Mick Hartley

Blog

  • The female child rapist

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • The BBC and the Taliban

    An exposé of the BBC's unhealthy relationship with the Taliban, from David Rose and and Ali Hamedani at UnHerd:

    Since the Taliban returned to power, media have been censored and radio stations in particular forced off the air. Yet, curiously, one foreign broadcaster endures: the BBC.

    On 1 December 2022, the Taliban issued a decree closing down the two local stations run by the BBC’s rivals: Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. According to a Taliban spokesman, they were being silenced for their “non-compliance with journalistic principles and one-sided broadcasts”. Remarkably, though, the militants are happy to indulge their British counterpart, which broadcasts from Afghanistan in Dari and Pashto, while also hosting local variants of the BBC news website.

    But while the Corporation clearly enjoys its unusual role, is editorial independence really maintained? For as UnHerd has discovered, BBC funds frequently end up Taliban coffers, channelled via organisations led by extremists at the very heart of government. More worrying still, these relationships seemingly shape the Corporations coverage in Afghanistan.

    Read on for the details – including the inevitable censorship, as they drop programmes featuring women, or music, for fear of alienating their Taliban partners.

    The conclusion:

    Yet perhaps the most telling statement comes from the Taliban itself. “The BBC is a credible source of news for Afghanistan,” says its official government spokesperson. “[The Corporation] collaborates constructively with the Islamic Emirate.” With praise like that, it’s hard to see how the Corporation can truly wave the flag for journalistic impartiality.

    Put this alongside the Beeb's continuing pro-Hamas reporting and, well, it's not a good look. And it's our money they're spending.

  • No Jews, no jihad

    That Telegraph article.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It's been happening for years. From the JC, July 2015:

    A BBC documentary has substituted the word “Israelis” for "Jews" in its translation of interviews with Palestinians, its maker has admitted.

    Lyse Doucet has stood by the decision to translate “yahud” as “Israeli” in subtitles on her hour-long documentary Children of the Gaza War, which airs on BBC Two tonight.

    The correct translation for “yahud” from Arabic to English is “Jew”.

    So any sense of antisemitism – god forbid – is removed, and we're left with a good old anti-imperialist struggle, which all decent BBC-watching people can understand and sympathise with. Likewise jihad. Wouldn't want any hint that this is an Islamic struggle to remove Jews from dar al-Islam, and that this war, this incessant violence, is all about Islam.

  • Non-binary genders

    rude associations – now refers to people's presentation of themselves around the concepts of masculinity and femininity. It's cultural, not biological. So of course it's not binary. Admittedly it's something approaching binary in a strict Islamic society like Afghanistan – men in turbans and beards, women hidden away in burkas – but we don't do that. We do more or less whatever we feel like – even men with long hair and a lovely girly head tilt.

  • Providing a platform for terrorists’ propaganda

    “jihad against the Jews” was also mistranslated as saying he was fighting “Israeli forces”.

    The BBC is under pressure to reveal whether taxpayers’ money was given to Hamas during the making of Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone….

    Orly Goldschmidt, of the Israeli embassy in the UK, accused the corporation of “intentional mistranslation”, which she described as a “sinister and misleading policy of the BBC”.

    She said the translation was “not only false and deeply offensive, but it also excuses racism” and “does not allow viewers to see how children, and Palestinians at large, have been taught to hate ‘Jews’ from a very young age”.

    She added that omitting the word “jihad” from the translations “downplays the threat of terrorism that Israelis face on a daily basis”, and that the issue of mistranslations went beyond the documentary. “It reflects a very serious and systematic issue, which has taken root at the BBC, with regards to its anti-Israel bias,” she said….

    Fresh questions over the documentary come ahead of a planned protest outside the BBC by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism on Tuesday night. The group has said the film is a breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines and “a betrayal of licence fee payers” and will protest outside Broadcasting House, in central London, from 7pm.

    A spokesman for the campaign said: “The BBC has no shame, and Britain has had enough. For over 16 months, we have watched our national broadcaster provide ever more sympathetic coverage to a proscribed terrorist organisation, hiding behind claims of impartiality.

    “There is nothing impartial about giving credibility to the claims of terrorists. Providing a platform for terrorists’ propaganda, downplaying their crimes and continuing to refuse to call them terrorists is the BBC putting its thumb on the scale.

    “Enough is enough. It is time for the BBC to stop whitewashing terrorism. There must be an independent investigation into its bias in relation to its Middle East coverage.”

  • Faculty Vacancy Announcement at CUNY

    Hunter College, part of the City University of New York (via):

    As part of a Palestine Studies cluster hire, Hunter College is honored to announce its search for an open rank tenure-line professor in one of the social sciences who would join one or more of the departments of Anthropology, History, Sociology, Political Science, or Women’s and Gender Studies….

    We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender and sexuality. We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches.

    Not too diverse, obviously. Strong dislike of Jews is a given.

    Applicants must hold a PhD in one of the aforementioned fields or one closely related, provide evidence of a publication record and of excellent teaching and mentorship, particularly of undergraduates. Ideal candidates will also have a record of public engagement and community action.

    A photo of you holding up a "Stop the Nazi/Zionist genocide now" placard at a Free Palestine demo would go down very well.

  • Problems Stonewall has brought on itself

    allow him to be a scapegoat for problems Stonewall has brought on itself.

    It struggles on then, Stonewall, awaiting that final stake through the heart.

  • Argentina’s Nazi files

    al of the Nazis. These requests were not approved.

    Current president Javier Milei, however, appears to have changed tack. Milei met with representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center last week and the Times of Israel reports that the meeting was a success. The Center’s researchers will be given access to files relating to financing of the so-called ‘ratlines’ – systems by which Nazis were able to flee Europe. Rabbi Abraham Cooper told the newspaper that while other Argentine leaders had promised help in the past, Milei was the ‘first to act with lightning speed.’

    If these documents are released, they could help reveal much about how the ratlines operated. Key figures in Hitler’s administration were able to flee with the apparent collaboration of members of the Catholic church and foreign governments….

    Milei’s decision could be motivated by a number of factors. Milei has been called a ‘great friend’ of Israel and has taken steps to deepen diplomatic ties with the country. Last week he announced two days of national mourning after the bodies of two Israeli-Argentine hostages were returned by Hamas. He has also spoken of his deep respect for the Jewish people, some 200,000 of whom live in Argentina.

    He may also have one eye on domestic politics. He has made no secret of his hatred of Peronism and might hope that research of these documents could lead to further scrutiny on the role of the movement’s founder in the flight of Nazi war criminals to Argentina.

    It is unclear what, if anything, will be achieved in terms of accountability. After all, most, if not all, of those involved will surely now be dead. The contribution to the historical record on the other hand could be considerable.

    Unfortunately the whole Eichmann issue has been clouded by Hannah Arendt's famous conclusion that he was just a dull bureaucrat following orders – "the banality of evil". As we know now, Eichmann was far from being a mere cog in the machine, but was an enthusiastic and highly intelligent Nazi and, as the article here states, one of the main architects of the Holocaust. His defence in the Jerusalem trial – just following orders – fooled Arendt, but didn't fool the Israelis. 

  • Wiping out Ukraine

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Now, terrifyingly, with the full backing of the US.

  • Acting as a raw propaganda outfit for a proscribed terrorist group

    The latest from David Collier:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    His conclusion:

    The BBC paid £400,000 (of our money) – and then aired the sum of these parts to the British public as if it were the truth. Acting as a raw propaganda outfit for a proscribed terrorist group.

    This is beyond disgraceful. We cannot just move on. Heads must roll.

Powered by