Staying on the topic of the press, David Cameron can't fix anything in England so he takes to the radio to whine that "Islamic State" is being used to describe the group in Iraq -- the group that has named itself the Islamic State.
Whining orally wasn't enough so a number of UK MPs put it in writing. Jake Kanter (UK Broadcast Now) reports:
A group of MPs, including Boris Johnson and Alex Salmond, also wrote to director general Tony Hall asking that the BBC instead adopt the term “Daesh”, which translates as Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Syria).
But Hall rejected the request, arguing that the corporation needed to “preserve the BBC’s impartiality”, according to The Times.
A BBC spokesman said: “No one listening to our reporting could be in any doubt what kind of organisation this is. We call the group by the name it uses itself, and regularly review our approach.
“We also use additional descriptions to help make it clear we are referring to the group as they refer to themselves, such as ‘so-called Islamic State’.”
No, Kanter, it's not really that simple and Da'ash is seen as a slur.
Roy Greenslade (Guardian) weighs in:
Some 120 MPs signed up to a letter to the BBC’s director general, Tony Hall, which urged the corporation to adopt the term “Daesh” (an Arabic acronym that is used by Islamic State’s opponents).*
Cameron claimed that the term “Islamic State” annoyed Muslims in Britain because the group was neither Islamic nor a state. The moment he made that specious remark on Radio 4’s Today programme I shook my head.
Did he seriously think that anyone was fooled by that description? Did he really believe that its use amounted to some kind of propaganda coup? If so, in what way?
Was he suggesting that more people will be inclined to join a gang of barabaric murderers because they proclaim themselves to be an Islamic state?
It immediately struck me that the prime minister, and the 120 MPs who agreed with him, were engaged in some form of displacement activity.
Instead of worrying over the substantive matter of designing a strategy to deal with terrorism, they preferred to go off at a tangent and adopt a Daily Mail/Sun-like agenda by attacking the BBC for doing its job.
If Cameron and company don't want to call them the Islamic State, they can certainly use their own mouths to use which ever words they desire.
David Cameron does get that, right? That he's in charge of his own mouth?
Judging by some of his statements, he might not grasp it -- or maybe just might not want to take responsibility for it.
But whining about the press using a term for a group that a group itself uses is bad enough. Trying to force a news outlet to instead use another a term is the sort of bullying one expects from a group like the Islamic State and not for a supposed legislative body representing a nation.
Again, it's a distraction and goes to the fact that Cameron has no plans for actually addressing the group so he hopes to score some easy points with this nonsense.
As for the actions that have been taken, it's been bombings dropped from war planes over and over. That's the 'plan' and it's really not working.
Amazingly, in June of 2014, US President Barack Obama was the first to say it wouldn't work. He was the first to note that the only road to peace was a political solution.
Yet all he and other western leaders have done is focus on bombings.
Which leads us to the question of the day on Twitter:
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Question: We have seen air strikes on Iraq since 1991 (24 years). How effective have they been in establishing peace?
Adam Walker
But bombings all the west wants to focus on.
National Iraqi News Agency reports:
Vice President Iyad Allawi said the international coalition led by the United States does not have a specific strategy in the ongoing fight against Daash, in the light of the lack of coordination between the allies.
Allawi added in a press statement transferred by his press office "that Britain and France will demand holding a meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly of the United Nations to adopt the convening of a regional conference to unify the visions to how eliminate the forces of extremism in the region.
And Allawi is correct.
Cameron whining about press coverage won't create a strategy.
Nor has Barack, stumbling around on this for a year now, been able to discover a strategy.
Which has left the State Dept acting like the Pentagon.
Here's the State Dept's Brett McGurk's entire Twitter output for Wednesday:
Brett McGurk
Again, he's confused himself with a DoD employee.
All Iraq News reports:
–Iraqi three presidencies, president, speaker of
parliament and prime minister, held a meeting Wednesday evening,
discussing the security and political situations in the state.
“Deputy president Iyad Allawi took part in the
meeting,” the media office of the deputy announced in a statement.
“Putting a comprehensive strategy and national reconciliation are the prior topics discussed in the meeting as well as the challenges that relate to the displaced families and the services,” the statement concluded.
“Putting a comprehensive strategy and national reconciliation are the prior topics discussed in the meeting as well as the challenges that relate to the displaced families and the services,” the statement concluded.
McGurk can't even amplify that meet-up, so desperate is he to stroke his War On.
The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley -- updated:
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
Iraq
