People Speaking – Do

— “No! It can’t be true! What a disgrace. Did you hear who received the Nobel Peace Prize?”

— “No. Who? Abu-Mazen?”

— “No, but the letters are almost the same.”

— “Eh… I don’t know.”

— “Obama.”

— “But what did he do?”

— “Exactly.”

Sex

Have i ever told you how much i love some BBC headlines? For example: Sex smell lures ‘vampire’ to doom.

Livingstone

Don’t believe media lies, Ken Livingstone is an evil cunt.

(Mogwai, All Tomorrow’s Parties 2000)

No Nukes, part 5 – Scientist

The Israelis have never confirmed they have nuclear weapons, but this has been widely assumed since a scientist leaked details in the 1980s.

(Israel ‘has 150 nuclear weapons’, BBC News, 26 May 2008)

BBC is very careful about quoting—they put ‘has 150 nuclear weapons’ in quotes because they don’t claim that this is true, but because it’s just something that Jimmy Carter said. I’m not sure that all BBC readers actually understand this subtlety, but it’s good that they do it.

However, they say that ‘a scientist leaked details in the 1980s.’ Obviously, they refer to Mordechai Vanunu, but he wasn’t a scientist, just a technician. According to vanunu.org, a website that supports Vanunu, it is an “important point often misunderstood or forgotten”; quoting that site, “Vanunu was not an advanced scientist, but a subordinate technical assistant.” But BBC misunderstood and forgot.

I don’t strongly support Vanunu, because he makes too much of a joke out of himself, but i do support nuclear disarmament.