The usually-wonderful Marina Hyde makes a really good point in the Guardian today. About the effect that the Daily Mail campaign against some pathetically stupid BBC presenters (Ross and Brand) has had on the BBC’s nerve, making the BBC too cowardly to broadcast an appeal for aid to the people of Gaza.
Enough said, here’s Marina.
Odd that the people on rapture-ready discussion boards – who hate supposedly- fellow-Christian Catholicism with a passion – identify themselves almost completely with Israel.
I find it’s amazing in how with all the bombs going into Israel (sp?) only 4 people as of yesterday had been killed. It that doesn’t speak to God’s hand over his people and how he protects and will defend us. I don’t know what does. (from bakerhorsepower on a
particularly disturbingtypical thread on Rapture Ready)
(Original h/t fstdt)
That thread has a whole editorial about how God is 100% with Israel. Just like the writer above who talks about his/her god protecting and defending “us”, God can’t tell the difference between Israelis and fundies, either, apparently. So he’s protecting Israeli lives, in the mistaken belief they are really American Protestant fundamentalists.
(RR posters don’t see greater firepower and many more armaments and soldiers as having anything to do with the disproportion in numbers of dead people between Israelis and palestinians. It’s all down to god’s smiting choices.)
How ironic then that another post sees this very same God as protecting Palestinian babies by killing them.
Despite some tough competition, this is possibly the most distasteful post I have ever read, even by the abysmal standards of Rapture Ready.*
It’s headed by a picture of a young blonde woman with a bunch of flowers – looking winsomely off to the middle distance, maybe imagining the rapture – with a picture of a couple of innocent-faced young blonde kids in the post’s footer. Which makes the content all the more chilling:
A great thought!!
I have been upset about the innocent children in all of the fighting in Gaza….but this thought came to me….these little children that are dying would have been taught Islam and hate…this way they have a chance to go to heaven!! It’s terrible that they are dying and my heart is sad….but when I was talking to God this thought came to me….the ones that are dying are going to be able to go to heaven….instead of growing up and following Islam…so, something good is coming out of this…. (by someone who calls herself “cbressler1976 ^^Heavenbound^^”)
Two exclamation marks on “A great thought”. Maybe the punctuation mark is evolving to fill the sentience vacancy created by people like cbressler1976. These stray exclamation marks are trying to draw our attention to the criminal misuse of the word “thought” in the only way that they know how.
You’d think that this post must make the hairs on even Rapture Ready posters’ necks stand on end. Far from it. It brings in lots of lurve from her fellow raptards.
That is an excellnt point. It is always good to have an eternal perspective. (says wvborn56)
Really. I am not making these up. (I decide to take that comment as really being massively sarcastic, in the face of the evidence. Because I have to retain some will to live.)
Very good thought, on the other hand their parents think they are with “allah” and enjoying 72 virgins. But we know they rest with Jesus. Too bad their kids can’t tell them they are worshiping a fake god. The kids know more than the “teachers” of islam. (adds rapturecalldan)
Even I can’t fool myself that “very good thought” is sarcasm, given the rest of that comment.
To recap: these people see the deaths of real babies and children as good, because the kids won’t grow up to be Muslims.
No, even more stunning than that, if that were possible. They see the deaths of any non-fundy babies as good.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I remember, at first, feeling soooo sorry for all the little children who had died in the tsunami (sp) in 04, I think???? Then, it just hit me like a ton a of bricks–those little children, had they grown up, may never have come to know the Lord, and now they can be w/ Him. (from Mommytoa3rdgradeboy)
So this woman – who defines herself entirely in relation to her own child, if her sig means anything – feels nothing except delight in the deaths of other “3rdgradeboys” who don’t share her religion and nationality.
This tsunami tale is an opportunity for cute little cbressler1976 to also show her soft and caring feminine side:
It’s good to know that they are in a better place..
On a temporary basis, I am going to pretend that this dangerous insanity constitutes a coherent worldview and address some of their “points”
How many chosen people can god have? If the Bible can’t lie, then it must be the Jews. Hence, there is at least some logic in the bible-bashers thinking god wants Israel to win (although, given history of Jewish persecution, if that’s what comes from being god’s favourite, I’m bloody glad I’m a heathen)
But I am more than confident that there’s nothing in the Bible about raptards being the chosen people. So, why wouldn’t god think he’d also be doing the raptards’ kids a favour by smiting them?
They are saying that God is smiting Asian children and Palestinian children (some of whom are of course from Christian families) FOR THEIR OWN GOOD. So, why is their god being so mean to Jewish children by forcing them to live without letting them become fundies?
And, surely that means that god should be all for abortions, then? He must be doing foetuses a big favour.
Why is their god cruelly forcing the fundies’ children to live, given that heaven is so great and that they would be spared the danger of sin, if he just took them now?
Let me repeat, in true shock and awe. These are people who can rage endlessly and mightily over the foetus’ right to life and they consider the deaths of real human children to be a good thing.
*************************************
(*I’ve messed about with the links so as not to give RR any link hits. You can access the threads by reverse-messing with the urls. I don’t normally bother but this stuff is so emetic that I can’t bring myself to even leave a link in.)
Flattering to the UK population as it might be to see the UK described as “gentle civilised Britain”, I suspect the evidence doesn’t exactly stack up. (You could ask the populations of Majorca or Falaraki or Ibiza if they recognise this as description of a British tourist, for a start.)
This was in the headline of a piece by Melanie Phillips in the Mail Even by the reliably rabid standards of Melanie Phillips, this must represent a new departure. The heading is:
Violent Gaza protests reveal how gentle civilised Britain has changed into something very ugly indeed
I have to assume that Melanie Phillips doesn’t have a history GCSE, so she may never have heard of the many centuries of political violence that constitute British history. I also assume that she is 12 years old so never heard of the political violence of the 1980s. Kudos to the Mail for not being ageist and recruiting children as its columnists.
Hmm, wikipedia confuses me. It turns out she was born in 1951. She studied English at Oxford. (I guess it must have been difficult to get in without History O level…) I have to let her wikipedia give aflavour of her.
The BBC has said that Phillips “is regarded as one of the [U.K.] media’s leading right-wing voices”, although she defines herself as a progressive and a defender of liberal democracy. She began her career on the liberal left with the Guardian newspaper, and her gradual drift to the right of the political spectrum has been mirrored by her journalistic career: she now writes for the right-wing Daily Mail. She has used her Daily Mail columns and her blog to criticise, amongst other issues, progressive teaching methods, scientism, militant Islam, and what she sees as anti-semitism as a means of defending Israeli policy; to oppose equal partnership rights for homosexuals; and to support strict anti-drug policies. She has described President-elect Obama of the USA a “revolutionary Marxist.”
Also, in case you couldn’t have guessed-
Phillips argues that evolution is “merely a theory
Bear in mind that this is a woman who sees Obama as a “revolutionary Marxist” At least this gives some consistency to her characterisation of the UK as in thrall to fundamentalist Islam, backed by a fifth column of revolutionary lefties. A conspiracy into which she pulls the Liberal Democrat’s leader (ffs).
For silence is complicity, as once gentle, decent, civilised Britain changes before our horrified eyes into something very ugly indeed.
The Mail has talked up the demonstrations against Israel’s actions in Gaza to the point that it claimed that 100,000 people attended and that police were knocked unconscious.
Violent clashes occurred between police and around 20,000 protesters outside the Israeli Embassy in London (from the Daily Mail)
In notable numeric contrast, he BBC news site (NB the BBC is itself a minor Daily Mail hate target) says:
The Metropolitan Police says 20,000 people marched but the BBC estimates the figure could be as high as 50,000……
It is estimated there were several hundred police officers dealing with around 200 protesters outside the embassy…
BBC correspondent Robert Hall said given the number of people involved, the protest had been peaceful.
“But as darkness fell a small number of people, several hundred, have begun confronting police and missiles have been thrown,” he said.
“Although these are ugly and unwelcome scenes, they do not represent what has happened for most of the afternoon.”
Note that the BBC’s estimate of fighting protesters is one-hundredth of the Mail’s. Yes that’s one hundredth. How impressive is that for a margin of error. (Hmm, which estimate comes from an internationally respected organisation and which from a right-wing rag?)
The Daily Mail’s implication is that political violence is on a huge scale and is some alien (probably Islamic) import. It must not even have access to its own back catalogue – or else it mistrusts its own words as alarmist propaganda 🙂 – which would pull out hundreds of examples of demonstrations in which an irate minority kicked off.
But no chance. If there’s ever an opportunity to make middle England even more bigoted and scared, you can always rely on the Mail to take it.
Rogue state fosters terrorism. That isn’t what the media are saying about Israel’s actions, despite the fact that a rational look at the situation in Gaza would support this conclusion. Every Israeli action of this kind drives the Palestinians further into the camp of extremists, as every other alternative is denied them.
A strange conflict arithmetic appears. Over 300 Palestinians dead, and 3 Israelis at yesterday’s count. The 3 Israeli casualties appeared as a rolling news banner, as if dead people are significant. Rightly so. But Palestinian casualties are treated as numbers, approximated and spurious. We are being hypnotised into seeing a hundred to one as some sort of equality of death, as if the value of a non-Israeli life is somehow one-hundredth that of an Israeli life.
On the rolling news broadcasts, images of Palestinians screaming and crying in grief are shown among a confusion of images of demonstrations and mass panic street scenes and Koran waving. At best, a local Englishman explains their situation in a half-screen box. Any attempt to follow what he is saying is disrupted by the flickering voiceless images of Palestinian chaos. The message is “You cannot understand these people. They are nothing like you.”
Israelis are interviewed in the circumstances of normality. Standing by their cars, discussing the events in English and expressing their concerns in the context of normal conversation. Israeli politicians are interviewed in modern well-set up studios. They say things that us Europeans tend to disagree with but they are recognisably like us. Reporters stand outside their comfortable hotels and discuss the day’s tallies and discuss Israeli reactions.
The overall impression seems to construct view of the Israelis that seems well nigh taken for granted in the US – that they are just like the people in USA or Europe or Canada, it’s just that they are insanely being bombarded by a load of Islamo-fanatics who hate their freedom and democracy and advanced way of life, etc.
Hmm. It’s not as if this is deliberate news management or anything. (Yes, “I am being sarcastic”, to quote Homer Simpson.) I initially thought it was just a side effect of the world’s journalists naturally gravitating towards interviewees who speak their language and can be easily reached from their hotels. And I was pretty depressed that, in the supposed age of the citizen journalist, traditional factors like accessibility and language and official control of information sources still frame the “news” so decisively.
But, it’s not just that.
“Israel is not currently permitting international journalists to cross into Gaza” (From the BBC report of a journalist who is Gaza resident)
Well, it’s not apparently permitting international medical aid to pass through the Mediterranean – as it admitted ramming a boat doing just that or it didn’t, according to UPN, according to which news source you believe – so it’s hardly going to allow foreign journalists into Gaza.
Hence, you can read lots stories like this in the New York Times.
A piercing shriek went up and a young woman fainted as the body, wrapped in a white shroud, was brought into the packed funeral hall.
On Tuesday, this fast-developing modern port city about half way between Gaza and Tel Aviv buried its first victim of a rocket attack: Irit Sheetrit, a 39-year-old mother of four
But, as far as I can see there very few people reporting for the Western media from within Gaza. Here’s one, a worker for an Islamic charity, writing on the BBC about the psychological effect of this on the children and about how hospitals are overwhelmed with the number of injured and dead people.
At the hospital I saw something I have never seen before – dead bodies outside on the floor. Everyone in Gaza has a relative or a friend killed or injured after these attacks.
Here’s another from the Guardian on a family that lost 5 daughters in one bombing raid. They lived in a refugee camp. Their lives were already shit and then they lost 5 daughters in one raid, while they were sleeping.
The Israeli strategy is based on a an insane belief that they will undercut support for Hamas by going ape on the Palestinians till they drop support for Hamas. This shows a level of ignorance about history and human psychology that seems almost wilful. The news management might have a fair amount of success in shaping how the USA sees and responds to this tragedy. But it is hardly going to convince the rest of the world. It’s not going to convince the people of Gaza of anything except the need to oppose Israel at any cost. It is not going to convince any Arab countries that they have any solution to the question of the Palestinians beyond slow burn genocide.
In the process, the Israelis are recruiting for Hamas, they are recruiting for Al Qeda. And, if the international community fails to put a stop to what they are doing, it is doing the same.
Well done America. You have put aside my lingering doubts about your national sanity (although looking at the red-blue map of the US, it seems there are an awful lot of nutcases) and the elections are all but over. Phew. A double sigh of relief; not only have you avoided putting a screaming nutter with nothing to offer other than “I was a POW” but the coverage on the UK news must surely soon dwindle. You have no idea how much that cheers me up!
Today however, it is still very much headline news. I can sort of understand this, it is a monumental change and is historic in that the Obama is the first black President. Wonderful. I do find it monumentally racist, however, that lots of commentators have suggested black people were going to vote for Obama because he was black. It carries the implication that black people dont have political viewpoints, the same issue arose around Hillary Clinton and Sarah “Crazy Eyes” Palin. Why would women vote against their political views simply to elect a woman into office?
Anyway, hopefully this will see the end of our 24 hour news coverage of the election campaign visiting places no one in the UK will have ever heard of. Of politics that have no impact on us and a government we have no say over. Maybe we will be able to get back to the days when a soldier dying in Afghanistan can make at least some headlines (maybe he is less news worthy because he was a Gurkha?). Or when a riot in the UK injures police and closes off half a city. Or even rocket attacks in Gaza if you must showcase world news.
Not long now.