September
14, 2001
All The The news that's fit to print
Volume 1 Issue 2
Late final

 

 

By Matt Johnson

I was in Sweden as I watched the Earth shaking events of September 11th unfold on television. I've always felt a deep connection with, and affection for, New York City and it's people so those harrowing scenes left me in a state of fevered astonishment. Slackjawed. It was also a combination of luck and timing that meant I was here rather than there. My apartment is not that far from where the World Trade Center is (or was) and as I watched the intimately familiar buildings and streets of my adopted home succumb to the devastation I felt a mixture of relief, that my family were with me over here, and guilt that I wasn't with my friends over there.

Like most people my thoughts have been with the thousands of ordinary people and the courageous emergency workers who died deaths of unimaginable terror in this catastrophe. Against that blue September sky what greater contrast could there be between acts of incomprehensible violence by some and the selfless acts of heroism by others?

But my thoughts inevitably started to drift towards another dimension of this tragedy. The mindset, perpetuated by certain politicians and media in America and the West, that the world really can be divided that neatly between good and evil. As recruitment to the US armed forces booms and record numbers of stars and stripes are handed over the counter to a population increasingly whipped up into the patriotic hysteria of war, should not the question now being asked be not 'how' the USA was attacked but 'why'?

  

From bombing civilians in every corner of the planet from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Yugoslavia without troubling to listen to the United Nations, to maintaining chains of crippling embargoes against disobedient regimes as well as the CIA's funding, training and arming of brutal dictators like Suddam Hussein and murderous terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, America and it's Allies have been guilty of heinous crimes themselves over the past few decades. How many more monsters are being trained and armed behind our sleeping backs even at this moment? How many more dragon's teeth are being sown for future generations of innocents to reap?

Violence begets violence begets violence begets violence and rather than creating ever more fertile breeding grounds of hate while bombing people ever deeper into despair and chasing them ever further into the clutches of extremists might not our best defence against this nightmare simply be a more humane foreign policy? Instead of declaring war on phantoms and shadows shouldn't we declare war on global injustice?
It's impossible to avoid the awful realisation that what the West has been visiting upon others for years is finally being visited upon the West. If you listen carefully you can hear the eerie sound of wings flapping as the chickens start coming home to roost.

 

 

 

 

 

Although I'm uncertain whether the BBC bothers listening to its audience any longer, this is an open letter urging them to reconsider their July 1st abandonment of World Service short-wave broadcasts to the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Various excuses were offered as this unpopular decision was announced. That people listened to the World Service on the Internet via their computers, or on their local FM stations, or that it was all just too expensive. It now appears to have been a rather hasty and ill thought out decision.

The Corporation released a statement recently that said shutting down the short-wave transmissions to these territories will save them £500,000. That's not a lot of money when you think of the incredible value this service has provided, decade after decade. Eyebrows were understandably raised therefore when it also slipped out that a 'bonus' of £800,000 would be divided between Director General Greg Dyke and several of his BBC colleagues in recognition of their cost cutting expertise. Hmmm. The phrase "They know the price of everything yet the value of nothing" springs to mind.

Recent events in New York and Washington have also served to make the BBC's decision look even more dubious. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, as telephones (mobile and fixed line) and the Internet ground to a halt, due to malfunctioning networks and clogged servers, thousands turned to their trusty radios and tried to tune into the World Service only to hear ... static or silence.

You would think It would be of interest to the BBC to know there are still untold thousands of listeners across the globe who use short-wave radio as their primary means of receiving the World Service. People who just aren't tied to their computers all day long. Although even if they were, the computer is a machine designed for tasks other than listening to the radio. And those local FM relays? They are piecemeal, inconsistent and broadcast at inconvenient times of the day.

It's ironic that at the same time that electronics giants Sony and Grundig are heavily promoting and selling large amounts of their excellent short-wave/world band radios in the North American market, that the premier short-wave broadcaster, the BBC, should be abandoning this historic and still viable medium. Internet and FM relay are a supplement to short-wave and not a substitute for it. The decision to shut down the short-wave transmitters is 10 years premature and should be reversed.

Is the BBC really still interested in what it's listeners think and want? If so I urge them to reconsider this premature, short sighted and dubious decision. PLEASE!

Please go to savebbc.org via our Link Of The Day and support this campaign

By Matt Johnson
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