Wonder what you make of the BBC’s coverage of Aaron Alexis’s rampage at the Washington DC Dockyard? They seemed awfully excited when the initial news seemed that it was a WHITE shooter but now the jury is in we must ponder if Obama thinks that Alexis “could have been me.:”
“COULD HAVE BEEN ME?”
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“If I had a way to further mess with my military, he look like…er…”
Nice they have a form for any ‘affected by this story’ seeking to get in touch. Rather broad scope. May make filtering a bigger job than usual.
Still, ‘we’ have Mark Mardell to speak for ‘us:
‘The assumption in Britain is that another shocking mass murder will make people more open to gun control.’
You know Mark, that was not my assumption at all, not even much later. I first was shocked and sympathetic on behalf of the victims and families, and then wondered how so many nut-jobs seem able to roam the streets (or get in closed facilities) free to use any means at their disposal to commit harm.
Twisting things to petty tribal point scoring on but one way of doing this… not so much.
Maybe we’ll be treated to an Anthony Little piece soon in the Graun asking why his cousin came to be shot? Those seem to play well in some quarters.
Here in the USA, a key component of the gun control debate is so called “gun free zones”. As personal firearms are not allowed on federal land, this is just another example of mass murderers prefering to commit their crimes where they know no one else will be armed. Combine that with the unfortunate fact that a large number of people react quite differently to soldiers dying than they do to school children dying, and I don’t expect this to have any measurable impact on the gun control debate.
In this case, I’m not entirely sure the gun-free zone argument is relevant. The latest word is that the two handguns the lunatic used were taken from either a safe or military security personnel. Not exactly a gun-free zone if there are armed guards in the vicinity.
If we’re talking about armed citizens instead, I’ve also seen footage of a couple of naval officers saying they could go in there carrying if they wanted to. In this case, it may have been a kind of gun-free zone for cultural reasons rather than legal ones.
So the solution to murder is to have other people with guns to kill the murderer. What logic.
Perhaps the better solution is to… ban guns! The real problem the US has is with it’s romanticism of guns. Americans are simply not emotionally mature enough to understand the role of a firearm is to kill people. They have foolish attachments to them, collecting them as trophies.
There’s also this stupid ‘guns keep me free’ nonsense. They do not. Never have.
It’s sad, really as until there is an acceptance that guns should be banned this sort of massacre will occur again and again.
Do you really think that criminals will willingly give up their guns, EVEN with the threat of death sentences?
No…they will not.
Come back when you have actually had a little think about the problem, and why folk in the States feel the need to own a gun for defense.
“Americans are simply not emotionally mature enough to understand the role of a firearm is to kill people.”
I suspect there’s some cultures you wouldn’t make such a sweeping statement about. Or allow it from others.
Perhaps you should look at your own emotional maturity. There are two sides to this argument. Both have been right on different occasions. You seem unable to accept that others may have a different opinion to yours. It does not make them bad, or even necessarily wrong.
It’snot Americans who are emotionally immature regarding firearms. Note the gun fetishism of our peaceful Muslim friends in Middle Eastern hell-holes. There is an abundance of video footage of members of the “Religion of Peace” firing their AK47s in the air for any reason, loosing off deadly 7.65mm rounds in the general direction of perceived enemies,without first taking aim and seemingly oblivious of any civilians who may be unfortunate enough to be in the way at the time.
Notice the messages from Al Qaeda murderers, always seen with their trusty weapons near to them, or sensuously stroking the gun barrels.
They really do look like children playing with toys, albeit very deadly toys.
There are many things from history that possibly the world could have benefitted from not being invented.
The human condition is that ‘we’ will always create, and what is created may have the potential for evil.
That is usually down to what some choose to use such inventions for.
’twas ever thus.
Solutions to the problems thrown up and made worse with evolution of ideas need to perhaps operate on a degree of acceptance that some genies are out of the bottle?
Idealism is fine, but a dose of pragmatism may be more useful in the mix, especially if left unsullied by naked banwagoneering.
‘Americans are simply not emotionally mature enough to understand the role of a firearm is to kill people.’
The stable maturity that the ‘British’ have with sharp objects of course is a source of great comfort lest they be deployed for less than peaceful purposes than skinning a rabbit.
Say, in Woolwich.
Yes banning hand guns in the UK has really worked well hasn’t it?
As a first step in ridding America of guns maybe Barack Obama and Joe Biden should get rid of their security teams?
Nick, nice bigotry on display. Ever heard of the Austin tower shootings? How about these stories, or any number of incidents of defending against home invasions? As the saying goes, you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.
Of course, there’s much, more to it than that, if anyone’s interested in US history. Neither the War for Independence nor the South’s secession which sparked the Civil War would have been possible without individual citizens being able to arm themselves. Then there’s the whole problem of gun control laws being drafted to keep the blacks from defending themselves or protecting their voting rights. I’m sure you didn’t know that, either.
Like the editor of the BBC News US website, Daniel Nasaw (who’s made several tweets lashing out at the “good guy with a gun” meme, among other things), you’ve probably spent very little time among typical gun owners or those who understand the concept.
The 2nd Amendment wasn’t drafted with your stereotypes or TV shootin’ matches in mind. It’s partly to do with citizens defending against government tyranny. I can already see your eyes rolling and hear you preparing a sneer. You may enjoy your cozy, safe, contemporary lifestyle and believe it to be a permanent state of affairs from the dawn to the end of time, but you cannot reasonably claim things won’t be different in 50 years or at any time in the future. It’s not always about the mundane simple things.
To dismiss such a complex issue fraught with history and civil rights the way you do is ignorant and juvenile, not to mention your clear prejudice. The ignorant foreigners and United Statesians who work for the BBC are no better.
It’s always worth keeping an eye on the photo that the bBBC chooses to use of people involved in crimes, as perpetrator or victim. Stephen Lawrence, Mark Duggan, Trayvon Martin, etc, all have always been depicted with a carefully-selected (or cropped) image showing a baby-face with no malicious intent.
Already the main bBBC ‘news’ image of Aaron Alexis shows him with a broad smile and a beanie hat, like he wouldn’t have hurt anyone. The bBBC spin-merchants know that a picture is worth a thousand words.
“We all know what blacks are really like.”
“I don’t actually understand what Sir Arthur wrote and have projected my own bigotry upon him instead.”
“I am increasingly uncomfortable using my real name on this site.”
In your case I can understand why
“The attention I get increases my self esteem.”
““The attention I get increases my self esteem.””
Damn, I walked right into that one.
Yours got more ‘likes’, if that helps.
That his got 4 for saying he didn’t read a one liner as too long, to then repeat verbatim, it is actually quite funny.
Much like news about the NHS.
Story good – lots of shots showing black staff
Story bad – lots of shots showing white staff.
Same with that story about the number of kids being born which the BBC represented with a photograph of three white babies. The only time they’d ever use that image is if the story was a negative one.
Oh well, you wouldn’t want them to show his identification photo, would you? (As the American media are doing.)
That looks too much like a mugshot– it might prejudice the jury! Oh, wait…there’s not going to BE a jury in this case, unless his family have the effronterous gall to sue the US Government– something which, considering the legal system in the US, cannot be ruled out. And it would be the height of conceit that they would be worried that the jury pool in the District of Columbia might watch BBC America for their news. Trust me, those folks are watching FOX, CNN, or MSNBC, if they’re watching cable-TV news at all about all of this.
Fox News:
BBC/ABC News:
“Already the main bBBC ‘news’ image of Aaron Alexis shows him with a broad smile……………………….”
You mean something like the one used by David elsewhere:
http://www.atangledweb.org/?p=45513#comments
Do you pay David £145.50 a year toward running that site?
Here’s another example from today, of the ‘promising footballer’ murdered in Leicester. The bBBC’s baby-faced smiling image, with other left-wing media showing a muscular man in an aggressive pose.
bBBC ‘news’:
Daily Mirror:
And how whitey is depicted…
I dunno…I don’t think I have ever seen him doing “gang” signs on FB
I’m pretty sure he’s not been arrested for possession of a firearm either…or a violent knife crime…or demanding anyone different from him be beheaded…in fact, that rascals only “crime” seems to be that he “stands up” for poor old, downtrodden, no longer listened to, non-Muslim whitey.
(Cue the lefty’s squeal about domestic offenses)
No wonder the Beeb hate him so much.
Sir Arthur Strebe-Grebling,
“Stephen Lawrence, Mark Duggan, Trayvon Martin, etc, all have always been depicted with a carefully-selected (or cropped) image showing a baby-face with no malicious intent.”
Couldn’t agree with you more. Every time Damilola Taylor comes up in the news the BBC are careful to use the exact same photo of him smiling into the camera as if he was all sweetness and light. Why can’t the use a photo of him looking a bit more threatening – you know; “the way black people look”.
Damilola had moved to Britain from Nigeria only months before he was stabbed in the thigh with a broken beer bottle by a gang of black youths. Gary Trowsdale, director of the Damilola Taylor Trust, said:
‘Having cost the taxpayer £15million in police and trial fees, we hope that..[his killers]..can finally show some remorse.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/justice/1304720/Damilola-Taylors-killers-Danny-and-Ricky-Preddie-smile-in-photo-at-Portland-Young-Offenders-Institution-in-Dorset.html
No excuse for the BBC not using a photo that makes Damilola look more like a Black Person.
http://goo.gl/XirVMT
We both know that a selection process takes place before a photograph is broadcast. The arguments of the BBC news and current affairs apologists get ever more feeble.
“Wonder what you make of the BBC’s coverage of Aaron Alexis’s rampage at the Washington DC Dockyard?”
Strangely in another place David provides a link to the BBC’s coverage (without mentioning any perceived bias) and actually highlights 12 lines of the BBC report.
http://www.atangledweb.org/?p=45509#comments
How very dare he! Disgraceful.
Some good comments on there ,thanks ali
As Louis Robinson warned us yesterday, reports on this sort of thing are generally wrong, early and often. After the initial rush for details has subsided, or intrepid journalists realize real facts are hard to come by for the moment, the search for meaning, for a larger issue about which this incident can be exploited, begins. Some of that is due to the need to fill air time with idle thoughts, so we get speculation upon speculation.
Turns out the murderer was mentally ill, had special access to the base because of his military and professional past, and stole the weapon he used to kill. Not a single Narrative supported there, so the BBC is now gasping for breath.
Actually, that’s only Mark Mardell, who ran over to the base in hopes that this tragedy will force a shift in the national gun debate in what he views as the correct direction. He was sorely disappointed, and spent the rest of his report moaning about how proposals stricter gun control laws are “languishing”. He blames his colleagues in London for making him ask the question, which is funny. It’s the BBC News producers in London, then, who couldn’t even wait for the dead to be buried before telling Mardell to climb on top of the bodies to exploit them for an ideological issue. And he has the gall to suggest that what’s missing from the national gun debate are “open minds”. There isn’t a single open mind on this issue at the BBC. What hypocrisy.
Any lurking or nor lurking journalist who wants to tell me that I’m reading something that isn’t there is full of it. Mardell’s choice of language, his admission that the BBC producers leapt at a chance to exploit the tragedy before learning all the facts, and the direction of his report make his perspective very clear, even if one has never read his previous output.
Probably best that you quote from the article then to support what you’re syaing because I’ve just read it and I don’t see where Mardell says any of that.
Now it turns out that there was no assault weapon used, so the national gun debate Mardell and his producers were so eager to exploit is reduced to banning shotguns – which are recommended by the Vice President for home protection – and hand guns. Not much of an argument now.
The locations change, but the question from the presenters in London is as predictable as it is understandable.
“Will this tragedy make a difference to the debate on gun control?” The short and blunt answer: “No.”
Certainly the murders at the Navy Yard will give fresh impetus to a very old debate.
*****
It is worth remembering that the jolting, sickening shock of the Sandy Hook killing of children just before Christmas did seem to change the debate, just a little.
******
As I write I hear a trail for a discussion on NPR radio.
Oops, sorry, wrong topic.
Those proposals aren’t quite formally dead, but they are languishing with little apparent chance of revival.
“Languishing”. The word choice of an advocate, but I know you’ll tell me I’ve imagined it. We’re down to your bias versus mine.
The real point may not be legal, but cultural.
Alexis had twice in the past shot in the general direction of people who had irritated him. Tyres and ceilings were thankfully the only casualties.
But in some countries that would mean he would not be allowed to own a gun and might have ended up in prison for a fairly long time.
Here, particularly in Texas, it is not that big a deal.
Hard as it is to change the law, it is much harder to change attitudes.
I don’t even know where to begin here. Texas doesn’t care if lunatics are running around armed to the teeth? No gun rights advocates are defending the right of the mentally ill to buy and own weapons, for heaven’s sake. This is just wrong. You don’t see that as a biased take?
The giveaway is his focus on attitudes. We have the wrong attitude, and it must be changed. Mardell has written this before knowing all the facts. I’ve done the same, but then I’m not a well-paid, high-profile, professional journalist. If I was paid to do this, I can assure you I’d be more careful. And the BBC certainly beat me in the rush to exploit yet another tragedy to pursue an ideological agenda.
Why is it the BBC love to jump in on the gun ownership debate in the states, yet are quite comfortable with 12 year old boys in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangaladesh, Syria…ect having them?
And they aint just hand guns the little cherubs of those middle eastern shitholes (and African , while were at it), they are fully automatic assault rifles those kids are holding.
Perhaps they think little Muslim boys are more responsible with machine guns than white, middle American home owners?
Just a thought.
While the BBC continues its obsession with the US, and 13 shooting deaths by a lunatic
Dozens killed in attacks across Iraq
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/09/2013917171743436248.html
But that’s Bush’s fault anyway….
The BBC must be so relieved Islam ain’t part of the equation (yet!)
i know this killer is black, but it hasnt stopped the bbc in the past labelling non whites as white right wing extremists so maybe by this time next week panorama will be claiming the killer was a member of the KKK
The latest news, confirmed by the FBI, is that Alexis used a shotgun, which he was carrying, and two pistols taken from the security guards he shot. An AR15 assault rifle was NOT, repeat NOT used. News organisations NBC and CBS have had to broadcast complete retractions of all the speculation and incorrect assertions that were made during their live broadcasts from the naval dockyard.
Obama has been rightly criticised by even liberal members of the MSM in America for making a blatantly partisan speech on the economy vilifying the Republican Party over the enforced spending cuts before ending with “…Oh, and before I forget….” and then offering condolences to the victims and families of the shootings, even while the incident was still running.
Will Lardell and BBC News refer to O’Bummer’s lack of taste in making political capital while a fatal series of shootings not far from where he was giving his speech was in progress? Somehow I doubt it.
There’s been the usual guff about more gun control from the likes of Sen Diane Feinstein and other Democrat politicians, even being referred to on BBC News. What they don’t tell you is that, once again Feinstein shows her ignorance of the facts and her opportunism. Wasn’t it Joe Biden who told the public to use shotguns instead of rifles? It seems that is exactly what Alexis did. I doubt if we’ll be reminded of Biden’s advice by Beeboids.
posh plum in his throat 5 live presenter peter allen on the drive show at 4pm said today it must be a relief to the muslim community that this was not a islamist terrorist attack,yes peter,the Burkha Broadcasting Corperation must be well pleased about that.
Must be a relief to most Americans as well
And a relief to those who believe in their 2nd Amendment rights because this was just another mentally ill person who should have been previously contained, and a ban on assault rifles wouldn’t have prevented this….oh, my bad….unapproved thoughts there…..off to re-education camp I go…..
It can’t be much fun for Buddhists and US Navy veterans, though.
Has anyone confirmed his “I was close to the Twin Tower collapse on September 11, 2001” story yet? Not that that would in any way say one thing or another about any in-person witness even were it true– but I see a Truther story coming up out of this.
Trust me: even if it happens he wasn’t one himself, the Truther community will still seize on this somehow, if his claim to have been there can be proved.
he could of been a member of some radical group like the black panthers or just another serial killer who just happens to be black
I’m sure the BBC can find some sort of wafer thin link to the EDL somewhere.
A joy to hear Justin Webb try and link in the old ” Sandy Hook” attack line so as to get the USA to stop letting people have guns…unless they`re Mr Duggan or related to the great man( he was going to be a ballet-dancing heart surgeon, I expect).
Sadly his interviewee-a Ricky Nelson no less- told wee Webb that American-style gun controls as hoped for by Obama and Webb would not have saved a Breivik or a machete attack on Lee Rigby…oh dear-stony silence , end of interview and straight to landfill.
Sadly also for Webb-it`s not guns in the hands of the people that causes this, but people with guns as well as a psychiatric history that are the problem.
But no-for then they are registered druggies and therefore vulnerable-like Moaty or Dr Duggan-and `twould be an infringement of their `yuman rites” for then NOT to have one…what with lying South Yorkshire ex coppers still out there on the loose!
Allah it`s tough to be a lefty-so many tumbleweeds twisting in the wind-but never enough to power a turbine blade in a beauty spot.
Oh look-here`s a nun with something that might yet turn out to be a niqab on-yet we don`t stop HER from intimidating witnesses do we-RACIST MAAN!…
The BBC seem to have lost interest in this story all of a sudden: it was way, way down the list of items on the 6 O’ Clock TV news.
Jeremy Vine tells me that more people have been killed in the USA by kids using guns that have been killed by terrorists.
I assume he means less people were killed by those broody lads in Boston this year…and not in , say Iraq or the USA in 2009 or 2001 then?
Some Easterhouse community worker told Evan Davis too that-say what you like about Gordon Brown, but he removed Glasgow Citys debts when he was PM or whatever…Evan didn`t question him, but just wanted our pal to trash Duncan Smith…which, being a Yeats on the Rates public-secta shill…he`d do anyway.
In fact-couldn`t they just employ one Alistair McGowan/Ronni Ancona type just to read BBC scripts and quotes in those earth regional accents-this would mean we`d spend less on Evan with his dick2fone seeking yet more Latvian lovelies to champion?
The BBC -Vine and Davis-clearly have problems with facts, and prefer agendas…and they`re so boring we all can see through them, like a taffeta niqab!
Strangers to the truth, the BBC-spineless swines, cemented minds as St Mozza sang once.
Weird how the same perspective on this issue is spread all across the spectrum of the BBC’s output. Groupthink? What groupthink?
When he says kids does he mean kids like 15-year-old James Edwards, Jr.?
Or Shawn Tyson.
I see that the Sarah Silverman ‘black NRA’ video no longer plays at Funny or Die. Well it wasn’t funny andd now a black man with a gun has killed 12 people, so 1 out of 2…
Strange, she usually gets away with stuff like that on account of being a Jewish woman.
The narratives just keep failing:
Shooter’s friend: Aaron Alexis was a liberal, happy with Obama
A friend of Navy Yard shooting suspect Aaron Alexis said on CNN Tuesday that the alleged gunman was “more of a liberal type” who was happier with the Obama administration than with the Bush administration.
“Aaron wasn’t conservative like I am. He was more of a liberal type; he wasn’t happy with the former administration. He was more happy with this administration — as far as presidential administrations,” Alexis’ friend Michael Ritrovato said on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”
This keeps happening.
Manifesto of LA Spree Killer Reveals: Fan of President Obama, Supporter of Gun Control
UPDATED: George Sodini La Fitness Killer An Obama Supporter
Alabama Obama Supporter, Socialist & Mass Murderer, Amy Bishop Says She’s Likely Insane (Video)
And so on. Some were saying that the mass murderer in that Colorado theater was an Occupier and supporter of the President, but I can’t find anything solid anymore. We should also remember how the BBC leapt to blame Sarah Palin and conservatives for that Tucson lunatic as well (see here, here, and here for starters). Then there’s Democrat George Zimmerman to ponder.
Democrats and supporters of the President going batsh!t insane and killing people seems to be a phenomenon almost as American as baseball. Perhaps we should really be concerned about just banning Democrats and supporters of the President from owning guns. I doubt that’s the kind of culture change Mardell is hoping for, though.
Sarcasm ends, sort of.