Daily Archive

Reuters:

Britain was criticised by its allies and detractors at the U.N.’s main human rights forum on Thursday, over its treatment of terrorism suspects, prison inmates and racial minorities.

In a three-hour debate at the United Nations Human Rights Council, countries also raised questions over the conduct of British troops deployed overseas and rising rates of suicide among prison inmates in overcrowded domestic jails…

…In response to concerns voiced by Cuba, India and Syria…

Hold it, hold it. I have to stop that excerpt in mid-sentence. Okay, I give. Really. Someone’s having a laugh here. Let me in on it . . .

As BBC had headlined it April 8:

At immediate first reading glance, one doesn’t quite know what that would entail. But if one reads on one notices in the story text following that she is calling for him to “boycott” the opening ceremony.

In comparison, yesterday, Sen Obama also called for a Bush “boycott”. The BBC interestingly headlined his “urging” in this way:

Rarely does one see two news stories that are essentially about the same thing. And we are constantly also told the BBC’s regular goal is to report fairly. Both being so, the only necessary reporting difference between the two worthy of mention would appear to be the respective identities of the candidates who made each call.

Obviously, one doesn’t expect robotic headlines to be spewed out. Who’d want to read such, after all? However, in its reporting how Sen Obama “urges” a “Bush Bejiing boycott” whereas Sen Clinton “urges” rather more passive “Bush Olympic action”, in that headlining difference the BBC would not be implying (even inadvertently) that Sen Obama is a more decisive foreign policy character through directly “urging” standing up to China, would it?

Then again, sometimes one can read too much into this sort of thing, of course. Perhaps at least the reason for “Olympic” v. “Bejiing” is more mundane? Maybe the same headline composer did both, and just wasn’t quite sure how to spell Beijing?

William Jennings Bryan Alec Baldwin writes, in The Huffington Post:

…Whatever you do, don’t buy into that Republican bullsh*t…

…The past eight years have been the moral low point of the American experience…

Really? The absolute “moral lowest”?

Mr Baldwin obviously simply forgot about 1619-1865.

And 1776-1783.

And 1854-1865 (particularly, what could reasonably be termed the worst calendar year in U.S. history — 1864).

And 1868-1877.

And 1877-1900.

And 1890.

And 1919-1920.

And 1932.

And 1942-1944.

And 1945.

And that Democrat war in which there hadn’t even been a 9/11 1964-1975.

And the list could go on. Separately, unsurprisingly so does Mr Baldwin:

…McCain is another right-wing, retro, deficit-loving, never-seen-a-defense-appropriation-I-didn’t-like tool. But there are a lot of people in this dumbed-down country that will buy that…

. . . but being a soft spoken intellectual — …[In 2007 he caused] a scandal by leaving an expletive filled voice mail for his daughter Ireland, calling her a “thoughtless little pig” — of course, certainly never the erudite Mr Baldwin himself.

Sky reports:

People in the graffiti-plagued village of Lunt are being asked to change its name to stop vandals.

But the proposal, designed to combat yobs who repeatedly scrawl on the village’s welcome signs, has sparked fury amongst some locals in Sefton, Merseyside…

One can only but commiserate with them. We used to live in north London, not far from Cockfosters. Yes, you’ve probably guessed already: on a sign directing you to it from the roundabout at the M25’s Junction 24, one still can’t miss the not exactly unexpected spray painted alteration of that name.

Also, down here New Forest direction, nearby a road sign informing drivers they are approaching the tiny village of Thorney Hill . . . for some time (until only recently) inexplicably had found its opening “T” whitened out.