Monthly Archives: November 2006

K Havakoz writes:

Found this today at
link

“Polls revealed religion as a striking predictor of voting behaviour – the more often a voter attended church, the more likely they were to vote for President Bush, by a wide margin. That is not a good thing in a nation where more than 90% believe in God.”

regards,

K. Havakoz

On similar lines, Will and others have pointed out a piece by Justin Webb.

But in rural America he (Bush) looks at home, and somehow less goofy, less jarring.

In the car park after the Georgia event the locals drifted off to do whatever Georgians do at night (pray I guess), knowing that the Republicans have a fight on their hands but still confident that it can be turned round.

They have not given up and many really do believe in miracles…

UPDATE: Nigel Holland comments that “The first linked article has been edited, it now reads “In a nation where more than 90% believe in God, that is not a good thing for the Democrats.”

included an appeal for help with the so-called ‘honour’ killing of Naziat Khan by her husband, Zafar Iqbal, who is thought to be on the run in Pakistan.

Part of the appeal included a background piece about the nature of so-called ‘honour’ crimes in Britain’s minority communities, explaining that such backward attitudes pervade all ages, which was demonstrated with several vox pop clips of younger Asian British males expressing their views on family honour.

One of the men shown was particularly forthright in the lengths he would go to in this regard, and said, I recall, words to the effect that ‘and you can quote me’ on that. Strangely, in his case, the Beeboids blurred out his face, so he managed to spread his evil views without of course being able to be held responsible for what he said, either by his family, community or the local constabulary.

included this one liner:

“Two Palestinian women are killed in an Israeli siege at a mosque in Gaza”

…which is a stunningly one-sided abridgement of the story. Turning to the World page on BBC Views Online for instance, we see a more accurate summary of events:

Gaza women end mosque stand-off

A siege at a Gaza mosque ends after the gunmen inside escape by mingling in a human shield of women.

When BBC News Twenty-Bore finally got round to their full report of the story it was introduced with:

“Two Palestinian women are reportedly killed…”

…just another word omitted from the headline version, natch.

The BBC’s Paul Reynolds, who has occasionally commented here, has written an article entitled, “Pentagon gears up for new media war.” Towards the end, it says:

A cautionary tale comes from the Vietnam War. There, the war was lost when viewers in the living room realised what was happening on the battlefield. No amount of spin could change it. The turning point in the media war came when the veteran CBS News presenter, Walter Cronkite, went to Vietnam after the Tet offensive in 1968. He came back and declared that there was “stalemate”.

Pete in London comments:

No, the war wasn’t lost when viewers in the living room realised what was happening on the battlefield. The war was lost when Walther Cronkite and others lied to obscure what was happening on the battlefield. This was covered in here on the 19th and 20th October, following Bush remarks apparently likening Iraq to the Tet Offensive (again, another case of skewed reporting by the BBC).

Personally, I’d say it was more likely that Cronkite et al were fooled – fooled with the assistance of their own anti-anti-communist worldview – rather than that they lied, but the result was the same.

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Slightly off B-BBC topic – but why does this story – that someone in Edinburgh jumped on a car bonnet and damaged it – make the BBC news website, when a man beating a woman to death with a mallet does not ? The killing of Deborah Wheatley by Mark Goldstraw in 2001 was only reported by the BBC when Goldstraw was accused of four other killings.

Michael Medved writes:

yet another example of BBC bias: link

The piece is titled “Hezbollah confirms Israel talks” and contains amongst the rest the following passage: “When Hezbollah captured Israeli soldiers in 2000, it took four years before talks succeeded and the soldiers were swapped for some 400 Palestinian and 35 Lebanese prisoners, our correspondent says.”

They conveniently forget to mention those were DEAD soldiers Hezbollah returned. Is it just an omission, or the internal wish of the BBC to see ALL the Israeli soldiers in this condition?

Another bit of information from this article: “The group has offered to exchange the two Israeli soldiers for Arab prisoners in Israel, but Israel has repeatedly refused.”

Perhaps my insufficient mastery of the English language plays a subtle trick on me, but I feel Israel is a villain in this sentence. Indeed, how dare they refuse to justify the hostages’ kidnapping?

Best regards, Michael Medved

Here is how the BBC reported that earlier swap. Back then, too, the BBC seemed to de-emphasise the fact that the Israeli soldiers concerned were dead. That article says, “Each side sent detainees to an air base in Germany, where identities were checked …” despite the fact that there was only one living Israeli “detainee”, the businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum. One does not usually speak of dead bodies as “detainees.”

UPDATE: The Michael Medved whose email sparked off this post writes, “I was (and am) often mistaken for the US talk show host Michael Medved, so I kind of got used to it :-)”

. In typical Neverdock style he writes:

BBC ignoring huge US political scandal, because it involves a Democrat

MSM and the US blogsphere are on fire with Democrat John Kerry’s attack on our troops. The BBC, who report with out fail on any misstep by Bush, are silent on Kerry’s attack. The only mention I could find about the scandal engulfing the Democrats, wasn’t on the front page but, buried on the world page on the editors blog. Even then, the BBC tries to downplay the scandal.

As the president was telling the good people of Texas that the Democrats did not want to win in Iraq, his former rival was in California insulting the troops.

Or so Mr Bush and his spokesman would have us believe.

Well, moron, let’s let Flipper speak for himself.

There’s not much to add to that, other than to note that the Beeboid, Richard Greene, does go on to add:

And when you review Mr Kerry’s comment, it’s hard to argue.

So, Beeboids one and all, just why isn’t this huge Kerry gaffe being covered in your reports of the US mid-term election campaign?