Note: updates below. (I also added a few more comments to the P.S.)
Throw them into a room and hope it works: I’ve just been watching one of the most superficial-ever episodes of Newsnight. A whole load of “experts” — although Paxman admitted to one transport “expert”, a completely obscure local Labour figure, that they had asked 48 other people before alighting on him — were collected together in a studio to discuss various pressing issues such as health, education and transport.
They were put together in groups of 5 or 6, and after watching a short film made by one of them, they banged on drunken dinner-party style for about 5 or so minutes. Not surprisingly they constantly interrupted each other, granstanded, defended their own patches, made sweeping, vague statements and predictable partisan comments. We learned absolutely nothing at all. The BBC think an intellectual discussion consists of people disagreeing with each other every few seconds.
The most disgraceful thing about the whole show, though, was the first film which involved a rock journalist and regular Guardian writer called John Harris (who even the BBC admitted was “a left-wing writer”) going to Cuba to wax rhapsodically about their health-care system. Moreover, when Paxman challenged him, saying that perhaps this was a rose-tinted view, he said that he had been TOLD — not by a Fidel flunkey, but by the Newsnight people – to do a “positive, proselytizing” story. (Oops!)
To be fair, they had another film on transport made by a Conservative big-wig, so perhaps the producers generally wanted everyone to make opinionated films for the sake of it being good TV. So it may not have been because the producers particularly wanted to portray Cuba in a positive light — although, equally, it may have been. They certainly wanted to draw attention to this one supposed good thing about Cuba.
Either way, it was disturbing to see that almost everyone on the show believed the myth that Cuba has a good health care system, and were concerned that we should learn from them. If you want to see the reality, rather than what a bunch of posers have assumed after reading a Guardian column on health — one particularly loud-mouthed panellist’s claim-to-fame was that she was “The Designer of the Year 2005”, for God’s sake — go to The Real Cuba website:
One of the greatest fallacies about the so called ‘Cuban Revolution’ has to do with healthcare. Foreigners who visit Cuba, are fed the official line from Castro’s propaganda machine: “All Cubans are now able to receive excellent healthcare, which is also free.” But the truth is very different. Castro has built excellent health facilities for the use of foreigners, who pay with hard currency for those services. Argentinean soccer star Maradona, for example, has traveled several times to Cuba to receive treatment to combat his drug addiction.
But Cubans are not even allowed to visit those facilities. Cubans who require medical attention must go to other hospitals, that lack the most minimum requirements needed to take care of their patients. In addition, most of these facilities are filthy and patients have to bring their own towels, bed sheets, pillows, or they would have to lay down on dirty bare mattresses stained with blood and other body fluids.
No wonder the Cubans that the left-wing writer interviewed stressed that the Cuban medical system placed great emphasis on prevention, rather than cure. The best way to stay alive in Cuba is not to need to go to hospital in the first place, because you won’t get much help there.
If you think this is all mere assertion, check out the numerous photos on this Real Cuba page, some of which were originally published in a major Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter.
And another thing: some of the people on the panel had an easy-going attitude towards Cuba’s practise of — as one panelist ever so cutely put it — knocking on the door late at night. Oh those incorrigible Red Stars! They play a little rough sometimes, but who minds when they’re so funky and in such rude health? (Somehow I can’t imagine these people having the same attitude towards Guantanamo Bay.)
P.S. The only good things about this show were that Paxman was actually using the term “left-wing” in relation to journalists and think-tanks, a term the BBC often manages to omit in these contexts, and that they at least had some right-wingers on in slightly more than token numbers. Having said that, it was depressing to see how many of the people involved just took it for granted that the state has the right to interfere in people’s lives at any level and run their lives for them. Yet many of these people are the same people who, when it comes to someone who’s committed a “traditional” crime, or a drug crime, get all anti-state and start talking about individual rights. (It doesn’t seem to occur to them that the only way you can enforce, for example, a state health compulsion, or yet another increase in taxes, is to criminalize those who disobey).
P.P.S. Speaking of crime, Paxman seemed astonished — his jaw genuinely dropped — that anyone could seriously suggest that we should put more people in jail, as though there’s some fixed amount of people who should be in jail, regardless of how many people are actually committing crimes, and we’ve now reached that level.
Some young twit then jumped in saying “We could put every male between 13 and 30 in jail and that would reduce crime, but I don’t want to live in a society like that”. Well, no doubt you wouldn’t, son, and neither would anybody else, but then this is straight from the Germaine Greer school of argument. Greer recently wrote a sour and much-mocked piece about Steve Irwin after he died in which she said:
What seems to have happened on Batt Reef is that Irwin and a cameraman went off in a little dinghy to see what they could find. What they found were stingrays. You can just imagine Irwin yelling: “Just look at these beauties! Crikey! With those barbs a stingray can kill a horse!” (Yes, Steve, but a stingray doesn’t want to kill a horse. It eats crustaceans, for God’s sake.)
That’s an innovative way to criticise someone; imagine them saying something stupid, then correct that imagined statement. The whole game of opinion writing just became a great deal easier.
This young man’s argument technique wasn’t much better. The fact that no-one would want to live in a society where every young male was put in jail even if completely innocent of any crime has nothing to do with the proposal that we put more of the people who are commiting actual crimes into jail, rather than not put them into jail even though we know this will result in a large percentage of them going on to commit other crimes.
Such a ridiculous argument is effective in the right circles, however, because even educated people — all right, mainly educated people — then come to believe that the idea that we should put more criminals in jail is somehow tantamount to (or is in the same political ballpark as) putting millions of innocent people in jail.
Update, 14-9-06: It was also disturbing that so many people on this show, including Paxman, thought we should hand more power back to local government. This is of course something that even the right has been banging on about for some time now, as though it’s a way to hand power back to the people. It isn’t. Local government isn’t much better than central government (that why there was so much demand to take powers away from local government in the past).
A good case can be made to show that the best way to empower people is not to hand over more powers to some government body (whether local or central or European) but to open up the market more, let a multitude of firms compete for custom, and let people make up their own minds about who they think is best at delivering them services. But “the market” is only ever mentioned on these shows in an airy, abstract way, to be readily dismissed by a wave of the hand. Designer of the Year 2005 Hilary Cottam’s criticism of the market amounted merely to saying that private institutions treat people as “customers”, as though that were a knock-down argument. (Unsurprisingly she turns out to actually be yet another Demos-linked sociologist).
The argument for handing more power to local government on this show seemed to be nothing more than “Here’s one place, namely Portand, Oregon, whose local government seems to have done a decent job of providing public transport. So let’s give more power to our local governments as well, because that will provide the same results”. Talk about cherry-picking. That’s like saying “Isaac Newton was an alchemist who was appointed a Cambridge Professor, and he produced fantastic scientific results. So let’s give all Cambridge Professorships to alchemists”.
Update 2, 14-9-06: Marian Tupy slammed John Harris’s Cuba report — apparently it was originally shown on Newsnight last month — in this article:
The report starts with the sounds of jolly Cuban music and happy children playing football in the street. There is no sign or, for that matter, mention of the political prisoners who fill Fidel Castro’s prisons. Yes, there is a mention of food shortages and lack of consumer goods, but those are, Harris tells us, America’s fault. In reality, the U.S. trade embargo is almost totally meaningless, since Cuba can trade with the rest of the world. All it needs to do to prosper is to produce goods and services that other people want to buy — not an easy task for a socialist economy.
Moreover, we are told in typically Orwellian fashion, shortages are really a blessing in disguise. After all, are the Cubans not lucky to be spared the scourge of fast food and passenger cars? Walking and a “balanced” diet, Harris informs us, are the ingredients for a long and healthy life…
The “Cuban miracle,” as Harris puts it, rests on the prevention, rather than treatment of disease. And for good reason! Treatment of disease requires advanced prescription drugs and expensive medical equipment that have to be purchased in the capitalist West. And how can an inefficient socialist economy produce enough foreign currency to afford such purchases? It cannot.
Not surprisingly, Harris does not mention the availability of drugs. Therefore, a viewer who is otherwise ignorant of Cuba might simply conclude that they are readily available. After all, to get drugs in the West, all you have to do is to walk into the nearest pharmacy. Yes, many Westerners grumble because drugs can be expensive and the insurance companies will not pay the full cost. It is also true that some Americans don’t have health insurance. But life without access to prescription drugs at all? Try living on the paradise island.
As Matus Posvanc, an economist who works for the Hayek Foundation in Slovakia, wrote to me after his recent trip to Cuba, “The people have no access to prescription drugs. The pharmacies are empty of even the most basic medicine. In fact, I had to help a Cuban lady buy drugs at a special clinic that has wonderful facilities and is well stocked with drugs. That clinic, however, only caters to tourists and prominent members of the Cuban Communist Party.” Other acquaintances, who have been to Cuba, found that the locals had to supply their own medicines and linen, because hospitals simply did not have them.
Both of my parents are medical doctors and I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia. As such, I find the problems of the Cuban healthcare system very familiar. As in Cuba, so in Czechoslovakia and throughout the supposedly egalitarian Soviet bloc, the prominent members of the Communist Party enjoyed superior healthcare in special hospitals or hospital wards. As in Cuba, the lack of hard currency resulted in the shortage of medicines, which had to be bought on the black market. As in Cuba, the availability of advanced medical technology was low. Socialism, it turns out, does not work no matter where you go — Central Europe or the Caribbean.
In an article in the British daily The Guardian, Harris recently opined, “Cuba may look forlorn, all peeling buildings and pockmarked roads. Its economy may have long since tumbled into creaking anarchy. But unlike the old states of Eastern Europe, the revolution has a few genuine jewels to defend: chiefly, its education system, and globally acclaimed healthcare.”
Strange, the superiority of communist healthcare was exactly what the Western socialists, like Harris, raved about during the Cold War. When the Berlin Wall fell and with it the veil of ignorance that shrouded the life behind the Iron Curtain, communist healthcare came to be seen for what it really was: far from equal and far from excellent. The same, I suspect, will become obvious in Cuba once the Castro brothers finally depart.
Update 3, 14-9-06: I found this bit of virtual-proselytizing on the Newsnight website (it’s dated Aug 1):
The best health service in the world?
Which country do you think has the best health service in the world? Some Scandinavian shangri-la? The wealthy United States? ? Or how about Cuba? Tonight we launch a series of films looking at what Britain can learn from the the best public services around the world. Tonight we launch a series of films on “the best public services in the world”.
It will look at what may well be the best run schools, hospitals and transport systems anywhere on earth. Tonight we look at the Cuban health service – and why it may be the best in the world – just as the Cuban President proves he trusts the system by undergoing surgery.
Here’s my challenge to either Paxman or Harris or any of Newsnight producers. If you need major surgery, then go to Cuba to have it done. And have it done in the way ordinary Cubans have it done, not in the way Castro is having it done. (For God’s sake, do they really think that Castro is going to get the same treatment as most other Cubans? How can they say with a straight face that this proves that he trusts his own system?)
On Newsnight they were praising Cuban medicine, one of the lefties’ articles of faith. It does not occur to beeboids that it is to do with creative statisticians, the way East Germany was at the time considered to be among the top ten industrial countries.
Were there any critical remarks? Paxman asked his correspondent Harris who was filming in the “Freedom Island”. No, said Harris, letting the cat out of the bag, because you told not to film it.
Nice post. Don’t leave it so long next time!
I’d like to extend the Greer remarks a little further. ‘You can just imagine Irwin yelling: “Just look at these beauties! Crikey! With those barbs a stingray can kill a horse!” (Yes, Steve, but a stingray doesn’t want to kill a horse. It eats crustaceans, for God’s sake.)’
Yes, Germaine – they eat crustaceans – so why does it need a barb that could kill a horse, for God’s sake? To which Germaine – with her ascerbic wit – would no doubt reply – “To defend itself from the Steve Irwins of this world, of course!” Right, Germaine – so, the stingray – several thousand years ago – developed a barb that could kill a horse, which it is never likely to encounter, just so that one day it could defend itself against Steve Irwin. Crikey! You’ve just taken the Theory Of Evolution another step forward – the Theory of Predictive Evolution.
The last refuges of an apologist for Leftist tyranny:
“Free health”
“Free education”
“Olympic gold medal-to-population ratio”
I could remember the Beeb extolling the virtues of the German “Democratic” Republic in terms of its sporting achievements years before the faeces hit the air-conditioning when the Wall fell down.
I’m pleased to say for once I agreed with something on this site re the failure of the BBC to mention that Samir Qantar caved a little girls head in against a rock. If he spends the rest of his days in an Israeli jail, that would be too good for him, most people knowing this would regard his release as impossible.
However, as for Cuba, the castro regieme is no worse than the one that preceded it and although one can’t apologise for the “knocking on the door late at night”, it is understandable in the context of Cuba’s geographical position and the size and power of its hostile next door neighbour. The same sort of “knocking on the door” is probably supported by you lot when done by Israel in the occupied territories, but that’s because in your opinion the IDF are never wrong and all 10,000 prisoners are indeed terrorists.
Anyway – back to Cuba, it would be interesting if a democratic and soverign Iraq were to make a few policy decisions that were hostile to US business and other interests, Cuba is still being punished for doing just that.
>However, as for Cuba, the castro regieme is no worse than the one that preceded it
Of all the appalling apologetics for Cuba I’ve heard, this one has to be the most ridiculous. The Batista dictatorship was overthrown 47 years ago! So we shouldn’t mind that Castro is an evil dictator because at least he got rid of another evil dictator (who the US also had an embargo against, I should add) half-a-century ago? I’ve met a few “Cuba-fools” in my life, but even they’ve never dared tried anything so idiotic.
Your next apology is just as ridiculous, but I’ll leave that to others to laugh at.
>it would be interesting if a democratic and soverign Iraq were to make a few policy decisions that were hostile to US business and other interests, Cuba is still being punished for doing just that.
No, the sanctions against Cuba are because Cuba is run by a Communist dictatorship, not because Cuba is anti-American.
>The same sort of “knocking on the door” is probably supported by you lot when done by Israel in the occupied territories, but that’s because in your opinion the IDF are never wrong and all 10,000 prisoners are indeed terrorists.
No-one here would support any Israeli action that was on a par with what Castro has done. Just as no-one here would support any Israeli action where they deliberately fired missiles from helicopters at Red Cross ambulances carrying injured innocent civilians. But then, that never happened.
To say it was no worse than the one that preceeded it is, at best, historical revisionism. The batisto government certainly wasn’t brilliant (most central and south american governments have a very healthy amouhnt of corruption), but most of its worst excesses were as a direct response to terrorism by the communists. As Batista’s government started to lose strength he lashed out.
GBut, however you spin it. Cuba is worse now than it was then. People were free, then. Farms were producing food and employing people, the economy was generally quite good and medical care was, oddly enough, better then than it is now.
Blithering Bunny
No, the sanctions against Cuba are because Cuba is run by a Communist dictatorship, not because Cuba is anti-American.
In the fantasy world in whicn you inhabit where US foreign policy is dictated according to idealogical principles, how do you explain the absence of a trade embargo with China ?
Also, I am not a “cuba fool” and am no fan of the Castro regieme and do not agree with it’s constituion, please get your facts right.
Blithering BUnny
Just as no-one here would support any Israeli action where they deliberately fired missiles from helicopters at Red Cross ambulances carrying injured innocent civilians. But then, that never happened.
There is much debate about this particular issue as you well know and I certainly wouldn’t be so bold as to suggest that having been nowhere near lebanon, spoken to anyone in either the IDF or the Red Cross, that I was placed in a position by reading hundreds of news sources, to state with total clarity that it either did or did not happen. The IDF have attacked ambulances before and they have been used by terrorists as cover before.
I wonder what wonderous power it is that you posses that affords you such insight ? Please share, and don’t just paste a few links to websites that support your particular contention.
>In the fantasy world in whicn you inhabit where US foreign policy is dictated according to idealogical principles, how do you explain the absence of a trade embargo with China?
I thought the latest left-wing objection to the US was that it was on an unrealistic ideological crusade? Now you’re denying that ideology is behind this? You think it’s just naked self-interest that makes the US do this, as though denying yourself a trading partner benefits you?
As for China, it is simply too powerful to be dealt with in this way. The US, for better or worse, thinks it can encourage it to change by trading with it. The US would certainly like to freeze it out if it could.
Make no mistake, ideology drives all this. If you don’t like the ideology, fine, but that’s another matter.
>I wonder what wonderous power it is that you posses that affords you such insight?
The wondrous power I possess is looking at some relevant evidence. You should try it sometime. Courts use it all the time, even though none of the lawyers of the judge or the jury were at the scene at the time.
(I should add that none of the journalists who “reported” on this incident were there either, and their “investigation” consisted of simply repeating what they were told).
>I am not a “cuba fool”
Anyone who made those comments about Cuba is a “Cuba-fool” in my book.
I thought the latest left-wing objection to the US was that it was on an unrealistic ideological crusade? Now you’re denying that ideology is behind this? You think it’s just naked self-interest that makes the US do this, as though denying yourself a trading partner benefits you?
I object to your fantatical assignment of any contrary opinion as “left wing”. There are certianly ideoligical elements at work in the US but throughout the entire history of the country, indeed since its very foundation its stated ideology has often been at odds with the reality of its actions. That is not to say that its principles are in anyway bad or that it has never been responsible for many great acts on the world stage.
Like all countries it wants a world where it gets the best deal for itself, there is nothing controversial about this but because of its power and its rather pompous attempts to cover its actions in a ideoligical cloak, US foreign policy comes under more scrutiny than others who are just as hypocritcal. With all its wealth and power the US could do a lot better than give billions of dollars to countries like Egypt but I wonder if you have a theory as to why it doesn’t ? Ideology ?
p.s. only a true “fool” would believe that the primary reason the US trades with China is so it can “encourage it to change”.
Back OT – I only saw the Tonight “debate” on education. Listening to the contributors you could be forgiven for thinking that the UK had the best schooling system in the world, producing the best educated pupils who were welcomed into the world of academe (or Bristol University anyway) as the educated miracles of the age. There was not one reference (even disparaging) to the concept, let alone the possibility, of academic selection. As someone who seeks (and fails) to employ the products of this system (I do not have the resources to teach 16-23 year olds to write or do sums) I can only assume that the contributors to the “Tonight” discussions live in a parallel universe and visit us from time to time to tell us how wonderful things are elsewhere.
The ignorance (I’ll not call them liars) displayed by the BBC with respect to US/Cuba demonstrates that the ‘reporters’ fail to comprehend the difference between an embargo and a blockade.
Someone wrote that Castro is no worse than Batista. Well, Batista was certainly a hijo de puta, but the difference between his and Castro’s regime is Batista’s Cuba was more prosperous than Sweden in the 50’s and when he imprisoned Castro for a few years for a failed uprising, the worse thing Castro could complain of was that he wasn’t given a table tennis table. Constrast this to Castro’s treatment of Armando Valladares, a Christian opponent of Batista and Castro. http://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Hope-Memoir-Castro/dp/1893554198/sr=8-2/qid=1158237139/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-2271255-8651947?ie=UTF8&s=books
Re “Castro is no worse than Batista”
If one does not understand the difference between authoritanianism and totalitarianism than the entire 20th century history has passed him by. Batista did not brainwash children to love him, did he?
> p.s. only a true “fool” would believe that the primary reason the US trades with China is so it can “encourage it to change”.
This is twisting it somewhat. Trading produces benefits for the parties involved, and that’s primarily why anyone trades. In the case of China is was matter of deciding whether forgoing those benefits for both Americans and the Chinese peopole would be worth it, taking into account the loss of freedoms involved, material gains (for both Americans and especially the Chinese themselves), and the likely effectiveness of any such action. Unlike Cuba, it was decided, (rightly or wrongly) that it wasn’t worth it with China. But if the US really though that stopping trade with China would produce a flourishing democracy within ten years, they’d stop trading now. (There are plenty of people in the American government on both sides of the fence who argue that we should stop now anyway).
Besides, how come you’re so omniscient about what goes on in the American governmental departments that deal with these issues? When it came to an crude ambulance hoax, you suddenly demanded that no-one make a judgement unless they were there. Yet you can somehow divine how US foreign policy works on the basis of hardly anything.
It was estimated that 80% of cubans were against the Batista regime. I wonder how many people here have even ben anywhere near Cuba let alone are aware if anything like that number of Cubans are against Castro ? This is totally OT anyway.
>With all its wealth and power the US could do a lot better than give billions of dollars to countries like Egypt but I wonder if you have a theory as to why it doesn’t ?
You do like to constantly change the subject (and to vaguer and vaguer assertions at that), don’t you?
>I object to your fantatical assignment of any contrary opinion as “left wing”.
Aw, diddums. I’ll call the “anonymous contrarian genius” if you prefer.
>It was estimated that 80% of cubans were against the Batista regime. I wonder how many people here have even ben anywhere near Cuba let alone are aware if anything like that number of Cubans are against Castro?
No, you’re not a Cuba-fool, are you? Not all all.
(Note that the Anonymous comment up two from this comment is actually me).
Blithering Bunny
Your comments strike at the heart of this whole debate. Just because I believe you cannot state as fact that the IDF did not attack red cross ambulances in Lebanon does not prevent me from being able to form judgements about other things. The difference is that the facts are disputed in the lebanese ambulance case. The facts regarding the destinations of US foreign aid are not in dispute and are there for all to see.
The wondrous power I possess is looking at some relevant evidence. You should try it sometime. Courts use it all the time, even though none of the lawyers of the judge or the jury were at the scene at the time.
This earlier refernce to yourself as some sort of an intellectual court is funny. The “relevant” sources to which you refer often have explicit political agendas, in the abscence of any such agendas for most of the other (presumably irellevant) sources of the story, one needs to try to prove the existence of one as part of a wider attempt to discredit them. You also seem to be suggesting that pretty much every major news coroporation who reported that particular story, all employ journalists that are incapable of applying anything approaching your level of analysis (either though laziness, incompetence or bias) to situations they report on.
You do like to constantly change the subject (and to vaguer and vaguer assertions at that), don’t you?
You were the one who made the point about foreign policy being driven by ideology. I asked you this because I would like you to explain how this (amongst other things) can be reconciled with your statement. What exactly do you find “vague” about that !?
>Just because I believe you cannot state as fact that the IDF did not attack red cross ambulances in Lebanon does not prevent me from being able to form judgements about other things.
Don’t you see how hilarious this statement is? (No, I don’t suppose you can). You can pass judgement from on high on all sorts of things you don’t know much about, but I can’t pass judgement on anything you disagree with (even though photos of the ambulances which had supposedly had a missile explode inside them showed that nothing of the sort had happened).
>The facts regarding the destinations of US foreign aid are not in dispute and are there for all to see.
Oh dear. No-one was ever arguing with you about the destinations of US foreign aid. You’re just shifting ground yet again.
>This earlier refernce to yourself as some sort of an intellectual court is funny.
A pretentious phrase such as “an intellectual court” is one I’ll let you keep for yourself.
>The “relevant” sources to which you refer often have explicit political agendas
Photos of ambulances have political agendas? Photos of ambulances taken by photographers from *the very papers who were saying that these ambulances had been destroyed by missiles*? Right.
>in the abscence of any such agendas for most of the other (presumably irellevant) sources of the story
Priceless!
>You also seem to be suggesting that pretty much every major news coroporation who reported that particular story, all employ journalists that are incapable of applying anything approaching your level of analysis (either though laziness, incompetence or bias) to situations they report on.
Hey, he’s starting to get the hang of how low-level journos in the Middle-East operate!
If you could point to any news story about this matter which involved a serious investigation of what happened, as opposed to just going back to the people who originally made the assertions and asking them if they really meant it (ala The Age and The Australian), we’d all be grateful.
I’ve missed being away from this site. I didn’t know we had such amusing guests these days!
Cuba is now becoming old hat as a lefties’ favourite country.
Castro might hate the US, but at least he doesn’t cosy up to Iran’s Ah’m On A Jihad and North Korea’s Kim like Venezuela’s Chavez.
Now we hear that London’s buses might be running on Venezuelan fuel thanks to a mucky deal between Red Ken and the Chav.
The chief foreign currency earner nowadays in Cuba is I’m told sex-tourism. Apparently it’s quite the thing for parents to prostitute their daughters to rich Europeans on a long-term basis.
Hey, he’s starting to get the hang of how low-level journos in the Middle-East operate!
*yawn*.
If you could point to any news story about this matter which involved a serious investigation of what happened, as opposed to just going back to the people who originally made the assertions and asking them if they really meant it (ala The Age and The Australian), we’d all be grateful.
You need only ask yourself whether you apply the same critical analysis to statements from say the IDF, and the answer is no. For example if the Israelis said one of their ambulances had been hit by a hizbollah rocket but didn’t provide pictures which showed a completely destroyed vehicle, would you then say the story was false ? Or would you belive the account given by the IDF, now to that question we both know the asnwer.
So called objective experts on this site said at the time that a missile fired from a helicopter could not possibly have hit a vehicle on the roof. Now that sort of thing, and your continued insistance that you know what vehicles that have been hit by any ordnance the IDF could have used would look like is laughable.
Oh dear. No-one was ever arguing with you about the destinations of US foreign aid. You’re just shifting ground yet again.
This isn’t hard. You say my inability to state with total conviction as you have that the ambulance story is a hoax means I cannot hold any other view about e.g. US foreign policy you said “Besides, how come you’re so omniscient about what goes on in the American governmental departments that deal with these issues? When it came to an crude ambulance hoax, you suddenly demanded that no-one make a judgement unless they were there. Yet you can somehow divine how US foreign policy works on the basis of hardly anything.”
I point out that the difference is about the dispute over what actually constitutes the facts in these two instances and you say once again I’m changing the subject. You don’t come across as the sharpest tool in the box really do you ?
Anon:
you cannot state as fact that the IDF did not attack red cross ambulances in Lebanon
No, but I can state with absolute certainty that the ambulances used as evidence in this case were not attacked by Israel in the manner described AND I have neither seen nor heard any evidence at all of any other attacked ambulances.
I don’t know what is the standard of proof in a war crimes trial: ‘Beyond reasonable doubt’ or ‘what a reasonable person would think’ or something else. However in the absence of any credible evidence the only conclusion must be to dismiss charges.
Anon:
Is there any technical reason why you and Anonymous can’t choose a distinctive contributer name?
Is the complaint that Newsnight gave a forum to non-BBC journos who then expressed left-wing views?
Or that there wasn’t significant balance between the left and right-wing guests and their presentations?
deegee | 14.09.06 – 7:39 pm |
wow! you missed all these….?
A Lebanese Red Cross volunteer was killed while tending to a wounded civilian just days before a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Mikhael Jbayleh was killed giving first aid to one of 32 people wounded after an Israeli air strike in Marjayoun on 11 August.
In another incident earlier that day, two volunteers were injured when a Lebanese Red Cross ambulance was hit directly by two projectiles while heading to a Red Cross centre in Tebnine, east of Tyre.
http://www.redcross.org.uk/news.asp?id=58493
In a press briefing held in Geneva Wednesday 19 July, ICRC director of operations Pierre Krähenbühl said:
Lebanese Red Cross ambulances are operating under very difficult circumstances and incidents have occurred. On 17 July, in Tyre, a missile hit the middle of the town, 10 meters away from a clearly marked Lebanese Red Cross ambulance and 30 meters away from Tyre’s main hospital.
On 12 July, the IDF bombed the Qasmiye bridge, located north of Tyre. Three ambulances, one from the Lebanese Red Cross, one from the Civil Defence and one private were damaged. A number of first aid workers were reportedly injured in this incident.
According to media reports, on 18 July, a medical convoy and ambulances of the United Arab Emirates were targeted at the Syrian-Lebanese border. The ICRC has been approached by the UAE Red Crescent on this matter and we are following it with them.
Last week a helicopter attacked an ambulance that had just pulled up outside a house in the village of Aitaroun, next door to where a Sydney family had been holidaying.
The ambulance just blew up and both the driver and his co-worker were killed, said witness Hassane Assef, of Sydney, who was holidaying in the area, and who tried to help the victims of both strikes.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19915049
‘Anon:
you cannot state as fact that the IDF did not attack red cross ambulances in Lebanon’
Are we suppose to prove negative now? Can you prove that you don’t beat your wife?
>You need only ask yourself whether you apply the same critical analysis to statements from say the IDF, and the answer is no.
No, you need to show that there is the slightest bit of evidence to support a claim which is on all indications false. You appealed to the fact that all the major news outlets ran this story. Now I’m asking you to merely demonstrate that they actually did some reporting rather than just parroting what they were told. You’re now just shying away from doing so.
>So called objective experts on this site said at the time that a missile fired from a helicopter could not possibly have hit a vehicle on the roof. Now that sort of thing, and your continued insistance that you know what vehicles that have been hit by any ordnance the IDF could have used would look like is laughable.
The claim was that these two ambulances were hit by missiles which exploded inside the ambulances. Yet none of the various ambulances shown to the media had any indications at all that anything had exploded inside them, let alone a missile. Not even any scorch marks. Have you not even noticed that most of the left — sorry, most of the other anonymous contrarian genuises — are not trying to defend this one very hard?
>You say my inability to state with total conviction as you have that the ambulance story is a hoax means I cannot hold any other view about e.g. US foreign policy you said
Not at all. I didn’t say that. You said I couldn’t state my views unless I was there at the time, and had spoken to everyone involved, etc. I merely pointed out that you’re opinionated as hell on lots of things even though you don’t qualify to be on the grounds you stated above.
>You don’t come across as the sharpest tool in the box really do you?
Not when I’m in the presence of a genius such as your good self, no. I doff my cap to the superior intellect.
Newsnight has lost the plot: tonight’s opener is “four years to save the planet”, and is based on a report urging Britons to abandon almost all energy consumption.
I’m listening to the nonsense in real time (Monbiot has been on to complete the looney loop) but I still haven’t heard anything about China and India.
The next item is about why does GWB “insist on sending the Guantanamo detainees to military tribunals”? What event had its 5th anniversary three days ago? That’s the answer, but only the seriously deranged could have put such a question.
The BBC is no longer run by Guardian readers – the readers of The Independent have taken over.
Chris Hitchens asked (BTW what exactly is the point of using that name?):
> Is the complaint that Newsnight gave a forum to non-BBC journos who then expressed left-wing views?
>
>Or that there wasn’t significant balance between the left and right-wing guests and their presentations?
The basic complaint is that Newsnight instructed a left-wing writer with no expertise whatsoever on the subject to uncritically promote the Cuban health system as the wonder of the world, when anyone familiar with the reality of the situation could have told them that the Cuban health care system is appallingly bad.
As for the guest balance, no-one minds if there is a left-wing imbalance sometimes, or even all the time if it wasn’t so pronounced, but it just happens so often on these sorts of BBC shows, year after year after year, and we’re forced to fund it under the pretence that it is supposed to be objective broadcasting.
Alan@Aberdeen writes:
“The BBC is no longer run by Guardian readers – the readers of The Independent have taken over.”
Indeed, and to cap a spectacularly biased edition (every single item coming from a Leftist perspective), the only two newspaper front pages on display at the end were those of The Grauniad and the Independent!
The BBC – quite beyond parody!
What I would really like to know is this: When will the BBC encourage its faithful to take responsibility for themselves? All I can see is endless spin to absolve Britons. It is tiresome, never mind dishonest.
Americans are constantly told what we do wrong, how we are evil, how we are stupid, bad and incompetent. That is fine. Sometimes we are some and sometimes we are all of those.
What I cannot bear is the assumption that Britons are blameless, because they are British. My history is good enough, my grasp of current affairs strong enough, to know that Britain needs to accept some responsiblity.
Come on, then.
Allan@Aberdeen:
Newsnight has lost the plot: tonight’s opener is “four years to save the planet”, and is based on a report urging Britons to abandon almost all energy consumption.
Oh, goody! Does that mean shutting down the Beeb? After all how much energy does television chew up in Britain? Quite a lot I’ll bet. Ban televisions — they consume too much energy. No televisions, no money for the Beeb.
I bet they’d be willing to exempt televisions from the “no energy consumption” ban.
So called objective experts on this site said at the time that a missile fired from a helicopter could not possibly have hit a vehicle on the roof.
Anon is acting like the BBC here – expressing a half-truth, which is worse than an outright lie. Obviously nobody claimed that a missile fired from a helicopter or from the moon for that matter could not hit a vehicle on the roof, as if vehicle roofs are somehow magically exempt from being hit. As I recall, the claim was that such a missile could not have hit the roof at the angle required to neatly take out the vent cover.
I have no expertise in this matter but I think it’s highly unlikely that helicopters fire missiles in the same way that planes drop bombs. Why would a low-flying and slow-flying craft deliberately offer its underbelly to enemy fire? Perhaps Anon thinks that the people who design these helicopters model them after the pigeon that shat on my head last year as I was enjoying a beer with a friend at a fast-food joint?
Fight fair, Anon, and stop trying to bullsh*t us.
“What I cannot bear is the assumption that Britons are blameless”
Are you sure we’re watching the same BBC? We get as muc stick from them as anyone, because we’re all apparently racist, sexist, generally bigoted anti-european, anti-islam, and-socialist unmutuals.
Newsnight has been rubbish for years. Its only saving grace being being Gavin Esler. He makes a refeshing change from Paxman who dissappeared up his own rather large back side sometime around the turn of the millenium.
Tim Sebastian’s HardTalk was the only thing worth watching on the BBC. But of course the BBC being what it is, they got rid of him. THE BBC — THATS WHAT WE DO.
Sebastian’s supine replacements, Stephen Sackur and a woman who name isnt worth looking up have turned the programme into a chat show format. Under Sackur the programe is now used to push a left agenda .. with second rate interviewees typically being molly coddled and prompted to gush their guff.They should re-launch it as SoftTalk or better still …. NumbTalk.
How about “Dumb Talk”.
I agree. Sebastian approached his interviewees like a terrier on that show. He would not let anyone get away with anything.
Thankfully the BBC still has archives of his shows, though not all of them.
It’s rather like Jimmy Young being booted from Radio 2 to be relaced with the rather uneven Jeremy “vinegary” Vine. Occasionally he gets it right, but mostof the time he gets in two people for a “debate” and then worries away at one of them so much that the other often has to intervene. Young used to be respectful. He never argued with people who he didn’t agree with, but merely let them make their case to each other and the listeners. And he had a much better taste in music too.
First I want to thank you guys at the Biased BBC and also thank Marian Tupy for helping spread the truth about the real Cuba, the truth that Castro doesn’t want to reveal and that the leftist/communist and socialist driven media refuses to acknowledge. I was born in Cuba and came to the United States six years ago. I wanted to add something that John Harris failed to mention. John Harris mentioned the Cuban “education system” and since he has never studied under this system and I was forced to, I will explain to him and to those who want to know what it consists of. In Cuba ALL the textbooks used must be authorized by the regime and it is strictly prohibited to teach anything other than what is authorized by the government. Of course, there is no freedom of information in Cuba because both the press and the television station is controlled by the Communist regime, and it is illegal for Cubans to have Internet. The National Library in Havana consists of six floors, but Cubans are only allowed to see the books that are on the first floor, the rest is forbidden and prohibited to public access. Parents are prohibited by law (Law of Patria Potestad established in Jan. 1, 1962) to teach their children anything based on religion, beliefs or sects; and under this law it is the state and the organizations appointed by the state who have the complete authority over the children and their education, NOT the parents. All these factors lead to a phenomenon called brain-washing of the kids, because after being told to believe lies repeatedly, the kids have no other choice but to take them as truths, and the lack of information make kids unable to actually find the truth. The indoctrination and manipulation of the regime over innocent children is a fact which many of us can give account of, given that we were told repeatedly that all the problems in Cuba are because of capitalism and the US.
Also, cubans kids are forced to participate in Communist party activities and to all the rallies that Castro decides to make, because if they don’t, they won’t be allowed to enter the University, due to the fact that to enter the University you must be part of the Communist party or you are simply discriminated. By the way, anyone who doesn’t go to Castro’s rallies is fired from work and they DO take attendance. Moreover, during their high school years cuban kids are taken through the school to do forced labor at the camps in the country sides, and if you don’t go you are kicked out of school. Also ALL cubans boys at the age of 15 are forced to enlist and go to obligatory military school, otherwise they are sent to jail. And when you get to the University you cannot pick whichever career you want, the government gives you a selection from two careers they pick(sometimes three), and you have to choose one from the ones they tell you.
So there you have the “great system of education” in Cuba where you have no choice and no opinion over what you believe or think.
I have true free education here in the United States, paid by the US government, and given to me without asking anything in return, other than I get good grades. And thanks to this great country I go to a University and I am free to choose any career I want.
Thanks again to Biased BBC blog and to Marian Tupy