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I was relieved to see this article by Gaby Hinsliff in the Guardian: “Whatever your view of the Israel-Hamas war, rape is rape. To trivialise it is to diminish ourselves”. At least some on the Left have not lost their humanity.
Midway through the article, Ms Hinsliff wrote the following:
Look away now if you would rather not read about women and young girls found dead with their pants pulled down, and telltale evidence of bleeding, bruises and scratches; about smashed pelvises, semen samples, and graphic details I wouldn’t normally go into on these pages except that otherwise it seems people don’t believe it. Though some won’t, even then.
Rape is a war crime as old as war itself, and yet still often invisible thanks to the stigma surrounding survivors, the practical challenges of gathering evidence under fire, and bleakly, sometimes also the lack of survivors.
That point – that murdered women cannot speak – seems to have escaped “feminist” Briahna Joy Gray, who was National Press Secretary for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. In a tweet quoted by tech writer Antonio García Martínez, she starts by saying, ‘“Believe all women” was always an absurd overreach: woman should be heard, claims should be investigated, but evidence is required. The same is true of the allegations out of Israel”‘, which would have been common sense if she had stopped there, but then she brightly adds, “But also, this isn’t a “believe women” scenario bc no female victims have offered testimony.”
Briahna’s Joy Gray’s next tweet is also… memorable. She says,
“Zionists are asking that we believe the uncorroborated eyewitness account of *men* who describe alleged rape victims in odd, fetishistic terms.”
That “uncorroborated” was revealing. One eyewitness account of the rape of a woman is not enough for Briahna Joy Gray, if that witness is a man and a “Zionist”. How many such witnesses would be enough to substantiate an accusation of rape in her eyes? Four?
And what did Gray mean by “*men* who describe alleged rape victims in odd, fetishistic terms.”? Judging from the two newspaper front pages she includes in her tweet, she is referring to (and casually libelling) Yoni Saadon who witnessed from hiding a woman being gang-raped and murdered on October 7th, and said how he was haunted by her face which he described as “the face of an angel”.
One of the better points feminists made repeatedly over the years was that victims of rape, and victims of other violent crimes, do not always react in ways that make them the type of witness who sways juries. Sometimes they cope with the horror of what they experienced by distancing themselves from it, which makes their account come across as lacking appropriate emotion. Sometimes the opposite happens and when the time comes to give their testimony their memories come spurting out as series of flash images, vivid but unstructured. Perhaps their vocabulary choice is not as good as Briahna Joy Gray’s would be in like circumstances, which, because I don’t wish to sink to her level, I pray she never experiences. Astonishing as it may seem to her, all these factors can apply to males as well. Astonishing as it may seem to her, for a man to watch, powerless to stop it, the rape and murder of a woman is a traumatic experience. Gray has has spent years denouncing the type of juror who dismisses a woman’s testimony because of superficial factors such as these, and then turns round and says that she can deduce in mere seconds that a man is lying – and that he is a “fetishist” – because the image that stuck in his head was the horrifying contrast between the woman’s beauty and the horrible thing being done to her.
“Violence in Dublin after five hurt in knife attack” reports the BBC:
There are violent scenes in Dublin after an earlier knife attack in the city centre in which five people were injured
It is not clear exactly what caused the disturbances – involving clashes, and reports of a number of vehicles set on fire
The BBC’s line about it not being clear exactly what caused the disturbances is disingenuous. It is entirely clear what they are rioting about. From the Telegraph:
Violent anti-immigration protesters descended on Dublin city centre on Thursday night after five people were injured in a knife attack outside a school. At least three small children were injured in the attack in the Irish capital, as well as a man and a woman. A five-year-old girl sustained “serious injuries” and was receiving emergency treatment, police said. Despite police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive, far-Right thugs emboldened by “misinformation” descended on the streets of the capital, setting fire to a police car, a tram and a double-decker bus, among other vehicles, and throwing fireworks at officers.
The only thing that is not entirely clear is whether the rioters are correct in thinking that the man who stabbed the children and adults is an Algerian migrant, as believed by those replying to this tweet by Micheál Martin, the Tánaiste (the deputy head of the Irish government).
It does not excuse the riots in the least if the rioters are correct to think that the would-be child murderer is any or all of a migrant, legal or illegal, or a Muslim, or from an ethnic minority. But the obfuscation from the Irish authorities and media on this point is making the situation worse.
The usual flashpoint for riots throughout history has been a rumour of crimes committed by a member of Group A against Group B. The riots in the Lozells district of Birmingham in 2005 have been almost forgotten because whites were not involved, but they were a typical example of the type, having been sparked by a completely unsubstantiated story that a black girl had been gang-raped by a group of South Asian men.
Sometimes the rumour is true, sometimes it is not.
If, as in that case, the inciting rumour is not true, the best tool for squelching the false claim and quelling the violence is a trusted press, taking the term “press” in a wider sense than just newspapers. If the rumour is true, the best tool for quelling the violence is still a trusted press. It can do things like publicising condemnations of the crime from leaders of the group to which the perpetrator belongs. What a pity that Ireland, like much of the Western World, no longer has a trusted press because it no longer has a trustworthy press.
It’s not “Despite police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive, far-Right thugs emboldened by “misinformation” descended on the streets of the capital”, it’s a damn sight closer to “Because of police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive, far-Right thugs emboldened by “misinformation” descended on the streets of the capital”. If the official sources of information won’t do their jobs, don’t be surprised when people turn to unofficial sources instead.
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Related posts: “Try not lying” – about the sexual assaults in Cologne and other German cities during the New Year celebrations of 1 January 2016, “If you do not want to see the BNP vindicated, try not proving them right”, and “Politically correct evasiveness fails on its own terms”.
Javier Milei elected in Argentina is being called “far-right“?
So, presumably he is obsessed by identity groups and demands everyone must be viewed collectively according to the status of their group; wants pervasive state control over every aspect of life (everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State); wants a state directed economy; and will refuse to have further elections after this one?
Or does he sees all rights as individual rights; wants to slash the size of the state; reduce taxes; wants to promote free enterprise; and has no problem with elections?
Because our media class seem to think both of those things are “far-right”
The Guardian‘s “social affairs correspondent”, Richard Booth, has written an article with the title “Five things that could help fix Britain’s private rented sector”. By “fix” he must mean “fix its current problems in stone”, because, with the possible exception of the first, every one of them would make yet more landlords run for the exits while they still have the chance.
An astonishing number of people think it is a good argument to say at this point, “Aha, but the houses would still exist, so landlords selling up would be good for the tenants because they could buy them”. There is indeed often a temporary glut of houses for sale just before laws such as Mr Booth advocates are passed, which is like winning the lottery for the people rich enough to buy at that moment. Then the door closes for decades. The great majority of tenants cannot afford to buy the houses they are renting and most would not want to even if they could. They are students, or people on temporary contracts, or people happy to do a fast-paced job in the big city while they are young but who never had any intention of settling there forever. Rent control and legal “protection” for these tenants is nice for one generation of them, a disaster for those who come after.
Then again, a return to the days of yore when most people lived and died within a few miles of where they were born can seem quite a charming prospect to those who think that it will not apply to them. And there is no doubt that an end to all this social mobility would be very eco-friendly.
In my recent post, “Peace-lovers love using the passive voice”, I asked you to supply particularly egregious examples of media attempts to downplay murders by Hamas and other protected groups. Ben did just that. From Canadian TV:
In case it disappears, the tweet from @CTVNews says, “Canadian peace activist Vivian Silver, who went missing after Hamas attack, has died.”
The use of “has died” rather than “is dead” makes it sound like she passed away in hospital within the last few days. Actually, she has been dead for a month because she was murdered on October 7th, alongside more than a thousand others. The only thing that has happened within the last few days is that they finally identified her remains. In most situations I would not read so much into a journalist’s slightly odd use of the present perfect for an event a month ago, but when every such oddity of phrasing works to push the murderers out of sight, it is not a coincidence, it’s a technique. Most headlines are written to grab the reader’s attention; these headlines are written to be forgotten. Like the small print in a dodgy contract, they are carefully crafted to meet the technical requirement of having been stated somewhere, but, in a betrayal of the normal function of journalism, those who write them would prefer you not to read on. That someone “has died” is scarcely news at all. Every morning’s news report gives its crop of vaguely prominent people who have died during the previous few days. They don’t want you to think about when or how she died. They don’t want you to think about the state in which Vivian Silver’s body must have been found, given that her remains were not identified for a month. They don’t want you to feel the horror of her murder.
I am going to post an image. If I have done this right, it will be hidden “below the fold”, so you must click the link in order to see it. I put it below the fold because it is horrifying. Am I doing the same as CTV in that tweet I was complaining about, then? No, the opposite. They do all they can to stop their readers ever thinking about the reality of terrorism. I am giving readers who cannot stop thinking about it the option not to see one particularly distressing photograph. The image I am talking about shows a poster put out by the Royal Ulster Constabulary in response to the La Mon restaurant bombing carried out by the IRA in 1978. These days people discussing this poster feel obliged to blur it out, but in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles they were not so sensitive. The poster shows what CTV and so many others in the modern media want to hide. Again and again, it says the word they will not say.
→ Continue reading: Lest we remember
What happened over the weekend is that every single media outlet in the country went into overdrive to say that Braverman’s comments are fuelling the “far right”. If you’re not entirely clued up on British political designations, in this country the far right generally refers to people who:
– are racist and intolerant towards other ethnic and religious groups
– harbour prejudice against sexual minorities
– consider women inferior to men and treat them as second-class citizens
– use violence to achieve their political objectives and incite violence in public
In other words, the “far right” have been on British streets for weeks chanting genocidal slogans, calling for Jihad and saying things like “death to all the Jews” and “Hitler knew how to deal with these people”.
But that is, of course, not who the media mean when they talk about the “far right”. What they mean is a small number of football fans who like to get pissed and get into scuffles with the police. When these people did turn up, this was immediately taken as evidence that Braverman had incited a riot. Because if there’s one thing we know about football hooligans it’s that they all have a subscription to the Times and take inspiration from powerful brown women.
– Konstantin Kisin (£)
It is unlikely to be one of those subjects that ought to grab more than fleeting attention, but being a man of the media and with a liking for satire, wit and a good investigative story, like many of my fellow Gen-Xers, I used to read Private Eye. The magazine, founded in the “Satire Boom” period of the 1960s (this is ancient history today), has achieved a few notable scalps over the years. These days, in my view, it is increasingly rather conventional in its hatreds and targets.
And its recent front page around the Israel/Hamas conflict seems all of a piece with this mindset.
Four days ago John Simpson of the BBC wrote this article, “Why BBC doesn’t call Hamas militants ‘terrorists’ – John Simpson”, in which he said, “It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn – who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.”
It may not be in its job description – it may be contrary to its job description – but the BBC tells people who are the good guys and who are the bad guys all the time. Here is why I know that. For several years I was one of the contributors to the “Biased BBC” blog, which in those days was on Blogspot but now is at https://biasedbbc.tv/. Eventually, I gradually stopped posting there due to a combination of burnout and the political centre of gravity of the blog having moved away from my own views. But before that there was a period of years when I used to post some example of BBC bias almost every day. People would send them in, or I would see them myself. And there was never a day when I could find no example to cite; there were only days when I did not post because I was doing something other than the damn blog.
As an exercise in nostalgia, yesterday morning I clicked on the BBC News website to see what I could see. And, just like the old days, I found something immediately. (I did not post it then because during the day I was doing something other than the damn blog.)
Like John Simpson, Katya Adler, the BBC’s Europe editor, is a veteran BBC journalist who has done much good work. I’m sure she thinks of herself as impartial. I am sure that she genuinely did not see the words I am about to quote as endorsing or condemning any particular view. The article concerned is headlined “Polish election: Expected political earthquake delights Brussels”, and it includes the words:
“In Poland’s case, Brussels withheld billions of euros of funds, pointing at the Polish government taking away women’s rights over their own bodies by virtually outlawing abortion, and threatening the independence of the judiciary and press freedom too by taking hold of the state broadcaster.”
The line about Polish politics is expressing an opinion. The line about abortion is expressing an opinion. Can a professional journalist like Ms Adler conceivably be unaware that the phrase “taking away women’s rights over their own bodies by virtually outlawing abortion”, assuming as it does that the foetus is merely part of the woman’s body, firmly takes one side in the abortion debate? The answer is yes, she can be unaware of it, because she is a well-connected, well-educated member of the more intellectual segment of the British upper middle class, who spends most of her time with colleagues of a similar background to herself. She joined the BBC in 1998. At that time the only major newspaper that carried BBC job adverts was the Guardian.
It could be worse. The British chattering classes are often silly and vain, but those who rose to prominence in the 1970s, 80s and 90s still have much of the liberal ethos of their parents in them. They want to believe, and so they do believe, that the rest of the world shares their kindly liberal values. They particularly want to believe that all their colleagues in the BBC World Service are “BBC people” in the same sense they are.
This belief is false.
Since John Simpson posted his piece, it has come out that several of the BBC’s Arabic language correspondents felt it was their job to “tell people who to support and who to condemn”, and the answers were “Hamas” and “Israel” respectively: “BBC reporters in the Middle East appear to justify killing of civilians by Hamas”
Mahmoud Sheleib, a BBC News senior broadcast journalist, tweeted suggesting that young Israelis were effectively combatants.
“[I see] In front of me on Al Jazeera, their so-called civilians are standing armed alongside the police and shooting because they basically don’t have any civilians among the youth. This is what the ignorant often don’t know. I am in favour of fighting them with love, yes, this is the solution.” Followed by a laughing emoji.
The Cairo-based journalist also took part in a Twitter conversation in which he joked about a woman whose grandmother was abducted by Hamas receiving an “inheritance”.
Aya Hossam,who describes herself as a broadcast journalist at BBC Arabic, liked a tweet saying: “Every member of the Zionist entity served in the army at some point in his life, whether men or women, and they all had victims of explicit violations… This term “civilians” applies to the animals and pets that live there and they are not seriously at fault.”
She later retweeted a message which included the phrase “the Zionist must know that he will live as a thief and a usurper”.
Hossam is a freelancer, but Sheleib is a senior correspondent.
Those two were not the only ones. Sally Nabil, Salma Khattab, Sanna Khoury and Amr Fekry were four more examples of BBC journalists happy to take the side of Hamas in public. Their BBC colleague Nada Abdelsamad was particularly enthusiastic:
Nada Abdelsamad, a Beirut-based programmes editor at BBC Arabic, retweeted a video of Israelis hiding in fear entitled: “settlers hiding inside a tin container in fear of the Palestinian resistance warriors”. This came with a hashtag translated as “promise of the hereafter”, a quranic reference to killing of the Jews.
My stance on this is Bill Burr’s. I’ll take it seriously when women fans show up. The men’s game is subsiding the sport with my money. Not that anyone asked my permission. I’ve done more than enough and it’s just “not my job” to watch it for them too.
– ‘Tom Payne‘
The BBC yesterday: Why BBC doesn’t call Hamas militants ‘terrorists’ – John Simpson
I wrote the following for the “Biased BBC” blog in 2006. Depressing to think that seventeen years and God knows how many thousands of terrorist murders later, I can repost it unchanged and, bar one or two place names and the reference to the London bombings of 7/7/2005 being ‘a year ago’, it is as relevant now as it was then.
But … you talk like war crimes are a bad thing.
I was listening to the ten o’clock news with half an ear and I caught Jeremy Bowen saying something like if Israel can’t prove that bombing the bridges in Lebanon was justified “then it’s a war crime.”
I don’t get it, BBC. So what if it is. Why do you care?
Note, I’m not asking why you, the readers of this site, might care – or you, the BBC audience, or you the Lebanese or you the Israelis or you the Palestinians or you the world. You all might have many and different opinions on whether it’s a war crime in law, or whether it’s a war crime in the sight of God – but I’m not asking you.
I’m talking to you, the British Broadcasting Corporation. When Hamas and then Hizbollah attacked Israel you never troubled to tell us the legal status of the acts. When suicide bombers killed Israelis at pizza parlours and bar mitzvahs you never gave us any of this war crime schtick, although attacks targeted at non-combatants are the epitome of a war crime. “Terrorist” is a term with meaning in international law, yet when bombers murdered your own countrymen in London a year ago you were so anxious to avoid being judgemental that you had someone go through what your reporters had written in the heat and pity of the moment, carefully replacing the word “terrorist” with the word “bomber.”
(God, what a shameful job. While they were still scrubbing the blood off the streets and the rails, some hack was scrubbing out any suggestion that the killers might have been bad people. Was it a junior hack under orders or a senior hack doing his own dirty work? Or were you all sent slinking back to your desks each to expunge his own words? I’d really like to know, but whichever it was you were anxious to avoid any talk of “crimes” then.)
“Bomber” not “terrorist”: by your own account your only job is to describe projectiles hitting meat. So what’s up now, with your “war crimes” and your “Israel kills Lebanese civilians”? You don’t need these fancy legal concepts, as if it mattered to you whether they were civilians or not. By your own stated standards moral distinctions between killings are “a barrier rather than an aid to understanding.”
I just don’t get it.
Adam Boulton is a journalist and broadcaster who is a regular panelist on TalkTV, a competitor to GB News.
Some background: GB News presenters Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton both are currently suspended while the station investigates some crass remarks from Fox about a female journalist for Joe News, Ava-Santina Evans. You can hear what he said on the clip embedded in this report by Metro magazine: Dan Wootton suspended and investigated by GB News over Laurence Fox’s misogynistic Ava Evans remarks.
Fox’s sexual comments about Evans (“Who’d want to shag that?”) and Wootton’s sniggering at them were oafish, but I do not see what Evans has to complain about given that she has made almost identical remarks herself:
But, as ever, it’s OK when the Left does it. Last week the Guardian ran a piece by Alexandra Topping called “Russell Brand and why the allegations took so long to surface”. She said, rather defensively I thought, that “multiple experts” had told her it was from fear of Brand suing for libel. OK, the experts do have a point about Britain’s libel laws, and that is why I am making absolutely no comment about the criminal accusations against him and ask you to do likewise, but fear of libel does not explain why Brand remained a star for years despite making on-air sexual remarks about a woman in a manner far worse than anything Laurence Fox has done.
The truly disgusting behaviour of Brand and Jonathan Ross towards Andrew Sachs and Georgina Baillie in 2008 did not stop the Guardian’s George Monbiot calling Brand one of his “heroes” in 2014 and saying “He’s the best thing that has happened to the left in years”.
Brand did not cease being on the left. Until these allegations came out on September 16th, he was due to contribute to book called “Poetry for the Many” edited by Jeremy Corbyn and the trade unionist Len McCluskey. But Brand’s views had ceased to be an asset to the left, certainly to the sort of left that flourishes in the current broadcast ecology.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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