dear Offcom please stop this women from using free speech, !

The british establishment has been embarrassed at the revelation of America's true nature - a corporate democracy for the white and privilieged, with the majority of the population left outside the social contract. American democracy is a fraud for the majority of the population. The racist backlash is explicable in this context, the response of the State is to blame the victims.

As for India being a successful economy, yeah, sure, if you're rich enough, for the majority of the population India is a bigger disaster than America or Britian. Levels of starvation in rural areas are through the roof. Needless to say, most of the misery is a result of western neo-liberal orthodoxy. India might have a 'successful' economy for foreign investors and the domestic elite. For the majority it;s a nightmare.

I have been known to defend free speech many, many times. I even respect her right to say all of these things if they truly are her educated opinions. I do not suggest anyone attempt to silence her forcefully or with litigation, I simply want the problem highlighted with the hope that the BBC will desist from giving her a nationwide platform to spread her racist propaganda. She is surely intelligent enough to be embarrassed into ending her skewed commentary?

I put it to you that she did not believe what she was saying and that she knew the opinion she was trying to spread is false and designed to belittle and discredit non-whites of all races worldwide. How can Nick Griffin be arrested for attempting to enflame racial hatred and this walking pile of skeletor's hand me downs be free to attempt the same thing in almost as overt a manner?

Go on. Make a big enough fuss and she will either shut up or step over the line of legality in frustration. Its a win win situation, you see?

Or are you a good friend of Enoch Powell?

She's vile... what more can I say? She knows exactly what she's saying-she comes from an Oil family or however she puts it-she advocates the most traditional values of The British Empire! She's part of the ruling class and quite proud of the way non WASPs have been treated through out history and continue to be tret. I would like to stop her speaking full stop.

What do you expect? The mail is a rascist tory scum rag. In the 30s they supported the Blackshirts and "Our Friend Chancellor Hitler".

A recent copy I saw had an article blaming 'The Beatles' for the 'decline in standards' i this country (I kid you not!)

I'd be more deeply shocked if anything vaguely progressive appeared in the Mail.

Come on, guys. We are talking about the Daily Mail here. What more can you expect?

It's such an enriching newspaper, filled to the brim with such worthy and gripping articles such as lard shortages, Gywenth Paltrow's roots, and this months new bikini style. Not to mention the delightfully schizophrenic articles about.. well, pretty much everything - from the "Atkins diet will kill you all" to the Free Atkins Diet Guide, this paper has all the mental capacity of a small undercooked sprout.

They clearly jump upon anything against immigrants, slobbering over a chance to exhale a little more racist slander to the general public!

I swear they want to kill off their readers - with stress from the public-scarer stories to recommending the Atkins diet!

ok ok I've finished now LOL

Everyone knows she's a racist who writes for a post-fascist rag - the shocking thing is that's precisely why the BBC employs her as a pundit. Free speech implies only that - it doesn't imply the right to the platform of a national public broadcaster.

People like George Galloway can't even get away with expressing their opinions on the BBC in a relatively direct and simple form, let alone in the form of the cynical, nudge-and-wink insinuations that Leslie indulges in.

For example the point where she uses the phrase "third world" with a pause of revulsion after the phrase "mostly black"; the explicit but subtle comparisons of the Southern States's and Africa's corruption without citing any other grounds than race.

Hers is an camouflaged extremist position, which, if it had come from someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum, would've been challenged vociferously by a Paxman or an Esler and presented in a controversial context. After Iraq, the BBC wants to be seen to be "neutral" by depoliticizing embarrassments for Bush like Katrina wherever possible. Yet paradoxically the only way you can depoliticize ethnic cleansing is by dehumanizing the population by camouflaged racism.

The media in general is following this pattern. They are obscuring the human reality with the spectacle of the disaster, and "Escape from New York" / Hollywood type narratives of apocalypse, the sensationalism of which, conveniently leaves no room for reflection about the obvious role of global warming.

Funnily enough, Leslie, in her cunning way, brings up the issue of oil, as usual to give her reactionary bile a veneer of intellectual respectability - but you can bet that next week she'll have shut up about it - and she certainly wasn't analysing the role of oil in the Iraq war in quite such cynical terms. Oh no.

I think that during this coverage the media has taken it's chance to subtly indoctrinate us into the callous mainstream capitalist US way of seeing ethnic minorities and the poor, because (as in terrorism, war, or third world disasters) it doesn't have to balance any powerful interests and the victims are comfortably removed from us.

It's just another example of the way the UK-USA alliance transforms our societal values while our dissent never shapes their's, because we are being brainwashed by our own media while we engage with issues of foreign policy on which we have no real voice.

"It's just another example of the way the UK-USA alliance transforms our societal values while our dissent never shapes their's, because we are being brainwashed by our own media while we engage with issues of foreign policy on which we have no real voice."

No, it's really just another example of everyday right-wing ramblings from a demagogic rag that embittered read. Nothing more significant than your usual Daily Mail bullshit.

This site seems to attract posts from people who are experts in spotting racism where others don't see it. Are these people more clever, sensitive and perceptive then the rest of us? What other skills do they have? Finding fault in others is fun for some people I suppose.

Having met AL, albeit fleetingly, I'd say she has a number of political opinions with which I disagree, but she ain't no racist. When she was on R4's Desert Island Discs a while back her selection included tracks by Nusrat Ali Fateh Khan, Ofra Haza and Ravi Shankar, as well as Billie Holiday's anti-lynching classic Strange Fruit.

As to her comments about the US south, Africa and the Middle East, it's an objective fact that many of these places are corrupt and dysfunctional. To ignore this fact is to let down the inhabitants of these countries - most of whom are non-white. Who's the racist now?

I don't see what all the fuss is about - she's probably right in most circumstances but people like her are beaten with the racist stick everytime they state a truth that the quivering white middle classes don't approve of. And for you to state that OJ Simpson wasn't guilty when everyone knew he was (except the corrupt judicial system in the US where money doesn't talk it screams!) just blows the rest of your objections to Ms (!) Leslie out of the water and leaves them without any credence.

Have you ever heard any of the factual stories about people trying to get aid to countries such as those destroyed by the Tsunami, the problems they had getting stuff to the needy of Ethiopia without it being taken by bandits or the government? Corrupt countries where the majority rule is not white - and there are lots more to be found! I might add that most of the money sent to these countries was in all probability largely financed by simpering white twats feeling guilty because they have seen disturbing pictures of women and babies suffering, perhaps they might not be so free with their dosh if they saw what their governments were doing with aid money instead of funneling it towards the ones who really need it. These governments should be carrying out programs of compulsory sterilisation so that these people can't keep breeding and bringing children into the world who have to die and suffer in drought regions. It's nothing less than infanticide.