Re: Innocent Brazilian ?

On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 23:39:28 -0700, Hawth Hill <hawthhill@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>Much as I respect your views, Maureen, we don't see this one eye to eye.


As long as it's only this one ! I get enough agro from the far
righters. I don't need any from the dems as well ! :-)

>
>True, Black was rightist, and ultimately proved to be a crook. As for
>Murdoch, well, he's not an ideologue, he's purely and simply a robber baron,
>and will happily rake in the moolah from both sides at once. (He owns the
>Los Angeles Dodgers, and would clearly have no qualms about buying up the
>San Francisco Giants if he could; he'd just get richer; yet any principled
>person knows that the two can't be expected to exist in peace on the same
>planet.)


Rupert Murdoch is undoubtedly a robber baron, but I think you'll find
he is also a far right wing ideologue who pushes his views onto his
staff and onto the public. The content of Fox News is a direct
outgrowth of the views held by its owner: News Corp. and CEO Rupert
Murdoch.

Fox News Channel was launched in 1996 ,"as a specific alternative to
what its founders perceived as a liberal bias in the American
media"(HAHA)


>Despite his ownership of the Times of London that newspaper and the
>Financial Times are, by far, the most reliable in Britain, and the Telegraph
>isn't far behind.



Murdoch also owns The Sun and the tawdry News of the World.

The Telegraph is too right wing for my tastes. They sometimes print
articles that make me cringe. An example that easily comes to mind is
the article in which they accused George Galloway of receiving oil
funds from Saddam Hussein based on some very dubious evidence from the
corrupt Chalabi.


It's interesting to note that the three nations where Murdoch has the
biggest influence in the West are, America, Great Britain, and
Australia. And these are the three nations that led the charge into
Iraq. They were on a completely different tack from the rest of the
world. His Fox News in the US really led the nation astray on WMD and
the relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Two American studies
show that regular viewers of Fox News are among the most uninformed
people in the US.

In Italy, Murdoch owns Sky Italia. They went upstream on the Iraq
issue as well..

The mid-?90s rise to prominence of Murdoch's Weekly Standard to the
Fox Network, helped secure the rise of NeoCons in the US.


>The Guardian often made me ashamed of my tilt toward
>liberalism, and the Independent frequently made me want to barf.



I've read the Guardian most of my life back to when it was the
Manchester Guardian. When I came to Canada I ordered the Weekly
Guardian for years. Nowadays, I skim through it once or twice a week
and read the one or two articles that interest me. There have been
times when I have strongly disagreed with their articles because they
were too rightist for my tastes - but it just reinforced my idea of
the Guardian as unbiased as it was possible to get. I've never been
ashamed of it.

As the world, including Britain has moved to the right, including
Blair, the Guardian is now considered a leftist paper just as I am
considered leftist when at one time I was smack in the middle of the
political continuum.

>
>No kiddin'! Here in the States I'm a staunch lib. In Britain, however, I
>was, to my great surprise, an unrepentant Conservative, (notwithstanding my
>admiration for Tony Blair). I ultimately put it down to the fact that
>Americans and Brits look at the world through much different paradigms than
>I'd ever even begun to realize before going to live in England. My friends
>and relatives there used to talk about this oddity at length, just as I'm
>now doing with friends and former colleagues back here in the States. . . .
>_I_ didn't change. But, the circumstances that I reacted to certainly did.


I believe you. There is no doubt that the States has moved to the far
right under Bush just as Britain has moved to the right with Blair and
Murdoch. It was Murdoch's "The Sun' that is said to have vaulted Blair
to power..



>I saw firsthand for years how the Guardian and the Independent freely
>intermingled factual reporting with op/ed. I saw the same thing on the
>Beeb, and, my Lord, Sky was utterly shameless in this regard; have you ever
>watched the "news" presented by Jon Snow? He is to the right in Britain
>what Hume is to the left here in the States. Jeremy Paxman isn't far behind
>over on the Beeb.
>

>Yet, more important, they also regularly carried programming where one of
>the Dimblebys was the presenter, or where Frost was the host. Those guys
>got it right. (God, I wish that America had a program such as Dimbleby's
>"Question Time" presented every Thursday evening!)



I couldn't agree more . Jonathan Dimbleby and Frost are excellent. I
also enjoyed Dimbleby's father for years on Panorama. He was up
there with the Queen. Everything he reported was considered "truth".
And it usually was except for the one time he caught the whole nation
with an April Fool's story which I fell for like a lemon.


>I love the Brits and Britain, so I'm immensely sad to see how their country
>has deteriorated in so many of the ways that us Yanks have come to admire
>them over the years. As most Brits who I met readily acknowledged the
>society there has coursened and become vulgar that one wouldn't have
>believed possible.


Rupert Murdoch helped .

>
>Yet, I've got to admit that when it comes to practicing Democracy with a
>capital D, they've got us Yanks beat hands down. There the people _will_ be
>heard, much more quickly and effectively than is the case here in the
>States. And, if they're not, they have the means readily at hand to bring
>down their government and install another one.



Perhaps because their democracy has developed over thousands of years
and not over a few hundred like that of the US. And they were exposed
to the government 's BBC 1 for many years, a station that contained
mostly erudite programs . Any propaganda was geared to what was good
for society.

>
>So, I have absolutely no doubt that the Brits will get to the bottom of the
>shooting, and that they'll do whatever can be done to minimize the chances
>that it will happen again. Yet, I read in their Monday morning papers that
>the chief of police is saying that more such shootings will happen; he says
>that Britain's policy regarding such shootings is based upon that developed
>by Israel in response to terrorist bombings in Israel.
>
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1707481,00.html
>

>If I were an Israeli, I think I'd back that policy.


A shoot to kill policy under Sharon led to overkill and horrors
galore. - to the excessive force used by Israelis to kill
Palestinian citizens in their homes, schools, and neighborhoods, and
to the careless destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure.
Sharon's policies have been of targeted assassinations, the use of
helicopter gunships, F16s, and tank missiles to terrorize the
Palestinian population into leaving or into total submission,.


If a shoot to kill policy is used in Britain it will tend to
alienate the Muslim population and increase the violence rather than
temper it. It's important to get the Muslim population on-side to
fight the problem. If there is a "shoot to kill" policy it must be
clearly defined.

The vast majority of Muslims are already on side as British citizens,
except like all of us as well as deploring the violence of extremist
Muslims they also deplore the violence and overkill of Bush and Sharon
- Iraq fueled this to the nth degree. .

The young Brazilian apparently was not wearing a heavy overcoat, but a
jean jacket. He went to work the same way each day. The police were
in plain clothers. The young man did not vault over the barrier in the
Tube station. And yet 7 bullets were shot into his head and one in
his shoulder while he lay supine. Already overkill , but I'm waiting
for the blanks to be filled in.

>
>Let's hope that it never becomes necessary for Americans to find out just
>what our policy would be in similar circumstances. We've already come close
>to it a few times. Remember when jets were scrambled to intercept a private
>plane that intruded into restricted airspace near the Capitol not too long
>ago? The pilot turned out to be just another confused Schmoe, but, I'd not
>have criticized our military had they shot him down if he'd not diverted his
>flight path. Afterwards I read an interview with the pilot that had the
>private plane in his sights, and he made no bones about saying that he'd
>have pulled the trigger without hesitating if he'd been given the order.
>And, in my book, that's as it should be.


I could agree with that.

>
>As I've said before, the Brits _WILL_ get this sorted out, and with as much
>respect for everybody's human rights as is possible under the circumstances.
>Certainly as much as Americans would give. But, at the same time, I'll also
>bet that the policy enunciated this morning by the police chief will stand,
>and that they'll continue to err on the side of protecting large numbers of
>undeniably innocents, even in circumstances where the rights and wrongs of
>the situation can't be clearly known in the blink of an eye.


I'm sure you are right! Still, I don't call what was done to that
Brazilian "erring " on the side of protecting large numbers of people
as things stand right now. The whole incident has a ring of
incompetence to it - incompetence fueled by fear. The police will
perhaps need to be trained in preparing better for these situations.

..
>
>Sorry to differ with you Maureen. I virtually always see you as a beacon of
>truth and enlightenment. I'm sure that in most instances that I'll continue
>to admire you as always.
>
>HH

You are my whopping peach of the day! :-)

maureen


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