A week ago Paul Weston, chairman of the party Liberty GB, was arrested for quoting Churchill on Islam.

The BBC reported this but didn’t seem to think it significant and the issues, suh as freedom of speech or indeed the issues raised by Weston himself, worthy of exploration…how different the benevolent coverage for the Muslim suicide bomber, or someone encarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, or a ‘community leader’ claiming Muslims are alienated and victimised,  radicalised by British foreign policy.

Wonder what the reaction would have been if Paul Weston had quoted Churchill’s statements from his ‘History of The English Speaking People’s’:

On dealing with quislings and appeasers….

‘It is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invader’s hearth.’

Or on the foolishness of those who adopt the customs and beliefs of the invaders:

‘Step by step they were led to practices which disposed to vice – the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet.  All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but part of their servitude.’

From that we take a leap to Halal meat, its unannounced introduction into non-Muslim’s diets and the BBC’s reporting of the issues.

The BBC stuck pretty rigidly to the technical issues surrounding Halal slaughter and concluded that there was little difference between the way animals slaughtered for Halal meat and non-Halal meat are treated…if stunned.

This of course dodges the question of religion and the fact that Muslims will object loudly and aggressively if given non-Halal meat but non-Muslims, because they don’t complain so aggressively, are fed Halal meat without any regard for their beliefs or concerns.

As far as slaughtering is concerned there is no reason why animals for Halal slaughter shouldn’t be stunned as long as they are not killed by that ‘stunning’.

According to this study animals not stunned feel the pain of having their throat cut, as you might expect:

Animals feel the pain of religious slaughter

Blood must drain completely from an animal to comply with religious requirements but some claim this doesn’t happen in stunned animals.  However a study shows that there should be no objections to stunning as blood drains just as fast from a stunned, and unconscious,  animal as from an unstunned one, and as long as the animal is only stunned and not dead this is permissible:

Halal-standard slaughtering doesn’t need animals awake

On the technical side the BBC is correct but the issues are deeper than purely ones of animal welfare and are symbolic of the way that Muslim culture, practices and belief have been forced upon the rest of the population by either commercial enterprises looking to cut corners and make a profit (selling Halal to all but not able to sell non-Halal to all) or Establishment organisations looking to appease Muslims whilst dismissing the concerns of the non-Muslims…often as the BBC’s ex-DG Mark Thompson said they don’t pack an AK47 at the end of the day:

“Without question, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms’, is different from, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47 as I write’,” he said. “This definitely raises the stakes.”

Imagine the uproar if it was deemed that only non-Halal meat was to be served or sold in the UK….but no one was told….Instead we have the opposite, the ‘Trojan Sheep’ fed to us by commercial enterprises all too willing to ride roughshod over sensibilties in the search for a quick buck (as they do also with cheap immigrant labour) and an Establishment all to ready to appease an aggressive minority many of whom make veiled threats if they don’t get their way…‘the youth will be angry and we can’t guarantee to control them.’

Essentially people are being forced to adopt Muslim culture either because it is easier and cheaper to make everyone conform to the minority rather than make separate arrangements for that minority…or, heaven forbid, make the minority conform to the norm.

Going to be a bit of a nightmare when the Sikhs, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Pagans, Jedi Warriors all want equal billing and their own brand of belief catered for…literally or otherwise.

The BBC has long been famous for its grovelling approach to Islam….whether Room 101’s approach, or Nicky Campbell’s craven prostration and self-abasement when talking of Islam and of his great respect for it, or Thompson’s admission that Islam gets special treatment due to the unique nature of any likely complaints.

With that in mind this article from the New Statesman might make interesting reading:

The challenge of Islam

The author, David Selbourne, was asked by John Kerry to write a briefing paper on the Islamist threat. He explains here what he told the US secretary of state and why he feels progressives have allowed themselves to be silenced by frightened self-censorship and the stifling of debate.

A beheading in Woolwich, a suicide bomb in Beijing, a blown-up marathon in Boston, a shooting in the head of a young Pakistani girl seeking education, a destroyed shopping mall in Nairobi – and so it continues, in the name of Islam, from south London to Timbuktu. It is time to take stock, especially on the left, since these things are part of the world’s daily round.

There is an objective historical need, and duty, to record radical Islam’s many-sided and determined advance upon the “infidel” world. Most still do not know what manner of force – the millions of peaceful Muslims notwithstanding – has struck it. And, with its own arms and ethics, it will continue to do so, perhaps till kingdom come.

The left continues covertly to celebrate US foreign policy blunders and defeats, while the naive see jihadists as a minority of “fanatics”. It is not so simple. To add to the confusion, President Obama’s stances, however well intentioned, have made their own contribution to the Islamic renaissance. Or as he expressed it in a speech in Cairo in June 2009, America and Islam “share common principles . . . of justice and progress, tolerance” – tolerance? – “and the dignity of all human beings”.

The non-Muslim world is too unaware of what is afoot, hobbled by its wishful thinking and lack of knowledge, and whistling in the dark. In a position paper I wrote for him [John Kerry], I set out a list of the failures that the west, and especially the US, has on its hands. Among them are the failure to recognise the ambition of radical Islam; the failure to condemn the silence of most Muslims at the crimes committed in their names; the failure to respond adequately to the persecution of Christians in many Muslim lands; the failure to grasp the nature of the non-military skills that are being deployed against the non-Muslim world – skills of manoeuvre, skills in deceiving the gullible, skills in making temporary truces in order to gain time (as in Iran); and, perhaps above all, the failure to realise the scale and speed of Islam’s advance.

“If things continue like this,” I told friend Kerry, “the history of our age may one day be written under a caliphate’s supervision.” I added brashly: “Get your aides to read the Quran. Keep political correctors at bay,” and “stop looking for the emergence of Jeffersonian democracies in Muslim lands”. “It has gotten me thinking,” he replied; and after further exchanges, “I agree with a great deal of what you’ve said.”

Islamists make no bones about their aspiration for “mastership of the world”, as Mohamed Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood leader, put it in December 2011. Muslim (and not merely Islamist) disdain for “the west” is also growing; in July 2012, the speaker of the Iranian parliament des­cribed it as a “dark spot in the present era”.

Such confidence, or arrogance, is easily understood. For these are times in which conversions to Islam in western countries are accelerating.

To the aid of Islam has also come the betrayal by much of today’s left of its notionally humane principles, as Christians are assaulted and murdered (shades of what was done to the Jews in the 1930s) and their churches desecrated and destroyed from Egypt to the Central African Republic, from Iran to Indonesia, and from Pakistan to Nigeria. Islam can kill its own apostates, too; in many Muslim countries denies reciprocity to other faiths in rights of worship; and seeks to prevent reasoned discussion about its beliefs by attempted resort to blasphemy laws.

So where is the old left’s centuries-long espousal of free speech and free thought? Where is the spirit of Tom Paine? The answer is simple. It has been curbed by frightened self-censorship and by the stifling of debate, in a betrayal of the principles for which “progressives” were once prepared to go to the stake.

And just as some Jews are too quick to call anti-Zionists “anti-Semites”, so some leftists are too quick to tar critics of Islam as “Islamophobes”.

To add to such falsehoods come the illusionists of every stripe, with their unknowing, simplistic or false descriptions of Islam as a “religion of peace”. Even today’s Pope – as the Christian faithful were being harried, persecuted or put to the sword in Nigeria, Syria, Iraq and beyond – told the world in November 2013 that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence”. But read the text yourself, and you will see that jihadists can find plenty justification for the acts they commit, even if most Muslims are pacific.

The present renaissance of Islam, additionally provoked, as ever, by western aggressions against its lands, is an old story of swift movement and conquest, as in the 7th century. Is something like it stirring again? Perhaps; you decide. In 50 years’ time the world will know for sure.

Karl Marx was wiser than the Pope. In March 1854, he wrote that for “Islamism” – the word was already in use – “the Infidel is the enemy” and that the Quran “treats all foreigners as foes”.

The BBC, and many others, some all too well connected to the Saudi Royal family or Qataris, are in denial about what the Koran says…or all too willing to adopt the practices for themselves and others…that ‘servitude’ Churchill spoke of.

Even today as Boko Haram marauds around Nigeria slaughtering hundreds in the name of Islam the BBC insists that it is poverty and inequality that drives them…never mind the name, the beliefs or that half of Nigeria has been Islamised and Christians made to submit or be chased from the north of the country.

What will it take to make the likes of the BBC admit that the Koran inspires this radicalism, that the Koran urges conquest and colonisation, that the Koran entraps its adherents and is designed so that the Religon will always expand, grow and eventually dominate any society it infiltrates?

Until the BBC et al does admit that, and they recognise the problem for what it is and what it means for the future, there will never be any resolution.

Today let loose a climate change advocate…Trevor Maynard(08:47)… but they didn’t tell us his links to the climate lobby.   Today didn’t question his claims…..that hurricanes are getting stronger,  that we’re heading for a 4 degrees temperature rise (a horrible scenario!), that we have to decarbonise…they did suggest there might be a pause in warming but were told that there has  definitely been no pause in global warming…’that’s completely wrong’…an answer they were happy to accept, as they were with his claim that the ‘excess’ heat is going into the ocean….not being a ‘climate scientist’ he’s obviously learnt his script well….spoon fed to him by the likes of Bob Ward no doubt.

Climate activist Bob Ward (paid for by Big Oil) who has worked closely with Maynard….a relationshp that the BBC didn’t bother to reveal either.

Trevor Maynard works for Lloyds Insurance and is keen to tell us that the risks from climate change are immense and that the damage done by extreme weather are increasing….no vested interests there?

In 2008 we had Maynard and Ward working together….

Coastal flooded high-risk property insurance losses could double by 2030- Lloyds

“The research shows that, with an effective adaptation strategy, future losses could be reduced to below present-day levels with losses for high-risk properties reduced by as much … must be location-specific and risk informed. They must also begin today.”  Co-authored by Trevor Maynard, Manager of Emerging Risks at Lloyd’s and Bob Ward and Nicola Patmore ..

And again here:

Finally, Robert Ward, Trevor Maynard, Emmanuel Leblanc, Erwann Michel-Kerjan and Frederic Morlaye present the main concerns and recommended strategies of private sector stakeholders involved in risk management, to deal with the new challenges and opportunities associated with climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The insurance companies have a huge vested interest in hyping climate change and they fund climate lobbyists:

As well as funding by the ESCR the CCCEP is also funded by a large insurance company, who might obviously have a vested interest in creating some alarm about climate change:

‘Generous support for the Centre’s work is also provided by Munich Re’

The Munich Re programme
Evaluating the economics of climate risks and opportunities in the insurance sector
This research programme is funded by Munich Re and benefits from research collaborations across the industry and public sectors. It is a comprehensive research programme that focuses on the assessment of the risks from climate change, and on the appropriate responses, to inform decision making in the private and public sectors.

Now surely just a coincidence but Bob Ward used to work in the insurance industry:

He was: Director of Global Science Networks at global risk insurance firm RMS.
‘While Ward’s employment is ostensibly with the Grantham, he also doubles up as PR man for the CCCEP. The CCCEP is funded jointly by the UK’s research councils and risk insurance giants Munich Re.
The close association between climate alarmists and the insurance industry is no less natural than that between ‘sceptics’ and Exxon. Just as Exxon might be expected to play down the threat of climate change when it suits them, Munich Re can be relied upon to overstate the dangers. Fear of risk is to the insurance industry what oil is to Exxon.

The difference is that Bob Ward doesn’t write letters of complaint to Munich Re insurers or articles for the Guardian when Munich Re disseminates ‘misleading and inaccurate information about climate change’ – which they surely do.’

And Ward writes papers about climate and insurance risk:

Herweijer, C., Ranger, N., and Ward, R.E.T. July 2009. Adaptation to climate change: threats and opportunities for the insurance industry. The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance: issues and practice, v.34 pp.360-380.

Ward, R.E.T., Herweijer, C., Patmore, N., and Muir-Wood, R. January 2008. The role of insurers in promoting adaptation to the impacts of climate change. The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance: Issues and Practice, v.33, pp.133-139.

Ward, R.E.T., Muir-Wood, R., and Grossi, P. 2007. Flood risk in New Orleans: implications for future management. Geophysical Research Abstracts, v.9, 04542.

A very small world, one that hasn’t been getting warmer for at least 16 years.

Remarkably the BBC is able to continue operating as smoothly as ever without the talented Chris Patten’s guiding hand….so I’m assuming the bias is coming as thick and fast as ever…list it here……

Patten has fled the scene of the crime and space is being booked in the Guardian’s jobs vacant section.

But who might be the best candidate for the job as Chairman of the BBC Trust?

The Telegraph has a stab at defining the necessary characteristics:

The debate about the BBC is one of the most important we will have in this country in the next few years. Unless you believe the best thing that could happen to the corporation is for it to be smashed up and sold off, then it makes sense to put its oversight in the hands of a convincing, heavyweight figure who can take on the politicians, the media and all the others who claim a right to decide its future. BBC chairman is one of the biggest small-p political jobs in Britain. To put it in the hands of someone who can’t play that game would be to cause it irreparable harm.

What’s noticeable about the article is that it illustrates just how much it is the responsibility of the BBC Trust to defend the BBC…..and yet it is also the final arbiter for complainants.

The two opposing responsibilities mean that there is a significant conflict of interest making the BBC Trust’s job ultimately impossible to carry out without compromises that undermine its credibility.

Separation of the two roles must surely be a priority to safeguard the BBC and the audience’s trust and respect for it.

Labour has released a video on Youtube which bears a remarkable similarity to the political rants disguised, almost,  as comedy on the Now Show……only funnier.

This weeks ‘Now Show’ doesn’t disappoint our low expectations with what is nothing less than an anti-government diatribe (9 mins) with not much sign of comedy…but then it is Marcus Brigstock making a welcome return…don’t know where he’s been but obviously not off honing his comic skills….though reading an ‘Occupy’ pamphlet out on the Now Show might be considered one of the better comedy highlights of his career I’d reckon…..and it goes on so long as well….great value from the BBC.

And all credit to the sound engineers who can make it all so audible…must be difficult to get a clear soundtrack when you have so many clever Chatterati with their heads up their jacksies talking rubbish out of those Jacksies whilst loudly applauding their own brilliance.

Any bets that a ‘comedian’ from the Now Show helped script the Labour Party video?

Normally the BBC settles for merely rewriting the past, or just ignoring whole chunks of it (1997-2010 for instance), but today the Beeb treated us to a glimpse into the future.…apparently the vast majority of the  human population will be consigned to the scrap heap living lives of unending poverty and misery whilst a gilded elite exploit us using powerful new technology and reaping all the rewards for themselves…those rewards which shall henceforth only be available to the hereditary class of the super rich who control and own that new technology.

A ‘hereditary class of super rich’ because social mobility is over, not a prediction but a fact apparently….and it is unlikely to ever return.  Not only that but living standards have been dropping for decades and there is a staggering, historic rise in inequality as the majority do not share in the wealth generated by growth…in fact we are all getting poorer not just standing still financially.

The Western economic model, Capitalism, has failed (er…China, India, Brazil?….and em..isn’t the UK the 6th biggest economy…with the USA, France, Germany, Japan and China leading the way…seems to me Capitalism works just fine…or at least how it’s meant to work).

The solution to inequality, we’re told.  is a global tax on the super-rich.

The solution is to up the taxes so much, to 80% or so, that people are incentivised to work even harder and so earn more…..no, really.

But there’s this warning…if the formal political systems do not provide the answers then the informal political ones will….Occupy is coming to take over Tesco’s in a town near you!

The BBC gave us what it billed as a look at an economic future governed by technology, but was in reality merely an excuse to peddle the Labour Party’s narrative on inequality, social mobility and higher taxes….

‘The Future is not what it used to be’ asks how the work force of the future will be changed by the advancements of technologies. How should governments respond to a jobs market which is hollowing out opportunities for traditional educated professions and how will rewards for innovation and income for labour be distributed without creating a society plagued by endemic inequality?

The programme was based on an intelligent question asking how will technology change the economy and our circumstances.   However whilst it did deal with that question it also used the opportunity to hijack the programme for a political rant about inequality and the super rich….the answer being super taxes and redistribution on a grand scale….not just presented as a theory but an urgent necessity based on the ‘fact’ life is now so terrible and only going to get worse.

It started with a clip from Obama on the stump telling us how he has spotted how unfair the world is and how he is aiming to fix it…just vote ‘Obama’!

Not sure why the BBC would think a politician on the stump is someone with a credible, trustworthy message but they did.

We then got onto the real meat…..Stiglitz, Piketty (the new Owen Jones, but more successful) and Diane Coyle (vice, now ‘acting’ apparently, chairman of BBC Trust, part time, on £77,000…but she thinks she can lecture us on inequality…and a business advisor to the Labour Party ).

All three agreed it’s over for us…and only a communistic, Robin Hood type sharing of the spoils will prevent Occupy rampaging across the Western world and turning our pockets out and dishing the contents out to all and sundry.

That was the problem with the programme, being hijacked by the Left, being told that inequality is worse than ever and rising rapidly, that we’re all doomed, that the only remedy is some form of communism.

But just how true is all that?

For a start what is ‘inequality’, just when is too much become too much? Are we really poorer than ever, have we actually gone backwards in our wealth? Has social mobility really ended?

It seems they have conveniently forgotten the past when Rockefeller’s roamed the earth and George Orwell could write Down and Out in London and Paris and The Road to Wigan Pier.

Life to be blunt, was shit for many many people.  And not so long ago either. The poorest now live lives inestimably richer than just a few decades ago by comparison.

And wages have risen since the 70’s not fallen as Stiglitz keeps trying to suggest…the fact that the rich may have gotten richer at a higher rate than you and me is neither here nor there to you and me…it makes not one jot of difference to me in my life:

However the final word was probably the most intelligent….and not from the usual suspects of left wing agitators that gave us the above nonsense…the final word was this….

‘People take refuge in strange ideologies when times are difficult, ideologies that don’t make sense but offer a free lunch.’

For some reason I couldn’t help thinking of Old New Labour and Ed Miliband’s populist list of things he’d really love to do if you’d only just vote for him.

Go on, give him a chance, you know it makes sense….the BBC certainly seems to think so.

But before you rush out to vote read this:

Britons happier than before financial crisis as contentment plummets in Europe – OECD

Looking up Diane Coyle’s Wikipedia entry and this is what came up today:

Diane Coyle, OBE (born February 1961), is a freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a member of the UK Competition Commission and is acting Chairman of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Thought that was odd…‘acting chairman’…since when?

The answer…someone didn’t waste any time updating the entry:

Lord Patten’s plea to save the BBC as he steps down

Outgoing BBC Trust chairman praises the corporation as a ‘precious and wonderful thing’, but fears it lacks backing of the main political parties

Lord Patten’s term in office had been due to end in April next year but he explained he experienced “serious chest pains” on April 27 and went into hospital. Diane Coyle, the vice-chairman of the BBC Trust, has taken over in an interim capacity while a successor is found.

Patten says:

In a letter to Sajid Javid, the Culture Secretary, Lord Patten said: “The BBC is a huge national asset which is part of the everyday fabric of our lives. It is not perfect — what institution is? It always needs to challenge itself to improve. But it is a precious and wonderful thing, a hugely positive influence which benefits greatly from the creativity and dedication of its staff.

“I have no reason to doubt that the leaders of all main political parties support the role it plays at the centre of our public realm. Most important of all, the British public enormously value the strength of its output, its independence and the contribution it makes to the quality of our lives.”

He will be sadly missed by all…I’m sure.

Jeremy Bowen doesn’t do things by half.  Not content with merely reporting the news, in his own inimitable way, he has decided to play his part in making it, and history along with it, replacing Tony Blair as Middle East Envoy and deciding Israel has logically no right to exist if Palestinians don’t get their demands answered.

His reply when asked about the possibility of a one state solution he replies:

So Israel won’t exist in 20 years or so predicts Bowen….remember a UN representative admitted a one state solution meant Israel would be destroyed.

Bowen made an appearance on ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ (7 mins 35) on which he was supposed to tell us of the new unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas and how it would alter things in the Middle East…instead he gave us a rather politicised, anti-Israeli, anti-Fatah,  pro-Hamas take on history…before finally getting to the ‘unity’ bit…which turned out to be yet more anti-Israeli guff.

Starting off by painting a picture of Gaza as an open prison, but not detailing the 60 years of war inflicted upon Israel, Bowen goes on eventually to enlighten us about the outcome of the recent thawing in relations between Hamas and Fatah……he starts by highlighting a story of a Hamas member who says he was tortured by a Fatah dominated police force.

This is just Bowen setting the scene to excuse what the BBC like to downplay…the massacre of Fatah men by Hamas in 2007….which the BBC at the time dismissed as Hamas ‘merely flushing out the corrupt and violent Fatah’.

How did Hamas do that?  By killing every Fatah member they could lay their hands on….they roamed the hospitals killing Fatah men, they took Fatah members to the tops of buildings and threw them off, they killed Fatah members in front of their families.

But for the BBC that was, and obviously still is, OK….Bowen excuses the violence today because he tells us Palestinians were sick of Fatah’s ‘excesses, corruption and ineptitude’….so Hamas slaughtered them.

There’s absolutely no idea from Bowen that Hamas tortured and killed at will….Bowen just gives the  impression that it is only Fatah who do such things…..a familiar ring to that line of thinking from Bowen as Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood franchise and so must be ‘moderate’.

Bowen then latches onto a conspiracy theory to further excuse the violence….The USA was conspiring with Fatah to remove Hamas after the election in 2006….not mentioning that Hamas was, and is, designated as a terrorist organisation threatening to annihilate Israel.

Curiously I can find no report from the BBC from the time claiming this was due to a US inspired Coup….there are some from others…but the usual suspects, anti-Israeli and pro-Hamas. 

Bowen tells us that the Americans helped Fatah prepare a coup against Hamas but Hamas moved first and amid brutal scenes Hamas unceremonioulsy ejected Fatah from the positions of power it still held.

Bowen tells us that the coup was organised by PA security commander Mohammed Dahlan who ‘escaped’….trouble is Dahlan wasn’t in the country at the time, he was having medical treatment in Europe…so how he organised a coup and set it in motion whilst not being there to command it…and then ‘escape’…is hard to imagine…unless you’re Bowen.

There were certainly plans to bolster the PA and channel funds to them…but this was as part of a bigger picture in developing the Palestinian ‘State’, bringing peace and security to it and to persuade Hamas to recognise Israel and give up its threats to annihilate Israel…and thence to negotiate peace with Israel.

There is no evidence that the US organised an actual coup attempt….that is merely a matter of interpretation.

Bowen’s overblown claim that the Americans were organising a ‘coup’  originated in a document obtained from an ‘Arab intelligence service’ by an Arab nationalist newspaper, Al-Majd, in Jordan in April 2007.

Bowen is claiming that this sudden revelation tipped the balance and forced Hamas to attack Fatah in Gaza in June 2007.
He no doubt would back his claim with the ‘evidence’ from this article in Vanity Fair in 2008:  The Gaza Bombshell
After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs.

(Note the article uses the same layout as Bowen…opening with a description of a Hamas man tortured by Fatah men)

Trouble with that is….they didn’t ‘cook up’ anything…the attempts to bolster the PA were already well under way long before any election put Hamas in charge.

Even MI6 (no comment!) were involved…..

UK’s MI6 ‘tried to weaken Hamas’

Leaked documents relating to the Middle East peace process suggest Britain’s intelligence service has been closely involved in attempts to weaken Hamas.

The documents, published by al-Jazeera, date back to 2004, before the militant group won elections in 2006 and took control of the Gaza Strip.

So no link to the al-majd document….and so no ‘US organised coup’ about to kick off that Hamas immediately had to tackle.

Bowen forgets to mention the main problem (Curious he forgets…as he wrote it in 2006):

US President George W Bush said the poll was a “wake-up call” for the Palestian leadership, but he hoped Mr Abbas would stay in power.

He said the US would not deal with Hamas unless it renounced its call to destroy Israel.

So if Hamas did renounce violence…the US would deal with them!  Undermines Bowen’s theory that the US were out purely to destroy Hamas.

Bowen also forgets to state that it was well known that all aid to Hamas was cut off in 2006 and it was channelled to the Palestinian Authority…so no surprise to Hamas a year later….nor does Bowen mention Hamas received its funding from Russia and Iran….Iran clearly stating it wants to finish off the State of Israel, and Russian no doubt would like to see America’s ally in the region taken out of the equation.

From USA Today in 2006:

The United States is pressing the Palestinian government to not only recognize Israel, but to renounce violence and form a national unity government with the moderate Fatah party.

Since Hamas took power in March, direct international aid to the Palestinian government has been largely cut off. Iran has provided the government with $120 million this year, boosting its influence among Palestinians.

Haniyeh (Hamas PM) called Iran, a longtime ally of Hamas, the Palestinians’ “strategic depth” because they were bound together in their fight against Israel.

“They (Israelis) assume the Palestinian nation is alone. This is an illusion. … We have a strategic depth in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.

Why was Hamas refused funding?    Both Europe and the USA designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation…as does Israel:

Israel will not conduct any negotiation with a Palestinian government, if it includes any (members of) an armed terror organisation that calls for Israel’s destruction   Ehud Olmert Acting Israeli Prime Minister

Bowen then moves on to his main theme…criticising Israel….apparently Israel still runs Gaza and it can blockade Gaza in a way that is ‘devastating for the civilians’.

Then he finally gets to the point of the piece…the new agreement between Fatah and Hamas….Bowen claims that such unity will lead ‘to war crime prosecutions for Israelis and there’s BDS, or Boycott, Disvestment and Sanctions, the idea is for Israel to be as isolated as South Africa was in the 1980’s…that worries the Israelis more and more.’

So Bowen takes 95% of his time to explain away Hamas’ actions and to condemn Fatah and the US, and then moves on to tell us that Israel ‘devastates’ civilians in Gaza, but a unified Palestinian government will lead to Israel being prosecuted for war crimes and a rise in the BDS campaign.

Why has he linked these things?  It seems the only reason he links them to the unified (for now) Palestinians is as an excuse to mention them and raise their profile…he makes no mention of Palestinian war crimes and atrocities, nor does he question the BDS campaign’s legitimacy.

Why does he not raise the prospect that a unified Palestinian government might be in a better position to negotiate peace with Hamas persuaded to rein in its wilder elements.  A more hopeful scenario than Bowen’s entirely negative one…after all what good are war crime trials and BDS?  They seem only designed to ‘attack’ Israel.

Bowen’s conclusions seem nothing more than an excuse to promote the two ideas and damage Israel.

Remember who made these comments…‘most people would consider the Muslim Brotherhood as a force for moderation’….’it is wrong to stereotype them as Islamists’.

“What is new in the last year, and will be one of the big stories in the coming twelve months, is the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting.
The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel’s military activities, land expropriation and settlement building – and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government”

That last being a Bowen memo to the troops on Fri Jan 05 15:16:16 2007 …his final sentence gives the game away:

The result is that internecine violence between Hamas and Fatah is getting worse.

So…not a US inspired coup that led to Hamas/Fatah violence?

The BBC were quick to bring you, twice, a story about Jewish school children allegedly being traumatised when taught about the Holocaust.

The BBC though never seems to find the time to bring you any reports about the Palestinian education system….

…despite it being quite obviously traumatic…again for the Jews….guess the BBC only cares when it can paint Jews in a bad light….Jews teaching their children that the world is against them is a bad thing….but Palestinians telling their children to kill Jews…well, nothing to see here says the BBC.

Is that really why a peace settlement hasn’t been negotiated in the last 20 years…or is it more likely that this is the problem?:

In December 2006, Ismail Haniyeh, Prime Minister of the PA, declared that the PA will never recognize Israel: “We will never recognize the usurper Zionist government and will continue our jihad-like movement until the liberation of Jerusalem.”

That was in 2006….but just a few days ago things hadn’t changed:

Hamas won’t recognise Israel

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Hamas will never recognise Israel and will not accept the conditions laid out by the Middle East peacemaking Quartet, according to the Islamist movement’s deputy leader.

Speaking late on Saturday, Mussa Abu Marzuq said Hamas, which recently signed a reconciliation deal with the Western-backed Palestinian leadership in the occupied West Bank, would never agree to recognise Israel.

“We will not recognise the Zionist entity,” he said at a press conference in Gaza City

Recognising Israel is one of the key conditions laid out in the 2003 peacemaking roadmap of the Middle East Quartet, which brings together the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia.

The other two key demands are a renunciation of violence and acceptance of all prior agreements with Israel.

And considering the Israelis suspended talks because Fatah joined up with Hamas you might think that was the real problem:

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, accused the western-backed Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, of forming an alliance with Hamas, which he called “a terrorist organisation that calls for the destruction of Israel” – and hinted at further retaliatory measures.

“What has happened is a great reverse for peace, because we had hoped the Palestinian Authority [PA] president Abbas would embrace the Jewish state, the idea of two nation states, Palestinian one and a Jewish one,” Netanyahu told NBC. “But instead, he took a giant leap backward.”

“If Abbas is back to doing business with an organisation that refuses to recognise Israel and believes in armed resistance, one cannot blame the Israeli government for abandoning the peace process.”

And yet Bowen thinks the major problem is the Settlements…Settlements are an issue but not the major one bearing in mind that the Palestinians have agreed to exchange settlements for other land handed over by Israel.

The problems are much deeper than the shallow, simplistic accusations Bowen makes in his Tweets…it’s a very selective choice of what was in the Ynetnews article in which the American’s attitude was called into question.

The US did indeed try and blame the settlement issue for a failure of talks:

The American version of why the current round of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians failed is fundamentally different to the one presented by Israeli officials. The list of those to blame for this failure is also very different. From the US perspective, the issue of the settlements was largely to blame.

You can get an inkling of the US attitude to Israel, apart from Obama not seeming personally interested, in this comment by one of the American team:

“One of the Palestinians who participated in the talks told an Israeli participant: ‘You don’t see us. We’re transparent, we’re hollow.’ He had a point. After the second intifada ended and the separation barrier was built, the Palestinians turned into ghosts in the eyes of the Israelis – they couldn’t see them anymore.”

Ynet: It almost sounds like you wish for an intifada.

“Quite the opposite, it would be a tragedy. The Jewish people are supposed to be smart; it is true that they’re also considered a stubborn nation. You’re supposed to know how to read the map: In the 21st century, the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation. The occupation threatens Israel’s status in the world and threatens Israel as a Jewish state.”

However, earlier in the interview one said: “I guess we need another intifada to create the circumstances that would allow progress.”

Ynet: The world is being self-righteous. It closes its eyes to China’s takeover of Tibet, it stutters at what Russia’s doing to Ukraine.

“Israel is not China. It was founded by a UN resolution. Its prosperity depends on the way it is viewed by the international community.”

Not quite sure why the way Israel was created is relevant…either it is a sovereign, legitimate nation or it isn’t, regardless of its origin.

The American team give a version of events that favours only the Palestinians and damns the Israelis…here even when Abbas rejects the deal it’s still the Israeli’s fault:

He was willing to give the process one final chance, but found, according to him, that he has no partner on the Israeli side. His legacy won’t include a peace agreement with Israel.

“In February, Abbas arrived at a Paris hotel for a meeting with Kerry. He had a lingering serious cold. ‘I’m under a lot of pressure,’ he complained. ‘I’m sick of this.’ He rejected all of Kerry’s ideas. A month later, in March, he was invited to the White House. Obama presented the American-formulated principles verbally – not in writing. Abbas refused.

“The claim on your side that Abbas was avoiding making decisions is not true. He wasn’t running away, he was just stuck.”

Not Abbas’ fault at all then.

No wonder Bowen wants to draw attention to this interview…unattributed by name to anyone…just ‘the team’of American negotiators beating up on Israel….bearing in mind their boss, John Kerry, used the phrase ‘apartheid state’ in relation to Israel.

Question is why would Bowen like to point to the Settlements as the major issue rather than Hamas’ refusal to recognise Israel and its stated desire to wipe Israel off the map?