Media Lens Rapid Response Media Alert: The BBC Refuses To Broadcast Gaza Charity Appeal

January 23, 2009Leave a comment

23 January, 2009

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

RAPID RESPONSE MEDIA ALERT: THE BBC REFUSES TO BROADCAST GAZA CHARITY APPEAL

Numerous members of the public have written to us expressing their bewilderment at the violence of Israel’s 22-day attack on Gaza killing upwards of 1,300 people and wounding 4,200. To many witnessing the onslaught on their TV screens (especially Al Jazeera) this appeared to be an act of state sadism.

Israeli forces repeatedly bombed schools (including UN schools), medical centres, hospitals, ambulances, UN buildings, power plants, sewage plants, roads, bridges and civilian homes.

On January 15, Helpdoctors.org reported that Al Quds hospital had been “again the target of bombing”. Some 50 patients, 30 in wheelchairs, fled as the burning hospital was “totally destroyed”. translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.helpdoctors.org%2F&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

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BBC BLOCKS AID TO GAZA: PROTEST 24 JANUARY BRING DOLLS TO LAY OUTSIDE THE BBC BRING SHOES WITH A MESSAGE FOR GORDON BROWN

January 23, 2009Leave a comment

If the BBC was not tarnished enough by its coverage of Israel’s attack on Gaza — in the words of Tony Benn, “often looking like a propaganda wing of the Zionist lobby” — its decision yesterday to block an appeal for emergency aid to Gaza would be reason enough for making the BBC a focus of our demonstration on Saturday 24 January.

While the media is now saturated with reports showing the scale of Israel’s barbarism over the past three weeks and the humanitarian disaster it has created, and while the United Nations, the Red Cross and all the other aid organisations involved are saying that immediate emergency aid must be rushed to Gaza, the BBC has blocked a joint appeal by a wide range of organisations from being broadcast after all the main news programmes on every TV channel.

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No to the database state! Spam Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for one day!

January 23, 2009Leave a comment

Facebook ‘super database’ protesters plan to spam Home Office – Computerworld UK 22/1/09

A Facebook protest against the government’s planned £12 billion ‘super database’ of electronic communications has called on people to forward all their emails to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for one day.

The exact date has not yet been decided. Check with the Facebook site.

See http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/online/new-media/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsId=12924

The Facebook URL: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43256614646

Here’s the Home Office’s email address
public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

And/or, direct to Ms. Smith: smithjj@parliament.uk

See also NO2ID’s latest newsletter for more information on the Total Surveillance State

The Crisis in Gaza: An Interview with Gilbert Achcar

January 23, 2009Leave a comment

Gilbert Achcar lived in Lebanon for many years. He is now Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. He is the author of many books analysing politics and society in the Middle East from a Left perspective, including The Clash of Barbarisms, Eastern Cauldron, The 33-Day War and Perilous Power (a collection of dialogues between Achcar and Noam Chomsky). He spoke to Daniel Finn for Irish Left Review about the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip and its likely consequences.

The interview was conducted on the 10th of January 2009 and published on the Irish Left Review website.

Daniel Finn: What do you think are the chief goals of Israeli strategy at present in their assault on the Gaza strip?

Gilbert Achcar: Well that’s a complicated question actually, because there are different levels involved. Seen through a wide angle, it is part of an ongoing struggle between Israel on the one hand and both Hamas and Hezbollah on the other, a struggle which reached a previous peak in 2006, when during the summer Israel was simultaneously waging a war against Gaza and another one, a major onslaught, on Lebanon. That was related to the global strategy of the Bush administration in its confrontation with Iran, with the conception prevailing in Washington that Hamas and Hezbollah are tools of the Iranian state and therefore part of an alliance of forces that should be smashed if ever US hegemony in the region as well as Israeli security is to be stabilized. It is therefore a further stage in the same ongoing war that has been unfolding for the last few years.

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