One of the most disgusting media techniques currently in vogue is the totally servile way the BBC's news scum all maintain a strict verbal division between 'hostages' (held by Hamas) and 'prisoners' (held by Israel). The intention, clearly, is to maximise the apparent illegality and wrongness of the non-state actor's detentions ... while lending the state actor's lawless imprisonments -- thousands of them! -- some kind of imaginary 'legitimacy' via a term that soothingly implies due process and the addressing of wrongdoing. (I mean, you don't want 'prisoners' being 'released', do you...? They must be 'prisoners' for a reason... Whereas, 'hostages', by contrast, are simply 'innocent victims'...)

Just one little verbal obscenity among millions; but it's one that makes me swear every time I hear it. Evil, sick, compliant fuckers.

M.