‘Bit by bit, the story is coming out.’
Well you have to look quite hard on the BBC to find the story tucked away on the US section:
Senator Rand Paul’s drone filibuster delays CIA nomination
The BBC gives more prominence to this:
French mother tried for 9/11 T-shirt
A mother has gone on trial in southern France for sending her son [Named Jihad] to nursery school wearing a T-shirt reading “I am a bomb” and “Born on 11 September”.
You might have thought the drone story was worthy of more coverage considering the subject…the use of drones, especially the use of drones to kill US citizens…US citizens on US soil….and its other repercussions worldwide.
Viewpoint: US media lax on drones
‘The media has been slow to fully report on the US drone programme, says Tara McKelvey, a correspondent for Newsweek Global and The Daily Beast. Is the truth finally starting to come out?’
The rest of the world questions the legality of their use, viscerally so in a country such as Pakistan, where drone attacks increased significantly during President Obama’s first term.
An estimated 74% of Pakistanis polled by Pew last year termed the United States an “enemy.” Drones are a clear factor.
Drones may be a key element in the US strategy, but as Ambassador Rehman makes clear, they are “not part of our playbook. The time for drone strikes is really over.”
The rest of the world opposes drone use, they increase radicalism and terrorism, Obama signs off 7 times more strikes than Bush ever did……and yet….
BBC seem a bit reluctant to give this story much prominence…unlike the dangers of a bacon sandwich.
I wonder if it would be a different sort of coverage from the BBC if George Bush was still in power and it had been a Democratic Senator who had opposed his use of drones?
I don’t ‘wonder’ at all really….I think I know the answer to that one.
Using drones, the winner of the Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize has killed more people than Osama bin Laden did.
But it’s not just the bBBC that doesn’t want us to know. Time magazine, in its end-of-2012 issue selecting Obama as Person of the Year – apparently on the grounds that he is still black – included a nauseating panegyric to the President.
Get your sick-bag ready, or preferably a bucket, if you’re going to read the article, which starts One of the least controversial judgments about Barack Obama’s first term is that he has been a good foreign policy President. Certainly that’s what the American public believes. It has given him high marks on overseas affairs for much of his presidency … but fails to mention drones, or indeed Israel or Palestine. However, Time thankfully omits any mention of the Nobel Peace prize, prematurely awarded for the same reason that they think he was Person of the Year 2012.
The BBC also carefully avoids mentioning His Nobel. I wonder if there’s a single Beeboid who feels even slightly embarrassed about this?
I don’t know about the Beeboids, but the Nobel Committee should certainly feel ashamed that they have ruined the Peace Prize with this and many other ridiculous awards of recent years.
I have no problem with drones: they decimated the AQ command structure in AfPak and virtually drove them to shift their base to Yemen where the drones continued to pursue them. The Pakistanis would dredge up some reason for hating the infidel Americans whatever they did and are mainly frustrated that their double game wasn’t as effective because of the use of drones to cross the border. I am in favour of blocking Brennan’s appointment, however: those accusations that he was converted to Islam by the Saudis have a certain plausibility when you hear him saying ‘inshallah’ several times in a speech, in Arabic, to an Egyptian audience. You would also have to meet a lot of people before you found one with a more credulous looking face.
Oh those drones, don’cha just adore ’em! Those crafty bastards used to be safe hiding in utterly remote inaccesible places. Now the fact is the murdering terrorist scum dont rest easy amy time of day or night. They move to Yemen? The drones can follow. Sometimes I think there really is a god!
Careful or ScottDezColditz will condemn you for not being a Christian like Benjamin Cohen…
US media has been lax? LOL. They mean the mainstream, Left-leaning media, whose lead the BBC follows on what and how to report. What about the BBC? The world’s largest news organization – surely could have spared a few moments to pay attention. But their excuse is always that they don’t have to cover it if the other major outlets don’t. Like I keep saying, the BBC’s US division is a waste of time and money, and could easily be replaced by a news aggregator.
Absent from the news report is the fact that Sen. Paul voiced clear reservations to the whole drone war deal because he saw no real difference between the President’s use of them and George Bush’s reasoning for invading Iraq. This is important. Paul made the point (I actually watched/listened to about two hours of this while it was live) that the whole “imminent threat” concept had been redefined from meaning a clear threat – he used a scenario of an enemy amassing tanks on the border – to an almost abstract “Well, we think they’re going to attack us one of these days”. Paul was very clear about his concerns about that rationale for using any kind of military action overseas, and it was way, way worse when the President uses that very low standard to decide when and if He should kill a US citizen on US soil. Paul especially took care to use the term “non-combatant”, meaning somebody who was not specifically on the battlefield or in a war zone. That was plainly missing from both the BBC news report and the “viewpoint” piece. It’s an important distinction, and a discussion worth having whether one agrees with the drone war plan or not.
It’s all very well to report the testimony they had to squeeze out of Atty. Gen. Holder that he believed it would be unconstitutional to do it, but where’s all the background that led us to this point? It’s as if the whole issue appeared out of thin air, a baseless accusation from Paul.
Getting back to the “viewpoint” article, how curious that there’s zero speculation as to why the media was so reluctant to cover the drone issue. At least they mentioned…whisper it quietly….that The Obamessiah has ramped Bush’s original drone scheme up to eleven. Oh, and spot the missing Nobel Peace Prize from all BBC coverage. How about the Nobel Peace Prize, BBC? The media has failed miserably, abdicated their responsibility on this and so many issues since 2008, and this is just one glaring example that people are finally noticing. And the BBC just floats above it all, looking down their noses at their media colleagues.
People who read this blog are far more informed about this than those who rely on the BBC for their news.
Where are all your anti-war darlings, BBC? Why have there been no specials wondering where they are these days? I remember the days of human shields and outrage and protests and a seemingly endless stream of activists on various BBC shows. But now, silence.
One other thing the BBC censored from their report: Paul got a standing ovation at the end. Not quite the tiny minority of obstructionists the BBC wants you to think it was. Of course, perhaps I’m being unfair and the Beeboids simply aren’t aware of it because the AP censored that from the video they released. World’s largest and most trusted news organization, you betcha.
I agree with the importance of the Paul filibuster story, but I am also surprised that the BBC went, even slightly, with the story about the “French” mother who sends her child to school with a shirt glorifying terrorism. I would have thought the BBC would ignore that story completely.
Why doesn’t anyone anywhere ask the real question: why is the US poking its nose into everyone’s business? They should do the world a favour and revert to isolationism.
Do the world a favour? Nah …. Keep sending in the drones. … Make my day!
If you’re concerned over the US putting itself around, you’ve seen nothing yet. Wait till China takes control economically and, ergo, militarily.
China? Yes we can send the labour party there for lessons in ‘uman rites!
That’s another version of my question about where have all the anti-war darlings gone.
Generally noone in the UK gives an utter toss what happens in other parliaments so why would this non story which had no effect be any different.
Discussing bacon sarnie’s far more relevant for most people. News is what people want to read not some dreary USSR type litany.
And it is the BRITISH Broadcasting Corp. It’s market is Brits, not Tea Party twits.
British? Misnomer anyone?
And yet that is not what the BBC itself says by Charter, nor what it is paid for and not what is expected. The BBC continually lionises itself as a leading global reporter to justify its enormous budget. Also, I do not believe that no-one in the UK is interested in other parliaments, and whether a story has an “effect” should not necessarily be a determiner as to whether or not a story is run (that WOULD be communist / USSR thinking – and in fact the BBC has form in that regard).
Oh, dear, pariochial, LittleBritainer colditz seems to be blissfully unaware that the BBC considers itself to be a global news organization, with a global audience. More specifically, how many times have I posted here about the BBC’s openly stated intention to expand their US audience, and have increased spending on their US division? But since you clearly don’t read or trust anything I say, here’s a video of BBC News boss in the US, Simon Wilson with Mark Mardell explaining to an audience of Beeboids at the BBC College of Journalism explaining it (among other things).
The BBC even win awards for it.
“It is recognition of BBC News as a whole against very strong competition. Investment into BBC.com has helped us expand our operations in the Washington bureau to create an even better showcase for BBC News for audiences in North America.”
Online journalists now work at the heart of the BBC’s Washington DC hub, offering news and feature content aimed at US audiences more directly than ever before.
As well as covering news from across the US and Canada, the team produces bespoke online video and text features for the BBC’s international Magazine section, which launched in September 2011.
Get a clue, colditz. Your apparent unawareness of what the BBC does is shocking.
PS to colditz: No result, eh? Wrong again. Holder conceded and wrote a letter stating outright – finally – that the President does not have the legal authority to kill US citizens on US soil without due process of law. Result. That’s when Paul ended his filibuster.
So how would the US like it if the rest of the world started meddling in its internal affairs? “We think you should have an NHS system right now,” said the UK. And “Israel calls for more border fences with Mexico and Canada”. What would Mardell et al have to say then?