If you don't frequent the rare sites that report this stuff, you may not be aware that at least three branches of Starbucks in London - in Whitechapel, and on Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly Circus - have been attacked and looted in the past week, because it is said that the owner of the chain is a "Zionist" who supports Israel. This is, it seems to me, very newsworthy, especially because of its chilling echoes of Kristallnacht. But I haven't seen or heard one mention of this on the BBC.
Now. Imagine that a popular and high profile chain of stores owned by an Asian businessman had been subject to such attacks by members of the BNP because of his support for the Palestinians. Do you think they would have gone unreported by the BBC?
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7 comments:
Sadly I suspect that the news blackout may be a precaution to prevent widespread copycat attacks by the more hot-headed element of anti-Zionist youth.
Quite possibly Polly, but a worrying development if so, n'est-ce pas?
Jonny
I remember we had a jolly good chat a while back about racism and you suggested, with good reason, that maybe I had been oversensitive and had overcompensated... I fear your Israeli stance may be headed in the same direction. You know for years that the NF / BNP did destroy Asian shops, not for what they supported, but simply because they were "foreign". These rarely made it on the news - I don't remember Jan Leeming telling us "A newsagent in Blackburn was covered in slogans tonight..."
There is no BBC conspiracy. If Sky was covering it you would have a point. Its not on the news because we have a new President, the banks are collapsing, Chelsea can't score and people in Gaza have been slaughtered.
And before you criticise that last word, I am surprised that your very sharp legal mind let through the word 'kristalnacht.' Again, the difference between Pakistan and Gaza was state sponsorship - the same difference between Nazi Germany and a few BNP twats...
And another thing - I'm in Dublin where I thought the porrage would be brilliant, but disappointingly warm and lifeless....
dNo - good point well made about the role of the state in Kristallnacht. But I do think there is plentiful evidence that the British state and media do - or certainly did - treat racism and racist inspired acts by Islamists differently from such racism and acts by white racists. This is typically for good liberal reasons - community cohesion etc - but it is wrong and dangerous nevertheless.
Sorry about your porridge.
I liked the comment from the Al Jazeera Washington correspondent who says they put most of their archives and do most of their interviews with westerners in Jerusalem as it really is the safest place to be an Arabic anti-Israeli TV station....
The old adage of judge a nation by the way it treats its prisoners...
Jonny - getting awfully confused. Switched on BBC News last night to see people outside the TV Centre with banners reading "BBC is Israel's puppet." Eh?
Open your souls to the chaos of the world and control your intake.
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