A Bloomberg Quote

Please help me with this

The BBC won't carry a DEC appeal for Gaza, yet they have done so for Vietnam and others. OK, granted, they did not run one for Lebanon or for Afghanistan. Hmmmm, anybody would think they are too shy to run any appeal related to the 'greater Middle East' region.

Worried about our international broadcast revenues? Concerned with certain constituents? Or is there something else?

It shouldn't matter what your view of the Palestine/Israel conflict is - civilians need help with food, water and shelter (it's cold out there, and all the buildings have been flattened).

If the BBC is that concerned about being an international broadcaster and being seen as impartial (though I think that assertion lacks credibility), then they should just run the campaign on terrestrial TV and not international services like BBC World.

Also, why is it, that over the last few days, rather than fielding the editors who apparently were so concerned with being impartial, the BBC fielded its Chief Operating Officer (COO)? I don't know about you, but in most companies, the COO is an internal-facing role, and in a media company, would have bugger all squared to do with editorial matters (coz that's what editors are for).

The Essential Gift for Jet-Setting Shitheads

Dumb, dumb, dumb. Getta load of this.

Hard Pilots

Yes, US Airways pilot Sullenberger did an amazing job, but check this guy out - Leul Abate. A Nat Geo doc of Ethiopian Airlines flight 961 is available here.

Bungle

A piece in Tehelka about the Mumbai attacks.

It is funny though, how the investigation has blurred the wider issue - India, although a democracy, does suffer from discrimination against various minorities, e.g. Dalits & Muslims. Think of Narendra Modi in Gujarat. Still in power, go figure.

There is enough going on in India to radicalise young Muslims, without importing Pakistan's own home-grown problems. This is being sweeped under the carpet.

One is also struck by the vocabulary of our times:

• 9/11 (Twin Towers, rather than Allende's overthrow in Chile)
• 26/11 (Mumbai)
• Extremists (taken as 'code' for Muslims, but an evangelical throwing a bomb at an abortion clinic, is to me at least, an extremist, regardless of their religion)
• Fundamentalists (a very misused and abused term)
• Freedom fighters (before Hamas, the PLO...there were groups like the Haganah fighting the British and the Palestinians) vs. terrorists

How can it be that a Palestinian, attacking an Israeli tank in Gaza, is a terrorist, yet a member of the Irgun, attacking a police station in British Palestine in the 1940s, is lauded as a hero? I guess it depends on your perspective - something lacking in the current debate.

Neither side will disappear, so they might as well reconcile. But it cannot happen while one side (an army with a state attached, rather than the other way round) expects the other side to hang its heads in shame and live like dogs.

After all, the Israelis refused to live like that, didn't they?

Israel & Palestine

Some interesting articles in the Economist, OpenDemocracy and London Review of Books. Also, a speech from the late, great Dr. Haidar Abdul Shafi.

Whatever your position and prejudices (and we all have them), please read widely, think broadly and act wisely, decisively and compassionately.

Two groups can live as one.

On this day...

...the term 'cock donkey', gave way to 'bent Womble' (at least until March).