GOOD BEEB, BAD BEEB

Believing in something is hard work, but worth it.

The BBC rattles on fearfully about George Bush's religious faith. In truth he shows it more humbly and no more frequently that Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton did. In Mr. Bush’s Inaugural address, he used the word God only 3 times, and freedom 27 times.


Meanwhile at the excellent blog "E-nough!" the tellement lucide Carine reports on what modern European life has done to belief in things generally. The city turns sincerity (and asking oneself REAL questions) into a lesser matter, barely even derived from self-interest anymore. When strikes are supported out of habit or boredom, can one really say that the public wants them? Probably not. (You GO girl!)

The phenomenon is telling, though. It reveals the public's great need to take BACK the social environment to reflect things that they DO believe in. No-one is immune to a cocktail of slick politics, single issue advocates, and brain-dead pop culture.

Bombard the public with enough of it and they take it seriously for a while. If one cannot wrestle with it up, one does the next best thing and simply takes it less seriously. Those with less capacity to judge start to mistake it for reality.

When children are practicing a musical instrument, the parents learn to shut the noise out of their minds. The French public have done this with the strikers, their politicians, and their social commentators.

More like the Beeb we remember

Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Chief Electoral Officer of Canada and one heck of a fella.

The Chief electoral officer of Canada and manager for election monitoring in Iraq’s upcoming election is obviously used to sparring with the media at home, and is extremely clear on the value concentual government has on a nation.
In an interview with the BBC, he shot down many criticisms of the election and its' oversight. Especially gallling was the presenter's suggestion that Iraqis couldn't monitor an Iraqi election. (The listener's imagination is left fill in the phrase "because they're wogs"...)

This is above and reflexive suspicion of, and distaste for, anything America touches. It reveals the British left's condescension of the rest of those less well-off than themselves, and an infantilized view that their knowledge and wisdom is critical for the permanent management of others'
affairs. In my view, the U.S. seems to look to help and urge structural corrections which let nations in distress (or that are dysfunctional) to grow to *not need* anyone else's intervention.
To nag a developing nation does not let it come into its' own in a beneficial way. We see this in the former Yugoslavia where others will be managing their institutions for some time to come, perhaps even permanently with all the attendant problems or resembling colonialism.

"Getting rid of Tyranny comes first" - Kanan Makiya of the Iraq Memory Foundation
[Audio Link] - [Web page Link]

To Auntie Beeb's credit, they are interviewing people with their heads screwed on straight, possibly by paying heed to the likes of Biased BBC.

Hint to the French media: the world hears a megatrend. Do you?

Makiya is the author of “Republic of Fear.” He makes no bones about his disagreement with the old view the U.S. and the Europeans had about trying to reason with and use a tyrant like Sadaam Hussein. He stuck to his beliefs and was glad that the Bush administration finally came for reasons of philosophy, and because there was an alignment of their national instrument "with the doing of some good."

As one Iraqi caller to the BBC talking point put it very well this morning: “Europeans don’t understand what it is to live under this kind of regime”, and went on to sensibly comment positively on the American liberation of Iraq.