On Friday Channel 4 News reprimanded their reporter Assed Baig after Guido revealed his racially-charged tweets. They were only the tip of the iceberg. Back in 2012 Baig wrote a blog arguing that injured British soldiers do not deserve the charity of the public as “they knew what they were signing up for”. He goes on say British soldiers aren’t “heroes“, suggesting the “real heroes” are the “resistance” fighting them:

“They are not my boys or ‘our’ boys. This may sound harsh to some, but they knew what they were signing up for, they went to fight in an occupation of a foreign land. If they get injured in the process it is the government’s responsibility to take care of them, not for them to rely on the charity of the public… On the back of the envelope [from the Royal British Legion] there is a ‘send a message of support to an injured hero’ plastered next to a British flag. Hero? Really? Since when did we start calling paid soldiers, with Kevlar protection, air support, heavy machine guns, armoured vehicles and tanks heroes? In this narrative the farmer who is defending his country from the occupier is the bad guy. Who are the real heroes?

We have whole-heartedly bought into this premise that soldiers are sacred and their role should never be questioned. I for one cannot accept it and must see the world in a much wider context. Rich versus poor, ruling elites versus the proletariat, the politicians versus the people, big business versus the indigenous people, the well-armed Western soldiers versus the rag tag resistance of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

This man is now employed as an investigative journalist by Channel 4 News…

It doesn’t end there. Another blog by Baig promotes conspiracy theories about the death of Osama bin Laden:

“as the news spreads out across the world, it raises more questions than it answers… Many will be suspicious of the US narrative. Many believe he was killed years ago since he has not played a major frontline role in recent years.”

In another blog, Baig played down the crimes of the Islamist extremist group Al Muhajiroun, Anjem Choudary’s Salafi group which has been a proscribed organisation since 2005:

“For all their ills, Al Muhajiroun have only carried out insensitive political protests at inappropriate times.”

Baig wrote that British Muslims should not celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee:

“There are a minority of Muslims that are falling over themselves to please the establishment and sign up to a colonial notion of tolerance and integration. Maybe… these Muslims have forgotten about the stolen jewels on the Queen’s crown, the British flags that once flew over the lands of their forefathers planted by an occupying British army and how colonialism still lives on in the shape of the occupation of Afghanistan”

Why is Channel 4 News employing a man with these extreme views?