Technical Glitch Lets Reporters Eavesdrop On Obama, Sarkozy

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that a technical glitch allowed reporters to listen in on a private conversation between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama, made in a backroom meeting at the G20 summit, treating listeners to a rare insight into the importance of personal relationships in international politics. 'I can't stand him any more,' said Mr. Sarkozy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 'He's a liar.' Mr. Obama replied: 'You're sick of him. I have to deal with him every day!' According to Reuters, the two presidents were apparently 'unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen in to a simultaneous translation.' The reporters made 'a group decision... not to report the conversation as it was considered private and off-the-record,' but Arrets Sur Images, a French website that covers current affairs, got wind of the exchange and broke the story."

Comments

2 people agreeing is news?

[Servaas]

2 people agree the another is an ass. What is the news?

Re:2 people agreeing is news?

[scot4875]

When will there be a candid talke and recognition that Israel is more often the villain and things should be set right?

Probably never, because any acknowledgment of Israel's dirty deeds is equivalent to anti semitism and means you like Hitler.

--Jeremy

Re:2 people agreeing is news?

[Moryath]

Sigh.

"And this is why we can't have nice things."

It's much, much more complicated than that. The "Palestinians" have had numerous opportunities for statehood from the early 1900's onwards. They've rejected peace option after peace option after peace option, beginning with several offerings from the British (who ruled the Manate of Palestine through 1947) and then launched an all-out war when the original UN partition plan was put into place.

This was AFTER they were already given the nation of Transjordan, into which no Jews were allowed to emigrate.

And of course, those who scream about "Palestinian refugees" ignore the fact that the stolen land intended to become the Nation of Palestine in 1948 was taken over, not by Israel, but by the nations of Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, and Egypt. The "Palestinians" were made "refugees" ON THEIR OWN LAND as a cynical political ploy by the Arab League and the Pan-Arabist factions, nothing more. And they still fail to acknowledge the number of Jews - at least twice the number of so-called "Palestinian refugees" - in Arab states in the years 1948-1955 who were kicked out, their houses and property confiscated, and forced to move "somewhere" (e.g. Israel) by those same Pan-Arabist forces and governments.

But you probably never did the slightest research into the subject. Because to you, it's all about "one side good, other side bad." The Jews have been kicked around and harassed by just about everyone for the past 2000 years. The "Palestinians" of the region have been abused by their so-called "brethren" the Arab Muslims, turned into a group of impoverished and locked-up people in one of the worst and most inhumane cynical political ploys I've ever seen. Meanwhile, the terrorist forces running the "refugee" region have attacked everyone they could find - tried to assassinate the leaders of Transjordan/Jordan numerous times, attacked the Egyptian government so often that the Egyptians said "fuck this" and put up a wall between themselves and Gaza a long time before the Israelis finally caught on to the wisdom of the idea, and of course waging a bloody-ass civil war in the south of Lebanon for the past two decades.

For my money? The Arabs - specifically, the Pan-Arabists, the fundamentalist Arab governments especially - are a bunch of fucking assholes. The leaders of the "Palestinian" movement? Likewise. The leaders of Israel? Probably assholes too, but they are tasked with an incredibly hard position, trying to keep a nation of a few million people safe from a group of hundreds of millions of assholes in nations like Iran who are told at Mosque once a week that the Jews will be "destroyed" in the apocalypse and that the Jews aren't even human. So I can cut them a little slack there.

Oh, and the people stuck in the middle - the few civilians in the "Palestinian territories", the civilians in Israel? Sucks to be them, on both sides.

Re:Glitch?

[ZeroSumHappiness]

The article isn't very clearly written, but it's Sarkozy accusing Netanyahu of being a liar. Edited for clarity:

Mr. Sarkozy: 'I can't stand him any more. He's a liar.'

Mr. Obama replied: 'You're sick of him. I have to deal with him every day!'

Re:Glitch?

[rahvin112]

The Reporters were told not to turn their headsets on until the show began. (Probably a bit silly in that Sarkosky/Obama should have turned their microphones off until they wished to be heard). As the conversation was meant to be private it would have been a serious violation (as in crime under french law) for anyone in attendance that was a French journalist to report on the content of what they illicitly overheard. So a tabloid that wasn't in attendence caught wind of the conversation and reported it. I'd expect that criminal charges will be leveled against whoever peeped.

But the point here is that under French law (privacy of conversation) they COULDN'T report on what they overheard (or they could be arrested) because they broke the conference rule by turning on their headsets early.

That's the little bit you won't hear in any of the US reporting.

Re:Israel is running out of allies...

[rahvin112]

Jewish is not an ethnicity. Semitic is the ethnicity Jews derive from. Arabs are also Semitic. I'm not even sure how you went off on this tangent, as you appear to be arguing that Jewish is a separate ethnicity, its not, it's a religion not ethnic origin. Jews and Arabs are from the same ethnic group, the only real difference between the groups is the religion, which has nothing to do with genetic ethnicity. Palestinians aren't ethnically Jewish because Jewish isn't an ethnicity.

That would be like saying anglo-saxons are ethnically Christian. It's nonsense. You appear to need to study what ethnicity is and how ethnic groups are divided. Let me give you a hint, it's not dictated by the religion they choose.