaign group'.
Biodegradable:
(i.e. land effectively stolen from legally registered title-holders)
That is straight out of the PA propaganda handbook!
What 'legally registered' land has been 'stolen' and where was it 'registered'?
Biodegradable:
BBC plea for Gaza correspondent
Middle East bureau chief Simon Wilson said the corporation had received no firm word on Johnston since he disappeared on Monday.
He thanked all those who had tried to help resolve the situation, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and PM Ismail Haniya.
Mr Haniya said he told security forces to do all they could to find him.
If Abbas and Haniya say they don't know where he is they're either lying, or Al-Qaeda really does have him.
Kidnappings were unacceptable and "harm the civilised face of our people", he added.
While televised interviews with the children of suicide killers are perfectly acceptable and show the (civilised) face of the "Palestinian people".
Reading a statement in Gaza, Wilson said Johnston had dedicated the last three years to living and working with the people of Gaza, and it was now becoming clear how much his efforts were appreciated.
Yep, there's gratitude for you, with friends like that who needs enemies?
archduke:
in the run up to st patricks day we get this from the bbc:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ope/
6451019.stm
"irish EU's worst binge-drinkers"
you can view the EU report yourself via here:
http://ec.europa.eu/
public_opini...ial_en.htm#272b
direct link to the PDF:
http://ec.europa.eu/
public_opini...ebs_272b_en.pdf
what the BBC doesnt mention is that the Irish have one of the *lowest* daily alchohol consumption rates - a mere 2%, compared to portugal's 47%
and also, the Irish have the highest "once a week" rates - 41%
(see page 9 of the report)
and the EU definition of "binge drinking" is a laughable "3 to 4 drinks in one session"
so a young Irish lad going out on a Saturday night , having 4 pints of guiness is suddenly a "binge drinker"?
one factor in true binge drinking is the speed of alchohol comsumption, not the total amount. in the time that it takes Essex lads to down 15 pints of lager, Mr Irish guy would be on his 4 pint of stout.
John Reith:
Biodegradable | 14.03.07 - 5:55 pm
I asked you to compare "Palestinian" indoctrination of children to hate with the Israeli education system.
No you didn’t. You asked me to compare a scene shown on PA-TV of Palestinians exulting in the death of Jews to something equivalent on Israeli TV.
see this clip from official Palestinian Authority TV then find me a comparable example from Israeli TV. Go on, I dare you. Biodegradable | 14.03.07 - 4:54 pm
Since I don’t get Israeli TV, I turned to the most proximate medium where I have witnessed someone exulting in the death of Palestinians - this blog.
that is very different from accepting your premise that both sides are equally at fault.
I have never said that both sides are equally at fault. Only that there is fault on both sides, which is not the same thing.
your attempts to justify Arab Jew-hatred by comparing it with what's said in the blogosphere
I wasn’t trying to justify anything. You invited me to find an example of tasteless exulting in the death of Palestinians. I found one close to home. Now you’re complaining. The difference between us is that I am prepared to condemn both Jew-hatred and exulting in the death of pregnant Palestinian women. You, it seems, are not.
I don't give a damn whether Alan Johnson lives or dies Biodegradable | 14.03.07 - 7:12 pm
Says it all really.
Biodegradable:
Since I don’t get Israeli TV, I turned to the most proximate medium where I have witnessed someone exulting in the death of Palestinians - this blog.
Your comments used to be vaguely interesting, sometimes I even agreed with you. You've become simply pathetic.
I don't give a damn whether Alan Johnson lives or dies Biodegradable | 14.03.07 - 7:12 pm
Says it all really.
Not quite, I also said this:
I'm certainly not wishing any ill on Alan Johnston, I simply don't care any more.
Biodegradable | 14.03.07 - 11:43 pm |
Ralph:
'Since I don’t get Israeli TV, I turned to the most proximate medium where I have witnessed someone exulting in the death of Palestinians - this blog.'
Says it all really.
With people like you working for the BBC why would anyone think it's biased and populated by arrogent prats?
Jonathan Cambridge:
"Since I don’t get Israeli TV, I turned to the most proximate medium where I have witnessed someone exulting in the death of Palestinians - this blog."
No John, sorry, I don't usually comment much on here but this is totally irrational. He asked you to find an example from Israeli TV and you haven't yet. Going to a blog where anyone at all can comment and finding someone exulting in the death of a Palestinian is NOT an acceptable substitute and you should know it. An open blog is not Israeli TV.
Bio's point remains: There are instances of Palestinian Authority TV which glory in the deaths of Israelis, but no instances of Israeli TV which glory in the deaths of Palestinians.
Please prove it wrong.
Anonymous:
"Says it all really."
Yes...maybe now you will start to realise just how much hate their is for the Damage the BBC has done......
You're not loved Rieth...your'e obsolete, and some hate the propaganda and lies so much, they wish ill of people.....
Time to kill the BBC, before anymore lies and hurt.
Hang your head in Shame Rieth...what a bloody mess the BBC has become.....ye reap what ye sow.
Biodegradable:
'John Reith':
Statement of policy on comments:
The comments facility is the property of ‘Biased BBC’ blog. Comments are unmoderated and do not necessarily reflect the views of Biased BBC or anyone other than the commenter who makes them. The owners of this blog reserve the right to edit, amend or remove all and any comments for reasons of libel, gratuitous insult or any other legal or policy reasons or any other reasons we judge fit. By posting comments here you accept and acknowledge the absolute and unfettered right of the owners of this blog to edit your comments as set out above. The presence of any comment on this site does NOT constitute an endorsement by Biased BBC or anyone else of the views expressed therein.
Oscar:
"What 'legally registered' land has been 'stolen' and where was it 'registered'?"
I happened to drive through the West Bank last week along the Jordan valley and was able to witness at first hand the 'settlements' there. The infamous route which movingly commemorates the many Israelis murdered by Palestinian snipers and bombers during the Intifada is now a well constructed and relatively safe road that snakes through mile after mile of rocky desert. In the midst of this toughest of terrain there are little oases of Jewish agricultural development where date palms and a variety of crops are planted. Apart from Bedouin who periodically graze their sheep in the Jordan valley there is no Arab presence - although where Jews have developed the land, Arab villages are enabled to start up. On the Jordanian side of the border there is now mile after mile of greenhouses and crop development - all due to water deals with Israel following the 1993 peace treaty. In general the productivity of Israel in industry and agriculture is astonishing. The idea that this development is anything other than beneficial to the land and its people is just nonsense.
TPO:
Jr
I don’t seem to have the time to contribute here that I used to but this one caught my eye and I couldn’t let it go. Through some of my old work I was privy to most of what is mentioned here and perhaps you might care to give me your opinions about part of it.
Key 9/11 suspect 'admits guilt'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...cas/
6452573.stm
What actually caused me to raise my eyebrow was this:
'But his confession of involvement in a wide range of ambitious plots reflects his boastful nature and a desire to portray himself as a terrorist mastermind, says the BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera.'
Now I don’t know anything about Mr. Corera but I fear he has gone out on a limb on this one, because what I knew at the time does not fit with his assertion.
You may recall that I once made mention about a BBC journalist making a statement on prime time news about something that he could not possibly know about from personal experience. The journalist in question was Tom Mangold and he had been fed a line from a particular government agency to bolster their credibility in Whitehall and to ‘steal the thunder’ from the bodies that had actually undertaken the work. Mangold is viewed as a useful dupe when it comes to things like this, being manipulated with titbits and passing it off as gospel.
Very similar in fact to John Simpson who is treated as another useful dupe. I well recall Simpson’s pomposity when he recounted how he had stood in ‘C’s’ office and, as if someone had indoctrinated him into all the Secrets of State, ‘looked out over the Thames’. Yes, and if you go down one floor you can get the same view from the bar.
Mr Corera however seems to have a different track, after all, the individual subject of the story has been held incommunicado since his apprehension, so how did he come by this information or is it just conjecture on his part?.
Biodegradable:
The difference between us is that I am prepared to condemn both Jew-hatred and exulting in the death of pregnant Palestinian women. You, it seems, are not.
Yes I do condemn the accidental death of a Palestinian woman and any comments that may glorify it, even though I don't remember it or the alleged reaction by a B-BBC commenter.
The difference is while you say you condemn incitement to Jew-hatred you excuse it and justify it by pointing to alleged Arab-hatred, not finding it in Israel you point at LGF and this blog.
You may remember some time ago I complained about "Pete_London" and his use of 'towel head', 'camel jockey' and other such terms when talking about Muslims.
I'm certainly not 'exalting' Alan Johnston's kidnapping, it just happens to be a fact of life that if you sleep with pigs you wake up covered in sh*t. Who's fault is that and should I sympathise with the sleeper, the pigs, both or neither?
BaggieJonathan:
Is it true then that the sound of disks being destroyed, paper shredders and 'Internet Cleanup 7 Pro guaranteeing e-mails can't be retreived' are pervading the home of the BBC as the allegations have emerged?
I have to assume the pro BBC tumbleweed and crickets response seems to help confirm it...
John Reith:
Jonathan Cambridge | 15.03.07 - 3:21 pm
Since I have never argued that Israeli TV indulges in displays of ethnic hatred, why should I feel under any pressure at all to 'prove it wrong'?
Frankly, I would be very surprised if Israeli TV did.
My point is merely that tasteless displays of exulting in the death of innocents isn't a Pally monopoly. It's happened here.
Biodegradable:
Oscar,
Thanks for that insight. What many forget, or never knew, is that the West Bank was under Jordanian control from 1948 - 1967 so who exactly are these "Palestinians" that Israel allegedly stole land from?
I'll be going to Israel for the first time in October to attend the World Mediation Forum which this year is to be held near the Dead Sea - I hope to have time to also visit other places and meet up with members of my family living in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
I commented previously about this news which the BBC and it's resident in Gaza, Alan Johnson, didn't see fit to mention:
IDF: 20,000 jobs created in Gaza
Close to 20,000 jobs have been created in the Gaza Strip over the last four months thanks to coordination between the IDF and Palestinian agricultural unions, according to Col. Nir Press, commander of the IDF Coordination and Liaison Administration.
A drop in terror threats to the Karni Crossing made the changes possible, said Press. Nevertheless, unemployment in the Strip remains close to 35 percent, he said.
Out of the 19,100 Gazans who found jobs in the past four months, 10,500 were in agriculture, he said. The increase was spurred by an IDF decision to allow Palestinians to work fields in the northern Strip, particularly in the Beit Lahiya area, that had been off limits since they are used to fire Kassam rockets.
It's always been clear that if the Arabs simply ceased their terror and hatred they would find Israel to be a more than willing partner in their future development as a truly viable state.
More that the BBC won't touch with a barge pole because it doesn't fit with their ideas:
Israel, PA agree on Japan-backed plan
A recent Japan-backed agreement to promote economic cooperation and development in the Middle East must run parallel to concrete steps to stem violence there and revive the stalled peace process, Israeli and Palestinian officials said Thursday.
Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Japan agreed on a plan Wednesday to build an agro industrial park in the West Bank at a confidence-building conference hosted by Tokyo, which has sought to play a mediating role in the region.
Guess who's putting a spanner n the works?
But senior officials from the Mideast parties said in the wake of the agreement that economic cooperation would be impossible without political progress.
"Can regional cooperation be translated into a political solution? Can we achieve prosperity for Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians while the Israeli occupation continues?" Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told a conference sponsored by Japan's Foreign Ministry Thursday in Tokyo.
Richard Brown:
I have just discovered, via The Brussels Journal, that the Ondiep area of Utrecht has had three days of rioting by native Dutch.
The BBC, as far as I know have not even mentioned this.
Go the link and you will find out why.
Oscar:
John Reith
Talking of the murder of pregnant women - remember the murder of the 8 months pregnant Jewish mother and her four children by terrorists in Gaza (before all the 'illegal settlements' were destroyed)?. Recognise this description of Palestinian reaction?
"In what has become a common scenario following terror attacks, Arab civilians in several locales under Arafat's control celebrated in the streets the murder of the Jewish mother and her children."
http://www.israelnationalnews.co...News.aspx/
61711
Biodegradable:
Richard Brown, I assume you're referring to this:
Utrecht: Ethnic Riots after Dutchman is Killed by Police
Jonathan Cambridge:
JR: "Since I have never argued that Israeli TV indulges in displays of ethnic hatred, why should I feel under any pressure at all to 'prove it wrong'?
Frankly, I would be very surprised if Israeli TV did."
Fair enough.
Oscar:
Biodegradable
Thanks for this interesting info. It's hard to describe just how different my experience of Israel was compared to BBC (and other) reports. The kind of bullshit John Reith is trying to peddle here bears virtually no relationship to the reality. What you say is absolutely true - the Israeli mentality is highly practical and constuctive and there are any number of productive deals Palestinians could be doing with Israel if only their leaders would let them.
The BBC is widely hated and shunned across Israel - funnily enough they don't seem to understand how impartial it is. Maybe John Reith should explain it to them.
Biodegradable:
Oscar | 15.03.07 - 3:58 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tali_Hatuel
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/
Terror...Tali+Hatuel.htm
Arafat's PA Honors Killers of Jewish Family
According to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA), pregnant Jewish women and young Jewish girls who make their homes in the Gaza Strip are "terrorists," while the Palestinians who murder them are "heroic martyrs."
On May 2, two Palestinian Arab gunmen mercilessly shot to death Tali Hatuel and her four daughters, all under the age of 12. The Hatuel's unborn son was also killed.
But rather than condemn their murder, the Arafat-controlled Voice of Palestine slammed Israel for rocketing a Gaza City Hamas radio station in response. The massacre of the Hatuel family - during which the terrorists themselves were eliminated by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops - was labeled as an "act of heroic martyrdom."
Following the gruesome slaughter of the Hatuel family, Israel launched a limited rocket attack on a Gaza City Hamas radio station known as a beacon of virulent hatred of Jews. While no Palestinians were wounded in the strike, and the station was operating in violation of the Oslo Accords, the Voice of Palestine quoted a senior PA official as calling the raid a "cowardly act by a war criminal."
The anchor then went on to portray the murderers of the Hatuel family as "heroic martyrs" (they were chased down and killed by IDF soldiers following the attack), reported media analyst Michael Widlanski.
The Voice of Palestine is an official mouthpiece of Arafat's PA. The mainstream Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera referred to the killing as a "resistance strike."
While their killers were honored, Voice of Palestine called Tali Hatuel and her daughters "terrorists" in its May 3 morning broadcast, Widlanski noted. The radio's initial report on the attack said only that "five settlers" had been killed, but failed to identify the victims as a pregnant woman and four young girls. Nor was the brutal manner in which they were executed reported.
Further investigation of the attack revealed that the two "Palestinian" gunmen first shot at the Hatuels' car from several meters away, and then approached to finish off the family at close range.
According to Arutz 7, the killers videotaped the Hatuels being ripped apart by their bullets and bleeding to death.
Palestinian Arabs throughout Judea, Samaria, and Gaza celebrated the murder of Tali and her girls.
How did the BBC report it?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
3679395.stm
John Reith:
BioD
while you say you condemn incitement to Jew-hatred you excuse it and justify it by pointing to alleged Arab-hatred, not finding it in Israel you point at LGF and this blog.
I did not excuse or justify it.
On the contrary, I called it 'appalling' and said that I shared your revulsion at the PA's role in disseminating it.
You invited an equivalent example from Israel. I am not in Israel. But the person who posted a comment expressing equivalent sentiments here used to post many comments in support of Israel.
You seek to put across the notion that only Palestinians behave badly. In one post today you suggest that the behaviour of those pictured in a magazine photo featured on LGF is enough to deny the entire people any rights of political self-determination.
Then you call yourself 'a reasonable person' - albeit one who doesn't care whether a British citizen kidnapped in Gaza lives or dies. Why not? Because he works for the BBC. So what happened - did your moral high horse die?
You ask rhetorically where Palestinian land is registered - when you know damn well that starting in the 20s the British Mandate authorities started to compile a land register based on the UK model - and that it was kept up by the Jordanians.
You probably also know that Israel's basic law recognizes the Ottoman criteria for the ownership of cultivated land.
You know more than anyone else on this blog about these sorts of issues.
Yet you seek to quibble about whether Peace Now should be represented as a leftwing group when it's irrelevant whether its right wing, left wing or a white heather club. The figures published on its website come directly from the Israeli Civil Administration under the equivalent of the freedom of information act. As you know full well.
BaggieJonathan:
Daffy duck follows bugs bunny on stage, the audience reacts...
Biodegradable:
I did not excuse or justify it.
You attempt to diminish it by pointing to similar exaltation in irrelevant places. Next you'll be quoting Storm Front or the BNP to discredit Israel and this blog. Oh, you already have accused commenters here of being members of the BNP.
You invited an equivalent example from Israel. I am not in Israel. But the person who posted a comment expressing equivalent sentiments here used to post many comments in support of Israel.
That is just too convoluted for words. But it comes very close to, "if you support Israel you must be a Zionist", ie: bad.
You seek to put across the notion that only Palestinians behave badly.
Just a 'notion'?
Just 'behaving badly'?
Are you now accusing me of maligning and slandering those poor innocent people?
... one who doesn't care whether a British citizen kidnapped in Gaza lives or dies. Why not?
I've already explained.
Because he works for the BBC.
He's paid by the BBC and works for the enemy, not just the enemy of Israel but the enemy of all 'reasonable' people.
So what happened - did your moral high horse die?
Unlike you I've never claimed to have one.
IngSoc is Doublethink:
TPO:
A Little Biographical leverage on MR CORREA
Mr Correa is from the "media friendly" and "cut and paste" school of journalism:
http://www.chronicpoverty.org/CP...ning%20(DE)
.pdf
Newsnifer was on him too
http://newssniffer.newworldodour...es/141/diff/0/
1
Appears to have some friends in high places:
http://search.atomz.com/search/?....x=22&
image.y=6
"There is little doubt that November 7, 2000 will forever be remembered as a “black Tuesday” for the American media – the day they first “gave” and then “took back” six million votes not once but twice in a few hours, ending up with what one of the million dollar anchors said was not just egg but an omelette on their faces".
http://www.bjr.org.uk/data/2001/.../
no1_corera.htm
"Gordon Corera was the US Affairs Analyst for BBC News (now Security). He was educated in the UK and the US and worked in political campaigns in Washington and London before joining the BBC".
JR-What sort of political campaigns was he in? CND? SWP? THE WEATHERMEN?
deegee:
you know damn well that starting in the 20s the British Mandate authorities started to compile a land register based on the UK model
Actually I know: The (Turkish) Land Registration Law of 1858, ostensibly passed to determine title to land, "was actually a means of identifying properties for the purpose of taxation and of disclosing the existence of persons subject to military conscription. For these reasons only a small proportion of transactions was recorded, and these chiefly concerned elderly persons, females, foreigners and those sufficiently influential to be able to avoid military service. As an index of owners, the registers therefore became hopelessly incomplete… In order to avoid taxation, a person owning some hundreds of dunums had them recorded as an area of, say, ten or twenty dunums"
Peasants who registered their land at all often did so in the names of deceased or fictitious persons or of members of the effendi (gentry) or of urban merchants. Title thereby existed in the names of upper class Moslems, Christians, and Jews in Jerusalem, Beirut, and Damascus. Members of the urban elite filed whole villages in their own names, and tenure passed into the hands of those who were often landlord, tax collector, and usurer all in one. The bribing of officials and the blackmailing of peasants also played a role in the recording of ever more land in the names of absentee landlord.
The preceding quote comes from The Alienation of a Homeland: How Palestine Became Israel by Stephen P. Halbrook quoting the report to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry 1946. While the author is as biased against Israel as JB and the BBC the article itself is academic, footnoted and worth reading.
Incidentally the Israel Land Registration Office is still known by its Turkish name - Tarbo.
The quote does explain why Palestinians and their apologists use 'ownership' as a stick to beat Israel in practice they avoid dealing with the issue. To do otherwise would be to admit that most 'Palestinians' do not legally own land they claim. To do otherwise would be to open the door to violence between the 'legal' owners, the 'inhabitant' owners and the Palestinian thugs who have acquired land in the P.A. through force and corruption.
John Reith:
IngSoc is Doublethink & TPO
JR-What sort of political campaigns was he in? CND? SWP? THE WEATHERMEN?
Hardly. Gordon C was a Frank Knox Fellow at Harvard.
According to the wishes of Mrs. Knox, Fellows are selected on the basis of "future promise of leadership, strength of character, keen mind, a balanced judgment and a devotion to the democratic ideal."
http://www.frankknox.harvard.edu...d.edu/
what.html
TPO
I agree with you about the need for journos to be circumspect about what's fed to them by your former colleagues and sister/rival services. Particularly if -as you suggest - Le Carre wasn't exaggerating the bureaucratic infighting.
Biodegradable:
You know more than anyone else on this blog about these sorts of issues.
John Reith | 15.03.07 - 4:20 pm
No I don't. deegee knows far more than me.
BTW, I've often wondered why the BBC's 'Related Links' to stories only ever include links to the Palestinian National Authority, as on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...east/
978626.stm , and never direct links to Fateh or Hamas web sites.
Explanation:
The 'moderate' Fateh's Constitution:
http://www.fateh.net/e_public/
co...onstitution.htm
CHAPTER ONE
Principles... Goals.... Methods
The Movement's Essential Principles
Article (1) Palestine is part of the Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation, and their struggle is part of its struggle.
Article (4) The Palestinian struggle is part and parcel of the world-wide struggle against Zionism, colonialism and international imperialism.
Article (5) Liberating Palestine is a national obligation which necessities the materialistic and human support of the Arab Nation.
Article (6) UN projects, accords and reso, or those of any individual cowhich undermine the Palestinian people's right in their homeland are illegal and rejected.
Article (7) The Zionist Movement is racial, colonial and aggressive in ideology, goals, organisation and method.
Article (
The Israeli existence in Palestine is a Zionist invasion with a colonial expansive base, and it is a natural ally to colonialism and international imperialism.
Article (9) Liberating Palestine and protecting its holy places is an Arab, religious and human obligation.
Article (10) Palestinian National Liberation Movement, "FATEH", is an independent national revolutionary movement representing the revolutionary vanguard of the Palestinian people.
Article (11) The crowds which participate in the revolution and liberation are the proprietors of the Palestinian land.
Goals
Article (12) Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.
Article (13) Establishing an independent democratic state with complete sovereignty on all Palestinian lands, and Jerusalem is its capital city, and protecting the citizens' legal and equal rights without any racial or religious discrimination.
[...]
Hamas Charter
Amongst the lunatic rantings just see this example:
Article Twenty-Eight
The Zionist invasion is a mischievous one. It does not hesitate to take any road, or to pursue all despicable and repulsive means to fulfill its desires. It relies to a great extent, for its meddling and spying activities, on the clandestine organizations which it has established, such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions, and other spying associations. All those secret organizations, some which are overt, act for the interests of Zionism and under its directions, strive to demolish societies, to destroy values, to wreck answerableness, to totter virtues and to wipe out Islam. It stands behind the diffusion of drugs and toxics of all kinds in order to facilitate its control and expansion. The Arab states surrounding Israel are required to open their borders to the Jihad fighters, the sons of the Arab and Islamic peoples, to enable them to play their role and to join their efforts to those of their brothers among the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The other Arab and Islamic states are required, at the very least, to facilitate the movement of the Jihad fighters from and to them. We cannot fail to remind every Muslim that when the Jews occupied Holy Jerusalem in 1967 and stood at the doorstep of the Blessed Aqsa Mosque, they shouted with joy: “Muhammad is dead, he left daughters behind.” Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. “Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep.”
Note the chutzpah:
Article Thirty-One: The Members of Other Religions The Hamas is a Humane Movement
Hamas is a humane movement, which cares for human rights and is committed to the tolerance inherent in Islam as regards attitudes towards other religions....
John Reith:
deegee | 15.03.07 - 5:19 pm
It was because the Ottoman register was as useless as your source describes that the British Mandate authority set up (in the 1920s) a proper one to register the land to the farmers who cultivated it and the residents who owned houses that were built on it.
Palestinian ownership rights are recognized by Israel. Talia Sasson wrote a report for the government of Israel in 2004, which said:
It is absolutely prohibited to establish outposts on private Palestinian property. Such an action may in certain circumstances become a felony.
But first and foremost this is a serious prejudice of the right of possession. This right is a basic right in Israel - included in Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom, and was defined by the Israeli Supreme Court as a constitutional right. Israel High Court of Justice ruled that the Commander of the area must protect the fundamental rights of the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. This means he must also protect their right of possession. It is the Commander's duty to prevent the intolerable prejudice of Palestinians' right of possession, which an establishment of outposts on their property causes.
There is no way to validate the establishment of an outpost on private Palestinian property, not even post factum. Such outposts must be evacuated, the sooner the better.
http://www.fmep.org/documents/
sa...ssonreport.html
Biodegradable:
The New York Times:
The Biased Broadcasting Corporation
If you need a login go to http://www.bugmenot.com/
Anonanon:
BBC eyewitness:
One eyewitness, who did not wish to be named, said she had seen the teenager chased by a gang.
"I saw a fight at the top of the road. There were a big gang of guys chasing a guy with a dog, chucking sticks and shouting.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/engla...don/
6452667.stm
Evening Standard eyewitness:
One woman said: "I saw eight or nine black boys in a very agitated state. One of them was waving a massive knife around. These boys were very hyped up. I recognised one of them as being a well-known local gang member. These kids were all gravitating around the boy with the carving knife.”
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/ne...away/
article.do
Biodegradable:
Anonanon:
To be fair the BBC does say:
A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said all seven youths in custody are black.
will:
From Bio's link to the NYT opinion piece -
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria enjoys similar favor (with the BBC World Service). When a State Department representative referred to Syria as a dictatorship, his BBC interviewer immediately interrupted and reprimanded him.
So Syria joins Iran in having a special form of democracy, according to the BBC.
Anonanon:
The full article from NYT linked to by Biodegradable:
The Biased Broadcasting Corporation
By FRANK H. STEWART
LAST summer, the Archbishop of Algeria remarked to this newspaper that when satellite dishes first appeared in Algeria, they were typically positioned to receive French broadcasts. Now the majority receive programming from the Persian Gulf.
“If you watch Western television, you live in one universe,” said the archbishop, “and if you watch Middle Eastern television, you live in another altogether.” The Middle Eastern broadcasts, he added, tended to depict the West in a negative light.
Washington is well aware of this problem and has tried to address it. In 2004, the United States established its own Arabic-language satellite television station, Al Hurra. But Al Hurra has not been a success, and stations like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya, based in the Gulf states, continue to dominate the region.
Those stations will soon face a formidable rival. The BBC World Service plans to start an Arabic television service this fall, and the BBC knows what it is doing. It has been broadcasting in Arabic on the radio for more than 60 years and has a huge audience.
This new television station might sound like good news for America. Many of us pick up BBC broadcasts in English, and we respect their quality. But the World Service in English is one thing, and the World Service in Arabic is another entirely. If the BBC’s Arabic TV programs resemble its radio programs, then they will be just as anti-Western as anything that comes out of the Gulf, if not more so. They will serve to increase, rather than to diminish, tensions, hostilities and misunderstandings among nations.
For example, a 50-minute BBC Arabic Service discussion program about torture discussed only one specific allegation, which came from the head of an organization representing some 90 Saudis imprisoned at Guantánamo. This speaker stated that the prisoners were subject to disgusting and horrible forms of torture and suggested that three inmates reported by the United States to have committed suicide were actually killed. Another participant insisted that the two countries guilty of torturing political prisoners on the largest scale were Israel and the United States.
At the same time, the authoritarian regimes and armed militants of the Arab world get sympathetic treatment on BBC Arabic. When Saddam Hussein was in power, he was a great favorite of the service, which reported as straight news his re-election to a seven-year term in 2002, when he got 100 percent of the vote. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria enjoys similar favor. When a State Department representative referred to Syria as a dictatorship, his BBC interviewer immediately interrupted and reprimanded him.
The Arabic Service not only shields Arab leaders from criticism but also tends to avoid topics they might find embarrassing: human rights, the role of military and security forces, corruption, discrimination against minorities, censorship, poverty and unemployment. When, from time to time, such topics do arise, they are usually dealt with in the most general terms: there may, for instance, be guarded references to “certain Arab countries.”
By contrast, the words and deeds of Western leaders, particularly the American president and the British prime minister, are subject to minute analysis, generally on the assumption that behind them lies a hidden and disreputable agenda. Last summer, when the British arrested two dozen people alleged to have been plotting to blow up airplanes crossing the Atlantic, a BBC presenter centered a discussion on the theory that these arrests had taken place because Tony Blair, embarrassed by opposition to Britain’s role in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, wanted to distract the public while at the same time associating Muslims with terrorism.
The British are among our closest and most reliable allies, and it is strange that their government pays for these broadcasts, many of which are produced in Cairo rather than in London. If the BBC models its Arabic television service on its Arabic radio service, yet another anti-Western, antidemocratic channel will find its place on the Arab screen.
Frank H. Stewart is a professor in the department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a visiting scholar at New York University.
Anonanon:
Biodegradable | 15.03.07 - 6:42 pm : "A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said all seven youths in custody are black."
I'm pretty sure that has been added during the latest update.
will:
By Justin Webb
BBC News, Venezuela
petrol here is cheaper than the most basic bottled water.
Even in the UK?
Webb goes on to tell of the crumbling economy - inflation, price controls, shortages etc
But Hugo Chavez has - so far - sent very few people to jail for political crimes.
So that's OK then!
I find myself torn by Venezuela - its economic experiment seems to me utterly doomed, and yet at the same time, wonderfully noble.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/progr...ent/
6435313.stm
Biodegradable:
Anonanon:
it's also been updated from 5 arrested to 7
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.../31883/diff/1/
2
Anonanon:
Re: "A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said all seven youths in custody are black."
Just noticed that I still have the tab open with the 15:38 timestamp and that line is not there. The BBC has updated its report to include the Met's info. Doesn't alter the fact that the BBC managed to find a politically correct eyewitness to quote.
Biodegradable:
Anonanon | 15.03.07 - 7:15 pm
Or they selectively quoted the same witness.
Biodegradable:
John Reith could have written this:
He just wants us to admit that there are victims on both sides - that, to some suffering communities who have been on the wrong end of American bombs, Americans are the inhuman ‘enemy combatants.’
Who is he talking about and justifying, nay, glorifying?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonl...3/15/1201/
95933
Biodegradable:
The same 'man' who also says this:
I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ameri...cas/
6455307.stm
Anonanon:
Or they selectively quoted the same witness.
Biodegradable | 15.03.07 - 7:23 pm
Surely the BBC would never do something like that!
Returning to an earlier theme - Melanie Phillips and others have already highlighted Miliband’s comment about the C4 Swindle film (“I didn’t see the programme — but I promise you I will do a blog demolishing its contents”) but I don’t think anyone has pointed out John Humphrys’ response. Did Humph question the idiocy of the Environment Secretary's statement? No - this is what the great attack dog of Radio 4 news said: “Look forward to the blog.”
The Fat Contractor:
Bryan | 15.03.07 - 9:47 am |
I’ve talked to loads of Irish people about ‘The Troubles’ and, for the most part, they have been civilised discussions. The vast majority of Irish people I met despised the IRA, considered them criminals and wanted nothing to do with them. A small minority, maybe two, were fervent fans. I have had several uneasy evenings in real, rather than themed, Irish pubs where the hat was passed around ‘for the boys’. I have met Catholics who wanted Ulster to stay British and Protestants who wanted a united Ireland. However the majority of Catholics wanted a united Ireland and the majority of Protestants wanted to remain British. Not a scientific study I know.
On the BBC you rarely heard the voice of the ordinary Irishman when a bomb went off, only Adams and Paisley got a shout. In the ‘70s and ‘80s it was easier to think the Irish supported the IRA because that was what we were led to believe.
I think that Muslims now have the same problem that the Irish had. The majority are only very loosely fellow travellers with the fanatics and they hate them and would rather they didn’t blow themselves up in London Tube trains. But what can they do about it? The ‘community leaders’ don’t speak for them, or even allow them a voice. No one in the press will give them a voice. Even the BBC, with its dhimmi attitudes ignores the ordinary Muslim and focuses on the fanatics. Most probably don’t even go to the mosques any more.
As with any population the ordinary man just wants to get on with his life and only gets involved when he can’t avoid it. As some found in Ulster, standing up to the terrorists was a very good way to end your life. So don’t expect the law abiding Muslim to stand up and rail against the bombers, no one is listening and most are simply not brave/stupid enough to take the risk.
Alan:
So, in one day, we have fundamental critiques of two pro-Islamic international broadcasters:
1.) "Al Jazeera: 'the Muslim Brotherhood channel'" (scroll down)
http://www.jihadwatch.org
2.) "The Biased Broadcasting Corporation" by Prof. Frank H. Stewart.( 'New York Times').
For reference and access go to 'Biodegradable' at 6.21 pm;
for content in full, go to 'anonanon'
at 6.50 pm.
It is apparent that broadcasting staff at both Al Jazeera and Al Beeb
find it mutually easy to cross over to employment at either corporation;
ideologically, there's not much difference, of course.
Jon:
I was really surprised to hear that the Zimbawe cricket team has not been boycotted - the conditions in Zimbabwe are much worse than they were in South Africa - yet there are no mass protests outside of cricket matches were Zimbabwe are playing - no outcry by the BBC.
I am also suprised why the BBC is banned from reporting in Zimbabwe - Mugabe must not listen to them - if he did he would invite them in with open arms so he can feed them some great anti-colonial clap-trap of how the problems in that country were caused by the British Empire or slavery or both - and kicking white farmers off their land would have gone down just fine with the BBC - I can see the headlines now "The oppressed Africans getting their land back after 100s of years of slavery and oppresion" - making sure that they don't mention that Zimbabwe used to be a rich and prosperous country before Mugabes dictatorship utterley trashed any prosperity and left thousands homeless and starving.
archduke:
"I have just discovered, via The Brussels Journal, that the Ondiep area of Utrecht has had three days of rioting by native Dutch.
The BBC, as far as I know have not even mentioned this.
Go the link and you will find out why.
Richard Brown | 15.03.07 - 3:58 pm "
yeah - i came across that this afternoon as well.
riots in one of our closest European neighbours and no mention by the BBC
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1977
and this time is not the "disaffected" Muslim youth - its the indigenous Dutch who are rioting, after a white Dutch man was shot dead by a
hence the news blackout. no "victim" card to play. no agenda to set.
meanwhile over in supposedly peaceful Cananda, there's a bit of a problem with radical Islamists in the universities there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n...h?
v=nUKrThFNYoA
archduke:
" The Fat Contractor | 15.03.07 - 8:00 pm |"
very good points. the dhimmi BBC is certainly not helping matters.
Ultraviolence:
I've just watched Question Time.
The Climate Change thing is reaching hysterical proportions.
What would be the right psychopathological term?
Mania? Nope, they're not excited enough.
Paranoia? It's much closer, but paranoia usually refers to malevolent anthropoid forces and intentions - for instance, spy cameras, persecution conspiracys. So for a little more accuracy I diagnose them with
Psychosis!
Psychosis is the most severe form of mental illness. Anybody can be paranoid within reason, but a psychotic cannot even accept to the smallest extent counter evidence to their delusion claims. This is referred to as 'lack of insight', in other words they don't know they are insane and cannot see past anything but their delusions.
IngSoc is Doublethink:
Archduke.
Hmmm...Ondeip?
My sister in law lives in Utrecht,and I'm in the area on Saturday so I'll let you know.
From what I do know of the area,(I live about 40 minutes away) its mainly made up of Turkish,Surinams,students,and some smallholdings in a fairly ordinary area.
If its Dutch kids it might be one of the "crackerhuistjes" (squats) run by the leftist from the University,or an illigal rave/hash house run by the skinheads.
"Gabbertjers" are quite common and a little menacing-they were linked to far right groups but it is mainly footy/club stuff for the kiddies...
I'll let you know more but to be honest it wasn't that bigger deal here,although it was headline in De Telegraaf (the Dutch Sun).
Jon:
Ultraviolence: To me its a kind of mass hysteria - the only sane voice on Question time was Peter Hichtins
Ultraviolence:
Yes, Peter Hichtins was received much better than usual, he could be on the 'up', as they say.
There were times when he was claim close to looking exasperated by the global warming babble. But he's far to English to be all loud and rude and interrupt them mid-sentence.
Jon:
Ultraviolence: Unlike The others - I did notice that the "conservative" candiate was a bit edgy - I do think that she did not believe a word she was saying - Its was like she had been given a script to stick by. You know the times when you have been asked to debate on something that you do not believe in - its very difficult to convince anyone when you can't convince yourself.
archduke:
peter hitchens made lembit opik a prime candidate for the mental asylum.
thats the impression i got. lembit in all his greenery even came out against nuke power. what? so the entire UK should run on wind turbines Lembit? wind turbines, that, by the way, kill thousands of sea birds every day it's utter f**king madness - the whole lot of it.
archduke:
" Jon | 16.03.07 - 12:47 am"
in fairness she did, at times, sound as if she was trying to defend the indefensible
archduke:
" Ultraviolence | 15.03.07 - 11:45 pm"
hitchens said something extremely valid tonight - "consensus" is not science.
just because 95 per cent of scientists agree with something doesnt mean that THEIR theory is correct. its just not science if you base your policy on a "consensus".
Louis Pasteur , for example, had to fight like hell to get his "microbe" theory of disease to be accepted.
Ultraviolence:
If you believe in global warming, THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU!
CityBlue:
Latest piece of cant heard on the Today programme shortly after 6am. In covering the Chinese government's new law on recognising private property the reporter stated that although supoorted by 'progressives' it would be opposed by 'conservatives'. What he really meant was 'reactionaries' but in BBC land the terms are interchangeable.
IngSoc is Doublethink:
Ultra and Archduke:
Good morning.
I was always brought up to think that the science in what ever subject always needs to be tested with imperical thinking and the results always being challenged and re-examined.
That seems not to be that case today.
So in my mind this is "global warming debate" is anti-science.
Alan:
"Great capital city. Shame about the awful BBC." (by Gerard Baker, 16 Mar.)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk (go to 'Comment')
One sentence fron article: " But worst of all ...is the political, cultural and intellectual hegemony exercised by the ultimate self-serving metropolitan monopoly of the BBC."
rightofcentre:
You know I would have bet anything that the BBC would be the first UK news to open with the words "allah wakbah" or whatever it is. But to my utter amazement Tim Marshall on Sky has just ended an interview with some Iraqi chap with the word "inshallah", the Iraqi chap looked a bit embarassed and mumbled "yes God willing".
D Burbage:
It betrayed an absolutely rock-solid assumption that the Queen is fundamentally unsympathetic, and that anyone who might still harbour some respect for the monarch — or indeed for that matter, the military or the Church, or the countryside or the joint stock company or any of the great English bequests to the world — must be some reactionary old buffer out in the sticks who has not had the benefit of the London media’s cultural enlightenment.
More than that, the question — all fawning and fraternal and friendly — contained within it an assumption that, of course, every thoughtful person shares the same view.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk
from the Comment section.
On the nose! (red or otherwise)
Pete:
Any examples of bias yet?
MisterMinit:
Here's a more convenient link to the Gerard Baker's article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle1522471.ece
Martin Belam:
>> But to my utter amazement Tim Marshall on Sky has just ended an interview with some Iraqi chap with the word "inshallah"
Is Tim in Iraq? I found when I stayed in Dubai for a while that you just pick up a couple of phrases like that. In Austria at the moment I greet people with "Groß gott!" out of politeness and habit, but it hasn't made me a church-going Austrian Catholic by saying it.
Martin Belam:
Gerard Baker's point about The Queen film puzzles me a bit - my wife went to watch it and she came out of it saying how she disliked the royal family in it. Isn't it set in the period when they have to be dragged kicking and screaming down to London to show the people they are in mourning. I thought the film *was* an unsympathetic portryal? Incidentally my wife didn't think Cherie Blair/Booth came out of it very well either. In fact, I'm not *really* sure that she enjoyed it...
The Fat Contractor:
Martin Belam | Homepage | 16.03.07 - 10:08 am |
But doesn't "insallah" mean 'by the will of God' or "God Willing"? In which case it was a bit of a non-seqateur (sp?).
Surely 'salam alekum' would have been more appropriate.
But, what do I know I don't speak Arabic.
Archonix:
Aye, it'd be rather like the equivalent of saying "Amen" every time you finished speaking to someone...
BaggieJonathan:
'Inshallah' translates as 'god (allah) willing'.
Some westerners do still use the term God willing or even DV in writing from the Latin for God willing.
'Amen' is better translated as let it be so or so be it and is normally kept for conversations with God (prayer) rather than people. When used in ordinary speech it is usually used to denote agreement.
BaggieJonathan:
I think salaam aleikum is a hello not a goodbye, unless an Arabic speaker cares to correct my impression...
Martin Belam:
Well, I don't speak Arabic either, but whilst it does mean "God-willing" it tended to be used by the Westerners I met in Dubai and Qatar either as a "Well, let's hope so" at the end of a conversation, or more of a shrug-shoulders, "whatever". But I didn't see the Sky clip obviously. I don't think it is an equivalent to "Amen" though, but, likewise FC, what do I know?
Oscar:
Compare and contrast Jerusalem Post coverage of the UNESCO report on the excavation by the Western Wall - headline ‘UNESCO: Dig not harming Temple Mount’
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Sat...icle%
2FShowFull
with al beeb’s coverage
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
6449177.stm
IngSoc is Doublethink:
Is see the War of the Diadochi has begun?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...ics/
6456945.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...ics/
6385603.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...ics/
6423761.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...ics/
6373333.stm
This is not a comment on the BBC per-se but a general observation.
To my mind there seems to be a large block of voters which is actually rather ignored by the media and political pundits alike. That is the voters who voted for TB and NOT the Labour Party.
I have drawn a conclusion that in spite of the sniping from the left and right, I think rather a lot of people like him or think he is the most competent (regardless of the the parties). I also include myself in the latter.
For all his mistakes and he has made some whoppers, to me when it mattered he showed strong leadership, five key points that spring to mind are:
-He was the only world leader to stand up and say “enough” in Bosnia and Kosovo. He showed backbone and courage to act when everybody else including America, was engaged in talking about it.
-The days following 9/11 when he seemed to articulate the utter shock we all felt. He also led the way in calls to combat Islamic extremism (he was doing so before) and to confront the violent ideology. IMHO I think the world was listening to TB, and by extension looking to the UK for leadership. This could also be extended to his personal handling of the 7/7 bombing.
-The way he has maintained his belief in dealing with Saddam-those of longer memories will remember TB trying to push Clinton to act firmly after the weapon inspectors were kicked out of Iraq, which sort of makes a mockery out “Bush’s poodle”. Whatever the rights and wrongs he has always stood by his view and not flipped flopped. It may have even killed his political reputation, but in a hue of Churchill in the thirties, sometimes doing the right thing is more important.
-The Northern Ireland Peace Process has been a giant step forward taking the fine work of John Major (another forgotten achievement by the “grey man” of politics) and creating a stable framework for power-sharing. He seems to have the trust of both parties and I think a huge achievement.
My praise is of his personal conduct and the way he generally does his job,not a strictly political one,but an important point.
But I think most of all he never reversed the policies of Mrs Thatcher and nationalised everything,and it's really been Post-Iraq that you now see the worst excesses of PC doublethink. I believe he even said it himself that he felt he wasn’t being radical enough on Education (something I think even Conservatives agree with)and on Law and Order and he saw the role of the private sector and charities in running our services-core values of conservative thinking.
The paradox of this I feel I also think that despite the tribal feelings that party politics arouses many Conservatives also wish that TB was the leader of the party behind close doors.It must be a difficult pill to swallow to find a Labour party leader being more to the "right" than your boss.
I wonder if many people are uneasy about the whole narration about him going-yes I think he needs to go too, but not in the grubby way that it’s being done. When I read Al Beeb’s reports above I wonder how much power do they have? And in the last few weeks I’ve noticed more and more “joint” news items with Guardian Media Group (more than normal that is) regarding news reporting on "the Government".
Perhaps it just me but I think the real problem in the UK lies behind TB?
Anonanon:
On R4’s Today this morning classicist Peter Jones was asked to give his verdict about 300. “The film is rubbish from beginning to end.” He went on to say that the film follows in a long tradition: “Spartans have always been romanticised as the sort of epitome of noble warriors prepared to go to their deaths for noble causes, and this apparently is the way the film shows them, and to that extent, in terms of the patriotic sentiment it espouses, Greeks would have applauded their heads off.”
Apparently? So had Peter Jones even seen the film? Doesn’t sound like it. Earlier this week David Miliband was encouraged to dismiss as rubbish a film he hadn’t watched. Is this a new trend on Today?
(And how does one applaud one’s head off? Is it a Greek thing?)
Martin Belam:
>> And how does one applaud one’s head off? Is it a Greek thing?
Well, I lived there for six months last year, and I never saw one do it - but rest assured, if anything would get them excited enough to do so, a load of pseudo-Greeks putting it to pseudo-Turks would be the thing!
BTW, did you know the Greek government threatened to break off diplomatic relations with the FYROMacedion when it attempted to rename Skopje airport "Alexander The Great"
BaggieJonathan:
IiD - re TB you are pretty much on the money. In fact I warm more and more to your posts - keep up the good work...
Archonix:
Blair may well embrace conservative ideas, but he still has a habit of going about them in highly statist ways...
Jonathan Cambridge:
"But to my utter amazement Tim Marshall on Sky has just ended an interview with some Iraqi chap with the word "inshallah" "
I've spent time in Iran, Egypt and other Muslim countries, and didn't go around saying inshallah. In comparison to "grus gott", which is Austrian for hello, and therefore necessary, it's not necessary for communication. It's slightly crawly of him to use it in my opinion.
Anonymous:
Anonanon.
“Spartans have always been romanticised as the sort of epitome of noble warriors"
I'm not claiming for one moment that I’m in any way an expert on these things, but isn’t the stories from Homer, or the very actual deeds of the later Philip II, Alexander ,or the Persian King Darius give you an idea that this period of history was VERY MUCH about Heroic leadership, and “noble” causes…….
His statement in my mind applies 21st Centaury thinking to a time very different to our own, and therefore an implied bias that as a historian he should be aware of this.
I would go further to say the personal skill, courage and leadership on the battlefield was very much at the heart of how the classical world was shaped and formed
http://academic.reed.edu/humanit...ric%
20Geography
John Keegan’s Mask of Command is an interesting study of general ship through the ages, and I for one would recommend.
Or for a less academic approach play the excellent Total War series, which is one of those rare games that are informative and educational while being a lot of fun.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Sorry the above was me
GCcooper:
I mistakenly posted the following to the wrong thread. I'm reposting it, if for no other reason, to thumb my nose at the imbecile who seemed to be suggesting there is no evidence of BBC bias posted here.
Auntie's acting as ZaNuLabour's press office again (or do I mean Pravda ?).
This morning the lead story on our favourite funded-by-threats website is yet more fiction from Princess Toni's dept. of eye-catching initiatives, this time invented statistics about the amount of food being 'wasted' by homeowners.
Naturally, in an attempt to convince us of the need for 'action', 'Global Warming' is invoked, but the real reason is to soften us up, so that ZNL can whack in unopposed, massively increased charges for domestic waste collection - in other words, raising council tax still further or, if you prefer, charging us twice for the same 'service'.
A properly independent news organisation would either spike a story like this, or fisk it.
The BBC just trots along, happy to play its own part in the thriving waste generation industry of "Green " rubbish and doing the government's dirty work for it.
Alan:
"Academic: Extremism debate is being stifled" (16 Mar.),(an extract from 'Daily Telegraph'):-
" Matthias Kuntzel, a German author and political scientist, was due to give a lecture at Leeds University on Islamic anti-Semitism but it was cancelled after complaints from Muslim students."
He added:
"It is a worrying trend. If I say something which is not positive about a particular brand of Islam, the imposition is that I am inciting hatred of every Muslim. I am very concerned about this - it is an attack on academic freedom. We are seeing it more and more, particularly in the UK."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
( go to 'News').
Can we look to Al Beeb to put on programmes which are really committed to free speech, and will not appease Islamic interests?
Martin Belam:
BBC web people visiting the Telegraph and the whole moderation / censrship debate http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/
tec...tfromthebbc.htm
Alan:
Melanie Phillips has an excellent take on climate change, with a report of a New York debate:
"Reason fights back"
http://www.melaniephillips.com
Anonymous:
You American haters, perhaps you would prefer the Taliban Democracy ?
"Two men, woman lynched in Pakistan for adultery"
"Karachi, Two men and a woman accused of adultery were stoned to death by hundreds of tribesmen and bullets pumped into their bodies on the direction of a pro-Taliban outfit in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province".
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/
ho...00703151586.htm
IngSoc is doublethink:
Thanks Baggie, I think you and I are fellow travellers on these boards……
Archonix:
I think you have to remember that TB is in a party that rejects the idea of the private sector having a say in health, education or social problems. I really think that TB understood the lessons of Thatcher in sound economics (I think independence of the Bank of England sounds more like a “Blair” idea than a “Brown” one) and empowering the little guy, but tried to address the “softer” issues as well, as any good Government should.
I don’t like his ideas on devolution, the introduction of the Human Rights Act (in its current form), parliamentary reform but he has always broadly supported conservative policy. Look again at whom micro-manages Government policy and state intervention.
I think those like me see a subtle difference in what TB is saying and the mass ranks of the Labour Party. As far as I can see the TB has spent more time battling Labour rebels than the Tories, on PPFI, Iraq, NHS reforms, Education Reforms. The debacle over immigration or the Home Office is down to the inability to carry out the reforms and a mix of human failings and political infighting.
Remember although TB is PM, it is the Labour Party in Government.
Where TB has gone seriously wrong is he has “Americanized” the interface between the policymakers and people. Rather than having the strength of his argument see him through, he has allowed the media to dictate the agenda. This is no more illustrated than the lead up to Iraq when he crumbled to media (and Lib Dem) pressure and releases the two reports. I understand why he done it (I really do believe he wanted to engage the public and try and inform) BUT the subsequent policy and has been held to ransom because the intelligence report didn’t fit the narrative set by the Government.
Next time we go to war I expect there will be shouts to publish the JIC findings-a fatal thing in my book.
I believe this was the poison dart .I think that a large part of the subsequent planning issues that have come out of Iraq and Afghanistan is because the political leadership has to fight pitched battles within their own parties and the media to stay on message, rather than focus on the job in hand. I doubt very much if Mrs Thatcher would have allowed that.
So far Mr Cameron has shown none of the good qualities of leadership (or even conservative thinking), and in fact out of all the parties I can only think of Liam Fox and John Reid that has any empathy towards to problems and challenges that the UK faces.
I actually like to hear Ministers say: “Yeap It’s a bulls-up we must do better” and then engage people with ideas.
I like to hear an Opposition Defence spokesperson challenging us by saying we have woefully under spent on defence and look towards the next five-ten years in PARTNERSHIP with our US friends.
I like ordinary plan speaking people talking to me without a talking head leading me down the track.
At his best Blair had those qualities , I’ve always understood his thinking and his conviction. I even respect the guy for having the guys to go on TV and be treated like a stock hate figure by people who had actually nothing to say (Election 2005 TV debate).
I think this is what is worrying ordinary folk, we now have three leaders shuffling left of the cliff, policies that clearly come out of the editors room of the Independent and Guardian (who were always lukewarm to Blair) and no centre/centre right voice (which I think is the default position in British politics).
Where next Columbus?
Bryan:
The Fat Contractor | 15.03.07 - 8:00 pm,
I'm not knowledgeable on Northern Ireland but I take your point about the reluctance of the ordinary man to get involved and stand up to the terrorists.
Still, Islamic terrorism is a very different kettle of fish in that it is the sharp end of a colonising, conquering force, aiming at the worldwide domination of Islam over everyone and everything else. And many Muslims who are not actually blowing themselves up on infidel buses are working for the Caliphate in numerous other ways - like instilling hatred of the infidel into their children and testing the traditions and resolve of the Western host societies by making ridiculous claims such as being "insulted" by the presence of an ornamental pig in an office.
Only very rarely do we hear of other Muslims combatting these insidious attempts to subvert and subjugate Western societies.
Anonymous:
Mr Boris, in Britain we use British law, we are not going to surrender and use Muslim Sharia law which is barbaric.
"Use Sharia law on bike thieves, says MP Boris"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...ge_id=1770&
ct=5
TPO:
In my days in the Middle East in the early 70s the term "inshallah" uttered by a local to an infidel really translated as "I couldn't be bothered to get off my arse today. I might consider it tomorrrow"
Martin Belam:
>> In my days in the Middle East in the early 70s the term "inshallah" uttered by a local to an infidel really translated as "I couldn't be bothered to get off my arse today. I might consider it tomorrrow"
That's the nail on the head chaps
Alan:
It seems that BORIS JOHNSON's Turkish, Islamic-influenced background still shows itself in his casual remarks about a deadly serious Islamic institution: Sharia Law.
This is what Gregory M. Davis, Ph.D has to say about Sharia Law:
"..upon examination of the Islamic sources.., it is apparent that any meaningful application of Sharia is going to look very different from anything resembling a free or open society in the Western sense. The stoning of adulters" (watch out, Mr. Johnson) "execution of apostates and blasphemers, repression of other religions, and a mandatory hostility toward non-Islamic nations punctuated by regular warfare will be the norm. It seems fair then to classify Islam and its Sharia code as a form of totalitarianism."
(from 'Introducing Islam 101')
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archiv...ives/
015638.php
will:
IngSoc is Doublethink | 16.03.07 - 11:12 am
BaggieJonathan | 16.03.07 - 11:58 am
My wife & I make four us left thinking that TB is not all bad.
TB "gets" one of the major issues facing the country - the threat from Islamic extremism - & that's one more thing than the other party leaders, who are as bad as him or worse on the other issues.
But the Labour party remains unchanged, as shown by a quote by my local MP
Mrs Riordan said: "By not supporting Trident, I am voting to save at least £20 billion and ensuring that money is better used elsewhere. I am voting for this country to abandon holding weapons of mass destruction and I am voting for Britain to set an example to the rest of the world by turning its back on the nuclear option."
Her unilateralist stance is contrary to the 2005 election manifesto.
I have a feeling that her intentions for the saving of £20bn would not involve leaving the cash in the taxpayer's pocket.
Alan:
Correction: Read 'ADULTERERS' for
adulters. Sorry, Mr. Johnson. But are you sorry? Your turn for another apology?
BaggieJonathan:
What is Cameron thinking of?
Is he just pandering to the Al Beeber caucus again.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/healt...lth/
6458273.stm
Well the 'policies' seem to have been greeted with favour by Al Beeb but they mostly seem to be apeing the spin not substance of Labour.
Why release a part of the health proposals without other relevant parts, it just holds them up to ridicule.
Changing a name (from Health Secretary to Public Health Secretary) is going to acheive exactly what? It might be good enough for the PC but all it will do is cause a lot more new noticeboards and stationary. Costs for no reason. I suppose it might appease some BBC bureacrats.
What happens if the public health bosses dont keep to their budgets? Does this help or exacerbate the deficits issue for primary care trusts?
Actually I'm a bit surprised a New Dave spokesman hasn't announced another spending commitment, after all they have already announced so many. Having said that they have also committed to cutting tax when possible so perhaps they have finally decided to put a gag on further expenditure increases.
The 'Health' section of BBC news continues to cuddle up to Dave but with little reasoning as to why.
BaggieJonathan:
will,
Good points, but unfortunately I can trump you.
My MP is one of the worst of all, Clare Short!
She is feted by al Beebzera but not her constituency.
It has been said in the past that a red stick would get in here.
However at the last election she recorded one of the very highest swings against her, the highest if you don't included the seats with 'special' factors.
She has always treated manifesto commitments as something thats sacrosanct when she agrees with and worthless when she doesn't.
The latter seemingly now in a majority as she is so left she has left Labour!
You do have to question why Labour did not expel her years ago.
Still she will always rentaquote in her hatred for Tony Blair and/or America and her support of a variety of terror associated causes is legendary.
Perhaps that reveals why she is the apple of Al Beebzera's eye.
BaggieJonathan:
Are the BBC taking the mickey?
Or will any story be a runner as long as it mentions Cameron?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...ics/
6453165.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...ics/
6459283.stm
Martin Belam:
Baggie, rather depressingly for the state of political coverage in the British media see also the seismic news of Cameron's hair in...
The Times (twice)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle1511688.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle1521212.ece
Guardian - http://
commentisfree.guardian.co...eet_sorrow.html
Mirror - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top...-
name_page.html
The Sun - http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/
...7120369,00.html
plus the Daily Mail - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
pages...in_page_id=1770 - with possibly one of my favourite ever Daily Mail reader comments: "How nice that politicians take care of themselves. We need pretty people in power" - Loris, Milan
The Telegraph looks to standalone by not covering it - a quick search on their site revealed lots of spot-on griping about 'green taxes' not being a vote winner, but nothing on the crucial topic of the hair
(The Independent may or may not have published anything but I find their site search so abysmal I didn't bother looking)
TPO:
TPO
'I agree with you about the need for journos to be circumspect about what's fed to them by your former colleagues and sister/rival services. Particularly if -as you suggest - Le Carre wasn't exaggerating the bureaucratic infighting.
John Reith | 15.03.07 - 5:30 pm | #
Quite!!!
A rare and welcome acknowledgement from you that all is not well with BBC journalism. It does however beggar the question about what else they need to be circumspect about when fed information from, lets say, Hamas or Mbeki's henchmen or Chavez's equivalent of the Ton Ton Macoute (I hear Chavez hasn't that many political prisoners, which apparently makes him an OK sort of bloke in the eyes of the BBC).
The areas with which I was familiar were fairly limited, but rarely a week went by without seeing some form of media manipulation taking place, almost always with the BBC, sometimes with the Sunday Times (I don't read the Guardian). I think it not unreasonable to take a further step and say that this form of manipulation of the BBC comes from a variety of interests outside of government, from lobby/single interest groups and from foreign governments and NGOs.
Swallowing it? Well some of it can be put down to basic human laziness on the part of the journalist, much of it to an appalling level of naivety.
With regard to Le Carre, well he did tend to downplay the infighting. The turf and budget protectionism that was conducted on a daily basis could be astounding. The main protagonists were the boys from Ceauşescu Towers and from the Doughnut, but they were beaten hands down by the Machiavellian plots of the bunch from Toad Hall. Surprising really when the really bright ones went to the first two and Toad Hall got the also rans.
Now back to BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera.
IngSoc is Doublethink provided some interesting background on him yet you imply that, because he was a Frank Knox Fellow at Harvard, he rises above all. I still think he falls into the same trap that Mangold and the insufferable Simpson do. But then again that’s an opinion.
One interesting point. Within a couple of hours of Corera pontificating on Mohammed’s ‘boastfulness’, clone news in the form of Classic FM touted the same line.
Astounding how quickly tosh can circulate as credence.
Anyway it’s good of you to take the time to respond to me. There's times that I think that you must feel like the Third Reich, fighting losing battles on all fronts and deserted by your early surrendering Axis ally in the form of Andy Tedd who seems to have fled the field. Chin up mate, the bunker will fall soon and you’ll be able to tell it as it really is rather than the party line.
Heron:
IngSoc, Baggie, Will
I think you can make that five. I feel that on an international level Tony Blair has proved himself a good statesman who can identify the challenges and stay the course. My instinct, though, has always been to dislike him, but when I examine the reasons that I hate his Labour party, few are directly attributable to Blair. I detest:
- Labour's tax and spend and tax again to make up the deficit policy. However, I feel Brown is the driving force behind much of this.
- The erosion of free speech and free movement that has taken place under this government. The Big Brother State is upon us, but once again the driving forces behind this were the Home Secretaries. Blair is not blameless here.
- The Government's need to control everything from the centre. Again this has Brown's paw-prints all over it.
- The Government's reliance on statistics and it's tendency to bend the truth to suit their aims. That's politics I guess.
- The Government abusing and overenjoying the trappings of power. Here Blair come out of it very badly - freebie holidays, his wife getting free shopping, Cash for Peerages, massive expenses, voting through massive pay rises for themselves, so on and so forth. Never has a British Government been so intoxicated by power as this one, and I have no defence for Blair on this.
- Messing about with the constitution, repeated use of the Parliament Act, reform of the House of Lords to become the House of Cronies without going to the electorate. Again, no defence for Blair here.
Overall, though, I don't have a big problem with Blair himself, and he has probably been a better option than Major, Hague, Duncan-Smith and possibly Howard over the last ten years, and a better option than Call Me Dave now. His party though are pondlife, and the prospect of Brown as PM is quite frightening.
Ultraviolence:
The new film '300' is repressed homosexuality.
Plus it was made by Hollywood. It is, apparently, historicallly inaccurate. And White Supremacist Neo-Nazi propaganda. Released at the worst possible time.
I suspect a conspiracy in Hollywood. A CONSPIRACY.
BaggieJonathan:
Martin Belam,
Sadly I'm afraid the other quite abysmal coverage by the media you mention cannot condone the BBC doing likewise.
I say the BBC in particular because like the Times they have done articles about it twice in successive days.
Also I recall it was the BBC who went on and on about bald politicians in the past.
Before someone says it, no I don't have a chip on my shoulder about it because I'm going bald, I'm not, in actual fact I still have all of my hair.
It is just a truly pathetic way to make stories or political 'judgements'.
Just because the BBC have allowed so much of their prime time television schedule to be taken over by makeover programming they now seem to think they can force similar on politicians - woeful.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Baggie,your right,strangly quite from the Tory front bench?
I have a real question for the Conservative commentators on this blog and indirectly to the BBC.
Why have the Tory’s chosen Cameron over this man:
Liam Fox:
http://www.conservatives.com/til...e&
obj_id=132628
http://www.conservatives.com/til...e&
obj_id=133782
His contribution I think was one of the more considered speeches in the Trident debate (you have to page quite far down to read him):
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/de...07-03-
14a.298.0
And reading back over his sales pitch for leadership I like more and more on what he has to say.
http://www.conservatives.com/til...5485&
speeches=1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opini...0/21/
dl2101.xml
I like it:
-He talks about energy security (the real issue that needs addressing)
-He talks about a proper military alliance within Europe.
-He talks about our long standing friend the United States in a positive and constructive way.
-He warns us of the dangers of European inertia.
-He points out the rising powers like China and India, and why the UK is loosing its scientific and commercial edge.
-He rightly mentions the spiritual poverty that is associated with multi-cultralism and the other damaging aspects of the PC state (to the extent that the Independent called him a racist).
-He is far more outward looking than the insular BBC village “Conservative” a la Johnston or Portillo.
-He keenly notes the failure of spin and the desperate need for substance and the need for the Conservatives to avoid the same trap.
-He warmly acknowledges Israel’s efforts when they withdrew from the Gaza Strip and has provided an interesting viewpoint on the ME.
-And I gather a very active campaigner for getting the right kit for UK troops who deserve much more support for the great job that they do.
I'm my book that is real world politics.
If there was a general election-and this man was leading the Conservative Party, I would have no hesitation in endorsing him. A clear honest vision that isn’t based on spin and PR but older tenants of the conservative thinking from the days of Churchill and Thatcher: liberty, fairness compassion and standing up for the weak and allowing them to be proud.
Sadly I don’t see enough of UK TV to know if he gets exposure, but I do notice a lack of profile on him when compared to other more “media friendly” chaps on the BBC. Obviously he is too busy going out to Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel to be running a TV production company, but I would certainly like to see a little more of him.
Any chance John Reith to have a little bit of the alternative viewpoint and are there more people like him Tory Bloggers?
Ralph:
This year's Red Nose Day looks from the schedule to be one long free promo for BBC shows linked to a bit of fund raising.
You can watch Comic Relief Does the BBC show The Apprentice, Comic Relief Does the BBC show Fame Academy, and Comic Relief Does the BBC show Car Booty. Also you have special episodes of the BBC show Casualty, the BBC show Mr Bean, the BBC show Little Britain, and the BBC show the Vicar of Dibley.
Alan:
" Girls chant 'kill him' as gang chases schoolboy then stabs him to death" (16 Mar.)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/crime
Apparently, this tragedy took place in an affluent part of Kensington, near to John Humphrys' London home.
One sentence from 'The Times' report:
"The murder is the fifth involving black youths in London in the past few weeks."
Martin Belam:
@Baggie - Sadly I'm afraid the other quite abysmal coverage by the media you mention cannot condone the BBC doing likewise.
Sorry I often need to make myself clearer - some of you seem so pre-judgemental of my comments that even when I am agreeing with you, you don't see it - perhaps it is a kind of conspiratorial bias against me? I mean, I was even handing out praise for The Telegraph for standing aloof of the hair debate and criticising the concept of 'green taxes' being a vote winner for the Conservatives
So, perhaps I can be clearer - I found it depressing because the British press *including* the BBC deem this complete nonsense to be a 'story' at all.
And you know what is even more depressing? I can't say anything for the other media outlets because they don't have the same kind of display - but at the time of writing that story is the most read on the BBC News site.
Anonymous:
Ultramoron
You really are retarded....lol.
IngSoc is doublethink:
Heron
Regarding the “trappings of power.”
When you look at Gladstone, Pitt or even Churchill you can’t help but noticing that we’ve have always had “patronage” and “perks”, be it from a union or business. Blair, very stupidly said that he was going to be “whiter than white” but if you look very carefully at the last six months, the interest from Al Beeb and the Guardian isn’t from a “public interest” point of view because if it was it wouldn’t just be the Labour and Tory leadership in the dock-(I’m sure the SNP have plenty of paws in the honey jar), but more to do with the inner struggles in the Labour Party.
To me the last days of Blair are the first days of the Foot legacy……regressive, reactionary and statist.
It reeks of a media backed “coup” to force a “change of direction” without the electorate being asked. The national agenda is being warped to fit some media driven lifestyle choice (remember your doing “good” buying Body Shop or a Radiohead CD) rather than engaging in debate.
And the stench comes from Broadcasting House and Co.
Unethical and Unaccountable.
Alan:
At the end of review of Nick Cohen's book, reviewer Oliver Kamm writes:
"Every time you hear the word 'community' in a BBC report try replacing it with 'lobby', and you'll get some idea of the prominence of these demands."
http://www.nickcohen.net (16 Mar.)
IngSoc is doublethink:
Alan:
Do you have a copy of Mr Cohn's book....I think he feels like "recovering liberal"....
Alan:
IngSoc is Doublethink
Yes, I've just finished it. It's a long, discursive tome of 386 pages.
He certainly knows what was his 'socialist left'. He particularly found this 'left' wanting when it came to the issue of support for the anti-Saddam Iraqi dissidents, of whom he knew a few well.
But his disquiet with the 'left' on its blanket anti-Americanism involved him finding broader flaws in the 'left' intolerant activism. In political stance, I suppose he's somewhere near to Christopher Hitchens now.
Some non-Left commenters on this site may not see much political interest in Cohen's political journey, but I think he is important for the 'socialist left'. He has had to put up with some personal hostility for his stand; but, I know that several 'left' people realise that they have to take on his arguments, and that they will not convince with their dogmatic anti- US, anti-capitalism, while holding hands with Islamists, and not seeing THEM as the enemy.
The 'Left' has a massive ignorance and blind-spot about Islam still.
Jon:
Sorry to all you Tony Blair fans who think he is such a great leader - but I think he has been one of the weakest leaders this country has ever had. Yes he may be OK to some on his foreign policy - but on this it is all self promotion - he wants to see himeself as a world leader and go down in the history books as a strong one. But this is a man who has sat on the sidelines while his ultra statist party has ruined the country. Either that or he has actually been the architect of the ruination of Britain (whichever way you look at he has been an unmitagated failure). I for one rue the day this smimy person was ever elected. With previous labour leaders you got what you saw - no pretence - everything was up front - people could agree with them or not (for then it was a free country).
Calmed down now - rant over.
archduke:
i got quite a few emails at work today from English colleagues and business clients wishing me a happy St Patricks Day for tommorow.
from looking at the front page of the bbc news site you'd never guess it was happening tommorow
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
maybe they're just lost in their own London chatterati media bubble - completely disjointed from the normal English folks who sent those greetings to me today.
i think i'll do a "st patricks day watch" on Al Beeb tommorow.
its a useful indicator of the scale of the BBC media class bubble.
archduke:
" Jon | 16.03.07 - 7:55 pm" - i agree Jon. everything he has done has been in his interest, not the countries.
the man doesnt even understand the concept of duty to ones country.
TPO:
Freedom of Speech Row as Talk on Islamic Extremists Is Banned
A leading university has been accused of "selling out" academic freedom of speech by scrapping a talk on links between the Nazis and Islamic anti-semitism after allegedly receiving emails from Muslims protesting about the event.
Matthias Küntzel, a German author and political scientist who specialises in the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, was told yesterday by the University of Leeds that a talk scheduled for yesterday evening, and a two-day workshop, on Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Anti-semitism in the Middle East, had been cancelled because of security fears.
In a statement yesterday, two academics in the Leeds German department, which had organised the event, claimed the university had bowed "to Muslim protests". Dr Küntzel said he had given similar addresses around the world and there had been no problems.
http://www.campus-watch.org/arti...article/id/
3122
Not only are we now gearing up for holocaust denial in this country we must not now be told that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was taken on a personal tour of Auschwitz:
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jka...z/
husseini.html
You can see him here strutting around with the Nazis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d...h?
v=d51poygEXYU
Did you know that he assisted with formation of Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans and that he was involved in plotting ‘The final solution’.
Testimony presented at the Nuremberg trials, however, accused the Mufti of not only having knowledge about the holocaust but of also actively encouraging the initiation of extermination programs against European Jews. Adolf Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny testified during his war crimes trial in 1946 that ... "The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan... He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chambers of Auschwitz."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moh...Amin_al-
Husayni
And who was his nephew?
Drum roll for Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, a terrorist thug who once managed to slaughter a number of school children in a bus
Where does th BBC fit into all of this? Through ‘cry me a river’ Barbara Plett who wept when Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, better known as Yasser Arafat died.
archduke:
and we thought we'd defeated the Nazis in 1945. they just moved to the Middle East and encamped there.
TPO:
Futher to the above, it seems that the BBC haven't a clue as to who Matthias Kuntzel is. Well, if they have they're certainly keeping Stumm about him and Leeds University's disgaceful decision.
TPO:
Calmed down now - rant over.
Jon | 16.03.07 - 7:55 pm |
Jon I'm with you on this, but for me the rant isn't over.
Having been a Conservative voter all my life I voted for someone else (Not Labour)in 1997.
When Blair got in I actually breathed a sigh of relief that at last we'd got rid of Maggie's assassins.
I agreed with Blair all throughout the mideast situations, (By the way Saddam Hussein did have WMD - they were just taken elsewhere) but everything else has been nothing but a shambles of soundbites.
'Today we are going to cure cancer'
'Tomorrow we are going to solve Africa's drinking water problem'
'And the day after we are going to ensure that we never have an ELE situation' (Think Morgan freeman and meteor)
How naive of me.
Bryan:
Talkimg of the Holocaust, Kevin Marsh, editor of the BBC College of "Journalism", has posted an article on the Lord Levy saga on The Editors blog:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/
theed..._arguments.html
Here's one of the comments it attracted:
6. At 11:20 AM on 14 Mar 2007, Des Currie wrote:
The one thing the Jews are expert at is creating diversions for any member of the Jewish community. Levy could be as guilty as sin and after Judaic spin has come into play he will be being sold as whiter than white washing powder.
Next the holocaust will come into play, if it has not already.
Des Currie
Funny thing is, they've censored quite a few of my comments to The Editors though I didn't break any rules I'm aware of. Maybe they'll stop censoring me if I post anti-Semitic crap.
IngSoc is Doublethink.:
Jon,
I really think those are welcome valid points.
But you have to unravel the soap opera and get to the “meat” of the politics.
Law and Order, Defence and Foreign Policy are at the heart of the debate.
With Blair, like the “old” Left of the days of ’45 understood what the JIC described as the “special hand that Britain has been dealt with” and our links between America and Europe. He has learnt from Kinnock, Smith (another fine example of the old Left) and Kauffman the bitter fruits of not having a balance foreign policy. Thatcher not Foot is his political model much to the disgust of Toynbee and Co.
You must also welcome the fact that the UK is going in the right direction with regards of the involvements of both the private and voluntary sectors in helping ease the ever grown demands on the NHS.
And I don’t think he was being weak when he backs the Security Services or the Police when dealing with Al Qaeda?
But to see that you must wade through the “chatter” of New Labour speak, the factions who squabble in the back ground.
Dr Fox, Mr Tebbitt and other more astute minds in the Conservative establishment have rightly pin-pointed that Blair’s weakness isn’t in his political judgement but his slavish adherence to be “liked”, and his attention to detail is woeful.
But he is soon to be history and instead on capitalising on those who DID vote for TB, instead the Tories have taken up an even more over-hyped, media craven fool with moonbat ideas from rock stars as a leader.
My question is why?
archduke:
more news from the wonderful multicultural world that is the "diverse" city of London
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
uklate...6485309,00.html
A post-mortem examination found that Kodjo, of Portland Road, west London, died from a single stab wound to the heart. Schoolchildren gathered and chanted "kill him" as the teenager was attacked in Hammersmith Grove on Wednesday afternoon, witnesses said.
Seven young males, all black and aged between 13 and 21, have been arrested over the murder.
Jon:
"My question is why?" - I think the answer is simple - These days there are no hustings - politicians are thought to be good if they can present themselves well on the BBC (thought good by the opportunists in the political hierchy that is). The ordinary voter does not matter anymore as they are fed wall to wall propaganda 24 hours a day by the MSm or Local Government "newsletters".
The way to swing an election is only to get "middle England" on your side and that’s who they target. I live in the North east of England and here people will vote for Labour because they always have full stop. You could have Mother Theresa as leader of the Tories and it would make no difference whatsoever.
"You must also welcome the fact that the UK is going in the right direction with regards of the involvements of both the private and vo