You are currently browsing the daily archive for November 20th, 2006.
…Mr Livingstone said: “Over recent weeks we have seen a demonisation of Muslims only comparable to the demonisation of Jews from the end of the 19th century. As at that time, the attack on Muslims in reality threatens freedoms for all of us, which took hundreds of years to win - freedom of conscience and freedom of cultural expression. Every person who values their right to follow the religion of their choice or none should stand with the Muslim communities today.”…
Powerfully expressed by the mayor. And a necessary clearing of the debate air. For until now, none of us had known how utterly ignorant we had been in never appreciating how Capt. Dreyfus. . .
. . . had been so overtly outspoken and unapologetically threatening.
British Airways proves once again that when you’ve dug a deep PR hole . . . just keep digging. The BBC reports:
…Nadia Eweida, 55, of Twickenham, has been on unpaid leave since her bosses told her she could not visibly wear her cross at the check-in counter.
She found out she had lost her appeal against the decision by BA when she met with the airline bosses on Monday.
BA denied it had banned the wearing of crosses and said Ms Eweida had a right to a second appeal…
BA explains for us (yet again):
…”British Airways has 34,000 uniformed staff, all of whom know they must abide by our uniform policy.”The policy does not ban staff from wearing a cross. It lays down that personal items of jewellery, including crosses may be worn - but underneath the uniform. Other airlines have the same policy.
“The policy recognises that it is not practical for some religious symbols - such as turbans and hijabs - to be worn underneath the uniform. This is purely a question of practicality. There is no discrimination between faiths.
“In Nadia Eweida’s case, she is not suspended and we want her to come back to work. We have explained to her the need to comply with the uniform policy like all her colleagues whatever their faith.”…
Thus BA insists that it doesn’t ban Christian symbols, but merely makes allowances for faiths that have religious symbols that are conveniently so large that they cannot be worn underneath a BA uniform. Ms Eweida ought to take BA at its word that this is not really about jewellery or Christian forms of observance. She therefore should take her crucifix, sew it into a tasteful scarf so the crucifix itself doesn’t dangle and is eminently visible . . . and then wrap the scarf prominently around the top of her head.
Problem solved then. No?
The Telegraph (via my wife):
Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, wants Britain to choose between being a “vassal” of the United States, and embracing a French-led drive for European integration, her adviser on Europe has revealed…
So, slowly, identifiable policies begin to emerge. For from the above, we now learn that socialist Ms Royal does indeed have a foreign policy. It just happens to be Gaullist.
…While the world’s attention has been focused on Baghdad’s slide into sectarian warfare, something remarkable has been happening in Ramadi, a city of 400,000 inhabitants that al-Qaeda and its Iraqi allies have controlled since mid-2004 and would like to make the capital of their cherished Islamic caliphate…
It is of course hardly a surprise “the world’s attention” has been ”focused” on Baghdad. As we know, most of our august mainstream media can focus intently only on one story at any given time . . . a reality made more complicated by the fact that they also well know that there are many vital non-Iraq stories that require urgent attention.
Blair says Afghan desert key to world security
In presenting us all with that big, condescending and yawning, “Oh, yeh, Blair, surrrrrre it is” headline, Reuters evidently chooses to overlook how out of Afghanistan came a group who thought they could level lower Manhattan by suicidally crashing hijacked civilian planes into skyscrapers.
The BBC reports:
A former Russian KGB colonel living in Britain and poisoned by the toxic chemical thallium remains in a serious condition in hospital.
Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB colonel and critic of President Vladimir Putin, fell ill on 1 November after a meeting at a London sushi bar.
A clinical toxicologist said Mr Litvinenko, 43, had been poisoned with a potentially lethal dose of the metal…
Despite some of them enjoying sushi coupled with many years of speaking out clearly and forcefully against his horrific and dictatorial misrule, nothing like this has ever happened to a “critic of President George W. Bush“. (Bush is clearly too sly to resort to such easy to detect methods of trying to eliminate critics, of course.)
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