Author Archives: T

Interpol calls it “people smuggling“, but at the BBC, they are “migrants“.

I know, I know – the PLO are merely activists for change, just like B-BBCers.

I never knew that Marwan Barghouti was one too:

“The rebel list is headed by a jailed activist, Marwan Barghouti, under the new name al-Mustaqbal (the Future)…

Barghouti is serving five life terms in an Israeli prison over militant attacks.” [emphasis added]

Mr Barghouti is a rather forceful “activist”:

“He was convicted on May 20, 2004 of five counts of murder, one of the victims being a Greek Orthodox monk, resulting from three attacks, one north of Jerusalem, one in Tel Aviv and one in the West Bank. He was also found guilty of one count of attempted murder resulting from a failed suicide car bomb. He was acquitted of 21 counts of murder in 33 other attacks. On June 6, 2004, he was sentenced to five life sentences for the five murders and 40 years imprisonment for the attempted murder.”

I suppose we should be thankful that the BBC bothered to refer to the somewhat inconvenient gaol term.

The BBC interviews two ex-US servicemen. Unsurprisingly, they both have problems with the way that George Bush has run the war.

They are:

“Captain Jonathan Powers served for a year in Iraq in the early stages of the war. After returning he founded War Kids Relief, a charity that rebuilds orphanages in Iraq.

Garrett Reppenhagen was a sniper. He served in Iraq for a year and returned home about four months ago. He now works for a public education group, Alliance for Security.”

The BBC forgets to tell us that Mr Reppenhagen is:

“…another antiwar activist who was on the Veterans for Peace Impeachment Tour with Cindy Sheehan from the very beginning.” source

“involved with Iraq Veterans Against the War” (I love “All points of view welcome”*) source

Hmmmm…

*Look at the programme:

“Fayetteville, NC Fri, Sep. 16th Event Description:

Friday, September 16th

9am–10am— Radio interview on WFNC

12:00—1:00—Peace Vigil on Hay Street at the Market House

1:30–4pm—Press Conference , afternoon buffet, meet and greet

5pm–9pm—National premiere of “Operation Dreamland” at the Cameo Theatre on Hay Street. We’ll be passing out leaflets at the 5pm,

7pm and 9pm showing. The showing at 5pm is free to active duty military, veterans and military families.

9pm—Public discussion of Occupation Dreamland in the Rainbow Room–(located next door to the Cameo Theatre)”

Well, B-BBC inches closer to 1 million hits.

Everyone’s pissed off with the Newsnight showtrial.

Well, inspired by Tim Blair*, why don’t all you crazy-kid RWDBs vote on BBC Online on:

“Do you believe the allies have breached the convention on the methods and means of warfare?

Do you believe the allies have breached the convention on torture and refugees?”

Vote here.

*The Australian Greens were very upset about this sort of grassroots democracy.

David Hicks, the soon-to-be-British Taleban, looks kind of sweet and gullible in the BBC photo, doesn’t he?

This page has the usual archive picture we see in Australia (scroll down) (and The Age is a Fairfax paper – Fairfax is the Australian equivalent of an infernal hybrid of The Guardian, The Independent and the NYT, so it would hardly be worried about being too soft on the terrorist).

They’re still at it on Sydney:

“The fighting then spread to other parts of the city, injuring more than 30 people, including police officers.

The violence continued on Monday night, apparently in retaliation, despite calls for calm and ethnic tolerance by Prime Minister John Howard and other senior figures.”

Quite wrong – the white on Lebanese attacks had ended by about mid-afternoon on Sunday. By Sunday evening, the violence was all Lebanese on Skips.* It stopped on Monday, while everyone was at work, and then the Lebanese gangs attacked on Monday night and then again on Tuesday night. To be fair, the writer does use “retaliation”, but you would have to have slightly more knowledge than the obtuse Mr Iles (whose comment has fortuitously been boxed) to understand this when immediately preceding the article has:

“The large-scale violence in Sydney started on Sunday, when thousands of young white men attacked people of Arabic and Mediterranean background.”

Oh well, they were just “people” whose the “violence continued”.

This update also misses the important 5 hour old news that the Muslim community has called for a stop, no ifs, no buts:

‘”The perpetrators of such activities are criminals and should be subject to the full force of the law.

“This applies to anyone involved in such activities regardless of their background.

“It is important that those who have committed criminal offences be charged and brought to account. In fact, this is an important part of the healing process.”

Eman Dandan, from the Lebanese Muslim Association, told smh.com.au: “Basically we are developing a working group to hit the streets and start talking to boys, notably the young males [who are] disrupting society or whatever.”‘

These righteous Muslims do not refer to Palestine or Iraq or [insert “root cause” here] so I doubt the BBC will get round to mentioning this awkward fact.

*Means Australians – see here (and before you start, “wog” has a different meaning in Australia of Italian or Greek, and is not racist in the way it is in the UK – notwithstanding the ignorant remarks of the ignoramus BBC HYS posters who spent all of 2 weeks backpacking and drunk on Bondi Beach – much to the annoyance of us locals – and then presume to mouth off about how all Australians are racist).

Commenter Dr Who notes NewsNight’s Maoist agitprop, you guessed it, a war crimes trial of the Coalition.

The comments are a laugh and a half.

…it appears, as those Kurds who had the temerity to stand up to one of the 20th century’s great mass killers apparently set up a one-party state:

“But while Kurdish officials say that democracy has flourished in their semi-autonomous region since splitting off from Saddam Hussein’s central government in 1992, there is only one way considered acceptable to vote here.”

Sounds just like more of the same, doesn’t it? However, look at the evidence:

”The TV channels and radio stations owned by the Kurdish political parties broadcast daily talk shows and interviews encouraging people to participate in the election.

Party officials describe those who do not plan to vote for the Kurdistan Alliance List as “traitors” and “non-patriots”.

The Kurdish parties warn voters of the challenges they will face if the Kurds do not obtain enough seats in the next Iraqi parliament…

But not all Kurds are loyal to their political parties. Many people criticise their performance and the local administrations.

“I will stay home on election day,” said Sadraddin Mohammed, a 65-year-old Kurdish man in Sulaimaniya. “The government and political party officials have been stealing our resources for years, so why should I go and vote for them?”

Some have even called for a boycott of the elections, particularly among the youth who make up more than 70% of the Kurdish community.

Kawa Aziz, a 23-year-old student at the University of Sulaimaniya, said that the regional government of Kurdistan had neglected the needs and demands of youth and believed corruption had spread throughout the administration…

Criticism has increased against the two main Kurdish parties ruling the autonomous region in northern Iraq: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Massoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Recently, the moderate Kurdistan Islamic Union, which was a part of the Kurdistan Alliance list during January’s elections, decided to break away from the grouping for the forthcoming elections.’

Maybe it’s just me, but this sounds more like a modern western democracy (the UK or US perhaps) than a one party state.

Yes, Dr Who again (Natalie discused it here previously):

‘”It’s Christmas Day, a day of peace,” said chief writer Russell T Davies. “There is absolutely an anti-war message because that’s what I think.”

Actress Penelope Wilton plays the Prime Minister in the hour-long show.

In one scene she says of the US president: “He is not my boss and he is certainly not turning this into a war.”

Decision condemned

A later scene echoes former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s decision to sink the General Belgrano during the Falklands conflict in 1982.

Wilton’s Prime Minister orders the destruction of a retreating alien spaceship, a decision condemned by the Doctor.

“She does that very easy speech about not listening to the American president but at the end she’s out of her depth and she does the wrong thing,” said Mr Davies.’

Presumably the BBC means “non-descript white” in the sidebar on ancestry here, because the last time I looked the rest of the people listed were also Australians:

“Total population: 21 million

Australian: 6.7m (38.7%)

English: 6.4m (36.5%)

Irish: 1.9m (11%)

Italian: 800,000 (4.6%)

German: 742,000 (4.3%)

Chinese: 557,000 (3.2%)

Greek: 376,000 (2.2%)

Dutch: 269,000 (1.5%)

Lebanese: 162,000 (0.9%)

Indian: 157,000

Vietnamese: 157,000 (0.9%)”

Note that this is an ancestry table, not an immigration table, where it might be appropriate to distinguish between Australian-born and others.

Last time I looked, Aborigines made up 2.4% of Australia’s population. Why on earth have they been ignored?