Category Archives: Uncategorized

. Hat tip: Callingallcomets.

Obrador:

One of the most popular politicians in Mexico … It ended in a triumph for him … As mayor of Mexico City, he won respect as much for his reputation for honesty, a gruelling work schedule and his humble lifestyle as for his ambitious public works and social programmes targeting the poor and disadvantaged … He often draws on his humble origins – growing up in a village of 600 in Tabasco State, the son of a store owner… recognition of indigenous people’s rights, scholarships for the handicapped and improving healthcare and education … He says he will pay for social spending, higher pensions and wages by wiping out corruption, cutting down on government waste and cracking down on tax evasion … His anti-capitalist speeches have sent jitters through the business community and his main rival has said he will bankrupt the country. Mr Lopez Obrador, however, insists he will respect private property and foreign business investment.

Calderon:

A Harvard educated lawyer, Mr Calderon, 44, is favoured by the business community ,,,

Since the election result is too close to call it looks like he is favoured by more than just businessmen.

…A career politician … He has run a negative campaign against his left-wing rival, linking him to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez in TV ads proclaiming: “Lopez Obrador is a danger to Mexico”.

The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) eventually banned the ad, despite Mr Calderon’s claim that the move constituted censorship. But Mr Calderon’s showing at the polls has been dented by counter-accusations from Mr Lopez Obrador that he gave contracts to a company part-owned by his brother-in-law while he was energy secretary. Mr Calderon has strongly denied the allegations.

… While Mr Lopez Obrador has pledged to fight crime through social programmes, Mr Calderon has pledged an iron fist approach, with life sentences for kidnappers.

on active service in Afghanistan, the fourth and fifth such deaths in the course of a week. Their deaths were reported as the second item on this evening’s BBC Ten O’Clock News bulletin. What story was judged by the BBC as being more important than the sacrifice of two British soldiers?

Yes, you’ve guessed it – the BBC’s fifteen minute long Ten O’Clock News programme was led by a full five minutes on the resignation of David Beckham as Captain of the England football team, with filmed pieces about the return of the squad (oh look, an aeroplane landing), the disappointment of Sven Goran Eriksson and an obituary style review of David Beckham’s time as captain, “those legendary free kicks”, and so on, even though Beckham has made it clear that he’s staying on as an England player.

The Beckham story is a big story – a big sports story – but it shouldn’t have led the Ten O’Clock News on any but the slowest of news days, and certainly not on a day with sad news like today. It’s not as if England’s football disappointment wasn’t fully covered yesterday, over and above the deaths of sixty people in a Baghdad bombing.

The producers of the Ten O’Clock News should be ashamed of their choice this evening – the British Broadcasting Corporation should know better.

Back in March 2004 the BBC were bigging up the launch of Air America, billed as the “liberal answer to the right-wing shock-jocks which fill the U.S air-waves”. and “regime change radio“. News stories, the Today programme, Front Row (the show that gives ‘liberal arts’ a bad name) were all on the case.

Fiona ‘Fi’ Glover and the Radio Four “Broadcasting House” team even moved to New York to present March 28th’s edition.

“We’re in New York for a special programme examining the launch of new, multi-million dollar, US radio network. ‘Air America’ wants to challenge the dominant right-wing talk shows in the US with a new brand of liberal political shows. We talk to the main players involved and ask can ‘Air America’ succeed ?”

Well, two years on, there are plenty of Air America stories around – mostly negative and on the lines of ‘how long can they survive ?’. Their president has just resigned after a year. The wikipedia entry, while sober, is not a cheerful read. Yet the BBC don’t seem to want to revisit the story on which so much money was lavished two years ago. Can’t imagine why. Come on, Justin, Matt. Come on, Fi !

Hat tip to Rachel: CAMERA have featured the same story about Walid Houdaly / Hodali and his wife Ataf Alyan that I did on Thursday. Their story features the same link as I found, saying that far from being “jailed for 12 years for being a political organiser” as the BBC said, Mr Houdaly was jailed for being an attempted kidnapper himself.

I’m not saying that CAMERA got the link from me. Once you had twigged the spelling confusion anyone who was reasonaby patient could have got this information from Google – or, of course, by inquiring more deeply at the time of the interview. The BBC did not do either.

The statement that Mr Houdaly was “jailed for 12 years for being a political organiser” is a misrepresentation of Israeli society. Is it going to be changed?

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

“in the tropical island of Cuba lies the detention camp that is seen by many around the world as America’s gulag”

Typical Matt Frei – light on facts, heavy on spin. Who are your “many around the world” Matt? Do you mean many BBC reporters around the world? Many Guardian readers around the world, many lefties around the world or what?

And what does it matter what these so-called ‘many’ think, when their alleged comparison is so fundamentally flawed? Unless of course you’re spinning us a line rather than giving us unvarnished facts in an impartial manner?

Do you Matt, have any idea what the Gulags were like? How many millions of people were detained in the Gulags? Over how many decades? How many died in the Gulags? Answers, for you Matt, according to Wikipedia, 18-20 million detained over four decades, with 1,606,748 deaths, not including “the more than 800,000 executions of ‘counterrevolutionaries’ during the period of the ‘Great Terror’, since they were mostly conducted outside the camp system” or the 390,000 plus peasants who died in labour camps.

Compare that with Guantanamo – a few hundred detainees, duration so far three to four years, health and welfare generally taken care of, with just a few deaths, none due to execution.

Do you know what you’re talking about Matt? It’s time for you to read some Solzhenitsyn before you go shooting your mouth off again. Sure, Guantanamo is an aberration in need of urgent resolution, but your unsubstantiated comparison of Guantanamo with the Soviet Gulags, based on nothing more than what you think ‘many people around the world’ (how conveniently anonymous) allegedly think is nothing but far-fetched, over the top, biased hyperbole. Plus ca change.

Hat tip to George (UPDATE and also to dumbcisco), who has pointed out this post from LGF: BBC Prisoner Sob Story Hides Terrorist Facts.

The post refers to this BBC story by Martin Patience, Palestinians back prisoner release call, featuring a Palestinian woman imprisoned by the Israelis. The BBC story simply says, “Mr Houdaly says his wife, Ataf, 44, headed a women’s organisation dedicated to providing health services for poor Palestinians.” LGF says:

Notice that Mr. Houdaly doesn’t say—and the BBC apparently doesn’t care—why his wife is imprisoned. They don’t even tell us her full name.

You have to search Google’s cache to find out who his wife really is, and why she’s in an Israeli jail, but it’s very probable that this man’s wife is an Islamic Jihad terrorist who planned to execute a suicide bombing by detonating a car bomb in Jerusalem in 1987, and was jailed for 10 years.

Charles Johnson of LGF then provides links.

Quite apart from the wife, what of the husband? The BBC story says,

Mr Houdaly knows more than most about imprisonment.

Apart from his wife, Mr Houdaly was himself jailed for 12 years for being a political organiser.

To me, that statement cries out for some supplementary questions. What sort of politics, exactly? Did your charge sheet actually say “being a political organiser”, Mr Houdaly? Did Mr Houdaly’s charge sheet actually say “being a political organiser”, Mr Israeli Government Spokesman?

UPDATE: I went looking myself. I found enough to convince me that the usual transcription of Mr Houdaly’s name is Walid al-Hodali. This article by Gideon Levy, in French, made me more sympathetic to both Mr and Mrs Hodali. It says that they had promised each other never again to get involved in the activities that got them into prison.

But what was he imprisoned for? Gideon Levy’s article is coy, diminishing my burst of sympathy. It only says, “Les années 1990-2002, Walid Hodali les a passées dans une prison israélienne, pour atteintes à la sécurité pendant la première Intifada.” That means “undermining security during the first Intifada.” I kept looking.

According to this link from the French language site of the Palestine Information Centre:

The authorities of the “Israeli” occupation freed a leader of Hamas after fifteen years of captivity.
June 24, 2005, 01:10

Ramallah – CPI

The “Israeli” occupation authorities have freed on Wednesday the leader of the Hamas movement Sheikh Sami Yousef Hussein, a resident of the Jalazon refugee camp in the village of Ramallah, after fifteen years in captivity.

The inhabitants of the camp organised a big party to receive the liberated Sheik at the entrance to the camp and brandished green banners and Palestinian flags.

Sheikh Sami was arrested on 4 February 1990, accused of being a member of the armed wing of Hamas and of having attempted to kidnap a soldier in order to exchange him for Palestinian prisoners, in cooperation with Sheikh Fuad Al-Hodali and his brother Walid.

Emphasis and translation mine. If Mr Hodali was himself a would-be kidnapper of an Israeli soldier, that is something I would expect to be told by the BBC when hearing about his feelings as the husband of a woman imprisoned by the Israelis – particularly when what prompted the story was the kidnapping of another Israeli soldier.

UPDATE: Google cache of same story in English here.

UPDATE: Gideon Levy article about Walid Hodali in English here.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

“Violence before diplomacy in Gaza”, says the BBC.

Violence moves faster than negotiation. Now that Israel has its tanks in Gaza, military force will drown out everything else until Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decides that his business there is done.

“Now that Israel has its tanks in Gaza…” Everything was just peachy before? Two Israeli soldiers were killed and one was kidnapped in a totally non-violent manner?

Standard stuff. But this next bit is just so weird.

Palestinians feel very uncomfortable about splits, and are always conscious of the pressure and power radiating from Israel.

Palestinians, you see, are like Counsellor Troi, only not with that dress.

Captain, I sense a great mass of … Israelis – the pressure – the power, radiating out – I can’t bear it…

• Two handfuls. First off, hat tip to USS Neverdock. Hat particularly tipped because I nearly got this one myself. On Tuesday morning I saw a story on Ceefax saying that demonstrations against rendition flights at Scottish airports have attracted “just a handful of protesters”. I was, I really was, going to do a quick post praising the BBC. We have often complained here that titchy demos get disproportionate coverage so long as they are for favoured BBC causes, and here was an example of a titchy demo for a favoured BBC cause being reported as titchy. Only when I looked again the story was different. I hadn’t written anything down, and, you know how it is, ordinary life intervened and the post never got done.

  However USS Neverdock followed the same story on the web, and has screenshots.

  Incidentally, 30 demonstrators at one airport and six at another is still titchy.

• “A life in power” indeed. An anonymous commenter writes:
  

  Beeb’s puff piece on Kenneth Kaunda:

  Kenneth Kaunda: A life in power

  A more balanced account from Wikipedia here:

  Kenneth Kuanda

  To the point.

• Max comments regarding this story: Israel soldier’s family wait for news .
  

  After misspelling the name of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit as ‘Shilat’ no less than seven times in the same article, the BBC’s Martin ‘I take cookery class lessons from terrorists’ Patience inserts a bit of agenda:

  “A mayor from a nearby Palestinian village paid a visit to the family to show his support.”

  Since there are no Palestinian villages nearby, one has to assume that Martin ‘Israeli drones would love to see what I can see’ Patience might refer to the Christian Arab village of Me’ilya (not sure if it’s spelled correctly in English) 2 kilometers down the road from Mitspe Hilla – where he’s ‘reporting’ from. For BBC reporters Arab Israeli citizens are Palestinians. Also, he doesn’t bother to identify this village by name; too difficult to spell I suppose.

  Then again I guess that for someone who writes that “Gilad’s older brother, a university student in the nearby city of Haifa [approx. 60 kilometers away]..” accuracy is not a priority.