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I see the BBC attacked Amercia again tonight…this time with Daleks from Dr Who…..last week it was the utterly fictional “Superstorm” that wiped out Manhatten….
I think the BBC are trying to “will” destruction on the USA…..
Or…more probably, they are DESPERAATE to break into the Amercian market, and so make Amercian based shows……paid for by extorting money from us Brits….
I’m so glad Amercia is waking up to the lies of the Beeb….
DG | Homepage | 21.04.07 – 12:29 am
i have a suggestion for a bbc program plot:
extremist, islamist state funds a british school, and immediately requires all female pupils, regardless of religious affiliation, to wear islamic dress, and distributes to all students texts defining certain ethnics as apes and pigs and those of other beliefs as kaffirs, infidels and perdition-bound.
oops, sorry, i forgot, the bbc’s program purported to be fiction…
According to the Electoral Commision.
“To vote in parliamentary elections in the UK you must be a British citizen, a citizen of another Commonwealth country or of the Irish Republic, as well as being resident in the UK
Which is why I, as a British citizen resident abroad, can’t vote.
‘Poll Tax’ was the right name for it.
While as a resident in an EU country I can vote in local and municipal election, I can’t vote in any UK election.
I’m disenfranchised! What about my Human and Civil Rights?
Other countries’ citizens living abroad have a postal vote – what about me? :o(
” phoebe | 21.04.07 – 11:14 pm ”
your focussing on the media luvvies who get all the attention….
there are capitalist irishmen out there though. mostly property tycoons who have been buying up the centre of London and the City.
dave t | Homepage | 21.04.07 – 5:44 pm
“Think you’ll find the problem Dale and others are complaining about is that they can and do affect the political map of some areas.
There are Labour buffoons like Labour MP John McDonnell who support Sinn Fein and refuse to condemn the IRA who rely on the Irish vote in their area to get elected.”
that sort of thing is decreasing over time. the newer generation that migrated over in the 80s and 90s arent limited to Irish ghettoes like before and are more spread around England. More integrated in other words.
20 or 30 years ago i would have agreed with you – yes there was an Irish voting bloc, but with so many heading back home, its less and less of a big issue. its an issue thats not really an issue anymore. its more of a case of Iain Dale doing the usual Tory anti-irish bit and dressing it up all nicely and turning into an issue that really isnt an issue.
the most politically active and motivated voting ethnic bloc right now isnt the Irish. its the Muslims. Dale is argueing about 30 years too late…
and in any case – does he seriously think that removing the vote from an 70 year old Irish pensioner , who has lived in say Bermondsey all her life, would NOT be jumped on by the Labour party? “nasty party” yet again – and by god will Labour drag out that particular example. its just idiotic to start suggesting that sort of thing in the run up to a local election and possibly the general election next year.
as a result, i’m cancelling my membership of the conservative party. i thought they had grown up a bit and moved onto more subtantial issues. – like the concept of freedom and less state inference in our lives and lower taxes.
obviously not.
The BBC, Israel and half a story
The defender of the faith (the BBC) has revamped its Palestine History website in which to inform the great unwashed about the history of the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/default.stm
The site which has no problem re-writing history such as this;
“War broke out in 1948 when Britain withdrew, the Jews declared the state of Israel and troops from neighbouring Arab nations moved in. After eight months of fighting an armistice line was agreed, establishing the West Bank and Gaza Strip as distinct geographical units”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/israel_founded.stm
“The Jews declared the state of Israel and troops from the neighbouring Arab nations moved in.” (What were these Arab Troops BBC, squatters? Anybody who has visited a Muslim country will see the double entendre there)
So according to the BBC , Jews invade, the British invade and the Americans invade. Yet when it comes to Arab neighbours they move in. How bloody convenient.
But it gets better the BBC then reports this as historical fact;
” After eight months of fighting an armistice line was agreed, establishing the West Bank and Gaza Strip as distinct geographical units”
(Err Hello Mcfly? Distinct geographical units, you kind of left out the fact that those distinct geographical units were absorbed into Jordan and Egypt, they weren’t independent in the sense of self government they were ruled by foreign governments.)
But what really gets my goat. Is how the Yom Kippur war in 1973 is still omitted from the history of the region.(You know BBC the war in which Egypt and Syria launched an attack on Israel.) The war which resulted in Israel actually taking more Arab land than they did in 1967 and the war which resulted in peace between Egypt and Israel. Which led to the handing back of the whole of the Sinai Peninsula, which then paved the way for the peace accord with Jordan, which lead to the handing back of Gaza to the Pals. So surely the Yom Kippur war is relevant to the historical story line. Yet for some reason the BBC omits all reference to that ever so relevant chapter in the regions history. Now I wonder why that is?
The BBC, Israel and half a story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/israel_founded.stm
love this line
“War broke out in 1948 when Britain withdrew,”
so its all Britains fault. hello Stern Gang? or maybe Arab rejection of the UN partition plan?
here’s the real history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel
Immediately following the adoption of the Partition Plan by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, David Ben-Gurion tentatively accepted the partition, while the Arab League rejected it. The Arab Higher Committee immediately ordered a violent three-day strike on Jewish civilians, attacking buildings, shops, and neighborhoods, and prompting insurgency organized by underground Jewish militias like the Lehi and Irgun. These attacks soon turned into widespread fighting between Arabs and Jews, this civil war being the first “phase” of the 1948 War of Independence
Phoebe:
I’d love to see a BBC report on Mike O’Brien’s incredibly long article in the Muslim Weekly
Did T.B. know about it before publication?
What other ethnic and national group have been honoured by a ‘look what NuLab has done for you’ spiel? It would be interesting to compare.
Heard a programme about Eastenders on BBC R4 today. An early scriptwriter was saying how hard he and his single colleague worked. 2 of them did the work of 27 scriptwriters today. No wonder the TV poll tax needs to rise so fast.
[I decided to delete this comment and the subsequent responses, particularly as some of them veered away from comment about impartiality issues and into levity that was inappropriate given that Alan Johnston may be dead and if alive is in grave danger.
You – addressing all those deleted, not just Biodegradable – may feel that that was not the best response to your comment, and it is true that some of them made some fair points along with unfair ones. But on balance I felt deleting them did some good and little harm.]
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archduke writs:
“as a result, i’m cancelling my membership of the conservative party. i thought they had grown up a bit and moved onto more subtantial issues. – like the concept of freedom and less state inference in our lives and lower taxes.”
Wrong Conservative Party, I’m afraid! Under Cameron (elected to placate the BBC) the party has lurched to the statist Left.
It isn’t even worth burning down in its present condition.
pounce, you missed this part:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/israel_founded.stm
The United Nations General Assembly decided in 1947 on the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem to be an international city. The plan, which was rejected by the native Arabs, was never implemented.
The majority of Arabs in the area were NOT ‘native’.
http://www.imninalu.net/myths-pals.htm
“There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent (valley of Jezreel, Galilea); not for thirty miles in either direction… One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee… Nazareth is forlorn… Jericho lies a mouldering ruin… Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation… untenanted by any living creature… A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent, mournful expanse… a desolation… We never saw a human being on the whole route… Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country… Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes… desolate and unlovely…”.
– Mark Twain, “The Innocents Abroad”, 1867 –
Where had the Palestinians been hidden that Mark Twain did not see them? Where was that “ancient” people in the mid XIX century c.e.? Of course, modern biased Arab politicians try to discredit Mark Twain and insult and blame him of racism. Yet, it seems that there were other people that did not achieve in recognizing a single Palestinian in those times and earlier:
“In 1590 a ‘simple English visitor’ to Jerusalem wrote: ‘Nothing there is to bescene but a little of the old walls, which is yet remayning and all the rest is grasse, mosse and weedes much like to a piece of rank or moist grounde’.”.
– Gunner Edward Webbe, Palestine Exploration Fund,
Quarterly Statement, p. 86; de Haas, History, p. 338 –
“The land in Palestine is lacking in people to till its fertile soil”.
– British archaeologist Thomas Shaw, mid-1700s –
“The Arabs themselves cannot be considered but temporary residents. They pitched their tents in its grazing fields or built their places of refuge in its ruined cities. They created nothing in it. Since they were strangers to the land, they never became its masters. The desert wind that brought them hither could one day carry them away without their leaving behind them any sign of their passage through it”.
– Comments by Christians concerning the Arabs in Palestine in the 1800s –
“The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population”.
– James Finn, British Consul in 1857 –
“The area was underpopulated and remained economically stagnant until the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers in the 1880’s, who came to rebuild the Jewish land. The country had remained “The Holy Land” in the religious and historic consciousness of mankind, which associated it with the Bible and the history of the Jewish people. Jewish development of the country also attracted large numbers of other immigrants – both Jewish and Arab. The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts… Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen… The plows used were of wood… The yields were very poor… The sanitary conditions in the village [Yabna] were horrible… Schools did not exist… The rate of infant mortality was very high… The western part, toward the sea, was almost a desert… The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants”.
– The report of the British Royal Commission, 1913 –
The list of travellers and pilgrims throughout the XVI to the XIX centuries c.e. that give a similar description of the Holy Land is quite longer, including Alphonse de Lamartine, Sir George Gawler, Sir George Adam Smith, Siebald Rieter, priest Michael Nuad, Martin Kabatnik, Arnold Van Harff, Johann Tucker, Felix Fabri, Edward Robinson and others. All of them found the land almost empty, except for Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Shechem, Hevron, Haifa, Safed, Irsuf, Cæsarea, Gaza, Ramleh, Acre, Sidon, Tzur, El Arish, and some towns in Galilee: Ein Zeitim, Pekiin, Biria, Kfar Alma, Kfar Hanania, Kfar Kana and Kfar Yassif. Even Napoleon I Bonaparte, having seen the need that the Holy Land would be populated, had in mind to enable a mass return of Jews from Europe to settle in the country that he recognized as theirs’ – evidently, he did not see any “Palestinian” claiming historical rights over the Holy Land, whose few inhabitants were mainly Jews.
Besides them, many Arab sources confirm the fact that the Holy Land was still Jewish by population and culture in spite of the Diaspora:
·In 985 c.e. the Arab writer Muqaddasi complained that in Jerusalem the large majority of the population were Jewish, and said that “the mosque is empty of worshippers…” .
·Ibn Khaldun, one of the most creditable Arab historians, in 1377 c.e. wrote:
“Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel extended over 1400 years… It was the Jews who implanted the culture and customs of the permanent settlement”.
After 300 years of Arab rule in the Holy Land, Ibn Khaldun attested that Jewish culture and traditions were still dominant. By that time there was still no evidence of “Palestinian” roots or culture .
·The historian James Parker wrote: “During the first century after the Arab conquest [670-740 c.e.], the caliph and governors of Syria and the [Holy] Land ruled entirely over Christian and Jewish subjects. Apart from the Bedouin in the earliest days, the only Arabs west of the Jordan were the garrisons”.
Even though the Arabs ruled the Land from 640 c.e. to 1099 c.e., they never became the majority of the population. Most of the inhabitants were Christians (Assyrian and Armenian) and Jews.
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Block 813 | 22.04.07 – 1:03 pm
Comments from beeboids:
malcolm brabant
It is hard to imagine a more unjustified or counter-productive kidnapping.Alan Johnston is a courageous correspondent who is a friend of the Palestinian people.For the past three years,he has shone a light on the problems of the people of Gaza.The result of this kidnapping is that western news organisations will be highly unlikely to send their correspondents to Gaza in the future and that light will go out.Surely that is not what the kidnappers want? It is not too late for them to undo the damage they have done.I hope they can find the strength and wisdom to ensure that Alan is unharmed and released immediately. Not just for Alan and his family,but also for the Palestinian people.
…
John Simpson
Dear Alan, By the time you read this you will have been freed: something your friends and colleagues, and people you have never met have been hoping and praying and demonstrating for. I have never seen such support for a captured journalist. It shows you how admired and loved you are, right around the world. I hope you can find it in your heart not to be bitter against your captors. They have simply demonstrated how important you are to us all. Look foward to seeing you soon. John Simpson.
This one is ironic or what?
Eoin Murray
A petition has been set up online calling for the release of Alan. It is for people who are supporters of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. Please sign up here: http://www.petitiononline.com/freealan/petition.
Errr, is that the legitimate right to kidnap foreign journalists you’re talking about?
[deleted]
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When the tale is anti-Iraq war, & by extension anti-UK/US, a BBC radio comedy about militants beheading the innocents is just fine, but …
Last week Radio 4 cancelled a broadcast of his short story Weddings and Beheadings, a fictional account of an Iraqi film-maker forced to document hostage decapitations. The story is shortlisted for the £15,000 National Short Story prize (the five finalists are aired on Radio 4) and the winner will be announced tomorrow. After unconfirmed reports that Alan Johnston, the BBC’s kidnapped Gaza correspondent, had been executed by a jihadist group Mark Damazer, Radio 4’s controller, pulled the plug on the scheduled broadcast of Kureishi’s tale.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1686701.ece
interesting. in the first 4 hours of voting in France, turnout is the highest its been in 20 years. (bbc tv news just now)
archduke – the result of LePen’s success at this stage last time?
The HYS “Alan Johnston: Your messages” has an extraordinarily large proportion of rejected submissions – 30%
It would appear that a large number are unsympathetic to Johnston’s (or the BBC’s) plight.
Last time they had a high turnout in France they voted against the will of the media and rejected the EU constitition quite resoundingly. Now the media is backing whatserface Royale.
Interesting times…
[deleted]
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fascinating. if you are american you dont need to travel across to atlantic to visit French soil…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Pierre%2C_Saint-Pierre_and_Miquelon
(they voted early in the French elections)
Added: Sunday, 22 April, 2007, 09:12 GMT 10:12 UK
What fuels anti-American sentiments around the world?
I think the BBC is one of the main culprits.
[rightofcentre], wakefield, United Kingdom
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Recommended by 18 people
I`m rather surprised I managed to get this published on HYS, what`s the betting it`s not there this time tomorrow?
bbc news 24 is saying that the french elections are “too close to call”
in other words, Sarko is going to win.
i’ll go out on a limb here, and predict that if Sarko wins, you’ll have an immediate thaw in French/American relations, and that the French will fill the vacuum left by the British withdrawal from Iraq.
This has started already, with the carrier Charles De Gaulle operating in the Gulf alongside the American carrier fleets.
SKY NEWS now : central London – showing massive queues for French polling booths. french journalist has said “he has NEVER seen anything like this before…”
Sarko to win. i’ll bet my grandmother on it.
i’ll also predict that with a Sarko presidency, Gordon Brown will be sidelined by the Americans. The French will offer the Yanks a fast track input into the goings on at the EU.
one thing is for sure – global geopolitics will be *very* interesting with a Sarko presidency – and it wont be to Britains benefit, unless that is, we elect a Sarko (a person who has yet to emerge unfortunately…)
“The French have been looking ahead to the election in a mood of mingled fear and hope, says the BBC’s Caroline Wyatt in Paris.
Many believe France needs urgent change under a new leader after 12 years of gentle economic decline under President Jacques Chirac, she says. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6580363.stm
‘gentle economic decline’? What planet is she on? Then again were Chirac not the Beeb’s chosen one despite his alleged frauds etc in the past it would have read ‘savage decline typical of conservative economic policies worldwide’ or similar!
And note:
“Some 1.5 million voters will use electronic voting machines for the first time, criticised by the socialists and some other opposition parties as dangerously unreliable.”
That’ll be her setting the scene for her left wing buddies to scream Florida-style Fraud etc! (After all they need to get a wee dig at Bush in there SOMEWHERE)
The BBC and how it moderators the CBBC message boards.
Here is a current debate on the BBC message boards.
god is our creator!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Message 1 – posted by U8030517 (U8030517) , 3 Days Ago
SO THAT MEANS NO BIG BANG…NO EVOLUTION…NO APES!
GOT IT?!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbnewsround/F2706291?thread=4075432
Nothing wrong with the above, and the following posts debate what U8030517 has to say.
Until this post
Message 7 – posted by U8158027 (U8158027) , Yesterday
r u a christian im not y do u worship the cross an instrument of torcher i think its not rite to worship a torcher
Now out of a thread of 12 posts 3 are censored, but the above isn’t. I wonder why the BBC moderator allowed that one to get through. I mean would they have allowed somebody to disparage the Islamic faith? So why is it different for Christians?
archduke | 22.04.07 – 2:57 pm |
Have you noticed the map at your link? My mind immedately translated Miquelon in to something resembling a nuclear mushroom cloud… heh.
Your predictions for the behaviour of the French are a bit radical. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right, but at the same time there’s always the problem of the bureaucracy of EU and French officials who wo7ldn’t be very happy with France aligning with the US. As the chinese would say, we’re living in interesting times.
Re the above, a Sarkozy win will definitely spark a mass protest by muslims, whatever his attitude toward the world. He’s not sufficiently pliable to their views.
sky news – turnout is at 73 per cent. highest since 1981.
“archonix | Homepage | 22.04.07 – 4:44 pm”
his mother is Jewish, although coverted to Catholicism. His father fled from Hungarian communism as well.
yeah with that background, he’s bound to get up the Islamist and left wing moonbat noses alright. and a good thing too.
i get a sense that France is about to reassert itself on the world stage.
Our future MacCavity the Cat PM will probably dissapear into a hidey hole.
“archonix | Homepage | 22.04.07 – 4:43 pm”
yeah, the bureaucracy is probably the biggest thing that Sarko will have to fight in order to rejunventate France’s economy.
interesting times ahead.
i expect the usual French riots – but i dont expect Sarko to back down.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6580363.stm
Look at ‘French voters views’ in pictures according to le BBC – and guess who the man pictured in the inset is voting for. According to the impartial pollsters down at le BBC you’d think a run off between Jose Bove and Sego was on the cards. And naturellement no-one is voting for Le Pen. Honestly beeboids are like a parody of themselves.
“The trouble with Islam”
“A few words about the world’s fastest growing religion”.
Video
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=418_1176494781
Gunmen execute 23:
BAGHDAD – Gunmen in northern Iraq stopped a bus filled with Christians and members of a tiny, mostly Kurdish religious sect on Sunday, police said, separating out the groups and taking 23 of the passengers away to be shot.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070422/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_ylt=A0WTUepkritGjSIAjyes0NUE
BAGHDAD – Gunmen in northern Iraq stopped a bus filled with Christians and members of a tiny, mostly Kurdish religious sect on Sunday…
No mention of Christians at Al-Beeb:
Iraq gunmen target minority group
No mention of Christians at Al-Beeb
And look at the prominence they give to the headline American Marines ‘devalued Iraqi lives’. Execution of religious minorities by ‘insurgents’ of course don’t devalue Iraqi lives. Only Americans do that.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6579511.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6580519.stm
This one’s very odd. First of all, Mr Benn seems to respond to accusations. And then, in the next para, he disagrees. Would that be with what he’s just said, or does it refer to what he said in his first response?
Sloppy, very sloppy.
And then scroll down to see the Unison spokesperson’s completely unrelated anti-Tory comment being highlighted.
Oscar, in the BBC world those minorities are being singled out for special treatment by the ‘insurgents’, giving their lives extra value and meaning above the rest.
They’re specially selected.
The americans are indiscriminate.
The morality is therefore obvious…
Obviously.
Here’s an unexpected discovery from the BBC’s French election coverage. It would seem that American character actor Charles Napier now lives in France, makes furniture and calls himself Bernard.
Charles Napier.
Bernard.
in the BBC world those minorities are being singled out for special treatment by the ‘insurgents’, giving their lives extra value and meaning above the rest.
Archonix – of course – it’s all clear to me now.
And how’s this for some staple anti-Israeli bias?
Israeli Arab resigns from Knesset
Israeli Arab MP Azmi Bishara has resigned, weeks after leaving the country amid a police investigation into unspecified criminal allegations
So the poor man is obviously a victim of racist Israelis for “unspecified criminal” activity
And this must be the reason:
Mr Bishara is an outspoken critic of policies toward the Palestinians
Mr Bishara’s views are heard, but strangely al beeb doesn’t give Israel’s side of the story:
Mr Bishara, 50, says he is the victim of a political conspiracy.
But wait a minute what’s the last sentence of this report?
He entered parliament in 1996 and three years later became the first Arab Israeli to run for prime minister.
So it took Israel 11 years to mount this conspiracy against Mr Bishara – and only after he’d run for PM. So you can see what a totalitarian kind of a state Israel is. Funny how al beeb never ran any articles about Mr Bishara showing how Israeli democracy includes Arab MPs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6581105.stm
Korova, how quaint that an anarchist cares about correct spelling.
Somthings a miss at the Beeb…
I was watching “songs of praise “this evening and the Topic was St Georges day
I was expecting an over emphasis on the fact that St george was probably Turkish and the We’d get some white liberal bishop spouting multicultural mood music etc
What we got was
Jerusalem as the opening Hymn (with shots of english countryside)
People from around the world celebrating Shakespeare
The obligatory bit about ST George being turkish was followed by an interview of a Turkish convert to Christianity telling the story of his perscution in his muslim homeland
the hymn ” I vow to thee my country”
An interview with a brigade commander in 7th Armoured div who is a comitted christian (and no sneering what about the “thou shalt not kill ” commanment)
and finally the obligatory C of E bishop turned out to be John Smenetu who firmly put the presenter in her place when she trotted out the usual “now we are a multi-cultural multi-faith society “line (the only typically BBC bit in the whole show)
Whats going on? were all the censors out on diversity training when this was written ?
Block 813: Everybody wants to destroy Manhatten, especially the rest of America 😀 And it may come as a shock to the Beeb that most of us American Who-Fans very much dislike eps. set in the US of A. Part of the program’s charm is exotic settings like London, Cardiff, and quarries and forests all over Britain 😉
Besides British actors who can do a decent American accent can be counted on the fingers of one hand…..
Roxana – did you ever see – or hear – Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins?
“hippiepooter:
Korova, how quaint that an anarchist cares about correct spelling.
hippiepooter | 22.04.07 – 9:07 pm | #”
Rather sweet, really; not unlike the drummer with The Clash (riot, anarchy, destroy, death to the establishment etc etc) who is now a successful chiropractor in South London.
I saw an interesting summary of he views of the four apparent main contenders in the French presidential elections. Until now, I’d been mystified as to why J-M Le Pen was described as ‘far-right’: nationalist certainly, but not right-wing as I’d define it. But then I saw that he intends to reduce state spending from 53% of GDP to 35%. Now that IS right-wing. No wonder the BBC don’t report his views.
“Besides British actors who can do a decent American accent can be counted on the fingers of one hand…..
Roxana | 22.04.07 – 9:38 pm”
that would be more or less the entire cast of Band of Brothers… i couldnt believe that the lead guy was actually English. only found that out a bit later.
“Oscar | 22.04.07 – 6:16 pm |”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/europe_french_voters0_views/html/1.stm
bbc french voters “views”
sarko: 4
royal : 3
bove: 2
bayrou: 2
villiers: 1
here’s the results:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/election-presidentielle-2007/20070422.WWW000000126_.html
% values
sarko: 30.5
royal: 25.7
bayrou: 18.3
le pen: 11.5
besancenot: 4.5 – revolutionary communist league
villiers: 2.5 – movement for france. anti-islamist.
buffet : 2 – communist party
laguiller: 1.5 – workers struggle
voynet: 1.5 – green
nihous: 1.5 – “hunting, fishing, nature, tradition party”
bove: 1 – anti-globalisation
schivardi: 0.5 – workers party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_elections%2C_2007#Candidates
interesting. out of the minor candidates, the bbc picked out the anti-globalisation leftist and the nationalist anti-islamist.
Johnston kidnappers want £2.5m
THE kidnappers holding Alan Johnston, the BBC’s Gaza correspondent, have demanded a ransom of at least £2.5m, according to a senior Palestinian intelligence source.
…
Sources claim Johnston is being held in the al-Sabra district of Gaza City, a stronghold of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the late co-founder of Hamas.
Eleven days ago, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, told Mark Thompson, the BBC director-general, he had “credible evidence” Johnston was safe.
It is understood an intermediary had asked his kidnappers the name of Johnston’s cat to prove he had not been killed. When they came back with the correct answer – Mombasa – officials were able to say with confidence that he was alive.
As well as demanding a ransom, Palestinian officials confirmed that Johnston’s kidnappers have called for the release of Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, an Iraqi woman who tried to blow herself up during an attack on a wedding reception in Jordan in 2005.
2.5 million? nice little earner.
they’ll probably “kidnap” jeremy bowen next.
[deleted – and Biodegradable, it would be sad to no longer hear your voice round here. Capisce?]
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