Britannia Radio

Amnesty Again

>> SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2011

Remember that meeting hosted by Amnesty? The one entitled Complicity in Oppression, Does the Media Aid Israel?
I mentioned the speakers, ex BBC Tim Llewellyn and the BBC’s resident Israel-bashing buddy, bulgy-eyed Abdul Bari (call me Barry) Atwan, Greg Philo and Victoria Brittain. Here’s Richard Millett’s review of what sounds like quite a night.
They brought up such tired old clichés - as though the audience hadn’t heard them a million times before. “But Hamas was democratically elected” “All political parties are completely and utterly dominated by the you-know-what lobby” etc. etc.
“The BBC waits in fear of phone calls from the Israelis” - I recall that laughable quote from Peter Oborne’s ridiculous television programme about the Jewish lobby.

Poor old ”Barry” Atwan complains that he’s not on the BBC enough. They seem to have dropped him on one occasion in favour of the likes of PM Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. (Jewish Lobby again.) Tim Llewellyn has gone off his rocker. He feels sorry for poor Jeremy Bowen, who’s obviously so constrained by the Zionists at the BBC. He’s not completely mad though. One thing he said sounds rather sane. “............ the BBC didn’t properly address his complaints. He referred to one response from the BBC as a “tendentious piece of garbage”.
Haha.
The BBC is busy celebrating Amnesty’s 50th anniversary. BBC News 24 just interviewed one of its representatives, Dr. Champa Patel, most ingratiatingly. Apparently Dr. Patel works within the anti-racism and community development sector.
Physician, heal thyself.

SAINT VINCE

Anyone catch "Any Questions" on the BBC this lunchtime? I listened to a few minutes of Saint Vince Cable playing to the loudly applauding audience by a/ Mocking Fox and Rupert Murdoch and b/ Pretending that "our" NHS must operate without those voracious reptiles from the Private Sector. Vince can rely on the BBC to at least try to keep his political career afloat.

WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN...

The BBC seem pretty euphoric about the decision by the Egyptian military to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza. Naturally this is presented as the most benign and enlightened decision one could imagine. Israeli concerns are mentioned but presented as more begrudgery, in true BBC fashion. The fact that Hamas can now get much needed armaments more easily is dismissed as a mere detail as we are all asked to join in BBC praise for the alleged Arab Spring. I heard James Naughtie on Today this morning waxing lyrical about the new Egypt. No mentions of the gang rape of Lara Logan in Freedom Square, no mention of the emerging Nazi Party, no mention of thelooming triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood. A secular-ish Egypt is morphing into a new Iran and the BBC can see nothing wrong in that - after all - if you hate Israel you can't be all that bad, right?

STRAWBERRY FIELDS

Is the BBC news operation now simply the formal mouthpiece of a number of environmental activists? The WWF - probably the world's wealthiest group of eco-fascists, swimming in billions of dollars of cash - is bellyaching that strawberry growing in Spain is a scandal. Don't get me wrong; I am all in favour of sensible preservation of wetlands, and illegal water extraction can be a a menace. But this is more than that, it's fervent, idealistic hate-the-farmer grandstanding. Never mind the 50,000 souls who depend on soft fruit growing; WWF has decreed they are wicked and it's trying to stop them making a living. In fact, strawberry growing, it seems, is a greenie hornet's nest of soul-searching about carbon footprints; here, a pair of intrepid investigative reporters at the Guardian have calaculated to the nearest ounce the respective "carbon footprints" of strawberries from Spain or Scotland. Golly gosh, how wonderful it is that they have so much time to pursue such vital public-interest stories.

The BBC, of course, is up to its neck in this activism and backs it to the hilt. Back in 2007, it was faithfully reporting the WWF eco-fascist efforts in Spain and printed virtually line-for-line it's call for a boycott on buying strawberries. Yesterday, it re-visited the story, presenting exactly the same facts, in the same strident, one-sided way. Clearly, the original propaganda burst did not do the trick - and those pesky, selfish farmers are still trying to make a living.