Saturday Live on the 16th had an interesting little report. (about 0945)…all the way from the delightful People’s Republic of North Korea.
John McCarthy hears about the Arirang or Mass Games in North Korea’s capital Pongyang; a dazzling display by thousands of marching, dancing, skipping, gymnastics and… flip charts. He talks to visitors to the games photographer Jeremy Hunter, former diplomat James Hoare and tourist Tony Pletts.
Fascinating what an upbeat little tale we have about one of the cruellest regimes in the world from the BBC….
We are witnessing an ‘ amazing stage, an incredible event….there is something here that these people have got, this system has got….the minders are really really wonderful…you only get to see what they want you to see but you really do get a sense of what life is like for Koreans…picnics and dances at the weekend….an element of Disney involved….it makes you appreciate just how different life could be from the life you lead at home….absolutely a thumbs up to go see one of the great spectacles of the world’
Curious how different is the BBC’s approach to that they take when reporting from Israel….possibly the only true democracy in the Middle East, a highly successful, modern progressive country which has succeeded despite being under constant attack for over 60 years.
Israel is a savage and oppressive regime whilst North Korea is somewhat like Disneyland?
Whodathunk?
Human rights in North Korea are heavily restricted. There is no right to free speech, and the only radio, television, and news providers that are deemed legal are those operated by the government.[1][2] It is estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 political prisoners are detained in concentration camps, where they perform forced labour and risk summary beatings, torture and execution.
The following section is a direct quote from the United Nation’s Human Rights Resolution 2005/11 referring specifically to occurrences in North Korea:
| Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, public executions, extra judicial and arbitrary detention, the absence of due process and the rule of law, imposition of the death penalty for political reasons, the existence of a large number of prison camps and the extensive use of forced labour;
All-pervasive and severe restrictions on the freedoms of thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association and on access of everyone to information, and limitations imposed on every person who wishes to move freely within the country and travel abroad; Continued violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women, in particular the trafficking of women for prostitution or forced marriage, ethnically motivated forced abortions, including by labour inducing injection or natural delivery, as well as infanticide of children of repatriated mothers, including in police detention centres and labour training camps. |
It was presumably a special treat for Billy Bragg, to make the old Stalinist feel even more at home.
Billy’s right at home in the BBC retirement rest home for washed up musicians and Labour politicians…and he was on again yesterday…there’s no escape….BB…Billy Bragg or Big Brother?
Must be confusing for the Beeb, though. In North Korea people have to choose from 28 approved socialist hair styles (see http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1103&MainCatID=11&id=20130223000071). But – and how shocking – the women’s heads are uncovered, rather than “adorned” with a niqab / scarf / burkha / Darth Vader outfit.
In keeping with his standard procedure, I’m sure Billy Bragg’s visit to North Korea would involve him spending the whole trip in Seoul, while frantically filing dispatches about how wonderful the People’s Republic is.
‘…it makes you appreciate just how different life could be from the life you lead at home….absolutely a thumbs up to go see one of the great spectacles of the world…’
I seem to recall that George Bernard Shaw enjoyed a similarly impressive trip to Stalin’s USSR in 1931.
I accidentally switched on BBC World on TV. They have a weird feature about Cuba, with the BBC’s usual Cuba love, and praise for Comrade Castro.
I featured a book fair in Havana of Mexican printed books. According to the BBC because of the Nasty American blockade the poor Cubans have no books to read. It also noted how well educated Cubans were, well how could they be if they have no books.
Anyway the Beeb reporter gushed when she said how many people had turned up to this book fair. However it looked like a lot less people than would turn up to my local Waterstones on a Saturday morning.
The Beeb reporter did say that most of the books normally available were about Marx, Fidel and Che. But it was all the fault of those evil Americans you see.
But they never asked the question why in this Socialist paradise didn’t Uncle Fidel print books that people wanted read and that the proletariat of Cuba had to rely on the books from evil capitalists of Mexico.
You can’t read Game of Thrones in Cuba I take it?
Didn’t the Beeb’s beloved Che oversee the burning of thousands of books . .
And running prison camps, murdering homosexuals, and thinking that black people were lazy, didn’t wash, and like animals.
It’s becoming a growing trend with the “British” militant left on YouTube, to screech “Neo Nazi” at anyone badmouthing their beloved BBC…
Perhaps this is a big thankyou to them, courtesy of the license payer…
Well the two countries, UK and North Korea, share the same model of TV ownership. That you must register it with the state, and pay a tax on ownership, or be liable to go to prison!
I’ll post this here as well, because, let’s face it, who will now look that far down the Open Thread…
Richard Bacon shows his true Beeboid colours.
It has already been discussed here how Bacon’s interview with ageing rocker Johnny Marr revealed how the former Smiths guitarist’s anti-David Cameron remarks had booking editors across the BBC from QT to Newsnight scrambling to get him on their shows.
The point of note here is the way that Beeboids and Bacon in particular are so desperate to have their hero on side politically. Bacon pushed Marr to agreee with the idea that his music was ‘working class’. Marr – quite sensibly – was a little evasive.
The Smiths were of course the very archetype STUDENT band.
Morissey’s angsty self-obsessed whining and his memorable appearance on TOTP with hearing aide and bunch of flowers down the back of his trousers were hardly the marks of a working class pop movement.
The Smiths never had a single that charter higher than number 10 and would open shows with Sergei Prokofiev’s Montagues and Capulets.
Definitely “Gown” and definitely not “Town”.
But how revealing of Bacon’s archetypal Beeboid background and thinking – the public school lefty playing at being working class.
Ironic but their best tune was ‘hang the DJ ‘ apt methinks .
As false as those BBC ‘dramas’ when they try to portray the working class, football hooligans or anyone else who doesn’t inhabit their bubble. Authentic they ain’t, with the odd exception e.g. Jimmy McGovern.
It is not often I am shocked by the warped antics of the BBC, but in this instance I really am. I have linked this biased BBC article to my new political FB page, and encouraged readers to officially complain: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Paul-Weston/203157736494118
Truly astonishing – and frightening.
I like your f/b page, well done.
Thanks Demon. It is just a stopgap whilst the new Political party goes through the Electoral Commission registration process. Having said that though, I had no idea (I am a dinosoar) about how powerful FB could be when it comes to linking to important articles.
This article should please them too.
If only such camps could exist in Britain for those who have the temerity to speak out as their towns are transformed in to crime-ridden Third World slums!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9894275/North-Korea-expanding-gulags-satellite-images-show.html
BBC reporter on the subject of Pakistan:
– when asked “Do you still think this is a country of terrorists?”
“I never did,” said Lyse Doucet, “And certainly don’t now.”
Funny how that old balanced view and seeing both sides sometimes suddenly goes out of the window and the BBC reporter becomes emphatic about her subject.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-21578516
Perhaps she doesn’t read all the news?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21585291
A policeman giving protection to an anti-polio programme in Pakistan has been shot dead, police say.
Funny how the BBC never mentions the number of asylum seekers Pakistan produces. Australia is taking in 7000 of them.
http://zeenews.india.com/news/south-asia/australia-offers-asylum-to-pakistans-2-500-shia-f_830591.html
I don’t think he went there. He went to an exhibition of photographs at a gallery near the studio and spoke to the photographer who had been to these games. The whole thing sounded bonkers, frankly.
I quote from above…
“We are witnessing an ‘ amazing stage, an incredible event….there is something here that these people have got, this system has got….the minders are really really wonderful…you only get to see what they want you to see but you really do get a sense of what life is like for Koreans…”
Does this pillock REALLY not understand what he’s saying ? He’s only allowed to see what they want him to see, and they want him to see picnics, dances, etc. And as a keen reporter, what did you do to look behind THAT facade ?
Oh, and I guess picnics and tea dances is what they’d show you, because, come dark, if you’ve ever seen the pictures from satellites – the lights are definitely out over North Korea… but then again, these things, the huge expenditure by the government on nuclear arms whilst its population is starving, etc. really are unknown to the rest of the world. Even China is losing patience with this country – but you were allowed to see picnics and dances, eh ?
H
Went to the Communism Museum in Prague last summer with the kids.
Very chilling in that it remains the one country that has not had to be rewritten…just added numbers of dead , with a Google earth picture or two that confirms all that that regime stands for.
Truly evil and indefensible. Guess therefore who alone will do so…our BBC, on our money! They alone…include the Morning Star possibly?
Still, not to worry eh, the BBC continues to be the Comedy Store-especially when in its “confused and splenetic” mode.
As witnessed in Today this morning.
The Italians have only stuck that quisling creature of the EU into the recycling bin of history…and filling very rapidly, thank the Lord.
And the dreaded Silvio is heading their way with a rose between his teeth and some hair dye to share…all those Tony pictures won`t stay in the archive now…for shame.
And one “big party” led by a Tarby type figure-well his 100 MPs or so were candidates sometimes only after 5 or so people nominated them online for a laugh.
Imagine then all those liberal Italian journos that the BBC have on speed dial…and not one of them able to tell us the first thing about the “runners and riders” and how this will all play out in the farty spacesuit of Von Rumpy or Mandy O!
Cue lots of flannel and bluster…reminded me of the closing stage of “Pig”…
er..well.er…
as the sinking Pound once said-blagged no doubt-“the people have spoken-the bastards!”
Can I be you candidate people…I sense there`s plenty “stars” on this site who will follow the Vance, and not let bloody Russell-Brand-Howard anywhere near the corridors of power!
That`ll do Pig,,,that`ll do!
Hey, hands of Silvio – he’s Murdoch with a funny accent. I’d swap him for Cameron any day. At least we would have better parties.
I’ve suddenly realised that “bbc” stands for 2 interchangeable phrases
Bring Back Communism
and
Bring Back the Caliphate
“North Korean parents ‘eating their own children’ after being driven mad by hunger in famine-hit pariah state”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269094/North-Korean-parents-eat-children-driven-mad-hunger-famine-hit-pariah-state.html#ixzz2M0iwN4PF
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
He has seen the future… and it works!
‘…you really do get a sense of what life is like for Koreans…picnics and dances at the weekend….an element of Disney involved’
I imagine that was what Leni Reifenstahl was going for with Triumph of the Will?
Still, I can’t wait to here a North Korean Mouseketeer get their tongue round ‘Pirates of the Caribbean:)
So ronry… I’m so ronry…
” ‘…you really do get a sense of what life is like for Koreans…picnics and dances at the weekend….an element of Disney involved’ ”
Guest Who, if you’d bothered to listen to the actual programme you’d realise that Alan is taking selective quotes, on different subjects, and then stringing them together to be deliberately misleading.
But good little sheep that you are; you believe everything he says.
Baaa…
I was ignoring the Turing Machine assault, which mercifully has run out of budget or been seen to be another investment in foot-in-mouth Cobaining.
But this latest from the returning raft of unpaid-but-its-OK-as-the–BBC-is-unique-here-too work experience kindergarden is simply too good to avoid keeping smouldering a while longer.
‘taking selective quotes, on different subjects, and then stringing them together to be deliberately misleading.’
No, Dez. Alan was passing on what the BBC wrote. At least I think he did, as what he quoted and the link I went to seems to have changed subsequently. Not another BBC retroactive ‘evolution’ surely?
I however did with mine engage in a bit of an edit, true. Not to really change the inherent idiocy, but to serve my narrative.
Now if you want to discuss taking selective quotes and then stringing them together to be deliberately misleading… how’s about this one?:
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/trust-upholds-complaint-against-bbc-news-over-inaccurate-tweet
‘The BBC’s view was that “the short headline was an accurate summary of the report to which it had linked”.
The ESC concluded : “The BBC’s view was not accepted by the Committee…’
All yours for £145.50pa by compulsion Dez.
That, and all other BBC comfort in the belief of what the BBC comes out with is what you appear to swallow Dez.
Along with, speaking of ovine following, the three others who hang on your every commentary dag here.
Humbug.
pity the beeboids couldn’t paint the same sympathetic picture when dealing with Israel and those nasty jooz
North Korean is well known for its organised spectacles.
That doesnt mean its not a crazy dictatorship which starves and oppresses its people.
If you actually listened to the report you might realise how silly this post is. Pathetic.
‘‘ amazing stage, an incredible event….there is something here that these people have got, this system has got….the minders are really really wonderful…you only get to see what they want you to see but you really do get a sense of what life is like for Koreans…picnics and dances at the weekend….an element of Disney involved….it makes you appreciate just how different life could be from the life you lead at home….absolutely a thumbs up to go see one of the great spectacles of the world’.
If any of that is misquoting the broadcast, perhaps you can make the effort to correct it and we can debate from there. Otherwise you are wasting your time (and ours).
North Korea is a workers paradise.
This country should be like it.
Then the BBC wonders why China is blocking its transmissions:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9893531/BBC-accuses-Beijing-of-extensive-jamming-of-World-Service.html
They know propaganda when they see it.
There’s a delicious, if perverse irony to that.
Maybe the Chinese should tell the BBC they can broadcast whatever they like, but first pay a fee, and have it all run through a filter as well in case any redactions are suggested before serving up an ‘enhanced’ version that suits?
Just like the BBC offers… sorry, gets to impose on the UK public.
Quoting Mr Horrocks, Director of BBC Global News, from the article…
“The deliberate and co-ordinated efforts by authorities in countries such as China and Iran illustrate the significance and importance of the role the BBC undertakes to provide impartial and accurate information to audiences around the world.”
Whoa – run that past me again….?
I have the (mis-) fortune to have viewed BBC’s World Service in action during many times in my many trips abroad (in countries where it may even be one of only two or three English-language channels available to view). Even CNN comes across as more balanced in its programming.
If anything, BBC World is even more left-wing than BBC UK. In particular, many of its ‘panel’ news programmes are so heavily left-wing-orientated, it is almost impossible to discern any iota of ‘balanced’ or ‘impartial’ representation of the news.
What he means is that the BBC will occasionally report errors or uncool things done by the Chinese or Iranian government, things they’d rather not have their citizens worry about. That’s pretty much it. Of course, it’s more than their state-controlled media will do, so it’s an important task worth doing.
It’s a shame that the US version is so the exact opposite.
‘The BBC website has also been blocked intermittently in the country since 1998
A bit like it gets blocked here by the BBC then?
http://merovee.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/redact.jpg
‘The months meld into each other…’
But then, it was a different time.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01qy5p6/Look_North_(North_East_and_Cumbria)_26_02_2013/
Nice sickeningly one-sided report on the “Bedroom Tax” (first report), constantly referred to as the “so-called” “Bedroom Tax”. The ‘journalist’ even manages to get in a new one: “Nasty Tax”, as in “Pasty Tax”.
“Fascinating what an upbeat little tale we have about one of the cruellest regimes in the world from the BBC….”
Typical little Alan misdirection:
It wasn’t about the regime; it was about the Arirang Games.
Do you really not understand the difference?
The usual sea of ellipses, which for some reason missed out:
“…pressure put on them by their parents to be be part of the performance because of the fact that in the end they probably get more food rations”
“They remind you of great displays [such as] the Nazi’s in Germany”
“One is very conscious this is a very militarised society”
“Pixel by pixel; human by human…”
“The Triumph of the Will is alive and kicking in North Korea”
^^^^^
licence payers money being put to good use by beeboid on night shift
He loves all regimes that opress their citizens.
‘If any of that is misquoting the broadcast, perhaps you can make the effort to correct it and we can debate from there. Otherwise you are wasting your time (and ours). ‘
Why don’t you actually make the effort to listen to the segment and you will then hear that Alan did indeed stick some quotes together and that it misleads.
Go listen to it and then comment. To suggest the report is the BBC saying ‘North Korea is somewhat like Disneyland’ is just really weak.
Still waiting for you to go ahead and correct Alan’s quotes. For the record, as it were.
‘Guest Who says:
No, Dez. Alan was passing on what the BBC wrote. At least I think he did, as what he quoted and the link I went to seems to have changed subsequently. Not another BBC retroactive ‘evolution’ surely?’
Nope, he wasn’t quoting what the BBC wrote, and the link hasn’t changed. Its still the same programme. Alan’s quote still looks same too, but if its changed that can hardly be a BBC ‘evolution’.
I really think this one is as simple as; BBC say N.Korean parade is nice =
Hello Hachi –
I simply didn’t recognise what Alan linked to since the first time. Are you saying the BBC never changes story content under a link subsequently?
As to sticking some quotes together that mislead, get caught, denied, denied and denied, any thoughts on how the world’s most trusted broadcaster gets to do it and get away with it?
Fail to paste a quote from yourself taking the BBC to task, with their reply, for much more serious compromises than any Alan may have made, and you simply peg yourself as a new name on a very tired roster.
ps: Makes things easier to track if you click the ‘reply’ link
The link is to a programme which can be listened to.
I’m not saying the BBC never changes story content under a link subsequently, just that it didn’t in this case, and nor did Alan.
Anyway, the programme is there for anyone who wishes to listen to it and make up their own minds.
p.s. thanks for the tip.
= BBC praises N.Korean.
Just heard PM tonight.
Apparently all that “democracy stuff and such” is for the birds really.
So last century!
So it is that we get some northern corespondent telling us that the likes of Manchester and Newham are the best of all possible worlds for out futures.
One Party states within states. Splendid-and the governing, unbudgeable party in both cases is the….?…oh go on, the Party of niceness, revolutionary passions and..just “good eggs”.
So why spoil a perfectly civil chat by going down to that horrid booth with that stubby pencil,,,don`t know where it`s been, and there`s so scary people out there!
No-leave it to Ed, Ed, Eddie, Yvette, Herman, Chris, Purnell, Barossa…..
Only though to say this as I read a few comments from Pyongyang poodles up above…they`ll be Labour!
Guessing Dennis Rodman will soon be on the BBC multi-hundred k commentary roster soon then? Maybe the Foreign Affairs beat? Look out Mark Urban.