Monthly Archives: December 2005

Interpol calls it “people smuggling“, but at the BBC, they are “migrants“.

Talking of Oliver Kamm, he has posted on the Newsnight “Allies on Trial” show. The writer and broadcaster William Shawcross, having declined to participate, wrote to Mr Kamm, who continues the story thus:

William explained that, while he would be happy to be part of an investigation or discussion, he would not take part in a form of entertainment. I am glad to set down his reasoning, with his permission.

Newsnight has done important work in reporting many areas of the war in Iraq and the war on Islamist terror more widely. A ‘courtroom’ pastiche is a fashionable but frivolous conceit that detracts from that record of excellent and courageous reporting in Iraq by Mark Urban and other correspondents. The allegations about “rendition” need a thorough investigation and merit the closest attention of Newsnight, but a ‘trial’ will do nothing in that regard. The name of the programme and the choice of counsel and witnesses suggest a spectacle more than an analysis. It is especially unfortunate that the ‘trial’ should be scheduled when a British hostage is threatened with death by real criminals in Iraq, and on the eve of the most important election that Iraq (and perhaps any Arab country) has ever had. One has to assume that the timing is deliberate; its effect will be to detract from the sacrifice of British and other forces in Iraq, and belittle the heroism of the Iraqi people in seeking to create a civil society in a nation ravaged by tyranny.

Kamm writes that he is “frequently a defender of the BBC against allegations – which I think are mistaken and miss the real criticism of its approach – of political bias.” You will not be too suprised to learn that I disagree. But the points he and Shawcross make about this programme hit the mark.

Adloyada had her first stint as a guest blogger for Today yesterday, where the subject for discussion was whether the media runs Britain.

Oliver Kamm has discussed – and dismissed – the idea that “money” runs Britain, and Tim Ireland says it ain’t the EU either.

Kudos to the Beeb for this initiative, and for being ready to ask bloggers who were critics of the organisation. And before anyone says, “Ah but never in a million years would they ask…” actually, they did. But I didn’t. I suggested my estimable colleagues here, some of whom live in reach of London, but the nice Beeb researcher said they sort of wanted a female.

I know, I know – the PLO are merely activists for change, just like B-BBCers.

I never knew that Marwan Barghouti was one too:

“The rebel list is headed by a jailed activist, Marwan Barghouti, under the new name al-Mustaqbal (the Future)…

Barghouti is serving five life terms in an Israeli prison over militant attacks.” [emphasis added]

Mr Barghouti is a rather forceful “activist”:

“He was convicted on May 20, 2004 of five counts of murder, one of the victims being a Greek Orthodox monk, resulting from three attacks, one north of Jerusalem, one in Tel Aviv and one in the West Bank. He was also found guilty of one count of attempted murder resulting from a failed suicide car bomb. He was acquitted of 21 counts of murder in 33 other attacks. On June 6, 2004, he was sentenced to five life sentences for the five murders and 40 years imprisonment for the attempted murder.”

I suppose we should be thankful that the BBC bothered to refer to the somewhat inconvenient gaol term.

The BBC interviews two ex-US servicemen. Unsurprisingly, they both have problems with the way that George Bush has run the war.

They are:

“Captain Jonathan Powers served for a year in Iraq in the early stages of the war. After returning he founded War Kids Relief, a charity that rebuilds orphanages in Iraq.

Garrett Reppenhagen was a sniper. He served in Iraq for a year and returned home about four months ago. He now works for a public education group, Alliance for Security.”

The BBC forgets to tell us that Mr Reppenhagen is:

“…another antiwar activist who was on the Veterans for Peace Impeachment Tour with Cindy Sheehan from the very beginning.” source

“involved with Iraq Veterans Against the War” (I love “All points of view welcome”*) source

Hmmmm…

*Look at the programme:

“Fayetteville, NC Fri, Sep. 16th Event Description:

Friday, September 16th

9am–10am— Radio interview on WFNC

12:00—1:00—Peace Vigil on Hay Street at the Market House

1:30–4pm—Press Conference , afternoon buffet, meet and greet

5pm–9pm—National premiere of “Operation Dreamland” at the Cameo Theatre on Hay Street. We’ll be passing out leaflets at the 5pm,

7pm and 9pm showing. The showing at 5pm is free to active duty military, veterans and military families.

9pm—Public discussion of Occupation Dreamland in the Rainbow Room–(located next door to the Cameo Theatre)”

Well, B-BBC inches closer to 1 million hits.

Everyone’s pissed off with the Newsnight showtrial.

Well, inspired by Tim Blair*, why don’t all you crazy-kid RWDBs vote on BBC Online on:

“Do you believe the allies have breached the convention on the methods and means of warfare?

Do you believe the allies have breached the convention on torture and refugees?”

Vote here.

*The Australian Greens were very upset about this sort of grassroots democracy.

“Nearly a millionon your site meter! Can the millionth visitor post a screeny?” – Rob Read, in the comments to the previous post.

David Hicks, the soon-to-be-British Taleban, looks kind of sweet and gullible in the BBC photo, doesn’t he?

This page has the usual archive picture we see in Australia (scroll down) (and The Age is a Fairfax paper – Fairfax is the Australian equivalent of an infernal hybrid of The Guardian, The Independent and the NYT, so it would hardly be worried about being too soft on the terrorist).

They’re still at it on Sydney:

“The fighting then spread to other parts of the city, injuring more than 30 people, including police officers.

The violence continued on Monday night, apparently in retaliation, despite calls for calm and ethnic tolerance by Prime Minister John Howard and other senior figures.”

Quite wrong – the white on Lebanese attacks had ended by about mid-afternoon on Sunday. By Sunday evening, the violence was all Lebanese on Skips.* It stopped on Monday, while everyone was at work, and then the Lebanese gangs attacked on Monday night and then again on Tuesday night. To be fair, the writer does use “retaliation”, but you would have to have slightly more knowledge than the obtuse Mr Iles (whose comment has fortuitously been boxed) to understand this when immediately preceding the article has:

“The large-scale violence in Sydney started on Sunday, when thousands of young white men attacked people of Arabic and Mediterranean background.”

Oh well, they were just “people” whose the “violence continued”.

This update also misses the important 5 hour old news that the Muslim community has called for a stop, no ifs, no buts:

‘”The perpetrators of such activities are criminals and should be subject to the full force of the law.

“This applies to anyone involved in such activities regardless of their background.

“It is important that those who have committed criminal offences be charged and brought to account. In fact, this is an important part of the healing process.”

Eman Dandan, from the Lebanese Muslim Association, told smh.com.au: “Basically we are developing a working group to hit the streets and start talking to boys, notably the young males [who are] disrupting society or whatever.”‘

These righteous Muslims do not refer to Palestine or Iraq or [insert “root cause” here] so I doubt the BBC will get round to mentioning this awkward fact.

*Means Australians – see here (and before you start, “wog” has a different meaning in Australia of Italian or Greek, and is not racist in the way it is in the UK – notwithstanding the ignorant remarks of the ignoramus BBC HYS posters who spent all of 2 weeks backpacking and drunk on Bondi Beach – much to the annoyance of us locals – and then presume to mouth off about how all Australians are racist).

Commenter Dr Who notes NewsNight’s Maoist agitprop, you guessed it, a war crimes trial of the Coalition.

The comments are a laugh and a half.