Don’t for one minute think anyone can get an intelligent, nuanced analysis of the situation in the Middle East from the BBC, despite the endless chatter.
Islamic organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Council of Britain are treated with reverential obsequiousness by the BBC, and to evaluate the threat of Islamism taking over the Egyptian government, or having a huge influence in Egypt and therefore the entire region, you have to look, for example, at Barry Rubin here, and here. The possibility of this happening, which would almost certainly entail the ‘removal,’ or attempted ‘removal’ of Israel, has been alluded to on the BBC with a cavalier indifference that beggars belief.
Ed Stourton presided over just such a discussion on Egypt on R4 Sunday with three specialists, including journalist and writer Carol Gould, who was one of the writers who alerted me to the full extent of the media’s demonisation of Israel and the Jews.
Also on the programme were Tarek Osman and Dr. Harry Hagopian. Ed opens with a reference to Obama’s iconic speech at Cairo – ‘reaching out to the Muslim World’. “Israel is supposed to be the only democracy in the region”, Ed opines, “but Lebanon also functions as a democracy.” I Beg your pardon?
After various assurances that the Brotherhood definitely deserves to play an important role in the new democracy, but that is ‘nothing to worry about’, Carol said she had been hearing some pretty alarming things on Press TV and Al-Jazeera. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood has promised that “the first thing to go will be Israel.” “This will be the end of the USA and Israel. They’ll be out of the region.” So, not much to worry about there then.
Carol Gould managed to remind us that Lebanon’s democracy has been scuppered by Hezbollah, and that Turkey is already a goner, but Ed had already stopped listening, because “we have to end it there”.
Only time will tell whether Egypt’s was a military coup or a straightforward people’s democratic revolution. If it’s the latter, however youthful the people are, or how Westernised they look and sound, no-one from the BBC has bothered to ask whether or not they’re actually of an anti-West and virulently anti Israel disposition. As for Tunisia, they’ve been marching on the Great Synangogue of Tunis. That should set alarm bells off about all of the freedom fighting ‘youth bulges’ in North African Islamic/Arab states, and the whole world.
The BBC? Tumbleweed.
A useful contribution to the discussion…
“In a genuine revolution, the police and military cannot contain the crowds. In Egypt, the military chose not to confront the demonstrators, not because the military itself was split, but because it agreed with the demonstrators’ core demand: getting rid of Mubarak. And since the military was the essence of the Egyptian regime, it is odd to consider this a revolution.
The crowd in Cairo, as telegenic as it was, was the backdrop to the drama, not the main feature. The main drama began months ago when it became apparent that Mubarak intended to make his reform-minded 47-year-old son, Gamal, lacking in military service, president of Egypt. This represented a direct challenge to the regime. In a way, Mubarak was the one trying to overthrow the regime.”
The BBC hasn’t a clue.
Mubarack’s ousting was no revolution, but a carefully structured military putsch.
“During the celebrations the evening of Feb. 11 and morning of Feb. 12, the two chants were about democracy and Palestine. While the regime committed itself to maintaining the treaty with Israel, the crowds in the square seemed to have other thoughts, not yet clearly defined. But then, it is not clear that the demonstrators in the square represent the wishes of 80 million Egyptians. For all the chatter about the Egyptian people demanding democracy, the fact is that hardly anyone participated in the demonstrations, relative to the number of Egyptians there are, and no one really knows how the Egyptian people would vote on this issue. The Egyptian government is hardly in a position to confront Israel, even if it wanted to. The Egyptian army has mostly American equipment and cannot function if the Americans don’t provide spare parts or contractors to maintain that equipment. There is no Soviet Union vying to replace the United States today. Re-equipping and training a military the size of Egypt’s is measured in decades, not weeks. Egypt is not going to war any time soon.”
There are far more pressing problems to worry about – like the terrible crisis facing Muslim speed-dating organisations!!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9396000/9396599.stm
The anti-fascist regime protests in Iran have now been relegated to a single tiny line on the BBC News front page. Yet the BBC egged on the Islamist “revolution” in Egypt minute by minute, and for days on end. Bastards.
The BBC in its childish exitement didnt bother to ask the questions posed here.
While it ran with the unrest in Egypt 24hrs a day for weeks the content of this wall of coverage was eyewateringly trivial repetetive shallow nonsense, the same questions to the same people over and over again, the same barely coherent babble from the rent a rabble. You could switch off for a day and the exact same rubbish was on the next. No caution and no in depth analysis just wild eyed people power revolutionary fervour.
The coverage of the Egyptian unrest highlights perfectly the BBCs imature childish and shallow reporting style, its been obvious from the start that the military would make a show of siding with the people while the police were taken off the streets, the rent a rabble mob was manipulated and used and where there are no cameras you can bet your arse the state torturers and abductors will be very busy.
Take the police off the streets and empty the prisons? Now just who would benefit from that eh? Ooooooh look here come the army saviours, smile boys and pretend you are the mobs best friends, the MSM dummies were surrounded with English speaking people who just happen to show up whenever a camera crew arrived, funny that! And now the military is in firm control, it seems Mubaraks visions of reform annoyed some very rich and powerful high rollers.
So in the end all the hours and hours of tedious BBC coverage left us knowing less than when the whole thing started. All that money wasted to get the story completely wrong? That is just normal service in beeboid land.
What happened was not what the media portrayed but a much more complex process, most of it not viewable on TV. Certainly, there was nothing unprecedented in what was achieved or how it was achieved. It is not even clear what was achieved. Nor is it clear that anything that has happened changes Egyptian foreign or domestic policy. It is not even clear that those policies could be changed in practical terms regardless of intent. The week began with an old soldier running Egypt. It ended with different old soldiers running Egypt with even more formal power than Mubarak had.
But we sure heard a lot about how furiously The Obamessiah was working behind the scenes to uplift the downtrodden.
I suspect the only people who really know what is happening in Egypt are a handful of senior officers in the Egyptian military.
The rest of us, including the teenage scribblers at the BBC, haven’t a clue.
I am truly appalled at the BBC’s approach to this as though it has no consequences when they are in fact potentially of epic proportions. They treat this whole event as very benign when it is far from that.
They now appear to have become bored with the whole thing. Looking at Bowen’s most recent analysis, it could have been done on a lazy afternoon sitting outside a Cairo Shisha Bar.
Given all of the BBC bodies in the area, it is staggering the news they have either missed or deliberately chosen not to report on that anyone who has done the slightest amount of digging will find. Whilst they quite happily reported Hague’s weasel attack on Israel’s language, maybe they would have done well to check what might be driving that. Maybe they would find stories like this:
http://www.debka.com/article/20652/
Maybe too they would also see the breaking news that Israel has put embassies in certain unamed capitals on high alert to a specific terrorist threat.
Maybe they would have dug a little into the more suspect events that got barely a line in their reports. For example, had they looked into the prison breakouts a little further maybe they would have seen who appears to be on the list of escaped prisoners. Maybe too they would have taken another look at that coincidental explosion at a gas pipe supplying 25% of Israel’s gas. Maybe they would have found this:
http://www.debka.com/article/20643/
Of course if this was a little bit too much work for those in the stifling heat of Cairo, maybe they cold have switched over to Sky like I did and heard the interview with a representative from that paragon of secular politics the Muslim Brotherhood. Although I didn’t catch his name I did hear him talk about the will of the people and how they wouldn’t field a candidate in any forthcoming election because this was a bout the people. How odd therefore that if they weren’t playing any part by fielding a candidate he could go on to talk about that they would honour any existing agreements. How would they do that? Well maybe the clue lies in the fact that during the protests, every time there was a surge in the numbers it was down to the MB rallying the mosque imams to urge the workers to rise up.
What was also odd was that despite saying they would honour any existing agreements, when pushed on the Israeli / Egypt peace agreement the MB spokesman started dancing around his words, saying that this would depend on the will of the people. Would this be the will of the people that the MB seem to have a firm grip on?
So BBC – nothing to worry about eh? Good luck explaining this one to the British public and how the 3/4 million pounds worth of ‘talent’ you sent to the region managed to miss it, if it does indeed go so horribly pear shaped.
Slight O/T but I suspect that this is a bit too much of a stretch for the BBC to report on either:
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=208277
That Mubarack was terminally ill would not be news in Germany.
http://www.bild.de/BILD/politik/2011/02/08/aegypten-hosni-mubarak/checkt-er-in-dieser-schwarzwaldklinik-ein.html
Let me also be Captain Obvious here and point out that there is already a second democracy in the Middle East, and it seems like only yesterday you couldn’t stop Beeboids going on about it too.
I’m a bit more optimistic than many here seem to be. If Egypt really has been a military dictatorship with Mubarak as the Army’s puppet, they wouldn’t mind if he installed his son as successor. They’d still be in full control; President Mubarak Junior wouldn’t have changed their status quo at all, no need to think about a military coup.
I think they responded to the people’s will, although yes, I realize that it’s convenient for them to do so and maintain their control in a less messy way than supporting Mubarak.
I’m still seeing this is as heading towards something like Thailand, or what Turkey used to be.
I’m on Carol Gould’s side, but I am no fan of hers, to be honest. She used to contribute to Pajamasmedia.com and may still do, although I haven’t seen anything of hers there lately. My problem with her was that she constantly assumed that the BBC’s anti-Jewish bias proved that Britain was anti-Jewish as a whole, which I don’t believe to be remotely true. The last time I recall reading a piece of hers, she was trying to prove how we British all hated Jews and produced a quotation from that famously influential Briton, Michael Heseltine (remember him?).
Tonight, ‘Newsnight’ will be putting its pro-Islamic spin on protests in Middle East. Will INBBC mention the kittenish role of the Muslim Brotherhood again, and its adherence to the tenets of Sharia?
Spencer on Qaradawi: Egypt’s New Hitler
Alternative view to INBBC’s on this, which INBBC is inclined to censor:
FOX NEWS, Glenn Beck (go to Feb 16 video):
http://www.watchglennbeck.com/
Tonight, Glen Beck show promises to cover Islamic Republic of Iran
(-for UK viewers, Fox News, Glenn Beck show is on SKY channel 509 at 10 pm weekdays.)