Weekend Ramble (II)

What else?

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John Simpson is aghast again:

He didn't link to precisely what he was aghast about so, naturally, I Googled, and I'm guessing he read about it in the Guardian. They published a piece about it some three days before JS's tweet, and they were aghast too.

Weirdly, the Guardian didn't note that this "hate-filled" NRA video was posted three months ago. (It's been on YouTube since 10 April). 

When I read JS's tweet I (naturally?) assumed it was a piece threatening the NY Times with violence, what with the NRA being a gun lobby. What else could provoke such an extreme reaction from the BBC man?

But then I watched the video, as you can too, and - as I suspect you'll agree, having done so - that JS, the BBC's World Affairs Editor, was swallowing a Guardian angle hook, line and sinker without engaging either his ears or his brain. 

Seriously, please watch the video and then re-read JS's tweet. What did the NRA lady, Dana Loesch, threaten to do to the NY Times?  She 'threatened' that the NRA would "fisk" the NY Times, "laser focus" on their journalism.

And, yes, that's it! That really is all she 'threatened'.

(Maybe JS doesn't know what 'fisk' means? Maybe he thinks it means 'shoot'?)

Is John Simpson losing the plot? 

I hate to keep criticising him, given all of the brave work he's done for the BBC over the years and his obvious fundamental decency, but he does seem to be going seriously off the impartiality/credibility rails at the moment. 

He probably should have kept off Twitter. It's doing his reputation no good whatsoever.

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David, in the last/present open thread (well, the one with the ducklings), pointed to a fascinating Proms-related story - one that I've also been following closely over the last few days after listening to the Prom in question.

Our friends at the BBC presented us with a concert containing two pieces. In the second half came the annual performance of Beethoven's glorious Ninth Symphony, which - partly due to a pro-EU stunt earlier in this Proms season but mainly due to post-referendum mania - has recently become far too entwined with its offshoot, the EU anthem (a fit of madness that will hopefully pass very soon). And in the first half came the European premiere of Sir James MacMillan's European Requiem. 

Many people saw that programme, put two and two together and made five. 

Sir James is an admirer of European culture not the EU. And both Sir James and his good friend Damian Thompson at the Spectator have made it very clear that this piece was not an anti-Brexit piece. It's a piece by a Catholic composer about the common European tradition of writing requiems, strongly tinged with elegiac concerns about the fate of European civilisation.  

The BBC appears to have been at the forefront of those putting two and two together and making five. 

Damian was not wrong in describing the BBC's presentation on the night. Sir James, being interviewed by the BBC presenter, kept having to insist it wasn't a Brexit-related requiem and the presenter rode the applause at the end by saying ‘as a young man James MacMillan had a lot to say politically and his work was rather politically engaged but over time that has rather changed’ - which Damian notes is "nonsense". James MacMillan has simply moved from being a politically-engaged left-winger in his youth [much favoured by the BBC] to being a politically-engaged right-winger in his middle years.

But the BBC can’t get its head round the notion of an internationally renowned composer who believes, as MacMillan does, that Europe needs defending from ‘the self-hating, elitist Left’ and ‘the incoming Islamofascist Right’. So it doesn’t try. 

The headline to Damian's Spectator piece sums up his piece very well:

The BBC Proms broadcast a piece of gloriously subversive new music – without realising it.

I suspect that's true.

And it was a superb piece too, which I've been listening too again and again in recent days, enjoying it ever more and more with every listen. 

The interval of the concert was a discussion about Europe between two BBC 'new generation thinkers' who weren't fans of Brexit (being "turfed out" of "Europe") - something that will only have added to the impression that the BBC intended this as a pro-EU blast of the trumpet (featuring lots of actual trumpets).

The BBC is a strange old beast at times.

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Musical joke (courtesy of Les Dawson): "I toyed with the idea of playing Ravel's Pavane pour une infante defunte but I couldn't remember if it's a tune or a Latin prescription for piles".

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It is very easy hereabouts (but not here, I hope!) to slip into the habit of mentioning (in passing) some piece of fine BBC reporting which goes against the bias we expect from the BBC and then instantly shrugging it off by mockingly saying (or implying) that such reporting is so untypical of the BBC as to make the BBC even more guilty than it already was!

Radio 4's The World at One has pursued a UK public relations company over four editions this week for helping Jacob Zuma play the 'anti-white race card' in South Africa. The company has now apologised, and BBC reporter Manveen Rana merits the credit for reporting that and for pursuing it so vigorously.

A BBC online report can be read about it here.

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I'm still listening to Tweet of the Day. (As a slightly obsessive bird-lover, how could I not?). It's a while since I've blogged about it though (for some strange reason).

Alas, it's gone all celebrity-based recently. Less natural history, more personal (celebrity) anecdote.

(A parable for the BBC as a whole?)

That said, Olympic gold-medal-winning rower Alex Gregory's tale of Sparky, his childhood pet - a female house sparrow he rescued and took care of - warmed the cockles of my heart.

She loved scrambled egg, and couldn't get enough of it. She quickly learned to fly and flew into the trees but would always come when her name was called and land on Alex's shoulder. But then, sinking heart!, a story all too familiar to lovers of garden birds, two years later, one day, she didn't reply to his call. And never did again. Deep sigh. 

It's one of the joys of this year that I've not seen as many sparrows in my garden for years. They've done well.

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That said, we're all doomed. Or at least many of us, possibly even Sparky's descendants.

Why? Well, according to the main report about the story on BBC News website this morning, extreme weather - the result of climate change - really has it in for us. We're going to die in our hundreds of thousands by the end of this century, every year.

The funny thing about this is the photos the BBC chose to accompany its article. They made me laugh, especially the final one.

Writing this piece I returned to that article in order to list the photos, but one of them had gone.

Yes, one of the BBC's photos is missing!

The picture of low levels of water in the River Po remains. The picture of flooding in Southern Germany remains. The picture of woodland fires in Southern France remains.

Now, yes, all of these might be signs of climate change or might just be occasional weather events. We'd probably need to know how regular or irregular all three of the above are to properly judge.

Regardless of that, the final picture is one I'm struggling to remember, given that the BBC got rid of it - even though it was the one that made me laugh out loud because it seemed so OTT. It contained lots of ice and was somewhere far from the Poles.

Did anyone else see it? Does anyone remember exactly what it depicted? (Oh, how I wish I'd 'snipped' the image at the time! And how I wish my memory was sharper!).

Update: I'm pretty sure it was a snow-and-ice bound Alpine resort. 

Why no outcry?

Before The Conservative Woman site (TCW) published several articles by Karen Harradine I was never quite sure what TCW’s official policy was on - err, you know, Israel and the Jews, or, if you prefer, Zionism and antisemitism. As we all know, it is a commonly held belief that antisemitism emanates from the right - the Foreign Office; Rowan Laxton and so on.

A recent TCW piece by Kathy Gyngell dispels all doubts and confirms my suspicion that they do indeed get it. 

"Why no outcry over the insidious and disgraceful rise of antisemitism" touches on Corbyn’s trip to Syria in the company of Baroness Tonge and others, where they were cordially received by President Assad. The jaunt was funded by another of those organisations dedicated to the elimination of the Jewish State, The Palestinian Return Centre. (PRC)

Also featured is the Rev Stephen Sizer, the Guildford vicar who’s so obsessed with Israel  that his bishop had to warn him to cool it. 

Another example of the insidious and disgraceful rise in antisemitism cited by Gyngell is the extraordinary behaviour of an orchestrated chorus of screaming pro-Palestinian students at University College London who violently disrupted a talk by an invited Israeli speaker. The mob intimidated the small number of attendees, who, along with the speaker, were stranded in a room till they could be escorted past the mob by police. Neither the BBC nor the Guardian reported this incident. 

And as Kathy Gyngell says “Our silence is beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to Germany of the early 1930s.”

Before I get to the subject of the comments beneath that article, I’d like to draw your attention to a podcast of a conversation between Damian Thompson and the Rev Ravi Holy. Yep. Comes out “ravioli”. In the podcast they’re chatting about antisemitism amongst the middle-class. I know about this as I could honestly say that some of my best friends are middle class antisemites, the sort who have little or no idea that that is what they are.

Every time someone posts an article about antisemitism on a not-especially-pro-Zionist platform - like, say the Spectator, a considerable number of antisemitic comments appear below the line, most of which unintentionally illustrate the actual point the author has clearly made.  

One thing that unites these commenters, despite their diversity and varying degrees of vitriol, is a staggering ignorance of the history and the politics of the Middle East. The comments below Damian Thompson’s podcast provide a rich display of inanity, triviality, trolls and responses to trolls. No wonder he wrote a piece about comments. 

TCW has an equally revealing below the line display. Amongst the majority of supportive comments appear familiar monikers of some of those internet regulars, purveyors of the usual antisemitic ‘tropes’ - much as I dislike using that word, (but that’s what they are) - such as the Jews control everything, a conspiracy theory out of  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

Of the 168 comments to date, they are a minority but still alarming because of the wilful and determined ignorance they revel in.

The BBC’s failings in respect of providing thorough and accurate reporting have a lot to answer for in this regard, particularly inaccurate online historical information concerning the creation of Israel as well as the absence of material covering the current and historical religious fanaticism of Hamas and the PA. 

The practice of selective impartiality is frequently taken to the brink of absurdity, where fear of making value judgments completely obscures reality. The opposite of reporting.  

I believe John Reith was an antisemite, so one could say the BBC was keeping up a tradition. 

(But this is not the 1930s, and ve have vays of making our voices heard.)

The BBC's "cutting-edge religion flagship"

From Sunday Morning Live to Radio 4's much-loved Sunday (with Edward Stourton)...

Well, I say 'much-loved' but the Spectator's Damian Thompson was (like me) being highly sarcastic about it on Twitter overnight:

That bit about religion at the Edinburgh Fringe featured a Muslim comic whose show was, he told Edward Stourton, designed to counter "Islamophobia". 

He told some jokes about fatwas, including one about bananas, which were (as far as I can see) merely lists of genuine fatwas. Quite where his creativity came into listing a few such mad fatwas I really can't say. 

And he didn't make me laugh either (no offence). So much so that I now realise why this less-than-side-splitting effort was awarded the 'Best Joke' prize this year:

I just deleted all the German names off my phone. It's Hans free.

The other Edinburgh Fringe comic interviewed by Ed this morning was a transgender comedian who performs as a transgender (Muhammad) Christ, saying that his/her show is about showing the world that transgender people are human beings (like we don't already know that).

This was preceded by a clip of another comedian saying that jokes from Muslim comics at the Fringe prove that Islam is a nice religion and that Islamic State has nothing, she repeats, nothing to do with real Islam....

....which I'm placing in Sunday's regular 'It's nothing to do with Islam' folder.

That said, despite Damian's very low expectations about the interview with the Lancaster University lecturer on the Chinese Communist Party's use of Confucianism to try to win over the Chinese population, it actually proved very interesting. (Lancaster University is my local university, not that I'm biased).

And call me 'not cutting edge', but I was genuinely pleased to listen to the bit about the man, Reg Portman, who is near to completing his project to draw every church in Hertfordshire. Here's a sample of his work:

@GeorgeMonbiot

The BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin appears in two interesting articles today - both times on the receiving end of sharp criticism.

First comes Damian Thompson's article at the Spectator berating RH's tweets denouncing BBC Radio 4 for broadcasting Quentin Letts's programme about the Met Office. Here are those tweets, set in a fuller context:

Damian Thompson notes the "entirely predictable outburst from The Guardian" - specifically from Roger Harrabin's former ally at the BBC, Richard Black, adding "that’s what you pay for when you buy The Guardian".

He then comes to the main point:

Harrabin, on the other hand, is paid by us – the licence payers. And he’s employed by the corporation that made What’s the Point of the Met Office? Yet, judging by his Twitter feed, his views are even more partisan than those of Black. When he’s not plugging a Guardian conspiracy theory involving US Republican sceptics and BP, he’s wringing his hands at the cut to wind subsidies or lamenting the lack of civil servants to enforce ‘smarter’ environmental laws. Also, he feels the need to add ‘@GeorgeMonbiot’ to many of his tweets, so the great man doesn’t miss them.

I'm glad he noticed that about RH adding @GeorgeMonbiot to so many of his tweets, as I've written about that before. It's all a bit odd. 

Damian concludes by asking:

What’s the Point of a supposedly impartial ‘environment analyst’ who – apparently – takes offence at his bosses allowing another journalist to offer views different to his own?

A good question.

The second piece today involving Roger Harrabin comes courtesy of David Keighley at Conservative Woman. It's a piece examining the BBC's coverage of Obama's green energy plan. 

David says that the BBC is failing to ask questions about the potentially disastrous pitfalls in the president's proposals, focusing instead on why the UK government is (or just appears to be) 'going in the other direction'. 

After outlining the case against the Obama plan, David writes:

That different perspective, of course, is of no consequence to the 8,000 journalists at the BBC. Under their bonkers ‘due impartiality’ rules propagated and enforced by the BBC Trustees, they barely even acknowledge that views that challenge climate alarmism have any validity. 

Under this McCarthyite regime, speakers on outlets such as the BBC’s Thought for the Day are emboldened and authorised by BBC editors to call those who disagree with climate change alarmism simply ‘deniers’ and ignore them.   The insult by deliberate linkage to Holocaust deniers is fully intended - and sanctioned at the highest levels.

Exhibit A is an article by Roger Harrabin:

The upshot of this rigid mindset is that across the BBC, the Obama plan has been reported with reverence. This article is typical. The main question is not whether the spending of billions on wind and solar farms is lunacy – but instead, why the same cannot happen here? Oh, and whether the plan is enough to meet the demands of the arrogant law-breakers at Greenpeace. [Craig - That sounds like most Roger Harrabin articles!]

This is therefore yet another peg to attack the Conservative government. Amber Rudd, the Energy Secretary, has had the temerity to announce plans to limit the huge subsidies that go to the companies that have made countless millions out of building wind and solar farms. To so-called BBC reporters like Roger Harrabin, that’s seen purely as massive attack on climate alarmism.

The very same thing happened with the equivalent news reports from Roger Harrabin on Radio 4. I remember the news reader giving us the news about President Obama and then RH entering and talking only about how people are puzzled about why the UK doesn't do the same, oh, and Greenpeace.

The BBC is biased!

A couple more pieces in the press about Roger Mosey’s  book.

Damian Thompson has written in the Daily Mail and Rod Liddle in the Spectator.

Damian and Rod both singled out the story about the Newsroom’s fear of racists and bigots airing their nasty views on the BBC.

Damian:

 'One night on the Ten O'Clock News we broadcast a package from a racially diverse part of Britain, where ethnic minorities had become a majority of the local population,' writes Mosey.'People there were interviewed about how they felt about the immigration that had led to the ethnic mix. Only one white man was featured, and he said he was perfectly happy with the way his neighbourhood had developed.'
It’s a good story, which neatly sets out the problem we’ve all been trying to prove. 

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Rod:

He recounted a story of the Ten O’Clock News broadcasting a package from an ‘ethnically diverse’ (i.e. monoculturally Muslim) part of Britain in which all the comments but one from the indigenous white folk were edited out because they were deemed ‘racist’: the one comment that remained expressed great satisfaction that these colourful and interesting people had so enriched all of our lives. It was not hugely representative of the real feelings in the community. It was, instead, a travesty.

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Both journalists have been known to complain about the BBC’s bias before, and Roger Mosey has given everyone a good excuse to go on about it some more. The evidence seems incontrovertible.

Goodness knows what good it will do.

Keep swallowing that 'Tablet'

Damian Thompson of The Spectator and The Catholic Herald did a 'me' and speculated yesterday about what would be on this morning's Sunday on Radio 4:

Wonder if the wildly biased @BBCR4Sunday is planning a hatchet job on Cardinal #Pell tomorrow. Stourton is friends with Pell’s opponents.

— Damian Thompson (@holysmoke) May 30, 2015

No such hatchet job on Cardinal Pell took place; although he was mentioned.

Damian, however, shares my much-repeated belief that Sunday tends to sound like the audio equivalent of the liberal Catholic magazine The Tablet - of which the programme's main presenter Edward Stourton remains a trustee.

Years of unsympathetic, snarky comments about Pope Benedict have been followed by what feels like an ongoing deluge of sympathetic, appreciative comments about Pope Francis. And stories largely of concern to Catholics seem to be almost weekly occurrences on Sunday. Oh, and there's all the left-liberal stuff too. 

That said, am I am guilty of overstating the case against Sunday? 

Even since Is the BBC biased? (with subsequent help from Damian Thompson and others) exposed the programme's heavy use of guests from The Tablet back in 2012 (and the total exclusion of guests from the rival, more-conservative-inclined Catholic Herald), Sunday has brought in much fewer guests from The Tablet and some guests from The Catholic Herald (usually Madeleine Teehan) and other more traditionalist voices have subsequently appeared, giving the programme a somewhat better balance of voices.

Yes, there was that Tablet 175th anniversary edition a couple of weeks ago where the magazine got a lot of highly favourable coverage (aka 'a plug') and, yes, the programme does still focus unusually heavily on purely Catholic matters...

...but is it really fair to describe Sunday as 'The radio version of The Tablet'?

Surely that's just rhetoric of the kind we bloggers about BBC bias might occasionally over-indulge in?

Maybe.

Anyhow, the centrepiece of this morning's Sunday saw Edward Stourton talking about the Vatican's media operation (yes, I know!) and interviewing the man Pope Francis appointed to review it - namely, former BBC Trust head Chris Patten. 

It was a good-natured interview, with Lord Patten expanding on his points at length and receiving no challenging questions from Edward. (Please listen to it and you might almost hear Ed purring in the background).

Edward Stourton began by asking Lord Patten: 

Many might say you were brave to take this on. Certainly under the last pope [i.e. Benedict] scarcely a week seemed to go by without the Vatican apparently shooting itself in the foot in media relations!

He later asked: 

Were you impressed with Pope Francis?

Lord Patten replied: 

Oh, I mean, I'm a bit old to go into hero worship. I think he's probably the most remarkable person I've ever met. I mean, he's astonishing. He's like...sorry, to some people this may sound a bit soppy or sanctimonious, but it's like the Gospel of St. Matthew embodied in one person. He's just remarkable - witty, normal, not sort of behind great formality or ceremonial or ecclesiastical millinery. He's a wonderful human being.

Yes, I know that's exactly the sort of thing that leads me to regularly describe Sunday as 'The Tablet on air', but at least Lord Patten isn't a fellow trustee of Ed's at The Tablet.

Oh, hang on! What's this?:

"Its trustees include Lord Patten, Baroness Shirley Williams, Baroness Helena Kennedy and Edward Stourton"?

Oh.

"The BBC will try to dampen it down"

As it's a blogpost [and, thus, not Paywall-bound], I think Damian Thompson's latest post can [just for once] be highlighted in full:

Radical Islam in secular schools: now the shocking truth emerges

"Students' understanding of the arts, different cultures and other beliefs are limited." That's one of the complaints about Birmingham schools made by Ofsted in their leaked report. It sounds like a relatively mild criticism.

Not so. What the Trojan Horse scandal has revealed is that leaders of the Muslim community in Birmingham have been creating a Wahhabi-inspired counterculture in secular, not faith, schools.

Put simply, the interpretation of Islam that's sweeping through the Muslim world, thanks to Saudi money, seeks to deprive children of any exposure to the arts, which it condemns as idolatrous. Even listening to music is haram, forbidden. The underlying teaching is that the arts, by seeking to create beauty, blaspheme by detracting attention from the only source of true beauty, Allah, which can be appreciated only in the natural world he created.

The imposition of this ideology on Muslim cultures is a tragedy – for them. But secular state schools in Birmingham are not part of Muslim culture, and their ghettoisation under the years of Labour government is a scandal.

To be clear about this: primary school children in certain non-faith schools are not taught music because Islamic fundamentalists have been able to manipulate the system.

Finally, Ofsted has begun to discover what's going on. I very much doubt whether it would have done so if anyone other than Michael Gove – who is not an Islamophobe but is definitely a veteran opponent of creeping Islamism – were Secretary of State for Education.

I expect plenty of controversy in the days to come, as the Ofsted report is published and its implications sink in. The BBC will try to dampen it down. We mustn't let that happen.

"The BBC will try to dampen it down." 

That's a serious charge, but it's one many of us might take more as a 'dead cert prediction' than as a mere charge. 

We'll see. If the report says what Damian says it says, and if the BBC tries to dampen it down, it would be unforgivable. So, eyes wide open then!

Good news, hopefully - and some sharp words for the BBC

Mother facing death penalty in Sudan for abandoning religious faith to be freed in few days - senior Sudan official http://t.co/j1RGmQrQhj
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) May 31, 2014

Damian Thompson in the Telegraph has a sharp word or two for the BBC - and others too:

There are reports that Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman sentenced to death by a Muslim judge for refusing to abandon her Christian faith, is to be freed. The BBC announced it thus: 

Mother facing death penalty in Sudan for abandoning religious faith to be freed

No! That is a lie. Meriam was sentenced to death (as the Telegraph correctly reports) "for refusing to recant her Christian beliefs, and on Tuesday she gave birth to a daughter while she was in prison, and with her legs shackled".

This young mother is – and always has been – a member of the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Church, an institution centuries older than Islam. The thuggish Sudanese ruled that she was an "apostate" because her father was a Muslim. What rubbish. It was her Christian mother who raised her in her faith. And even if she had chosen to leave Islam and become a Christian, then she would have had every right to do so.

Her ordeal, coupled with the continuing atrocities of Boko Haram, have finally alerted the international community to the fact that the malign influence of Islamism extends far beyond its terrorist aggression towards the West. It is directed at Christians in Islamic countries and is not confined to "apostates".

The wider global Muslim community (if one can speak of such a thing) does not believe in putting into practice the extremists' homicidal agenda. But if it's been campaigning furiously against the slaughter of Christians then I must have missed it.

That original BBC headline now reads Meriam Ibrahim: Sudan 'to free' death row woman.

Hound Dog

There were a lot of very angry elderly bingo players during tonight's The Unbelievable Truth. I even had to duck as an ashtray narrowly missed my head after one particularly fanatical player of Radio 4 Comedians Bingo registered her frustration at Marcus Brigstocke barely believable failure to attack The Daily Mail. 

Despite some mockery of Christian belief, all the Radio 4 comedians present failed to make any jokes about Michael Gove or the Bullingdon Club or baby-killing Tory prime ministers. It was the lowest-scoring edition of the programme yet, and a thousand cigarettes in the Radio 4 Comedians Bingo Hall were lit, quickly smoked and angrily stubbed out during the course of it. And, oh, the swearing!

The mood in the hall got even worse during Rufus Hound's 'funny turn' towards the end of the programme. Even the The Unbelievable Truth audience stopped laughing - and up till then they'd seemed capable of laughing at anything. Even Marcus Brigstocke. 

As Edmund Blackadder might have put it, Rufus Hound's turn on tonight's show was about as funny as getting an arrow through your neck and then finding there's a gas bill attached to it. 

Rufus, of course, is very much the man of the moment. Everyone's talking about him (except for almost everyone else). 

Yesterday, he was the BBC News website's 'Hero of the Hour', being granted a full-length plug article about his decision to stand for election for a pro-NHS party. 

Today, he's the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Biased BBC's 'Zero of the Hour' for saying (on his blog) that David Cameron "wants your kids to die (unless they're rich)". (Mr Cameron's own son Ivan died aged six a few years ago). 

Blog favourite Damian Thompson is certainly gunning for the BBC: 

BBC 'comedian' Rufus Hound says Cameron wants children to die. Beeb says nothing

Auntie, did you miss Toby Young's blog post in which he revealed that BBC comic Rufus Hound is telling voters that "David [Cameron] and Jeremy [Hunt] want your kids to die"? (He's standing in the Euro elections for some loony Left party "supporting" the NHS.)

Imagine if a Right-wing blogger joked that Gordon Brown wanted children to die. There would be an outcry – and, if it was one of the Telegraph bloggers, an instant sacking.

I don't want to spell this out the BBC, but it seems I need to. Mr Cameron, like Mr Brown, has lost a child; to suggest that he wishes that ordeal on other parents is despicable.

So, BBC, you can't escape this one. What's your response? 

While we're waiting for the BBC's response (and to re-lighten the mood), here's Elvis. Altogether now,

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Appearin' on Radio 4 comedy programmes all the time.
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Appearin' on Radio 4 comedy programmes all the time.
Well, you aint never made me laugh, particularly on tonight's The Unbelievable Truth,
And you ain't no friend of mine (particularly as I've never met you). 

"And remember: you pay for this."

When I wrote the other day

The BBC are, as ever, calling the perpetrators "militants" and avoiding the use of the word "terrorists". That may make some people feel queasy (and angry), but they are going to keep on calling them that no matter how often people like us complain about it. They think they are right to do so. 

maybe I was being a bit too pessimistic. 

More and more people appear to be getting angrier about it, and the criticism is spreading into the mainstream media.

Take Damian Thompson's blistering blog post in the Telegraph yesterday:

Kenya terror attack: disgracefully, the BBC still won't call these murderers 'terrorists'

Let's get this straight. There is nothing wrong with using the term "militants" to describe the al-Shabab gunmen. But they are terrorists, by any criterion, and that word should also be used.

The Beeb won't do it, however. It virtually bans the word from reporting, lest it be used "inappropriately". Many BBC journalists, who are overwhelmingly on the Left, support the causes for which armed gunmen fight in, say, Palestine. Therefore there's no question of describing Hamas as a terrorist organisation. This I can just about understand, given that Hamas is also a powerful political party, though I don't agree with the policy.

But in what universe are Islamists who spray women and children with bullets in a shopping centre not terrorists? The BBC may say: we have a rule and we have to apply it universally. This is nonsense. That's what editors are for.

But hang on. On re-reading a BBC report, I see that it does use the T-word:

Kenyan officials said earlier that three "terrorists" had been killed, and that 10 people had been arrested.

Those inverted commas are more contemptible than not using the word at all. And remember: you pay for this.

I couldn't agree more with that. The top-rated comment below the line sums up what seems to be the growing mood of disgust:

Amazingly, comments are allowed.

Your sentiments are entirely right. ( I remember when Palestinian terrorists held up women and children, and killed indiscriminately, yet the Left seems to support them whatever their bloody, murderous past.)

If the BBC has 'cleansed' the word in their reports this weekend, then some explanation should be expected, pretty quickly.

Have just heard the 1pm BBC Radio 2 News - no mention of Terrorists, but ten or so references to the "ISLAMIST MILITANTS"!! UNBELIEVABLE Orwellian double-speak!

Whoever wrote that news bulletin should be named and asked for some respect for all those murdered by those revolting, sick terrorists. They were not 'killed' by militants, but MURDERED by Islamist terrorist thugs.

Even a juggernaut can be turned around, and I must be less pessimistic. The BBC can be shamed out of this absurd and shameful policy the more people like us complain about it, especially if more people like Damian Thompson complain about it too. When MPs and ministers start complaining, things could start moving. I shall write to my MP.

Generating hot air

Bacon on a bike

BBC Radio 5 Live proudly announces:

A day of output dedicated to the energy debate with a studio powered by renewable energy.

The BBC Media Centre provides all the details of the day here.

The Daily Telegraph's Damian Thompson is not impressed:

If you’re a fan of BBC Radio 5 Live, you should steer clear of it on September 5. Unless you’re a raging eco-bore, in which case you’re in for a treat. To mark Energy Day, whatever that is, “Richard Bacon will be powered by the pedal as exercise bikes are set up for guests and Richard himself to 'hop-on’.” Ed Davey and Caroline Flint will debate global warming (no sceptics allowed!). A “human hamster wheel” will generate kinetic energy. Plus loads of other fatuous green stunts. The Beeb is inviting the public to turn up and watch. No thanks: it would make me feel like an 18th-century visitor to Bedlam, whiling away a Sunday afternoon by gawping at the loonies.

That said, the first Radio 5 link above features two videos - one about nuclear power, one about wind energy. Both provide us with voices for and against. 

So if the channel gives pro-nuclear and pro-fracking voices as fair a hearing as anti-nuclear and anti-fracking voices, and gives wind energy sceptics as fair a hearing as wind energy proponents maybe it won't be quite as excruciating as Damian makes it sound. 

That said (again), the tilt does seem to be towards renewables, with the station planning to generate energy for twelve hours of radio from wind, solar, biofuel, cycling and hydropower. 

BBC Radio 5 Live will have to be very careful about being seen to endorse such technologies at the expense of others and must not give the impression of siding with environmentalist campaigners.

What will be the balance between environmental activists/pro-green politicians and their critics? Will any man-made global warming sceptics invited into the BBC studios? 

Swivel-eyed Lib Dhims.

At the time of Jenny Tonge’s organ-harvesting outburst I told my former constituency MP that her boss (Nick Clegg) should get rid of Doc Tonge. However, she wasn’t very responsive. In fact she was off on an all-night ‘vigil for Gaza’, and the expression on her face as she made for the door clearly conveyed what she was thinking. That I was bonkers. Why am I telling you this? Because of CAABU, and its pernicious influence, particularly it seems, on your Lib Dems.

Damian Thompson is on the case: 

"I’m all in favour of banning the adjective “swivel-eyed” – unless we’re talking about the one party that merits it. I refer, of course, to the Liberal Democrats. This week Sir Bob Russell MP equated the plight of the Palestinians with the Holocaust. And this just after David Ward compared Israelis to Nazis. What is it about Lib Dems and Jews? Remember Baroness Tonge suggesting they were harvesting organs? They go for non-Jewish conspiracy theories, too: Norman Baker, transport minister, has loopy views on the “murder” of Dr David Kelly. What weirdos. Swivel, swivel, swivel. If you look closely, you can see their contact lenses popping out during PMQs."

A few weeks back Daphne Anson wrote extensively about the early days of the organisation on her website. Since its inception in the ‘60s CAABU has managed to seduce a number of British MPs and other prominent UK persons.  and seems to have the  knack of turning otherwise rational people into romanticising, sentimentalising Arabists who loathe Israel and accordingly espouse varying degrees of antisemitism. They then go forth and multiply, proliferating in UK schools, colleges, academia, parliament, and most perniciously, our mainstream media. 

“Funded by Arab money, CAABU was established in the immediate wake of the Six Day War”,  the acronym CAABU stands for Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding. 

They achieved their stated objective - to reverse the pro-Israeli climate that once prevailed in Britain - with remarkable rapidity, although, given the underlying antisemitism and suspicion of Jews that has long-since simmered away in the background in this country, I doubt this venture was the uphill struggle they would have us believe. 

The exceptional post-war circumstances - the holocaust, the pioneering spirit of the Israelis, and the ‘plucky little Israel’ image that briefly prevailed immediately after the six-day war, meant Jews were, for the time being, perceived as underdogs. But that soon evaporated. Predictably, public opinion reverted to type; a natural pattern, rather than a massive struggle against a stubbornly pro-Israel scenario.

CAABU’s director Chris Doyle:

“Caabu has a distinguished history of working to change the pro-Israeli atmosphere in British politics in the 1960s and 1970s. Much has changed since then, and the plight of the Palestinians is now widely recognised.”
“A core function of Caabu is to lobby parliament. “At a time when so much is going on the Arab world, British politicians need an organisation which can synthesise everything into an easily understood coherent narrative, so that we can explain the main trends of what is happening in the region.”“Caabu regularly takes delegations to the Arab world. It took 19 members of parliament to Palestine last year, and the members saw for themselves what it is like. They themselves felt the impact of the colonies, and the blockade of Gaza among other irritants

 Another Lib Dem MP, Sarah Teather, upon returning from a Caabu delegation to Palestine proclaimed:

“I would recommend to any colleague that they go and see the situation in Israel and Palestine with Caabu.  Caabu’s excellent contacts meant that we were able to meet Israelis and Palestinians, and gained access to Gaza with the UN. “The trip had a huge impact on me.  I could not have understood the impact of settlements on the peace process without seeing the situation for myself, and no amount of reading reports could have done the conditions in Gaza justice.”

From Daphne Anson again, this really gripped me:

In the following words, Christopher Mayhew (1915-97; created a life peer as Baron Mayhew in 1981),a  Labour MP until 1974, and from then a Liberal, began a speech on 27 July 1977 in a committee room at Westminster to mark the tenth anniversary of CAABU's foundation.  
"Those who founded CAABU, at a meeting here in the House of Commons ten years ago, took on a formidable task - to challenge the deeply held beliefs about Palestine of the overwhelming majority of the British people.An opinion poll just published by the Sunday Times had shown that only 2% of the British people supported the Arabs.  It was almost universally agreed that the 1967 war had been planned and started by the Arabs with Russian support; that the Arabs were racialists who aimed to drive the Jews into the sea; that the Palestinian refugees had left Israel in 1948 and should resettle elsewhere in the Arab world; that the refugee camps were kept in being by the Arab Governments as a political weapon against Israel; that Israel, a small country surrounded by numerous enemies, had no designs at all on Arab territory unless, reasonably enough, to secure her own security; and that, in general, after the appalling sufferings of the Jewish people, Israel was entitled, on moral, legal and historical grounds, to the wholehearted support of the civilised world.

The truth at last? Not on your nellie. It’s as if Sir Christopher Mayhew was a  flat earther attempting to ridicule the crazies who thought the world was round by reiterating their beliefs in a sarcastic manner. More fool him. This is what he actually believes:

“To make things worse, these opinions were shared at that time by almost all newspaper proprietors and editors, almost all the directing staff of the BBC and ITV, almost all MPs, and almost the entire publishing and film industries.They were also supported, with enthusiasm and sincerity, by the great bulk of Britain's large, lively and influential Jewish community, many of whose members were totally dedicated to Israel's cause and were willing to make great sacrifices of time and money to support it.'"None  of the founders of CAABU, I feel sure, expected to enjoy the experience of challenging the Zionist lobby ... but it was plainly a job that had to be done by someone.  Moreover, there are always compensations in supporting wildly unpopular causes.  To begin with, nobody joins you for a beer, so that your companions tend to be people of genuine conviction.  Moreover, in a situation where everyone desperately needs mutual encouragement, personal relations tend to flourish.  There have been notably few resignations or quarrels in CAABU during the past ten years. Sadly, death has removed some of our most vauled colleagues.  We remember, for example, Arnold Toynbee, Tom Little, Will Griffiths and Nevill Barbour."

Sir Christopher doesn’t like the Jewish Lobby, eh?  Q) Because it’s a lobby or because it’s Jewish? 

A) He obviously approves of the lobby in principle, as he’s inaugurating one. It must just be the Jews he doesn’t like.

 'It is extraordinary, looking back, to see how many statements about the Middle East that are now uncontroversial were considered, ten years ago, not merely wrong but wicked.  In June, 1967, a Guardian report of a meeting of the Labour Party's Foreign Affairs Group contained the following passage"Bitterness came to the surface when Mr Mayhew began to speak .... the interruptions began when he argued that it was wrong to talk in terms of racial extermination by the Arab forces .... he was almost shouted down when he went on to claim that the existence of the Palestinian refugees was the root of the crisis".If the same speech were made today, the audience, instead of shouting the speaker down, would gently fall asleep.".... There are still some aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict which cannot be freely discussed in the press or on radio or television.  For example, the proposition that Zionism is racialist, or that Zionists have dual loyalties; but these propositions, though true and important, are not central to the basis argument.  Other criticisms of Zionism and of Israel appear quite frequently nowadays in the media....”
This advance was, of course, only partly due to the pressure of CAABU and its supporters.

Remember when the Grauniad was the Manchester Guardian? Those were the days my friend I thought they’d never end but they did.

Long after achieving their goal CAABU keeps on going, onwards and upwards. It seems like only yesterday that the BBC treated us to Chris Doyle’s latest opinion on the Syrian crisis. 

An interview took place on Friday 14th June, which was mentioned by Craig in the relevant week’s worth of PMs: 

“Paul Woods talked to Carolyn (Quinn) about where the Syrian conflict stands at the moment, before Carolyn moved on to talk to two experts - BBC favourite Shoshank Joshi of RUSI and Rim Turkmani, a disheartened member of the Syrian opposition (based, inevitably, in London).”

Rim? Rim Turkmani? Yes, that Rim. The Rim who’s married to one of the BBC’s experts on Syria, Chris Doyle, director of CAABU.

I didn’t hear the programme, but Craig summed up her contribution thus:

“Rim, as might be expected, slagged off the Assad regime for its "huge atrocities", but favours diplomacy as she thinks the Assad regime will remain stronger than any section of the fragmented opposition. She thinks military aid to the rebels will be unhelpful and fears al-Qaeda.”

Perhaps the Doyles are not quite sure which side to apologise for. 

Mrs Doyle, Dr. Rim Turkmani, is  a Syrian.  Her family has ties to the Assad regime. The Doyles may not wish to align CAABU with either side; not the government and certainly not the Islamists who appear to make up the majority of the rebels that most of the world deems beyond the pale. The Doyles are torn between a rock and a hard place, but the one uniting certainty that can be relied on thanks to the likes of CAABU, is the almost universal denigration and hatred of Israel.

Things have moved on in Syria, and the Doyles aren’t the only ones who are bending with the wind. but the BBC presents them both as ‘experts’ when they are in fact both members of an active anti-Israel lobbying movement, and the audience should be made aware of that when they’re brought in as advisors,  just so we know. After all, CAABU is a lobby group and proud of it, whereas the mere mention of “The Jewish Lobby” or the “Israel Lobby” is enough to provoke outrage and disgust at the very idea that such a thing should exist. Or for that matter that such a country as Israel  should exist.

David Ward MP was recently rebuked for suggesting that the Holocaust should have ‘taught the Jews’ enough about atrocities to insure they would never inflict the same thing on others. As if they were inflicting an actual  Holocaust upon the Palestinians. And Lib Dem MP Sir Bob Russell, whoever he is, has demonstrated that expressing anti-Israel sentiment in public is nothing to be ashamed of. 

“Russell, who was speaking at a debate on the national curriculum in the House of Commons on Monday said, "On the assumption that the 20th century will include the Holocaust, will he give me an assurance that the life of Palestinians since 1948 will be given equal attention?”

 An insinuation that smacks of CAABU-influenced antisemitism from a  Lib Dem which somehow  passes with little shame or embarrassment, and ill-informed antisemites just lap it all up.

The BBC, so keen to label anything it disapproves of  - think “right-wing think tank”  - would probably,  should they stumble upon it, call this  entire blog a ‘little hate-site’ to Biased-BBC’s ‘Hate Site’ (as in the big and little Satans.)   It seems fair, and obligatory for an impartial organisation, that everything, the good, the bad and the Prebble, should come with a label, for 'context'.  If so, they should label the Doyles “lobbyists” and CAABU “ A pro-Arab anti-Israel Lobby Group”, and Lib Dems “ill-informed antisemites.”

Insanity in the genes.

During the few years I contributed to the Biased-BBC blog the area that particularly interested me was the BBC’s one-sided attitude towards all Israel-related matters, and latterly the BBC’s naïve, misguided and flawed interpretation of  Arab Spring; from ecstatic live reporting from Tahrir Square, to the ongoing Pollyannaish euphoria over the dawning of democracy throughout the Arab World.

Those pieces are archived on that blog until another site revamp sends them into cyber-oblivion, but they still seem relevant, despite everything that has occurred since. 

Immediately before Morsi’s arrest, or the military coup, or whatever you like to call the Morsi/ Muslim Brotherhood government’s downfall, the BBC was aggressively promoting the line that both the rabble in Tahrir Square and the ‘experts’ they wheeled in to analyse the situation were expecting too much too soon. 

“Only one year? Not nearly enough time to prove themselves.” they kept insisting. 

I watched one BBC News 24 anchor try very hard to persuade an anti-Morsi ‘expert’ to concur that all Morsi’s government needed, nay, deserved, was ‘more time’. Having completely failed, she brought the same thing up all over again with the very next guest. She (as Vic Reeves would say) “wouldn’t let it lie”. Was someone on high urging her, through the headphones, to keep flogging that dead horse, or was it a fancy notion of her own, one wondered.  

When the protests in Egypt escalated and the army stepped in, the BBC decided to focus on the illegality of ‘the coup’ and the intrinsic insult to democracy of 'coups.' 

The belief that democracy is the panacea for all the world’s ills is hard to shake.

Here in the civilised West we favour democracy as a form of government because although it’s flawed, all the others are worse. 

It’s just  that some democracies are more democratic than others.

A couple of days ago Harry’s Place explored the issue.  As usual the comments pulled no punches. In response to:

“As much as I detest Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood and everything they stand for, they were democratically elected.” 

a commenter with inside knowledge said:

“No they were not. The parliamentary elections were rigged, marred by intimidation of voters, irregularities and assorted causes for concern that the elections were free or fair.Not that it mattered, for the lower house of parliament was soon enough abolished, leaving an upper house that rapidly was packed by the incoming president with his party cronies.And let's not start on the democratic credentials of a president *elected* by less than 40% of the population, after a campaign in which any other credible candidates were disqualified on one spurious ground or another. And let's not mention the election of the president which made the parliamentary elections look as pure as snow.FFS.

Some H/P comments are worth reproducing in full, because as far as i know they’re all routinely deleted after a week

 A comment by “S&A” specifically concerning the BBC: 

“I saw this covered last night from two angles, 'Newsnight' (the BBC's 'flagship' current affairs programme) and ITN. This is roughly how each programme presented events:Newsnight: (1) Began with a Paxman monologue along the lines of 'Yet again a democratically elected government has been overthrown by a military coup, and yet again the West has done nothing'.
(2) Over the next 15 minutes there is just one piece of vox pop by an anti-Morsi demonstrator. Everyone else that's interviewed or asked to hold forth is a Muslim Brotherhood supporter. (3) I lost count of the number of times Morsi's mandate, or the size of it, was mentioned. I do however recall how many times the reporter mentioned Morsi's loss of support amongst erstwhile voters - not once. (4) After the report, Paxman had a panel discussion in the studio - with the UK's representative of the MB.ITN: (1) Report began with a backgrounder to the crisis in Egypt. It mentioned the Army's ultimatum to the President, and the inflammatory speech the latter subsequently gave. (2) The reporter referred to the violence in Cairo two nights ago, in which Morsi supporters shot at opposition demonstrators (around 20 people killed in ensuing clashes). (3) ITN emphasised the fact that Egypt was polarised between pro and anti-Morsi factions, but made it clear that protests against the Presidency were nationwide, and not just due to an elite in Cairo. (4) Footage showed how extensive the anti-Morsi protests in the capital were, and how overjoyed the crowd in Tahrir Square was when they heard that the army had ousted the President.In both reports footage of the anti-Morsi protests were taken from a distance, to show the sheer size of the crowds involved. In the 'Newsnight' report the camera got as close as possible to the MB crowd (which to media observers suggests a resort to a common trick camera crews use when trying to hide how small a demo is). My conclusion is that we are now seeing the imprint of Ian 'Clark County' Katz on BBC2's 'flagship' news programme.

This comment on another H/P thread, from esteemed contributor Sarka was enlightening.  

It was about a stupid and offensive Tweet from Hope not Hate’: (" Voltaire but he never had the benefit of going to Auschwitz and seeing where unfettered free speech ends up.”) which, in turn, concerned a longer version published in the Indy:

“There is a line in the sand between freedom of speech and the right to use hate speech. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you that right. We live in a democracy and we believe in free speech. People will now quote Voltaire but he never had the benefit of going to the gates of Auschwitz and seeing where unfettered free speech ends up.”

This is Sarka’s retort:

“ I imagine HnH would have an even bigger gripe with Voltaire if they read his views on Islam: Famously,"But that a camel-merchant should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him."

(She says “famously” but sadly, not previously known to me) I won’t forget “extinguished all natural light in him” which for me is the nub of the problem.

 Back to the BBC.

Bowen in a Bandage.

I understand there was some sort of stealth edit to Jeremy Bowen’s original, disingenuously benign definition of the Muslim Brotherhood as  ‘moderate, conservative and non-violent’. I think the word ‘moderate’ was dispatched to room 101.

Bowen is now sporting a gigantic bandage on his head. I have to say that he looks comical. A graze from a stray bullet according to the BBC, but people have been predicting(I presume they’re joking) that he’s about to blame Israel. In fact, since the stray bullets very likely emanated from the army and not the MB, Bowen won’t have to revise his allegiance to Morsi and his colleagues. Not everyone loathes poor Bowen.

A btl comment in the Mirror said:

BULLIT IN THE HEAD AND CARRIES ON WAT A MAN ?

Metaphysical or wat?

The same old delusion is waiting in the wings. As if they hadn’t learned anything from the past, the BBC’s assumptions seem uncannily like last time round. Déjà vu all over again.  This time all too many people still seem to think the Islamists’ disgrace will pave the way for true democracy, disregarding the obvious signs that the opposition consists of  oh so many factions, all at each others’ throats, with hatred of Jews their only uniting factor.

It’s beginning to look a bit like Einstein’s definition of insanity. There must be other definitions of it. I wonder what Einstein would make of the Islamisation of football, or Channel 4’s decision to broadcast the Adhan every day during Ramalamadingdong? 

Or how would Sigmund Freud evaluate the mental health of professional Israel basher Victoria Brittain who has chosen to write an article praising Abu Qatada ( - he’s no terrorist) or, for that matter, the sanity surrounding the Guardian’s decision to publish it.

Somehow the BBC and its influence is all a part of this madness.

Damian Thompson goes further, on vaguely related issues, in the Telegraph. 

Not about insanity - he is more concerned with criminality, towards which he thinks the BBC is edging. Closer. 

“Let me explain. The news story is in Ariel, the BBC’s in-house magazine. As a piece of journalism, it’s so laughably twisted as to be useless: the phrase “deep liberal bias”, a quote from none other than the BBC’s former director of news Helen Boaden, is nowhere to be found. [..........]

He cites Helen Boaden who was caught acknowledging the BBC’s deep liberal bias one minute and blogging that “impartiality is in our genes” the next, the move to Salford, the crazy pay-off to a former employee, then: 

“One of the sillier lines put about by the BBC is that it’s been too ready to allow its coverage of immigration and Europe to be dictated by politicians. The truth is that Auntie is the dominatrix in this relationship, whipping into line any MPs who say the wrong thing on its programmes. There are times when the Beeb behaves like a powerful unelected political party it its own right – while simultaneously gorging on public money like a government department that doesn’t have to answer to ministers.The Keating affair tells us the Beeb’s folie de grandeur is taking it closer and closer to the boundaries of criminality. Indeed, it may already have crossed it. In a funny way, I hope it has. We need a proper scandal to reveal the rottenness at the heart of the BBC; only then can we begin the desperately overdue business of breaking it up.”

Even people who formerly had little interest in anything outside their own four walls are noticing. “The world’s gawn mad, Mrs!” a man who had never spoken of anything other than the weather before remarked the other day.

Define that, Mr. Einstein.