This is the front page for BBC Online’s country profiles.
Look at the photos:
JFK, Gorbachev and Mandela
An AK47-wielding kaffiyeh-wrapped terrorist/”militant”
A faceless (hence inscrutable) Asian woman in a coolie hat on a bicycle
The Eiffel Tower
What would Edward Said say?
Well at least Arafat is excluded.
Anyone hear the “hard hitting” interview with Ramsey Clark by St James of Smug on the Today programme this morning (7.55)?
Clark was frankly ludicrous, making out that the USA is worse than Saddam’s Iraq. Yet St James barely raised his voice to challenge this rubbish, which I regard as akin to Holocaust denial. Clark is of course free to spout gobs—e, but please can the BBC treat it with the same regard as they would the rantings of a BNP spokesman?
Oh, and what do the Today team use to finish off their programme at 9am? Why a Ramsey Clark clip of course.
On Radio 5 Live, Victoria Derbyshire is awful.
This morning’s programme is about gay partnerships, and she has a series of gay guests on. But switch on and see how Victoria “PC” Derbyshire puts down any callers who have the temerity to suggest that gay partnerships are perhaps, not such the great idea that the BBC classes assume.
OT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4546742.stm
I must say, i’m glad to see the BBC cover this very important issue.
The govt have stalled for years on this kind of thing. The Carriers should have been ordered 2-3 years ago, along with the Type 45 escort vessels, (and dare i say more of them).
The sad thing is the ships are built at labour constituencies, and Mr Blair still can’t even support them!
The ships and aircraft will provide tens of thousands of jobs, help british industry and develop our technological knowledge, why this has been held up is probably down to ignorance.
The treasury is broke.
Blair is the ‘First lord to the Treasury’ maybe its about time he started exercising his powers and telling Gordon what he is going to do.?
ps. anyone notice The Sun, has on the front a story about Holly and Jessica AGAIN! leave those families alone, their daughters are dead, give it a rest and stop using them for political means every time Tony is in trouble. This isnt the first time and they know it.
To be fair to al-BBC on this one, if there were a picture of a smiling Palestinian handing out sweets to children while Orla Goering looked on approvingly, we’d rightly rip that apart as bias. So a picture of a generic Muslim with a towel round his head and an AK47 in his hand is actually a reasonably non-PC way of depicting Muslims.
Al-BBC does seem to find terrorists quite cuddly on the whole, though. If they ever find out that the Arabs are known in some quarters as “the desert Irish” we can presumably look forward to a lot more propagandising on their behalf from our state broadcaster, given al-BBC’s sentimental attachment to Irish murderers.
I guess if, like the IRA, you believe in forcing your worldview on others by means of threats and intimidation, and if you are funded by means of a large-scale extortion racket, you will always find an ally in Al-BBC, which operates on much the same basis.
Ian,
Those carriers will never be built, or if they are, will never go into service for the Royal Navy – I predict they will end up on eBay and will eventually be sold at a knockdown price to India.
The whining voices of the correspondants on “From our own Adolesent”, thier childlike simplification of complex issues and now this Photo Montage of cliches all comes from the same “School Project” mentality of BBC staffers.
Last night on R4 we were treated to a program about Sarajevo which could have been an interesting look at what happened and why, instead we get the usual War is Bad, War is Futile, War is Pointless Crap.
Note to the BBC; lets just take it as read that war is horrible, now get on and tell the story.
I can’t see Hilary
Was this Teenager a plumber?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/4548018.stm
Why is the Arab “militant” placed on South America, whereas all of the other figures are placed on the region they are associated with?
(a) promoting Arab-Islamic imperialism while keeping it safely away from Europe
(b) alluding to the existence of cells of Hamas and Hizbollah in the “tri-state area” on the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay (allegedly involved in the bombings and mass murders at a Jewish centre and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in1992 and 1994)
(c) the BBC has no idea what South Americans look like or do
(d) just a mix-up or incompetence?
take your pick
I wonder
I suppose you read Laban Tall’s blog, but if not….
A policewoman is charged with assisting in the escape of her muderering boyfriend.
As she is not a plumber the BBC avoid mentioning her occupation.
Police and Thieves
http://www.ukcommentators.blogspot.com/
OT
No retreat on reform, says Blair
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4547018.stm
Shouldn’t that be
No retreat on ‘reform’, says Blair?
Unless the BBC are talking about Blairs proposed reform of the EU CAP, in which of course he was entirely ‘successful’.
As I understand it the aircraft carrier deal is further complicated by the Joint Strike Fighter, which is the aircraft that the carriers are being built to fly.
The JSF is a joint American-British programme, mostly designed in America, with the British JSFs to be built in Britain, but the Americans are loathe to give us access to the JSF’s technology in one chunk (because, as part of the EU, we will probably give it to France and thus Russian Iran).
And so if the JSF is cancelled – it is a complex design which can be built in three different ways, depending on whether it is to take off like a Harrier Jump Jet or conventionally, from a runway – the carriers themselves might be in trouble, because we won’t have any aircraft to put on them.
And I believe the carriers are a French design that is going to be part-build by BAE, which had a competing design, although no hard feelings probably.
Of course that should read “and thus Russia and Iran”.
OT
Rapid US economic growth persists
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4549442.stm
“The Department of Commerce said that gross domestic product (GDP) increased by an annual rate of 4.1% in the three months to the end of September.”
and
Fast US growth outstrips estimate
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4485314.stm
“US economic growth accelerated to an annual rate of 4.3% in the three months from July to September, according to revised Commerce Department figures.”
Those stoopid Americans! How come they can’t run an economy as bad as us Europeans eh?
From December’s BBC News Online:
French output has surprise tumble
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4513880.stm
European R&D falls behind rivals
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4514572.stm
Deficit widens as growth slows
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4500374.stm
and finally, rejoice at the news that the German economy is ‘to grow quicker’:
German economy ‘to grow quicker’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4542744.stm
“Growth also is set to improve in 2005, hitting a higher-than-expected 0.9%.”
0.9% !!! That’s how you run an economy!
Totally OT (and probably OTT!) yet perfectly apposite to just about everything on this site:
THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
Classic Version:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
THE END
The PC British Version:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate, like him, are cold and starving.
The BBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper; with cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm home with a table laden with food.
Britons are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.
The Labour Party, Greenpeace and The Grasshopper Council of GB demonstrate in front of the ant’s house. The BBC, interrupting a Jamaican cultural festival special from Notting Hill with breaking news, broadcasts them singing “We Shall Overcome”
Ken Livingstone rants in an interview with Trevor McDonald that the ant has got rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his “fair share”.
In response to polls, the Labour Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant’s taxes are reassessed, and he is also fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as helpers.
Without enough money to pay both the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, the government repossesses his home.
The ant moves to Spain, and starts a successful wine-exporting company.
A Panorama special later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the ant’s food, though Spring is still months away, while the council house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he hasn’t bothered to maintain it.
Inadequate government funding is blamed, Trevor Phillips is appointed to head a commission of enquiry that will cost £10,000,000.
The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose, the Daily Mirror blames it on the obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity.
The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders, praised by the government for enriching Britain’s multicultural diversity, who promptly set up a marijuana plantation and terrorise the community.
THE END
Kulibar Tree,
An instant classic.
Rob,
Many thanks, but I wish I could take any of the credit for it, so I thought the least I could was spread it as far and wide as possible.
Cheers.
You’re right, Eamonn, Derbyshire is dreadful. Droning, boring, humourless, politcally correct. I switched off a long time ago.
Wot, no mention of the Grauniad or the al-Indy ?
BBC ‘Breaking News’
Americans tortured me – Saddam
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4550314.stm
Jackpot for beeboids, Saddam Vs America. Whose side are the BBC on?
re the Grasshopper & Ant – here is a minister (in Scotland) talking today:
Minister makes homeless priority
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4547452.stm
“We need fair housing allocations where all applicants are treated as human beings and their needs are assessed properly. Above all, we need a system that treats people as individual human beings not as a label or category, deserving or otherwise.”
fair housing allocations for grasshoppers today!
Ritter,
“Above all, we need a system that treats people as individual human beings not as a label or category” directly contradicts “We need fair housing allocations where all applicants are treated as human beings and their needs are assessed properly.” categorising people as “needy” or paying for “needy”.
Coerced collectivism just seems to have no rationality to it.
Ritter,
Aaaah, and Saddam and the terrorists thought they owned the copyright to torture and humiliation.
Bully syndrome I guess, can give it out but can’ take it.
Kulibar Tree, very amusing. On a similar note, try this parody of Chomsky discussing “The Lord of the Rings”:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/ring…ary/part1.html
Apologies, that link didn’t seem to work. Try this one:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/ringcommentary/part1.html
Rob Read
The “teenager” was described by a R5 Live reporter as “white”
As linked above, BBC headline –
Rapid US economic growth persists
Funny choice of word is “persist”, descriptive of something unpleasant like war or athletes foot?
To be obstinately repetitious, insistent, or tenacious.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=persist
Darned Capitalism!
Persists in offering mankind the best solutions for the largest number of people. Dont tell the BBC, its still 1979 in White City.
Donkey Jacket anyone?
You will NEVER see the headline “License Fee Persists”.