Author Archives: Sue

Breaking the Silence

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“Just in case you’d been distracted by trivial, parochial concerns like BBC salaries and British soldiers coming home in coffins, it’s our duty to remind you once more about the real scandal. The Israelis.”

“Lest you forget, we must tell you again about the war crimes, human rights violations and abuses that took place in Gaza! What’s more the BBC didn’t even have to uncover the scandal because Israelis blabbed about it all by themselves.”

“The BBC is outraged to hear that Israel protects those spoilt Israeli soldiers at all costs. Even putting their lives above the human rights of the enemy! They use deadly weapons, and even innocents – children, babies and women get killed.
They’d stop at nothing to avoid their precious soldiers coming home in body-bags! How typically selfish!”

“If the Israelis were proper soldiers, They’d make do do with cardboard vehicles and a wonky helicopter. They’d put the enemy’s human rights at the forefront and abide strictly by the rules of engagement and be sure to die in sufficient quantities. Unlike the noble martyrs of Hamas who obviously stick strictly to the rules. ”

“Booby traps, suicide bombers, children playing on rooftops, launching rockets from schoolyards, terrorists hiding in houses, hatred and Islamic Jihad are no excuse for not playing by the rules, the BBC has learned.”

Evan Davis quotes Wilfred Owen: “These men are worth your tears!”
As long as they’re not Israelis.

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Little White Lies

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“I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are.”
I’m not sure what the purpose of the ‘also’ is in that little gem, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s the oft-quoted soundbite from a man named Ben White who has written a book entitled “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide.”

According to reviews this book really lives up to its title, brimming as it is, with fabricated quotations and half-truths. Critics say the author misunderstands and misrepresents everything about Israel, using quotes selectively and out of context; in fact performing a perfect imitation of the antisemite he doesn’t consider himself to be.

The charity War on Want is helping Mr. White promote this book to show their solidarity with suffering Palestinians and spread the word about their contempt for Israel and Jews.

Organisers of the publicity event that was held in East London’s Toynbee Hall were so afraid of an outbreak of aggression from violent self-detonating Zionist militants that they banned Jonathan Hoffman from attending altogether, and alerted the police, who remained on stand-by just in case he should initiate a disturbance by lurking outside threateningly with leaflets, which he duly did. The sight of him standing there with his leaflets must have been terrifying.

The Guardian gives Ben White a platform to proclaim the evils of the Apartheid Wall, inform the eager reader that Oxfam, Amnesty and likeminded charitable organisations agree with him, and to publicise the meeting so that all Zionist hating Guardianistas will come along to cheer him on, buy a copy of his book and protect him from Jonathan Hoffman.

What has all this got to do with the BBC? In line with their forty year hate campaign against Israel, they are doing something uncannily similar. They tell us all about Oxfam, another charitable organisation demanding the dismantling of the illegal barrier. The barrier which “Israel says is for security.”
Very concerning to them is the fact that Palestinian children have been separated from their playground and have to play in the streets. More concerning obviously than the 200 Israeli lives that were lost in 2002 before the barrier was put there to protect them.

Ben White does not mention such things at all in his “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide.” Moreover, he also cannot seem to understand why some people do.

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Burial of Respect

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Melanie Phillips has an article about the Tories’ new policy on marriage and the family. Towards the end she writes:

“A two-part programme for the BBC by the respected journalist John Ware about ‘The Death Of Respect’, which identifies family breakdown as an important reason for the rise of aggression, incivility and crime, has been moved by channel controllers from a prime 9pm slot to the ‘graveyard’ 11.20pm time because it is considered to be ‘too dark’.”

I couldn’t find any more about this cowardly decision by the ‘channel controllers,’ but if this is true it’s pathetic.
I did find:

“What a pity, therefore, that the BBC have chosen to schedule this show in a graveyard slot instead of putting it on earlier opposite Big Brother, for instance.”

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Unhinder us!

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Former top anti-terror police officer Peter Clarke says the anti-terror police are constrained by the Contempt of Court Act. Because of it, the police are unable to explain why they do what they do, and this discourages ‘the community’ from cooperating with them.
Citing the controversial 2003 police raid of the Finsbury Park Mosque, he said restrictions had actually forced the police to skew the conduct of operations.

The BBC has its own Restraining Act, and it implements this mysterious act when describing certain individuals.
Q. When is a Muslim not a Muslim? A. When he’s a terror suspect.
On such occasions he’s religiously de -religionised by the BBC, and ‘the community’ is just any old community. So as not to jeopardise community cohesion.

On the other hand, when it applies to something admirable, or something English, they go to ridiculous lengths to include the ROP.
A programme entitled ‘Morris and the Muslims’ is being trailed relentlessly on the radio.
William Morris, renowned 19th C. English designer of wallpaper and fabric, pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement and Commie, was, according to the BBC, influenced by “The Muslim World.” This is the first I’ve heard of it. I thought stained glass, medieval history, the classics, French cathedrals, and visiting Iceland were the things that influenced him. His patterns emanated from natural forms, fruit, foliage etc.

Islamic art consists of repetitive patterning. Does this mean anything repetitive stems from Islamic Art? Patterned fabric is necessarily repetitive because of the manufacturing process. Manufactured and fabricated, as, I suspect, is this strange link. But what do I know?

Was the BBC’s reluctance to call terror suspects ‘Muslim’ merely because of the Contempt of Court Act all along? In which case a change in the law might liberate the BBC and they could unleash even more ‘Influenced-by-the-Muslim-World’ broadcasting, and like wallpaper; the pattern could be repeated over and over and applied wall-to-wall.

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To Beeb or not to Beeb

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Iain Dale, Oliver Kamm and Nick Ferrari all belatedly decided to stop appearing on the Iranian-backed Press T.V.
They no longer wish to lend whatever credibility their participation bestows upon this alleged propaganda machine.

What prompted these ‘principled’ resignations? For Iain Dale it was because “I have been appalled at the way their website has portrayed what’s happened in the Iranian elections” and for Nick Ferrari it was “in protest at the regime crushing dissent after the Iranian elections,” Oliver Kamm said his was because of “the station’s promotion of the work of a Holocaust denier”

But surely the clamp-down on protesters and Press T.V.s support for the Ahmadinejad regime – not to mention Holocaust denial – were not the first or the only signs that Press T.V. was something one wouldn’t want to be associated with?

This particular dilemma must have pre-dated the Iranian election fiasco. Why did the moral objections come to a head only after these terrible events?
The publicity engendered by these resignations wouldn’t have been quite the same if they had simply declined invitations to appear in the first place as I understand others have done.
There are calls for Press T.V. to be banned altogether, but where does that leave freedom of speech?
A station that features George Galloway, Yvonne Ridley and Lauren Booth, and has the ridiculous Matthew Richardson for an MD can’t have much credibility going for it, and too many bans make Jack a very dull boy..

Anyway, the dilemma applies to BBC as well, and the argument goes like this:
Does one participate in a set-up with which one profoundly disagrees in order to put the case for the other side? Or, does one have nothing to do with it in the first place?

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Out of Proportion

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Amnesty International, the so-called Independent Human Rights organisation, has released a report about war crimes committed during the Cast Lead episode. To help, the BBC web page shows injured babies.
Israel’s crimes, many, varied and wide-ranging, (as well as wanton, deliberate and unjustified,) largely amount to not being accurate enough with their retaliatory responses. So when Hamas sends rockets from densely populated areas, Israel must restrain itself until it is absolutely certain that the guilty party can be targeted precisely, (provided that he is a militant, and not a civilian or a ‘child’) Then he’s permitted to be neatly zapped like in a computer game.

Well, we knew all this already.

The BBC doesn’t say that Donatella Rovera’s report is emotive and unprofessional, or that it criticises Israel “disproportionately “ and “Indiscriminately.”
On ‘Ask Amnesty’ for example, she seems to think Israel occupies Gaza. However hard she tries, her attempts to appear even-handed fall flat.

Neither Amnesty nor the BBC sees fit to mention that Hamas provoked the war in the first place, and that there could be peace tomorrow if the Palestinians recognised Israel and renounced violence. (I meant peace with Israel, – not peace amongst themselves, a different thing altogether.)

On this occasion I don’t think the BBC is as biased as usual. There are scare quotes around ‘war crimes’ in the headline. Almost as though they weren’t unreservedly supporting Amnesty’s report. Or is that wishful thinking?

Amnesty’s method of ‘evidence gathering’ is merely to question Palestinian eyewitnesses. Even the BBC might think that a little unscrupulous and unprofessional. But then again…

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Bleep Bleep Corporation

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Bleeping out, (or should I say redacting) strong language is a bit ****ing ridiculous if you ask me. Which you didn’t.

It’s not so much the ****ing gratuitous bad language that the BBC ought to be ****ing-well worried about, it’s the general decline in quality and morality.

For one thing, this token exercise merely draws unnecessary attention to something wretched, and for another…. I think that one’s ebleepingnough for now.

Will ‘toning down sex and swearing’ be enough to reverse the moral decline? No it will not.

“Viewers also expressed concern about pre-watershed programmes, including EastEnders, which often dealt with adult themes.”

Why call themes featuring self-obsessed misfits and retarded, immature, maladjusted inadequates with narcissistic personality disorders, ‘adult’?
Enough about Newsnight, as Bruce Forsythe might quip.

‘Adult’ is clearly a euphemism, a bit like ‘gay’. By all means let’s have adult themes in the old fashioned sense, i.e. for adults with a brain. And before, after and during the watershed, introduce quality, originality, wit, wisdom, entertainment, information and substance. Surely someone somewhere is capable of providing that for all the £illions we fork out.

Ann Widdecombe thinks the BBC should reduce bad language, (not bleep it out) implement the watershed, (not merely treat it as the go-ahead for violence, titillation and inanity) and NOT put stuff before (or after) 9pm that most of us do not want to see, and show families that are ‘together’ instead of drug taking, broken and dysfunctional.” My words are in brackets, above.

If they do that, as far as I’m concerned, the swearing will take care of itself.

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A Tale of two Censures

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The BBC reports that Ofcom has censured George Galloway over five shows broadcast on Talksport during the Gaza conflict. Ofcom says he crossed the line from legitimate and provocative debate to one “calling listeners to action,” but “did not break the rules on offering opposing views.”

Was that the same kind of ‘not breaking the rules’ as in the ‘I’ve done nothing wrong’ kind of ‘not breaking the rules?’

Or in the sense that fading out counter arguments on a radio debate is somehow within the rules of ’offering opposing views’ (Well, Galloway did offer them, it’s just that he happened to make them inaudible.)

Because that is what happened to Oliver Kamm who appeared on one of his programmes, and he didn’t seem to like it very much.

When Jeremy Bowen was censured for breaching impartiality rules Oliver Kamm supported him, rather bizarrely according to many people.

Kamm said he believed that scrupulous impartiality was not necessary from Bowen, citing other notable journalistic precedents.

Though he disagreed with some of Bowen’s views, he concluded:

“Objective reporting means that, while being aware of your partial information, you describe the world as you see it. This is the responsibility that Bowen has, and it’s one that he has discharged.”

Furthermore he doesn’t seem to think Bowen is the sharpest knife in the box.

“I watched the BBC programme this evening, and I have to acknowledge that its presenter, Jeremy Bowen, whose greatest admirers would be hard put to identify in him the sharpest of inquiring minds, didn’t do a bad job.”

But he’s the BBC Middle East Editor! Of course he has more of a responsibility than just describing the world as he, the Palestinians and Hamas, see it.

So Bowen is Biased AND thick, but Galloway is beyond the pale. The fact that the BBC lets him get away with so much speaks volumes; it’s time he was faded out altogether.

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