Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may be moderated.
Radio 4 Today Programme, this morning 7 a.m.
News headlines start with a so-called report on Gordon Brown’s visit to China, except it isn’t a report it is merely reading a government press release; “Gordon Brown says… trade with China, British jobs, important relationship. The Prime Minister said… investment, moving forward etc etc”. Nothing of any news value whatsoever, merely a string of meaningless platitudes from Gordon Brown — nevertheless the BBC thought this was the most important story of the day.
And then story number two. “Gordon Brown has praised the pilots of the British Airways plane involved in yesterday’s… etc etc”. You can guess the rest I am sure.
Yes, preparing for work this morning I was treated to “the world according to Gordon” thanks to the marvellous BBC. With supreme irony a later article referred to increasing plagiarism by students; their lecturers had dubbed them “the cut and paste generation”. But we now have a cut and paste BBC, where the headlines are simply extracts from Labour press releases.
Let me make it easier for you people who continue to argue with John Reith.
BBC good, Biased-BBC bad.
Palestinians good, Israelis bad.
Man Made Climate Change believers good, Man Made Climate Change deniers bad.
Islam good, critics of Islam bad.
You won’t ever win an argument with him because he’s not interested in informed debate. John Reith has his belief set and he’s not going to change.
I thought this report from across the Pond was a little one sided in favour of the democrats. Under the heading DIRTY TRICKS, there is only mention of Republicans. As if the Democrates never participated in such! Then under the section for the Democrats we have the heading FAST-GROWING NEVADA which doesn’t mention in-candidate differences at all but purrs sweetly about helping the poor.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7195269.stm
Sorry – link here.
A good, if belated, comment on the December 9th post on Rafah has apeared, for anyone who wants to catch it before it falls off the edge of the page:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/6264797821054647247/#380535
bodo | 18.01.08 – 1:24 pm
You have a point.
But it has nothing to do with bias.
There has long been a convention that the BBC reports prominently the doings and sayings of certain officeholders (Prime Minister, President of the US among them), however banal or fatuous they may be.
If you have a long enough memory you will recall that John Major’s dislike of traffic cones was given a similarly high-profile airing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7195276.stm
Just yet another opportunity for the BBC to have a go at America?
Not quite, there’s more to it.
We have the case of Omar Khadr, its just mentioned, a Canadian being held and mistreated at Gitmo.
Awful Americans holding a a harmless 15 year boy (well 15 then hes a lot older now of course).
Well, the truth is a little different.
Omar Khadr moved from Canada to Pakistan when he was 2 years old (though he did come back to Canada for a 4 year stay later in his life).
In 1997 he moved to Afghanistan and into Bin Laden’s compound.
His father was one of bin Laden’s senior lieutenants.
He and all of his brothers did ‘military’ training with Bin Laden.
Omar Khadr was captured after a fight at Khost in Afghanistan when he was 15, during that fight he injured 3 American soldiers and killed and American sergeant.
He admitted to co-ordinating the placement of landmines for Al Qaeda.
He placed some mines personally.
Not quite the Canadian innocent you might think.
It was Khadr Senior who knew Almalki who in turn knew Arar.
Arar was joint Canadian Syrian citizen who was deported by the US to Syria rather than Canada.
It was the Syrians who are accused of torturing Arar not the US.
The US and Syria are not allies, if anything they are enemies, the suggestion of collusion is proposterous.
All this information was easy enough to access, but the BBC article failed to point it out or link to it.
and mr major was right as well, the worlds changed now tho, its all anti car 🙁
Reith: “It [so called] can signal you are taking care not to endorse the thinking behind or the associations implicit in a phrase…”
Without wanting to be drawn into a slightly pointless debate, that’s pretty close to signifying disapproval, but, yes, you are more accurate: It distances you from the term you’re using. It’s also a little sniffy.
What I don’t think we’ll see is it consistently attached to “sustainable development”, “social justice”, “green living” or “Palestinian refugees”. And I don’t want you to, cos it’s badly overused. I just don’t see the benefit of using it for the war on terror. I think most of your readers know what side coined the term, where they come from and what it means.
Hugh | 18.01.08 – 1:38 pm
I just don’t see the benefit of using it for the war on terror. I think most of your readers know what side coined the term, where they come from and what it means.
Yes, but Zbigniew Brzezinski begs to disagree. And please don’t tell me he’s ‘anti-American’.
ttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/23/AR2007032301613.html
JR:
“If you have a long enough memory you will recall that John Major’s dislike of traffic cones was given a similarly high-profile airing.”
Yes I remember the Major years, and I remember how the BBC and Labour told us repeatedly how unspeakably awful the Conservative government was.
Naively I thought it was merely the BBC fulfilling its role to challenge and question those in power. I now realise it was just the BBC expressing its hatred of all things Conservative – something which continues to this day.
The BBC TV audience share continues to plummet.
(BARB figures, December base)
1998 BBC1 31.2% BBC2 10.6% total 41.8%
2001 BBC1 28.1% BBC2 11.6% total 39.8%
2004 BBC1 23.8% BBC2 9.5% total 33.3%
2007 BBC1 22.4% BBC2 8.8% total 31.2%
But the corresponding licence fee just goes inexorably up
1998 £97.50
2001 £109.00
2004 £121.00
2007 £131.50
In reverse proportion to market share.
No other business works this way.
Ha!!!! John Reith, you funny guy!
The Wshington Post is a Bush hating, Republican hating rag not fit to be used as toilet roll.
The very fact you quote from the US version of the Guardian (the other being the New York Times which is their version of the Independent) says it all.
Baggiejonathan: you are correct. The left wing liberals that read the Guardian or work for the BBC don’t give a sh*t about the poor white working class. They never have done.
They HATE with every breath in their bodies these people.
Reith: “Zbigniew Brzezinski begs to disagree”
But that’s the point isn’t it? The BBC seems to think it’s vital to remind its readers that some (principally on the left) disagree with the term every time it’s mentioned. It would not, for instance, always refer to the “so called pro choice lobby”, despite the objections of some that oppose that term. And, again, why should it? Once a term is well understood, the BBC, as a broadcaster whose raison d’etre is impartiality, would be safer just to drop the “so called” and call it by the name everyone understands.
BaggieJonathan | 18.01.08 – 10:42 am | #
It is a question of semantics.
HAMAS admitted that it had directly, rather than its proxies (or its terrorist wing?)
“fired salvoes of unguided rockets for the first time in months”
For many months (years), the terrorist wing of Hamas, along with other terrorist organisations approved of by the political wing of Hamas have launched rockets and mortars at the soverign state of Israel. Average fire rate in 2007 – after Israel withdrew from the disputed territory of Gaza – is something like one every ten hours.
http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/
Using the phrase ” so called” gives a positive resonance and tacit approval within a frame stressing a multi cultural and political compromise
its a common trick of propaganda, apparently
I am still chuckling over John Reiths indirect fire and direct fire comment, well when a missile locks onto the car with innocent people in it is an accident.
Now lets look at it properly, indirect fire aimed at a civillian population or direct fire accidently hitting civillians, which is worse.
For the BBC it is Israel because they are a first world country and should know better!
Hamas good / Israel bad
For us its indirect fire aimed at civilians. THe BBC moral compass is locked in with the Islamic moral compass, amusing isn’t it.
Reith:
Zbigniew Brzezinski?
Jimmy Carter’s security chief is your goto guy? The man responsible for Iran’s fall to Islamic fundamentists?
Surely you can’t be this thick? With each passing comment you show yourself to be little better than the yahoos of International Answer or Code Pink.
Good grief!
No, not necessarily . It can signal you are taking care not to endorse the thinking behind or the associations implicit in a phrase or perhaps a mistaken exclusivity suggested by a label.
That’s why it is an appropriate phrase to use in connection with honour killings, the war on terror and the ‘so-called date rape drug, Rohypnol’.
John Reith | 18.01.08 – 1:03 pm | #
Good afternoon Team JR – what happened to the morning shift?
It’s heartening to see that the BBC are so fastidious about not endorsing contentious definitions.
Shall we offer a prize to whoever finds your first use of “so called man-made global warming”?
This morning on Today there was a brief discussion of the forthcoming ‘Bloody Sunday’ broadcast by the BBC.
The female presenter asked one of the authors of the ‘dramatisation’ how he had gone about producing the programme, and he said that it all came from the court transcripts.
She was keen for the author to point out that it had not been ‘rewritten’, but he had kept to what was said and when it was said.
My wife and I laughed wryly – the lady doth protest too much – especially in the light of The Queen, Yentob’s noddies etc.
“The BBC – all the right words, but not necessarily in the right order. This is what we do.”
Anon sd:
“You won’t ever win an argument with him because he’s not interested in informed debate. John Reith has his belief set and he’s not going to change.”
Spotted long ago, better to just highlight his idiocy for other readers to spot.
His views are indistinguishable from the losers I used to see at college, usually camping out at the student
union in support of Cuba, China or in the way past, the Soviets.
Thinking his “new age” ideas make him fresh, he can’t see just how indoctrinated he is.
Re Zbigniew Brzezinski Wapo piece, he starts The “war on terror” has created a culture of fear in America.
aka “The Power of Nightmares” as promoted by the BBC.
It seems to be a standard line from those who oppose resisting “anti Islamic activity”
Well for sure we expect the government to minimise the threat of terrorism (after all they are expected to protect us from every potential harm), but “fear”? No, its anger.
In our house we all shout “Traktor Production Up Again” whenever BBc News on Radio 2 reads out No 10’s latest missive. Trouble is, it makes for a noisy breakfast these days.
Hannah M / John Reith / Jonathan Miller / anybody
I occasionally do a cursory search for a complete history of the telly tax rate, but I have so far not found one.
I see the BARB website has an (incomplete) record of the number of telly-taxed homes, which has risen sharply since 1979.
I also saw a BBC clip on YouTube recently in which the presenter suggested that the number of telly-tax prosecutions in the late 80s was about 2,900 per year, which contrasts sharply with the current 130,000+. I think I read somewhere that the BBC became responsible for collecting its own tax in 1990. I suspect the dramatic rise in prosecutions began immediately.
It might be interesting to put all these figures on a graph, or at least have them all available in one place.
Another interesting figure to have would be the number of people who ultimately end up in jail because of the telly tax. IIRC there are 40+ people in jail at any given moment thanks to NuBeeb. Assuming an average sentence of 1 week, that would make about 2000 sent to jail in a year, but John Reith suggested a while ago that the average sentence was more like a couple of days, which would raise the Beeb’s prison flow rate considerably.
JR,
“Yes, but Zbigniew Brzezinski begs to disagree. And please don’t tell me he’s ‘anti-American’.”
“Zbig” as you like to call him lovingly is associated with Carter administration. For Americans the most inapt bunch of idiots that ever governed the country.
I know that is what makes him so lovable to you.
Why does everyone think Guido Fawkes AKA Paul Staines is a neutral. Guido Fawkes is an extreme right winger.
His recent castigation of anti racist campaigner Mr Hain is a sign of what he hates. Hain sacrificed his security against a brutal state to fight for democracy for blacks in south Africa. Fawkes despises him for that.
He joined the Young Conservatives whilst at University.
Here is the real facts about Fawkes
Having joined the Federation of Conservative Students, he described his politics as “Thatcher on drugs”.
Staines worked as ‘foreign policy analyst’ for the extreme right wing Committee for a Free Britain, a right wing Conservative pressure group, alongside David Hart. Staines acted as editor of ‘British Briefing’ a long standing publication that sought to “smear Labour MPs and left leaning lawyers and writers”.
He does the same now but claims he is neutral. Funny how he nevers insults the tories bosses infact seems to let them of the hook. I am sure you can see he is no neutral. He is no neutral but wait the later points are even worse. .
Staines relates of his work with the Committee: in the book
(1998). Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House, 2nd edition, London: Serpent’s Tail. ISBN 1-85242-604-7. —
“I was lobbying at the Council of Europe and at Parliament; I was over in Washington, in Jo’burg, in South America. It was ‘let’s get guns for the Contras’, that sort of stuff. I was enjoying it immensely, I got to go with these guys and fire off AK-47s. I always like to go where the action is, and for that period in the Reagan/Thatcher days, it was great fun, it was all expenses paid and I got to see the world. I used to think that World Briefing was a bit funny. The only scary thing about those publications was the mailing list – people like George Bush – and the fact that Hart would talk to the head of British Intelligence for an hour. I used to think it was us having a laugh, putting some loony right-wing sell in, and that somebody somewhere was taking it seriously. You’ve got to understand that we had a sense of humor about this.”
The CFB invited Adolfo Calero, the Nicaraguan Contra leader, to visit the UK.
What kinf of sickoe works with the contras and supplies gunsot them.
In a November 1984 report the Sandinista government alleged since 1981 the Contras had assassinated 910 state officials; attacked nearly 100 civilian communities; caused the displacement of over 150,000 people from their homes and farms; and damaged or destroyed bridges, port facilities, granaries, water and oil deposits, electrical power stations, telephone lines, saw mills, health centers, schools and dams.
A Sandinista militiaman interviewed by The Guardian stated Contra rebels committed these atrocities against Sandinista prisoners after a battle at a Sandinista rural outpost:
Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles cut off. They were killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit. Fawkes must be so proud. So think of that when you read his blog.
What kind of sickoe thinks it is fun to support sick creeps like the contras.
The CFB launched a number of policy campaigns and initiatives during 1988. It also supported the Community Charge (Poll Tax).
In time for the October 1988 Conservative Party Conference, the CFB published a British Foreign Policy – The Case for Reform, featuring a photo on the front cover of Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe giving the clenched fist salute at a meeting in southern Africa. In the pamphlet’s conclusion it stated “The Foreign Office is one of the last of the great institutions to escape the refreshing breath of Thatcherism.” Howe maintained he had not been giving a black power salute.
So now we see why fawkes despises hain. Re,ber he was a foreign policy analyst.. .
ZZ
Re: the constant rockets on Israel.
In fact I agree with you 100%.
I thought that was clear, my apologies if my post could be misinterpreted otherwise.
Heroes say
Clearly you never actually read Guido Fawkes. He certainly does attack the Conservatives. He also does not attack Hain for his stance on racism, but for his dishonesty and incompetence. the dishonesty is the only part that Gordon Brown deny!
Of course there is a lot to attack – donations, unthoughtful think tank, lying to the press about his conviction for conspiracy. None of it trivial, some of it illegal, some of it far worse than things Labour criticise the Conservatives for.
I should add that you seem, instead of defending Hain from the factual attacks by Guido, to be attacking Guido. That is ad hominem, a logical fallacy. It is typically used by someone who has no logically-correct answers.
fewqwer | 18.01.08 – 4:06 pm
Another interesting figure to have would be the number of people who ultimately end up in jail because of the telly tax.
I don’t have the most recent figures, but in 1999 it was 83; in 2000 – it was 36; and in 2001 – it was 31.
The BBC, reporting the news and reporting the news.
Passenger criticises BA treatment
British Airways has been criticised for the way it treated Heathrow crash passengers once they had been taken into the airport. Passenger Mark Tamburro praised the pilot and staff on board, but said ground staff were not so helpful. He said they were more concerned about security and keeping the media away than about passengers’ welfare. A British Airways spokeswoman said the company tried to provide as much help as possible to customers. Mr Tamburro, a 46-year-old father-of-four from Oxford who suffered whiplash and a cut head in the crash, said passengers were forced to wait for hours without refreshments.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7196128.stm
Yup the world renowned BBC drops down to the level of the gutter press in trying to promote a new angle on the story. It won’t be long before they start exposing the flight crew for any shenanigans they can unearth.
The BBC, reporting the news and reporting the news.
JR,
As usual your attempt to cover up for BBC’s use of “indirect fire” to describe Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad fire is riddicilous.
Sderot is in plain sight from Gaza.
If you knew anything, you would know that modern howitzers are precise to within 1 squared meter and can shoot in front of an advancing army.
Together with modern airborne surveillance equipment,
the distinction between “direct” and “indirect” fire is outdated unless you are using it only for small arms fire (which you are not) with small range and high velocity to mass ratio.
Firing a GPS guided Tomahawk is also “indirect” according to the definition. Yet, I doubt BBC would use “indirect US fire” to subtly lower the culpability when US accidentally kills civilians.
There are two dimensions in aiming any ballistic weapon (including small arms):
* In the horizontal plane (azimuth); and
* In the vertical plane (elevation), which is governed by the distance (range) to the target and the energy of the propelling charge.
Since Sderot and Askelon are visible from Gaza, Hamas is undoubtedly using plain sight to set the azimuth and elevation for their missiles.
They know the range from the maps and Google Earth (as they were bragging the other day).
They are missing as much as they do only because, due to Israel’s response, they cannot use the same launcher more than once and improve their aim, by slight adjustments.
As opposed to Israel, you favorite freedom fighters, the Hamas, are not aiming at a particular person, but at an entire city. They can see it in plain sight. So even by your own definition it is direct fire!
It is also very obvious from your snide comment that Palestinian civilians are killed by Israel’s “direct fire”, that you understand fully well that indirect vs. direct to almost anyone reading, changes the level of culpability.
Or, maybe you seem to think that Israel’s weapons travel in a straight line – like War of the Worlds ray guns. Israel being the evil aliens really suits your line of thought.
You have just proven once again how superficial you are on issues dealing with modern warfare in addition to openly showing your disdain for Israel.
fewqwer | 18.01.08 – 4:06 pm
Here’s a few more up to date figures on the number of people imprisoned for refusal to pay TV licences:
2002 – 14
2003 – 20
2004 – 28
Looks like your 2000+ estimate was way out!
Dear ‘heroes say down with gun Runni’
(whatever that is)
Just what has your ‘Stasi like’ inquisition got to do with BBC bias?
G Fawkes’ blog is about uncovering graft and corruption at Westminster, and a very good job he does!
If you had read through the blog with care you will see he attacks ALL parties who engage in graft and corruption.
The fact of the matter is that the NuLabour regime is mired in sleaze and corruption at the highest levels and despicable crooks like Hain think that they are above the law(that may well be the case, for now). Just because Hain was a ‘rent a mob thug’ in his younger days does not make him immune to the Law of the Land does it?
OK, maybe on planet socialist utopia it does, but not in the real world!
JR,
“I don’t have the most recent figures, but in 1999 it was 83; in 2000 – it was 36; and in 2001 – it was 31.”
And you can actually go to sleep at night?
People are actually in jail so an ignorant slob like you can waste all his or her work hours on Internet talkbacks!
Are headbangers who comment on this site just making matters worse, and should they shut up about Islam? See Honest Reporting thread below.
Or is it just me?
Team JR
I know your budget’s been cut to £3 billion and you only have 30,000 odd people and probably only a couple of thousand english grads – but I was alarmed to see on your website, just now, that the plane at Heathrow “ditched” while attempting to land.
Either global warming has finally happened in a big way – or somebody should explain to your highly educated journalists that “ditching” in the aviation world means crash landing onto water.
Sue,
”
You ‘know things’ that I don’t understand – are you afraid I will enrage more Muslims into a Jihad camp? ”
Wraith is simply another salaried myrmidon of the the BBC,as such, outside his knowledge of his little part of the BBC,the views of John “so called Reith” are no more valid than those of any one else.
In fact Wraith has wandered so far from the issue of BBC bias that he is beginning to sound like a half arsed troll.
I would like the BBC to make clear that it will NOT copy the UK Labour government in the totally inaccurate use of the phrase ‘anti-Islamic activity’ to describe ISLAMIC JIHAD.
“Government renames Islamic terrorism as ‘anti-Islamic activity’ to woo Muslims” ( James Slack).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=508901&in_page_id=1770
As the ‘Daily Mail’ editorial comment says today:-
” It was the Home Secretary’s big moment, her first major speech on Islamic extremism. An opportunity for innovative proposals, or at the least a thoughtful analysis of how we got into this mess.
” But no. Instead, we heard more half-baked political correctness. If Al Qaeda attacks tomorrow, the bombers should, according to Miss Smith not be described as Islamic terrorists, but as engaging in ‘anti-Islamic activity’.
” It’s like describing the Nazis as being engaged in ‘anti-German activity’. Goebbels would have been proud of such double speak.”
Similarly, I would like the BBC to make clear that it will not resort to Muslims as trusted interpreters of Islam, but will recognise in the future, what has been reluctant to recognise up till now, that there are now many non-Muslims and apostates who understand Islam and the threat that it can pose to us, e.g.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/
BBC 2 ‘Newsnight’ at least has done some useful journalism on Islam jihad (with some notable gaps, e.g., its lack of support for Channel 4’s ‘Undercover Mosque’) and some of this can be found below. But the BBC in that webpage is drifting into the use of loose, unaccurate language like calling Islam jihad as vaguely, ‘extremism’:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/uk_terror_threat/default.stm
John Reith spins in his grave | 18.01.08 – 6:29 pm |
Chocks away….Jerry at 12 O’clock:
I was alarmed to see {on the BBC website}…that the plane at Heathrow “ditched” while attempting to land.
… “ditching” in the aviation world means crash landing onto water.
You’re dead right, Foxgoose old man.
That’s the first allegation of bias on this blog that bally well stands up.
Er….hang on a minute…. what exactly has that got to do with bias?
LOL
“Chess legend Fischer dies at 64”
The caption under his pic: “The US-born player was a fierce critic of his government”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7195840.stm
Although BBC does admit he was “controversial” and an antisemite.
Here is what the man actually said on a radio show:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=785448
John Reith:
Hugh | 18.01.08 – 1:38 pm
Yes, but Zbigniew Brzezinski begs to disagree. And please don’t tell me he’s ‘anti-American’.
No – but he was Jimmy Carter’s NSA. So, your choice of a arch-Democrat as some sort of independent arbiter on a Republican policy is disingenuous and partisan.
You’re dead right, Foxgoose old man.
That’s the first allegation of bias on this blog that bally well stands up.
Er….hang on a minute…. what exactly has that got to do with bias?
John Reith | 18.01.08 – 7:06 pm | #
You’re right of course.
Nothing to do with bias at all.
Just the exasperated rantings of an old fool who can’t get his head round the fact that a £3 billion a year, 30,000 man operation now wants to take over the education of our children – while employing people who apparently don’t know stuff that everybody down my local (including the landlord’s dog) knows without stopping to think
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3193302.ece.
Why don’t you break the habit of a lifetime and hire a couple of journalists with a science A level or two?
Their conversation might not be scintillating by Islington Guardianista standards – but you could just park ’em in a corner somewhere and have ’em on hand to explain the difference between volts and amps, how icebergs can melt without flooding us all out and why planes don’t use petrol etc.
You know – all the really boring stuff you have to bring those men in funny sports jackets into the studio to explain.
John Reith
Re: the “direct fire/indirect fire” debate—
You’re going all Talmudic on me with your hair-splitting semantics! Siding with the “letter of the law” in this case, rather than the “spirit.” Watch out, you might end up in a Yeshiva!
Bobby fisher interveiw:
Bobby Fischer: .. You ask the Palestinians. I was just listening to the BBC. the horror story that come out of there when you get into an Israeli prison. the way they torture you . it’s unheard of. I was listening to a Palestinian woman, a Christian woman from Palestine, not even Muslims, Christian women who were anti-Israel. They got picked up by the Israeli police, taken down to the jail, and then the Israeli police tried to get information — Who do you know among your friends that’s anti-Israel? Give us all the names of your Arab, Christian friends who are anti-Israel. When they refused, they put the women in a cell, these are mothers, these women, mostly. They put em in a cell, and then they start playing, in Arabic, on the loudspeaker, 24 hours a day, “Mommy, come home, Mommy, we miss you” in Arabic. They played it over and over again until the women just collapsed.
Pablo Mercado: All right, do you have any.
Bobby Fischer: This is the Jewish mentality. These are a criminal people. They torture their prisoners in the worst way. It’s even illegal! They don’t even deny it hardly. Jews were always bastards throughout history. They are liars, they are the worst pieces of shit in the world. They mutilate their own children.
Pablo Mercado: all right.
Bobby Fischer: Fuck the Jews.
John Reith
You wrote, in relation to the “indirect fire” comment “I suspect you already know this and are simply scrabbling around for some pretext to hang another false accusation of bias upon.” Actually, that’s not true. I was reading the site when I came across the description. It struck as oddly exculpatory. Had it been the only one, or one of a few, examples of possible “bias” on the site, I might have dismissed it. Given that it comes in the context of a site rife with repeated examples of this kind of subtle bias almost always tilted against one side (Israel), it appeared to fit the pattern. That’s why I brought it up. It could certainly be, as you say, an intentional use of strictly military terminology, in which case it is, at the very least, a careless use given the sensitive nature of the subject matter. But then, the BBC wouldn’t ever deign to be sensitive to the use of other potentially inflammatory terms–oh, wait a minute, the strict definition of “terrorism” involves the intentional targeting of civilians for murder for political purposes–but the BBC seems to be sensitive to the usage, so they’ve nearly banned the term, or at least heavily discouraged its use. Oh, wait again, a benign drawing of a religious figure is a sensitive issue–no publishing that either. I guess the BBC isn’t applying equal standards across the board in their reporting after all.
John Reith: Thank you for your response. I seem to remember reading some parliamentary proceedings once in which it was stated that there were 40-something NuBeeb victims in prison. I wasn’t able to find that again (perhaps I mis-remembered), but a quick search yielded this from 1995/6:
Has there really been such a dramatic drop in the figures since 1994? A change in sentencing policy would require an act of parliament, wouldn’t it?
I notice on the BBC News website that the MoD missing laptop has a far higher profile than the missing data from the Department of Work and Pensions.
So, just who runs that department again BBC?
The BBC do not mention Peter Hain once. WHY?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
“My Lords, I do not have the figures as at 30th November. However, in 1994 a total of 730 people were imprisoned under this heading, of whom 487 were male and 243 female. Figures are available for Scotland, but I am afraid I do not have them at the moment. ”
In more enlightened times they could have been transported to the colonies or sentenced to the hulks.
Amazing how illiberal liberals are when it comes to earning a coin.