I’m rather busy at the moment, so here are some quick links on several subjects all in one fell post.
Coming Anarchy (a blog with the intriguing tagline “Speak Victorian – Think Pagan”) wasn’t impressed with the economic assumptions behind a BBC article called Living in Somalia’s Anarchy.
Norman Geras agrees with many complainers that Jeremy Paxman and other media interviewers are too rude and dismissive to many political interviewees, including George Galloway. Anyone who reads Normblog knows that he isn’t saying this out of any fondness for Gorgeous George.
Dash Riprock is one of many who comment unfavourably on this article by Tim Butcher, “Stigma of life in “Traitors’ Village.”
JC Keiner wrote a formal complaint to the BBC about the same article, copied to us. She cited the way in which reprisals including plucking the eyes out of a corpse were described as “Old Testament-style brutality”. An extract from her letter of complaint:
“It is surely anti-semitism to attribute these brutal atrocities committed by non Jews to Jewish religious law, based on a gross misrepresentation of it. Your web site compounds this by using the words “Old Testament-style Brutality” as a subhead. It is not excusable to defend this as an example of a correspondent’s personal perspective, since the BBC undertakes to avoid anti-semitic or otherwise racist content.”
“Lazy Student” says that this piece on the French Referendum makes “a no vote sound like the end of the world.” (UPDATE 18 May: PJF reports that the phrase “So a No [vote] looks like bad news all round.” has been stealth edited out of this article.)
ADDED LATER: The Newsweek allegation about a copy of the Koran and its fateful consequences have been the subject of a blogswarm. Paul Reynold’s article “Koran story brings US journalism crisis” rounds up this and related stories.
“The Bolshevik Bullshit Collective”? I like that almost as much as “the EUSSR”.
From the Collective’s “report”:-
“Since then Somalia has been divided into a myriad of different fiefdoms controlled by rival warlords, who occasionally clash for territory.”
If only those stupid blacks could organise a proper federal superstate!
…and re Paxman’s interviewing technique, in the Galloway case I think he was just externalising what goes in inside a Lefty’s head when the mission really stops making sense.
Oona King is black and a woman and a sitting Labour MP, so she scores points heavily there. Paxo’s default assumption is thus that she should get a shoo-in election victory against a white male.
It’s not any white male, however. This particular white male is Scottish (which is good) and pro-Sadam (which is good). She’s Jewish (which is bad, therefore good for George), and most of his supporters are Muslims (which is also good), so he claws back valuable victimisation heirarchy points back there.
So, anti-war pro-Arab non-Jewish white male versus black female Labour MP…what to do, what to do?
Paxo would have been furious at any result, though on the whole he would probably have been best pleased if Oona had narrowly beaten the BNP.
Paxman’s little display was just the equivalent of HAL9000 deliberately breaking his AE35 antenna orientation unit to disrupt a mission whose priorities are impossible to reconcile.
>pro-Sadam (which is good).
Unfair. There are very few BBC lefties who are actually pro-Saddam, least of all Paxman. Some see Saddam as no worse than Bush, a few may even think he’s better than Bush (and you can certainly argue that these attitudes are idiotic and dangerous), but you’d be struggling to find any who are literally his supporters, who really think he’s a good thing.
This was why Paxman was so hard on Galloway — because it’s become clear that Galloway really is a Saddam fan, and that appalls even BBC News. They have started to realize that Galloway is a menace. Pity they can’t turn that analysis on themselves.
I agree the BBC are certainly confused as to where the line lies between being pro-Saddamn and merely virtuously anti-American.
OT but topical: “Gorgeous” is testifying in front of the US Senate even as I write this.
I can’t play the file on my media player for some reason. Does anybody have a blow-by-blow account they can share?
(Why do they call him Gorgeous, btw? Is it ironic? He’s no Brad Pitt and that’s putting it mildly.)
OT but topical: Newsweek lied, people died.
VOICE OF AMERICA, 12 May 2005
“General Myers also told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday that the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Carl Eichenberry, disagrees with the reports that protests in the city of Jalalabad were caused by anger over the alleged Koran incident.”
Miami Herald March 9, 2005
“recently declassified court documents allege that, as far back as 2002, some of Guantanamo’s staff cursed Allah, threw Korans into toilets”
Philadelphia Inquirer January 20, 2005
“Some detainees complained of religious humiliation, saying guards had defaced their copies of the Koran and, in one case, had thrown it in a toilet, said Kristine Huskey, who interviewed clients late last month.”
“Hartford Courant January 16, 2005
In March, the government released five British men from Guantanamo [..] They said they were punched, slapped, denied sleep, had seen other prisoners sexually humiliated, had been hooded, and were forced to watch copies of the Koran being flushed down toilets.”
BBC Monitoring International Reports December 30, 2004, Text of report by Khadija Ali Moussa entitled “Abdallah Tabarak, the former Guantanamo prisoner, gives Attajdid details of his ordeal from Kandahar to Guantanamo
“American soldiers used to tear up copies of the Koran and to throw them in the toilet”
DAILY MAIL, October 28, 2004
“The Tipton men have already submitted a 115-page dossier alleging they were beaten, stripped, shackled and deprived of sleep during their detention. They say guards threw prisoners’ Korans into toilets”
The Observer, March 14, 2004
“As Muslims, they were shocked when in repeated ‘shakedown’ searches of the sleeping tents, copies of the Koran would be trampled on by soldiers and, on one occasion, thrown into a toilet bucket”
Blow by blow account can be found at the Daily Ablution
Does the publication whi9ch is alleged to have been thrown into toilets urge its readers to kill people if that happens? If so, it would appear that the toilet is where it properly belongs.
I don’t know. The prophet marries a 6-year-old and gets the religious devotion of millions. Gary Glitter leers at a 14-year-old and gets four months. Where’s the justice?
I actually like Jeremy Paxman. He gives everybody a hard time and rightly so. He is totally fair and balanced in my opinion and i don`t think he deserves criticism but applause.
In an organisation full of ridiculous left wingers who grill tories but drool over lib dem MPs, Paxman and Andrew Neil are refreshing and totally impartial. They grill everyone.
Galloway, as always, acted like a spoilt child in that interview, playing the victim as ever, and he actually did the same in an interview with ITV News. In age where politicans are so corrupt and careerist we should be grateful for Paxman and his type, not getting paranoid about some sort of imaginery bias that he has.
Thanks Jon. I finally got my media player to work, but I couldn’t hear the sound. Maybe my speakers are on the fritz. The Beeb’s live feed worked better for me than the US Senate’s, BTW.
Gotta give ’em credit for doing something right!
Susan
I think the ‘gorgeous’ tag comes is due to his perma-tan and the monumental amount of love he has for himself.
It must be said that Galloway is a hell of an orator and defends himself very well. However, he hasn’t gone to Washington to answer the Committee’s questions, nor to shine a light on a murky business.
He’s gone there to preen himself up, sit on the Hill under the media light and give a bunch of American politicians a dressing down over the Iraq war and Abu Ghraib. To him it’s theatre and he can’t wait to enter stage far-left. The performance is for himself and his nutty supporters.
Hurricane George makes Landfall in Washington DC, no loss of life, injury or Damage reported.
On the BBC 6 0’clock news they really rolled the red carpet out for the courageous George, off to do battle with those nasty Amerikkkans. Their Washington correspondent Clive Myrie (sp?) sounded as if he was about to give Galloway a hand job.
Pete:
To paraphrase something said about Walter Mondale years ago, Galloway looks like he should declare those bags under his eyes as carry-on luggage when boarding an airplane. Gorgeous, my foot!
I don’t think Gorgeous’ theatrics will go over well with the Yankee audience. The US Senate is the most staid of staid institutions; it’s like an Episcopalian church; (porobably not a coincidence since the Anglo-Saxon Protestants still pretty much rule the roost in the US as they’ve done for the past 300 years and counting. . .)
They’ll probably be chuckling (in a genteel sort of way) over Galloway’s performance for years.
As I wrote before… arrest him (Galloway) and transport him to Guantanamo Bay so he can sit down and pray with his Muslim friends. Galloway is one of the worst scumbags around and the BBC love him. No surprise there.
I agree with Marks comment regarding Paxman and Neil.
“In an organisation full of ridiculous left wingers who grill tories but drool over lib dem MPs, Paxman and Andrew Neil are refreshing and totally impartial. They grill everyone.”
IMHO Galloway used the same technique as (John Reid:Rottweiler incident) to avoid getting asked the same type of race/gender question which he himself deploys as a substitute for rational discource during debates.
The question put to him by Paxman whilst therefore fair is also irrelevant.
If the BBC is ever to be a representative impartial interlocutor on behalf of those it purports to serve then we need more Paxmans.
Yeah, I think I’m going to have to go along with Mark and Anonymous re Paxman. I think Paxman just sniffs BS from anywhere and attacks like a shark to blood. He’s pretty equal opportunity.
I used to think that he may have been a Lib Dem (from the Lib side and not the SD side) because he generally gave them wide berth when it came to liberty-oriented issues. But it doesn’t appear to be so lately.
Reading his book, The English, I think, too, that he was more sympathetic to the subject at hand than one would expect any lefty intellectual to be in this country.
While his combative style can grate, and lately, he just seems plain angry, I think he has some grand moments. I saw him savage some Muslamists on Newsnight and he backed Ayaan Hirsi Ali up in a discussion about Islamism (pre-Theo van Gogh murder). She was certainly smiling when the session was over.
Susan – Galloway has absolutely no interest in whether his theatrics wow ’em down on the farm. He is playing to an international audience – partly his own constituents, but also sections of the EU and the ME.
Verity,
Yeah, I know.
More Beeb hero-worshipping of Galloway here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4553601.stm
On Paxo, while I generally like his style, he can tip too far into growling and barking when a bit of sublety is needed to tease out information. Being an interviewer is a tough art though and it’s a small gripe.
It’s hard to argue against where he’s coming from. He once stated: “When I interview a politician I always ask myself, why is this bastard lying to me?”
They really are a lickspittle lot aren’t they. However, the correspondent that I saw on BBC News 24 had a very different take on Galloway’s Senate appearance. He said that Galloway did not have it all his own way, and that the Senators’ questions just kept coming. Also that Galloway was clearly evading the question.
I watched that at 5pm and notice that it has now been taken off the BBC website. Truly we have censorship. The Ministry of Truth has arrived. It’s called the BBC.
Speaking of the BBC memory hole, it has stealth edited this story:
Consequences of a French ‘Non’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4552937.stm
to remove the brazen and revealing, “So a No [vote] looks like bad news all round.”
That propaganda was too obvious and embarrassing, so it’s under the carpet with it. But only after it has done its damage to those not paying attention.
.
Possibly Off Topic but then you never know…..
Struggling around the BBC’s labarinthine website a couple of hours ago, somewhere in the foothills of Radio4 I chanced across a WORLD banner with what appeared to be some fly do-do incorporated in it. Reaching for the Specsavers £9.99 specials I was just able to make out that this was in fact Arabic.
Huh?
Didn’t seem to be any Middle-East links thereunder. No Arab type references at all. Just this bit of squiggly writing tacked onto the WORLD logo.
I’ve just spent nearly an hour trying to find it again.
And it’s gone.
D’you think this could be some sort of try out for when the Corporation at last anounces it’s become a wholly owned subsidiary of al Jazheera?
Slightly OT but it’s no surprise that the Beeb had to put this piece on the homepage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4557407.stm
Shocking, innit… I didn’t even know there were Canadian Conservatives.
Is Nicholas Witchell (ghastly little squirt) still covering Royal stories? I think he`s been sidelined myself. And not before time, I cant stand that man.
BBC receives 100 complaints over Paxman Galloway interview.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4553075.stm
alex
It is perfectly possible for highly-paid BBC journalists to go for weeks on end without filing any story. That way, they can’t get the story wrong ? But of course they still get paid – and get all the expenses they log up on non-writing of stories.
Maybe that is why staff numbers are intended to be cut. 4000 news staff does seem rather a lot, especially if so few of them are employed on getting accuracy into the news.
The BBC seems to be cockahoop about George Galloway’s performance in Wshington yesterday. Hymns of praise from Mtt Free and Justin Webb etc.
They omitted to notice that Galloway may have lied – on oath – in suggesting that the Charity Commission found that the accounts of the Mariam appeal were totally clean. The Charity Commission is already picking away at that – and the Senators will have little difficulty showing again that the appeal received funds from a major source, that the appeal funds were not disbursed primarily for the little girl people donated for, and that the accounts were mysteriously shipped off to Jordan allowing Galloway to claim no current knowledge.
The Galloway incident with the Senate committee is far from over. It was shallow and stupid of Frei and Webb to suggest it was game, set and match to Galloway. But typical of them to concentrate on the Bush-bashing, not the facts of the matter, the accusations of the sleaze that lies behind the Mariam Appeal funds.
While Paxo is pretty contemptuous of all politicians, it’s clear that he is extra contemptuous of conservative ones. Remember when he rushed round to Mandy’s to apologise for someone outing him in a Paxo interview. Nothing wrong with doing that, of course, but it shows that he is fully tuned in to right-on metropolitan sensitivities, and thinks they are important. Also I remember a discussion many years ago on Start the Week, when the usual gaggle of lefty chatterers was discussing Michael Howard’s “tough on criminals – lock ’em up” policies. Having dismissed the possibility that such policies could be effective in reducing crime, someone asked (rhetorically) “What could Howard’s real motives be ?” Paxo intoned “Maybe he gets off on it.”
I regularly criticise the Today programme.
This morning however, they at least looked at the possibility that Galloway’s demagoguery in Washington may have, at least in part, been economical with the truth.
We still wait for Galloway’s Mariam appeal accounts to be made available here. A year or two ago on Newsnight, Galloway promised Jeremy Paxman (!) that this would happen, but we are still waiting.
In the meantime, I hope Today will continue with a serious analysis of Galloway’s financial affairs, and not be sucked in by the charismatic Gorgeousness of this nasty politician, who in other times would have been tried for the treasonable offence of encouraging our troops to disobey orders in a war situation.
I’m about to go Digital to get some breadth of news from likes of cnn, sky etc not just Beeb all the time. Choices are freeview, freesat (sky), or sky. Can’t get cable.
Anyone got any advice for me before I head out and buy a box?
Freeview gives a good spread of channels – FREE !!! Just buy a cheap set-top box, about £40. (several news channels including Sky News but apparently not CNN.) And evidently E4 is going to join the channel mix.
http://www.freeview.co.uk/
http://www.freeview.co.uk/whatson/index.html
Freesat from Sky gives more channels, but costs £150 to install. A lot of the extra channels are fluff.
http://www.freesatfromsky.co.uk/?pID=2
Probbl;y bst to check with Comet or Curry for leaflets on which channels are in which mix. Also on whether you can get the service in your area.
On the Galloway issue, isn’t there a more fundamental point. During his testimony Galloway seemed to be trying to turn tables on the Senator by saying that he knew what it was like when you are raising funds for a poltical campaign. His words then I think certainly made it sound as though the Mariam Appeal was a political campaign. The only problem – political causes are not eligible for charity status under charity law as I understand it. So if he had been conducting a political campaign under guise of a charity he would have been acting outside the law.
Does anyone have a link for the full text of the session so I can check . I will investigate further myself.
On the issue of style, I must say I enjoyed Georgey Boy’s old fashioned eloquence and steely-eyed intensity. Certainly had the Senator looking for some imaginary missing paper clip rather than make eye contact.
The Times has a transcript of Galloway’s intro statement, and the Telegraph has transcribed some of the questioning by Senator Levin:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616578,00.html
http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/18/wgall518.xml
Galloway’s grand-standing played well to the moonbat crowd over here; I sniff a lucrative university lecture tour in the offing. He’ll probably make more of the long green on the US lecture circuit than he did being Saddam’s toady, as a matter of fact.
His ego will be inflated today. The Senators were bloody useless.
I tell you what though, I couldn’t help laughing at him. He goes out of his way to use big words to impress the audience. It gets comical at times. When he pointed to his dossier and said “Vol-um-inous” I had a chuckle.
It was reminiscent of when he tried to impress Saddam with ‘In-de-fat-ig-ab-le’.
Oh yeah, he also made me chuckle when he said “I was right when I predicted that the fall of Baghdad was not the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.” Trying to paraphrase Churchill.
At times he almost comes across as someone who is actually making an effort to sound stupid.
Well it’s stupid to paraphrase Churchill because the good guys won that one, not those of Galloway’s ilk.
“Galloway’s grand-standing played well to the moonbat crowd over here; I sniff a lucrative university lecture tour in the offing”
I think he could do very well on the Christmas Panto circuit. He could do walk on appearances and say a couple of anti-Blair jokes. The children would love it!
Charm us, orator, till the lion look no larger than the cat.
– Lord Alfred Tennyson
I read that “Stigma of life in “Traitors’ Village.” and I was struck by what an expert piece of propaganda it was. The best propaganda does not make overt claims that you can agree or disagree with. Instead, good propaganda appears to report events in a value-neutral way, but uses language in a loaded way that you have to buy into just to make sense of the piece.
For example, the word “collaborator” gained its current meaning after WWII when it was used to describe those who willingly cooperated with the vile Nazi regime. So this word does double duty for a propagandist. Those accused of collaboration become the moral equivalent of those who served the Nazis, and the powers they serve are cast as the moral equivalent of the Nazi regime itself.
As it happens, I believe in self-determination, so if the Northern Irish, say, or the Palestinians, want their own state, they should have it. But that does not mean I think that the British in NI or the Israelis are the equivalent of the Nazis, and yet this piece uses the word “collaborator” no less than nine times (!)
I find myself wondering why.
The second use of loaded language is the use of words like “justice” and “convicted. We are told that a man was killed as “a convicted Arab collaborator” and that this was “justice”.
But consider that other Palestinians have been killed by being drowned in human excrement for the “crime” of homosexuality and it becomes clear that this is also loaded language. What’s going on here is not justice in the sense western liberal democratic countries would recognize. It is better described as a mob lynching. Yet once again loaded words are used when other words are available.
To be clear here, I think that Palestinians or their supporters are entitled to make their case using every rhetorical trick in the book.
However, the BBC should not be doing this. This is worse than mere “bias”. This is the BBC debasing the language to make a covert case against the Israelis and in favour of Palestinian brutality, and that is not acceptable.
Yes, Jon what you say about loaded words is quite true. But notice how selective and hypocritical is the interpretation of those loaded words – they would never use the same word with approval in a story about a convicted mass murderer getting the needle in a Texas prison. Then it would be copious whining about the horrible injustice of the US death penalty, coupled with warm-puppy-dog tales about the mass murderer’s childhood.
But a far more brutal execution gets the “justice” apologist treatment because it supports the Beeb’s political agenda. And certainly no warm-puppy-dog tales about the “collaborator’s” childhood.
The Beeb has no consistent principles and neither does the Left. Their goal is destruction of the prevailing order by fair means or by foul. Their vaunted “ideals” and self-centered moral pieties are nothing more than a means of achieving that end.
George Galloway, Britain’s own Michael Moore.
No wonder the BBC love him.
‘Georgeous George’ stems from some frolicks he got up to with a couple of women in Greece while on official business for his now defunct (and of course investigated by the Charity Commission) ‘Charity’ War on Want. Caused a bit of scandal about 15 years or so ago and since then he’s had the label.
Paxman not biased?? Come off it! Compare his obnoxious interview with Hague in 2001 with his cosy ‘two mates chatting in a pub’ interview with Blair. Paxman is as biased as they come. He may appear to give Labour Ministers a hard time but this is about ‘plausible deniability’. Only recently you have to think of the story he did on Howard when as a journalist covering Howard’s tour of the West Country Paxman was actually barracking him when he was talking to members of the public!
Something I’m suprised the Senator’s didn’t use and hasn’t been latched onto generally is Gorgeous George’s self-confessed lie that he had been relentlessly requesting to the Senate Cttee that he could appear before them but they’d ignored him.
Lets hope that in time, the Iraqi’s themselves, based upon the evidence the Americans are accumulating and the witnesses in custody in Iraq, can build a sufficient case against Galloway to seek his extradition. Taking food and medicine out of the mouths of children in Iraq. Does it get much more despicable?
Graeme
Galloway left War on Want after his expenses were found to be a touch inflated. I suppose he could have found solace, sitting in his villa, under the Portuguese sun.
Solidarity, comrades.
Excellent points, Graeme.
“Paxman is as biased as they come. He may appear to give Labour Ministers a hard time but this is about ‘plausible deniability’.”
Indeed – when Paxman gives Labour sockpuppets a hard time, it’s a hard time from even further left than they are (“Why haven’t you raised taxes even more?”), never from the right (“Justify the tax the already take”).
Jeremy Paxman, I believe to be biased in favour of Jeremy Paxman and most people seem to comment on the “spectacle” rather than the content, that is why I believe that “celebrity” journalists are so inimiical to the search for truth.
Camp commandant correctly points out that ALL questioning comes from a position well to the left of New Labour and this is where the “institutional” leftism becomes manifest.
Typical of his ilk, Paxman has a multi million pound contract, no doubt takes many vacations and lives lavishly. No doubt he sees it as his job to hold large Corporations accountable to some standard of social justice cooked up willy nilly by the in house lefties at Red Square….sorry, I mean White City. What they all overlook is that the largest of unruly Corporations is thier employer. How the BBC adored the McLibel couple and championed thier cause although you could make any number of similar accusations against the McBias Corporation i.e. crushes competition, enviromentally negligent (how many “anchors” went to Rome to cover the Popes funeral?), dangerous if consumed daily, disrespectful of minorities (prosecutions for non payment) a blight on the landscape (Kirsty McWark) and a bloody waste of money.
” …and re Paxman’s interviewing technique, in the Galloway case I think he was just externalising what goes in inside a Lefty’s head when the mission really stops making sense.”
I think this statement is correct but
the reason I think Paxman is impartial is that he uses the rhetorical techniques of the interviewee when interviewing them.
He applies this regardless of the political persuasion of the interviewee.
Those who argue rationally are treated rationally.
The demagouges are treated as such.
“Typical of his ilk, Paxman has a multi million pound contract, no doubt takes many vacations and lives lavishly.”
I doubt it. Andrew Marr was only reported to be on £150k/yr, compared to Adam Boulton’s rumoured £450k/year.