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Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

theguardian.com

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Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#301

Post by belorn »

atmavatar wrote: post #265
int_19h wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because free people should be able to decide for themselves what to read and listen to. If you want a longer answer, George Orwell penned an eloquent one all the way back in 1944: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

The problem is, we've seen how that ends up: you get bad actors masquerading as news (e.g., Fox News, Info Wars, OAN, etc.) and people flocking to low information, high entertainment vendors over good faith (if sometimes or even often flawed) traditional news (e.g., Associated Press, Reuters, BBC News, etc.). As such, you end up with a large cohort of people believing immigrants eat their pets, vaccines have microchi…

Freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and freedom of receiving and imparting information and ideas. The United Nations was fully aware when making the declaration of human rights that bad actors existed. However the outcome of not having those rights have shown to be universally worse.

It is not that one has to accept that we are inevitably screwed. That assumes that no amount of work or effort can address social problems peacefully, and that the only way for a functional society is through force.

Im hoping that current decades of polarization and championing of censorship will end up resulting in similar conclusions as the UN did after world war 2. Censorship and violence only breed higher quantity and intensity of censorship and violence.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#302

Post by somename9 »

parineum wrote: post #276
somename9 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why monarchies are better than democracies. There is no accountability or ownership. A king wants to pass down something better to his progeny. A politician wants to make money and generally doesn’t care what state he leaves things in.

Why don't politicians care about their kids and why do monarchs not care about money?

I never said either of those things. By progeny, I meant both the heirs of the king and the common race of people belonging to the kingdom. Kings were the head of different races of people and as the head, they looked after their people (if they were a good king). For example, a good king wouldn’t import millions of people who are different from those in his kingdom for economic reasons, and you don’t see this in history. It is his job to take care of his people and if he suddenly gave them an incredible amount of competition for resources, he would be responsible for causing his people great difficulty. He cares about them and wouldn’t do that.

Politicians don’t have this headship and from their behavior clearly don’t view themselves as stewards of their country and people (they do care about their own children though). An example of this would be Mike Lee’s attempt to sell off American public lands to foreign interests. The money raised from this would not make a dent in the deficit or debt, and it would take away beautiful fishing and hiking from Americans. Thankfully this was done away with, but a good king would never consider selling public land in the middle of his country to foreigners.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#303

Post by wtcactus »

ragazzina wrote: post #297
wtcactus wrote: post #78

This is a non exhaustive list of news where the BBC started by blaming Israel of some war crime since the October 7th massacre occurred, and then had to remove, recant or apologize about after overwhelming evidence against it came to light: - Al-Ahli hospital explosion (Oct 2023) - Al-Shifa hospital “medical teams targeted” (Nov 2023) - Summary executions claim (Dec 24) - Aid‑centre shooting attribution (Jun 2025) -…

>after overwhelming evidence against it came to light Or maybe they removed articles because of political pressure? Post overwhelming evidence against the fact that the Al-Ahli hospital explosion was caused by an Israel airstrike, for example.

Sure, here you go:

Not only every expert consulted by every journal agreed that the explosion was not even caused by an airstrike, but they also agreed it was caused by a projectile launched from Palestinian territory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio...

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#304

Post by raxxorraxor »

rich_sasha wrote: post #260

Offending or over-accusing sides of this conflict is a very asymmetric risk. Misrepresent Palestinians negatively and you may eventually get an angry, vague letter - with a quarter of signatories doing so anonymously. Misrepresent Israelis negatively and you get very powerful and well-organised protests. BBC is sadly doing the rational thing of staying clear of suggesting Israel may be doing some bad things. It is a…

There was a study about negative bias towards Israel at the BBC. It contradicts your explanation.

Do you have a single example of a protest you try to summon here? I very much doubt it.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#306

Post by computerthings »

YZF wrote: post #240
jakelazaroff wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty much all Israeli serve in the IDF. He called for their death. The mental gymnastics. This argument makes no sense to me. You're basically saying that it's bad to call for the deaths of a genocidal military… once a certain percentage of the country enlists? Like, at what threshold do you think it would have been unacceptable to chant "death to the Nazis" or "death to the Imperial Japanese Army"?

Let's help you make sense of this: - Israel is at war with Gaza after it was attacked by Gaza. This war will end as soon as Hamas surrenders and the hostages are returned. Could have ended a long time ago. - Gaza is ruled by Hamas that just like Bob Vylan advocates for the murder of all Israelis and Jews. That is the genocidal party to this conflict, by their own declaration and actions. - The correct analogy is the…

[dead]

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#307

Post by aaomidi »

ithkuil wrote: post #72
aaomidi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That definition of Terrorism would make Israel a terrorist state.

I guess it's hard to define words. Surely terrorism has this vague meaning of doing very evil and violent things. But a picked up a random dictionary and it says: "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims". I struggle to understand what political aim Israel is pursuing when using unlawful violence and intimidation. If you believe that Israel is perf…

Political aims that come to mind:

- settlement and expulsion of Palestinians (think the bulldozer tactics)

- a testing ground for weapons: Israel routinely uses footage and draws evidence about how they’ve battle tested their weapons and tech they’re selling in the West Bank. There’s a book about this: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2684-the-palestine-labor...

Anyway I think there’s probably more goals I can think of but these might be enough for now. Makes me too sad otherwise.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#308

Post by raxxorraxor »

WaxProlix wrote: post #147
topspin wrote: post #99

Recent BBC World headlines: Gaza doctor whose nine children were killed in Israeli strike dies from injuries (June 2) Gaza now worse than hell on earth, humanitarian chief tells BBC (June 4) Three journalists among five killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital (June 5) Four killed near Gaza aid centre, health workers say (June 8) Dozens of Palestinians killed while seeking aid in Gaza, hospitals say (June 11) More t…

1. You don't have the counterfactual here, so who's to say how the world would have turned out without exhortations from top brass. 2. Recent is the keyword. The tide of public sentiment has shifted somewhat against Israel in this conflict as the civilian casualties mount & theater of combat expands, so maybe it's easier to be a Brave Truth-Teller in the past 2 months of a conflict whose most recent flare-up dates ba…

"Brave Truth Tellers"? There were protests on the 8th october after Israel was attacked and didn't even retaliate yet. Nothing happened to the people that shared their thoughts. I personally think they should improve their education on the topic, but that is my opinion.

This is a thorough victim complex if you really apply a neutral perspective.

"Counterfactual" my arse...

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#310

Post by rixed »

hliyan wrote: post #268
rixed wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this "end of history illusion", if not the belief that there is a "decent end state"? There will always be reasons to oppose any current equilibrium for improvements, and that's ok.

The "end of history illusion" is not the belief that there is a decent end state, but the belief of each generation that that state has been reached, and that they were to first to reach it.

Actually, this expression "end of history" has been coined, and the ideology(*) behind it promoted, in the 1990s after the collapse of the eastern block. Before that, for what I can tell, the prevaling idea seems to have been that of an "ustoppable march of progress". Long before that, I would guess that the most common ideology was that of a persistant, immuable order.

(*) That's the proper term to denote a concept that justify the will of a group, regardless of its veracity.

Considering history, I see no signs of converging to some end state. I guess technical progress and knowledge accumulate somehow, but even this is not linear and history shows plenty of exemples of drastic step backs. But even assuming an ever increasing technical progress, in a world with infinite resources (that's a very big assumption), what would be the end state? I guess, given we are on HN, a state were humans program conscious machines which then do all the hard work? In other words, the ideology of bigtech?

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