The BBC have made a remarkable scientific breakthrough which has eluded the world’s medical researchers.
They have discovered that unborn infants fall into two distinct classes.
If the mother wishes not to bring the the unborn infant to term, it becomes, by a process not yet fully understood, a ‘foetus‘.
“The procedure involves the extraction of the body of the foetus into the vagina before the contents of the skull are sucked out, killing the unborn, after which the intact foetus is removed from the woman’s body.”
If the mother does not wish to kill the unborn infant, but threatens its life with, for example, cigarette smoke, the unborn infant becomes a ‘baby‘. Again, more research is needed to establish the exact mechanism by which this change occurs, but the infant can become a ‘baby’ within six weeks of conception.
“A study found that nearly a third of women whose partners smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day lost their babies within six weeks of conceiving.”
Whereas an unborn infant whose mother does not wish to give birth remains a ‘foetus’ up to the ninth month of pregnancy.
“Partial-birth abortion is one in which the foetus is partially delivered before the pregnancy is terminated.
The procedure would not normally be used until 20 weeks into a pregnancy. Most are performed late in the second trimester, which ends at 27 weeks into pregnancy. However, “partial-birth” abortions can be carried out right through to the ninth month of pregnancy.”
UPDATE – tidied up (with a hint of stealth edit) 9.06 am 03/03/2005
See Melanie Phillips
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/
“The BBC’s Augean stables”
“BBC’s TV coverage on sunday of the Tel Aviv bombing, in which five people died and 49 were injured. Using a clip entitled ‘A family in mourning’, the family it showed was not one of the Israeli dead but of the human bomb terrorist instead.
BBC panjandrums are embarrassed enough to put their hands up to this one. In what it coyly calls a ‘correction’, the Beeb has posted up the following comment by Roger Mosey, head of TV news:
‘The programme editors and I agree it was inappropriate to begin the report with footage of the suicide bomber’s family in mourning.It was also inappropriate to include this footage without coverage of the suffering of the victims’ families. Using this picture sequence in this way was a mistake.'”
A mistake they seem to keep on making.
again and again and again.
Let give em an email bomb on this one.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4300000/newsid_4305200/4305253.stm
“But dozens of people have contacted the BBC to complain about a related news item on Sunday’s Breakfast programme on BBC One.”
I didn’t see this item broadcast, but I’d be very interested to know the identity of the reporter concerned.
“I didn’t see this item broadcast, but I’d be very interested to know the identity of the reporter concerned.”
Really? Sounds like it’s got Orla’s grubby fingerprints all over it. Why even bother to ask?
“Really? Sounds like it’s got Orla’s grubby fingerprints all over it. Why even bother to ask?”
You never know – it might be Babs ‘Cry me a river’ Plett.
I’d be surprised if it was Teary Babs. She seems to be strictly second-string in the nastiness department.
Surely Orla is more capable of this sheer-genious level of malevolence.
“Surely Orla is more capable of this sheer-genious level of malevolence.”
Well certainly, if I were a detective, Ms Goering would be the first person I would seek to interview to try and eliminate her from my enquiries. Then I’d seek statements from Ms. Plett (once she had managed to regain her composure) followed by the rest of the moonbats from this particular bureau.
Somebody please bring an end to my suspense – was this report accompanied by Ms Goering’s furrowed brow and scowling visage?
Many will have already seen this, but I’m sure those that haven’t will appreciate the juxtaposition of the image of the lovely Ms. Goering under the headline “Impartiality”:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1536_impartiality/page3.shtml
At least it’s not “uterine content.”
Wandering off the reservation:
Major upheavals in Lebanon, lots of drama and images available to all at dawn of day three of …what?… a popular revolution, it seems, with tens of thousands in the, ahem, “Arab Street” going off-script.
This on the heels of Bush’s promise to support freedom everywhere.
THEREFORE, as day follows night, BBC coughs up a tight shot of a few flag wavers backed by an arid studio voiceover, seven down on the headlines on Dermott and Natasha’s Morning Moron Show.
Instead, the lead is a lengthy coulda-shoulda-mighta flu story. Right…
Still no sign of Orla, BTW. A remit thing, no doubt.
Wally,
I didn’t hear much this morning on Radio 4, this morning, either, although my wife says she heard a bit over the weekend on the radio.
But I am amazed. This is practically a George Bush-induced revolution and there is hardly anything on it.
From the BBC “correction” at the newswatch link –
“It showed footage of the suicide bomber’s family in mourning but failed to show any footage of victims’ families to balance the report.”
So the victims would only “balance the report” would they? How outrageous that the dead innocents, in the BBC’s view, only achieve, at best, parity with the perpetrators.
If the BBC and the EU and a significant number of Europeans are in love with Islam then Islam they must have. Plett and Orla will indeed have something to cry about when it is required that they remain silent and covered in black cloth. On offer are freedom and discovery versus mind numbing orthodoxy. What a shame the so called intellectuals are beating a path to the door of enslavement of us all.
I found a link to Private Eye’s ‘Book of Sharon’ the other day which provides a far better commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than the BBC, Melanie Phillips and assorted left wing cretins put together.
http://clublet.com/c/c/why?BookOfSharon
BBC still have this online including pic of a ‘victim’ – Israeli? No, mother of the suicide bomber.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4300893.stm
re the Lebanon – Why hasn’t the BBC told me what Robert Fisk thinks of it all ? (they must be slipping up). I want to be sure of what really isn’t happening.
The events in Lebanon are a George Bush-induced revolution to about the extent that the events in Ukraine were an EU-induced revolution: not at all, except that some self-aggrandising morons afterwards claimed otherwise.
It shows a complete ignorance of Lebanese politics and history (and insults the Lebanese people to boot) to suggest that Chimpy’s Iraqi-slaughtering mission was even relevant, nevermind vital, to the extremely groovy happenings in Lebanon…
I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen. — Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese Druze boss with an anti-American past more luminous than yours.
But then, you know better.
Ha John B, a standard left wing comment. I bet you think the fall of the iron curtain had nothing to do with Reagan. Do you realise you live in a bubble?
Oh, John’s just pulling your chains.
He knows what’s going on, just funnin’ ya.
Perfect parody.
In order to guide John B he could do far worse than listen to Walid Jumblatt’s take on this
“I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen.”
Walid Jumblatt Leader of Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon and Druze Leader.
Oops I someone got in there first. I’ll get my coat
Surely, John b was just helpfully summarizing the Fisk analysis of the Lebanon – and I am duly grateful (for the reason stated above).
‘Do you realise you live in a bubble?’
He’d have to get his head out of his arse first
The guy is an idiot.
second that
LOL, Sebastien… I was about to post that Jumblatt quote, too… :D.
The whole foetus/baby thing is getting confusing, and not just to me, but also to legal authorities.
Here in the US, it’s possible to be charged with murder if you cause a woman to lose the baby she’s carrying. Such charges have been successfully tried in cases of spouse abuse. Personally, I’m all for that.
However, it opens the door to a whole new problem: Whether an unborn child is a “baby” or a “foetus” depends on the mother. Does she want the child? Then it’s a “baby”.
And the way the laws are currently structured, this means that people can be charged with murder based entirely upon a woman’s whim.
There’s something seriously wrong with this entire setup :(.
OT. Today programme this am – Naughtie to Ed Balls, “If we win the election…”
Ooops!
“Do you realise you live in a bubble”
Coming from a group of people who contribute to this fetid echo chamber and the smug, self-regarding nature of the comments, that’s quite ironic.
If he really did live in a [left wing] bubble, he wouldn’t be commenting periodically at a right wing blog, would he?
Cheers Anon. I don’t live in a bubble; I read right-, left- and more-or-less-neutral media, and historical background
As a result, I don’t take Jumblatt’s pronouncement terribly seriously: he’s been trying to get rid of the Syrians since they killed his dad in 1976, so the idea that it was the fantastic spectacle of Iraq that got him to rise up is laughable. Equally, Lebanon before recent events was at least as democratic as Iraq now: it featured reasonably free elections, under an occupying army with questionable motives, to choose legislators with limited political power.
Of course I don’t think Reagan was instrumental in ending the Cold War. The USSR’s economic (and hence political) system collapsed under its own inherent unsustainability. This was obvious to people who knew about the topic by the mid-1970s, although Soviet propaganda was remarkably effective in planting the opposite impression in the public’s mind.
Obvious to all those Sovietologists who loathed Reagan, said we’d just have to live with Communism and got the fall of the Berlin wall completely and utterly wrong. I think you need to read Gorbachov’s memoirs…
I have. It’s hardly a controversial point that a lot of Sovietologists (from both ideological camps) fell for the regime’s propaganda big-style and failed to notice that it was collapsing. And it’s an understandable mistake on their part: the Communists were bloody good at propaganda.
Nonetheless, since we have the tool of hindsight we might as well use it…
Hello John B
You claimed:
“This was obvious to people who knew about the topic by the mid-1970s”
As a matter of interest, who were these people? I am no Cold War expert, so it would be interesting to be educated.
The jury is still out on whether this is a Bush inspired revolution. History will be the judge. We only now know that Ronnie Reagan was “the man who defeated communism”
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=S%27%2980%28Q%21%27%23%23P%224 Unfortunately I think it is subscription only
“the Reagan presidency of 1981-89 changed the face of the world.. By defeating communism, Ronald Reagan ended one of history’s most violent centuries and opened the door to the possibility that for at least a few decades ahead war would be a smaller horror than in the past, and democracy might become available to more of the people who wanted it.”
CONTD
But it is now interesting that the parralels are being drawn between Reagan and Bush.
From the Times:
Bush basks in that Reagan glow
” Der Spiegel, the German news weekly, asking “Could Bush be right?” on foreign policy and comparing him with Reagan, who was lampooned in Germany for challenging Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, to “tear down” the Berlin Wall.
“History has shown it wasn’t Reagan who was the dreamer as he voiced his demand. Rather it was the German politicians who were lacking in imagination — a group who in 1987 couldn’t imagine that there might be an alternative to a divided Germany,” the magazine observed.
“Maybe the people of Syria, Iran or Jordan will get the idea in their heads to free themselves from their oppressive regimes just as the East Germans did.”
JJ,
well spotted! Anybody wanting a rerun, go to the Today “Listen Again” page at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/
and click on the Ed Balls link. James Naughtie’s slip of the tongue is about 5 minutes into the interview. It’s quite funny because he says it in a very forceful way and then lamely interjects with “you” as Ed Balls is replying.
From ‘The Belgravia Dispatch’:
But look, anyone who thinks Bush’s forward-leaning posture on the entire democratization issue has had no impact on the Lebanese filling the streets of downtown Beirut are in denial of reality; or rabidly partisan fools, or both. There are many variables at play, yes, but Bush’s post 9/11 policies have been an undeniable and major motor driving the developments we are currently witnessing with such expectation and hope. No one serious can deny this anymore.
I can do that Belmont Club thing too: “No-one serious can deny that I am the king of the world and everyone should lick my shoes.”
It’s much easier than real argument.
Belmont Club?
I do believe the quotation was listed as being from Belgravia Dispatch.
“It’s much easier than real argument.”
Indeed john b,
As you should know quite well!
Is the Belmont Club one of the best sources for debate on current world affairs as recommended by the Washingon Post, like the Dispatch?
Hello John B
Though I am no expert on the Coldwar, your analysis seems at odds with most respected opinion
Many people in the West just wanted to ‘contain’ the Soviet Union
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1055-1508324,00.html
“…condemned at the time by the school of foreign policy “realists” led by Henry Kissinger. For the realists, …attempt to promote freedom was not just naive but also counter-productive. Not only was America better off developing a more cordial relationship with a stable Soviet leadership, greater liberalisation in the Soviet bloc could only be inhibited by external hectoring.”
Lee – as I said, most experts in the West at the time believed the propaganda. Anyone who was important in the USSR at the time will point out that the system was obviously crumbling.
Sorry re Belmont/Belgravia confusion; I got my pompous right-wing Bels confused (the Washington Times is not the Washington Post, of course – the latter is a serious newspaper, the former is a comic devoted to furthering a religious cult).
Yes John, the system was crumbling, and who rejected the views of his opponents of a full detente with the USSR and instead pursued an aggresive arms race that pushed them over the edge? Reagan thought the USSR needn’t be a permanent fixture and being the most powerful man in the world he did something about it. To believe that Reagan wasn’t one of the biggest reasons for the victory of the Cold War is revisionism IMO. Can you imagine Jimmy Carter yelling: “Tear down this wall?” He’d perhaps have whimpered it and then fallen over.
Can you imagine Jimmy Carter yelling: “Tear down this wall?”
Um, no. He’d have wanted to tear down the killer rabbit hutch though.
Hello John B
I am no expert in the Cold War, but your arguments seem flawed and incoherent. Moreover, you do not seem to be able to point to any sources for your information (Are you the Ghost Of Red Ken- writing under another alias?). If you cannot provide any reference to any reputable source, there will always be a suspicion that you are making stuff up as you go along.
CONTD
You suggested:
“Of course I don’t think Reagan was instrumental in ending the Cold War. The USSR’s economic (and hence political) system collapsed under its own inherent unsustainability.”
I believe your argument is flawed. Suppose I was to say:
“Of course I don’t think Churchill was instrumental in ending World War 2. Germany collapsed through the inherent unsustainability, of having to fight a war on two fronts. All the German generals knew that leaving Britain undefeated, attacking Russia and declaring war on America meant that defeat was inevitable ”
I think history would demonstrate that I was an idiot.
CONTD
According to the Economist, history has demonstrated Ronald Reagan was not an idiot. Though conventional wisdom (particularly in Europe) was that he was an idiot. 1 million protestors turned out in New York. His own daughter invited the leader of the protests to the Whitehouse. He was lampooned in Germany for wanting to bring the wall down. Americas foreign policy ‘experts’ (I.e the legendary Henry Kissenger) thought that confrontation was wrong.
The parallels with Bush are interesting. History will judge whether Bush is an idiot or a genius, I have a sneaking suspicion that history may be kinder than current/conventional wisdom.
George Orwell attributed the Leftist Intelligentsia’s fondness for totalitarians and terrorists to ‘cowardice and a worship of power that is not far from cowardice’.
Thus Nazi Germany and Japan could not be defeated, the Soviet Union would inevitably win in the end, and a war against Terrorism cannot succeed.
Given their record it’s safe to say they’re wrong on that last too.
Check it out john b: Look what they are waving at the Lebanese protests:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,1658,422138,00.jpg
It ain’t the flag of the EU.