Repair or despair? Natalie or Jim?

I gather that the USA was paying locals to 'inform' on Al Qaeda. Of course they had no way of telling if the information was true. So the locals saw this as a neat way of making money by 'informing' on random non-Afghan nationals. It was a system bound to be abused.

Graham

Have you always been so naive and so stupid or did you have to take lessons from LIEbrawls?

>

Just how gullible are you ? Do you think they would have been released if they were actually guilty of something ?

Suspicion =/= guilt. If the USA wants to say it is then it doesn't belong in a civilised society.

I imagine you're pro illegal-phone-tap and pro suspension of habeas corpus (for suspects!) too ?

Yes, Bush and his criminal friends are destroying what was once a proudly democratic society.

Graham

It's you LIEbrawl bullshit artists who get into bed with the terrorists at every conceivable opportunity who are truly responsible. Grow some spine...and brain, eh!

Suspending the constitution (and ignoring the rule of law) is 'having a spine' is it ? What are you afraid of ? 'Reds under the bed' ? Bwahahaahahaa !

What a f****it ! I suppose you'd bring back McCarthy too when you could destroy someone merely by pointing a finger of suspicion. It's not unlike what could happen in Stalin's USSR.

Why don't you be honest and admit you'd rather have a dictatorship over a democracy ?

Graham

You LIEbrawls seldom criticize any of various and sundry dictatorships in South America, Asia or Africa.

I'm critical of ANY dictatorship. Which dictatorships did you have in mind in S America btw ? Don't forget the former US backed Chilean dictator Pinochet btw. The US has a track record of being friendly to dictators. Especially the political Right in the USA. And of course the USA is supporting the unelected effective dictator of Pakistan Gen Pervez Musharraf.

Why do you want the USA to be as bad as they are ?

Graham

Graham...if you don't need this tripe, just take alt.autos.toyota out of your xpost. This sort of crap makes up the majority of the posts there....

jak

Welcome to alt.autos.toyota, where they sometimes talk about cars....

jak

Close enough for government work. Rather have them there than plotting against wither the US or the UK.

But it's not just the US. The UK sends people to Gitmo. Australia sends people to Gitmo. Afghanis send people to Gitmo. It isn't just the US rounding these people up.

Sorry to say this, but you sound like a typical UK Liberal: don't like something, blame it on the US.

There are plenty of other people to blame other than us, we're just convenient because we're the only SuperPower left in the world, and everyone loves to hate the US anyway.

I certainly do! They were invariably run by control freaks.

Even the BBC admit their bias:

I'd

say that was official enough.

Clearly, you missed the date at the top of the piece. That article was penned in 2006, when Blair was still firmly in power, and at which time it was known by everyone, that the BBC was full of left wing management, that had been edged into place by friends of the government who were already in the Corporation, and as a result, it had a pronounced left wing liberalist bias, which is what I said at the top of my post.

Since the demise of Blair, and his succession by Brown a few months back, that situation is changing.

Furthermore, the Daily Mail, which is actually my paper of choice, is a highly right-wing publication, so will of course latch onto anything that is anti the left wing government, or anything that is perceived to be rooted in government control, such as the BBC, and take twice the literary mileage from it that it probably deserves.

So no, the articles that you cite as making it 'official', are so out of date as to be meaningless. That is not to say that the BBC is suddenly neutral as it should be, but its position has now shifted a long way right of where it was perhaps as little as three months ago. Public opinion has started (finally) to swing away from the lefty doctrines of our current government, with the right wing mutterings of the major opposition party gaining ground. Never one to dawdle, the BBC is perhaps beginning to see its days as the (unofficial) government mouthpiece, becoming numbered, so is quietly shifting in the same direction ...

Arfa

Oh, dear, oh dear. I have been listening to the World Service for almost

30 years. Even up to three years ago I would have agreed with this. Two years ago I was looking for a satellite radio and settled on XM because they had the World Service. I was so enthralled with the music I didn't start listening to the BBC until earlier this year.

HOLY SHIT!!!!!! Have they got Agendas, or WHAT?!?!?! They LOVE slamming the US, and they shove things down your throat!!! I can't BELIEVE the change!

For their 75th 'Birthday' they were talking with a guy from the US who has moved to Shanghai, sold all his US Dollars and securities and is investing heavily in Asia. He says he finds the BBC delightfully neutral and unbiased.

He must have cotton for brains...

(But, I still listen to the World Service every night, even when I do find myself swearing at the radio, which I *NEVER* used to do with the BBC...)

Yeah, this I can agree with.

Here, if you screw up, you get sent to the 'hole', (segregation, etc) where all you get is one hour out and mail. That's it. If you own a radio (you have to buy them) you can have it, and they will bring you books, but that's it. No TV, no arts and crafts, and one hour rec per day.

If you behave yourself and play by the rules then you get TV, etc etc. But they're pretty strict.

LOL! We're talking KENNEDY here! He NEVER shuts up!!!

No, if he stopped flapping his gums, it was because he realized he had nothing to flap them about. If he had found things out of line at Guantanamo, he would have done his best to shut it down.

His reticence since his visit speaks volumes to me.

Man, some of us are sorry for that, even if we DID have a bone to pick with the Iranians.

Is this crap coming from 'sci.electronics.repair' or 'alt.autos.toyota' ?

'We' don't read it. Such human importance, that is so worthless. Well, maybe Graham does.........