JUST SLOPPY...

Whilst the BBC agonises about the societal causes that made poor devout Muslim Major Hasan slaughter 13 of his colleagues at Fort Hood whilst screaming Allahu Akhbar it manages to get some of the basic facts wrong. In this report it reports that Hasan was shot by a fellow soldier. He was not. He was shot by Sergeant Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer stationed at the base who was the first on the scene as Hasan picked off his victims. You would think with all that world class journalism they could get the basics right, wouldn't you?.

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Open Thread

Time for another open thread.

(Possible discussion for Remembrance Sunday - Media Lens wants the wearing of red poppies banned on the BBC.)

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Trouble in Arcadia

A documentary maker whose previous work for the BBC has included a film about a radical socialist Scottish republican has had his latest piece rejected by the Corporation because it takes a negative view of wind farms:

A BAFTA-nominated documentary maker has accused the BBC of banning his latest film about life in a remote Highland glen because it shows a lack of impartiality about wind farms.
BBC bosses part-funded the short film Arcadia by controversial Scots film producer David Graham Scott.
But the BBC has refused to broadcast the finished film, warning Scott that the documentary does not meet its strict rules on objectivity...

Scott said: "This was not meant to be a political film. It is more about the impact of modernity on an ancient landscape where people are having to cope with the modern world.
"I don't have a problem with the BBC's impartiality guidelines, but I think my film has been misinterpreted. I wouldn't want to alter the film to get it broadcast as that might ruin it."...

Protesters fighting the impact of wind farms in Scotland insist the film should be aired to highlight one of the biggest issues in rural Scotland amid the plight of communities where the farms are planned.
Bob Graham, who has fought a long-running campaign against wind farms across Scotland because of their visual impact, said: "The BBC has a duty to show realistic depictions of what wind farms can do to fragile environments and communities. They say the film is biased. I would say the BBC is biased in favour of wind farms, and that is why it will not show this documentary."

Here's Scott's film about an ardent Scottish republican campaigner made as part of a series called The New Ten Commandments which was broadcast last year. This passed the BBC's impartiality guidelines, but a film highlighting opposition to wind farms did not. Thou shalt not take the name of climate change in vain!



Scott's wind farm film was "one of seven films shot through the Bridging The Gap programme, which seeks to promote work by young Scots directors." It will be interesting to see the subject matter and "impartiality" of the films the BBC does broadcast.

(By the by - the Scottish republican seen in the above film has left this comment, among others, at YouTube:

If the Queen or any royalist successor is banned from Scotland's roads and rivers, and shot on sight for defying a ban then Scotland SHALL be free of monarchy from its veins.

Pleasant chap.)

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Fanfare cancelled

Yesterday I was rather sickened to see close-up the visage of our Prime Minister(discredited to all but Labour loyalists and those who know nothing about him ie. gullible foreigners) splayed across the BBC frontpage. Not another interminable G20 pose-fest, I thought. Not another opportunity for G. Brown to mince across our screens flaunting his moral compass. Yet it was: Gordon had yet another populist wheeze- a tax of financial transactions- to "save the world" with.

The BBC was kindly obliging him, as they have always done. They seemed to sense a chance to hype Gordon as the world's saviour again- which bombast is the only way to cover the reality that he is the world's biggest bust as an economic manager and political leader.

Well now the latest pose-fest seems to have squibbed, the BBC having to play backstop for the Prime Mentalist. Despite another grotesque miscalculation on the part of HMG, the BBC report covering the event now simply leads with the glossy affirmation that "G20 vows to spur fragile growth". Gordon's latest serial embarrassment is slipped surreptitiously in lower down as having "received a lukewarm response from other G20 countries". This is just prior to Geitner's statement of a "very broad consensus that growth remains the dominant policy imperative across our economies".

Watching the C4News clip here, I almost laughed when Geitner prefaced his rebuttal of Gordon's scheme by saying that he wanted "to show the appropriate deference to our hosts" (Gordon/UK). Interestingly, Gordon's gesture did seem to meet a little gleeful approval from the French. And of course from the BBC, until the wind changed.

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SHILLING FOR ISLAM...

Just watched the BBC TV News. The line being retailed is that the mass murder of US soldiers may well lead to even more of that awful Islamophobia that so concerns the State Broadcaster. Even as Major Nidal shouted "Allahu Akbar" and slaughtered the innocent, the BBC has instantly reverted to "Islam is the victim" mode. One of my readers over on A Tangled Web is currently helping treat the injured at Fort Hoods and it is to my shame that I tell him how the British State Broadcaster is doing everything possible to present Nidal as the victim and the real guilty party as the USA.

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"Shooting Raises Fears for Sanity of Entire Western World"

So sayeth Mark Steyn, referring to this BBC News story :

Shooting Raises Fears For Muslims In US Army

Steyn :

Really? Right now the body count stands at:

Non-Muslims 13
Muslims 0

Even if you are concerned that it would be terribly unfair if all Muslims were to be tarred by Major Hasan's brush, it is, to put it at its mildest, the grossest bad taste to default every single time within minutes to the position that what's of most interest about an actual atrocity with real victims is that it may provoke an entirely hypothetical atrocity with entirely hypothetical victims.

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"I honestly have no pity for them"

Following the criticism of some BBC coverage of the Fort Hood killings, credit is due to the BBC's Gavin Lee for including in his report this morning the following interview with a young Muslim from the same mosque attended by Major Hasan (the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen) :

Duane : I'm not going to condemn him for what he did. I don't know why he did it. I will not, absolutely not, condemn him for what he had done though. If he had done it for selfish reasons I still will not condemn him. He's my brother in the end. I will never condemn him.
Gavin Lee : There might be a lot of people shocked to hear you say that.
Duane: Well, that's the way it is. I don't speak for the community here but me personally I will not condemn him.
Gavin Lee : What are your thoughts towards those that were victims in this?
Duane : They were, in the end, they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them. It's just like the majority of the people that will hear this, after five or six minutes they'll be shocked, after that they'll forget about them and go on their day.

The full segment from which this was taken can be heard here.

I wonder if this is the same Duane from the same mosque quoted in the New York Times (my emphasis):

Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood, said Major Hassan was told he would be sent to Afghanistan on Nov. 28, and he did not like it.
“He said he should quit the Army,” Mr. Reasoner said. “In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.”

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Balance

Never let it be said that we here at Biased BBC refuse to recognise examples of BBC balance when we spot them:

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PC PR

Mark Mardell:

The alleged murderer was clearly a Muslim, but there is very little to suggest that he adhered to a hard-line interpretation of his religion or that he had political or religious motives.

Really? How about this, Mark?

A US officer who killed 13 soldiers in a gun rampage at a Texas army base shouted a triumphant Islamic proclamation before opening fire, it was claimed today.
Army spokesman Lieutenant General Bob Cone said witnesses heard Major Nidal Malik Hasan cry "Allahu Akbar" - Arabic for "God is great" - before opening fire at the Fort Hood complex.

And this?

He gave a Grand Rounds presentation. . . You take turns giving a lecture on, you know, the correct treatment of schizophrenia, the right drugs to prescribe for personality disorder, you know, that sort of thing. But instead of giving an academic paper, he gave a lecture on the Koran, and they said it didn’t seem to be just an informational lecture, but it seemed to be his own beliefs. That’s what a lot of people thought.

He talked about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire. And I said well couldn’t this just be his educating you? And the psychiatrist said yes, but one of the Muslims in the audience, another psychiatrist, raised his hand and was quite disturbed and he said you know, a lot of us don’t believe these things you’re saying, and that there was no place where Hasan couched it as this is what the Koran teaches but you know I don’t believe it. And people actually talked in the hallway afterwards about ‘is he one of these people that’s going to freak out and shoot people someday?’

[snip]

“A source tells NPR’s Joseph Shapiro that Hasan was put on probation early in his postgraduate work at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. He was disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues, according to the source, who worked with him at the time.”

It's not as if Mark Mardell hasn't had time to read the internet today:

But for some, nothing less than a conspiracy will do as an explanation. On the website of a respected newspaper, I see one poster has blamed Barack Obama, whom he calls "that Marxist thug". It's not that it's hard to follow the logic; it's that there isn't any.

Mardell would rather recount the idiotic comments of one goofball he's read on a website somewhere than concede that the motives of a Muslim mass murderer could be down to his religion. Never mind the killer, check out this fruitcake instead; right wing nutters are the real problem here in America, nudge nudge.

He concludes:

Still, searching for patterns and for answers is part of what it is to be human. I loathe cliche, but perhaps, for once, this is a "senseless tragedy", devoid of deeper meaning.

Nothing to do with the Religion of Peace! Repeat - nothing to do with the Religion of Peace!

Here's another cliché for you Mark - wake up and smell the coffee.

Update:

In the morning, neighbors said Hasan handed Qurans and donated his furniture to anyone who would take it.

Update:

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people and wounding 30 others at the Fort Hood Army Base in Texas, regularly described the war on terror as “a war against Islam,” according to a doctor who was in a graduate program with him.

While studying for a masters degree in public health in 2007, Hasan used a presentation for an environmental health class to argue that Muslims were being targeted by the U.S. anti-terror campaign, said Val Finnell, a classmate.

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THE ELEPHANT IN THE FORT

Yes, so I've been listening to the BBC's coverage of the act of mass murder at Fort Hood carried out by Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Just one thing missing - the fact that he was a Muslim who apparently entertained dreams of Jihad. Maybe that's not news? Best to focus on US foreign policy and how it enraged him....

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ABBAS MEETS HIS WATERLOO...

The BBC has a touching eulogy to "man of peace" and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas here. No mention of this holocaust denier's support for genocidal terrorism against Israel, of course. The sanitisation of Abbas is, of course, not just restricted to the BBC, but it needs to be exposed wherever it is found and, of course, the BBC has a duty to provide a balanced portrait of this godfather of Palestinian terrorism. Naturally, it won't just as it constantly drooled over Arafat.

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Question Time 5th November

As usual we will be shadowing Question Time with our very own Biased-BBC live-chat session tonight. Christopher Kelly has stirred the MPs expenses pot once more, David Cameron's "cast iron guarantee" will surely come up, and of course this may be one of the last ever editions of Question Time - McDoom is about half way through his Fifty Days To Save The World.

Tonight's event will be from Reading and the panel will be the Welsh Secretary Peter Hain MP, the Shadow Environment Secretary Nick Herbert MP, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner "Sir" Ian Blair, the former MEP and perma-tanned Robert Kilroy-Silk. The final "eh? who?" slot is taken up by a Natalie Haynes. Please join us as usual at 10:30pm with David Vance back in the Big Chair here!

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NEVER AGAIN?

I see the BBC is piling the pressure on David Cameron's new (supine) stance on the EU - using the ramblings of a French politician who suggests Cameron has "castrated" future UK influence in the post Lisbon world. (As if it would have any influence one way or another!) This is a moment of unrestrained joy for the ruthlessly pro-EU BBC - with the Czechs sadly caving in on Lisbon and poor little Cameron with nothing left to do but abandon any pretence of asserting British sovereignty in the guise of a "Never Again" claim that doesn't matter since Lisbon ensures there will be no need for anything again.

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YOU CAN CALL ME, AL!

Anyone listen to Al Gore interviewed - if that is the right word for it - on "Today" this morning? I was hoping that Naughtie might have found the time to ask Gore how it feels to be the first Green Billionaire, or perhaps why he has not given up eating meat yet, given the perils of meat eating highlighted by the IPCC no less! But alas, his fawning left no time for such questioning!

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ALL ABOUT PRIORITIES

It's so sweet to be back and enduring BBC coverage of world affairs. Take the news that Obama just suffered humiliating defeats in the US. Headline stuff, you might think. Nope. On the BBC US portal the big news is that an Italian judge convicts 23 Americans and two Italian secret agents over the CIA kidnap of an Egyptian cleric in 2003.

I heard Mark Mardell drooling about Obama and how "cool" he still is even after this bit of a a setback on the PM programme. Utterly pathetic. Did you hear him - he spoke as a fan, not a journalist.

The radical leftist agenda pursued by Obama the Cool is going to cause huge alienation in the coming year and it will be informative to watch the BBC do all that it can to try and protect the image of their man in the White House.

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Moore on Marr

Charles Moore here expertly casts his eye over Andrew Marr's BBC series The Making of Modern Britain. It pretty much sums up almost all that is wrong with the BBC today. In a nutshell, Marr ludicrously condemns anything to do with the political right and praises unreservedly the forces of "progress" - especially the trade unions. It's goodies versus baddies and we know who the villains are in Marr's universe.

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BACK!

Hi all. Just to say I have returned from my break over in the States and am pleased to report I have not caught any BBC output for the past 10 days! Instead, I tuned in to watch the excellent Fox News for some fair and balanced news - putting all points of view. My thanks to all my fellow writers for stepping in here during my absence - I will return tomorrow when the jetlag has worn off! Thanks also to all who have emailed me during my absence, I will respond in due course.

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Jo Abbess - Comedy Genius

Eco-warrior Jo Abbess, occasional editor of Roger Harrabin articles, is now focusing her attention on another BBC environment correspondent. I would quote some snippets but you really have to read the whole thing to get the full hilarious impact of her authoritarian pomposity.

The question is - will Richard Black follow Harrabin and do as Jo demands?

Update. It seems like a lot of effort considering Black is pretty much on her side anyway.

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Ethical Comparison Drawn

The BBC's Ethical Man attends a FreedomWorks meeting:

In the US state of Virginia the talk is of revolution. In the basement of a restaurant in Richmond we met 100 or so American patriots -ordinary people who claim to be the vanguard of a great new movement, a movement for American liberty.
"Lower taxes, less government, more freedom", is their rallying cry…

Their call to arms focuses on two issues: healthcare reform and - you guessed it - President Barack Obama's plan for a cap and trade system to regulate greenhouse gas emissions…

Most of the people I spoke at the Richmond meeting did not believe climate change is something they need worry about…

Bastards! They're no better than the murderous defenders of slavery:

As the meeting broke up one man took me aside to say he was not persuaded by the arguments he had heard.
"You are in a state that fought for the freedom to keep people in slavery," Phil told me.
Indeed, Patrick Henry, who demanded liberty or death as he helped launch the revolt against British tyranny, subsequently worked to defend the slave trade as an attorney.
Phil told me the story of Gabriel, a slave who, 24 years after the Declaration of Independence, attempted to lead a rebellion against the slave owners here in Richmond Virginia…
Gabriel was hanged just a couple of blocks away from the cellar where the FreedomWorks meeting was held.
"Freedom means different things to different people," Phil said as he left the meeting.

They even held their meeting "just a couple of blocks away" from where a slave was hanged! The comparisons are spooky, aren't they?

Coming soon - Ethical Man visits the Holocaust Museum in Washington and writes some nonsense about "deniers".

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JOYFUL BBC – CLIMATE CHANGE IS A BELIEF....

This was regarded as so important that it was on the BBC News website front page

A man has been told he can take his employer to tribunal on the grounds he was unfairly dismissed because of his views on climate change.

Tim Nicholson, 42, of Oxford, was made redundant in 2008 by Grainger Plc in Didcot, as head of sustainability.
He said his beliefs had contributed to his dismissal and in March a judge ruled he could use employment equality laws to claim it was unfair.
But the firm appealed against this as it believed his views were political.

After the hearing on Monday, Mr Nicholson said he was delighted by the judgement for himself and other people who may feel they are discriminated against because of their views on climate change.
His solicitor, Shah Qureshi, said: "Essentially what the judgment says is that a belief in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperative is capable of being a philosophical belief and is therefore protected by the 2003 religion or belief regulations."

Naturally the BBC is delighted. For years they have been shilling for the likes of Monbiot and Gore, pushing man made global warming as a political message and doing their best to ignore or demean anyone who questioned the theory. With judges veering towards the classification of the theory as a “belief” it could mean that critics could be identified as “climate change deniers”. From that it would only be a short step to the creation of denial as an offence against the “believers” and – hey presto – more money for Carter-Ruck and Schillings.

Stay tuned for the man made global warming message to become even more fervent as the true believers do their best to ratchet it up to messianic levels. Doubters will be demonised as servants of the great beast Anthropogenor (I’m not making that up – you’ve seen the end of days doomsday prediction that cost £6 million of your money) and cast out into the darkness –or, more likely sacked, fined or jailed.

Normally, of course, the BBC’s heart usually bleeds for people punished by the courts – but there are certain crimes that strike at everything the BBC holds dear so don’t hold your breath for any Newsnight features pimping sympathy for climate change deniers being hit by the full force of m’learned friends.....

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Open Thread

I declare this new thread open.

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Earley Morning

James Naughtie introducing a Steve Earle interview this morning:

"The American singer-songwriter Steve Earle has been interviewed quite often on this programme over the years about his political views."

I can't for the life of me think what it is about the political views of this anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Guantanamo, anti-death penalty left-wing American singer-songwriter that makes him such a favourite on the Today programme.

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MORE NUTT

Briefly, for those who believe Professor Nutt is a genuine scientist who was martyred for uttering objective truths about drug use, I recommend this article by Melanie Phillips. Hat tip to Marky.

There isn't the space on this blog to analyse why he so richly deserved the sack, but from what I've seen so far of the BBC's continued coverage this morning , you won't see it there. And for the record, though I am not a scientist, I do sit on a body which contains many experts on drugs (working in both academic fields and rehabilitation) who have markedly different views from Professor Nutt and his fellow government cronies. What they have been saying has been a huge matter of concern to my committee for years. But its views are consistently ignored by the BBC.

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