A while back I wrote a system to detect when the BBC censor comments on their Have Your Say website. It’s been running for a few months now and recently I wrote a fancy front end for it to allow easy browsing of the database.
It’s called ‘Watch Your Mouth’ and it’s part of my News Sniffer project, which will include other corporate media monitoring tools (coming soon).
It was broken for the duration of last week so no censored comments got detected, but it’s been working since and there is a large archive of censored comments too from the last few months.
I spotted some BBC ip addresses browsing the site already too.
Comments
Hello,
In your program you were wondering about how the world is percieved after the terror attacks on New York, september the 11th.
I believe that most of the world does not share your view, that the world is a dangerous place full of terrorists.
I live in Finland, a small country in the north, never engaged in any macro politics in the world. Me and my countrymen dont feel unsafe in our country, or when flying abroad. Infact, that is the way I believe most of the countries percieve the world.
Several other cities were target for islamist terrorism after the NY attack, London, Madrid and Berlin. These were countries that were engaged in the conflict in Iraq. They were invading a souvereign nation without justified cause, and the rebound came right after: Terrorist attacks. What were you expecting? If US and UK, for instance, would invade Finland (wich is somewhat unlike) I too will become a terrorist, defending my country. The terrorist bombings are therefore quite understandable. A newly released research by US military(wich you referred to during one of your programs), pointed out that most of the terrorist attacks are not caused by religeous fanatism, but more of the will to repell an invading force in the mothercountry. This phenomena is found around the world. Presently we have Tchetchenia, with its terrorists. During the second world war, “Le resistance” was a terrorist organisation in France.
The happenings are quite logical, and they could probably have been forceen, if UK&US would not have thoughtlessly rushed into Iraq(wich left Afganistan, your actual reason for the war on terror, undefendend. This again let the “terrorists” there to rearm).
Therefore I am amazed how little the world has learned. There has not been a time in history, when armed invasions of souveregn nations would have been without complications. Therefore you have quite a mess to solve.
The fact that the muslim world, percieves the conflict in Iraq and Libanon as an attack the religion, makes matters even more complicated. How will you solve that? Are you going to taint the populace of a religion with one and a half billion supporters?
Nothing bad is so bad that nothing good can come out of it(a saying roughly translated from my language). This, in some strange way, also fits these happenings(The terrorist attacks, the terrible failed atempt to bring peace in Iraq). You made mistakes, and now you will pay the price. Everything is about cause and effect. And perhaps the world will finally learn something of its mistakes, although the chance is very small.
I want to remark again that most of the world does not see the world as a dangerous terrorist place. We have muslims living in Finland. I am, however in no way afraid of them, or their community. There has been no terrorism in our country, save for a few peaceful demonstrations, where i also have participated (even though I am protestant of religion, even though that is completely irrelevant)
I would greatly apreciate any reply on my comments.
With sincere regards,
Axel Aminoff
Reservist Leutenant in the concriptional army.
5th year student of Psychology
Journalist
Dear Axel,
here is one reply for you. I feel some of your assumptions need to be corrected, beacuse they are based on feeling rather than fact.
First of all, you are drawing some really narrowminded conclusions about the sentiments of your countrymen, let alone citizens of “most countries”. I find it alarming, that somebody as educated as yourself has the nerve to diminish the impact and consequenses of terrorism worldwide. As you pointed out, Finland has successfully stayed out of the ongoing conflicts due to greater politics, and that alone guarantees the Finns a somewhat safe life up in the cold, godforsaken North. But as always, you lack the ability to feel compassion, to sympathize with anybody else. If the world has learned little, as you say, then Axel Aminoff has learned even less. Millions of people live in constant fear of terror, everywhere in the world, each day. Therefore, please don’t apply your ideas to people and nations you personally haven’t encountered.
In your text, you are approaching somebody, referred to as “you”. It reamains quite unclear who that “you” is. Are you addressing the BBC reporter, the people of United States or somebody else? You are discharging some serious accusations there. It seems a little arbitrary to put the blame of military intervention in the Middle East on, as the reader receives it, the people of USA. You are also pointing out Afghanistan as the “actual reason” to 9/11. Could you accept that these kinds of decisions have been made by very few people, in one case mainly by Head of State?
You say the 9/11 events were a reaction to invading forces in the terrorists’ mothercountry. At this point we all know, that the actual terrorists came from several different nations:
The hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 were reported to be:
Mohamed Atta (Egyptian)
Waleed al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian)
Wail al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian)
Abdulaziz al-Omari (Saudi Arabian)
Satam al-Suqami (Saudi Arabian)
Mohammed Atta is believed to have flown Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Aboard United Airlines Flight 175 the hijackers were reported to be:
Marwan al-Shehhi (from the United Arab Emirates)
Fayez Banihammad (from the United Arab Emirates)
Mohand al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian)
Hamza al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian)
Ahmed al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian)
Marwan al-Shehhi is believed to have flown Flight 175 into the South Tower.
The hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77 were reported to be:
Hani Hanjour (Saudi Arabian)
Khalid al-Mihdhar (Saudi Arabian)
Majed Moqed (Saudi Arabian)
Nawaf al-Hazmi (Saudi Arabian)
Salem al-Hazmi (Saudi Arabian)
Hani Hanjour is believed to have flown Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
The hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 were reported to be:
Ziad Jarrah (Lebanese)
Ahmed al-Haznawi (Saudi Arabian)
Ahmed al-Nami (Saudi Arabian)
Saeed al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian)
Ziad Jarrah is believed to have crashed Flight 93 into the Pennsylvania countryside to prevent or end an assault by the passengers.
The unifying element of these men was bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. The attacks were performed in the name of Allah.
I believe you are not familiar with the ideology of marginal, fanatic Muslim groupings. Islam is a powerful phenomenon, because much more than Christianity, it completely applies its lable to everyday life in Muslim countries. Much more than Protestantism, it’s a visible and visual culture, breathed as air. You can convert to Islam, but you can never really leave Islam, if you have been born and raised a Muslim. Most Muslim’s don’t interprete the Koran itself, but have it “translated” by Mullahs and other “experts”. The nuances of personal belief is therefore as vast as any scientific color scale. There is no such thing as “bad religion”, since all religions have emerged from human’s need to interact with the divine for peace of the soul. But there are bad believers, both Christian and Muslim. For the 9/11 terrorists, religion was the greatest issue and all Americans haram.
In Finland you don’t have many Muslims. You don’t have a long tradition of their presence in your country, and about 97% of them are political refugees (and their family members). The only Muslims you have probably encountered are the guys that provide you with pizza Turkish kebabs. The demonstrations you say you have attended, well, what can we make of that? You probably went along with it because you were seeking the admiration of somebody near you, social approval or some other personal benefit that would come out of it. That’s just the way it goes.
You don’t fear. Why would you? You live a protected life. You are in a position where you can bale yourself out of inconvenient situations with money. You would not rise up and “become a terrorist” in case of serious foreign intervention. Maybe you already are the terrorist, to those who live near you. And you still have a lot to learn.
Love,
Eleonore
Such anger.
I only meant to say thanks for news sniffer, i’ll do it on the post above..
p.s. being godless i’ve always hated religion and superstition, from crystals to islam. I’ll never forget that when I was slightly active politically, warning the left that islam and individuality were completely incompatible was seen as being fascistic.
Still the 9/11 ‘Reichstag fire’ has given the industrial military complex everything it wanted.
Hi,
I would like to comment on the Eleonoras article. I find it very strange that your central theses is that Axels article is based on emotional, rather than rational evaluations. Your article is practically based on pure emotional anger. Do you really think most of the world percieves the world as a terrorist place? I’ll have to agree with Axel on that one. Most people live outside Europe and US. Why are you writing your article? Do you have a point you’r making or are you just just writing because your angry yourself?
Nicholas
Axel i stand by everything you say, you are right.Elonore why did usa and uk did not attack saudi where terrorists came from.also osama in afganistan
On the most popular Have Your Say – What is the impact of Lockerbie release? the top rated comment was recently censored. The comment was:
Well, I guess someone had to be first to defend this decision so here goes:
1). There is great doubt that this man was involved in the Lockerbie Incident. Someone had to be a fall guy and there is weight of opinion that al-Megrahi was the stooge, put up by Libya (with the UK Government being complicit) in order to improve relations.
[Barry, England]
If you look around on the BBC web site it’s possible to see (some? all) of the complaints. I could only find this single complaint:
what worries me the comment from ‘BARRY, ENGLAND’, currently ‘top rated’ on here by the usaual SELF RIGHTIOUS middle class bbc viewers.
what an OUTRAGIOUS, IGNORANT comment. to say ‘it is no business of americans how we deal with our prisoners.
oh ok, using that logic… no one is allowed to speak out anymore on the issue of how other countries deal with their prisoners.
it is these kind of STUPID comments that encourage separation. well done bbc viewers for displaying your ignorance.
So it appears that the post was censored due to a complaint about Barry’s logic, rather than breaking the “House Rules”.
The censored comment does not show up in your News Sniffer archive of the thread here but maybe it just hasn’t been indexed yet. Hope your blog likes html markup…
Sorry I only quoted part of the censored post. The full post from “Barry, England” (retrieved from Google’s cache) was:
Well, I guess someone had to be first to defend this decision so here goes:
1). There is great doubt that this man was involved in the Lockerbie Incident. Someone had to be a fall guy and there is weight of opinion that al-Megrahi was the stooge, put up by Libya (with the UK Government being complicit) in order to improve relations.
2). We are all aware of the red-neck opinions of most Americans. We are more humanitarian.
3). It is no business of the US how the UK deals with its prisoners.
Barry, England
I received a reply from the BBC stating “It appears the comment was removed after complaints about point 2, which was deemed offensive.”
Hmm this is the site where one of the most highly related comments in this thread on African DNA</a contains the statement "African/Americans is the largest and hatful group of racist in the world today."
Seriously, study more English before making me look like a fool.
Sincerely,
The Swedish Axel Aminoff