I bet you’ll all be tuning in on Saturday night to BBC Radio 4 to catch Rory Bremner’s farewell to President Bush. Bremner “considers the rhetorical evolution of George W Bush, from gaffe-prone candidate to grandiose war president. He considers whether Bush grew to become an effective orator and who was responsible for writing the words he spoke and examines some of his key speeches and phrases.” The trailer for the programme consists entirely of gaffes made by Bush and I think we can be sure that this programme is designed to produce one big raspberry at the departing Bush. Now then, I accept that Bush DID make gaffes, but then again, who doesn’t? So I hope Rory and the gang will immediately start working on a follow -up programme on Obama – starting with those 57 States of America, examining his Muslim, sorry Christian faith, and how he has a few problems without the teleprompter. Rory’s researchers could have a read here if they want more material on The One. In the interests of balance, of course.
BUSH WHACKED.
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Cockney: the whole of London being clogged up? Yeah, all that traffic that usually cuts across the centre of Trafalgar Square will just have to use roads on Sunday morning instead.
Wed do have a direct link to the conflict: we are democrats showing solidarity to a democracy under attack from fundamentalist fascism, a democracy that must at times think it is under pressure not to defend itself and its citizens because of the sheer weight of coverage that the anti-Israel protest industry receives from the media. That might not be enough of a connection for you, but for me it is, and it’s important. Sorry if it inconveniences your Sunday morning (though I doubt it actually will) but maybe that moral high-horse of yours can fly above the traffic congestion and get you to your pub on time after all.
moonbat nibbler:
Garden Trash | 07.01.09 – 11:34 pm |
“Looks like Hamas is going for anotherQana Massacre,the Corruption of the Media with the assistance of the BBC.”
More like a Jenin blood libel which UNRWA were complicit in. The British press are making the same fundamental ‘mistakes’ yet again. Its hard to blame commentators here for believing many BBC employees don’t want to learn from past slandering of Israel.
Absolutely – the world media have fallen for the Jenin “massacre that never was” script again – almost word-for-word.
And guess who the main cheerleaders were then – the UN and the BBC:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1937048.stm
After the dust had settled and even the Guardian had printed a half hearted apology – http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2002/may/06/mondaymediasection5 – you’d think the UK media would be cautious about “massacre” reports from Palestinian sources, “aid workers” and UN stooges – but you’re right, they’re just not interested in the truth – anything that fits the narrative will do.
Roland Deschain | 08.01.09 – 8:21 am | #
Well articulated.
While I care very much about what goes on around me, often I too recognize there is very little I can realistically do.
To make a move in a proactive direction, I therefore need accurate information to help me in my decisions.
Hence, with the situation in Gaza, the quality of reporting and editorial has become very important to me.
Sadly, I am not feeling very well served by many broadcast and print outlets here, and frankly blogs, whilst in many ways more productive sources, are getting rather wearing as various ‘sides’ dig in, and especially when the discussion moves more to the existence, and rights and wrongs of such as ‘ant-Semitism’. It is a term, along with ‘Israel-lovers’ or ‘warmongers’, that usually means the end of rational debate and a descent into name-calling that gets no one anywhere.
But even on a few, very few discussion boards where there does seem to be some attempt at reasoned debate, I am more often than not astounded by the contributions from theoretically impartial, objective, professional reporters, who seem to be trying establish what I can only deem ‘boundaries to logic’.
In a very imperfect world, these fine folk seem to have predetermined ideals, and parameters they set by default around them. Hence, when circumstances, and the law of sod, kick in, as they will in any shooting war, they allow themselves to get to these points but if anything goes beyond this it doesn’t seem to compute, and hence exist for them. Which means they have to try and bend what is going on to fit within their comfort zone.
There are too many to list them all, but to mention just a few there is the notion that when talk fails, the only solution is more talk. There is also the one where negotiation must work, based on the premise that all sides are dedicated to ending the killing first. This is especially complicated when it’s hard (unlike Germany and Japan in WW2, Korea/China in that war and Vietnam subsequently – all vicious and protracted, but ultimately resolved), to deal with folk who are not for very much, but simply against anything and everything.
I don’t propose to go into the fine details of who is doing, and saying what, save to say that expecting any war to fit into some neat tick-boxes of conduct is ‘optimistic’ at best. The nature of the (cramped and packed) terrain has been cited more often than not as a reason not to have chosen it by way of critiquing the IDF, but it is hard to see what else they were supposed to do. Sit in a nearby plain and ask Hamas to come out? You have to work with what you are presented with. Hence already I feel the impact on civilians was more predetermined by those who knew full well the consequences, and are allowing these to fall mainly on those with perhaps less choice, to suit other agendas.
And as it keeps cropping up, there is this bizarre notion of proportionality and a level of score-keeping that could only work with the fevered minds of box-tickers everywhere. The death toll is very unbalanced and may well not be very ‘fair’. But paraphrasing the words of Tommy Lee Jones’ marshall character in The Fugitive, I can see why the IDF might not really care; they have a job to do and are setting about doing it: stopping the launches.
And when it comes to these, for the life of me I can’t get to grips with the mindset at play here by those who would defend Hamas’ actions. The very same folk who would be front of a ‘Just say no’ march for the sisterhood seem also to be advocating the notion of being just a little bit raped as OK on balance, as making a fuss about it, or worse acting to prevent it may just ‘stir things up in the comfort zone’.
Mistakes, have, are and will be made. That the sad outcome of the fog of war. Civilians shouldn’t be cheek by jowl with combatants, but they are. Equally, combatants should be in uniform but often aren’t. And in a firefight it may not be front of mind if stuff is coming in your direction to check if some guys to the side are waving a press pass. I suspect the IDFs reluctance to allowing access to the media stems more from military common sense than much else (certainly the stories and imagery are not being better ‘controlled’ by the exclusion, to the detriment of their PR), but the safety issue is pertinent. It’s not like one of their own getting hurt exactly results in the rest going ‘oh well, stuff happens’. So maybe the best way of avoiding a media martyr is to avoid having them getting in the way.
I believe the IDF has the capability of bring much more force to bear, and in a much less targeted manner than it is currently doing (though expecting postcode accuracy in an urban firefight again seems an ideal they are being unfairly held to by some armchair warriors), but seem to be committing to a much more dangerous street by street approach using troops.
Even so, it’s hard not to sympathize if they use what tools they have to put some distance (and hence introduce some inaccuracy) into their efforts. I seem to recall getting too up close and personal with Hamas does not really make for satisfactory Geneva convention-obeying prisoner-taking scenarios.
I don’t know what’s going to go down, or how long it will take, but again to counter individual reporters who claim ‘world’ opinion for their own, I am sensing much more ambivalence from a lot of individuals and countries to this presumption, to the extent that I have at least heard that ‘Hamas’ must not be allowed to emerge undiminished’ more than once at senior level.
It’s a mess. But cherry-picking of isolated aspects and trying to squeeze them into a narrative based on a naive view of human nature against all common sense or pragmatism is making many in the media professionals look at best silly or, worse, woefully compromised to be guardians of the information the public needs to understand what is going on.
This is a blog. It will have extremes. I feel that, within reasonable moderating boundaries it is best to step lightly and let those who would damn themselves, or their arguments, to do so in their own words.
Certainly I know what nickname’s are worth paying attention to, and which merely need skipping over.
It certainly serves to help dismiss the collectivist ‘you lots’ (from any quarter) that crop up from time to time when all else has failed the author.
At best it is only pointless. You will never convince those who most frustrate you, and only serve to alienate those who make decisions by the power of argument if you try and lump them in with others. I have a fair idea where many come from, and can disagree or agree depending on what I believe… or have pointed out to me rationally. There’s no catch-all that applies, from any ‘ist/zi/inger box of tricks, that can affect me, because only I know who I am and what I believe.
I just like the facts, well told.
Something many in the MSM seem to have forgotten, and been allowed to get away with too long.
Hence my frequenting this site, for all its quirks and characters, as ‘it’ doesn’t pretend ‘it’ knows all, or presume to tell me how to think.
And then charge me for doing so.
henryflower – care to tell us what you have ever posted that’s of any interest or use, given your opinion about everyone else as nutters?
Roland Deschain, 8:21 – yes, excellent.
John Connor, to your attention:
The BBC have reported on the rockets fired from Lebanon into Israel
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7817135.stm
But guess which detail is nowhere to be found in this article? The fact that one of the rockets hit a civilian nursing home;
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3652649,00.html
Because, as the BBC makes clear in all its reports, civilians exist only on the Gazan/Lebanese side. Israelis, on the other hand, are never civilians.
So when John Connor says (9:40 pm) ‘The Hamas rockets did not kill hundreds of innocent civilians in the way that the Israeli campaign has’, he is simply lying. He has no idea how many of those hit by Israel are civilians, because his vile BBC calls all Arab casualties civilians without actually checking. But the same BBC do their best to hide Israeli civilan victims, as in the example given above.
They’ll probably stealth-edit that piece later, after sufficient harm is done. In anticipation of this, I have saved the original article. Who knows, it may come useful eventually in the Beeb trial from incitement to murder and aiding and abetting terrorists.
.
Anat,
I don’t know much about it, but is there not something called Snopes that allows you to compare BBC pages before and after stealth edits?
From a hysterical poster.
.
Henryflower,
You test my patience with your allegation that I am “a died-in-the-wool Orange Lodge bigot who takes his secret orders from a shadowy conspiracy of Freemasons plotting to destroy Christianity and dominate the world.”
Apart from the fact that every word you write is untrue, I wonder what made you write that? I have not claimed that Obama is a Muslim, and I couldn’t care less if he was. The US people have elected him and that is all that matters. If he was a Kilingo, I would be of equal disinterest to me.
MY substantive point, which you appear to have spectacularly missed, is that the BBC are using a series of verbal gaffes by President Bush on the Rory Bremner show. I was simply pointing out that Obama has also made a series of gaffes (as we all do in life) including ONE in an interview in which when he referred to “My Muslim, erm Christian faith”. He said it, not me! It was a mistake, of course, but it was HIS mistake. Just like George W made mistakes. But the BBC seem oddly reluctant to quote gaffes from The One!!!!
Now, if you care to apologise I will listen, otherwise I will assume that your own prejudices trump reason and will not engage with you any further
Nearly Oxfordian: my point was not that I post anything interesting or useful: it was in fact that you do, but that you sometimes obscure this by resorting too easily to childish insults and naughty words.
this thread is not about Israel!!!!
Please post the comments elsewhere.
ON-topic, the BBC have put up yet another of its many articles mocking the President.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7809160.stm
It’s not news or topical, since most of the comments are at least five years old, I guess the journalist wanted to whine about the evil Right again.
David Vance | Homepage | 08.01.09 – 10:09 am | #
David, I don’t believe henryflower said the following with all seriousness:-
“You might object that this is untrue, but I know better, I know what you’re hiding, whatever you may claim you believe.”
Your obscure reference to a gaffe of Obama’s just comes across as a further questioning of his religious persuasion. Let’s face it, you seemed to endorse the letter of a colleague, posted on here, that called into question this very issue. To bring this up again just looks like a further petty attempt to slur his name.
David Vance
David,
May I , tentatively, suggest that you start another general comments thread ?!
Girls, girls, girls!!
Calm down. Shouldn’t we all be united in a common cause against the enemy?
The Judeans People Front!
No, no, no- The Romans!!
Henry –
You have, in fact, maybe sensible points in later posts that I had failed to see at the time.
That said, I am sorry that you are such a sensitive soul that a few strong words traumatise you to that extent. Sorry I may be, but I will not stop using strong words against antisemitic propaganda. This is not a vicarage tea party. The same goes for whoever it was who gave himself the free get out of jail card by referring to a ‘bear pit’, which means he no longer has to engage with the issues posted here.
The BBC is actively promoting racial hatred and incitement to murder. Prissy words are not really the be all and end all in such circumstances.
Matthew, do you own this site?
Sorry-
You have, in fact, MADE sensible points …
To bring this up again just looks like a further petty attempt to slur his name.
And this looks like a hysterical attempt by an Obama groupie to censor any mention of his gaffes.
Richard Lancaster,
The Obama gaffe may be obscure to you but I suggest that it is down to your ignorance of what he said. It was ALL over the blogosphere and is as worthy of satire as anything Bush has said. I fail to see why you also launch into all this crap about me wanting to “slur” The One’s good name. Have you any concept on the basis of political satire – which is, I understand, what fans of Mr Bremner claim that he is so good at. For years it has been deemd fair enough to chuckle at what Bush says. Fair enough. I suggest it is reasonable to chuckle at Barack “57 States” Obama in just the same way and if you can explain why he deserves special treatment, I am all ears. He said what I claim, not me. Get over it.
David Vance
Why would the BBC (or anyone) print a load of Obama gaffs when he hasnt even become President yet? Bush has been there 8 years, and therefore there are plenty of opportunities for him to made mistakes. Remember that many of us identify Bush first and foremost with gaffs, and mistakes – so the media focuses on that and looks for stories that fit that stereotype.
Most people don’t identify Obama with gaffs and the such because he is a smoother talker, and comes across as more intellectual that Bush. The mockery of Obama when it comes, and it will after a while (remember, he ahsnt even started the job yet) will come about his claims to save the world etc, and maybe even jokes about his race – not meant in a nasty way I’m sure, but there will be humour made out of it at some point.
David Vance | Homepage | 08.01.09 – 11:21 am | #
Apparently I need to spend more of my life on the internet. I still think that given the blogosphere’s (and Clinton campaign’s) attacks on his perceived religious beliefs, it’s not particularly funny. Your call – my right to raise an objection.
“Most people don’t identify Obama with gaffs and the such because he is a smoother talker,”
Actually,away from the teleprompter,he isn’t,he waffles and ums and ahs.
The bottom line is the BBC hitched its wagon to the Barrack Hussein Obama star and could not be prised loose with a JCB.
None of the MSM vetted Obama,very little is known about him,he has left no paper trail,which is incredibly difficult to do. Obama is palimpsest upon whom liberals can project their hopes.
Why would the BBC (or anyone) print a load of Obama gaffs when he hasnt even become President yet?
You must have missed the non-stop adulation of Obama on the BBC for months and months before he was even officially a candidate yet …
‘Liberals’, please, Garden.
I am a liberal. The BBC is far from being liberal.
I try to give Bush the benefit of the doubt because of his steadfast record on facing down the terrorists.
But I know many Americans (like my wife) who think he’s the most useless POTUS pretty much ever.
The BBC may invite us to laugh at his gaffes. But this is not necessarily bias, since if we paid serious heed to his domestic record we might weep.
Look at these indicators posted over at the Spectator Coffee House:
UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
Then: 4.2% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2001)
Now: 6.7% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 2008
DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE
Then: 10,587 (close of Friday, Jan. 19, 2001)
Now: 9,015 (close of Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009
CONSUMER CONFIDENCE (1985=100)
Then: 115.7 (Conference Board, January 2001)
Now: 38.0, which is an all-time low (Conference Board, December 2008
FAMILIES LIVING IN POVERTY
Then: 6.4 million (Census numbers for 2000)
Now: 7.6 million (Census numbers for 2007 — most recent numbers available)
AMERICANS WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE
Then: 39.8 million (Census numbers for 2000)
Now: 45.7 million (Census numbers for 2007 — most recent available)
U.S. BUDGET
Then: +236.2 billion (2000, Congressional Budget Office)
Now: -$1.2 trillion (projected figure for 2009, Congressional Budget Office)
http://www.spectator.co.uk/americano/3215826/bush-by-numbers.thtml
Thom Yorke,
So, no satire of Dems then. Right.
Richard,
I don’t find the MSM mockery of the Christian beliefs of President Bush that funny but I endure it. Maybe I need to spend even less time watching it.
Too whom does the sock puppet Richard Lancaster belong? Popping up to be fawned over by some Igor,or in turn fawning over someone else.
Tom,
Those figures will get worse under Obama,economies are like huge bulk carriers,nor easy to turn round.
Forget health insurance,it is a hugely complex issue,immigration,choice,age groups,the young trend away from insurance.
It is also worth bearing in mind that for the last two years,the Legislature of the US has been dominated by the Democrats.
Garden is right. For example, the mortgage disaster was entirely of the Clinton administration’s making, but took years to filter through.
Tom Yorke 11:26
The reason the BBC don’t publicise Obama’s many gaffes is not because he is not President yet, but because they supported him for the Presidency.
It didn’t stop the BBC publicising Palin gaffes.
Why didn’t the BBC publicise Joe “thicko” Biden’s many gaffes ? Why is he the invisible man ?
Anat,
I don’t know much about it, but is there not something called Snopes that allows you to compare BBC pages before and after stealth edits?
Nearly Oxfordian | 08.01.09 – 10:07 am
http://snopes.com is useful for checking on urban myths.
The site you and Anat need is http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/
I agree that Bush has been pretty rubbish but much of the criticism one can level at him has been from the economically liberal side of the argument, ably assisted by the Democrat congress. How often does this angle get covered on the Beeb?
Instead we get verbal gaffes (irrelevent), cultural conservatism (irrelevent to Brits), Iraq (not looking like such a bad idea these days), Kyoto (pointless as none of the signatories can be arsed to comply with it anyway), and the credit crunch (a valid point but there’s many, many other equally guilty parties). All strangely left wing criticisms and all approached from such a simplistic, moronic standpoint as to be utterly pointless.
“I was going to post a serious comment about the way the BBC is,as usual, wriggling off the hook over criticisms of its pro-Hamas stance, but the level of comment and insult has descended into the pits. Most of the material above is not even about the BBC’s coverage (the purpose of this blog as I understood it) but about the rights and wrongs of the war itself. All very sad, and I don’t feel it’s worth commenting in such a bear-pit.”
Sorry, but some of us think that the BBC in its coverage of the Hamas/Israel conflict ignores the self evident issue of who is right and who is wrong!
This is what generates the bearpit atmosphere
It’s funny how the BBC – openly stated by Matt Frei – believe that Bush has somehow finally been defeated and will be removed from office, rather than just leaving in the usual way. There seems to be no awareness that his term limit was up, and he had no VP – or any member of his Administration – to run as a successor or anything close to that.
This just goes to show the shallowness of Beeboids.
It also shows the unrelenting bias.
‘I accept that Bush DID make gaffes, but then again, who doesn’t?’
Indeed David, you make them every time you post. Look, you made another a couple of sentences later…
‘Obama…examining his Muslim, sorry Christian faith,…’
Ooops, that was an accidental blunder right? It wasn’t just the comment of a narrow-minded bigot?
I’ll be back after my forthcoming ban, because Vance has so much in common with his Taleban buddies after all.
The screeching parting comment of an idiot. Good riddance.
Thanks, Bio – yes, couldn’t remember the name but that’s the one I meant.