Posted on 06/12/2004 4:39:23 PM PDT by MadIvan
Good to see you back on FR, Ivan. Naturally, the media over here are making this into a referendum on Tony Blair's support of the Iraq war, and are totally ignoring the anti-EU angle. What's your read on the relative weight of these two factors?
We miss you Maggie!
I'd like to see Great Britain, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Canada come closer together in the years ahead. In fact, I see Canada joining the U.S. at some point. May not happen in my lifetime but I think it will.
Hi Basil! MadIvan, too. I have a friend in the UK who ran on the "England First" ticket, Blackburn constituency. He narrowly lost, however. When I visited the UK back in 1997, I noted that the cost of living there was (and remains) sky-high. A lot of that has to do with that nation's EU membership, which so many Brits are seriously questioning.
A little more info on Mr. Kilroy-Silk. Except for his apology, I see nothing to disagree with. I am looking for the rest of the article, entitled "We owe the arabs nothing"
BBC suspends talkshow after anti-Arab outburst
The BBC suspended a popular daily talkshow on Friday after its presenter branded Arabs “suicide bombers, limb amputators and women repressors” in a newspaper article.
Show presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk, a former parliamentarian with the ruling Labour Party, later expressed “very deep regret” over the column which questioned whether Arab nations had contributed anything to civilisation.
The BBC said it would suspend his daily talkshow “Kilroy” from Monday while it conducts an internal investigation into his article in the Sunday Express newspaper.
“The BBC strongly disassociates itself from the views expressed,” the publicly-funded broadcaster said in a statement. “We stress that these comments do not reflect the views of the BBC.”
The article, headlined “We owe the Arabs nothing”, asked: “What do (Arabs) think we feel about them? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors?”
Kilroy-Silk said the column had been republished in error, and had originally been written in April last year in response to opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq. “It is not what I would have said today,” he said in a statement. “It has obviously caused great distress and offence and I can only reiterate that I deeply regret that. The article contains a couple of obvious factual errors which I also regret.”
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, a publicly-funded body which campaigns against racism, said it was “indisputably stupid”.
The Muslim Council of Britain welcomed the BBC’s suspension of Kilroy-Silk’s talkshow and called on the Sunday Express to scrap his column, which it said had become a “platform for bigotry and Islamophobia”. —Reuters
Few of them make much contribution to the welfare of the rest of the world. Indeed, apart from oil — which was discovered, is produced and is paid for by the West — what do they contribute? Can you think of anything? Anything really useful? Anything really valuable? Something we really need, could not do without? No, nor can I. Indeed, the Arab countries put together export less than Finland. We're told that the Arabs loathe us. Really? For liberating the Iraqis? For subsidising the lifestyles of people in Egypt and Jordan, to name but two, for giving them vast amounts of aid? For providing them with science, medicine, technology and all the other benefits of the West? They should go down on their knees and thank God for the munificence of the United States.
What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders? That we admire them for the cold-blooded killings in Mombasa, Yemen and elsewhere? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors? I don't think the Arab states should start a debate about what is really loathsome.
somehow, the only full text I could find was on Freerepublic
I voted UKIP too. Not mecessarily because I agree with everything about them (in fact, I hardly know what they stand for) but because it was a good way of giving Michael Howard a kick up the *ss.
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