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Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:
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Given that you probably know very little about it. What makes it all the more surprising is that they share your hatred of Muslims.
You have no idea what I know or don’t know.
I do not hate Muslims.
Neither would I describe myself as being on the right. If you read more of the threads here you’d be surprised how many other commenters here aren’t either.
You still haven’t answered my questions and I refuse to feed your trolling any longer.
As you haven’t answered my questions either, I refuse to feed you any longer. Thanks for signing the petition, shame you didn’t believe in it enough to add your real name.
Though I feel sure Mickey Mouse will figure somewhere in a convincing explanation…
GCooper | 07.05.07 – 5:48 pm
You bet!
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25370_Video-_Death_Cult_Mickey_Mouse_Teaches_Islamic_Supremacism&only
John reithw rites:
“I haven’t heard the programme • but perhaps no mention was made of this because it is some time since Mattew Taylor ran the place.”
Not for the first time, I have to say you should try listening to the outpourings of your employer before leaping to its defence like some rubber-fanged Alsatian.
Taylor’s position at the IPPR was, indeed, mentioned. What was not, was its seminal role within ZaNuLabour and, thus, its clearly vested interest in defending Bliar’s legacy.
I’ll chalk that one up as a point to me, shall I?
shame you didn’t believe in it enough to add your real name.
korova | 07.05.07 – 5:53 pm
Biodegradable is my real name!
My friends call me BioD
;-Þ
Now, why don’t you get back to your slacktivism, and I’ll get back to writing irate letters to the BBC.
“Throw a brick for peace, man!”
Hello John dear!
Out to play again? I’m so glad you enjoyed the link I provided for the BBC’s description of the Iron Lady as right wing. I thought it was a witty choice too, for the contention that at the BBC “Right Wing means “people we don’t like.” came from me!
Most people who comment here will have enjoyed the delicious irony of a BBC hate-figure like Baroness T being in a section on heroes on the BBC Albanian section.
But it seems that you haven’t been weaned onto irony yet.
pounce and I have both commented on the BBC’s coverage of B’Tselem’s report alleging that Israeli interrogators torture Palestinian detainees.
See NGO Monitor’s response and the Minstry of Justice slamming B’Tselem’s methodology.
http://backspin.typepad.com/backspin/2007/05/tortuous_resear.html
GCooper | 07.05.07 – 5:48 pm
Take a peek at this chart and you will begin to see how characters as diverse as Guido Fawkes (the blogger) and General Franco can both be accurately described as right-wing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Political_chart.svg
If pictures aren’t your thing, this wiki does it with words:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics
All a bit Politics 101. I’m surprised you haven’t grasped this before.
As for Walt Disney • I’m told he hated Jews, unions and JFK with a passion and wore a Barry Goldwater badge to meet Lyndon Johnson.
Probably not a liberal Democrat, then.
Shit, not letter writing! You will single handedly bring down the BBC with such nefarious deeds.
Reith…are you a Card Carrying Anti-Jew/West/Blair/Bush Beeboid…….?
Just curious, as I see you are in on a Bank Holiday, which leads me to assume you are some way down the BBC Totem Pole……and little more than a pawn.
While everyone else enjoys a day off, they bring in the Junior Staff?….lol.
Happy May Day slave…..pucker your lips for your new boss…….it’s all downhill from here mate…lol.
In response to John Reith:
I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you had sunk so low that you were reduced to linking to Wikipedia.
And there was I, actually hoping for a straight answer. For once.
“As for Walt Disney • I’m told he hated Jews, unions and JFK with a passion and wore a Barry Goldwater badge to meet Lyndon Johnson.
Probably not a liberal Democrat, then.”
Oh, I wouldn’t say that. It’d depend on which constituency they’d be trying to appeal to at the time.
“Most people who comment here will have enjoyed the delicious irony of a BBC hate-figure like Baroness T being in a section on heroes on the BBC Albanian section.
Fran | 07.05.07 – 6:04 pm | # ”
…and the BBC Serbian section.
🙂
Fran | 07.05.07 – 6:04 pm
it seems that you haven’t been weaned onto irony yet
No need. I imbibed it with my mother’s milk.
That’s why I can spot the difference between irony and internal contradiction.
The idea that Lady T is a ‘BBC hate figure’ exists only in the tortured imaginations of B-BBC folk.
Her presence alongside Pope JP the Great, JFK and Mother Teresa would confirm that for some people. (Catholics, say.)
Her presence alongside Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Gandhi surely does it for the emancipation crowd.
And Sir Winston settles it for moderate rightists like yours truly.
I guess only a gallery including Herbert Spencer, Ayn Rand and Ariel Sharon would do it for you lot.
……afterthought……
of course it wouldn’t. You’d claim the BBC was being ‘ironic’.
Shit, not letter writing! You will single handedly bring down the BBC with such nefarious deeds.
korova | 07.05.07 – 6:07 pm
You may well laugh, but I and others here have succeeded in convincing the BBC to change several articles and publish amendments.
How many Australian terrorists have you freed today, or how many Bolivians now earn more money thanks to your efforts?
You should get out more into the real world.
Regarding Sarkozy again, one of the “features, views, analysis” boxes links to a story about the election. It has a little picture of a ripped-up Sarkozy poster with the text:
“‘A new page’
France prepares for uncertain future under a tough new leader”
I wonder what the spin would have been if Ms Quarter-Pounder had won. Probably something like:
“‘A new chapter’
France unites under charismatic new leader”
And there would be mention in the report of her dress sense etc. Perhaps it would have been “France unites under très chic Royale” or something equally dire and shallow.
The report iself is one of those pre-written things a la obituaries:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6631001.stm
It has the line “there is a sense of relief … even if it is mingled with a fear of the future”, which is a massive cliche. It mentions Sarkozy’s “will to power”. I would not have chosen to remind the readers of Niestzche… Nietszche… Nietszche… Nietzsche… Nietzche?
The article is mentioned above, for this line:
“(in 2005) he re-assured a woman on one housing estate that he would hose the “scum” or “racaille” from the streets, and helped set France alight during the riots.”
It offends me because it is badly written. There should be a full stop after “streets”, and the next sentence should begin “It was this kind of language that helped etc”, although it should really say “It was against a backdrop of this kind of language etc” because that is subtler.
I think he looks like a Jim Henson puppet, but I admire his thick, full head of hair.
Whoop-dee-doo!!! I have written letters to the BBC and got them to change their reporting. As well as writing to a Tory MP and exposing his blatant racism. Sadly, as I have discovered, you don’t get a medal for your efforts. Still, I’m sure your mummy is very proud of you.
BBC News at Six on R4 found time to let the British people know that Israeli news had broadcast video footage of motorists in Tel Aviv not stopping at a road traffic accident where a motor cyclist had been killed. Of what public interest was that in Britain? None. It was clearly yet another attempt to demonise the Israeli/Jewish people in this country. All context was left out of the report, which I would guess was actually part of a public spirited drive in Israel to reduce road traffic accidents, which all Israelis acknowledge are too frequent with death tolls too high. But the BBC message was clear – Israelis are such cold blooded uncaring types they drive past accidents (no doubt on the other side….).
Day after day after day after day the BBC fails to report attrocities committed by Palestinians. The recent serious attacks that have left several Israelis seriously injured have not been reported on the broadcast news. But demonise the Israelis? – hey let’s pump up the volume. Let’s get everyone in Britain hating the jooos (sorry) ‘Zionists’. John Reith – your colleagues are monsters. And that’s not irony.
Another BBC feel good program ‘Victoria’s empire’ it’s all about how the nasty British enslaved everybody they happened to bump onto. In fact old Vicky cannot go more than 2 minutes without repeating the word “Slave”
Nothing like the BBC in which to ensure that the White British are continually reminded about how nasty it is too be Old, ungifted and white.
Did anyone hear Billy Bragg interviewed on PM about his proposal to amnesty illegal immigrants? He was asked a few half hearted questions about whether this might increase illegal immigration. Then they put up an American who said that illegal immigration had been on the whole good for the US.
So this is balance JR?
Thanks to John Reith’s link I found this load of tosh:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3829139.stm
So what constitutes honour? Is this is a religious issue?
No. The world’s major religions do not play a part in these killings – although many of the guilty have tried to justify their actions on religious grounds.
So, how many atheists carry out such crimes, eh?
The BBC, its love for radical Islam and half a story
Kidnap compounds Gaza’s crisis
In early May a radical group claimed responsibility for an attack on a UN-run school in the southern Gaza Strip. In a statement it said a festival being held at the school was not in keeping with Islamic values.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6632383.stm
Early May BBC? You mean 2 days ago. Christ almighty talk about fudging the truth.
Still, I’m sure your mummy is very proud of you.
korova | 07.05.07 – 6:43 pm
She would be if she were still alive, but she died more than 30 years ago. (May she rest in peace)
Now piss off you nasty little brat!
Oh dear, ‘Have I already exhausted your debating skills?’
🙂
I don’t know if it’s on the BBC website, but the UN school shooting has just been reported on the BBC news.
“The school was attacked because IT was un-islamic”.
According to other scources, it was attacked because a mixed gender sports day was planned.
Oh dear, ‘Have I already exhausted your debating skills?’
korova | 07.05.07 – 6:56 pm
You got personal and insulted the memory of my mother.
What kind of sick cretin needs to drag my family into a debate?
You’re filth.
It would only be an insult if I was aware that your mother was dead. As I didn’t, it wasn’t. Don’t get all politically correct with me now.
Gordon | 07.05.07 – 6:49 pm
So this is balance JR?
Yes. They had the bloke from MigrationWatch on this morning.
There’s a lot of interesting material on threads such as these, but the personal insults which are going back and forth at present are not doing the blog any good, and since time is limited I(and I’m sure others) have to give up reading the important bits. Let’s try to keep to the subject, folks!
I’m with you on that Jim T.
I’m with you on that Jim T.
korova | 07.05.07 – 7:20 pm
WTF?
Ha ha, brilliant!!!
Nice one!!
🙂
I give up! Moderator PLEASE start a new thread.
BioD said; “You may well laugh, but I and others here have succeeded in convincing the BBC to change several articles and publish amendments.”
Keep up the good work BioD –
“True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! — itself a nothing! —
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Cæsars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! — Take away the sword —
States can be saved without it!”
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
This is a typical piece of sentimental, uncritical, biased , pro-illegal immigrant ‘reporting’ by BBC News:
“Migrants find a voiced in the rain”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6633015.stm
( Note the avoidance of the word ‘IMMIGRANT’ in the title, and the out of hand rejection of the word ‘illegal’.)
John Reith –
Re “right-wing”.
Come off it JR – take a look at that Frances Harrison article. Why the lazy repetitive use of “right-wing”? On grounds of journalistic composition alone she should’ve introduced other phrases. The occasional use of a far more descriptive and accurate term such as “Islamic fundamentalist” would’ve improved her report. Admit it, she chose “right-wing” because it doesn’t trouble the PC-radar.
Re the RSA
I seem to recall that’s where the BBC’s Jim Naughtie hosted an Al Gore lecture last year and told him: “You’re talking among friends”.
Thank you Jon.
Yeah but Bio, only if she knew your mother personally would such an insult have teeth?
Korova is just like Kitten from that old Big Brother program.
The greatest threat an agent faces is merging with her cover story; as soon as she is exposed to social hostility and disapproval, the people loving anarchist/socialist will snap right back and tell you how much she hates you and then go and cry in the kitchen.
All socialists are worthless cretins who seek to redefine the criteria by which people are valued, and then conveniently place themselves at the top of the new value system whilst wearing a face of benevolence and paradoxically cutting off the evaluations of nominated enemys.
Oh to clarify: Korova is an imposter. Like most of the left. And perhaps Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin.
Yeah but Bio, only if she knew your mother personally would such an insult have teeth?
I disagree. Like I said, to bring anybody’s family into a debate is beyond the pale. It’s making things personal when the debate isn’t about us.
korova is obviously young and immature because she assumes we all still have parents that are alive. I imagine she still lives with hers too.
.
FFS — stop feeding the troll’s !!!
.
.
So this is balance JR?
Yes. They had the bloke from MigrationWatch on this morning.
So that makes it 2 to 1 then JR?
”
John Reith:
Gordon | 07.05.07 – 6:49 pm
So this is balance JR?
Yes. They had the bloke from MigrationWatch on this morning.
John Reith | 07.05.07 – 7:15 pm | #”
Was that the interview where Sir Andrew Green was constantly interrupted by the interviewer and then rubbished with a couple of ‘helpful’ e-mails afterwards?
Or have I missed a five minute polemic, complete with leading questions, similar to the one uttered by Billy Bragg/Cormack Murphy O’Connor/Some Brazilian Illegal Immigant/Some Nigerian Illegal Immigrant in the afternoon?
Oh Sorry.
I just realised I was listening to R5.
“korova is obviously young and immature because she assumes we all still have parents that are alive. I imagine she still lives with hers too.”
Ah, touche Mr life-is-degradeable!
Korovas response: “YES, YOU WOULD CALL YOUNG PEOPLE IMMATURE, YOU THINK WE’RE IMMATURE BECAUSE WE STILL HAVE HOPES AND DREAMS AND HAVEN’T BEEN CRUSHED BY THE PHONY WORLD OF ADULTS”
Korova = Catcher in the Rye
My recommended treatment = Slayer
John Reith
re: Fran and “Surely some mistake?”
You do persistently miss the point, don’t you? Just because Thatcher is one of the “people of the century” says nothing as compared with the BBC’s misrepresentation of her and her party.
Interestingly, clicking on the Churchill link from the same site, I noticed that his membership and leadership of the Conservative party wasn’t even mentioned!
Fran was pointing to a thread in the BBC’s thinking manifest on its website. She was right, and you were pathetic in trying to discredit her with your weasily invocation of a fairly pathetic teenage politicos mag.
As for Korova; I haven’t tended to ban people but your tedious provocations and nasty contempt for others is walking the line. Why don’t you get back to your rather predictable Mask of Anarchy blog and stop bothering this website?
Korova,
I, for one, will not sign a petition – no matter how just the cause listed at the top – if it comes from someone such as yourself who is actively trying to bring mankind back to a lower level of existence. For all I know any positive attention you might get for this little lark could be used as leverage for some of your more nefarious goals.
I certainly support the concept of action to stop the barbaric practice of honor killings. However, I suspect that you and I would never agree on the main course of such action. It follows, then, that even though the cause listed as the reason people should sign is just, I would most likely not support any actions that would result from it. So I won’t sign. This does not signify my support for honor killings. This signifies my lack of support of your activities.
Another reason I will not sign your petition is that I cannot associate myself with anyone who is blinded by extremist emotions, regardless of the righteousness of the cause. Your statement:
” It’s good to hear that this kind of brutality in Iraq is condemned by the right.”
and your outright taunting of those yet to sign demonstrate that you seriously believe that anyone who does not hold your views of the world must automatically not care about such barbarism, if not condone it outright simply because the victim was poor or opressed or whatever. It is this sort of black & white blinkered thinking that tells me to be deeply suspicious of any dealings with activities sponsored by your lot, no matter the cause at hand. You would sooner take us into Pol Pot territory than allow the uneven distribution of wealth in society. This sort of deliberate blindness to reality is what leads to more barbarism than the combined activities of everyone whom you lump into “The Establishment”. History has taught me that people with your world view will always cause massive destruction when allowed into power. And I don’t mean anything as silly as the end of rich people and privelege and the oppressive capitalist system. I mean your thought process leads directly to Pol Pot and Robert Mugabe and Joseph Stalin, and soon to join him, Hugo Chavez.
Your extremist economic views are a case in point. The economy is not a zero sum game, and to behave as if it is just leads to destructive action, rather than constructive. The same goes for politics. Like most extremists, you are certain that if somebody does not agree with you on one point, then by default they must be 100% evil. There is no middle ground, nor room for your own growth, never mind anyone else’s.
No, I will not sign your petition. Honor killings are barbaric, and I condemn any society or culture that allows it and teaches it. But I will not sign your petition.
John Reith’s deploying of this chart :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Political_chart.svg
to explain how General Franco and Guido Fawkes could both be described as “right wing” simply deepens the mystery as to how “right wing” could have appeared in this article (several times) :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6631715.stm
For “right wing” in the wiki chart clearly means “economically laissez-faire” whereas in Ms Harrison’s piece it clearly means “authoritarian.” There is no reason at all to believe that the “right wing” students referred to in Ms Harrison’s story are enthusiasts for laissez-faire economics (I bet they don’t approve of interest, for example), and even less reason to believe that the “reformists” are inclined to economic dirigisme. Indeed the odds are very much the other way round. So she could with equal, or probably greater, justice have referred to the students opposing the reformists as “left wing.”
The short answer is that Ms Harrison, like the BBC in general, regards authoritarianism outside the economic sphere as being “right wing.” No doubt as and when the Chinese and North Koreans drop their references to communism, they will be able to morph into “right wingers” as the Burmese regime has done since it ceased to proclaim “the Burmese road to socialism.” The Chinese commies have already managed to acquire the tag “conservatives” in BBC-speak.
“Conservative” is another of those words that tend to be deployed in a “We don’t like him at the BBC” sense. There is of course a perfectly respectable usage of “conservative” as “resistant to change” • but in this sense the “conservative” candidate in the French elections was Sego not Sarko. But on the BBC Sarko was the “conservative.”
Lee Moore | 07.05.07 – 9:00 pm
If you were to look a little more closely at the Political Compass chart, you would see that the top right quadrant is actually labeled ‘authoritarian’.
The Caudillo, who disapproved of sex’n’drugs’n’rock’n’roll – to the extent of passing laws against them, belongs in this quadrant. Mussolini – an economic dirigiste – does too, for different reasons.
Your laissez-faire, libertarian like Guido is towards the bottom of the bottom right quadrant.
Iranian clerics are, by and large, authoritarian. Dope smoking, motor bike riding, veil-eschewing Tehran students with iPods aren’t.
Left authoritarians would include Lenin and Stalin. Left libertarians would include John Lennon.
In some contexts the resistance to change factor would be significant in distinguishing between conservative and radical or conservative and progressive. China’s a good example.
Mississippi in the 60s was too – in a rather different way.
The Taliban are authoritarian and conservative.
Hamas ditto.
The descriptors aren’t absolute – but relative to context.
No system of taxonomy suits every case.
We all know this. It’s an imperfect world.
So what’s the problem?
The “Nazis weren’t right-wing because they nationalised steel works” argument is school debating society stuff. Leave it to the adolescents.
The Nazis certainly weren’t conservative or capitalist.