Bubbles on the Air

Bubbles on the Air

‘As early as the first paragraph of the Introduction he claims that “never a thought is given to Gaza” in the city of Tel Aviv.’

I lifted that from ‘Philosemite’ Chas Newkey Burden’s blog post about Gideon Levy’s book "The Punishment of Gaza", which elicited a lively response from people who think of Levy as an obnoxious self serving liar. Seeing as how Gideon Levy has been hobnobbing with Jeremy Bowen at the Edinburgh Festival, I immediately wondered if this was the source of this morning’s report by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in which he decided to contrast heartless greedy Jews of Tel Aviv with a couple of Palestinian ‘victims’ in Nablus. However, as one of the Palestinians seemed to be threatening another intefada, and the other had just been acquiring an MBA from Exeter University, which some see as a Saudi-funded academic enclave and possible hotbed of Islamist subversion nestling incongruously in a South West rural idyll, this seemed at odds with the Beeb’s normal practice of showcasing the righteousness of the Palestinians and the wrongteousness of the Israelis. The Israelis he interviewed sounded somewhat easier to identify with than the Palestinians this time. So you slipped up there Rupert old bean if you don’t mind my saying so. Does the theme that runs through the BBC’s presentation of the middle east conflict, namely that the Israelis are land-grabbing expansionist warmongers, actually stem from Jeremy Bowen’s superficial grasp of the situation? He recently exposed this when he stated that a religious element has been “grafted on” to what was fundamentally an issue about land. Melanie Phillips touches on the topic of ill-informed journalism in this articleabout the misrepresentation of Jewish history underpinning a Christian theme park in Mallorca:

“It is a narrative which gives the lie to the naive belief that the Middle East impasse is a fight over land boundaries. It is instead an attempt to excise from the region not just the Jewish state of Israel, not just every single Jew from a future state of Palestine, but the historical evidence that this land – including Judea and Samaria – was the Jewish national home centuries before Arabs invaded and conquered it, and many more centuries before Arabs started to style themselves as Palestinian.[.....] Isn’t it wonderful to have quality newspapers written by educated writers?”

The BBC should educate its journalists, if only because they wield such a disproportionate influence. Ignorance in journalism is deplorable, but nothing satisfactorily explains the BBC’s “wholesale adoption of the fictional Arab narrative”

Intolerance

Back in May the BBC reported the following:

A cartoonist whose work inspired an internet campaign inviting people to draw images of the Prophet Muhammad has apologised for her role in the row. Writing on her blog, Molly Norris said her satirical cartoon was "hijacked" and that the campaign was "offensive to Muslims"... Molly Norris drew a cartoon in April to protest against the decision by a US television channel to cancel an episode of the popular show South Park because of a contentious depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.

Sadly, apologising doesn't appear to have done her much good.

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Justine Greening Deflates BBC Motormouth Kirsty Wark On Cuts

On last night’s Newsnight Kirsty Wark had obviously been instructed to sex up the “savage cuts will cause the death of millions of women, children and old people” narrative by wheeling in a trio of rent-a-whiners waving shrouds on behalf of defence, the police and, naturally the NHS. As Kirsty wielded her remote each of these Duracell bunnies leapt into life to squawk about the horrors to come. Former Brown minister Lord West went Cassandra over the possibility of cuts in defence expenditure though oddly enough the Admiral, who has had very close links with the defence industry lobby in the past, clearly forgot to say anything about the financial black hole of procurement. One tear jerker of note that had been programmed into the Police Federation robot – “Cuts = Christmas for criminals” – obviously caught Kirsty’s fancy because she threw this at the hapless coalition sacrificial goat who was tethered in the studio in front of Wark and her bunnies, Economic Secretary to the Treasury Justine Greening. Only Justine turned out to be not so hapless after all. She ignored Wark’s Paxman-like attempts to steamroller her into pleading guilty to plunging her knife into the heroes and heroines of the frontline services. Instead she hammered home on one simple fact.

The average taxpayer is paying £1400 not on schools, hospitals or police but debt interest.

Unless we take these immediate steps to reduce the deficit the cost of servicing that debt will increase year on year leaving much smaller slices of the pie for defence, policing and healthcare. Strangely enough, after Ms Greening made that point in a quiet but assertive manner, the Duracell bunnies sat in their chairs lifeless and silent and Kirsty quickly passed on to the next item. Watch here from 14.43 onwards.. Game, set and match to Justine Greening..... cross posted at The Aged P

MORE CASH

On his blog, Cash Peters is taking a stand against "the nutjobs and loons". He has responded to my post about him yesterday by comparing it to "Opposition arsonists who spread fear, irrational and baseless rumors, and a raft of lies about Obama in the hope of destabilizing his power to govern and discredit him and his administration." Gosh! And armed only with his trusty raw vegetable and a healing crystal, Cash is mad as hell and he's not going to take it any more.

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