21-08-2003 01:38									#31
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quote: Originally posted by FrustratedPoet I still don't get your point. Unless you really ARE claiming that what you perceive as anti-war sentiment by the BBC is rooted in anti-semetism?

My suspicion is that for whatever reasons they are strongly opposed to the policies of both the Bush and Blair administrations in the middle east. And they are will do whatever they can to hinder those policies. and that includes magnifying the role of a Jew with a high rank in the Bush admin, implying he is pulling the strings - and reminding the viewers as well as they can that the said man IS jewish. Instrumental anti-semitism, if you will. If Wolfowitz were a dove, they would manage to pronounce his name correctly.

	21-08-2003 01:40									#32
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The English anti-semitic?! Never!

	21-08-2003 01:40									#33
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quote: Originally posted by FrustratedPoet quote: It was not clear to the BBC that the deaths of two of the most sadistic mass murderers on the planet was in any way a good thing, It's not clear to me either. I favour trials before executions. Perhaps their murder was unavoidable in the circumstances, and I'm certainly not losing any sleep over it, but that doesn't mean I think it was a "good thing".

The news wasnt "Saddam sons, on way to trial, are killed instead" It was "Saddam sons, previously not found, probably hoping to regain power, are killed" Versus them staying on the loose was it a good thing? Sully thinks it was. BBC thought it wasnt.

	21-08-2003 01:45									#34
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BBC on the north american blackout


via instapundit

"I'm writing from a blackout area, but my power has recently come back on (Ypsilanti, MI). Last night while listening to my wind up radio, on comes the "authoritative" BBC voice. Their headline was that the power outage was causing "chaos" in several American cities. Well, there was no chaos in the Metro Detroit area. Listening for a few hours to the radio revealed no chaos in any American city. People calmly did what they needed to do. There's very little, if any, panic. Seems like the BBC "sexed up" its journalism once again."

	21-08-2003 01:46									#35
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LoTM: so your way to show the defciencies of the BBC is to quote opinion pieces from other publications? (which I must assume you believe to be nonbiased and hence credible, in so far as they are opinion pieces?)

As for Wolfie: that pronounciation makes it sound more German as well (with the w to v switch): Damn anti-Germanic BBC!

As for the actual news: Yeah, some improvement in one city not Kabul well over a year after the war 'ended'! Good "Ol admin. Now, if just so many Afghan Policement weren;t dying in the last few weeks form attacks, the whole things would be great!

	21-08-2003 01:49									#36
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quote: Originally posted by GePap LoTM: so your way to show the defciencies of the BBC is to quote opinion pieces from other publications? (which I must assume you believe to be nonbiased and hence credible, in so far as they are opinion pieces?)

I am of course not relying on the authority of the publications. I am relying on the facts cited. In the course of doing so i attributed were i found the info. Thats considered the proper thing to do when quoting someone. I think i learned that as far back as Stuyvesant.

	21-08-2003 01:50									#37
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Soooooo... it's good to hear Kandahar is doing better...

I almost forgot what this thread was about..

	21-08-2003 01:55									#38
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark If Wolfowitz were a dove, they would manage to pronounce his name correctly.

So wait, by pronouncing his name as if it were German, whom are considered great war-mongers of history, they are really impuning his Jewishness?

	21-08-2003 01:59									#39
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quote: Originally posted by GePap As for the actual news: Yeah, some improvement in one city not Kabul well over a year after the war 'ended'! Good "Ol admin. Now, if just so many Afghan Policement weren;t dying in the last few weeks form attacks, the whole things would be great!

So you had a timetable for how long it should take to improve things in Afghanistan???? Just a few days ago here, one poster stated that Afghan was a "shithole" with the implication that it could never be improved. I dont recall you challenging that. I seem to recall a whole lot of people stating quited confidently that the US would fall into the same disaster as the Soviets did. When this hadnt happened after one year, we were told wait, things didnt go south for the Soviets till after the first year was up. So now its not wait, it takes a year before afghanistan becomes a disaster. Its not even the place is gonna collapse any day now. Its "youve taken 2 whole years and the place doesnt look like Singapore yet"

Yeah im sorry for the afghan cops who died. Brave men, defending their country against terrorists. On the battle line, dying to try to keep their civilian countrymen from being killed. And at least in the first incident they gave as good as they got, taking out a big bunch of the baddies. A couple of hundred baddies are roaming around the mountains somewhere - hope the coalition catches them before they escape to Pakistan. And hope we deal with the Pakistan problem.

And I dont think the admin has played afghan right. I think more funding to the central govt would have helped in speeding the rebuilding of the central admin and diluting the power of the warlords. Instead that money went for tax cuts for the rich. But things ARE improving in Afghanistan,however slowly.

And Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan. Its predominantly Pashtun. Its the home of the Taliban. IF things go well there, Herat and Mazar are not likely to be problems.

If you wish, i will try to post articles about recovery in other parts of afghanistan as well.

	21-08-2003 02:00									#40
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara So wait, by pronouncing his name as if it were German, whom are considered great war-mongers of history, they are really impuning his Jewishness?

making him sound middle-european, yiddish, whatever. Why the hell cant they get his name right? as Hitch points out they manage to do ok with the names of people from the most obscure third world countries -what the hell is so hard about wolfowitz?

	21-08-2003 02:04									#41
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quote: Originally posted by GePap As for the actual news: Yeah, some improvement in one city not Kabul well over a year after the war 'ended'! Good "Ol admin. Now, if just so many Afghan Policement weren;t dying in the last few weeks form attacks, the whole things would be great!

Heres what the BBC says:


"The city still bears battle scars and many Kandaharis do not seem unduly phased by the current political tensions.

Large swathes of the city were destroyed in the factional fighting of the 1990s but reconstruction is now under way.

Refugees have been returning from Pakistan and elsewhere, houses have been rebuilt and new shops and businesses are opening. The roads are jammed with bikes, motorbikes and cars. "

Do you have any reason to think that things are good in Kandahar, but bad in other cities? Is there some reason Kandahar is not representative? Cites, please.

	21-08-2003 02:07									#42
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News agencies all over the world pronounce Osama Bin Laden's name differently every time they say it. I often heard many sources pronounce Colin Powell's first name wrong too (perhaps to try and play down his blackness to make him more acceptable to the white audience????), although they don't do that anymore. It's not unusual.

	21-08-2003 02:10									#43
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quote: Originally posted by GePap As for the actual news: Yeah, some improvement in one city not Kabul well over a year after the war 'ended'! Good "Ol admin. Now, if just so many Afghan Policement weren;t dying in the last few weeks form attacks, the whole things would be great!

who said anything about the admin?? Where did either i or the Beeb mention the Bush admin. Its just a story about afghanistan, thats all. Must you see anything that happens in afghanistan through the lens of US domestic politics? Is your hatred of Bush so intense that anything you see become "is this good for Bush" and if so, you have to minimize.

Not "good ol admin" Rather good for the Afghan people. Good for the US, and good for our coalition allies.

	21-08-2003 02:16									#44
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark I am of course not relying on the authority of the publications. I am relying on the facts cited. In the course of doing so i attributed were i found the info. Thats considered the proper thing to do when quoting someone. I think i learned that as far back as Stuyvesant.

As far back as Stuy I also learned that without intepretation, fatcs are just words on a page. If I givce you the height of Everest, without any more, that tells you very little, and nothing useful. I also learned that sources matter. If I quote "facts" from a neo-nazi tract, they aren't authoritative or trustworthy, given the FACT that they very weel could misnterpret info they got elsewhere and run with it.

Lerts take the case of Wolfie. They misspronounce his name. That ois given. Why? In that regard , you are speculating as to why, becuase unless you speak to the guys at the pronounciation desk, you really have no idea of it. as for the "chaos in the streets": when was it reported? early on, later? But of course, chaos is a decriptive term: can you give the the authoritative definition? I would agree that the term was too strong for the things that happened, but it is low level sensasionalism, not even within the same order of magnitude as the charge of sexing up, and not particuarly worse than some things I heard on US stations during it.

quote: And Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan. Its predominantly Pashtun. Its the home of the Taliban. IF things go well there, Herat and Mazar are not likely to be problems.

If afghnaistan were a primarilly urban country, perhaps. Second, Herat is doing very well and things are calm: just not under government control.

As for timetables: We could have done much better in Afghnistan. NO, I did not chalanege calling it a sh1thole becuase it is: that it is gettiong better odes not make it Disneyland, now does it?

As for your last statements: Do you have any proof that becuase they are good in Kandahar they are good everywhere? That conclusion is just as ilogical. But again, since Afghanistan is NOT a highly urban place, that the cities do fine is no proof. Kabul was mostly untouched through 8 years of intense warfare in the country. That was becuase what central rule there was could keep the cities and keep them safe. But having a safe Kabul, Kahndahar, Herat and so forth didn;t mean the country was a paradise and the Soviets were doing just peachy keen backn in 1987. Do YOU have any citations to show why this would be different today?

	21-08-2003 02:18									#45
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark making him sound middle-european, yiddish, whatever.

First think I thought was German; that they were slandering him as a war-monger. Which he is, so it's not really slander, is it?

	21-08-2003 19:38									#46
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quote: Originally posted by GePap As for your last statements: Do you have any proof that becuase they are good in Kandahar they are good everywhere? That conclusion is just as ilogical. But again, since Afghanistan is NOT a highly urban place, that the cities do fine is no proof. Kabul was mostly untouched through 8 years of intense warfare in the country. That was becuase what central rule there was could keep the cities and keep them safe. But having a safe Kabul, Kahndahar, Herat and so forth didn;t mean the country was a paradise and the Soviets were doing just peachy keen backn in 1987. Do YOU have any citations to show why this would be different today?

Im quite sure things are NOT good everywhere. When did I say that they were?

While Kabul may have been untouched during the Soviet occupation, it was nearly destroyed during the civil war that followed the Soviet occupation, and which led to the rise of the Taliban. That is what we were told to fear when we sided with the northern alliance - let them into Kabul and theyll rip the place apart, like they did in the early '90's. And then the taliban will come back.

Instead all the major cities are quiet. The rural areas in the north, center, and west IE all the non-Pashtun parts of the country - seem to be fairly quiet. OTOH the rural areas in the south and east - IE the Pashtun lands along the Pakistani border are a mess. How is this different from the Soviet situation? 1.The rural areas were a mess all over the country then 2. They had 100,000 troops in the country and still had a mess - we have less than 10,000. 3. Their mess was worse - the road in south now are unsafe for NGO's ( a problem, to be sure) under the Soviets the roads were unsafe for Soviet military convoys.

	21-08-2003 19:40									#47
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BTW, i did see something about how well things are going in Bamiyan province (home to the fiercely anti-Taliban Hazaras) Id love to be able to give you a full province by province report, but Im limited by what i see in the press.

	21-08-2003 19:43									#48
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From the Guardian, via instapundit"

"
David Kelly told a Sunday Times journalist that Andrew Gilligan's report on the Today programme was "bullshit" and said he had been "put through the wringer" by the Ministry of Defence over the affair. . . .

Rufford told the inquiry it was not unusual for him to visit Dr Kelly at his home, but admitted part of his reason for visiting the government scientist on that day had been to ask him about the row between the government and the BBC over the September dossier on Iraq's weapons.

He said that in their conversation Dr Kelly described the dossier as "factual and credible"."

	21-08-2003 19:53									#49
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quote: Originally posted by GePap As far back as Stuy I also learned that without intepretation, fatcs are just words on a page. If I givce you the height of Everest, without any more, that tells you very little, and nothing useful. I also learned that sources matter. If I quote "facts" from a neo-nazi tract, they aren't authoritative or trustworthy, given the FACT that they very weel could misnterpret info they got elsewhere and run with it.

Re:interpretation. Yes of course. Thats why i posted the facts here, so we could discuss their interpretation.

Re: Facts - there were 3 facts mention. Weekly standard quoting the BBC world service, Weekly standard mentioning the use of scare quotes, and Hitchens reporting on the pronunciation.. Which of those facts do you think were incorrect? The scare quote ISTR seeing myself. The quotes from the broadcasts? Those would be a matter of public record, i can hardly see the Standard or Hitchens lying about them.

BTW, while Hitchens was a strong supporter of intervention in Iraq, he is a leftist who is generally anti-Bush, and opposed to US support of Israel. His column was published in Slate,a moderately liberal magazine whose chief editor strongly opposed intervention in Iraq.

Weekly Standard is of course a strongly Neo-con opinion magazine. the author of the article was Josh Chafetz, publisher of Oxblog, a blog on international affairs that includes both Republicans and Democrats and that has been critical of admin policy on many issues. Its about the most intelligent blog I've seen - well worth reading given the issues youre interested in, GePap.

	21-08-2003 20:00									#50
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark If they gave the same detail to positive things, or the negative things they mentioned were really as bad as they spun it.

Yes, that's what makes good media. Let's look forward to the headlines:

"93.6 % of Americans employed - jubilate!"

"230 million Americans have electricity during regional blackout - praise the leader!"

"Area man stayed home, not murdered in gang war"

"The good news communiqué: Bush did not choke on a pretzel today"

	21-08-2003 20:01									#51
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark Instead all the major cities are quiet. The rural areas in the north, center, and west IE all the non-Pashtun parts of the country - seem to be fairly quiet. OTOH the rural areas in the south and east - IE the Pashtun lands along the Pakistani border are a mess. How is this different from the Soviet situation? 1.The rural areas were a mess all over the country then 2. They had 100,000 troops in the country and still had a mess - we have less than 10,000. 3. Their mess was worse - the road in south now are unsafe for NGO's ( a problem, to be sure) under the Soviets the roads were unsafe for Soviet military convoys.

Yeah, but the Soviets were not fighting in a country utterly devastated after 20 ood years of war (they were doing plenty of that at the time) and were dealing in a proxy war. I don;t see anyone giving the Taliban bilions of dollard of brand new shinny weapons. Plus the Soviets were trying to exert central government control everywhere. The US sin;t trying to exert central gov. control anywhere: we are there only to get Al Qaeda. HOw much of those quiet villages are under Karzai's control? How mnat are under the control of local warlords? Things were quiet in the vast majority of the country in 2000 too, when the Taliban had full control, no?

	21-08-2003 20:07									#52
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quote: Originally posted by HershOstropoler Yes, that's what makes good media. Let's look forward to the headlines: "93.6 % of Americans employed - jubilate!" "230 million Americans have electricity during regional blackout - praise the leader!" "Area man stayed home, not murdered in gang war" "The good news communiqué: Bush did not choke on a pretzel today"

So youre saying that good news in Afghanistan is as routine as the above - geez, youre a lot more optimistic than I am.

	21-08-2003 20:12									#53
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quote: Originally posted by GePap Yeah, but the Soviets were not fighting in a country utterly devastated after 20 ood years of war (they were doing plenty of that at the time) and were dealing in a proxy war. I don;t see anyone giving the Taliban bilions of dollard of brand new shinny weapons. Plus the Soviets were trying to exert central government control everywhere. The US sin;t trying to exert central gov. control anywhere: we are there only to get Al Qaeda. HOw much of those quiet villages are under Karzai's control? How mnat are under the control of local warlords? Things were quiet in the vast majority of the country in 2000 too, when the Taliban had full control, no?

well thanks for giving the reasons why the US intervention was likely to be more successful than the Soviets - thats precisely what I was saying before we went in, and in the early weeks when some were calling it a quagmire.

Villages under Karzai's control? Very few, as the provinces under Karzai's control are mainly in the Pashtun south and east, while the quiet villages are largely in the warlord controlled west and north, where central control is only slowly being increased. Why does that matter? Villages being out of control is a major problem if its due to the Taliban - the issue of Karzai vs the warlords is an important one, but not a crisis.

Quiet under the Taliban - well yeah (outside of the northeast) but Karzai isnt using the Taliban tactics, thank God.

	21-08-2003 20:23									#54
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The warlord issue may not be a crisis now: it looms over the future if the idea is to turn Afghanistan into a democracy that is stable long-term.

	21-08-2003 20:37									#55
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark So youre saying that good news in Afghanistan is as routine as the above - geez, youre a lot more optimistic than I am.

That's an odd interpretation, but not surprising.

But yes, there's a lot of good news, like much of the country being relatively quiet. But it is not the job of the media to report that. There are more than enough problems there that are more important. Or do you seriosly want a "much of afghanistan relatively quiet" headline every day?

	21-08-2003 20:47									#56
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quote: Originally posted by HershOstropoler That's an odd interpretation, but not surprising. But yes, there's a lot of good news, like much of the country being relatively quiet. But it is not the job of the media to report that. There are more than enough problems there that are more important. Or do you seriosly want a "much of afghanistan relatively quiet" headline every day?

No but id like to know specifics about the afghan economy, infrastructure reconstruction, education, and the gradual political extension of Karzais power over the warlords. To its credit the BBC reports some of that (like the article I linked to) but its hard to find all of that without checking some fairly obscure weblogs, UD Dod sites, afghan sites, etc. Whereas something negative gets reported, even when obscure - and some such stories get repeated over and over again.

Does not mean the BBC isnt a very useful source. What it means is that when they report something positive, I tend to find it very credible. Which was all i said in the beginning. Somebody thought I was wrong it that - that the BBC wasnt necessarily trustworthy on this, as its a pro-US source. I remain quite unconvinced of that.

	21-08-2003 20:52									#57
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quote: Originally posted by GePap The warlord issue may not be a crisis now: it looms over the future if the idea is to turn Afghanistan into a democracy that is stable long-term.

The idea is to keep the Taliban from returning to power (for our won security) and to make the lives of the afghan people significantly better off than they were before we went in both to advance the above goal, to show the muslim world this isnt a war against Islam, and (IMO) out of obligation to the Afghan people from their role in the end of the cold war.

Turn it into a stable democracy? This is a country with one of the lowest literacy rates in the world, one of the lowest per capital GDP's in the world, and hardly any natural resources. And its land locked. Their prospects for stable democracy anytime soon are pretty low (much lower than in Iraq, by the way)

	21-08-2003 21:02									#58
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark No but id like to know specifics about the afghan economy, infrastructure reconstruction, education, and the gradual political extension of Karzais power over the warlords.

The standard news is that it is all going extremely slowly, and Karsai hasn't much authority outside of Kabul. Do you think that's incorrect?

"Somebody thought I was wrong it that - that the BBC wasnt necessarily trustworthy on this, as its a pro-US source. I remain quite unconvinced of that."

All a matter of perspective. I could say the BBC is pro-war as it does not refer to Bush and Blair as war criminals all the time.

	21-08-2003 21:09									#59
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quote: Originally posted by HershOstropoler The standard news is that it is all going extremely slowly, and Karsai hasn't much authority outside of Kabul. Do you think that's incorrect? "Somebody thought I was wrong it that - that the BBC wasnt necessarily trustworthy on this, as its a pro-US source. I remain quite unconvinced of that." All a matter of perspective. I could say the BBC is pro-war as it does not refer to Bush and Blair as war criminals all the time.

I see.


Is it correct. Close but not 100%. In fact just about all the governors in the eastern provinces are Karzai appointees who he effectively controls. He has just appointed a new governor in Kandahar, establishing control there and removing a major warlord. He also has control over Bamiyan province in the central mountains.

Warlords continue to rule in the northeast (Atta Muhammed) north (Dostum) and west (ismail Khan)

But that does NOT mean karzai has NO authority in those places - the situation is much like late feudal europe, where the central govt has SOME control over fiefdoms, and is constantly pressing to expand control.
For example in recent months Karzai has wrested control over customs revenues from the warlord. He has also instituted a policy of limiting any individual to one post - Khan, as governor of Herat, has had to give up his post as western military commander.

	21-08-2003 21:50									#60
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"He has just appointed a new governor in Kandahar, establishing control there and removing a major warlord."

And we have to wait what happens next. So far similar attempts didn't work too well.

"But that does NOT mean karzai has NO authority in those places - the situation is much like late feudal europe, where the central govt has SOME control over fiefdoms"

Iow, he "hasn't much authority" there.

"Khan, as governor of Herat, has had to give up his post as western military commander."

Which was also very recently, IIRC.