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Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:
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Richard, You can download the RealAudio file of the FiveLive budget programme from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/fivelive/mayo_wed.ram
Comments on Gordon’s speech are at around 20 minutes in.
The interruption of Cameron’s speech,the description of the 2p cut in income tax as “wizardry” (and “mastery”, sorry, not “magic”) and the criticisms of DC are after 33 minutes.
The interruption of Campbell’s speech is just before 43 minutes. Pienaar’s comments that Campbell is “mis-reading” the budget and that Brown “wouldn’t dream” of hitting the poor are after 43:30. Further unjustified criticism of Campbell and Cameron, and claiming that the budget is good for the poor can be found at around 53:40.
It sounds like Pienaar had been well-briefed by the Treasury beforehand.
Believe it or not but Al Beeb actually does carry a piece with a positive view of Israel:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A21003698?s_fromedit=1
“Believe it or not but Al Beeb actually does carry a piece with a positive view of Israel”
I can hardly beleive it – an article by the BBC with no snide or derogatory comments – is this a first? And a description of the place I can actually recognise. On the downside did anyone catch Jeremy Bowen topping and tailing a report on Iraq’s refugees for the news at 6 last night with references to the “plight of the Palestinians” – ending with the killer line – “At least Iraqis have a homeland to return to unlike the Palestinians”
And back to domestic irritants – John Humphrys prostrated himself before Gordon Brown this morning in an interview which was if anything more sycophantic than Andrew Marr’s stage managed effort in January. Even under these circumstances Brown was unable to make capital out of it, droning out his usual lofty and pompous platitudes. The guy would defintely be at home in the Kremlin.
oops – I posted my Bowen comment before reading the thread – thanks to Bio for a very thorough report on the misdeeds of Abu Bowen.
Believe it or not but Al Beeb actually does carry a piece with a positive view of Israel:
disillusioned_german | 22.03.07 – 7:06 am
Finally a non-biased piece on Israel. And you know why? Because it’s written by sports journalists who don’t have a pre-determined agenda to push.
Having said that, it does seem like the article is written with some surprise. It’s like the writers expected a war-torn, dangerous and evil place and found Israel instead.
Get these guys to report on events in Israel and we might start to hear the truth.
Michael Crick is the new political editor of Newsnight. No I’m not joking.
The problems of UK mass immigration are relegated by BBC, and ‘liberal/left’ is presumptuously hostile to Migrationwatch.
To counteract this, read Sir Andrew Green’s evidence on UK Borders Bill.
http://www.migrationwatch.org
(scroll down home page to:
‘House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee: 16 Mar. UK Borders Bill.’) You can read Sir Andrew Green’s evidence in FULL here.
Re Humphrys’ interview with Brown on “Today”: funnily enough I don’t believe that letting Brown getting away with his whole “lower taxes” budget is necessarily bias. However, it’s certainly incompetence. Having interviewed Brown over the last 10 years Humphrys (and Naughtie) should be aware – as most of us with an IQ above 75 and not “professional” journalists (not mutually exclusive) are – that Brown avoids issues by diverting to detail when he’s tackled on general points and going into generalities when tackled on detail.
One obvious way of dealing with this is to hammer away at a very limited number of well researched points. For instance, there is the egregious contradiction between Brown’s “modernising, reformist, pro-enterprise cut-red-tape blah blah” agenda and penalising small businesses by increasing their corporation tax. A small point but an outstandingly simple one to hammer Brown on. And did Humphrys hammer him? Did he heck! Humphrys (as usual) allowed Brown to duck and dive while they both enjoyed the closed circle intimacy of patronising the “little people” who, they believe, hang on to their every word.
Mind you, Cameron in the Commons and Osborne earlier on “Today” were as pathetic as Humphrys so the BBC’s ace interviewer is in good company.
Where do you suppose the Guardian found its new economics leader writer?
BBC journalist and producer Aditya Chakrabortty joined the Guardian newspaper this week, AIM magazine can exclusively reveal.
He joins the liberal-left newspaper as it Economics leader writer… Aditya comes from the BBC where he was a senior producer on the Ten o’clock News and on Newsnight.
http://www.asiansinmedia.org/news/article.php/publishing/1578
bbc – guardian – al jazeera – back to the bbc
what a nice little gravy train they’ve got going there.
Abu Bowen (pbuh-MA!) doesn’t just stop at the errors listed above, appalling but typical though they are.
By the way the term Middle East is fairly imprecise, so that many would include Africa from Egypt down to the Horn of Africa as part of it, in which case the Somali, Eritrean, and Sudanese refugees would need to be included as well.
He also refers not just to the “prophet mohammed” but also their “martyr hussein”. All pretence of saying islamic discarded, now it is a ‘fact’.
What is more after his intentionally loaded question to the Saudi about the recruiting sergeant he fails to ask how the horrendous campaign of brutal murders of mostly ‘fellow’ muslims constitutes “protecting the islamic civilisation and culture in Iraq”.
And his in depth answer to his own question “what about the Americans”? Brutal warplanes (summarised) – implying brute force from a distance without ‘getting involved’ and that the Americans (all of them) equate freedom with destruction. Pathetic.
Abu Bowen – just when you think he can’t get any worse, he does!
If we are putting a kind spin on it you could argue that the budget was albeit slowly moving more towards the needful flat tax system.
One corporation tax rate and one income tax rate would be part of that, and that is a little closer now.
Didn’t hear much about it as an option though…
If Jeremy Bowen reported on… today’s entertainment news :
“Unlike the Palestinian refugees forced to leave their land when Israel was created, Doctor Who knows he will return – for a fourth series in 2008!”
“There are millions of Palestinians who would happily walk 500 miles to fall down at the doors of the homes they lost when Israel was founded, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. However one group has returned in style – the Proclaimers are back in the charts.”
“Elton John has called for an end to the persecution of homosexuals. Other people who are also persecuted: the Palestinians.”
“Woody Harrelson’s father has died in prison, not unlike the many Palestinians who die every day in the brutal jails of the Israeli occupiers.”
Osbourne got a fair grilling from Humphries this morning.
The Tories were too chickenshit to promise tax cuts, Brown did it.
AnonAnon – great spoof and spot on. As Little Bulldogs points out – down at Beebistan it takes a sports writer with no political agenda to give a genuine (and suprised) account of what Israel is really like. No doubt Abu Bowen is making his way to the sports department right now. Thanks for the (rueful) laugh.
“The Tories were too chickenshit to promise tax cuts, Brown did it.”
No Brown didn’t do it. He did his usual trick of saying one thing and doing another. Small businesses are bearing the cost of cuts in corporation tax for big business. And anyone with no children earning less than £18,000 a year is bearing the cost of tax cuts for middle income families – quite something from a Labour Chancellor.
Jeff Randall sums up the con trick rather well in today’s DT.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/03/22/do2202.xml
They hoped then to take over the land vacated by the murder of Jews. They became voluntarily stateless, then their gamble didn’t pay off because Israel won the war.
Richard | 22.03.07 – 4:55 am
The article I linked to explains all that perfectly, with historical facts and quotes from the Arabs involved.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18072
Scroll down to the appendix:
Appendix: Quotes confirming that Arab leaders told Arabs to flee:
1. “The first group of our fifth column consist of those who abandon their homes…At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle” — Ash-Sha’ab, Jaffa, 1.30.48
2. “(the fleeing villagers)…are bringing down disgrace on us all… by abandoning their villages” — As-Sarih, Jaffa, 3.30.48
3. “Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe.” — Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948, (quoted in
Battleground by Samuel Katz).
4. “The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city…. By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.” — Time Magazine, May 3, 1948, page 25
There are 26 such quotes plus this:
· Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) penned an article in March 1976 in Falastin al-Thawra (cf. supra), the official journal of the PLO in Beirut: “The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe” (emphasis added).
· As Abu Mazen alluded, it was in large part due to threats and fear-mongering from Arab leaders that some 700,000 Arabs fled Israel in 1948 when the new state was invaded by Arab armies. Ever since, the growing refugee population, now around 4 million by UN estimates, has been corralled into squalid camps scattered across the Middle East – in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank.
The BBC has given long-standing pro-homosexual publicity to Elton John, and does again today. His comments appear on the BBC’s website under ‘Entertainment’, but the six entries, some of which are still there after 6 months, are blatantly political, such as: ‘Sir Elton berates Australian PM’.
In contrast, the BBC rather ignores comment like this:
“The war within the west (10)”
http://www.melaniephillips.com
Perhaps people should look at this article in The Times by Michael Gove MP. In the second part he lambasts the BBC for biased reporting:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/michael_gove/article1543843.ece
In a recent entry on the Editors Blog Newsround’s Tim Levell attempted to address the concerns of a viewer who had complained, “If Newsround is anything to go by, then there’s not one white child in the country.” Levell conceded: “…we probably need to work harder to make sure that our day-to-day production requirements don’t end up setting the on-screen agenda.”
Here’s the BBC’s In Pictures on today’s School Report News Day.
Brown did not cut taxes but he did reapportion them in what was essentially a neutral budget.
Unquestioningly Brown was ‘cleverer’ than expected.
Dave and George were bamboozled, after all they are promising increased spending not tax cuts themselves.
There is no denying he stole a lot of Tory ‘thunder’, for example the Tories had been proposing a cut of corporation tax to 27% but removing capital allowances so this was in effect very similar.
I do fail to see what was so ‘tricky’ about either party’s proposals.
What was missed was the flat tax possibility – see the TaxPayers Alliance site for varying possibilities on this.
Instead of stealthing us with national insurance that is in reality treated as tax why not combine them with tax set one rate and make personal allowances much greater.
Easier to understand, cuts down on admin costs and stops tax avoidance.
Same with companies, set one rate and abolish employees NI which is a tax on jobs.
More and more EU countries are adopting this type of policy and are reaping the rewards.
Do we really want to be left with the go slow euro countries?
Its time it was taken seriously over here.
I look forward to the BBC covering it and questioning politicians about the possibility.
On second thoughts that might be a long wait…
So the BBC isn’t biased?
R4’s Brian Hanrahan just trailed a head-to-head between pro and anti-EU opinions with views to be given by the UKIP’s Nigel Farage and the EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson.
Farage was given what felt like a quarter of the time Mandelson was treated to and was repeatedly challenged by Hanrahan.
Mandleson, on the other hand, was allowed an easy waffle about globalisation and not once asked to defend the EU, which was supposed to have been the point of the feature.
Indeed, the only vaguely challenging question was about his relationshp with Brown.
Any comment from the BBC fanboys, or does this fail on the grounds that it isn’t about Israel’s policy towards the Palestinans and lacks sufficient nits to pick?
GC,
It’s what they do to the Tory guest week in and week out on Question Time. They claim they are being unbiased but give one side an easy time and the other they grill.
Do they really think nobody has noticed?
Re: Alan Johnstone
I do not think too much of Alan Johnston’s reporting abilities and blatant favour towards the Palestinians yet I very much hope that he is freed safe and well. His relatives and friends must be sick with worry over what will happen. I hope we can all rise above the all too often selective sympathy shown by those on the left and show our concern and compassion for a fellow Briton, irrespective of his political leanings.
GCcooper | 22.03.07 – 2:50 pm
It wasn’t a ‘head to head’ – it was two separate interviews.
Hanrahan asked Farage 3 questions about the EU which were answered with Farage’s signature brio.
Hanrahan let Farage finish each answer – he didn’t interrupt on any occasion before Farage had completed his point.
Mandelson was asked three questions on the EU and three on Gordon Brown.
These latter elicited the information that 1. Gordon Brown can’t fire him even if he wants to; and 2. That Mandelson will not be seeking a second term.
Both worth knowing.
Prior to that, he had, as you say, waffled about globalization.
So Hanrahan was right to persist in search of the money quotes.
zboy | 22.03.07 – 3:22 pm
Yes indeed, ‘selective sympathy’ is the name of the game played by Johnston, Bowen, Platt, Guerin and all.
Where is the outpouring of sympathy from you, or the BBC, for the fate of Israeli corporal Gilead Shalit and the other two Israelis kidnapped by Hezballah? They have friends and family too, but they’re not ‘Britons’ of course.
I have as much sympathy for Alan Johnston, Briton that he is, as I would have had for Lord Haw-Haw had I been alive during WW2. He was British too.
irrespective of his political leanings
Like Lord Haw-Haw, Johnston made a choice about which side he would lean towards. He crossed that line and placed himself on the other side.
I reserve my sympathy for the victims of his friends and see absolutely nothing wrong in that. I have no compassion to spare for one who blatantly supports those who would murder my friends and family.
As I’ve stated here before, I do not wish him any ill, I simply do not care what happens to him.
The Today home page currently displays prominent links to two galleries on its website – Jim Naughtie’s love-in with Michael Foot, and a retrospective of communist cartoons. It’s like they want to be caught.
” zboy | 22.03.07 – 3:22 pm ”
i have as much sympathy for the terrorist loving Alan Johnston as i do for Lord Haw Haw.
he made his own bed, and he can lie in it.
Not a murmur on this from Alan Johnston’s BBC:
4 killed in Gaza clashes
Despite the Mecca agreement and the formation of the new unity government, which brought hope to the Palestinian people, four Palestinians have been killed in internal fighting in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours.
Of course if it had been Israelis killing “Palestinians” in Gaza we wouldn’t hear the last of it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6461067.stm
Palestinian Authority (PA) President and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas called for an end to “the siege” – referring to a crippling Western embargo.
He said the Palestinian people “reject violence in all its forms”, and called for “mutual commitment by Israel to stop all violence”.
Yeah, right…
Zboy
“I hope we can all rise above the all too often selective sympathy shown by those on the left and show our concern and compassion for a fellow Briton, irrespective of his political leanings.”
I wouldn’t wish being kidnapped by Islamists (and it looks like al Qaida operating in Gaza might have Johnston) on anyone and hope Johnston is released safely as soon as possible. The point is that the BBC consistently fails to condemn acts like this with an ever more refined species of apologetics. By subscribing to the rhetoric of ‘fighting the occupation’ they tend to show a callous disregard for Israeli victims. They won’t call it terror – they find excuses for the perpetrators – they are equivocal. Maybe right now it is tactical to play up Johnston’s Palestinian sympathies, but in the long term the BBC approach only encourages more kidnapping, more terror and more poor bastards like Johnston being victimised.
” Anonanon | 22.03.07 – 2:10 pm |”
interesting. they’re actually admitting to a London centric media-bubble leftie bias.
More news from Gaza that Johnston wouldn’t have bothered reporting, and the rest of the Gaza bureau simply can’t be arsed right now:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/840831.html
Earlier Thursday, four masked Palestinian gunmen carjacked a United Nations-marked vehicle in Gaza City, in the latest act of violence against UN workers in the coastal strip, a spokesman for the UN’s refugee mission in Gaza said.
The gunmen blocked a vehicle marked with the emblem of the UN Relief and Works Agency with their own car, and forced out the driver, who was traveling alone, said Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the agency in the Gaza Strip. The driver, an unidentified Palestinian staffer, was unharmed.
Although carjackings are prevalent in Gaza, they almost always involve locals. Parked UN cars have been stolen, however, and just last week, gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying the UNRWA chief in Gaza, John Ging. Bullets were fired at Ging’s vehicle, but no one was hurt in the kidnap attempt.
UNRWA has about 11,000 staffers operating in Gaza. Abu Hasna had no immediate comment on whether the increasing violence might cause the mission to revise its operations.
Also Thursday, a Hamas-affiliated university professor kidnapped by gunmen was released, officials from Hamas said.
The professor, Hamad al-Sousi, was abducted Wednesday as he left evening prayers at a mosque south of Gaza City. There was no official claim of responsibility, but Hamas officials blamed the rival Fatah for the incident.
The Hamas officials who reported the professor’s release spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Hamas and Fatah have often used kidnapping as a weapon in their often violent struggle for power, which has killed more than 140 Palestinians from last May until a cease-fire was called in early February.
The infighting between the two factions was supposed to end with the formation of a national unity government last week. But on Wednesday, a 24-year-old man was killed and two were seriously wounded in an armed clash between Fatah and Hamas supporters.
Fatah spokesman Abdel Hakim Awad told the AP on Wednesday that Al-Sousi had been apparently kidnapped by Fatah sympathizers in response to the shooting.
Good news today for freedom of speech in France, in fight against global Islamic censorship:
“French cartoon editor aquitted”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6479673.stm
Is there any chance Al Beeb will show the same guts as ‘Charlie Hebdo’, or will it still act the dhimmi?
Acquit me of ‘aqitted'(4:37 pm.)
Apologies.
… the local BBC chappie who eventually finished up as head of news gathering. He once told me that as he controlled what people watched I would never win. I’ll expand on that if anyone is interested.
TPO | 21.03.07 – 3:41 pm
Yes please, I’m interested.
Biodegradable | 21.03.07 – 3:57 pm | #
TPO writes:
“I’ll expand on that if anyone is interested. ”
I’m with Biodegradable on this. I’d be fascinated.
GCcooper | 21.03.07 – 6:09 pm | #
Sorry not to respond sooner I was out celebrating my 60th and getting my bus pass.
It was in the mid 70s in North Borneo. The ex-pat community, from all walks, wasn’t that large and most people knew each other. At the time the phenomenon known as the Vietnamese Boat People was at its peak. These were people escaping the communist regime in Vietnam. Most of the SE Asian countries would not let them land and would tow them back out to sea. Hundreds, if not thousands drowned. I got into a big ruck about it with a Stalinist masquerading as a VSO school teacher. He’d been on the Grosvenor Square riot and boasted that had thrown marbles under the hoofs of the police horses and stabbed darts into their flanks.
Here’s the BBC’s take on the event (all glossed up just like the miner’s strike):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/march/17/newsid_3516000/3516162.stm
Anyway this communist thought it quite hilarious that people escaping the Vietnamese regime were drowning. I was at the age when I could get pretty incensed and I was close to decking this clown who was being egged on by the BBC chappie. I’d already had a right ding-dong with them about the criminally corrupt labour government in the UK which both wholeheartedly supported. I seem to recall calling both of them communist c***s. The VSO Stalinist responded by saying that he could control what the children were taught and the BBC man added that as he controlled what they watched Tories like me would never win.
I left North Borneo in 1977 and lost track of them until May 1980 when I saw the BBC chappie staggering out of the Iranian embassy whilst the siege was in progress. He went on to become head of news gathering for the BBC before moving on to CNN.
Sorry – a bit long winded but that’s how it happened.
Promoting their doc on the Hizb’allah war, the BBC, completely fudge the fact that Hizb’allah contravened international law with their raid across the blue line, killing four Israelis and capturing two. Their carefully edited version has it:
“The war began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, but it quickly escalated into a full-scale conflict.”
And then they claim their own correspondent has the authority to pronounce on the action as if she was some impartial expert, instead of a reporter working for the corporation –
“BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall says the US-UK refusal to join calls for a ceasefire was one of the most controversial aspects of the diplomacy.”
And John Bolton, their source, is treated to extensive use of sneer quotes and described as “a controversial and blunt-speaking character” – note the use of favourite code word “controversial” again to signal beeboid disapproval.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6479377.stm
note the use of favourite code word “controversial” again to signal beeboid disapproval.
Oscar | 22.03.07 – 4:52 pm |
“Controversial” … Yes. Now there’s a word you’ll find missing from the BBC’s reporting on the bugger’s charter that’s just been rushed through Parliament.
jr
Good to see you back. I’m sure you’ll catch my ramble @ 4.52 above. I raised this one before sometime back without identifying the individual. I’m sure you guessed who it was and I seem to recall you saying the man was a prat for saying what he did.
Glad to see we’re on the same wavelength.
The BBC Olds (it cannot be called News) page continues on its not so merry way.
The “In ‘Depth’ : muslims In Europe” is into its umpteenmillionth week on the Olds site.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/europe/2005/muslims_in_europe/default.stm
Closer examination reveals the only remotely new item to be about possible veil bans in English schools.
Well I suppose England is in Europe though the implication of the section is it will be about the rest of Europe as Britain is well covered in the British sections.
The other ‘headlines’ – are from 12 January 2007, 10 November 2006 (another UK article) and 31 October 2005. Quite incredible!
Do you know of an example anywhere in the media where Olds are so blatantly masquerading as ‘News’?
Still given the agenda, laziness and cost saving by Al Beeb I suppose it all fits in for them!
TPO | 22.03.07 – 4:52 pm
Is this the guy?
Chris Cramer is executive vice president and managing director of CNN International, responsible for the CNN International directorate………
This includes overseeing the editorial and programming components of CNN International, and associated services with the additional responsibility of management of the 26 international bureaus.
Cramer is based in CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta and is a member of the CNN Executive Committee. ………..Before joining CNN in April 1996, Cramer was the Head of Newsgathering for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and sat on the BBC’s News and Current Affairs Management Board.
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/cramer.chris.html
SAS End Iranian Embassy Siege
Most of their hostages were fellow Iranians but also included embassy police guard PC Trevor Lock, BBC sound man Sim Harris, BBC news organiser Chris Cramer and tourists who had stopped by to collect visas.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/5/newsid_2510000/2510873.stm
TPO | 22.03.07 – 5:06 pm
I seem to recall you saying the man was a prat for saying what he did.
He certainly was a prat for saying what he did. But then, he’s a prat anyway.
chris cramer on the SAS:
I was stupid enough to apply for a visa inside the Iranian Embassy in London in April 1980. I was stupid enough to be there when Iraqi terrorists stormed it. I was there for a very, very short time. I was there for precisely 28 hours. … I was fortunate enough to have a slightly troubling stomach condition, having been in Zimbabwe, which manifested itself in a very short space of time. It’s a most incredible heart attack. And I do fantastic heart attacks. I do great heart attacks. So convincing with my heart attack that the people there were embarrassed and threw me out. And I was released after 27 hours into the hands of the Metropolitan Police in London and two days later into a dreadful bunch of terrorists called the SAS, who were probably worse than the terrorists inside the Iranian embassy.
John Reith writes:
“Hanrahan let Farage finish each answer – he didn’t interrupt on any occasion before Farage had completed his point.”
He did, however, challenge Farage’s points, which he did not do with anything like the same rigour, when interviewing Mandleson.
As we were sold this pup on the premise that it was supposed to be reflecting on the 50th anniversary, it would have been more properly balanced had Hanrahan asked Mandelson to address the issue, rather than allowing him waffle.
“These latter elicited the information that 1. Gordon Brown can’t fire him even if he wants to; and 2. That Mandelson will not be seeking a second term.
Both worth knowing.”
Both amusing, as they reflect the animosity between the two, but not really relevant to the value, or otherwise, of the EU.
There remains the question of the allotted time, which you have avoided.
forgot link to that –
http://www.crimesofwar.org/seminars/day2cramer-p4.html
Chris Cramer recounts his experience of the Iranian Embassy seige, where he faked a heart attack, leaving his BBC colleague behind:
I do great heart attacks. So convincing with my heart attack that the people there were embarrassed and threw me out. And I was released after 27 hours into the hands of the Metropolitan Police in London and two days later into a dreadful bunch of terrorists called the SAS, who were probably worse than the terrorists inside the Iranian embassy. And four and a half days later, Maggie Thatcher, in one of her rare moments of triumph, deployed the SAS in broad daylight to storm the embassy and they rescued all but maybe one or two of the hostages.
http://www.crimesofwar.org/seminars/day2-cramer-p4.html
I don’t think ‘prat’ quite does justice to this spiteful, self-absorbed c**t.
Anonymous – SNAP!
TPO writes:
“I left North Borneo in 1977 and lost track of them until May 1980 when I saw the BBC chappie staggering out of the Iranian embassy whilst the siege was in progress. He went on to become head of news gathering for the BBC before moving on to CNN.
Sorry – a bit long winded but that’s how it happened.”
Thank you for that, TPO – very illuminating. And entirely consistent with my own brushes with BBC staff.
watch out- Cramer’s quitting CNN to return to the UK:
Chris Cramer, one of the most powerful Britons in global news-gathering, the man who built CNN into the worldwide powerhouse it is today, has a mission on his mind. He is going to take his rowing boat out on to the Chattahoochee river in Georgia – as seen in the film Deliverance – and he is going to practise his sculling for a couple of months.
After that, he is heading home from the southern states of America to London, where he hopes to put in place a plan for shaking up the landscape of British television news.
http://www.newssafety.com/stories/insi/cramer2.htm
Sorry not to respond sooner I was out celebrating my 60th and getting my bus pass.
TPO | 22.03.07 – 4:52 pm
Congratulations!
I’m celebrating my 58th today, waiting for the sun to go down behind the yardarm…
“The war began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, but it quickly escalated into a full-scale conflict.”
Oscar | 22.03.07 – 4:52 pm
I noticed that too and was going to comment. No mention of the ‘capture’ taking place on Israeli soil. No mention of the dead Israelis, and the insinuation that it was Israel which did the escalating.
Of course Bolton was dead right:
Mr Bolton now describes it as “perfectly legitimate… and good politics” for the Israelis to seek to defeat their enemy militarily, especially as Hezbollah had attacked Israel first and it was acting “in its own self-defence”.
Mr Bolton, a controversial and blunt-speaking figure, said he was “damned proud of what we did” to prevent an early ceasefire.
Sod the concept of ‘proportionality’. What’s the point of you slap me, I slap you back, you slap me again, I slap you back…?
Slap me and I’ll hit you so hard you won’t be able to slap anyone for a while.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krav_Maga#Basic_principles
😉
Cologne Karnival, Germany – 2 MILLION people – not a mention.
Paddys Day. Worldwide. MILLIONS celebrating it. never even made the front page of the “news” site.
600 people attending a anti-racism demo in Belgium -oooh lets make that front page news!!!
“Carnival mood as Belgians reject racism”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/default.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6479519.stm