Petitioning Whom?

2007 June 8

by Robert

The BBC has on its web site a petition demanding the release of journalist Alan Johnston, kidnapped as you probably know about three months ago in Gaza. But even when demanding its own journalist be released, the BBC’s maddeningly detached and passive tense writing style still manages to rear its head in the vital opening paragraph. In fact, it doesn’t even make clear initially at whom the demand is directed:

Thousands of BBC News website users have written to the BBC to demand the release of Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston. They have signed an online petition and the names are published here…

That is composed so blandly it reads as if the BBC is itself holding Mr Johnston, and web site readers are demanding the BBC release him. How about this opening instead?:

Thousands of BBC News website users have signed a petition demanding those who kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston in Gaza release him immediately and unconditionally. They have signed an online petition and the names are published here…

There. If you are going to make a demand . . . at least make that demand clear right from the start. Is that so difficult?

Twitter

...but there is still one living British survivor of the Great War...living now in Australia. http://yweb.com/7qi 5 days ago

At today's 11th hour, for the first time, there was not a single living Briton in Britain, who had fought in WWI. http://yweb.com/7qh 5 days ago

A visit as a show of respect towards today's ally, and reflection upon shared loss, is fine. An "apology" would not be. http://yweb.com/7qg 6 days ago

http://yweb.com/7qd Mr Hornby missed this: alcohol is in our culture a lot longer than ecstasy. Same horse riding. http://yweb.com/7qe 1 week ago

"Assimilation"? Even Nisei WWII servicemen with their families confined in camps, didn't mow down army comrades. http://yweb.com/7pr 1 week ago

A Snapshot Of What To Expect

(Old site, 2003-2006)

____________

In English terms, this blog loves this country, and it just wishes its politicians would somehow always remember that Britain is where our modern, free world truly began. Not Brussels. (Actually, to be more precise, just south of Brussels, where Wellington had thumped a certain well-known continental who was also in favor of "European union".)

In political U.S. terms, this blog is disgruntled Democrat turned Republican, slightly right of what is now deemed "center" -- but admits still to possessing moments of weakness for the rapidly vanishing Democratic party that helped win WWII and the Cold War. (Then again, finding oneself "right of center" is not difficult nowadays, given that according to what one sees of much U.S. political discourse, even a Castro -- and Hillary Clinton -- are apparently now rather rightist, and merely attending church weekly gets one labelled "Ker-ris-chan". Eeeeyou! Not one of those!)

Email and Comments Policy

Expatyank@aol.com.

This writer sure as heck doesn't know everything -- unlike the BBC's Jeremy Bowen, who obviously does -- so disagreement is expected. For up to 90 days after a post, comments may be offered. (After that, well, that's that. Blogs are also about timeliness, remember. If one has to draw a line somewhere, 3 months sounds reasonable.)

Thus well-expressed alternative views and interpretations are more than welcome, for that's how we all learn more in this life. Which means that vulgar and/or obscene comments will probably be deleted. So please phrase all abuse politely, and if in doubt refrain from any colorful metaphors and get thee to a thesaurus.

If you have never commented before, please note there may be a delay of however long before your comment appears. It is merely being held for first-time approval.

Afterwards, assuming you follow the modest guidelines above, your comments appear immediately.

This writer recalls having felt much the same, at the Hertz desk at Catania airport …

'...For the first time in my life, I felt comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide, how it could carry an entire history in other people's memories, so that they might nod and say knowingly, "Oh, you are so and so's son." No one here in Kenya would ask how to spell my name, or mangle it with an unfamiliar tongue. My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances and grudges that I did not yet understand...'

President Barack H. Obama, "Dreams From My Father."

[Also, there was that time the Wife strode into a London meeting hosted by a group of Italian businessmen, who, having seen her name on the list, but not having seen her previously, were taken aback by the height and red hair, when she walked in.

That troubling identity crisis at last resolved to the world's satisfaction, yours truly can now obviously be president also.]

There’s little more tiresome abroad, than those too full of themselves

"But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a few feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded every individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their throttle valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, and blaspheme the sacred name of Truth! Their central idea, their grand aim, is to subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and humble in the blaze of their cosmopolitan glory! They will not let you know anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities; they deride your most trusted authors and demolish the fair images they have set up for your willing worship with the pitiless ferocity of the fanatic iconoclast! But still I love the Old Travelers. I love them for their witless platitudes, for their supernatural ability to bore, for their delightful asinine vanity, for their luxuriant fertility of imagination, for their startling, their brilliant, their overwhelming mendacity!"

Mark Twain, in "The Innocents Abroad."

Theodore Roosevelt’s Nine Reasons a Man Should Go To Church

1 In this actual world, a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid down grade.

2 Church work and church attendance mean the cultivation of the habit of feeling responsibility for others.

3 There are enough holidays for most of us. Sundays differ from other holidays in the fact that there are fifty-two of them every year. Therefore, on Sundays go to church.

4 Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in a man's own house as well as in church. But I also know, as a matter of cold fact, that the average man does not thus worship.

5 He may not hear a good sermon at church. He will hear a sermon by a good man who, whith his wife, is engaged all of the week in making hard lives a little easier.

6 He will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from the Bible. And if he is not familiar with the Bible he has suffered a loss.

7 He will take part in the singing of some good hymns.

8 He will meet and nod or speak to good, quiet neighbors. He will come away feeling a little more charitable toward all the world, even toward those excessively foolish young men who regard churchgoing as a soft performance.

9 I advocate a man's joining in church work for the sake of showing his faith by his works.

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Expat Yank: One American living in the south of England

Petitioning Whom?

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This writer recalls having felt much the same, at the Hertz desk at Catania airport …

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There’s little more tiresome abroad, than those too full of themselves

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Theodore Roosevelt’s Nine Reasons a Man Should Go To Church

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