Conditions improving in Kandahar

[lord of the mark]

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.

[Dom Pedro II]

The English anti-semitic?! Never!

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet

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.

[lord of the mark]

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."

[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?)

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!

[lord of the mark]

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.

[Dom Pedro II]

Soooooo... it's good to hear Kandahar is doing better...

I almost forgot what this thread was about..

[chequita guevara]

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?

[lord of the mark]

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 "****hole" 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.

[lord of the mark]

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?

[lord of the mark]

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.

[FrustratedPoet]

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.

[lord of the mark]

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.

[GePap]

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.

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?

[chequita guevara]

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?