Britannia Radio

Justifying Jihad?

>> TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 09, 2010

I only had half an eye on Peter Taylor’s Generation Jihad last night - and also, until I noticed it on the website, I didn’t realise it was only part one of a series of three. So my impression that he was more sympathetic to his Jihadi interviewees than strictly necessary may be premature. He may have been coaxing them into letting their fanaticism speak for itself. But this episode strove to convince us that Islamist extremism wasn’t the real Islam, but as chalk to ‘moderate’ Islam’s cheese.
I was horrified to see him perpetuating the discredited tale of the Al Durahshooting at the hands of the Israelis, when the veracity of that has been exposed, at the very least, as dubious.

If Peter Taylor is sufficiently ignorant about the controversy surrounding that case to use it to illustrate justification for Jihad how does that make the rest of his programme look?

THE ENEMY WITHIN..

Did you read that the head of Britain’s special forces has been trying to stop the publication of a book by a senior BBC journalist which describes in “tactical detail” operations carried out by the SAS in Iraq from 2003 to 2009?

The major-general, who cannot be identified for security reasons, is concerned about the impact of Task Force Black on the elite regiment’s operational effectiveness because of the contents, which are understood to be based on interviews with members and former members of the SAS. Negotiations with lawyers representing the book’s author, Mark Urban, Newsnight’s diplomatic and defence editor, and the Ministry of Defence, have been going on for months, and a compromise had been reached.

I suggest that the BBC's visceral hatred of our military - and our Special Forces in particular - drives this sort of project and even though the publication of this book may result in future deaths of OUR soldiers, I am sure Newsnight's Urban has no such worries. 

LORD BROWNE - BBC IDOL

I wonder what it might be about gay corporatist Lord Browne that encourages the BBC to give him ANOTHER spot on the Today programme, second day running?

WHEN A DEBATE IS NOT A DEBATE

The BBC allows all shades of opinion, from A to B! With our first past the post system no longer looking so good for Labour, time for the Today programme to have a debate on alternatives. So, around 7.51am this morning bring on Hillary Benn and Chris Huhne to cover the topic - what could be more balanced than that? All shades of political opinion...!

ALI DIZAEI...BBC ICON

The newspapers are well-and truly laying into jailed Met Commander Ali Dizaei this morning; it seems that the world and his wife knew about his corruption and his bullying, but the Met sought to cover it up as best they could because they feared his chants of racism - and shared his 'equality' agenda. So of course did the BBC. They disgracefully made his pack-of-porkies autobiography Not One of Us Radio 4's book of the week when it was published, despite its lack of obvious literary flair (to put it mildly!); and then there's this gem of an interview by Andrew Marr soon afterwards. Here's a small extract of the gut-wrenching exchange to illustrate how avid Marr and his cronies are to hear and air such claims: 

ANDREW MARR: Just to be clear, you're saying that the police are still institutionally racist?

ALI DIZAEI: Yes they are. We are less institutionally racist than ten years ago. Have we got a clean bill of health? No. Is it within our grasp? Possibly. And I think the reason this is very important, and I think politicians ought to really take this very seriously, because there is direct correlation in the way the police service looks in terms of this composition, and the way we deliver a service to our community.

ANDREW MARR: You have become Commander at the fifth attempt, which of itself suggests that you are abnormally tough and determined to keep going when other people might have given up long ago. Was it frankly humiliating to have to do, go through that process five times...