This is a cross post from Autonomous Mind "Regular readers may recall a couple of posts back in January where we told the story of an Autonomous Mind reader who complained to the BBC about an edition of Hardtalk. This is the one in December 2010 where President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives was allowed to state, without challenge, that due to human induced climate change sea levels around the Maldives are rising. The lack of journalistic rigour and blind acceptance of such a controversial viewpoint as fact led to the complaint being made and the BBC’s two fingered resp0nse in January which included the immortal words: We’re committed to honest, unbiased reporting and are determined to remain free from influence by outside parties. In publishing the story in a follow up post we shared the unsurprising news that the response from the BBC to our reader’s request was a refusal to provide the information sought. Once again the BBC was hiding behind its establishment-given provision to withhold any information the BBC considers to be held for the ‘purposes of journalism, art or literature’. The only thing that was new in Andrew Marr’s interview appeared to be Obama’s acknowledgment that ‘conditions on the ground have changed’ in the Middle East. People are attributing this to Netanyahu’s response to the ‘1967 lines’ section of Obama’s speech. On BBC news 24 with Zeinab Badawi they infuriatingly cut Netanyahu’s reply. It was essential to listen toNetanyahu’s speech in full to critique his reaction, but as the BBC would rather misunderstand it, why bother? The West’s desire for a new dawning of an Arab age of enlightenment has triumphed over reality. Effigies draped in the Israeli flag, strange fruithanging in Tahrir Square, are ignored while the West’s wishful thinking is projected onto the so-called Arab Spring. Echoes of the deluded optimism that led America to project all its desires onto Obama’s vacuous promises of Hope and Change and swept Him to power, startled, on a tidal wave of expectation with only a platitudinous manifesto to sustain him. Obama was bound to disappoint. As we pull out of Iraq it is generally admitted that we failed to plan for the ‘peace.’ The overthrow of Saddam was the beginning, not the end. Yet we repeat this error having learned nothing. Obama’s obtuse self-serving interpretation of the Arab revolutions, his deliberately naive pretence that they herald ‘democracy,’ his willful ability to ignore the rise of Islamism and refusal to acknowledge that the single unifying feature of the Arab street is hatred of Israel and Jews, were the discordant notes in Obama’s ambiguous backward-looking speech. In the Marr interview Obama refers to ‘ rockets fired by Hizbollah’ but completely fails to mention the ideology behind them. Similarly his two ridiculously biased ill-informed guests sagely warned that unless Israel makes more concessions to its deadly enemies there will be dire consequences for the whole world. On Barry Rubin’s Pyjamas Media summary, commenter ‘Terry’ describes Obama as: “an adolescent, a sophomore radical imbued with all the Leftist BS slogans, he is immature & his intellectual development stopped long ago, he is intellectually shallow & not particularly well-educated or well-read. He has no understanding of history or economics beyond all the incoherent leftist slogans & the crap he heard from his leftist & Islamist friends & acquaintances, the Rev. Wright comes to mind.” The BBC is hostile to Israel, openly disrespectful to PM Netanyahu, superficial, lazy, pandering to Islam; in fact the BBC itself fits the above description of Obama perfectly. How else could they get away with promoting Obama’s outrageous plan to wind the clock back 44 years and recreate the conditions that gave Israel’s enemies the confidence to attempt an intended war of annihilation? They make no secret of the fact that this is still their aim. They don’t have to. Even if they shouted it from the rooftops, the world would project their own cuckoo-land interpretation onto the religion of peace, and the BBC is up there aiding and abetting. Anyone catch William Hague on the politics show? It was interesting to see him dodge BBC questions on whether the Fatah/Hamas "reconciliation" was a step forward. It's sad to see Hague spew forth the banalities of the Israel-hating F.O. but not unexpected. Whilst the blogosphere was alive with Netanyahu's very public dressing down of Obama's "1967" nonsense, the BBC remains married to it. The reason why Tata steel is cutting 1,500 jobs from its UK operations could not be clearer. According to this report, Karl-Ulrich Köhler, head of European operations for Tata, said: 
Complicity in Israel-Bashing Jamboree
“The Israelis appear in studios wearing suits. They’ve learned all sorts of tricks. They are wizards at communication; [....]He added that the tone of complaints against those giving the Palestinian viewpoint was “vituperative, pestering and controlling.”
‘Bad News From Israel’ is a rich source of material from which BBC spokespersons tediously produce morsels to attest to the BBC’s impartiality. (the antidote is Stephanie Gutmann’s The Other War) Author Greg Philo and his colleague Llewellyn use the technique, much cherished by Arabs, of attributing your own most malevolent inner thoughts, suspicions and shortcomings to your enemy. To employ one anti-Israel polemicist as Middle East correspondent seems careless; two appears more than mere coincidence. Yet more still ...... looks positively purposeful. When the Arab uprisings began to make the headlines, one of the experts on the BBC’s speed dial was kindly grandfather Kamal Helbawy, spokesman for the Islamist group Jeremy Bowen calls moderate, the Muslim Brotherhood. Moderate in comparison to something in his own head no doubt. Meanwhile, Bowen, himself a man with attitude, has temporarily forsaken his Palestinian pals to support Gaddafi, and Jon Donnison is following in Alan “I’m telling your story” Johnston’s well trodden footsteps, like a kidnap waiting to happen. So Is Wyre Davies. Yasmin Alabhai Brown is on the BBC so often that she acts as if she owns the place. She and Mehdi Hasan are incessantly called upon to review the newspapers. Why? Abdel Bari Atwan’s eyes bulge constantly from our screens. Thought for the Day regular Oliver McTernan runs Forward Thinking. “Have a look through Harry’s Place archives and you’ll understand very quickly that this is merely a euphemism for “we support Hamas”.
I could go on, but I won’t. Tim Llewellyn is consumed by his hatred of Israel. He’s beside himself, a man possessed. He and Mr Philo are continually beavering away alongside other Israel-haters, spreading the word. Amnesty International has unequivocally aligned itself with the Islamists. In the UK the BBC, the rest of the MSM, and probably the global social media network have convinced the majority of the idiocracy that taking an anti Israel stance is cool. Occasionally the BBC administers Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips to take the bitter taste away, but that’s just a drop in the bucket of balance. Next time a human rights report from Amnesty headlines a BBC news bulletin, remember the BBC’s charter. Because of the BBC, Zionism is a pejorative, and the very word Israel has come to embody evil. Heedless that they’re recreating 1930s Germany, the BBC carries on regardless.How The Establishment Closes Ranks Around the BBC
All The same Mistakes
RECONCILIATION BETWEEN HOLOCAUST DENIERS AND GENOCIDAL JIHADISTS
MISSING CO2
“EU carbon legislation threatens to impose huge additional costs on the steel industry. Besides, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about the level of further unilateral carbon cost rises the UK Government is planning. These measures risk undermining our competitiveness and we must make ourselves stronger in preparation for them.”
In other words, lunatic EU greenie policies combined with dead-man-walking Chris Huhne's newly-adopted turning of the screw (scroll down to the David Rose comment piece) - proudly putting the UK in the world lead as adopter-in-chief of suicidal eco-economic policies - are forcing lifeblood manufacturing industries out of the UK. Surprise, surprise, the BBC's reports on the job losses here and here barely mention this. When a union chief or Labour MP slams government policy for being Thatcherite or "Tory cuts", the subs at the BBC routinely salivate and make it headline news. But because in this case Labour MP Nick Dakin dares to attack the BBC's revered carbon taxes, it's not emphasised or played up at all. The headline I would have written for the story would have been "Carbon taxes lead to major job losses, says steel boss". Never in a month of Sundays on the BBC.
Monday, 23 May 2011
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