AUGUR IN CHIEF

AUGUR IN CHIEF

>> WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 07, 2011

In ancient Rome, augurs were a special class of priest who foretold the future by examining the flight patterns and sounds of birds. I quote from wiki:

Only some species of birds (aves augurales) could yield valid signs whose meaning would vary according to the species. Among them were ravens, woodpeckers, owls, oxifragae, eagles. Signs from birds were divided into alites, from the flight, and oscines, from the voice. The alites included region of the sky, height and type of flight, behaviour of the bird and place where it would rest. The oscines included the pitch and direction of the sound. Since the observation was complex conflict among signs was not uncommon.

The BBC now has its own very augur in Richard Black, whose brief is a bit wider and adapted to the religion of climate change. His technique is to scour selectively special journals (rather than the sky), and find stories from "researchers" about creatures that are doing strange or different things. He then grandiloquently pronounces what will happen in future: a message from on high. His topic today is crustaceans in the Palmer basin off the west Antarctic penninsula. Already, Mr Black has augured that this ice is disastrously melting. Now, it seems, "researchers" have found that the area has been invaded by 1.5m king crabs. Woe! Doom! He solemnly intones they are doing what king crabs do - voraciously scoffing other marine creatures - but this, he warns, is a very bad sign. It will cause "profound damage" to the ecosystem because verily, they are nasty invaders that can only survive because of the catastrophic warming. The snag with augury, of course, was that it was a whole belief system based on a few snippets of truth. Some birds do gather before a storm - but their behaviour is much more complex than that. In exactly the same way, Mr Black - in his haste to spread alarm - ignores the key facts. The Antarctic is not getting significantly warmer.

EARTH CALLING MARK MARDELL

>> TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 06, 2011

Yes, he's the BBC North America editor, the man with his finger on the pulse of political events in the USA. I recall back in January when Mark Mardell brought us to near tears with his moving commentary on Obama's calls for"civil discourse" (Remember that meme, the one that suggested the evil Sarah Palin was more or less directly responsible for the Arizona shootings?) But here's the problem; For some inexplicable reason. Mark has overlooked the Democrat supporting Jimmy Hoffa calling "to take these sons of bitches out" and the ..erm..Vice President referring to opponents as"Barbarians." I'm sure Mark will get around to highlighting these examples of outrageous hypocrisy from the Obama camp.....any minute now.....

MURDOCH TO BE HANGED?

Have to laugh at the faux hysteria the BBC are trying to whip up in their endless jihad against the evil Murdoch empire! Have you see this?

Compare And Contrast: BBC vs. Muslim Brotherhood Edition

>> MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 05, 2011

It's pretty sad when the Muslim Brotherhood's Ikhwanweb is more informative and balanced than the BBC. Compare and contrast: Fire and graffiti attack on Palestinian mosque in Kasra with Settlers torch mosque in Al-Mughayyir village near Ramallah Both pieces talk about how this was a (misguided and wrong, in my view) retaliation for the Israeli Government's razing of some illegal Jewish settlements in the area.

The BBC reports that the Hebrew graffiti threatens further attacks, while Ikhwanweb just says the settlers left racist graffiti. It looks like it's supposed to say something like "Mohammed go away", but my Hebrew's a bit rusty and this may be vernacular. There's apparently other graffiti not shown in either report, so there isn't enough information to draw a proper conclusion about who is more accurate.

I should mention here that the Jerusalem Post reports something not mentioned by either the BBC or Ikhwanweb: the mosque was not in use, and there were no holy books inside. Unhelpful context, that.

Ikhwanweb, whose sympathies are not in question and who do not claim impartiality, report Palestinian eyewitness accounts that IDF forces abetted the arson crime, while the BBC instead reports rumors of the IDF training settlers to fight Palestinians. The openly anti-Israel Muslim Brotherhood reports eyewitness accounts (whether one beileves them or not, at least they're trying), while the allegedly impartial BBC instead makes an inflammatory statement. There is some training going on, in fact, and the BBC uses this to plant the idea in the reader's mind that the Israeli Government is actually responsible for this and future violence. Even though the training is for defensive purposes.

The BBC report closes with the required (yes, BBC, it's required, and I challenge anyone to prove that it isn't, and no whining about proving a negative: this is included nearly verbatim in every report about settlements) boilerplate copied and pasted from the style guide:

There are some 500,000 Jewish Settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Settlements are regarded as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Meanwhile, the more informative and balanced Ikhwanweb closes with this:

Since the incident, more and more Palestinians have criticized the Palestinian Authority which rules the West Bank, accusing security services of not fulfilling the ”duty of protecting the mosques”. One Palestinian man Mohammed Abdurrahman condemned the West Bank security services for the inability to protect the mosques at a time when the services have effectively persecuted Palestinian resistance fighters in the West Bank.

No mention of this at all by the BBC. They're too busy stoking up anger against Israel. And there's no obligatory moaning about the number of Jewish settlements or legal judgments about them from Ikhwanweb.

One is tempted to say that the Muslim Brotherhood is more interested in accuracy and balance about the Israel/Palestinian conflict than the BBC is. Once again it seems that the Corporation's editorial policy and innate bias cause them to demonize Israel at every opportunity, although the BBC disputes this.

GOB SMACKING

Another depth plumbed by BBC science reporting. A warmist fanatic - in this case Alun Hubbard, a glaciologist whose self-declared mission is to confirm his fanaticism - has now only to say that he's "gob-smacked" about the extent of ice loss for it to make a website lead story. Never mind that there is huge controversy about the causes of glacier melt in Greenland, and never mind that many experts suggest it is triggered by nothing more sinister than natural variability. I am not sure under which category of scientific measurement you will find the gob-smacking technique, but clearly for the BBC, any form of panic-mongering will now do. Especially if it's from one of its regular warmist pimps, as Dr Hubbard clearly is.