Who are the militants in Afghanistan [and India]?

BBC World News, broadcast overnight on BBC One, looks to be recognising the new Taliban regime, even if the UK government hasn't yet.

Here BBC newsreader Karin Giannone describes the people opposing the Taliban as 'militants':

Now there are reports of from Afghanistan of heavy fighting between Taliban forces and militants who oppose the Islamist takeover around the Panjshir Valley.

The Daily Express today has it the other way round, with the Taliban remaining ''the militants'' and the forces of former vice-president Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud in the Panjshir Valley being ''resistance fighters'':

The Taliban have clashed with a group of resistance fighters in Afghanistan's Panjshir province as the final stronghold against the militants hangs in the balance. 

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On a possibly related theme, this glowing headline following the death of a leading pro-Pakistan, Islamist Kashmiri separatist hasn't gone down well in India, where he's a highly controversial figure - understandably so given his pronouncements about Osama bin Laden and the Mumbai attackers:

The introductory paragraph goes on to say: 

Kashmir's top separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who spearheaded the resistance movement against Indian rule, has died, aged 92. 

This is the language of approval. 

Here's a flavour of the reaction:

• As expected, the BBC turns Syed Ali Shah Geelani into a freedom fighter when even Al Jazeera refers to him as "separatist". Is the BBC completely tone deaf when it comes to reporting? What's the reason behind this sustained anti-India stance? What kind of biased journalism is this?
• Geelani fought to make Kashmir a totalitarian Islamist hellhole. He was partially responsible for massacres and ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus. He was an enemy of freedom. BBC's headline is unbelievable but reflects their anti-India and anti-Hindu bias.
• If Geelani was a Hindu, the tone of the article would have been very different. 
• Interesting. BBC News calls a Talibani-style terrorist Geelani a freedom fighter. The way it is BBC will stitch a burqa for the British queen. 

Business as usual

A bird's eye view of our church, St Peter's at Sawrey #lakedistrict #cumbria #northwest #englishchurches pic.twitter.com/CYjYtzvEGK

— Tim Brownlow (@timjb69) November 24, 2018

"Nothing is the same", Andrew Marr said this morning. I don't think his colleagues at Radio 4's Sunday programme have got the message though. They were doubling-down on their ongoing mission to remain the most liberal programme on the BBC. 

This morning's programme began with discussion of the Modi government's "very controversial" new citizen law in Assam. "What is means for Muslims is the focus of a great deal of the criticism", said Ed Stourton. 

Then it was onto an exhibition of art work by prisoners at Chester Cathedral and a long segment on homelessness featuring the Bishop of Manchester David Walker. (He's on the programme so often he should be called 'the Bishop of the Sunday Programme'). 

The main discussion of the day involved a couple of liberals - Sunny Hundal of the New Statesman and Ben Ryan of Theos - agreeing with each other that the election has fracture faith communities and blaming politicians, the government and India's BJP. This discussion ended in a very Sunday way:

Ben Ryan: I think if there's one sign of hope it's that, compared to most of Europe, one area in the UK has done quite well is that it hasn't had a very close association between the populist right and Christianity. And there's various reasons for that, but one is that the churches have been so clear about their opposition to those sorts of policies. So there is a hope for British leaders to stand up and do something."

Ed Stourton: "On that more positive note, we must leave it. Thank you both very much for coming in this morning".

Oh, so you're agreeing with that, are you Ed?

Then it was only a new Netflix series called  The Two Popes and an interview with its left-wing director, Fernando Meirelles. Fernando originally intended it to be "a story of the Good Pope and the Bad Pope", but the Bad Pope (Pope Benedict) has grown on him. "I'm still more on Francis's side, but I understand his point", he said. The BBC's Emily Buchanan used the programme's usual kind of labelling, saying:

Many people talk about a lot of very right-wing Catholics seeing the presence of Pope Benedict as a rallying point for an opposition.

And finally, it was onto an interview with a nice lady from Tree Sisters who are running a Christmas campaign called 'Seven ways to be an earth-restorer' this year. Ed talked of the "high environmental price tag" of Christmas. 

You see what I mean?

"We no longer believe this was the case"

The BBC is on the receiving end of 'fake news' and 'acting irresponsibility' charges from Indian Twitter users this week: 

The BBC News website report they are complaining about went through some startling edits, as Newssniffer reveals:

Where Version 0 has "An Indian police officer hailed as a hero for protecting a Muslim man from being lynched by a mob has begun receiving threats, police say", Version 1 has "An Indian police officer hailed as a hero for protecting a Muslim man from being lynched by a mob has begun receiving death threats, police say."

Where Version 1 has "Some government officials have also publicly justified the actions of the mob", Version 2 has "Some politicians have also publicly justified the actions of the mob". 

Where Version 2 has "It's wrong when these people (Muslim men) bring Hindu girls to our places of worship despite knowing it's a temple and it's pious," Rakesh Nainwal, an MLA of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), told BBC Punjabi's Sunil Kataria", Version 3 has "It's wrong when these people (Muslim men) bring Hindu girls to our places of worship despite knowing it's a temple and it's pious," Rakesh Nainwal, a local leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), told BBC Punjabi's Sunil Kataria. 

Where Version 3 has "When a boy and a girl go somewhere together by choice, then how can these right-wing groups call it a case of "love jihad" and attack them?" Ajit Sahni, a resident of Ramnagar, told BBC Punjabi, Version 4 has "When a boy and a girl go somewhere together by choice, then how can these right-wing groups call it a case of "love jihad" and attack them?" Kaisar Rana, a resident of Ramnagar, told BBC Punjabi."

And where Version 4 has "An Indian police officer hailed as a hero for protecting a Muslim man from being lynched by a mob has begun receiving death threats, police say", Version 5 has "An Indian police officer hailed as a hero for protecting a Muslim man from a mob has said he has received abusive messages on social media"....

...and the following passage was added to the end of the report:

Correction: The BBC initially reported that the police officer had received death threats. We no longer believe this was the case.

That was posted some 24 hours after the original version. (None of the other errors were publicly acknowledged). 

The Times of India reports:

NAINITAL: A day after news reports started circulating that Gagandeep Singh, the policeman who had saved a Muslim man from getting lynched by a mob had gone underground since he was facing death threats, the sub-inspector clarified to TOI that he had received no threats and was in fact at home with his family. 

Reacting to a news report in a reputed foreign news portal on Wednesday which claimed that the officer has been getting threat calls, Singh said, "There is no such thing. I have taken leave to be with my family. My sister is home (from the United States of America), so I am spending time with her and other family members.” He added that he will return to duty on June 2.

Senior police officials from the district also denied information of any kind of threat or abuse to the officer or his family. Janmejay Khanduri, senior superintendent of police, Nainital district said, “There have been no threats made to him. Something like this will never go unnoticed. We are committed to serve and protect not just people but also our officers.” 

The report by the portal had quoted a claim which it said had been made by Singh to a local media outlet in which he had said, "I have received several hate messages." The report also said that police officials working with Singh had told their reporter that he had been sent on leave and would receive counselling. Later on Thursday, after the report went viral on social media, the portal put up a statement saying that although they had initially reported that the police officer had received death threats. “we no longer believe this was the case.” 

The "reputed foreign news portal" is, of course, the BBC. 

What on earth happened here?

Fisking Roger Bolton

Funny old statement from Roger Bolton on this week's Feedback:

But first a political earthquake with devastating consequences: On August 15th 1947 British rule on the Indian sub-continent came to an end and it was partitioned into two countries: India, predominantly Hindu and Sikh, and Muslim Pakistan. 

Well, India is not "predominantly Hindu and Sikh". It's predominantly Hindu, yes, but Sikhs have always been a much smaller minority than Indian Muslims. The latest census shows that India is 80% Hindu, 13.4% Muslim and just 1.9% Sikh.

A small point, but there you go!

Bring back Congress!

Monday's Today, shortly after that cataclysmic interview with Norman Smith, featured a report from India, overwhelmingly critical of the right-wing Modi government for its treatment of minorities, especially Muslims. 

(The BBC reporter did speak to a BJP minister, for balance, but, in a shrill voice, ostentatiously interrupted him - presumably in order to show him to be 'a bad man').

Other blogs have also covered this (Biased BBC here and here), making some serious charges that India is being unfairly focused upon (with, I think, some justification) - though they failed to spot a complicating factor: that the report also included aggrieved Indian Christians complaining about the way things are going there. 

Still, I heard that report as I drove to work early on Monday morning and thought, 'Typical BBC!' 

I had, after all, predicted that the BBC would be overwhelmingly negative about the Modi government from the word go (he says, 'doing an Ian Katz'). 

And what's this I see appearing as the latest update on BBC News's feed on the 'My Blog list' sidebar as I write this post? 

Hmm.

Ethical Man v Narendra Modi

Somehow, I never really expected the BBC to be anything other than largely critical of Narendra Modi's "right wing" government in India, so this high-profile BBC website piece didn't come as a great surprise.

Still...

Justin Rowlatt has moved on from being the BBC's 'Ethical Man' to being its South Asia correspondent, but his old environmentalist concerns clearly still linger on - at least if this latest BBC website article is anything to go by:

Why India’s government is targeting Greenpeace

...But one year into his term as prime minister and many say Mr Modi is showing some distinctly undemocratic tendencies as he tries to foster a manufacturing boom in India.

At the end of April, India cancelled the registration of nearly 9,000 foreign-funded non-governmental organisations (NGOs), saying they didn't comply with the country's tax codes.

And the Indian government has singled out the environmental pressure group, Greenpeace, for special attention.

...The reason why says a lot, both about Mr Modi's ambitions for India and his attitude to dissent.

When the Indian electorate voted Mr Modi into power with a handsome majority a year ago they were voting for his promise to transform the Indian economy.

Mr Modi is clearly determined to deliver on that promise. Indeed some Indians now fear that he may compromise some of the country's other core values along the way.

The story concerns Greenpeace's campaigning against India's reliance on coal to fuel its economic development. Coal leads to more carbon dioxide emissions and, thus, to climate change. Ergo, India's reliance on coal is 'a bad thing'. Ergo, Greenpeace and Justin are up in arms.

Somebody on Twitter subsequently pointed out that the Indian government has considerable public support for its moves against Greenpeace & Co.:

@EthicalMan This is how Indians really feel abt NGOs and ur precious Greenpeace. U can stop writing rubbish now. https://t.co/Ux00m7Tpwg
— Jithu (@JithuG2) May 16, 2015

According to the polls 55% say the Modi government is "Rightly putting them in their place" and only 13% say that the move is "Unnecessarily hostile". (33% either "don't know" or  "can't say"). 

Without directly responding to his critic, Justin at least had the good grace to promptly put out the following tweet:

Poll suggests Modi's confrontational approach to NGOs proving popular. https://t.co/MwhWw2wxIC
— Justin Rowlatt (@EthicalMan) May 16, 2015

Maybe some of that popular support might have been reflected in his original article? And shouldn't that 'front page' article now have an 'update'?

Booker on anti-India bias at the BBC

I've been holding off all day about posting about Christopher Booker's hard-hitting Sunday Telegraph piece, Why to blacken India on rape do they have to omit the facts?. 

It savages the BBC over its controversial documentary about rape in India - a documentary India's courts have banned.

I have to say that, up till reading Mr B's piece, I'd been entirely siding with the BBC against the Indian government over this. The BBC seemed, from all the (extensive) coverage I've been reading (and hearing), to be on the right side of the argument. 

However, as I now know that others are in a similar position, I'll give it a recommendation because it does raise some concerns about the BBC's selective targeting of particular countries and communities (especially in comparison to other countries and communities)...

...and it makes a serious charge (with what looks to me like compelling evidence) that the BBC cut out counterbalancing material from the original version of its film - material which (apparently) pointed out that India is far from being unique or, indeed, anywhere near being the worst case of a country which tolerates rape. 

'Divisive' and 'Controversial' - Yalda Hakim on 'Newsnight'

Last night's Newsnight led with the overwhelming victory of Narendra Modi, the BJP and their allies in India's general election.

They persisted with the "Modi is such a controversial figure" line that the BBC has been pushing so vigorously over the last few weeks, and rather nailed their own colours to the anti-Modi mast by inviting the strongly Islamophilic, left-leaning, Western-bashing, Palestinian Solidarity Campaign-supporting historian William Dalrymple to present their main report on the story.

Mr Dalrymple's report may have featured a fair sample of 'talking heads' but his commentary was deeply loaded against Mr Modi. Anyone who knows William Dalrymple's work will have expected that, and so would Newsnight. 

In the studio presenter Yalda Hakim then interviewed Mr Dalrymple and journalist Swapan Dasgupta. That provided a measure of balance in that we were now getting a two-sided debate, though - in a classic example of bias by labeling - Yalda introduced William Dalrymple as "one of the keenest observers of Indian life and history" while introducing Mr Dasgupta as a "Modi supporter" [Mr Dasgupta is, in fact, an award-winning journalist who tilts rightwards politically, being a fan of British Conservatism]. 

Their discussion was interrupted for an interview with sculptor Anish Kapoor, a Modi hater who wrote that letter (along with lots of other left-wing Modi haters) to the Guardian denouncing Mr Modi in the strongest terms. In Yalda Hakim's introduction to this interview, she called Mr Modi "one of India's most divisive politicians" [despite the fact that he seems to have united most of India to vote for him!!]. Mr Kapoor was vicious about the soon-to-be prime minister, calling him "a mass murderer" and speaking sourly of "supposedly democratic politics" in India. 

Then it was back to the studio and William Dalrymple and Swapan Dasgupta, with Yalda Hakim going on the offensive against Mr Dasgupta and William Dalrymple backing up Anish Kapoor. Yalda strongly interrupted and challenged Mr Dasgupta, each of them virtually screaming at each other at times, while William Dalrymple was allowed to speak uninterrupted and not challenged. 

If this was impartial BBC broadcasting then I'm Yalda Hakim. And I'm not Yalda Hakim.

Still, then came an interview with the Green Party leader Natalie Bennett. Frankly, it's the first time I've ever felt sorry for the Green Party. Yalda was absolutely unrelenting in her interruptions. She was like Jeremy Paxman/Andrew Neil/John Humphrys on speed. Quite what's to be gained by interviewing someone like that (except a name for yourself as an interviewer) beats me. Still, at least she can't be accused of pro-Green bias.

Then came one of Ian Katz's trademark all-female panels to discuss one of Ian Katz's trademark issues - sexism. (Yep.) The boss of the Premier League sent a friend a private e-mail that has got the ranks of the easily offended up in arms. (No, he didn't use the n-word). Two women in the studio were aghast at his sexism, Claire Fox of 'The Moral Maze' was aghast at all the fuss. (2 against 1).

Then in the closing credits we were invited to (snigger) laugh at two bearded American Republican would-be candidates ('redneck' ZZ Top lookalikes). Classic BBC.

********

Update: I don't think Rod Liddle was very impressed with last night's Newsnight. "It was bad on a whole new level of badness", he said.

Presented by an Afghan-Australian woman called Yalda Kasem, of whom I had never heard. Yalda was hampered in her presentational debut by being unable to string a sentence together; nor did she have the knowledge or acuity to ask interesting questions of her guests. 

Mind you, she’s quite fit. And yes, that would be a sexist observation were it not for the fact that I cannot fathom any other reason the lass was presenting the BBC’s premiere news and current affairs show. Well, ok, I can think of one, but let’s not go there.

Has the BBC has found its latest bogeyman?

Various academics, artists and MPs [including Baroness Helena  Kennedy, author Salmon Rushdie, solicitor Imran Khan, Labour MP John McDonnell MP and artist Anish Kapoor] wrote a letter to the Guardian yesterday expressing their grave concerns at the prospect of Narendra Modi, leader of India's major centre-right party, the BJP, winning the current general election there. Newsnight led its coverage of the Indian election yesterday with that very angle, and one of the signatories, Pragna Patel from the Southall Black Sisters, was invited on the programme to air her concerns, alongside crossbench peer Lord Bilimoria. Ms Patel repeatedly slung epithets like "Hindu supremacist", "right wing" and "fascist" at Mr Modi, while Lord Bilimoria (evidently not an unqualified supporter of the BJP leader, though remaining cautiously optimistic about a new BJP-led government) trod a much more measured, far less adjective-strewn path. 

And talking of adjectives....the preceding Newsnight report from the BBC's Tulip Mazumdar described him in the way all such bogeymen as described by the BBC: "deeply controversial and divisive".  

Now Narendra Modi undoubtedly is deeply controversial. 

Despite being repeatedly cleared by the Indian courts during the last ten years of Congress rule, lots of people still believe he did nothing to stop the massacre of around a thousand Muslims in Gujurat back in 2002, indeed that he may have helped whip up the anti-Muslim violence there following the deaths of several dozen Hindu pilgrims in a fire on a train, and both Tulip and Laura Kuenssberg made space for both viewpoints - the 'Modi is innocent' one and the 'Modi is guilty' one - but the angle chosen (in line with that taken by last week's Sunday) is not an unexpected one for the BBC.

The 'Narendra Modi is controversial' angle does seem to be the only one I've heard on BBC current affairs programmes. (I'm not an omnipresent BBC viewer/listener though!) 

There was an episode of Beyond Belief a couple of weeks ago, for example, where all of Ernie Rea's guests laid into Narendra Modi and Hindu nationalism with a vengeance. I took that as a sign of where the BBC would be going with this story. 

In contrast, the apparent deep disenchantment in India with the Congress Party, the flagging of the country's once-booming economy, and the strange story of latest scion of the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty, young Rahul Gandhi (Mr Modi's main opponent in the election), who seems unsure about whether he even wants the job, remain areas I've yet to hear explored on the BBC's airwaves in the run-up to this election. (Have you heard such discussions?)

Tonight's Profile on Radio 4 certainly won't be profiling Rahul. No, it's going to be Narendra Modi instead:

Narendra Modi is tipped to become the next Prime Minister of India but he's a controversial character, both loved and loathed. In this edition of Profile, Ritula Shah travels to India to find out more about the son of a tea seller who has become a formidable politician. She speaks to the brother he left behind and the tailor who gives him his signature style.

...which echoes Newsnight's introduction to the story last night:

He's certainly loved, but also loathed. India's voters look likely to choose a man some believe has dangerous charisma. So who is the politician at the centre of Modimania?

Has the BBC has found its latest bogeyman?

Update: Having just listened to Palestinian Solidarity Campaign patron William Dalrymple's A Point of View on Radio 4, this feeling that the Beebosphere has found a new Emmanuel Goldstein to hate has become even firmer. William Dalrymple expressed "a deep sense of unease" at the prospect of Narendra Modi winning power in India. "I find it difficult to suspend my anxieties about Narendra Modi", he said. 

Here it's possible to enter dangerous territory, as my gut reaction is to immediately assume that anyone William Dalrymple dislikes is bound to be a good thing!