– I am sure readers can add a lot to this post. There are many examples of where the BBC just spouts nonsense for no apparent reason- one suspects just a dilute form of PC is at work.
This article was a typical one for the Beeb– post-colonial handwringing. I am not saying that it is unimportant what went on in the past- not at all. However, one point struck me. Peter Biles reporting genocide in Namibia under German colonial rule says that the estimated deaths involved were 40,000 (he gives before and after figures). Then he goes on to say that
‘Close to the centre of town, there is an old German church, with a powerful reminder that the Germans too, took casualties in the fighting with the Herero in the early years of the last century.
The graves of more than 50 German soldiers are laid out in a neatly kept cemetery, and on the granite headstones are recorded the names of those who perished in a far-flung land.
This was not an altogether one-sided conflict.’
But how absurd. 40,000 v 50 is not one-sided? What’s he trying to say here? And why? Mystifying, and typical.
BBC1 6pm News features a report on nuclear waste.
The reporter tells us that present stations will require a clean up cost of £56bn.
He says “Let’s put this sum into context”, & compares it with NHS spending.
Context?
Perhaps he could have compared it with the cost of reclaiming pit sites, paying compensation to lung damaged miners & the cost of the premature deaths caused by mining, coal pollution etc.
Alternatively he could have compared it to the cost of providing equivilent energy by renewable means.
i know paulc – i would have expected that sort of talk from Dubya.
but Chirac? i’m still dumbfounded with the ramifications of it.
any journalist worth his salt would be scrambling around looking for the reasons (via security sources) behind this enormous doctrinal shift in French military strategy. not so the bbc.
what prompted Chirac to say this?
is there something he knows that we dont?
THATS the question.
Yellerkat – you might want to read up on Tasmania, turns out history has been bent towards the PC – now subject to some revisionism.
Yellerkat – you might want to read this:
http://www.sydneyline.com/Manne%20debate%20Quadrant.htm
Rob Read
Oh definately the BBC wins that debate. There is nothing worse than some-one, you are supposed to trust and paying for,”Pissing on your back while telling you its raining.” Islam or Islamic people are, and must never be, your or my enemy. Just their leaders and the politicians and other criminals, who use and abuse them. Which should keep us all very buzy.
This…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4629486.stm
Will be dropped quicky – USA success.
much as i hate to use the term, but the “blogosphere” (urghh) is alive with the chirac nuke threat.
http://flapsblog.com/?p=1810
http://house-pundit.livejournal.com/4576.html
http://newwars.blogspot.com/2006/01/france-would-go-nuclear.html
http://danceswithidiots.blogspot.com/2006/01/chirac-occasionally-my-balls-clank-too.html
and thats just a few of them.
jerusalem post picks up on it
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1137605875863&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
and Israpundit calls it “France on Viagra”
http://www.israpundit.com/archives/2006/01/france_on_viagr_1.php
even Matt “French cheese eating surrender monkeys” Drudge has it on the front page , with a picture of Chirac with the headline “France threatens nuclear weapons against terrorist states”
http://www.drudgereport.com
As far as I can see, geopolitically, this has knocked the American right wing for six – this really is an earthquake – honestly, from looking at the right wing blogs, and pro Bush sites , its like a bolt from the blue that they werent expecting.
In other words – VERY newsworthy.
if we look at the BBC international news front page – its dropped off the radar already (besides a link tucked under “europe”)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
so in the Beeboid mindset, its not newsworthy – Bin Laden’s audio tape is vastly more important than the French changing their nuclear weapons policy.
Oh dear…
bin laden is more important according to the beeboids.
that says a lot.
ming the merciless,
BinMan Ladens hudnu is a sign the Islamists are getting their arses whooped.
Time to step up a arse whooping gear and eliminate the islamist infestation.
They practically worship the guy.
Could it simply be Chriac trying to bring himself up in the opinion poles? There’s an election brewing… well, eventually. It could be that he’s sensed a change in mood amongst the French public and now he’s playing the hardliner to get their approval.
Alright, not likely…
you know, despite all the jokes about French military victories, you really don’t want to piss them off. They’re like the quiet guy who always runs away from a fight, until one day he’s trapped in a corner and goes mental.
“you know, despite all the jokes about French military victories, you really don’t want to piss them off. They’re like the quiet guy who always runs away from a fight, until one day he’s trapped in a corner and goes mental.”
Huh huh.
hmmmm.
Noooooo.
But I enjoyed the laugh 🙂
Archonix is right – look at what happened in Algeria – French were cornered and they got mightily vicious.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/01/another-unholy-mess.html
“EU Referendum keeps us up to date on the attrocities that the French are allegedly committing in the Ivory Coast (and remember, the press is ignoring this even though they were hyping Abu Graib when it was as substantial as a whisper in the wind): The report, originating from the online site, African News Dimension, retails allegations that French troops have been raping young girls and stripping them naked for pornography scenes, in the north of Ivory Coast. One report claims how soldiers forced a young girl to have sex with a dog.
This follows on from other allegations that French soldiers stole €58,000 from the Ivorian reserve bank last year, but they are now accused of kidnapping young girls between 16 and 22 for a strip shows. Some soldiers are said to be giving US$1.50 to the girls “when they are hostile to their disgraceful scenes”.
The behaviour of the French raises the question as to why Blair is not bringing up the Ivory Coast issue through the European Council (he could have, for instance, raised it through the UK presidency period), especially as he has made poverty in Africa a priority issue. But it also raises the question as to whether we can afford to be associated with the French military; whether • to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher • these are people with whom we can, or should do business.
While the hacks are quite happy to slag off the American administration and military • from the comfort of their luxury hotels in the Baghdad Green Zone, protected by the lives of those very troops they so detest – none of the professionals who employ them and use their copy have stirred themselves to find out what is going on the Ivory Coast, and report it. One way or another, this is an unholy mess, but most of the mess is on our doorstep.”
Ritter wrote:
The destruction of the Herero people was supposed to be the prototype for the genocide of the Jews.
The Imperial German Army Officer in charge of the eradication, survived WW1 and went on to serve the 3rd Reich”
Really ? So the Armenians were merely an oversight in 1915 then ? Are you Turkish ?
German Officers were involved in the Armenian “disappearances”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar_von_Trotha
The Imperial German Army Officer was DEAD in 1920
“US rebuffs Bin Laden ‘truce call’ ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4630314.stm
‘However, from time to time we also contact a small number of contributors to ask them to participate in related television or radio programmes.”
Any guesses as to who they contact?
Anonymous | 19.01.06 – 4:52 pm |’
To be fair, I was asked to participate in a radio debate a few years back. The topic was China’s new friendliness towards the West, and I had pointed out on HYS the ongoing human rights abuses carried out by the Chinese authorities, especially against the underground Christian churches there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take part in the debate, but the BBC did at least issue an invitation to have my view heard.
The French soldier is like the French lover. He talks up a big performance beforehand but when it comes to action he discharges his weapon out of range of the target, wets his pants, and rolls over.
Rob Read
Re OBL’s truce offer: you’re absolutely right – no-one offers a truce unless they’re losing. Same with the IRA – they were militarily whipped but politically very astute.
In Islamic theology, jihadists ask for a truce when they are weak and need to gather strength.
so , your not wrong umbongo. nows the time to hit al qaeda even harder.
I think OBL has been watching too many Batman movies………I somehow don’t think the Mayor will agree to the Riddler’s latest wheeze
Umbongo
No one offers a truce unless they are being beaten??
You could argue that Israel’s entire strategy with the Palestinians from Oslo through Wye, Geneva, disengagement from Gaza is offering a truce to the beaten party. The ‘Roadmap’ can be seen as the world demanding that Israel submit to Palestinian demands despite the Arabs continually initiating war and losing! 🙁
One question no one seems to ask themselves. On whom precisely will Chirac drop the bomb? Damascus, Teheran, Corsica or Lille?
rick
Ritter didn’t write it, I did.
‘The Imperial German Army Officer was DEAD in 1920’
I looked up the wikipoedia ref. and found I’d inadvertantly given Franz Epp a premature promotion.
As for:
‘Really ? So the Armenians were merely an oversight in 1915 then ? Are you Turkish ?
German Officers were involved in the Armenian “disappearances”‘
Take that up with the BBC, It was their revisionism.
Personally I believe the revisionist argument is invalid.
The Nature of the Genocides against the Armenians and Jews was that of a majority expelling/eliminating a peaceful, settled, integrated minority for ‘political’ and ‘cultural’ reasons.
The genocide of the Herero looks like an act of racially driven revenge with a large topping of ‘land-grab’
But the lesson the Nazis took from the Armenian Holocaust was expressed in the musings of Hitler as he posed the question – “Who remembers now the extermination of the Armenians?”
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