Scott Callahan has put together a detailed post that’s right up this blog’s street. He compares the BBC’s approach to the death penalty in the US and China- and finds a stark contrast.
Just over a week ago I did a similar thing in relation to the BBC’s coverage of the Iranian death penalty- though not as well – on my own blog. The point is that whichever way you cut it, the Beeb basically gives alien cultures a free pass for being alien (playing up every sign of decency, downplaying every barbarism), whereas they feel free to run the USA into the ground over its penal code.
ed, interesting take – and I thought I was cynical!
It’s a rare sensation for me, but I’m actually optimistic that arguments expressed in the blogosphere might be having an impact. Then again, I am pissed.
Please watch the whole Nick Griffin speech http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=744
not just the bits the BBC took out of context and make your own mind up.
Would Oaten have looked worse or better if he’d been caught poling a female whore rather than a male one?
Surely the Oaten matter is a quetion of:
a) marital infidelity – sex with another person;
b) risk of STD being passed to the wife – sex with a (presumably) multi-partner person;
c) can we ever trust such a duplicitous person again
d) political niavety – how could he believe that the story would never come out
e) lack of personal discipline or self control
By the way, is it adultery?
Mark Oaten has shown that he is just like the rest of us. To condemn him would be hypocritical.
I mean, how many of us can honestly say that we have never contemplated having an affair with a rent-boy while holding down a job as a high-profile MP and giving the impression of being happily married?
Incidentally, rumours suggesting that Simon Hughes is also a keen ‘badger-watcher’ are malicious and completely untrue.
Seriously though, the reaction of the liberal meejah will be interesting. Very interesting indeed.
Mark Oaten is not like the rest of us – but I see you are being facetious. Charles Kennedy is more understandable with drink being a common feature of people with time on their hands and lots of boredom. Once the LibDems knifed him they opened the fissures of a fractured party and Oaten has basically decieved his wife and children, not just his voters – and it was “deceit” that the media and LibDems accused Kennedy of.
Ron Davies lied to Blair and was eventually forced to go; Alan Duncan did not need to go. The simple fact is that Mark Oaten has used his image as a solid family man in his constituency and set himself up as a replacement for Kennedy.
The only thing I wonder is if the NoW really found out itself or whether it was fed the line by No10/MI5 to pay back Oaten for joining with the Tories in opposing Blair on ID Cards and 90-Day Detention
It should be noted that Europeans are not all that anti-death penalty.
“Even now, large percentages in most European nations favor the death penalty, according to polls. More countries continue to abolish it to meet a condition of inclusion in the European Union. Poland, for example, abolished the death penalty in 1997, despite surveys showing that more than 60 percent of Poles wanted to keep it.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11306-2005Jan15.html
What you have is a small class of self-appointed leftist “elites” who run Europe, most of whom are not elected. They control the press, and their beliefs are used to filter the news.
Lou Minatti: Ain’t that the truth!
Who on here would love to see the death penalty for our old friend Hook???
Me!
O/T (sorry)
Just saw the travel segment on News 24, we have PC in full effect. Constant references to “Mumbai” rather than “Bombay”, now thats fine if Indians really care whether we call it that (of course if I kept saying, with a straight face, that I was going to Milano instead of Milan I would be regarded as a pretentious wanker).
The problem is if Bombay is now Mumbai then “Bollywood” is now “Mollywood” or “Mullywood” perhaps “Mummywood”, “Mumblywood” anybody? The possibilities are endless.
But you know what? In that last day or so Ive heard the Beeb refer to *shhh* Bollywood – ugh I can barely get my tongue around its colonialist tones! What culturally insensitive swine they are! If I catch another instance of such non-PC behaviour I will be sure to email them.
OT
A Danish fashion firm is to sell T-shirts inspired by rebel fighters, with proceeds to go to militant groups.
Therefore the headline must be:
Danish T-shirts ‘to fund rebels’.
Calls for total ban on smacking
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4636240.stm
Let the state nanny the kids (and the grown-ups) – I can sense a success story in the making. Britain in 2006 … More Orwellian than Orwell ever could have imagined. My a***!
Max, I forgot to comment on that “piece” last night… Typical Beeb – let’s fund some rebels.
Why don’t they just sell Bin Laden t-shirts through their website?
O.T.: This is good…
Shooting rekindles Canada gun debate
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4636102.stm
“…Of 78 murders last year, 52 were gun-related, sparking fears that US levels of gun crime are creeping their way north.
Toronto mayor David Miller laid the blame for the Boxing Day shooting squarely south of the border.
“The US is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto,” he said…”
Ah, these bad Americans again. Typical. Let’s hope http://www.conservative.ca/ rules next week
And all the gangland shootings in the UK are also down to a lack of gun-control in the US – the socialist freedom criminals enjoy in Britain of 2006 doesn’t have anything to do with it, does it???
Lurker – same way the always talk about the Irish ‘Teashop’ but never the German Bundeskanzler nor do they refer to Warszawa, Praha, Lisboa, Muenchen, Roma, Jerushaylim, or Beit-Lechem
Did anyone hear “Up All Night” yesterday on the dreaded 5Live ? Surreal…….the BBC guy was lecturing some Scotsman on how his view that gays should not enter politics and people like Mark Oaten were not fitted to leadership roles and were bad examples – was not acceptable and he was not fit for the “21st Century”.
So at least the guy paying the licence fee was able to get his BBC Sermon delivered down his own telephone line.
Then they had some Media Studies stiff from Staffordshire Poly telling then it was fine for Coronation Street to call people “White Trash” especially if they were single parents on a council estate – a single male parent living in a council flat made his anger at “the Leftist BBC” evident.
Hey – try this one from The Sunday Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2003576,00.ht
As the old saying goes, the definition of a racist is anybody who’s winning an argument with a liberal — one who is, after all, used to setting all the guidelines for what passes for national debate, is insulated from the effects of his opinions, and doesn’t much care for being challenged.
Peter Oborne is socking it to them on Sunday AM now.
OT.
so if we are allowed to look at the Sunday Times,(and far be it for me to criticise, as a Master of the Bleedin’ Obvious)have a look at this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2003915,00.html
Of course MI5 knew. If they didn’t know, they’d deserve the sack; after all, Nick Griffin worked it out in 2004.
But at that time, the Beeb was busily trying to sell the idea that it was all scaremongering.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4171213.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4036843.stm
Hmm. Does the BBC ‘Stealth Edit’ its own archives? Do they ‘airbrush’ history, like the Soviets?
(Socialism this) Sunday am with the Relativist in Chief Andrew Marr.
Four minutes from conservative commentator Peter Obourne and then Fifty Six minutes of undiluted Socialism from a Scottish Labour MP (we should pay more tax and work longer), a Lib Dem leadership candidate (we should pay more tax and work longer) and Greg Dyke (we should continue to pay telly tax, oh! and by the way! I was biased on the Iraq war and never thought it was a good idea.)
Feeling unwell I switched to Sky for a bit of Adam Boulton but no respite.
Jackie Ashley (Mrs Andrew Marr) pontificating ( we should pay more tax and work longer).
Is there any escape from the Marr Family on a Sunday Morning?
Is there any escape from having very rich people telling us that we should all pay more tax?
Is there any way of forcing rich media class Labour hypocrites to get away from the public trough and do some work?
The BBC stealth-edits live web pages; there is no doubt that they would do likewise to their archives. They are, after all, ‘journalists’.
Do you recall how Dalek Birt used to have his BBC pay run through a private company to minimise tax ? I wonder just how many members of the BBC aristocracy do this still ?
In days of yore the lazy sons of the aristos used to get wining-and-dining jobs in merchant banks, now it is the media and the BBC seems to have become the new Kleinworts or Morgan Grenfells – then we have the Dimbleby aristos growing up in a house with 7 servants and the whole hereditary principle of the Wilcox, Magnussen, Dimbleby, families to name but three.
The wining-and-dining jobs are today funded by the taxpayer the private sector being too competitive and volatile nowadays for those who like easy living.
It seems that the BBC audience is delusional. HYS poses
What could this new message mean if it is from the al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden? What do you think is significant about the “truce” he reportedly offers. Send us your comments.
& the most recommended comment is
George Bush’s approval ratings are on a downward slide again – it’s time to roll out the Big Bad Bogeyman again!!!
[papalazzzaru], London
Recommended by 125 people
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=785&edition=1&ttl=20060122131012&#paginator
So the audience is prepared to go beyond the BBC’s thesis that al-Qaeda doesn’t exist, & believe that OBL is just a CIA stooge.
I suppose Bush’n’Sharon brought down the WTC.
“I suppose Bush’n’Sharon brought down the WTC.”
There are those who are promoting that idea. Some are postulating it in books and are making money from the sales, particularly in France.
peter oborne – sunday am – made a good point. loads of whale coverage in the papers, bugger all about the iraqi elections.
Lurker,
Dont forget the BBC is going to have trouble when it wants to send a commentator to the opera at-Firenze.
So thats Florence,Florentine etc gone then.
They didn’t even look for Jonah in the whale !
paulc
Hmm. Does the BBC ‘Stealth Edit’ its own archives? Do they ‘airbrush’ history, like the Soviets?
Very interesting question. Winston Smith’s job in 1984 was of course to do just that.
The left seems to regard Orwell as a textbook, rather than as a warning like humans do. So it would not surprise me at all to find that al-BBC spends some of its £3,000,000,000 annual income on paying people to alter the past.
Ive been emailing the Beeb like a mentalist regarding their use of the culturally insensitive term “Bollywood”.
Its disgusting, these imperialists appear to have more than 800 pages using the term. How our asian brothers and sisters must groan under the boot of oppression!
Ive made a few culturally sensitive suggestions like “Mollywood”. It will be only a matter of time before all British media adopt the term I’m sure.
erm – but Molly was 18th century English slang for camp homosexual?
Now thats great!
Mollywood!
Ive had a couple of replies from various BBC areas.
The line seems to be that Bollywood is now a word in its own right. And Bombay isnt?
Its the arbitary change from Bombay to Mumbai that really annoys.
>You sometimes hear about Singapore and, more recently Thailand, Archduke but only very rarely (if ever) about Japan (and their low crime rate< Nor Botswana, South Africa's neighbour. Now sure there is to the massive difference in crime between SA and Bots, but this is simply not discussed.
That statement has only been true since 1946, and then not including countries behind the Iron Curtain, the Balkans, or Northern Ireland.
Lou Zhu worked hard
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