“John”notes It’s My Story, 9 minutes in*:
“It’s My Story : The Vietnamese Buddha
Documentary about a Buddhist master returning to Vietnam for the first time since the war. Discussing the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves in protest at the Vietnam war the presenter drops in this staggering bit of amoral relativism:
‘I kind of think about what happened at 9/11 and I suppose I’m trying to figure out how that’s kind of different’
What kind of question is that to ask for anyone with any moral sense whatsoever?
Though I suppose both the Buddhist monks and the 9/11 hijackers committed suicide protesting the Imperialism of the evil Americans so it IS a tricky conundrum in the mind of a presenter impregnated with the BBC/Guardian/Independent worldview to say who’s better or worse.”
I suppose we should be thankful the presenter is at least aware that there may actually be a difference…
*Not double-checked by B-BBC
“disillusioned_german” complains to the BBC about The Christmas Resistance. Yesterday, this was hyperlinked from the news front page with the heading “Bah humbug!” (from memory – gone now).
Although every news organisation peddles these sorts of Christmas stories every year (in the US under the “War on Christmas” palaver, whereas in the UK and Australia it is more normally with an amused “human interest”/eccentricity angle), I think the broader point might be fair. Eid and Diwali etc etc never get subjected to this sort of questioning. When the BBC starts giving equal time to people like the brilliant Irshad Manji (BBC treatment here), who represents an important reforming strain in Islam (like The Times does with Salman Rushdie, for example), then pieces like this and the Whine about Christmas would be OK.*
*This is hardly some world service issue irrelevant to BBC UK programming – although Muslims only make up 3.1% of the E&W population, the issue is well covered by White City. (Then again, UK government institutions have always had a thing for romantic Arabism, and pro-Islam-ism may seep out from there).
I think the deeper issue is not that there is some lapidary, monolithic “Let’s attack whitey” stance in the BBC, but more that the “institutionalised multi-culturalism” is so pervasive that the “oh so clever” 20 year-old baby Beeboid just out of university who is assigned to write this Christmas dross lives in a world that can’t possibly contemplate that some might wonder why his cynicism over a Christian religious festival shouldn’t equally be applied to a festival celebrated by a religion whose adherents have more melanin in their skin than Pat Robertson.
On the issue of Islam, “the_camp_commandant” notes the confusion when two PC shibboleths collide. Same sex domestic partnerships in the UK are truly newsworthy. In coverage of the Belfast ceremonies, the BBC had quotations from Christians protesting about hellfire etc etc, and a Catholic cardinal about the Catholic view of the issue. I have never seen a quotation from an imam on Islam’s view. I wonder why?
USS Neverdock on more BB Blankety Blanks.
“Ritter” notes Christians accused of homophobia which seems to be a local news beat-up about police harrassment of two old people for breaching groupthink rules (this is becoming a pattern), while a perfunctory search about those executions of young gay men in Islamic Iran was pretty uninformative.
“Ritter” links to Ray Snoddy on the changing media landscape.
“Rob White” and “Lizzie” think Christmas after Katrina: Part One and Christmas after Katrina: Part two are worse respectively.
“Steve” notes 262 BBC Execs earn over £100,000.
“Rob White” looks forward to 2006:
“Starting on 4 January, 2006, Matt Frei will be writing a fortnightly diary from Washington for the BBC News website.”
“Roy” notes:
“Seems that Frei is joined by BBC’s Daniela Relph in Washington who provided this article on the renewal of the Patriot Act.
The American Expatriate explains that the BBC are calling the result after 90 minutes, when the match is going into extra time, with more support for Bush’s position than the BBC will credit.”
The Expat discussses BBC reporting on ID. To be fair, the US is an exremely complex country, where you can find whatever you are looking for (the cleverest people, the dumbest people, the fattest/most health-freaky people, the most Christian/most depraved people etc). However, a basic knowledge of the US system ought to cover things like federal/state/county/parish devolution of power and the consitutional structure. Why is it OK for the BBC and other PC lefties to generalise about the US, but not, for example, about Muslims or black people? Like Jews, the US and Americans are fast becoming the blank slate upon which the rest of the world unfairly, illogically and irrationally projects its own prejudices and nightmares.
“Rob Read” plays BB Blankety Blanks with this article about those postal workers – I wonder why the scare quotes:
‘Up to £5m was pilfered from 1,300 “mainly Jewish” residents in Golders Green, north London, alone.
Because of the large number of victims, both they and police initially feared the community was being “targeted because of religion”, but that concern was “misplaced”.’
The scare quotes are unnecessary and cause the cynical to assume something worse – replace “Jewish” with “black” or “Muslim” (mutatis mutandis).
Re. Buddhists,
I could be wrong, but weren’t the monks protesting
‘The War,’
not
‘The Americans?’
Y’know, non-violence and all that?
9/11 wasn’t about non-violence, was it?
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all the B-BBC people, commenters and readers. 🙂
OT: Big demo last night outside the gates of RAF Akrotiri Cyprus against the activities of one Cherie Booth QC and her money grabbing antics regarding Greek owned property in the North where she is defending the people who brought the land from Turks….
Lots of graffiti on the gates and the RAF sign has been covered. Well done Cherie, the locals are even more peed off at the RAF and British Forces in Cyrus now!
Yes, but the locals don’t get that Cherie Blair ain’t actually British… If she could launch a court-suit that would disband the UK I guess she’d take it.
Toby: Maybe I’m watching too much Fox News but from what has been presented to me I can only conclude that there is a “War against Christmas” in the US. I’m not a practising Christian but I think Christianity is not a bad basis for developing moral values. Values that are sadly lacking in many Western European countries…
Talk about loaded questions:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=649&&&edition=2&ttl=20051224015445
Check out the above thread on (D)HYS and the lead-in question:
Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld both made Christmas visits to soldiers in Iraq this week. Do they really care about the troops or is it just a photo opportunity?
The British Prime Minister and the US Defence Secretary each took the chance to announce that troop numbers would be cut next year.
Mr Blair praised the soldiers’ efforts: “I just want you to know how grateful we are for the work you are doing here.”
Do you think the trips boost troops’ morale or are they just political stunts for people back home?
Why, no attempt to skew the responses, no siree! Nothing to see here, move along folks.
Dis german
Im not a christian, practising or otherwise. However the BBC would do well to remember the Ten commandments. Especialy remember the one about baring false wittness, and another one about coverting other peoples oxes,when reporting about America in particular. I mean its not as if we cant actualy go there ourselves, reed books or use a PC. Like misguided parents that tell there teenagers that drinking one drink will instantly turn them into useless alcoholics. The BBC is losing its credibility with youth. Which may go some way to explaining the increasing Americanisation of our culture inspite of the BBCs best efforts of misinformation. They have show themselves incapable of steming the constant flow of anti-American bile that streems from every BBC production.
What is needed is an alternative televistion channel that exposes regulary the lac of any real cloths covering the BBCs blotted ass. Unfortuatly we have only ITV, channel 3 and 4.( OH DEAR) The BBC is a national embarasment. It has not only shown its political bias but is becoming increasingly incompetent in general.
The BBC today reported on the post office crime. They explained that the post was safe even though 250,000 seperate packages went missing every year. This statement was justified by stateing the statistic that it was a very very small % of the tottal letters sent. Perhaps the next time a aroplain crashes they will take such a disregarding attitude. It did not seem apparent to the reporters that an extreemly high proportion of the mail is not worth stealing, and that there is actualy no acurate figures on NON-RECORDED postal loses. Do they have mates in the post office union or have I just got paranoid. But then that is only to be expected when a news organisation loses its credibility.
The highlights of 2005 “as seen by BBC News website users” can be found here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4545736.stm
Now, of course, with the BBC’s selection of stories, their notorious filtering of (D)HYS and the lack of weight given to stories from the other side of the political spectrum to their own, means that the highlights will inevitably be shaped in their own image.
However, a few points:
Inevitably Galloway’s Washington performance features prominently for the month of May. We have an “Adam Johannes” paying fellatio-like tribute to his hero, with no anti-Galloway view quoted (contrast that with David Cameron in December • both a “pro” and an “anti” viewpoint are provided).
No mention either of the Paxman-Galloway election night rumble or the doubts raised by the Gorgeous One’s testimony, under oath, to the US Senate committee.
November: strange how the Government’s defeat on detention of terror suspects sees a favourable response from a reader highlighted. You’d never know from the BBC’s coverage that the 90 days without charge proposal had public support according to opinion polls. An alternative way of looking at this might be “the people’s elected representatives distanced themselves from those who voted for them by voting down an issue that had widespread public support”. Or, “MPs vote for civil liberties ahead of national security”. I’m sure you’d get those sort of views expressed in the country but not on BBC Views Online.
August: the untimely (but in one case not unexpected) deaths of Labour favourites Mowlam and Cook gets mentioned. Fair enough in the case of Cook • he was at least a sitting MP and an anti-Iraq liberation advocate. Certainly, the Today programme presenters will miss having him along in the studio for a coffee and a cozy chat about the Iraq situation.
However, neither of the two former Prime Ministers who passed away in 2005 gets a mention. Okay, Heath passed away in July when a lot was going on, but despite that the Beeb mentions a lesser story: “Robert Kilroy silk [sic] quits as Veritas leader”.
Poor old Jim Callaghan’s passing gets trumped by Jamie Oliver.
I’d urge Biased-BBC readers to get their vote in for the moment of 2005 (sidebar). Cameron at PMQs lags Galloway in Washington, but there has only been 707 votes cast so far.
One bit of good news is that less and less PEOPLE, (which is what matters),trust or indeed watch the BBC and the BBC news in particular. The few believers in a socalist econemy left in the world dont believe a word of it. Bin-Larden thinks its just state propergander. It has lost respect from The Democrates and Christians alike in America. Personaly I just plain hate it with every abused bone in my body.
The problem is that the less people of a conservative nature (which is nearly everyone) watch it, the more out of touch it becomes with them. So who does TRUST the BBC anymore? Answer: a few wanabe second rate University graduates,and …………..no one.
Here’s a shocker (for the Beeb / IBC):
“US mosques checked for radiation”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4557224.stm
“…Nearly all of the targets were key Muslim sites.
“In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the programme,” the publication said.
“The targets were almost all US citizens,” an unnamed source involved in the programme told the magazine…”
So? All of the July 7th bombers were British citizens, right? Why are they making a big deal of the fact that the “targets were almost all US citizes”? As most of us know Muslims generally don’t consider themselves nationals of a state but members of the ummah.
I had lost a lot of faith in the Bush administration but this story gives me some hope. Almost all terrorists are muslims, that’s why need to keep a close eye on them.
G Powell: You’re right… I didn’t mean to imply that you need to be a Christian to have morals. But it doesn’t help if you’re a left wing atheist. Conservative agnostics are fine by me… Merry Christmas, my friend.
The Blog of The Spectator Magazine is quite good
http://www.spectator.co.uk/blog/index.thtml#323
A response to the disgraceful HYS highlighted above by Susan –
To Nizamuddin B Yagoub, Dhahran : The BBC may host an “open forum” where anyone can send in their comments, but they (the BBC) decide which ones to post. So, it’s not open and free, it’s censored by the BBC. You’ll note that there are many more “Left” notes posted, but the posts with the most “recommends” are those with a Conservative opinion. So, it would appear that the BBC, like most of the media, wants mainly posts that are Liberal. Not a huge surprise. Just a disappointment.
Julie Trask, Maryland, United S
The picture of Alan Shearer in this link clearly shows a BBC bias against my beloved Newcastle United football club:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/4557460.stm
Was anyone else listening to Radio 4 this Xmas Eve morning? I was, unfortunately.
Note to Kirsty Wark; Pete Doherty is not a Prodigious Talent
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=prodigious
Note to BBC; You are not permitted the luxury of a Point of View, you are the broadcast equivalent of Public Transport.
DFH
More from today’s output on Radio 4
They have been out of power since 1997 but the Tory party got much more of a going over from ‘Dead Ringers’ today than the (supposedly) governing labour party.
socialism is necrotizing
I feel compeled to give you this quotation from a true western sage.
Carl Gustave Jung:from Memories,Dreams,Reflections 1957
As a rule the INDIVIDUAL is so unconscious that he altogether fails to see his own potentialities for decision. Instead he is constantly and anxiously looking around for external rules and regulations which can guide him in his perplexity. Aside from general human inadequacy, a good deal of blame for this rests with education, which promugates the old generalisations and says nothing about the secrets of PRIVATE EXPERIENCE. Thus, every effort is made to teach idealistic beliefs or conduct which people know in their hearts they can never live up to, and such idears are preached by officials who know that they themselves have never lived up to these high standards and never will. What is more is that, nobody ever questions the value of this kind of teaching.
To-day we nead phychology for reasons that involve our VERY EXSISTANCE. We stand perplexed and stupefied before the phenonemon of Nazism and Bolshevism because we know nothing about man. If we had self-Knowledge, that would not be the case. We stand face to face with evil and we do not even know what is before us. And if we did know, we still could not know “how it could happen here.”
The likes of Mandleson and The rest of Neo Labour and the statist Starlinist BBC should read this. But it would do no good they are to thick and brain washed to understand a word of it.
See what a University education has done to them. The answer is and has always been with the “great unwashed” as they think and act as individuals in there interests. If they are alowed to and dont alow there brains and actions manipulated by 60 years of BBC propergander and of state education.
All went totally quiet about Kember about 3 weeks ago.
I thought it odd that the media didn’t keep up the story. Other cases (Bigley etc) didn’t disappear.
I suspect the Kember case is all a hoax & I expected him out today – tomorrow being more dramatic, but less people watching the news.
Anyway, he is back to star billing on BBC Online, with the quote from Saddam’s family member
Mr Altikriti (al-Tikriti, surely?) said it would be a “wonderful gesture” if the men were released before Christmas Day.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4554430.stm
So we are counting down to the happy event. (24/12/05 16:00)
Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings to all B-BBCers! And best regards and thanks to the B-BBC staff for another great year of blogging.
In relation to Homosexual ‘Weddings’:
Can someone explain to me how a taxpayer funded broadcaster can justify spending all day AND half the night covering a wedding ???
Further, could someone clarify for me if Reginald Dwyer is a ‘friend’ of Tony Blair.
Also, am I being cynical (paranoid)in thinking that Mr Dwyer’s ‘Wedding’was timed to ‘Launch’ the new legislation ???
And finally, can someone clafify for me whether or not the Labour party had a mandate for introducing this legislation, given that the polls I have seen state that 70-75% of the general public are opposed to it (not that Labour were elected by many of the electorate or population for that matter, but of course they do enjoy a substantial gerrymander).
Oh and finally, could we please start refer to the Labor Party by its original name: the Labour Party. Perhaps this would embarrass them into making a genuine effort represent those who they deserted when they changed there name from Labour to Labor, done in order to braoden their appeal.
Anon.
Your post was very interesting. I’m listening to R5’s round-up of the year’s news (plus a lot on sport). It seems to be in agreement with what you saw.
(Galloway – check.
Mowlem – check.
Cook – check.)
The presenters of this item are R5 live Drive presenters, but the items they highlight and the way that they edit the reports….
I just looked at the webpage you posted on.
What we see and hear is the ‘Party Line’. I think the ‘users’ quotes have been selected to push BBC’s own collective worldview (quelle surprise).
I feel somewhat saddened. I actually came onto the website, to inform those who care about such matters, of the BBC’s decision to describe the perpetrators of the 7/7/05 terror attack as ‘Bombers’ rather than ‘Terrorists’.
(in fact the word ‘terrorist’ did not pass the lips of a 5Live Drive presenter until they came to the sad demise of Charles deMenezes. Incidentally, the BeeB blackguarded Sir Ian Blair by informing the public that he said that M. Menezes was a terrorist suspect. This is not so, as the Beeb proved by playing Blair’s words immediately afterward:
They must think we have the attention span of goldfish.)
But there again, I expect very little of Auntie nowadays.
Wishing you all the joys of your season.
PS I am now listening to GG Galloway’s excursions in Washington (courtesy of BBC R5).
Is this a two fingered salute from Auntie to ‘factualists’ everywhere?
I am now sorry I have already eaten.
File this under “BBC Inconsistencies”:
Low-key start for new Pope
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4542844.stm
“The unexpected election of the first German pope in 1,000 years in April…”
“Unexpected”?
So, how come the BBC’s profile on Pope Benedict XVI…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4445279.stm
…States: “Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 78 – now to be known as Pope Benedict XVI – was the clear favourite to fill the vacancy left by John Paul II’s death.”
The clear favourite was unexpectedly elected! 😆
Glad we’ve got that clarified then.
File this under BBC Sloppiness:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4542844.stm
“Within the first eight months of their election, three of his most recent predecessors – John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II – had all left a powerful personal imprint upon their papacies… John Paul II, visiting his native Poland, launched a powerful defence of the Solidarity free trade union movement, marking the beginning of the end of communist hegemony in eastern Europe.”
Hmm, John Paul II must have been some sort of clairvoyant defending Solidarity in June 1979, when it wasn’t founded until September 1980:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity
(D)HYS now has a thread up about the Muslim Hajj, inviting Muslims from all over the world to gush about how wonderful the Hajj ceremony is:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=619&&edition=2&ttl=20051224215729
Compare and contrast, as they love to say, to the infamous “Christmas whine” thread inviting people to post about how much they hate Christmas.
I believe there are 12 (twelve) major religions worldwide. Anybody know anything about Shinto? Do they celebrate Christmas. I believe it was Pope Pious IV about 7th century who ticked off December 25th as Christmas Day. Don’t know when it was before then.
Major Religions of the World
Ranked by Number of Adherents
(Sizes shown are approximate estimates, and are here mainly for the purpose of ordering the groups, not providing a definitive number. This list is sociological/statistical in perspective.)
Christianity: 2.1 billion
Islam: 1.3 billion
Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
Hinduism: 900 million
Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
Buddhism: 376 million
primal-indigenous: 300 million
African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
Sikhism: 23 million
Juche: 19 million
Spiritism: 15 million
Judaism: 14 million
Baha’i: 7 million
Jainism: 4.2 million
Shinto: 4 million
Cao Dai: 4 million
Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
Tenrikyo: 2 million
Neo-Paganism: 1 million
Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
Scientology: 500 thousand
I noticed Juche in the list – is that Juche as in the self-reliance philosophy promulgated and disastrously implemented in North Korea by the “eternal President” Kim Il-Sung?
Given that North Korea is a completely materialist society, I’m wondering how Juche qualifies as a religion.
Cheers.
OT
notwithstanding one’s personal religious/atheistic leanings, it is recognizably christmas eve/christmas day in much of the world, not just the west
yet guess what that bastion of publicly-funded western-nominally-largely-christian-tax-payer supported broadcaster has for its weekly world service radio play at 2200 gmt? “ali Baba and the 40 thieves” (or at least based on it)
many references to allah, naturally
can we next year expect something with repeated references to jehovah or jesus to be broadcast on world service (arabic?) on the eve of ramadan?
don’t get me wrong, i enjoyed the tales myself many years ago, but is the timing just purely random? or is there some subtlety at work? or am i just being paranoid? (and no, not because i’m christian – i’m not)
just wondering…
‘I have a head of hair again’
A young woman who was horrifically burnt in an acid attack almost a year ago finally has a full head of hair again.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4553000.stm
Wo threw the acid??? Did it suddenly fall out of the sky???
From The Times:
“…Sundeep has no idea why she was attacked. But in Bangladesh and other Asian societies where arranged marriages are the norm, acid attacks are often carried out or arranged by disappointed suitors…”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1653144,00.html
I guess I’m slowly getting the message. I’ll do more googling. Maybe we can find out if the religion of peace was behind the attack (again).
mrdgriff | 24.12.05 – 10:51 pm |
so distant a second despite its extent of sometimes being a state religion and having solidarity-enhancing tenets like “leave and die!”?
i read somewhere that islam was the fastest-growing religion, however, not by free choice of new converts but rather by conscription – er, i mean,assent (?) at birth
From the CIA Factbook on Kenya: “…note: a large majority of Kenyans are Christian, but estimates for the percentage of the population that adheres to Islam or indigenous beliefs vary widely…”
Country profiles can sometimes be a good guide to BBC attitudes to Christianity and other religions. The country profile on Israel and Palestinian territories ignores any Christian connection to the area or even that it is known to millions as the Holyland.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/country_profiles/803257.stm#
To the BBC, Jordan’s significance results partly from its strategic location at the crossroads of what most Christians, Jews and Muslims call the Holy Land.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/country_profiles/828763.stm
It is not surprising that Jordan’s relinquishing of all claims to the area is missing from the country’s timeline. Who writes these profiles, anyway?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/country_profiles/828993.stm
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannuka or whatever warms your December to all at Biased BBC 🙂
Religion to many is an ethical and moral framework around which they can build their lives, to that extent it serves a useful purpose. When religion is used to coerce others into blind faith in the supernatural or into killing non-believers it cause more human misery than it is worthwhile holding to that faith.
The Pope has recently abandoned the concept of “limbo” Apparently this is where Jesus went between the crucifixion and the resurrection.
This led to a heated debate as to where he went for three days. Some say the Bible says he went Heaven while the Prayer Book says he went to Hell. Personally I think he was gathering rocket fuel for his rocket to pass escape velocity and ascend into heaven.
Faith and religion are to be respected when they perform useful services for mankind, but when they become obsessional irrational psychotic intro-spective nationalistic racialist mind numbing inflexible dogmatic cults – forget it.
Christmas Day 10am. Sky News lead story the Royal family at Sandringham (traditional) BBC News 24 – lead story Father Murphy O’Connor in all his finery preaching from the pulpit, apparently about the unhappy Holy Land of today crisscrossed by checkpoints and border patrols. Cut to video of Israeli security checkpoint with voice over, ” Father O’Connor blamed Israeli security checkpoints for..”
Guess what the BBC traditional message is?
As for Mr Kember the BBC angle appears to be – another British Muslim pleads for his release. If he is released, the expect huge coverage of the grand work dine by British Muslims on his behalf.
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/recruit020.shtml
New broom or old?
Ms Farnsworth’s move follows a career at the BBC which began in 1986 with her appointment as a news trainee. Following this she worked as an assistant producer on Panorama and producer on Newsnight.
21 December 2005
Current editor of the BBC Ten O’Clock News Kevin Backhurst has been promoted to controller of BBC News 24.
Joining the BBC in 1989, Mr Backhurst started out as an assistant producer in the business and economics unit. He went on to become producer of the BBC Nine O’Clock News, assistant editor of the Ten O’Clock News and then editor of News 24.
9 dec 2005
Qatar-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera International has appointed Stephen Cole as the main male news anchor in their London bureau.
Mr Cole has 26 years’ experience in journalism and has fronted Sky News, CNNI, BBC World and BBC News 24.
Most recently he was senior anchor with BBC World in London and host of the BBC’s Click Online programme.
Mr Cole said he was honoured to be part of the Doha-based, 24-hour news channel.
He said: “I firmly believe in the mission of the channel to bring viewers a 360-degree perspective on world events that shows all sides of the story from all parts of the world.”
2 January 2004
Former BBC journalist Shaista Aziz has become the second UK journalist to be sacked by Al-Jazeera.net in two months.
Ms Aziz was an outspoken member of the Al-Jazeera team, opposing controversial new staff contracts and pushing for union representation for the group. She was given notice on 1 January.
The English-language web site has a team of 11 journalists, many recruited from the BBC and the Guardian. Senior editor Yvonne Ridley, who helped to launch the news site earlier this year, was sacked without warning in November.
Kidnappers air demands
Saturday 24 December 2005, 21:07 Makka Time, 18:07 GMT
Kidnappers in Iraq have released a video of a Jordanian hostage, calling on Jordan to cut ties with the Baghdad government and free a woman involved in attacks in Amman last month.
The video, aired on the Al-Arabiya satellite channel, showed Mahmud Sulayman Saidat, a driver for the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad who was kidnapped on Tuesday by gunmen.
Saidat read a statement while sitting on the floor, surrounded by three armed men.
“I ask the Jordanian government to withdraw its diplomatic mission from Iraq and not to co-operate with this illegitimate government [in Baghdad],” he said.
He also called for Jordan to release Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, a would-be suicide bomber. Her explosives belt failed to go off at attacks on hotels in Amman on 9 November in which 60 people died.
A banner hanging in the background identified Saidat’s kidnappers as a previously unknown group, the Hawk Brigades.
Al-Arabiya said the statement in the video gave the Jordanain government three days to meet the demand.
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3189686,00.html
BBC: Jesus’ parents would get stuck in roadblock
British TV channel broadcast this week claims Jesus’ parents’ historical trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have been rendered impossible today, due to IDF restrictions. Israel Foreign Ministry outraged
Itamar Eichner
Had Jesus’ parents Joseph and Mary tried to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem nowadays, they would find it to be a near impossible task due to the IDF roadblocks and the West Bank security fence, a BBC reporter claimed in a televised broadcast this week.
The news story, by BBC correspondent in Israel Matthew Price, has brought the already shaky relations between the U.K. television channel and Israel to a new low, Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday.
In the report, Price reenacted Joseph and Mary’s historical route from Nazareth to Bethlehem, by accompanying an Israeli-Arab Nazareth carpenter, who will be forced to skip his annual visit to Bethlehem on Christmas this year, due to the army’s traffic restrictions and the exhausting effort entailed in crossing the IDF roadblocks.
Today, Nazareth and Bethlehem are two separate worlds, Price claimed in the broadcast, describing the ‘reminders to the Israeli occupation’ evident throughout the route archeologist say was taken by Jesus’ parents in their trip.
‘Jerusalem: City of suicides’
In the section of the report dedicated to Jerusalem, Price called the capital “a town of suicides,” and a place of old and new walls.
As expected, the report spurred outrage in the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office.
This is one of the most dreadful stories ever broadcasted by the BBC, Foreign Ministry sources said, adding that they plan to officially protest the report to the channel’s heads.
“The story is filled with Christian and religious elements, and it unequivocally states that Israel prevents free passage to Bethlehem,” a ministry source said.
The implication of the report is that the Jews today are like the Romans of 2000 years ago. So the Jews are the Christ killers.If the parents of Jesus (as Jews) were to enter Bethlehem or Ramalla, or Jenin, or Gaza today they would be killed within minutes because of their faith / nationality. Does the BBC documentary mention this?
Mora: What’s the difference between today and the Holy Land 2000 years ago?
Answer: There was no Islam and therefore no Muslims (suicide bombers) back then.
I guess that’s what you wanted to say too… Merry Christmas
If you were Pope and you had to write your Midnight Mass homily, you’d probably want to refer to the birth of baby Jesus in Bethlehem as a segue to both the Church’s stance for the protection of the unborn as well as an appeal for peace in that now-turbulent region.
Sure enough, Benedict XVI did exactly that according to this AP-sourced article on ABC:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1440958
However, can you guess which of those two themes the BBC dropped?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4558658.stm
>>>>
“I firmly believe in the mission of the channel to bring viewers a 360-degree perspective on world events that shows all sides of the story from all parts of the world.”
Erk, that didn’t work. Take two:
“I firmly believe in the mission of the channel to bring viewers a 360-degree perspective on world events that shows all sides of the story from all parts of the world.”
So… is the story a polygon, or is it circular? Or are the world events circular, and the story is a polygon? Or is it just the perspective that it circular? Or possibly ellipsoid, but I’ll assume he is thinking of a circle. If the story has only four sides then he won’t t really need 360-degree coverage, he can just observe it from four points. Also, what about the third dimension? Has he thought of that? I think not.
If the man shows all sides of the story from all points of the world his reports are going to be enormous and full of redundancies. He’s going to need some kind of radio navigation equipment to plot all these points and vectors. It’s ridiculous.
Go here for some Palestinian toys
http://www.strategypage.com/gallery/default.asp?target=cute_palestinian_toys.htm
Ludicrous article on a Green politician nattering on about how your Christmas Turkey is a danger to the environment:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4558940.stm
Money quote:
A European turkey, African vegetables, Australian wine and American cranberry sauce will have notched up enough miles to circumnavigate the globe, she says.
Ms Lucas, a member of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee and an MEP for the south-west England, said thoughtless sourcing of produce was contributing significantly to the aviation industry’s greenhouse gas emissions and the extension of “monoculture” farming.
Most of the products listed in the article would arrive in England on a ship, not by plane. The Beeb parrots this ignorant airhead’s line without bothering to investigate whether it’s true or not.
Air freight is extremely expensive compared to ocean freight and is reserved for highly perishable products such as cut flowers. Frozen turkeys, Ozzie wine and canned cranberry sauce would not normally be shipped via airfreight — otherwise the cost of your canned cranberry sauce would be astronomical.
If this dope of an MP (not to mention the dope of the BBC editor who greenlighted this “article”) had worked in international shipping like I did for 15+ years, they’d know that.
That’s the trouble with the “intellectual” ruling classes — none of them have ever worked in real industries, and yet feel that despite their abysmal ignorance of commerce, they have the right to tell people who DO work in real industries what to do.
Susan,
Ms Lucas could always turn her garden into a vegetable plot and keep some chickens. Trouble is she would have to be out in all weathers getting dirt under her fingernails and stay up all night with a shotgun to keep the foxes at bay.
The post five times preceding mine shows the BBC at its worst. There is no doubt (if there were ever any) that the BBC favours abortion of native Britons. Discussion on that subject is never permitted and, allied with their stance favouring unlimited immigration, it becomes clear that they want the indigenous people of this country to be replaced by outsiders.
O/T
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4557224.stm
I have an issue with this.
“US authorities have been secretly monitoring radiation levels at Muslim sites amid fears that…”
“Nearly all of the targets were key Muslim sites.”
“Muslim anger”
“They also rejected the claim that the programme specifically targeted Muslims.”
“said the news “comes as a complete shock to us and everyone in the Muslim community”.”
“He added: “This creates the appearance that Muslims are targeted simply for being Muslims. I don’t think this is the message the government wants to send at this time.””
So my issue being – all the quotes use the “M” word.
Now – I wont go into them – you all know the many, many other stories on the Beeb web site that never mention the “M” word. I.e plumber stories, bombs going off, you know the stories.
They NEVER mention the “M” word. So why is it repeated on this one over and over….
Obviously not got anything to do with bad bad bad America is it?