Wednesday, 11 July 2007
The dangers of providing links to your sources
Over at Comment is Free, Tony Greenstein (profile: "a founding member of Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a member of Jews Against Zionism") is having a go at Richard Littlejohn and his programme on Channel 4 the other day about anti-Semitism, The War on Britain's Jews.
Now, I didn't watch the programme in question, largely because I am on record as saying that Richard Littlejohn is a cunt; a view I now restate. But that's no excuse for distortion of this sort:
The main thrust of the programme was the alleged increase in anti-semitism. Yet even the statistics used by the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Anti-semitism show (paragraph 29, page 14) that there was a 14% decline in anti-semitic incidents from 2004 to 2005.
Oh dear, Tony, you shouldn't have linked to the report. For when you check the citation, you find this (pdf):
In 2005 the CST, a charitable organisation which provides security and defence services and advice to the Jewish community, recorded 455 antisemitic incidents, a 14% fall from 2004, but the second highest annual total since the Trust began recording incidents in 1984.
So anti-Semitic incidents fell from their highest-ever annual total in 2004 to their second highest-ever annual total in 2005. In other words, you've just cited a report that shows that anti-Semitic incidents are indeed at an all-time modern high.
Now, it's possible that Greenstein stopped reading at the comma after the word "2004", and so didn't realise his schoolboy error. The alternative - that he read the whole sentence, clearly understood it, and then deliberately misrepresented its import - well, that would be fatal for his credibility, wouldn't it?
Oh, and just in case you're too stupid - or dishonest - to understand numbers, there's even a helpful graph:
So this would seem to be a slam-dunk. (Amazing what you can do with statistics, isn't it?)
But wait - there's more...
If you go to the website of the CST (Community Security Trust), the organisation whose statistics Greenstein cites so cack-handedly in his attempt to downplay the incidence of anti-Semitism, you find that, in addition to the figures for 2004 and 2005 quoted above, they have now produced their report for 2006 (pdf) and - oh dear, can you see what's coming?
The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 594 antisemitic race hate incidents throughout the UK in 2006. This is a 31% rise from the 455 incidents recorded in 2005, and is the highest total since records began in 1984.
I must say that it takes a special kind of moron to be outwitted by Richard fucking Littlejohn.
Labels: Idiotarians
You, and several others, deserve medals for trawling through all these lnks.
How do you get the time?
The program was actually rather good - and I also have a particularly low opinion of the cokney c**t. Gave all sides a pretty good kicking and had balanced interviews with several (non anti-semitic) lefties.
I can easily understand why the anti-semitic-in-denial lefties are so aggitated by it. The truth often hurts.
http://www.geocities.com/tonynotgreenstein/
http://www.buggerance.blogspot.com
http://buggerance.blogspot.com/2007/07/sorry-mister-greenstein-but-no-you.html
any other jew = A ok in my book
Littlejohn should be fucking gangraped but I'm afraid he might enjoy it too much.
As for this Greek Jew Fucker Who Has Too Much Fucking Time on his hands -- get back to what you're paid for -YES I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!
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