What is RKS up to now ?

[HS Thomas]

No not RK Singh aka Ravish.
Bur Robert Kilroy-Silk.
Anger at Kilroy 'anti-Arab rant'
"gratuitous anti-Arab rant".
In the Sunday Express piece, the former Labour MP referred to Arabs as "suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors".
The Commission for Racial Equality has also reported the matter to the police.
The MCB secretary general Iqbal Sacranie said in a letter to BBC One controller Lorraine Heggessey that Mr Kilroy-Silk had failed to distinguish between the terrorists behind the 11 September attacks and 200 million "ordinary Arab peoples".
Mr Sacranie questioned whether if the word Jew or black was substituted for Arab in the piece, the presenter would not still be occupying a high-profile spot on television."
Oh-oh! Here we go again!
[ January 10, 2004: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

[Tim Baker]

I'd like to read the whole rant tbh

[HS Thomas]

BBC investigation

A BBC statement would only say that the corporation was "looking into how the Sunday Express column, which Robert Kilroy-Silk writes in his capacity as a freelance, fits with his on-screen work for the BBC."

The issue of what scope BBC employees have to freelance for other media is a particularly thorny one.

Last summer, a story written for the Mail on Sunday by the BBC Today reporter Andrew Gilligan set in train a series of events which culminated in the death of weapons expert David Kelly.
After Dr Kelly's suicide, new BBC guidelines were issued to staff who wrote freelance articles, which said they "should not bring the BBC into disrepute or undermine the integrity or impartiality of BBC programmes or presenters".

Storm over comments by TV presenter

TV host defended
But Perry de Havilland of the Libertarian Alliance defended the television host's right to free speech.
He told BBC News: "Blackening everyone in an entire civilisation is intemperate, to put it mildly.
"But I certainly think he's entitled to his opinions and I don't see why he's been whipped from pillar to post for it."
TV host defended
[ January 11, 2004: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

[Tim Baker]

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BBD044EE-87AF-4860-BB32-DDCA21C1B6D5.htm

Kilroy-Silk says Arabs murdered civilians on September 11

Surely thats a statement of fact?

In the article, the former Labour MP described Arabs as "suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors",

Thats a nice quote, but without context I can't tell whether it's racist or not. Some arabs have been all of those things, as have many white people. I wish someone would reprint the whole thing so I could judge it for myself.

[HS Thomas]

I've been searching various forums but seems no one can find a link to the whole article. Guess there aren't many Sunday Express readers that can type, or connect to the web.
Kilroy and his Defenders. http://www.leninology.blogspot.com/
Kilroy claims:
"It was originally written as a response to the views of opponents to the war in Iraq that Arab States 'loathe' the West and my piece referred to 'Arab States' rather than 'Arabs'.

Out of that context, it has obviously caused great distress and offence and I can only reiterate that I very deeply regret that."
On the basis of that pitiful claim, a number of neophytic defenders of free speech have emerged to claim that Kilroy is being subject to a politically correct pogrom. Here is what Kilroy wrote:
�We're told that the Arabs loathe us. Really?� What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11� That we admire them for the cold-blooded killings in Mombasa, Yemen and elsewhere? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women-repressors?�
Does that say "Arab states" or "Arabs"? Oh, you read it right.
As Inayat Bunglawala notes in this week's Sunday Express (yeah, they let the Arabs have their say):
"Unfortunately Mr Kilroy-Silk didn�t restrict himself to attacking the actions of a particular criminal few. As the Muslim author Ziauddin Sardar commented, "It is like blaming Yorkshire people for the actions of the Yorkshire Ripper�."
Kilroy is also guilty of basic ignorance:
�The Arab world has not exactly earned our respect, has it? Iran is a vile, terrorist-supporting regime - part of the axis of evil."
Apart from drawing on this fictitious notion of an "axis", since when was Iran part of the Arab world?
Andrew Dismore, Labour MP, comes out to make his pitch:
"I am not defending anything Mr Kilroy-Silk has said, but I was greatly upset by what Mr Paulin said, and I think the rules should apply to people equally," said Mr Dismore. "Mr Paulin said awful things about Israel and Jewish people. He should have been kept off BBC screens while his own comments were investigated. I was surprised that that did not happen. It smacks of double standards on the part of the BBC."
No, Mr Dismore. Tom Paulin said that occupiers of someone else's land should be resisted with force. He did not denigrate "Jewish people", or even Israelis. He specifically called for violent resistance against Israeli "settlers" (occupiers, in other words). That is not a racist statement, however inflammatory it is for Israel's amen corner.
The Telegraph claims that Tom Paulin described "Jews living in the Israeli-occupied territories" as "Nazis" who should be "shot dead". That's an interesting way to describe it. Imagine someone saying that armed Russians living in the Russian controlled territories of Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion were "Nazis" who should be "shot dead". Would they be decried for this? Well, no. They would be armed and trained by the American government. Such distortion, which privileges the rights of occupiers, bigots and racists over those of Arabs, Muslims and anti-occupation forces, can only be wilful stupidity.
The lengths to which Kilroy's defenders will go to avoid the substance of what he said and to divert the argument down side-tracks is truly a wonder to behold. One hopes that the next time some nutter stands up in Finsbury Park and describe the Jews and Americans as "pigs", we will see such an emotional, passionate defense of "free speech". But one doesn't expect it in such a manifestly racist culture as ours. "

[HS Thomas]

Guardian article
In a column for the Sunday Express last weekend, headed We owe Arabs nothing, Kilroy-Silk said: "Apart from oil - which was discovered, is produced and is paid for by the west - what do they contribute? Can you think of anything? Anything really useful? Anything really valuable? Something we really need, could not do without? No, nor can I.
"What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors?"
Kilroy-Silk lands in hot water over 'indisputably stupid' attack on Arabs
[ January 11, 2004: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

[R K Singh]

Originally posted by HS Thomas:
No not RK Singh aka Ravish.

[Bela Bardak]

The BBC is hinting that the presenter may have to make a choice between his column in the Sunday Express, in which the article appeared, and his television show.

Hmmm, if this is true than the hooraw is much greater than it should be. The fact is that the Beeb is going to make all of it's news figures give up regular newspaper columns and is going to pay them a nice chunk of license fee money in order to do so.
I was under a number of false impressions about this case and Mr. Kilroy-Silk himself. First, I thought the Beeb had fired him. Perhaps it has, but the Independent apparently believes otherwise. Second, I thought that Kilroy-Silk was a former Tory MP, when in fact he was an ex Labor MP.
Kilroy-Silk's piece was something of an anti-Arab rant. I'm not sure what his free-speech rights are in the UK, but the fact is that he's wrong about a number of things including the historical worth of the Arabs. The Arabs were the one of the custodians of civilization after the Fall of the Roman Empire and the work of Arab philosophers, scientists, and mathemeticians from the early Middle Ages are of great worth.
Had the piece been written more selectively he would have been correct on other things. Arabs have done the things he cited, but not all Arabs celebrated in the streets on September 11th, 2001.
[ January 12, 2004: Message edited by: Bela Bardak ]

[HS Thomas]

Originally posted by Bela Bardak:

Had the piece been written more selectively he would have been correct on other things. Arabs have done the things he cited, but not all Arabs celebrated in the streets on September 11th, 2001.

THat was an insightful post. I've read somewhere that what was shown to be celebrations about the 9/11 attack or events since ,in some cases was actually celebrations about something else altogether. The media portrayed it differently.
I guess we need to question those news clips that don't show the correspondent actually going up and questioning some to find what the celebration was all about.
[ January 12, 2004: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

[HS Thomas]

Originally posted by Bela Bardak:

The Arabs were the one of the custodians of civilization after the Fall of the Roman Empire and the work of Arab philosophers, scientists, and mathemeticians from the early Middle Ages are of great worth.

That should be well documented if one were interested enough to look.
Robert Kilroy Silk has apologised (even if the article was sent in error very little excuse can be given for those words as written). The fact that he is still given space/time in the media makes one think the media are after something deeper and more sinister. Once there was quite a lot of mess uncovered in the BBC. Perhaps free speech is at question when looking at the angle of presenters serving more than one mouth piece.

[Bela Bardak]

I've read somewhere that what was shown to be celebrations about the 9/11 attack or events since ,in some cases was actually celebrations about something else altogether.

I'm not surprised that such a thing was written, though I'm very skeptical about the truth of it. I saw celebrations and heard what purported to be translations of comments made there. Yasser Arafat has made it his business to refute those tapes and transcripts. So no doubt they were refuted in time....

[Pradeep bhatt]

No not RK Singh aka Ravish.

I thought it was RK Singh so I clicked on the thread link,.

[HS Thomas]

Pulling the punters in...
I am sure there's a story behind this line.
The Topic name could well be a Sunday Express headline.

[HS Thomas]

Fundamentalism aside, Arabs may have had, in past history way back in time, a better sense of ethics.Arabic is, currently, the most studied new language in the US, I believe, for various reasons.
I can just see Robert Kilroy-Silk coming back to present such a program under the banner of the BBC. A suitably chastened , well informed , statement retracting RKS. His is a personae well suited to presenting to the general public, Joe Bloggs.
[ January 12, 2004: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

[Richard Hawkes]

I thought it was mainly lonely British house wives that showed this much interest in the "Robert Kilroy-Silk".

[HS Thomas]

Oh, I think house husbands too while the wife has been suckered into getting a career.
Would Jamie Oliver count as New Man ?

[Richard Hawkes]

Originally posted by HS Thomas:
Would Jamie Oliver count as New Man ?
"New Mockney-W*nker-what-does-Smell-like-Garlic" more like
"Lubberly-jubberly mate, that's it, mash it in in like this, really give it some wiv yer fingers, then bang it in the oven. Sorted"