Perhaps they read the Guardian?

Along similar lines, you might want to have a look at “An Open Letter to George Galloway: Re Salam Pax,” from someone who appears to be a Kurdish blogger and addressed to the fanatically anti-American ex-Labour MP.

Likewise an article from the Financial Times:

“At the end of last month, a small group of British trade unionists came here for a week-long trip. It was the first union delegation to travel through Iraqi Kurdistan since the 2003 war, although short visits had been made to Baghdad in the immediate aftermath. [. . .]

“Everywhere the British unionists go, they are congratulated on the virtues of prime minister Tony Blair. They, of course, are not fans. The trade union movement, especially on the left, takes the view that this government, if possibly better than a Conservative one, is not real Labour. ‘It’s all very well going on about Tony Blair,’ says Davis, half drolly, half irritably, at one of the group’s lengthy feasts. ‘We don’t think he’s so wonderful.’ (Davis’s British Communist Party and its paper, the Morning Star, are fiercely hostile to New Labour.)

“The trip does seem to make a difference to the group’s views on the war. During a meal in a restaurant towards the end of the week, David Green, the younger of the two firefighters’ union leaders, says: ‘I was against the war. I thought it was a bad idea and it shouldn’t have been done.’ I ask him about his thoughts now. ‘Well, you see a different perspective. You see what these people have done.’”

Both of these pieces were excerpted and linked to at Harry’s Place (here and here).

I’m glad Harry’s Place is posting on the gratitude of the Kurds toward the British, because, although the bloggers at Harry’s are pro-Iraq war, British lefties might be more willing to read Harry than they would be willing to read the Sun or the Financial Times or the Kurdish blogger. It’s the Guardian/Independent/BBC/Channel Four crowd–the ones who are right now considering voting for Respect or the Lib Dems in order to punish Blair–that we have to break through to.

“People in Britain who lived through World War II do not remember it with anything like the horror one might have expected. In fact, they often remember it as the best time of their lives…what could possibly have been good about it? The answer, of course, is that it provided a powerful existential meaning and purpose…A unified and preeminent national goal provided respite from the peacetime cacophony of complaint, bickering, and social division. And privation for a purpose brings its own content.”

Hear, hear! With a war to win, the people pulled together.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_2_oh_to_be.html

All those comments and questions all apply to American media, yes?

Living in Britain, I found that people there are much more passive and accepting of what “the authorities” say than here in the US. The BBC, which is a branch of government, gets the same automatic deference. Dalrymple believes that this is due to generations growing up under the welfare state.

OT

Tom Sowell has an article about redneck culture that should interest many here.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006608

The scary part, though, is that the pov does filter through into society.

re Talabani, I think he has such a wonderful face. Expressive and non-threatening.

This institution’s mission and prerogative are to oppose the government vigorously, particularly when it goes against the Beeb’s core institutional views on foreign policy. Q’s: What democratic control or review is there for this fourth pillar of government? And why in the age of the internet does any media organisation in a democracy arrogate to itself a role that didn’t exist even in the pre-internet era?

Is it that the British public are so full of hatred and loathing for their political class that they actually welcome this self-designated, unaccountable, unelected, uncontrolled fourth branch of government? After all, if they really hate Blair so much, they can vote him out. There is no other explanation for the continued existence of such an unbelieveably biased and amateurish operation as the BBC’s foreign reporting.