WELL THERE'S A SURPRISE!

WELL THERE'S A SURPRISE!

>> SATURDAY, MAY 21, 2011

Regular readers of this blog will know that David Preiser, DB and myself (in the comments) have had our purely metaphorical cross hairs trained on Katie Connolly - the lead reporter at BBC Online's Washington bureau - for quite some time now. She was headhunted from Newsweek in the Spring of 2010 to head a new teamthat (we discovered) also included an enthusiastic Obama 2008 campaigner called Matt Danzico (remember 'Llamas Heart Obama'?). We noticed that the new online unit began pumping out a lot of heavily-biased reports, generally favouring Democrat positions and undermining Republican ones. Katie Connolly was responsible for quite a few of those articles. The unit seems to have gone oddly quiet in recent weeks and it now transpires that Katie Connolly has a new job. According to her updated strap line on Twitter she is now a Senior Project Director at the Benenson Strategy Group. They are usually described as Democratic Party pollsters but also help devise campaign strategies for a large number of Democrat politicians and trades unions, playing a major role in the 2008 ObamaCampaign and even helping Gordon Brown during the 2010 UK general election. (That went well, didn't it?) . So a BBC reporter we've long suspected of being biased towards the Democrats leaves to join a firm of Democrat Party strategists. Who'd have thunk it?

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day - 1st Anniversary

What with all the noise about the US President selling Israel down the river due to a combination of naiveté, wrong-headedness, and a soupçon of anti-Israel sentiment, but apparently still not doing enough to please Hamas and Kim Ghattas, I missed out remembering that May 20 is the 1st anniversary of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. Yes, I realize it's officially over in the UK as I write this, but when I started there was still five minutes to go US EST. So there. The BBC is going to censor all of it because they bow to unjust demands of Islam on these things. Mark Thompson himself said that Islam gets special treatment. I'm recognizing the day not out of any malice towards Islam itself, as I personally bear none (I'm aware that I'm in the minority here, but this blog is actually a pretty big tent). I do this in defense of individual religious freedom, something that is as relevant in the US as it is in Britain, even though my country doesn't have an official state religion (If anyone tells me that Christianity is the official religion of the US, they'll need to tell me which version before I start laughing). The reason I say this is about individual religious freedom and not malice towards Islam is because I take the position that non-Muslims are not required to obey the rules of Mohammed. Why do I bother? Because of the continued pressure to avoid saying anything that offends Muslims. Except the real concern isn't as obvious as having the freedom to burn a Koran (which is an act of malice towards the religion), but rather the freedom to do things that Muslims wouldn't do without being told to stop because it's offensive to their sensibilities. The vast majority of media outlets in the UK and US censored even the most innocent cartoons out of appeasement and fear. Freedom of speech was thus taken away from non-Muslims, who instead were forced to obey the law of a religion not their own. I'm talking about things like preventing non-Muslims from having a plastic pig included with their childrens' farm toy set, because pork is verboten in Islam. More food companies are shifting their products into halal compliance, in the US and in the UK, in spite of many non-Muslims' objections to that particular method of butchering. It's being forced on non-Muslim children by the school system as well. No option for both choices: only the Mohammedan option on offer, period. Then there's telling non-Muslims they can't eat in front of Muslims during Ramadan. Nobody's going to ban eating a sandwich in any public sector workplace during Passover in order to avoid offending Jews who don't eat leavened bread during that time, so there is a clear unjust double standard which cannot withstand the scrutiny of the laws of freemen. Nobody should be forced to obey the rules of a religion not their own, or even their own if they don't want to. Yes, the above examples are mostly a couple years old or more, but where's the evidence that this no longer happens anywhere, all cases are solved and will never happen again? I fully support offering halal or kosher or Klingon dietary options in an area where that's what the majority wants, if it's a commercial decision. If KFC or Domino's want to have halal-only food in Mohammedan neighborhoods because that's where the money is, it's perfectly fine by me. But nobody should be forced by the government to obey the rules of another religion. It's in the spirit of continued religious freedom that I mark this first anniversary of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. Muslims are forbidden from making graven images of people, most especially Mohammed, but non-Muslims can do whatever the hell they like in a free country. That is not an attack on Islam, but a defense of freedom against any form of fascism or oppression. My contribution is below. Everyone is encouraged to add their own contribution or links to others. It's not an attack on Islam, but rather a statement of individual freedom. Mohammedans are as free to make fun of me as celebrated artists are for such brave acts as dipping a crucifix in urine or producing a play featuring Jesus as a homosexual. I don't care. Freedom, baby. Censorship is against the best interests of a free society.

The Street That Cut Everything

>> FRIDAY, MAY 20, 2011

On this week's edition of Newswatch: "Alas no BBC exec available". Well, it's such a hassle to go down to the Newswatch studio just to mouth "You're wrong, we're right" in a variety of ways for ten minutes. Hey, perhaps they're planning a sequel in which the street is flooded with dozens of diversity officers, climate change advisers and other assorted wastes of space, paid for by taking all the residents' money and then maxing out their credit cards for good measure. That wouldn't be any more ludicrous than Nick Robinson's stupid programme. UPDATE. I see James Delingpole has given the programme a good kicking in the latest Spectator. Extract (subscriber-only until next week):

"Then, a subtitle appeared on the screen saying: 'Do you see how vital, caring, nurturing and important a role the State plays in your lives? Well, DO you, citizen?' And then an extendable finger came out of the side of the TV set and prodded the viewer really hard in the ribs… [The BBC's] default position, the length and breadth of its programming from the World Service to Springwatch to CBBC, is that Big Brother is your friend, the public sector is good and the private sector bad. And the real joke is, we actually fork out for this brainwashing, 24/7, 365 days of the year."

Israel In The Crosshairs Of The BBC

There's plenty of other stuff on this blog about the BBC's unbalanced bias against Israel after the President's speech yesterday, but here's one glaring example of their entrenched anti-Israel attitude. This article about Netanyahu's visit to the US and audience with the President includes an analysis inset from Wyre Davies, in which he sneers at the Israeli PM and at what he perceives to be trained seals in Congress, as well as at the nasty old Jewish Lobby. Surely there is a less snarky - less editorializing and impartial - way to describe the situation? In the middle of the article itself, though, the News Online sub-editor slips in this other bit of Davies' wisdom:

Israel's claim to being the only democratic state in the region has also been undermined by the dramatic developments of the "Arab Spring" anti-government uprisings, our correspondent adds.

Let's consider the twisted logic here. Davies - approved by the BBC - is saying that protests against Arab dictators have (Davies uses the past tense, and so will I) already undermined Israel's claim to being the only democracy in the village. In other words, according to the BBC protesting against dictators diminishes the democratic position of the only non-dictatorship. And this isn't the first time I've heard this Narrative from a Beeboid. Kevin Connolly, having departed his former post as US correspondent where heinsulted thousands of people on air with a sexual innuendo to become a newly-minted Middle East correspondent, said the exact same thing two weeks ago. Now if, in a few months' time or so, an Arab/Muslim country actually achieved a state of democracy as a result of all these Arab Spring protests (which would be great and fine with me, regardless of the resulting government's attitude towards Israel or the US), then there would be some validity to the BBC's position. At this time, though, there is no such thing. In fact, the protests highlight the very fact the BBC says is undermined by them. But since BBC groupthink is that Israel is the worst of the bunch and the root cause of all strife in the Middle East (even as the President tells them to cut the crap), they see it exactly backwards. The anti-Israel sentiment entrenched at the BBC twists their vision into seeing black as white. Protests against dictators undermine the idea that Israel is the only non-dictatorship in the region? Only in the minds of Beeboids. Sadly, it's a set Narrative, clearly prepared in advance, with the latest opportunity seized with gusto. They want Israel to be undermined, to be diminished, to be delegitimized, and see it happening even where it's the exact opposite.

OPEN THREAD...

It is Friday and time for an Open Thread to take you across the weekend. Please detail your thoughts here on those seemingly endless instances of political bias from the State Broadcaster.

TREE HUGGING FRIDAY

Had to laugh at the interview with the Woodland Trust's Sue Holden on Today this morning (7.42am). Sue was on to spout the usual spiel that we need many more forest, more trees, since this is good for our health apparently. Naturally there was no voice of opposition to Holden's tree-mania. When it comes to their favourite causes, the BBC are very careful who they put up for interview and who they deny access. In this case, there was consensus that we all love trees. Who would have figured that then?

A TRIBUTE TO HUMILIATION

I listened aghast to this 5 minute paean to the ritual humiliation of Her Majesty the Queen otherwise known as the Irish State Visit. Royal Correspondent Peter Hunt demonstrated a lamentable lack of objectivity, parroting the government propaganda line that this four day event has been transformational. Included in the interviews was one with a certain Jackie McDonald, a self styled "Brigadier" in the loathsome terrorist group, the UDA. That organisation slaughtered hundreds of innocents and has been (and remains) up to its scrawny neck in every form of criminality. Mr McDonald was invited into the Queen's presence as proof of how we have all "moved on" (except the victims and their families) Sanitising terrorism is at the heart of what was being celebrated in Dublin and yet no voice is allowed on the BBC to explain this perspective. Hunt talked of the Queen's magnaminity - written for her, of course, by Hague's F.O. wordsmiths. He seemed to overlook the total lack of contriteness on behalf of the Irish President who managed to neatly avoid saying anything that was even remotely like an apology despite the fact her Government funded the IRA, gave sanctuary to the IRA, Lord Mountbatten was killed in the Republic, and even most recently, the Irish Government was partly bailed out by the UK. No apologies, No word of thanks or appreciation for Osborne's largesse - and he BBC's hordes of "analysts" all flown over to Dublin at our expense simply missed these dimensions to the story since they do not synch with the narrative THEY want to put across. This past few days has been the coronation of the corrupting Belfast Agreement - a process which inverted common decency, saw convicted murderers set free, and saw the IRA installed in the government of Northern Ireland. This is tres chic in political circles and the BBC has been to the fore in evangelising for the process. Yet not ONE country around the world has chosen to follow such a loathsome process - I'm sure the BBC are puzzled at this. I'm not but then again I'm not a BBC stool pigeon.

LOVING OBAMA, HATING ISRAEL

Given the hostility shown towards Israel by Obama in his blustering speech yesterday, it was of course entirely predictable that the BBC would get very excited about it. We had Mark Mardell and Jeremy Bowen praising the wisdom of Obama whilst bemoaning the negativity of the Netanyahu response in equal measure. Then there is the careful and contrived BBC skirting around the genocidal anti-Semitism that drives "Palestinians" in the first place.Anytime I am given the opportunity to discuss this issue on the BBC I am instantly beseiged by the BBC interview expressing incredulity that anyone might question the bona fides of the savages in Hamas and the holocaust denying "moderates" in Fatah. Obama is playing to a general MSM bias against Israel but in the case of the BBC this bias is deep, profound and consistent. Israel is always going to be portrayed by the BBC as in the wrong and so when a shrill Obama dares to lecture it, the BBC can be relied upon to a little echo-chamber.