While I’ve been away from blogging I caught what little news I did mostly from Ceefax. This comes from Monday’s Ceefax page 117:
The Western firm targeted in the shooting that killed six in Saudi Arabian city Yanbu is evacuating its foreign staff.
Two Americans, two Britons, an Australian and a Saudi national died in Saturday’s gun attack at the offices of engineering firm ABB Lummus.
Note the careful delineation of the nationalities of the six victims. Note in contrast that ABB-Lummus is merely described as “Western.” Actually it it Swiss-Swedish, having been formed by a merger in 1988 of Swedish company Asea and a Swiss company with the confusing initials BBC, standing in this case for Brown, Boveri & Cie. (Why “& Cie”, which I thought meant the same as “& Co.”, should get its own initial is a mystery to me.)
True, ABB-Lummus is a now a multinational company with a mutinational workforce. But the BBC never has any trouble about specifying the American roots of US multinationals. I rather think the reason they slurred the national origin of the company while laboriously spelling out the national origins of the murdered men is that the deaths of Americans, Britons and Australians suggest that terrorism is a punishment for the forces of those nations being in Iraq where as the targeting of a Swiss-Swedish company suggests that terrorism is directed against all infidels.
Natalie,
Brown, Boveri used to pride itself in being “the other BBC” – a way of strengthening the brand (at a time when “BBC” implied impeccable corporate values). Certainly my father always used to refer to them in that way (back in the 60s and 70s).
R.
I would have thought that you guys in the pro-war lobby might have taken a little time out to think over the last few days, given the disgusting revelations of abuse in Iraqi prisons.
Read this Iraqi prisoner’s first person account:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3689371.stm
Laura Nere, what is there to take time out for? The complaints expressed here about the hypocrisy, willful hatred, plain lies and wrongful actions operated throughout the BBC media – are just that – genuine complaints about wrongful acts.
That Iraqi prisoners families feel able to make complaints about wrongful acts committed by some of the troops in Iraq is a bad reflection on those specific troops, and action is now being taken to rectify the matter.
That is a huge step up from the situation that existed under Saddam Hussein.
If you wish to compare the actions of the troops with the actions of the BBC – then consider how the BBC has continued to manipulate news with total disregard to the facts – despite having given assurances (following the recent court case) that it would rectify this matter. It has failed to do so – Any complaints here about its continued abuse of its charter are therefore fair and justified.
I wonder why the BBC never picked up on the veterans against Kerry and Sadr being politically isolated amongst Shias? Oh and Shias in Najaf knocking off members of Sadr’s rabble.
Gosh you’d think they had an agenda never to report good news for republicans. Meanwhile the top america story was that Fat Liar (Moor) getting told to publicise his own work. BBC gets in full spin for this.
To think I could be sent to jail if I refused to pay for their bias!
Back to the ABB story: the day after it happened John Humfreys was interviewing someone from ABB about the attacks on the BBC’s Today programme. The man from ABB was called something like Svensson which might have provided a clue, but what Humfreys actually said was (roughly) “is the fact that your company is American the reason why your staff were attacked”. To which Svensson replied “That subsidiary is based in Houston but ABB itself is not American, its Swiss-Swedish”. To which Humfreys replied: “Oh! So we’ve got that bit wrong.” A rare admission of error on the part of the Today programme – if only they’d done that the day after Gilligan had made his infamous report about the WMD dossier.
Laura Nere – why use this site to discuss US forces’ shortcomings in Iraq? The site is devoted to the BBC’s shortcomings which are not restricted to its Iraq war agenda.
joe – “despite having given assurances (following the recent court case) that it would rectify this matter”
The BBC are still in denial about Hutton. Smug Gito Hari reporting on Scarlett’s promotion for Daily Politics still referred to the WMD dossier as “dodgy”, in the face of Hutton evidence & the real claim to “Dodgy” being reserved for Campbell’s Horlicks of Feb03. He stated that Scarlett had politicised the dossier, whereas the Hutton evidence & judgement was that that was not so & the dossier had the full endorsement of all the JIC.
It is very unseemly for the BBC to continue to question Hutton’s findings.
Oh fantastic, under Saddam people got tortured but had no redress. Now they get tortured but have the remote possibility of talking to somone from the BBC World Service about it.
Progress indeed.
Bit tenuous this one isn’t it?
If you really want to push the point, the majority of the foreign staff at the site that was bombed were American. I’d suggest that this mattered more to the bombers than an in depth analysis of the legal residence of the firm involved.
If you’re trying to imply that all infidels are perceived as equal irrespective of, say, their governments policies on invading Arab countries or supporting Israel I’d strongly argue otherwise.
I would suggest that the likelihood of Islamic fundamentalism causing carnage in Stockholm or Zurich is round about zero.
There is something odd about these terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia which has received very little attention. I get only the World Service(radio) here in France and heard on the day the news broke a deadpan BBC report of the comments of Crown Prince Abdullah that this attack was the work of jews who had “seduced” the young men who had carried out the killings!
The fact that such an absurd claim could pass virtualy without comment(in fact the question was asked by the BBC as to wether this statement was intended for purely internal consumption-which being interpreted means:- Was this shameless lie intended to deceive only the Saudis, or the rest of humanity).
Of course the BBC could never reveal the truth which is that the Zionist Entity has put LSD in the Palace drinking water or perhaps introduced magic mushrooms into the Royal goat stew
Rich,
I think the World would be a VERY different place and maybe September 11th wouldn’t have happened had the Al-Quaeda plot to bomb the Strasbourg Christmas Market had succeeded and killed a large number of people. I think the Americans would have tightened up travel security in response to this. But what would Europe have done? At the time Bush had a very unengaging foriegn policy. Would Old-Europe have begged Americas help through Nato to knock out The Base (Afganistan)?
Rich
‘If you’re trying to imply that all infidels are perceived as equal irrespective of, say, their governments policies on invading Arab countries or supporting Israel I’d strongly argue otherwise’
Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah: “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you. We do not want anything of you but your deaths. In thousands, in hundreds of thousands and eventually in millions.
“We say this because we hate you. We hate you with an all-consuming passion, not just for what you have done (though that is bad enough) but for what you are.
“There is no point in negotiating, for there is nothing to negotiate. We are going to kill you whenever, wherever and in as great a number as we can…. we are guaranteed eternal bliss if we die while killing you.”
Argue with that.
Rich, This just in from the BBC…
‘Rewards of gold are said to be on offer for the assassinations of top US and UN officials, according to a message purportedly from Osama Bin Laden”…
The statement said 10kg (22lb) of gold would be given to anyone killing the US Iraq administrator Paul Bremer or senior military officers.
The same amount was offered for the death of UN chief Kofi Annan or his Iraq envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.’
Still in an argumentative mood?
Perhaps we westerners should call for public subscriptions for gold on the heads of leading opponents? How would the BBC play that?
hard for me to see how listing the facts is a case of bias. you are reaching, reaching, reaching…oh, you fell over
YOY,
Fluffy bullsh*t speeches are made by every politician (and nutcase religious extremist), they shouldn’t necessarily be taken literally (is Bush really going to win a ‘war’ on terror by destroying all terrorists or is it really a wooly phrase to rally the unintelligent to the cause?).
Some zealots may make themselves feel like billy big b*llocks by ranting about the death of all infidels but an organisation with finite resources has to prioritise. Clearly Sweden and Switzerland aren’t top of the list.