Animal rights groups are better terrorists

[steevo]

Some good comments on this from readers here too.

The BBC has dropped plans to show a fictional terror attack in an episode of Casualty to avoid offending Muslims.

The first show of the hospital drama's new series was to have featured a storyline about an explosion caused by Islamic extremists.

The stars of Casualty won't be dealing with an explosion caused by Islamic extremists in case it offends Muslims

Now the bomb will be set off by animal rights campaigners instead.

A BBC spokesman said: "With any storyline there are lots of ideas that get put forward but don't make the series."

A blogger: "Funny how it's only the fictional terrorist attacks that seem to offend Muslims."

[Teddy Bear]

Richard Littlejohn, one of the few fine journalists we still have in this country, writes a piece on this event too, and includes other recent goings-on at the Beeb. I know all of us here will agree with his conclusion.

Truth is the first Casualty at the BBC
23:11pm 20th August 2007
Comments (8)

"Good morning, this is the news from the BBC. A group of animal rights activists has hijacked four airliners and flown them into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington."

I'm sorry, I'll read that again. "Four members of the anti-vivisection movement have blown themselves up on the London Transport network, killing 52 people and injuring hundreds more."

I don't think so. "Two doctors have attempted a suicide car bomb attack on Glasgow airport. The League Against Cruel Sports has claimed responsibility."

As the late Bill Deedes might have said: shurely shome mishtake.

But it all makes about as much sense as the BBC's decision to can an episode of Casualty which starts with a young Muslim blowing himself up in a crowded bus station - and rewrite it so that the bombing is carried out by animal rights extremists.

The Casualty plotline was rejected by the Beeb's "editorial and ethical standards" commissars, who were worried that it was stereotyping young Muslims as terrorists.

Another dramatic moment in Casualty: the BBC likes to boast about the gritty reality of its dramas - but if that were the case, they'd have stuck with the original Casualty script

The BBC likes to boast about the gritty reality of its dramas. But if that were the case, they'd have stuck with the original script.

In real life, it's Muslims committing all the terrorist atrocities in Britain these days.

That's not to say that all Muslims are terrorists, far from it, but to pretend that the bunny liberation brigade are bombing bus stations is preposterous.

Admittedly, the animal rights movement contains its fair share of violent lunatics. But much as they love beagles and lab rats, there is no recorded incident to my knowledge of any of them being prepared to lay down their own lives for the cause - although I do seem to remember one madwoman threw herself in front of a lorryload of veal calves a few years ago.

Even if we concede that the decision to pull the Casualty episode was taken for the most laudable of reasons, it is yet more evidence of the institutionalised bias, cowardice and cultural cringe which runs through the Corporation like the lettering in a stick of rock.

The simple fact is that the BBC, like the police, like the CPS and so many other of our public institutions, is scared to death of upsetting Muslims.

No such self-censorship applies when it comes to offending other religious groups.

The BBC went to court to defend its right to "free speech" when it was determined to screen the appalling, puerile Jerry Springer: The Opera - which portrayed Christ as an infantilised, nappy-wearing copraphiliac who was "a little bit gay".

The protests of 47,000 devout Christians counted for nothing. But, then, devout Christians are unlikely to storm Broadcasting House demanding the beheading of the director-general.

Let's say someone was daft enough to write a musical which featured the Prophet Mohammed as an incontinent paedophile. Do you think the BBC would move heaven and earth to broadcast it in the name of defending "free speech"?

Precisely.

The BBC groupthink permeates its entire output, from its news bulletins, through drama and even the website.

Take the MI5 series, Spooks. It's good fun and well done, but it's a complete parcel of nonsense designed to peddle the Guardianista worldview.

The last series featured a fundamentalist Christian sect, hellbent on killing Muslims (yeah, right).

Then there was the bombing of an oil depot and a plot to blow up an airliner over London. Jihadists? Nope, rogue elements in the security services and a deranged, Tory-supporting newspaper baron.

And a special two-parter centred on the takeover of the Saudi Embassy by Islamist terrorists demanding the release of al-Qaeda prisoners.

Turns out - you're ahead of me here, aren't you? - that it wasn't Osama's boys after all, it was the evil Izza-ra-ay-lees in disguise, trying to destabilise the Saudis and blame it all on peace-loving Muslim freedom fighters.

So there you have it: the threat to life and limb in Britain today comes from, in no particular order, the provisional wing of Fleet Street; renegade members of MI6; Mossad; and genocidal Christian evangelicals.

I'm only surprised that they didn't rule that the bus station bombing in Casualty should be carried out by "militants" linked to UKIP, demanding a referendum on the European Constitution.

There's a lot going on under the radar, too. The BBC website forums automatically delete any criticism of Islam immediately. Yet a posting which called Christ a 'B-A-S-T-A-R-D' was allowed to remain for a week until the Mail on Sunday got on the case.

This comment came from someone called Colonelartist (not his real name, I suspect) who has also written that the Jews in concentration camps enjoyed better conditions and freedoms than the Palestinians, without incurring the wrath of the editorial and ethical standards watchdogs.

After my recent TV documentary on anti-Semitism, someone called "Iron Naz" posted a comment on the BBC website which perpetrated the old, discredited and utterly false libel that the Talmud legitimises Jewish supremacy over other faiths.

Last time anyone looked, it was still there, despite protests from the Board of Deputies and Jewish community groups.

I'm still not sure why there was a BBC forum devoted to the programme. After all, the Beeb had turned it down flat and it went out on Channel 4.

Anyway, when did it become part of the remit for licence-payers to provide a noticeboard for anonymous anti-Semites?

Meanwhile, the BBC is still refusing to publish a report it commissioned into whether or not there is systematic anti-Israel bias in its news coverage from the Middle East.

So we'll take that as a "yes" then.

I don't like to indulge in gratuitous Beeb-bashing, because there's so much good about the organisation.

But it is too big, too unaccountable and too riddled with an institutionalised mindset which holds that it's fine to heap scorn on Christians and Jews, but cravenly appeases Muslims at every turn.

The BBC is a publicly-funded body which has a duty to be even-handed to all and not pander to the political prejudices of those who work for it.

If it can't manage that, it should be broken up and sold off.

No offence.

[Teddy Bear]

A blogger at The Telegraph offers this. It's worth following the link and reading the comments there too.

BBC's coverage of Islam is gutlessPosted by Damian Thompson on 20 Aug 2007 at 16:56

A quick thought, in the light of the justified public scorn over the BBC banning a Muslim terrorist storyline from Casualty. The BBC’s coverage of Islam is creepily PC and downright gutless. Channel 4, on the other hand, isn’t afraid to investigate the “religion of Peace”.

The views of Pakistani protesters are echoed closer to home

In the last few years, Channel 4 has given us documentaries on radical mosques, on the extremist links of “moderate” Muslim spokesmen, and on the alarmingly high support for terrorism among British Muslims.

Here are some quotes from the Dispatches film “Undercover Mosque” shown in January. The speakers are Abu Usamah, a self-proclaimed “moderate” preacher from Birmingham, and Dr Ijaz Mian, a senior imam.

Usamah: “They will fight in the cause of Allah. I encourage all of you to be from among them, to begin to cultivate ourselves for the time that is approaching.”

Mian: “You have to live like a state-within-a-state until you take over.”

Usamah on Osama bin Laden: “He’s better than a million George Bushes, he’s better than a thousand Tony Blairs, because he’s a Muslim.”

Guess who was investigated by West Midlands police after these disgusting views were aired. The speakers or Channel 4? The latter, of course.

The BBC, in contrast, is in no danger of having its collar felt by the Old Bill for criticising Islam. It has its own thought police who squash any remotely controversial storyline long before a programme is aired. And you’re paying their salaries.