We noted yesterday the attempted hijacking by the Somali woman in New Zealand, and it took quite a bit of searching until we could locate her name.

For some strange reason, most media outlets are reticent to tell us who she is.

Hmmm. I wonder why?

A 33-year-old woman immigrant from Somalia was charged with hijacking Friday after invading the cockpit of a small commuter plane on a domestic flight in New Zealand and stabbing the two pilots.

The plane, carrying seven passengers on an early morning, 240-kilometre flight from Blenheim to Christchurch, made a safe emergency landing after the knife-wielding woman fell in severe turbulence, police said.

One of the pilots was so badly slashed on the hands as he fought off the woman who tried to grab the controls that he had to undergo surgery.

The co-pilot and another woman passenger who intervened were treated for less serious cuts.

Police said the woman, who demanded to be flown to Australia at one stage, was sitting immediately behind the pilot and jumped up and attacked him 10 minutes after take-off.

She claimed she had brought two bombs on board, but army experts who searched the plane, which was taxied to an isolated part of the airfield, found nothing. The Christchurch airport was closed to all flights and the terminal evacuated for more than two hours until the all-clear was given, reports said.

New Zealand television channels said the woman - who they named as Asha Ali Abdille - came to New Zealand as a refugee with a troubled past in 1994 when she was aged 19 and was known to police.

She had been the subject of questions in parliament following an on-going fight with the immigration department which rejected her application for New Zealand residence visas for 14 members of her extended family.

The woman had been working as a fruit picker in the Blenheim area and leaders of the Somali immigrant community in New Zealand were reported as having distanced themselves from her.

Just curious as to why in all these stories nobody wants to name her?

Anyone want to hedge a guess?

While further looking into this story, I find it curious that passengers on short domestic flights do not pass through security screening. I suspect that will soon be changed.

Air New Zealand general manager of short haul airlines, Bruce Parton, said the airline was reviewing its security procedures.

"Today's incident, although a one-off, has naturally given us cause to conduct a thorough review of our safety and security systems and processes on regional domestic flights,'' Parton said.

Passengers boarding short haul flights at New Zealand airports do not routinely pass through security screening.

Can you say soft target?

As we know from recent headlines, it's not beneath terrorists using unstable women to do their evil deeds. Of course, his may well not be terror-related, but it would be nice if the media dug a little deeper here.

A few more details on her past emerge.

Ms Abdille was born in Sudan but grew up in Somalia. When fighting began in Mogadishu in 1991, she was separated from her family and eventually flown to New Zealand in 1994 as a refugee.

She has moved frequently since and is said to be alienated from her community and frustrated by failures to reunite with her family.

A Blenheim Muslim community spokesman, Zayad Blissett, said that Ms Abdille was not part of the community. “She has quite a history of mental instability and she has threatened to kill family here. She's an alcoholic and very unstable.”

A taxi driver says Ms Abdille had seemed "vague" when he took her to Blenheim airport. The driver, who identified himself as Colin, told New Zealand radio: “She was a wee bit vague. He described her as "away with the fairies.”

"She couldn't work out where she wanted to go for while which I thought was quite strange at that time of the morning. She was very nervous, very unsure of where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do.”

All the more reason to wonder why she was allowed on a plane.

Cross posted at JWF.

BACK FROM A WEEK in Eastern Prussia, where the posting has been non-existent due to a wind-up computer, a dial-up connection and Polak software. I have been watching Sky News, however, so I'm perfectly up to date on the Clinton-Obama roadshow.

One thing does bother me - when are the Republicans going to hold their primaries?

They don't even make an attempt at being objective in this non-bylined story.

It'd be interesting to know who put this agitprop together.

A Palestinian "protester" dons a Santa outfit, instigates some trouble with Israeli troops and this is the resulting headline:

'Father Christmas' beaten in West Bank demo: organisers

It's all downhill from there.

Israeli guards beat five demonstrators, including one dressed as Father Christmas, during a protest on Friday against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank, organisers said.

About 50 Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists attended the rally in the village of Um Salomona, near Bethlehem, the Biblical birthplace of Jesus that is preparing to celebrate Christmas.

Israeli border guards armed with truncheons briefly detained one activist and beat another five during the rally, the organisers told AFP, adding that one was wearing a Santa Claus costume.

No mention who these organisers are, what group they belong to, or whether they have any track record of pulling such transparent stunts to gain attention.

See, see, the Israelis are beating up Santa!

And AFP willingly plays along.

An Israeli army spokesman said there had been disorder at the protest and that several demonstrators who were briefly detained were subsequently released.

Israel says the massive barrier of electric fencing, barbed wire and concrete walls built across the West Bank is needed to stop potential attackers from infiltrating the country and attacking Jewish settlements on Arab land.

Yes, and it's been quite effective. Why tear down something that's working?

The Palestinians say the project is aimed at grabbing their land and undermining the viability of their promised state.

Good grief. 

Also at JWF. 

In this post, written last month, I mentioned, en passant, the case of John Payne, the white man whose head was sliced open with a machete in a racist attack by a gang of Pakistani thugs. Now, via the Pub Philosopher, I read that three of Payne's attackers - Sodrul Islam, Delwar Hussain, and Mamoon Hussain - have been convicted of attempted murder following a trial at the Old Bailey. They will be sentenced in the New Year. Of course, these three men appear to have been no more than the particularly violent tip of the racist iceberg: as many as thirty men were involved in the attack, which was apparently motivated by their anger at seeing a group of five white people drinking in a pub on the Clichy estate in Stepney, an area that the attackers regarded as "their turf". After shouting racist abuse at the drinkers, they launched their murderous attack.

Now, what we have in this case is an attack by a large gang on a group of people whose only crime was to go into an area in which people of their race were not welcome. An attack, moreover, which left its victim suffering permanent brain damage. And yet, the only report of the conviction has been the comparatively brief mention of it in the Daily Mail, cited above (a few local papers reported the trial as it was in progress). Had the races of the parties been reversed - had a gang of white thugs set upon a small group of Asians for doing nothing more than venturing onto "their turf", shouted racist abuse at them, and then almost killed one of them - this would have been front page news. As it is, the mainstream media collectively deems this horrific crime to be utterly unnewsworthy. And I'll bet that you won't hear Boris Johnson proposing an early day motion against this kind of racism, either.

Click to read more ...

Looking at al-Beeb's website this evening, I chanced upon the news that two Bollywood stars are claiming that they had racist remarks shouted at them from a passing car, as they shot a film in Southall. This, clearly very important and newsworthy, story is currently receiving second billing on the "England" section of the BBC News website, and has had quite a lengthy, illustrated, article devoted to it. Of course, the Beeboids did not see fit to publish a single paragraph on a rather more serious recent case in which a man had his skull sliced open with a machete in a racist attack, but that's understandable: the victim was only white, after all.

But, what struck me rather more than this anti-white racism (which, let's face it, is no more than you expect from al-Beeb), was this sentence, regarding the absolutely charming part of London in which the alleged shouting of racist abuse took place:

The town's Pakistani and Indian communities for the most part live happily alongside Somalis and the newest immigrants from eastern Europe.

On the BBC news website this evening, I find the following mildly bizarre paean in praise of the frugality of Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw:

Push bike pushes MP expenses down

The MP who claimed the lowest expenses in Devon and Cornwall for 2006/7 says it is because he travels almost everywhere by bicycle.

Ben Bradshaw, the Labour MP for Exeter claimed £131,000 - more than £30,000 less than the South West average.

[...]

Mr Bradshaw, who also travels standard class on the train to Westminster, said he was aware of who foots the bill.

"It's important for all politicians and public servants to remember it's the people's money that's being spent," he said.

In 1986 he joined the BBC as reporter with BBC Radio Devon. In 1989 he became the award winning Berlin correspondent with BBC Radio and was serving in the city at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He became a reporter in 1991 with BBC Radio's The World At One programme, where he stayed until his election to Westminster.

When first elected in 1997, Ben Bradshaw was one of the first gay MPs to be out at the time he was initially elected, along with Stephen Twigg. He lives with his partner, Neal Dalgleish, who is a BBC producer.

Did anyone else out there see the BBC "Question Time" programme last night? It was truly awful - a new low! The panel consisted of the late Saddam's best friend, the jihad-supporting George Galloway; we also had the execrable Conservative Francis Maude, Tony Blair's former flat-mate Lord Charlie Falconer, Fraser Nelson from the allegedly conservative minded Spectator magazine, and leftist historian Maria Misra.

Galloway bullied his way through the programme, cheered on by the moonbats in the audience. He made so MANY offensive remarks, so many lies, that there's not enough time to detail them except to say that not one of the panel stood up to this bully. Georgie-boy seems to think that bellicosity and verbal dexterity will always win the day. Well, in BBC land he may have a point but I would love to argue with him and I would not let his feverish imaginations go unanswered. Ms Misra proved a good friend of the mullahs in Iran, and the audience cheered when she and Galloway portrayed America, not Ahmadinejad, as the problem.

Some Question Time's are almost bearable but not this one. I was enraged right through it feeling that BBC bias was once more on full display. Fraser Nelson was a poor champion of the right, and Francis Maude is as soft as they come amongst Conservative ranks. 

Just switched the t.v. on, and for about fifty milli-seconds was treated to the owner of the Most Boring Voice in the Western World!

Yes; Alan Johnston is back, with his truly cringe-making reminiscences of life and hardship in Gaza.

 Oh how I wish they had at least kept him for the five years that our Terry was chained up, mainly because the sound of his droning adenoidal rasp would have driven his captors stone crazy.

 Come back Terry Waite; all is forgiven!

Newsbusters brings us what for some may be a shocking transcript and video of two 'journalists' showing their total bias and lack of objectivity (and therefore ability to do their damn jobs!) for all to see. Whichever side of the debate you're on, it is clear that this pretty pair have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about bringing their own side of the debate to work with them, so to speak.

Howard Kurtz is asking them why positive indicators from Iraq were buried to obscurity by most media outlets in the US, but negative events would always be splashed over the front pages. The responses were quite blatant examples of the enormous ideological agenda which these so-called 'journalists' bring to their supposedly objective work.

Troop casualties fall for the fourth straight month?

Robin Wright of the Washington Post:

"The fact is we're at the beginning of a trend -- and it's not even sure that it is a trend yet. There is also an enormous dispute over how to count the numbers."

Pretty simple, moron. Note the names of the poor bloody soldiers who have died while you were busy undermining their mission, add them up. That's how we count numbers in the real world.

Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent:

"But that's the problem, we don't know whether it is a trend about specifically the decline in the number of U.S. troops being killed in Iraq. This is not enduring progress. This is a very positive step on that potential road to progress."

Got that? Troop casualties falling for four months straight is unclear and definitely not any kind of a trend, and of course there is a mythical 'dispute' over how to count to a few dozen. Bet if it was a few hundred that 'dispute' would vanish like a puff of integrity.

But, asks Kurtz, what if the figures showed US and Iraqi civilian casualties going up instead of down? The instant response from dear Barb:

"Oh, I think inevitably it would have. I mean, that's certainly -- that, by any definition, is news. Look, nobody more than a Pentagon correspondent would like to stop reporting the number of deaths, interviewing grieving families, talking to soldiers who have lost their arms and their legs in the war. But, is this really enduring progress?

We've had five years of the Pentagon telling us there is progress, there is progress. Forgive me for being skeptical, I need to see a little bit more than one month before I get too excited about all of this."

Wow. She might as well have gone into the studio wearing a MoveOn T-Shirt. And this is a chief correspondent from a national news station...the naked face of the media enemy, there for all to see.  

Last evening saw Northern Ireland's version of "Question Time" return. Oh dear! It's called "Let's Talk" but on reflection, it might be better NOT to talk based on the gibberish put across last night.

As ever we had the IRA/Sinn Fein/DUP governing axis represented this time by Michelle Gildernew and Nigel Dodds respectively. We then had celebrity gay protestor Peter Tatchell and Irish writer Mary Kenny.  

There was a quite interesting debate about the "Causewaygate" issue. This is the situation which has arisen where a DUP Minister, Arlene Foster, is "minded" to award a major development contract at the Giant's Causeway, to a person who is, entirely coincidentally, a paying member of the DUP. The DUP sees no conflict here, nor would I it to. Snouts in the trough time, folks and don't we all know it? I was pleased to see Peter Tatchell ask some sensible searching questions of the DUP's Nigel Dodds. Michelle Gildernew, by comparison, seemed more concerned to keep private enterprise out of just about everything in which she is involved. Mary Kenny also spoke sensibly on the issue, wondering what is wrong with letting the private sector do things in preference to the State? She even criticised - GASP - Socialism - to the evident horror of the audience whose average age seemed about 10.

Then they discussed the vexed topic of "gay rights"! No one had the  bottle, except perhaps Mary Kenny, to tell Tatchell that gays need to stop whingeing and demanding legal rights greater than anyone else. The BBC is avowedly pro-Gay rights and Mark Carruthers seemed very uncomfortable with the idea that anyone could oppose "Hate Crime" legislation. I do oppose this and see no reason to apologise for it. I'm sick of the militant gay lobby thinking it is above criticism. Gays, like the rest of us, can do what they want in the privacy of their own homes but in public they must be subject to the same laws as the rest of the population and so I do not think they require additional legislation. If a hotel owner doesn't want to let a room - HIS property remember, not the States' - to a gay person, that's fine by me! Same applies if it is a black person, a white person, someone with red hair, a Welsh person, a Vulcan, whatever. You see a Hotel is PRIVATE property and people must have the right to decide who they will allow or prohibit from their property. This point was not fully made last night.

All in all - watching "Let's Talk" is a bit like watching a car crash. Awful but fascinating. It's a little love-in these days between the DUP and IRA/Sinn Fein, with window dressing in the form of a mainland British personality and then the token southern Irish personality - a little bit of social engineering by the Beeb.

I happened to catch the late night ITN news in the UK as it reviewed the Petraeus Report on the Surge in Iraq. It was interesting to note the rampant anti-Bush bias that is being pumped throught our newsrooms dressed up as "news." Obviously the fact that General Petraeus has something positive to say about the military objectives being met was met with complete dismay in the newsrooms. Instantly, we had political correspondents comment that "President Bush will be able to hide behind this report",  "It was a good news day even though Iraq is a disaster," etc etc. Let's be clear - the UK media are ONLY interested in US failure and defeat, one reason why I despise them. The fact of the matter is that MANY brave US soldiers are doing a brilliant job in the most horrible circumstances and on this day of all days, we salute them. It's that simple.

As the follow-on item, and in another clear example of anti-Bush anti-US military propagandising, ITN took their cameras off to interview the families of some of those in the US who serve in Iraq. The tone was that it was a terrible strain when their loved ones are away from home and it would be best to get out of Iraq. I can understand this attitude but would suggest that the overwhelming number of military families support the mission in Iraq. ITN couldn't find any. What a disgraceful organisation, full of bias.

From the BBC:

A man has appeared in court accused of preparing acts of terrorism in his home town in South Yorkshire.

Nicholas Roddis, of Reedham Drive, Bramley, Rotherham, appeared at London's Old Bailey on Friday by video link from custody.

The 22-year-old was remanded in custody for a plea and case management hearing on 21 November.

At his next court appearance, the charge of preparing acts of terrorism will be put to him.

Click to read more ...

The BBC is racist! Or so says award-winning writer Jimmy McGovern who has accused it of being "one of the most racist institutions in England" during an interview on BBC Five Live. McGovern said while there were "lots of black faces in the BBC", they were working in the canteen. What rubbish. The BBC goes out of its way to employ ethnic minorities at every level. Given the frequency with which we see various shades of coloured folk presenting our TV programmes, I think McGovern could not be more wrong. There is only one group that the BBC ignores -  white anglo-saxon heterosexual males who love their country. McGovern is a died in the wool unreconstructed Marxist.

How many times have we Brits been subjected to pronouncements by the Muslim Council of Britain?  It must run into dozens over the past two years since the Islamic terrorist attacks in London.  The MCB contains some pretty unpleasant characters - with ideas on the annihilation of Israel and a rather feeble talent in concealing some of the more obvious 'understandings' of why Muslims as a whole seem hell-bent on world domination.

What I have yet to hear or read in the MSM is anything significant about this organisation.  The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain is made up of what I consider to be a very brave bunch of individuals, all of whom have shorn the the lifestyle trappings of this twisted cult in order to show fealty and assimilation into their adopted country.  I welcome the establishment of the Council for it shows not only the indigenous people in this country are sick, sore and tired of repeated attempts to stealthily inject a dose of Islamism into the overall social fabric of our society. 

I concede members of the Council have been on one or two programmes.  However, how does that compare with the air time afforded to militant scumbags, niqab-sporting oddities and so-called Islamic moderates.  Groups such as this Council need to be promoted and encouraged.  They hope to prosper.  I share that hope.

Poor old BBC! I see that it has been forced to apologise once more after a blunder in another interactive television programme. BBC Northern Ireland issued the apology after admitting that a programme designed to test if sectarian views continued to be held 10 years after the second IRA ceasefire had given viewers the wrong answers. Thousands of people took part in the interactive State of Minds quiz broadcast live on BBC1 last month. As part of the State of Minds programme, viewers were encouraged to text in their answers to a series of questions to test their attitudes to diversity.

They were then sent a message telling them whether they were 'tolerant' or 'intolerant' and how they compared with others. However, the BBC has since contacted hundreds of people to tell them they had got it wrong. In all cases the blunder meant that people were given the exact opposite answer to their true result.

LOL - what makes me laugh is the idea that anyone would ask the BBC if they were "tolerant"!!!!

(Mind you, in an example of enlightened BBC judgement, I will be on the BBC Radio Ulster Nolan Show discussing student grants!)

Hat-tip to the ATW reader for the story.

BBC Northern Ireland has given the tragic death of Lance Corporal Darren Flowers prime position on its website.  L/Cpl Flowers was killed when hit by shrapnel whilst serving in Basra.  His funeral took place with full military honours in Portstewart, Co Londonderry earlier today.  Perhaps the saddest aspect of all in this story is that Darren Flowers has already resigned from the Army by the time he arrived for duty in Iraq.

Why am I mentioning the plight of this brave soldier?  To highlight the fact that the Army in Northern Ireland was, both for the duration of the Troubles and since, made up of a significant section of the Ulster population.  There was no such thing as 'Brit troops go home'.  For many hundreds of serving soldiers they WERE HOME.  So why did Auntie show such appalling bias over its coverage of the ending of Operation Banner?  Like the sewage-infested waters of Gloucestershire, MOPEing separatists came oozing down Belfast's streets from all points west to tell various BBC reporters of how their lives had been really terrible under 'occupation' from the Army.  There was no hint of how things could have been different had these individuals not harboured, supported and justified acts of terrorism committed by the Provisional IRA.  Jeremy Vine's programme on Radio 2 played the atrocious Go On Home British Soldiers, which contains the following lines (hat-tip to 'O'Neill on Biased BBC):

'Throughout our history We were born to be free
So get out British bastards leave us be.'

This the 'impartiality' we're supposed to be getting for our licence money is it?  To the Lefty, Islingtonian, Guardian-obsessed luvvies at Auntie, the Army probably does fit the scumbag separatist narrative.  To the overwhelming majority of the British people, they were in Ulster to carry out a task.  That task took place and was achieved with the contribution of British subjects born in Northern Ireland.  The next time political editors at the BBC sanction such an appalling soundtrack to a story regarding the role of our own Army in our own country, they should ask themselves whether their warped sense of values, as expressed in the line about 'British bastards' leaving, also applies to the family of L/Cpl Flowers and the countless other Ulster-born troops who have played their noble part.

Yesterday David commented on the Telegraph story about UKIP's being 'down to its last £5,000'. There's just one problem. It isn't true.

Dr Whittaker said that the article was "a disgraceful piece of journalism" and that it is nonsense that the party is ‘down to it's last £5,000’, as the newspaper alleges.

“During the court case considering Alan Bown’s donations, I was asked how much UKIP has in the bank. But this figure has nothing to do with the party’s solvency. Party expenditure is covered by income from donations and membership subscriptions and this is how it always has been."

Click to read more ...

Interested to read that the BBC has been forced to spent precious taxpayers money  teaching their staff not to lie. The decision to send 16,500 employees on an "integrity" course in the wake of the fake TV shows scandal was condemned by MPs.

Tory MP Philip Davies asked: "Is funding a training programme to tell your staff not to lie and cheat viewers a good use of licence-fee payers' money? Perhaps you need to look at your recruitment process if you have to train them on such fundamentals as not lying or cheating?" But the BBC insisted the training programme, called Safeguarding Trust, was a good idea.

I suggest that Mr Davies is absolutely right. IF you have to run a course instructing staff to be honest, the chances are you have the wrong staff, honestly!

Did you read the details of the deception which the BBC has systematically carried out in it's flagship children's and charity phone-in programmes? Children in Need, Comic Relief and Sport Relief all featured fake competition winners, the corporation said!

The fake winners were put on Comic Relief on BBC1 in March, TMi on CBBC in September 2006, and Sport Relief on BBC 1 in July 2006. On Children in Need in November 2005 on BBC1 Scotland a fictitious winner's details were broadcast because no telephone calls had got through from the public. The Liz Kershaw Show on BBC 6 Music and White Label on the World Service were repeat offenders. Neither their competitions nor the prizes existed and all callers featured were members of the production team or their friends.

Clearly any sense of ethics has gone out the window! I wonder if ANYONE will be sacked as a result of this widespread fraud? Given it's position as National Broadcaster, care of the tax-payer, this breach in trust really makes me wonder if it is not time to take the axe to the BBC? What say you - do we need a State broadcaster in 2007?

Remember back in 2001 when the, then, Director General of the BBC, Greg Dyke, said the corporation was 'hideously white'?  I am waiting, six years later for someone to point out that the same institution is now 'hideously ethnic'.  I suspect I'll have a long wait.

I've mentioned this phenomenon in passing but I now feel it is something that requires a full-length rant.  Twenty years ago we had two black newsreaders: Maura Stewart and Sir Trevor MacDonald.  Nobody ever thought about their ethnic background because they were such professional people with an excellent ability to read the news.  In short, notwithstanding their background, they were amongst the most dedicated people in the business.  Also, the proportion of ethnic representation on front line news coverage was broadly reflective of the demographic breakdown of the country as a whole.  Can the same really be said for the news departments of the BBC, ITV Channel 4 and Channel 5 today?

I don't think so.  Nearly every single news correspondent - especially on the BBC, every 'progressive' liberal's nocturnal frisson - seems to be Asian or black?  Are these people in the pay of Auntie because they were the very best candidates for the position?  Or, as seems more likely, is their skin tone and oriental name the killer decider when being interviewed by the Beeb's Guardianistas (or their equally wacko counterparts on Channel 4, etc.)?  How many media graduates are there in British universities year after year?  How many of those will be with first or upper second class honours?  More importantly, how many of those will be individuals from indigenous communities in this country?  Are we really supposed to believe that the current crop of the ethnic media mafia on our news programmes, massively over-represented that they are, were all decided purely on the basis of merit? 

'Oh that 'orrible McCann.  Making an issue of race out of something unimportant,' will go the cries from the lunatic fringes of the blogosphere.  Except that it isn't me that is making an issue out of race, it is many of the public institutions of this country, who appear desperate to employ anyone whose 'face fits' in order to show how 'wonderfully' multi-cultural we are.  That's why nearly every public sector advertisement has to have an ethnic face on the photograph; why we have to have a panoply of ethno-orientated bodies; why ethnic minorities are now over-represented on the various news and media pay rolls; and why sectors such as the police are now going head-over-heels to discriminate against white candidates in the hope that the police will be 'more reflective' of the communities they serve.  Nobody seems to have paused to reflect on the idiocy of letting all these different tribes settle here in the first place - especially in the numbers that have arrived.  If immigration had been properly managed the issue of 'community reflection', and other PC-orgasmic terms, would not have been necessary.  Ethnic minorities make up about 7% of the population.  They certainly make up more than 7% of the public and media sectors' strategies of employee 'meritocracy'.