The BBC considers Palestinians in Gaza to be unique among the peoples of the world. They, and they alone, are too “controversial” to be worthy of humanitarian aid at a time of extraordinary crisis. Blankets for children whose homes were destroyed in the middle of winter; food parcels for families with virtually no means of […]
Saturday, January 10, 2009
“Israeli forces pound targets…” (AP)
What, you mean this?
Oh, no, you mean this:
United Nations News Centre, January 8, 2009:
The Israeli operation has so far killed 758 people in Gaza, of whom 257 were children and 56 women, with 3,100 wounded, 1,080 of them children and 452 women, according to Palestinian reports cited as credible by […]
So, the prospect of Sarah Palin with nuclear weapons has been averted, at least for the next four years. There was a wailing and gnashing of teeth from the lunatic far right of America who are still terrified that a communist Islamist terrorist is going to take away their God-given right to shoot wild animals […]
Saturday, November 1, 2008
I can’t speak, read or write Welsh, so I haven’t got the slightest idea what gyfieithu means. Neither did Swansea council when they put up this bilingual road sign:
From the BBC:
When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.
Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council […]
Friday, September 12, 2008
Another 9/11 anniversary. Three thousand dead. A terrible tragedy. A horrific crime.
Five and a half years into the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a million dead, give or take a hundred thousand or so. So much destroyed, so many dead they have to be counted by survey like voters in an opinion poll. No […]
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
On August 13, ITN’s John Ray was arrested while covering a protest in Beijing:
Police in Beijing roughed up and detained a British journalist after he covered a Free Tibet protest close to the city’s main Olympic zone earlier today.
The incident appeared to be the clearest breach yet of the host nation’s promise of free media […]
This blog is a disgrace. I haven’t posted a single thing since May. I was tired. Sorry! There may or may not be some sporadic posting this month, but I’m now on holiday so I might not do anything much at all. Normal (i.e. equally irregular) posting should resume in August.
But for today, a look […]
With all the Tibet furore, I missed the release of the BBC World Service poll (PDF) measuring views on the positive and negative influence of various countries around the world. The BBC leads with the United States. Not surprisingly, I’m more interested in China. But Americans might be disturbed to know that the world thinks […]
There is some anger being expressed by Chinese citizens about foreign media reporting on the Tibet protests and violence. To a certain extent it is justified. Showing pictures of Nepali security forces beating Tibetan protesters and labeling those pictures as Chinese violence is at best sloppy, at worst a lie. And I keep wondering why […]
An unusual way to learn English:
Could this have been made anywhere but Japan?