Monday, March 22, 2004

Of course the BBC don't have an agenda ....

That's why there's no room on BBC News for the revelation that the senior civil servant in charge of "Managed Migration" was aware of the policy of rubber-stamping all Eastern European work permits. You know, the policy that was being carried out by a few low-level people in one office, that no-one else knew about.

Yet there's time on the Today Programme for an idiotic piece in which Will Hutton draws parallels between Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat - and Wagner's Ring Cycle. And of course Richard Clarke is all over the place like a rash - after all, its another anti-Bush story, innit ?

For relief try the Have Your Say page on Sheikh Yassin's demise.

"Was Israel's action justified? Will this just worsen the spiral of violence?"

UPDATE - as of 10 pm the 'cycle of violence' has mysteriously vanished. But the late Sheikh (aka "Spiritual figurehead") is all over BBC news - you'd think Gandhi had died. Strangely enough this story - the murder of an Arab who didn't kill Jews - doesn't seem to have made the BBC.

George Khoury, a 20-year-old economics student at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and the son of a prominent lawyer, was jogging through a neighbourhood mostly populated by Jews when gunmen shot him in the head, neck and stomach on Friday night.

His father, Elias, has represented Palestinian politicians and Israeli Arabs accused of murder, and fought renowned legal battles against Jewish settlers over land ownership. The victim's grandfather, Daoud, was killed in 1975 when a bomb hidden in a refrigerator by Mr Arafat's Fatah movement exploded in one of Jerusalem's busiest shopping streets, Jaffa road.

The Palestinian leader called Elias Khoury's home on Saturday to apologise. The al-Aqsa brigade issued a statement also expressing regret, saying the killing was a case of "mistaken identity". It said it regarded Mr Khoury as a "martyr" to the cause of Palestinian liberation.

The father called the shooting "barbaric".


UPDATE - links to the BBC's description of Yassin and the Hamas Covenant.



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