Via Drinking from Home, via commenter Alan, this story of how the BBC ignored a massacre committed by Islamic Courts’ men in Somalia.
I have been deeply suspicious of the BBC’s Somalia output for a while now: lots of spin about how the Islamic Courts were bringing the smack of firm Government. This report, “Taming Mogadishu” ,for example, describes how “restaurants are opening, business is booming – and people are proud to show off to visitors their new-found security.”
And all with a wave of the magic Islamic wand, no doubt. The author describes how “Trials are swift and punishments public: publicity is their policeman.”
How very snappy and euphemistic.
Meanwhile, the Somalinet website which has published this criticism of the BBC may not have very good English, but its points are stark enough:
“Many believe BBC Somali service has always been partial and inaccurate while though minority, many think it is actually part of Somalia’s problem.”
Perhaps even more worryingly,
“SomaliNet has a concrete prove with images that shows BBC Somali Service management going out of their way to suppress other news agencies who reported a different version of one of their reports”
Precisely what this last point means I can’t say for sure, but it doesn’t sound at all good, while it does sound like the BBC I’ve come to know and, well, not like.
Also not reported by the BBC, an anti-Islamist rally in Somalia.
[By the way, I don’t know much about the Somalinet website, but I do know it carries articles favourable, as well as unfavourable, to the Islamic Courts.]
The BBC’s slanted reporting when it comes to Islamist activity is not limited to Somalia.
You can see how they are doing the same thing in Thailand…
http://sceptered-isle.blogspot.com/2006/11/thailand-appeases-muslims-attacks.html
That IS a beer belly the gunman has, isn’t it?
“the BBC ignored a massacre in committed by Islamic Courts’ men in Somalia”? It’s always a bit embarassing when the very first sentence is the one that hasn’t been proofread as well as the others.
A critic of this site would note your observation that “the Somalinet website … may not have very good English” and would laugh and laugh; and he or she would then try to insinuate that your criticism of Somalinet’s English was somehow racist.
And in doing so he or she would have successfully deflected attention away from your original criticism, which is a victory for the other side.
A.P. – fixed. Thanks.
“Many believe BBC Somali service has always been partial and inaccurate while though minority, many think it is actually part of Somalia’s problem.”
your license fee causing their problems.
i too have been deeply suspicious of the Beebs Somalia coverage.
we need to keep an eye on it.
Were these stories covered elsewhere in the British media?
If not, can we conclude that the whole British media is pro-Islamic?
archduke 04.11.06 – 9:59 pm
“your license fee causing their problems.”
Not by any stretch of the imagination.
The Somali Service is part of World Service and funded directly by the Foreign Office.
Yes, MisterMint, we could call the rest of the British media pro-Islamist if they all had ‘Somalia desks’ and specifically produced coverage of Somalia aimed at Somalis, all on the taxpayers dime, yet refused to cover a big story which reflects badly on the Islamists.
Thing is they don’t, so we won’t.
So how do we now that the BBC hasn’t reported this massacre?
Because Drinking From Home says so?
Sorry, not good enough.
Because somalinet says so?
Well, let’s check out this ‘massacre’ (in which four people are alleged to have died).
If it’s so important, you’d expect somalinet to have reported it itself, wouldn’t you?
Well, Googling the various spellings of Buale, Bu’aal, Bua’aale etc. specifying the somalinet site produces
nothing in English.
Googling again produces one story in Somali.
Now, I don’t speak a word of Somali so I don’t know whether this is a report of the massacre or not.
One thing I do know is that the BBC Somali service posted a story on the very same day as somalinet that also seems to contain the name of the town in its text.
Some of the words in somalinet’s headline are very like those in the BBC’s.
Somalinet headline:
Dagaalo xoogan oo ka dhacay Bu’aale
BBC headline:
Dagaal ka dhacey agagaarka Bu’aal
As I say, both could be about something completely different. Or not.
Any somali speakers out there?
http://somalinet.com/news/world/Soomaaliya/4351
http://www.bbc.co.uk/somali/news/story/2006/10/061022_buale.shtml
Wow! You mean ‘Somalinet’ are part of the VRWC as well ? Is there no end to people trying to do down the BBC ? Hey, maybe that could be the BBC’s newe slogan: you can’t prove nuffink!
DumbJon | 05.11.06 – 12:29 pm |
VRWC – no. Conspiracy theories are your bag, not mine.
Could somalinet be wrong? Yeah, could be. Worth a check, at least. I certainly wouldn’t launch into a major B-BBC post without trying to stand-up an isolated claim I found on a somali website.
But maybe that’s just me showing my old-fahioned MSM background.
Hey! This is the blogosphere…..check the facts? Uncoooooool.
JR- Ever the opportunist. If you want to check the language issue, why not contact your pals in the BBC with access to all the Foreign Office money?
“worth a check”- where precisely? Should I ask the BBC politely whether they deliberately ignored an important story. Oh yeah, of course, that’ll work.
My contribution to the accuracy issue you completely ignored. It’s surely unlikely that if the Somalinet organisation were out to fabricate stories against the Islamic Courts, they would permit articles with opposing viewpoints to be seen. But they do. You didn’t take seriously the fact that I had viewed other parts of their output, and you couldn’t be bothered to check yourself. Consider: is it likely that an organisation which shows indications of showing both positive and negatives should take the trouble to fabricate something wholly negative?
Your old-fashioned MSM background prefers your privileges of contacts over and above the application of reason, and seeks hysterically to discredit critics who lack the former, which you only have courtesy of unwilling telly taxpayers and a place at the heart of the political establishment (the FO, as you helpfully point out). That’s where your uncoolness lies, it you could but see it.
ANd there’s more on this story at DfH. Quick summary: more right-wing conspirators.
http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/11/bbc-somalia-update.html
ed | 05.11.06 – 1:06 pm
“worth a check”- where precisely?
Well Ed, you could have done what I did: Google. Then, when you’d found a BBC story that was written in a language you don’t understand, you could have sent it to somalinet and invited their comments. It might have held up the post for a day or two – but ………..
“Should I ask the BBC politely whether they deliberately ignored an important story. ”
And why the hell not? The BBC – and the rest of the MSM – generally follow the age old convention of putting allegations to the accused before running with them. Why not you?
“should take the trouble to fabricate something wholly negative”
Who said fabricate? I said I didn’t do conspiracy theories. Any media source can be wrong. To err is human.
John Reith-
The Somalinet people outlined a number of steps which they say occurred, with which you seem to be unfamiliar- despite my link.
It seemed to me unnecessary to outline them when the article does so. It points out that the Islamic Courts themselves acknowledged the fact of the event, but the BBC failed to cover it. It also points out reports that the families of the victims contacted the BBC to tell them about the attacks.
Why should they be wrong about the BBC’s coverage, if they are, as it appears, Somali speakers? More to the point, they are reporting someone else’s gesture- the cartoonist’s gesture pictured in this post being emblematic. Thus there is not only one witness to the BBC’s failings, but a number of them. Furthermore, it reports the kind of generalised feeling that the BBC thrive on: though in this case the generalised feeling is dissatisfaction with the BBC. How inconvenient for you.
I did check the BBC’s English website, scouring its Africa pages and its Somalia coverage. This would seem to me a salient event to set alongside its broadly positive coverage of the new “law and order” said to be returning to Somalia. In addition, I googled- but what, I ask, should I have googled for? I googled the place name from the story, as it happens.
My experience of success in requesting verification for information from other web sources may be patchier than yours as a BBC employee. Perhaps you might consider that in your criticism. As for contacting the BBC, I have no hotline, and when I have requested information I have had little success. I sent a very substantial email concerning Sheikh Al Qaradawi’s visit to the UK in 2005 and received no acknowledgement, let alone a detailed response.
The responses obtained by members of the public seem to be depressingly few and far between.
There is one further point: when I send an email to request further information, and have to wait, I have all but destroyed the news value of what I am saying. I simply cannot afford the time involved in doing this, all things considered.
As I have said, I have checked the rest of the site’s output. It seems grounded, without obvious bias, and with pretty good sources.
Care to answer the charge now?
Well, let’s check out this ‘massacre’ (in which four people are alleged to have died).
John Reith
You speak as if 4 deaths are not worth reporting. If it had been British or American troops ‘allegedly’ killing 4 people, or it was 4 Palestinian deaths, the headlines would be huge and never-ending.
Two can play the moral equivalence game.
Anonymous was me. Sorry.
Inspite of his pro-MSM BBC Bias John Reith inadvertently FO lets the cat out of the bag.
“The Somali Service is part of World Service and funded directly by the Foreign Office.”
The FO, which is also BTW funding by the taxes imposed on the great unwashed license payers (which cleanly behaeds the argument that Mulla Reith makes) has always been know for its pro-Islamic and pro-Arab bias.
The FO is currently running the same operation in Iran and accross the Islamic world. They are funding a pro-Islamic governments and movements with BBC Satellite and local language services which will no doubt gloss over the crimes of the Islamic government of Iran .. and the crimes of the global jihdi movements … the FO has funded radical Shiekhs like Qardawi and supported legitimisng terrorist groups like Hamas.
The BBC in many instances is nothing more than an arm of the pro-Arab and por-EU FO. JR doesnt “do conspiracy theories” but one doesnt need a do conspiracy theory to explain what the BBC and the FO are up to. One simply need to understand the motivations of the staffer of both these organisations.
‘Well, let’s check out this ‘massacre’ (in which four people are alleged to have died).’
As Heron says the BBC is happy to report without comment Palestinian claims of ‘genocide’ when two people have been killed yet time after time won’t report violence conducted by Even David Irving wasn’t that one sided and he’s a racist liar.
John Reith, since we are on the subject of Somalia, your Somali BBC friends should be able to tell us whether anyone has been found or charged for the murder of that Catholic nun. You know, the one who was murdered a week after the Pope’s Regensburg speech. You know, the speech which did not offend anyone and to which nobody objected until a certain world news organization, practically without any support by anyone else, had hammered away at it for a week – when the disappointingly slow “Muslim street”, goaded by seven days of constant repetition, finally performed as that certain world news organization had expected them to, indulging in a certain amount of property destruction, threats and general displays of folly and ignorance. And then, you know, the same world news organization that had clearly goaded the crowds did not bother to report that 38 world-class Muslim authorities had written and co-signed a firm but peaceful and respectful response to the Pope, in which they produced theological counter-arguments and, er, strongly condemned street violence and murder. That went altogether unreported by this world news organization; which, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that it had ignorantly misrepresented the Pope’s philosophical argument from the start, or that it had acted in all things as if it had wanted and expected an outburst of Muslim violence. So tell me, John Reith, have they found the nun’s murderer yet? Perhaps they ought to look for him somewhere near Portland Square.
Criticism of the BBC’s pro-Muslim
bias persists. That bias seems to incorporate a BBC world view, by default.
A whole large section of the BBC’s so-called ‘news’ coverage online includes, currently (posted 2 Nov.),
when you follow ‘World News’,then
to ‘Europe’ then to ‘Features’:
“In Depth: Muslims in Europe”. Here,
in one of countless sub-sections, under ‘Quick Guide: Islam’ is contained such cryptic contentions as the following, presented as facts:
” Muslims respect Christians and Jews
as they consider them members of the family of Abraham, one of the prophets.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk.
Of course, tne BBC has no equivalent features on e.g. Christians in Europe. The BBC Feature
smacks of having been written by some of its Muslim staff. The BBC is not providing ‘news’ in this, it is allowing itself to be used as an
organisation for propagandising a particular religion, namely Islam.
”The BBC – and the rest of the MSM – generally follow the age old convention of putting allegations to the accused before running with them”
Yeh, Just ask Dan Rather
“The BBC – and the rest of the MSM – generally follow the age old convention of putting allegations to the accused before running with them.”
So when the BBC peddled this conspiracy theory, about the tsunami, someone had already rang the US embassy and asked, “oh, did you just kill several hundred thousand people?” and had got the answer, “yes”?
And what “yoy” said.
I am starting to think J.R. is a composite and has the the resources of the entire BBC at his disposal for his propaganda and spin. I don’t trust a word he says.
Shows how “old media” likke the BBC doesn’t understand new media at all. It also shows how effective a few voices like B-BBC are.
Sorry “john reith” went off duty at 2:00 pm. He’ll be back in post tomorrow. Unfortunately, he will not be able to answer your questions directly but will be happy to take you down a completely unimportant side-alley.
Natalie Solent | Homepage | 05.11.06 – 8:51 pm |
Natalie the BBC wasn’t ‘peddling’ any conspiracy in the link you posted….it was exploding one.
Here’s a perfect example of B-BBC getting things arsy versy.
The BBC spots some nutty stories on blogs or websites about Diego Garcia and obtains a sensible refutation from the US. It’s then accused of ‘peddling’ the very net-originated loony toon it set out to expose as the worthless drivel it was.
John, the tone of the question was certainly peddling something. You may not realise it (evidently more than a few BBC employees are somewhat undereducated as regards to the queen’s english which, incidentally, makes their criticism of “Bushsims” highly ironic), but english grammar places a lot of emphasis on the order of statements in a question. THh following is taken from the page links:
“Let us know what you think. Is this just anti-US sentiment on the web or something more worrying?”
The final statement in a question, or the last question in a string of questions, is usually the one that the writer, or author, wishes to focus upon. In this case the implication is that it might actually be “something more worrying” rather than just anti-US sentiment, implying in turn that the conspiracy theories might have some substance. If they wanted to dispute or explode the conspiracy theory they might have phrased it like this:
“Is there any validity to this idea, or is it just more anti-US sentiment on the web?”
Or they could simply have stopped at “Let us know what you think.” and avoided any charges of taking sides at all.
Not to self: proofread before criticising somone else’s spelling and grammar…
Point still stands, though, despite the typo. 🙂
Well, I assumed the Foreign Office had distanced themselves from supporting Islamic extremism over the decades since TE Lawrence and the creation of Pakistan.
Is the ‘old club’ still active in the service, then? Seven Pillars of Wisdom, eh?
OT but more evidence of al-BBc’s blatant bias against the US Republican party. Left-wing hack and bitter anti-American, Matt Frei shills for the Democrats in a piece headlined “Season of bitter harvests in US”.
In this badly-written piece (a Frei trademark) Frei gloats over what he sees as the Democratic landslide about to sweep America. Filled with his usual agit-prop babble and wishful thinking , Frei’s piece seizes on news that four “military magazines” are about to have a go at Rumsfield this Monday (just in time for the election). Frei is beside himself with joy at this news ……
“When military “in-house” magazines, more comfortable with cheerleading, call for the scalps of their bosses in the middle of an unpopular war, you know you have a problem.
Welcome to the season of bitter verdicts!”
What the hack doesn’t mention is that the four magazines he mentioned are run by the company that controls USA Today (the pro-Democrat MSM rag) – he also doesn’t mention the fact that the four magazines all share staff and editorial input from the USA Today Democrats. Stop The ACLU has the whole story..
http://stoptheaclu.com/
If I could find this out why didn’t the overpaid Frei earn his money, do some research and report the same thing ? Oh, that’s right – it wouldn’t fit into to his student union, agit-prop view of the world. Glad I don’t pay al-BBC for their one-sided rubbish anymore.
Quite right, those publications have no connection with the US Department of Defense. They are privately owned and operated. The US DoD has a rebutal and refutes the editorial at it’s website.
Terry,
How do you think Macht Frei et al will explain things if the Dims don’t do as well as they’re claiming? The scared stupid Americans line again?
archonix | Homepage | 05.11.06 – 11:22
You have assumed that ‘something more worrying’ refers to the possibility that the daft theory might be true.
I didn’t read it like that.
For me the distinction between ‘simply anti-americanism on the web’ and ‘something more worrying’ was a distinction between political mischief-making and a general cultural descent into irrationality/credulity of a sort that has been remarked upon by Francis Wheen in his book ‘How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World.’ That is to say the widespread belief in ‘new age’ remedies, the re-surgence of magic and various other superstitions.
I really don’t think the BBC was encouraging the view that the tsunami was steered away from Diego Garcia by the US employing alien technologies acquired at Roswell or by Jerry Falwell leading a pray-in on the floor of the Oval Office.
It’s truly amazing how people here have entirely lost an sense of irony and how consequently they get hold of the wrong end of every stick.
“How do you think Macht Frei et al will explain things if the Dims don’t do as well as they’re claiming?” : Ralph
That’s what all the cheating allegations are for.
“Is this just another case of anti-Muslim sentiment or is it something more worrying?”
I can confidently predict this will never ever be seen on the BBC.
I’m just waiting for the NuLabour govt. to send a fact finding mission to Somalia to see if they can learn anything form them in order to improve the ASBO output, and community relations in general.
I can’t remember which article I skimmed there, but it sounded like nirvana — order, discipline and no muzak. I can hardly wait for Somali Islamic gunmen to patrol those unruly council estates here as contractors soon. ;(
Does anyone see the bizarre disconnect? The Beeb is the first to defend the worst of criminals in the West, especially in the US. Death penalty for multiple murderer Tookie Williams (after 20 years of appeals)? ohhh, how horrible, how awful. Tuck them in with eiderdown quilts and warm milk and cookies instead.
Then they switch positions 360 degrees and chirp happily about public executions in Somalia. As long as it’s in a Communist or Islamic country, public executions are just the thing!
These people are crazy, and sick. They don’t even realize how insane they are.
John Reith
Natalie the BBC wasn’t ‘peddling’ any conspiracy in the link you posted….it was exploding one. Here’s a perfect example of B-BBC getting things arsy versy.
Rubbish. As well as repeating a rumour which was theory both lunatic and wicked, the piece asks:
Is America a power for good or ill in the world? Was there a malign hand at work, or has America’s role in the crisis in fact been a model of humanitarian leadership.
That the BBC can pose such a question against a country which orders its affairs under the rule of law and which has been in the frontline against successive tyranies around the world and across the ages shows how sick an organisation it is. The fact that you can read that page and conclude that it is ‘busting’ a myth reveals an absence of judgement at best, on your behalf, though I suspect it’s more likely due to your sicko left-liberalism.
Susan
These people are crazy, and sick. They don’t even realize how insane they are.
Never a truer word said. And on that note, the Grauniad gives us:
Saddam: a tribute
“As the former Iraqi dictator goes to meet the hangman, the world has cause to rue his demise.”
The author of this stuff is one David Cox. His profile page says:
David Cox is a writer and television producer. He has contributed to many publications, including the New Statesman, Prospect, the Times and the Observer, mainly on communications and environmental issues.
He has made programmes for ITV, the BBC, and Channel 4, mainly about current affairs and history. He lives in Battersea, London.
A London liberal, utterly unrepresentative of the nation at large, making programmes for the BBC, lamenting Saddam Hussein’s death sentence in the Guardian. Welcome to Britain.
Dont forget, Saddam modelled him self on that much loved man of the left Uncle Joe aka Stalin.
Amoral morons like Guardian writer David Cox need to live in a closed society run to understand what freedom means.
Its easy to pay homage to Saddam sipping an expresso in Battersea, less so in Basra or Baaqaba where chances are that a member of your family has dissapeared or someone you have loved has had a hot poker shoved up his/her rectum (one of Saddam’s preferred methods of disending justice).
To fathom the utter moral corruption of the Left one need look no further than the editorials of the Guardian or the “reportage” of the BBC. In his inane Commentary Cox writes:
Today, many former Soviet citizens feel no more free under the yoke of global capitalism than they did before, and some would like to see the return of Stalinism. The people of China seem in no rush to jettison a regime that holds out the prospect of prosperity at the expense only of liberty.
THe fact remains that for the Left as long as the tyrant in question is opposed in any extent to the United States then no matter what crimes he commits he is never beyond the pale.
This is the one and only consistent stand that you will find in the addeled remnanants of what passes as intellect amongst left wing writer like Cox.
Tribute to Saddam indeed.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_cox/2006/11/saddam_a_tribute.html
I answered to that article before from a comment that Anon had made.
Here it is:
“At least the traffic runs on time under sharia law, that makes it worthwhile…”
Anon | 01.11.06 – 3:19 pm
Sure, and maybe if you say it doesn’t run on time you will be stoned, or for that matter, every woman out of the street without a veil might get stoned too.
I think most reasonable people will agree that they rather have bad traffic than live in a society where there is no due process of law, no individual rights, and where a religion is imposed, oh oh but wait, you will have good traffic yet you won’t have freedom, great compensation right???!!! You should make that a slogan Anon: Have good traffic in exchange for surrendering all your civil rights and freedoms.
“Trials are swift and punishments public: publicity is their policeman. ”
I am not sure if by swift they mean summary trials where everyone agrees the person is guilty and where there is not an impartial jury. Maybe by public punishment they mean stoning to death or hanging or cutting people’s hands, maybe the BBC should be more specific because swift and public may not necessarily mean it is good. For example, many cubans were given “swift” trials of 20 minutes where they were automatically sentenced because they did not have an impartial jury or receive due process of law. Many were sentenced and still are sentenced to 20 years in prison for disagreeing with the communist government. Many more were murdered in the firing squads held by Che Guevara and these firing squads were televised, so is that considered effective “public punishments” according to the BBC.
“Dissenters argue that this authoritarian attitude is eating away at Somali culture and traditions, from dulling their dress code to muting their music.
But for most this is an argument for another day.”
Which day BBC??? the day when the Somalians are absolutely silenced by the regime’s oppression such as in Cuba, will that be the day to claim one’s freedoms.
“Dulling their dress code” does that mean enforcing the veil, talk about freedom right??!!
“Muting the music,” ohhh that reminds me of when the cuban communist regime called listening to American or British music an act against the communist ideology, thus, it was illegal to do so.
Where’s the freedom BBC??? or is that concept not a right of every human being according to the BBC???
Diana | 01.11.06 – 4:22 pm | #
Hmmm…anyone want to bet on the likelehood of the BBC having on its payroll anyone who’d pen a fulsome tribute to Hitler, Apartheid South Africa or the Confederacy ?
Dumb
Hmmm…anyone want to bet on the likelehood of the BBC having on its payroll anyone who’d pen a fulsome tribute to Hitler, Apartheid South Africa or the Confederacy ?
I’ll take the bet.
Upto the 22 June 1941 when Hitler invaded the Soviet union the left wing element of the BBC were notorious in their silence about the Nazis.
South Africa was never opposed to the Unied States. Had it been it would not have been under the constant scrutiny of the left. Today one hears little or nothing about the inequities of South African society. Something to do with the party in charge perhaps?
The Confederacy … you may have a point, … though not a serious one … im sure that had the BBC been around we would have had a line on how wounderful an institutionslavery is in regulating the socio-economic conduct of blacks in a communal society etc. … nevertheless its not the United States per say that the BBC types hate … its the open liberal society based on free market capitalism which is their one over riding enemy.
You will not be able to ome up with a single example of a government allied with this force which the BBC supports.
BD,
I think thats what DJ was iiiimplying.
“….at the expense only of liberty.”
So liberty is not important for liberals (read “communists”). This is letting the cat out of the bag
No surprise there.
I seem to recall the British upper class supported those romantic Confederates. Oddly enough British workers, including those in the cotton industry, felt quite differently.
Pete_London:
A London liberal, utterly unrepresentative of the nation at large,
Depending on how you define it, Londoners are between 10-20% of the UK population. If coming from London disqualifies someone from being representative of the nation who could possibly fulfill that role?
The UK is not homogeneous (and never has been). No one is representative of the nation at last, not the Queen; not the Prime Minister; not the BBC. Such an animal does not exist.
deegee
The emphasis is on ‘London liberal’, not ‘London’. Here again are the words of Richard Klein, the BBC’s commissioning editor (see B-BBC October 26):
By and large, people who work at the BBC think the same and it’s not the way the audience thinks. That’s not long term sustainable. We pride ourselves on being ‘of the people’, and it’s pathetic…..Channel 4 tends to laugh at people, the BBC ignores them.
Klein, who made his views known at an “audience festival” organised by the BBC last week to find out what its viewers think, admitted that the BBC’s liberal internal culture did not match that of the wider British public. He said: Most people at the BBC don’t live lives like this, but these are our licence payers. It’s our job to reflect and engage.
It’s the liberal, not the Londoner, combine the two and you have a tiny elite with a political, cultural and economic influence vastly in excess of what their numbers warrant.
Pete-london
I’m not so sure this guy Cox is your standard london-liberal.
Check out his other blog posts – they seem calculated to get up the noses of the Guardian-reader eco-stalinist brigade.
He even defends 4X4s.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_cox/2006/10/a_convenient_truth.html
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_cox/2006/10/the_fuel_that_drives_anti4x4_f.html
RWB
I think you are missing the point with Cox. I typically take my dog for a walk via a route that passes the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Embassy … on most day I succeed in getting him to sh*t on their doorstep. Its the least I can do given that they shat all over Iran (my country), however I have never bothered to take account of whether my dog is really against the Islamic republic and its values. Cox here is acting as no more of an independent agent than my dog. He writes his sh*t and the Guardian airs it. Reflect more on the motives of why the Guardian and the BBC give prominenece to certain views at given times then consistency of the “opinion” of the writer.