Jeremy Bowen’s Islam-friendly reporting seems to have come back to bite him on the bum.
All those years of Israel-bashing and pro Palestinian propaganda, all that peculiar sucking up to Gaddafi. Now the BBC don’t seem prepared to give his sneakily defensive interpretation of Bashar al-Assad’s desperate struggles, the time of day. (BBC News24) The BBC is squarely on the side of the rebels. Could Jeremy Bowen be the only one at the BBC who suspects, in a ‘better the Devil you know’ Damascene moment, that toppled dictators could really be replaced by something much worse?
All day the outrage at Russia and China’s refusal to support the UN resolution backing an emasculated Arab League peace plan, has been topping the BBC headlines.
There has been a huge, as yet unquantified death toll in Syria, which makes the argument for the stability of Bashar’s murderous regime against the uncertainty of what the rebels might have to offer, (possibly equally murderous) all the weaker.
Melanie Phillips sets out the “utter intrinsic bankruptcy of the UN.”
I don’t recall the BBC questioning the legitimacy of the UN security Council before, but they seem to be hinting at something like that now, in respect of these vetoes. This is obviously because they approved of previous UN resolutions which have, of course, mostly been against Israel.
A great failing of the BBC is that they refuse to see radical Islam as a threat. “They’re just like us,” they always seem to be saying. “Talk to Hamas. Talk to the Taliban”. They wouldn’t entertain the possibility that radical Islam was beyond reason, that the core beliefs in Islam were irreconcilable with our own. At the same time, the group they chose to portray as ‘other’ with a vengeance, were those dastardly Jews in Israel.
Now look what is happening. The Arab Spring has unleashed goodness knows what. Democracy? Freedom? Not on your Nellie.
It must be worth considering the possibility that being controlled by Despots and Tyrants is the only way of keeping a lid on an explosive, unruly, ungovernable, squabbling bunch of religious maniacs whose hatred of each other is only trumped by their hatred of Israel, America and Britain. The intellectuals and idealists who revolted in Tahrir Square have melted away. Now all that’s left is the wild bunch.
So if Jeremy Bowen’s belated reservations about the Arab world’s new-fangled vision of democracy jars with the BBC, they might stop defending his scrupulous impartiality and start treating him as a pariah, as well as the Jews and the Zionists. Wouldn’t that be weird?
Every career has its curve…and Bowen seems now to be on the gradual incline, having supped mint tea and swapped Windies with Gadhaffi.
That namecheck by Patten probably started it, but it`ll be good to see a bit of integrity and competence once Bowen gets pushed off his lilo at the Beirut Hyatt.
It`s too important a place to be left to novices and old time servers.
One less Jeremy-another 99 to go!
Iraq supplies 15-20% of China’s power requirements. Hague must be really, seriously stupid to think they would vote for sanctions. Or that his soundbites put any pressure on them….
Actually I agree with the Russian and Chinese, so far every one of these countries that’s got rid of its hard man in charge has voted in islamic nutters
You know, I do too – I have a sneaking admiration for them stuffing the UN, someone needs to. let the Middle East sort out it’s own problems – why the fuck do we have to interfere all the time?
I for one am getting utterly sick and bloody tired of turning on the TV and constantly hearing about the Arab struggle, the poor oppressed Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim uprisings etc etc etc ad nauseum-they seem to be protesting every week about a different ‘injustice’. The BBC are completely losing touch with those who are forced to pay for their left wing existence; many of us, apart from the left wing middle class ‘socialists’, are simply not interested in the Muslim struggles thousands of miles away as we all know that what is behind this uprising is not democracy but Islamic fundamentalism. I don’t want to see suffering or innocent people dying BUT I have had enough of the BBC ramming the Arab Spring down our throats every day, all day. And did anyone see the ‘Big’ Questions this morning? It was pathetic! Apart from Peter Hitchens and a couple of others voicing normality the show was a dripping wet luvvie-fest of handwringing socialist liberals with a ‘moderate’ Muslim chucked in for good measure to tell us that our Monarch should be able to choose Islam as the national religion if she so chooses (his ‘moderate’ cover was soon blown though when he went into a rant bemoning the dreaded oppression and targeting of ethnic (Muslim) minorities in the Tory welfare reform).
I’m sick of the self-loathing BBC trying to tinker with our national identity. The sooner we remove this corrupt Marxist propaganda machine the better.
Yes; INBBC persists, despite the reality, in trying to push a fictitious Islamic ‘utopia’ on every riot on the Islamic world!
You can keep your jihad, Hamas, Hizbollah, Muslim Brotherhood and sharia law, INBBC and BOWEN!
A weak, divided set of countries in the Arab and Muslim world is no bad thing for the West.
Alternatively, Bowen could just feel that an Assad-run Syria is the best bulwark against nasty old Israel, which is the real danger in the Middle East.
I did hear someone on BBC, I think Al Bowen, last year telling us that Assad would be safe from an uprising because ‘he stood up to Israel’.
Well, one of the main complaints we heard about Mubarak (filtered through the BBC prism, of course) was that he kept the US-bribed peace with Israel. So I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some dopey Beeboid said that Assad Jr. was assumed cool because of his antagonsim towards the Jooooos.
The Russians and Chinese are doing the West a favour vetoing the UN resolution. While the West is behaving totally naively in this affair,the Russian bandits who make up that country’s government and the totalitarian kleptocrats who run China are doing their best to ensure that Syria doesn’t get taken over by the West’s real enemies – the mohammedans.
INBBC totally uninterested in need to provide a public service by showing crucial current link between Syria, Islamic jihad threat and the 7/7 bombing massacre in London.
‘Jihadwatch’ significantly has:
Syria releases “mastermind” of 7/7 bombings
INBBC made no attempt to say who the Syrian rioters were smashing up the Syria Embassy, and confronting British police in London yesterday.
This is a non-INBBC report and comment on a similar event in Australia:
“Australia: Angry Mob, Most Likely Comprising Sunni Muslims, Attacks and Trashes Syrian Embassy in Canberra”
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/40427
The BBC narrative is well and truly stuffed on this one. It takes a special kind of double think to reconcile the UN being an unconditional force for good and China being the future with seeing them defy the world’s greatest ever peacemaker, Obama, and not pledging support to Syria’s young ‘activists’, at the same time uncritically covering these same ‘activists’ while ignoring the violent results of similar movements coming to power elsewhere.
Definitely conflicting Narratives, anyway. Why, it’s almost as if BBC reporting and analysis was based largely on ideology and visceral feeling rather than what was actually happening. And that Nobel Prize just keeps on paying dividends, doesn’t it?
why WHY all this trumpeting of the arab league??? el beeb
their only interest more unbridled Islam and less of everything else,(sounds like el beeb utopia)
i m sick of seeing the UN act like its patsy anyway, somebody needed to give them a kick up the arse.
Whatever the outcome in Syria, the only certainty is that something nasty will replace something nasty a’ la Tunisa, Libya,Iraq and increasingly Egypt.
As for the UN. This is a organisation that reminds me of Chicargo in the 1920’s where (for some rason) Al Capone was given a permenatnt seat and veto powers on the city council.
Re the UN.
I suggest that anybody who wants to know where they stand re “End of Days” need only look at the Prayer Room at the United Nations!
Remind you of anything?…now be scared-or at least aware of what the UN is actually going to be used for!
hence the unalloyed love for it by the flabby frightened West-stops them having to act, let alone think!
God Bless Israel…and God Bless John Bolton who knows what the UN is up to in his great country!
This is a great post, sue. You had me chuckling into the monitor. I recall that you noted Bowen’s support of Gadaffi at the time. Unsurprising, perhaps, that he would be so inclined. After all, Gadaffi was an international terrorist with a deep hatred of the West and Israel – so what would not be to like about him? Assad, likewise, though apparently his hatred is more of Israel than the West.
Bowen must be most upset that a leader who has sheltered the worst of anti-Israel terrorists and has acted as a reliable conduit for missiles from Iran to Hezbollah looks likely to meet a grisly end fairly soon. But the push by the BBC to join the clamour against Assad? I find this as weird as I found them jumping up and down like excited schoolboys (well to the rear of course) as the rebels advanced on Gadaffi. Where were those of the BBC who could barely restrain themselves from kissing Gadaffi’s feet?
I’m reminded of that old televised ‘Have Your Say’ programme with Gadaffi as honoured guest and the BBC host slobbering all over him and calling him “Brother Leader.”
I think the answer is that the mere odour of the Arab Spring makes BBC hacks so emotional and glassy-eyed that they simply forget that Assad is the enemy of their enemy Israel. And of course if the UN is (mostly) against Syria, the BBC can only follow its lead, since it is deeply and hopelessly in love with that noble institution.
Another reason, of course, for the BBC’s support for a “free” Syria is the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood would almost certainly rise to power once they’ve strung Assad from a lamppost. And that in turn would add yet more pressure on an Israel that the BBC so loves to hate.
Having said that, this Paul Wood of theirs has a good deal of old-fashioned guts. The first clip I saw of him in Homs as he crouched with the freer Syrians had what appeared to be a bullet ricocheting off the wall a few feet from him. This is in stark contrast to the crew in Libya who kept well away from the action. So much so that they couldn’t even report what the hell was going on most of the time. It was embarrassing listening to them on the World Service.
A guy back in the studio seemed nonplussed as he tried to get some info out of a hack on the ground apparently covering the action.
Very different indeed now with Paul Wood.
Bowen treated as a pariah by the BBC along with the Jews and the Zionists?! Wouldn’t that be something.
“Britain’s agenda of anti-Israeli-hate and the deadly new triangle in the MidEast”
(by Robin Shepherd)
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/869/britain_s_agenda_of_anti_israeli_hate_and_the_deadly_new_triangle_in_the_mideast