tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3272054900018746845.post1408953633257999206..comments2024-01-01T17:21:52.555+00:00Comments on Is the BBC biased?: Talk Like an EgyptianCraighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741318067991857821noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3272054900018746845.post-17245941897880923382013-08-25T17:34:14.223+01:002013-08-25T17:34:14.223+01:00Nabila, I find you biased and insulting towards yo...Nabila, I find you biased and insulting towards your views against General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. I saw the Arabic program last night and you calling him a butcher for slaughtering the muslim brotherhood sit in Rabaa, when you know fully well that these were armed terrorists that killed and shot at the Egyptian Police that stormed the sit in. Shame on people like you twisting the reality and shame on BBC for having a liar like you.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3272054900018746845.post-42245290115227124662013-08-17T22:30:06.268+01:002013-08-17T22:30:06.268+01:00So I think Janet Daley more or less said what I wa...So I think Janet Daley more or less said what I was trying to say. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blogs/michael-j-totten" rel="nofollow">Michael J Totton</a> explains how <i>un</i>moderate the brotherhood is. (Remember Jeremy Bowen's assurances that they were moderates?)<br /><br />Of course if the Egyptian people who voted for the MB knew what they were really like, and the fact that the organisation was outlawed during Mubarak’s reign suggests people knew very well, then I suppose, having been voted in, they possibly <i>did</i> have some sort of mandate, and if so they should have been allowed to pursue their ‘vision’ till it came to some sort of conclusion.<br /> <br />After all, Obama’s version of democracy (<i>I aim to represent all the people, not just those who voted Democrat</i>) could end up being a wishy-washy coalition-like flip-flop. Indecisive and ineffectual. <br />Maybe, in order to be effective, true democracy needs government to be resolute, visionary and principled, all the way to hell if necessary; and then if possible, replaced, by democratic means.<br /><br />Not very likely with the MB in power though. Once installed they would hardly budge, and perhaps, on the principle of a stitch in time, early intervention in the form of a coup was the only way, democracy or no. Short and sharp it is not, and the stitch might have been in time but it doesn’t appear to have saved nine.suehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02693686958796849316noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3272054900018746845.post-67365685431992607492013-08-17T19:22:46.370+01:002013-08-17T19:22:46.370+01:00Yes, I thought Douglas Carswell was uncharacterist...Yes, I thought Douglas Carswell was uncharacteristically off-key there too. <br /><br />Godwin's Law shouldn't prevent us from noting that democratically-elected dictatorships can last indefinitely - unless they are actively resisted. They can prove remarkably resilient, however self-destructive their actions might seem.<br /><br />Just as an extra to the post...<br /><br />Janet Daley said the following about the Western media's reporting, in the wake of its reporting of the anti-Morsi mass protests]: <br /><br />"Suddenly, when the military did step in and take control, there was a revolt against this, a bizarre sort of intellectual turnaround in which we decided that a democratically legitimate government had been displaced.<br /><br />"Democratic legitimacy doesn't come just from being elected. Elections aren't all there is to democracy. Hitler was elected. The fact that you've been elected doesn't mean that you're committed to democratic institutions or the rule of law. <br /><br />"When Morsi got into power he had no mandate to create an Islamist state. That wasn't his democratic mandate, and yet that is what he proceeded to do, and there was huge mass protest about that, as you know, mass demonstrations against that, an the army stepped in to restore order."<br /><br />And Abdallah Homouda added, "I think the argument against the army intervention is like returning us, in this very situation, to the nursery book of politics. The army did not intervene to do anything other than to suspend what was going on... ...I have never defended the army but the army now acted as a bailiff for the will of the Egyptian people to reclaim their country."Craighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08741318067991857821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3272054900018746845.post-43081335034431171842013-08-17T18:21:58.945+01:002013-08-17T18:21:58.945+01:00I didn’t see Dateline, but from your description i...I didn’t see Dateline, but from your description it does sound as though it was unusually ‘biased’ towards the, (shall we call it the <i>sane</i>) point of view, which indicates how unhelpful aspiring to scrupulous impartiality really is. <br /><br />Even though defenders of the BBC would say, (as they frequently did on B-BBC) “you don’t want an unbiased BBC, you want one biased towards YOUR bias” which I don’t actually think <i>is </i>what I want, the BBC still has plenty of chances to make up for it “over time’, which is what it always claims it does.<br /><br />On this occasion, it sounded just what the doctor ordered.<br /><br />One other point - I heard Douglas Carswell the other day expressing a view I’ve heard a lot from various politicians, about democracies and coups. <br />He seemed to be saying that democratically elected governments must always be respected, come what may, and the military intervention was definitely a coup d’etat. That brings to mind Hamas, who were also democratically elected, a grim fact that people never stop reminding each other of, but I'd say that when the elected government “gets off the bus” as the analogy goes, it no longer properly qualifies as representative of the people.<br /><br />Of course <b>if </b>a huge majority wished for Sharia and a strict repressive Islamist regime and were willing to sacrifice the resultant hope of economic recovery, then so be it. But it seems that is not the case. <br />Later I read somewhere that Carswell’s theory included the prediction that if there had been no coup and Morsi’s policies were left to take their course, they would self-destruct ‘democratically’ and somehow that was what he meant all along. <br /><br />Would that that were the case in Iran, or for that matter various other Islamist countries, in the M.E and NA. Their kind of self-destruct doesn’t seem to have many happy endings<br />suehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02693686958796849316noreply@blogger.com