NetRunner
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Member Since: 2006-08-05
Favorite Sift: I'm Voting Republican! - You'll Get What You Deserve!
Last Power Points used: 2008-08-12 • Available: now
Max Power Points: 2
Favorite Sift: I'm Voting Republican! - You'll Get What You Deserve!
Last Power Points used: 2008-08-12 • Available: now
Max Power Points: 2
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^ It's web only. http://www.therealnews.com/
Ahh thanks. They seem to always have kinda a liberal edge, and im more a libritarian. But I remembering watching an interview on BBC and liked the idea of it being non-big business funded. Makes me wonder where they money is coming from though.
Man, I was a news junkie for years, I picked it up from my grandfather. I was one of those guys who sat and watched BBC News 24, all day long, changing over to the ITV news to see their take on the same stories. All I ever watched on TV was News and Star Trek.
I remember the exact moment when BBC News started to change and go the way of American news. It was in 2003, when David Kelly, the british UN weapons expert was found dead in a forest near his home. Just a couple of days previous, I had watched the entire live 2 hour cross examination of David Kelly in front of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, as he completely tore holes in the dossier that the UK government had put forward claiming that Saddam had WMD. I had been following the whole story in impeccable detail, online, on TV, bookmarking everything I could, and I had been looking forward to seeing David Kelly appear in front of the committee.
Anyone who watched it live was completely blown away by it, it couldn't have been any more dramatic. The government totally shot themselves in the foot. That night on the news, the BBC got stuck right into Tony Blair and the UK government and they continued to do so for the next couple of days, exposing all the lies about the Iraq war. It seemed finally that we were going to get the whole truth, and David Kelly was the key to the whole thing.
Then David Kelly was found dead, an alleged suicide. The same day the government went on the offensive against the BBC, people in the BBC were sacked over the next few weeks, government mouthpieces started appearing on all the TV news programmes shouting down presenters and acting very very strange indeed.
That is the exact moment when it changed. The BBC started becoming very very dumbed down very very quickly. Reports on the Israel/Palestine conflict became very watered down, that was when I really knew that the government had gagged the BBC (also happened in the 80s when Thatcher was in power during the Falklands war). The only decent reports were hour long specials broadcast at 1am or 2am, the normal daily news became a joke. Even the presenters were changed.
Within a year, the ITV News (Independent TV news in the UK), which had been reporting very consistently about the whole debacle ceased broadcasting.
Now the House of Lords - very little of what goes on in there is ever covered on the news. To see it you have to watch the live broadcasts on the Parliament channel (which I don't get any more cos I cancelled my cable a few months ago). It's where law is made, the house of commons is the showpiece for the public. All the stuff they decide in the commons has to go to the Lords where it is actually discussed at a very high level of detail and intelligence before it can be made law. The Lords also recommend what the UK prime minister should be saying to foreign presidents during state visits, a good example was when Blair was going to Russia and the Lords wanted him to confront the Russians about old KGB type activity rearing its head again - fascinating stuff, not a bit of it was ever on the normal news.
The Lords are probably the most well versed people on the history of Europe you could possibly meet. It is an education watching them debate sensibly and intelligently without all the pomp and drama you get on the TV news. They have bloodlines going way way back, they are soaked in the history of Britain and Europe. (Tony Blair near the end of his term even made moves to get rid of the Lords altogether when he wanted to get his 48 days detention without trial bill passed into law, the BBC actually started running hit pieces on the Lords, another sign that the BBC had changed)
Anyway, the point is, the Lords are a bit jumpy about stuff like this, and I'm sure it won't have gotten past them. Someone will have raised it for discussion. Obama making speeches in Israel about fighting extremism is very dangerous for Britain because I have watched discussions about the oppression of Palestine in the Lords and how delicately it has to be handled because the UK is an ally of the US which is an ally of Israel. Following that up with an event reminiscent of a British coronation more than a US presidential acceptance speech will really be ringing alarm bells.
I hope you're following my line of thinking, I'm brainstorming it all right out in full flow...
To Americans, these events will be soaked in pride, hope and patriotism, there is nothing wrong with that.
But to a British politician or to the Lords who have reign over the politicians, it paints a very different picture. It's one thing when Luther King makes speeches about civil rights in this way, it's another when Obama talks about uniting forces against extremism, and even goes as far as talking about Iranian nukes. That's the language of fear, that's the kicker, that's the alarm bell - and I mean that in the most literal sense, this language of fear is one of the things Winston Churchill warned about in the tomes of books he wrote after WW2, about how the world must avoid the same thing happening again, and how he regretted that Britian didn't move sooner against Germany.
These are very specific things contained in Obama's speeches, and I really don't know what to make of it. I think you should be thankful that at least somebody in American media saw this from a perspective of history. WW2 is very fresh in the minds of people in England, the country is soaked in the history of that war in every town and city and bit of countryside and Obama's words are very potent and a bit scary to be frank in that context.
That's why I say it's all about persepective, and what makes it frightening is that Obama's speechwriters couldn't have made it any more potent in the context of WW2.
Phew.
In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Are you, as your name implies, from Ireland?
I'm definitely curious on your take as to why the House of Lords would have an objection to what Obama said in Israel, or the fact that he plans on giving a speech to 75,000 campaign volunteers at his nomination (different from inauguration, BTW).
I did a couple searches of BBC News's site, and it seemed to generally be reporting positive reactions in the UK and elsewhere to Obama's trip. Is the UK media as distorted as the US's these days?
Here, there's already a meme forming about how this trip is going to hurt Obama domestically.
In reply to this comment by Irishman:
http://politics.videosift.com/video/Obamas-Speech-Something-the-Fuehrer-would-have-done
In regards to this, I think it's important that this stuff be posted, sifted, and discussed. I'm not into posting stuff that I personally believe or subscribe to. I'm quite the opposite, I post stuff because I want to know what people think so I can get a big brainstorm of commentary. I don't know what to make of it, but I have an excellent knowledge of WW2 and whether intentional or not this is resonates with that history and is very dangerous ground for Obama and America to be on.
To be absolutely honest with you, I wouldn't be surprised if this and the Israel visit are items for discussion in the House of Lords in the UK.
In regards to this, I think it's important that this stuff be posted, sifted, and discussed. I'm not into posting stuff that I personally believe or subscribe to. I'm quite the opposite, I post stuff because I want to know what people think so I can get a big brainstorm of commentary. I don't know what to make of it, but I have an excellent knowledge of WW2 and whether intentional or not this is resonates with that history and is very dangerous ground for Obama and America to be on.
To be absolutely honest with you, I wouldn't be surprised if this and the Israel visit are items for discussion in the House of Lords in the UK.
In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Is the point here to show how misleading and offensive this is, or to take something mediamatters.org highlighted as misleading and offensive and try to perpetuate it?
Do you really think giving a political speech in front of lots of people makes you a Nazi? Usually acceptance speeches happen before crowds of 20,000 or so. What's the cutoff number for Nazification?
Does that mean Martin Luther King became a Nazi for his I Have a Dream speech, which he gave before 200,000 people?
Moving the venue to a football ground and filling it with 75,000 'adoring fans' does have the whiff of fanatacism about it.
I'm sure many Europeans will see this event echoing 1930s Germany.
I think it's right that this be raised and discussed. Obama's speech in Israel followed by this event is sending out a very particular type of message.
It's not about what I personally think, it's about the alarm bells that this kind of stunt rings around the rest of the world. It's about perception.
In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Is the point here to show how misleading and offensive this is, or to take something mediamatters.org highlighted as misleading and offensive and try to perpetuate it?
Do you really think giving a political speech in front of lots of people makes you a Nazi? Usually acceptance speeches happen before crowds of 20,000 or so. What's the cutoff number for Nazification?
Does that mean Martin Luther King became a Nazi for his I Have a Dream speech, which he gave before 200,000 people?
Great channel by the way!
http://www.videosift.com/video/John-McCain-Blames-Barack-Obama-For-high-Price-Of-Gas
In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Unfortunately, it's a dupe: http://www.videosift.com/video/When-the-Earth-has-a-case-of-the-Humans