How the news is spun (and the BBC fails to learn any lessons)

A young British female journalist Natasha Smith was brutally raped in Cairo last week. You should read her gruesome account here. There have been many such attacks on Western women in Cairo since the 'Arab spring' all of which were either ignored or under-reported in the Western media. Even when the victim was high profile reporter Lara Logan of CBS News her own organisation CBS tried to cover up the story completely.

Hence, it is no great surprise that, as startling and newsworthy as the story is (especially considering it involves a young attractive British journalist), the British media has been almost completely silent on it. A search of both BBC News and Sky News draws a blank.  However, there is a CNN video on the web (presumably the Americans are only prepared to report cases like this when it is not an American victim).  But compare the CNN report with what Smith actually says herself. The CNN report plays up the role of 'heroic bystanders' and completely plays down the scale of the attack and ignores completely the crucial cultural angle such as the refusal of Egyptian doctors to treat her and the demands of others to know whether or not she was a Virgin.

This story is not just about the extent to which Western media will cover up violent Islamic attitudes and crimes. It also provides a very good example of the extent to which people like Smith are useful idiots to the cause of Islam. Just read the beginning of her account and wonder how she could be so naive given the stream of previous attacks against Western women like her in that very place. And read her comments which show the disconnect between her positive perception of Islam and Egypt and the reality that she herself went through (Sultan Knish has a typically incisive view on her attitude). I also found it rather interesting to note that the book that she was shown reading at the end of the CNN report. is by Jon Snow, the anti-Israel, pro-Jihadist bigot from Channel 4. 

Put simply the story does not fit the mainstream (especially BBC and Sky News) narrative about the wonderful 'liberal' Egyptian revolution and the inherently peaceful nature of Islam. That is why this story will receive minimal coverage.  In many respects there is a close analogy here with the BBC's refusal to cover the Fogel family massacre by Palestinian terrorists in Israel last year. Interestingly the BBC has just issued an apology to MP Louise Mensch about their failure to report on the story. But what they have not done is right the wrong. Nobody outside the Jewish blogasphere will ever hear about the BBC apology. And the BBC will continue to refuse to inform the public about the massacre.  The BBC will not learn from their mistakes and they clearly do not want to. For how else to explain the complete failure of the BBC - at the very time they were issuing their 'apology' to Louise Mensch - to report on the terrorist attack against Israel from Egypt on 19 June (resulting in the death of an Israeli civilian) and the subsequent 180 rockets fired from both Egypt and Gaza that followed Israel's targetted killing of two of the terrorist attackers.  While the BBC and other British media outlets continue to refuse to report on those stories the British public remains ignorant of the the real news, and as a result is guided to cast the blame on Israel for any unrest in the Middle East.

Honouring and helping Jewish child killers

No deed in the Arab-Muslim world achieves greater respect than the cold-blooded killing of Jewish children. That is why Ahlam Tamimi, the woman who engineered the 2001 massacre of so many children in Jerusalem’s Sbarro restaurant, was the most 'honoured' of all the terrorists released in exchange for Gilad Shalit. She is now a major celebrity in the Arab world, presenting a weekly TV programme where she encourages millions of viewers to emulate her crimes.

One of Tamimi's victims was 15-year-old Malki Roth. Whereas the views and feelings of the terrorist murderer Tamimi are heard by millions, the views and feelings of Malki's parents are rarely heard or respected. It is especially important therefore to read this article by Malki's parents (thanks to Israel Matzav for this link). It shows that it is not only the Arabs, but also the spineless Israeli Government that is providing help to Tamimi while ignoring the feelings of the Roths.

Imprisoned for criticizing Islam - and we not allowed to know why

In March I blogged about the astonishing case of Darren Conway who was sentenced to a year in prison for posting 'anti-Islamic materials' in the window of his ground-floor apartment in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.  No information about the actual posters was provided in any news reports. There were concerns that the material was simply standard factual information about Islam and Mohammed (including the fact that, by having sex with the  9-year old Aisha, Muhammad would be classified as a pedophile in any Western society).

In order to find out exactly what the posters were I filed a Freedom of Information Request to the Crown Prosection Service.

I have now had a response from The Crown Prosecution Service. They have refused the request for information about the posters on the grounds that it is 'not in the public interest'.  Here is their justification:

There is a substantial public interest in many circumstances in protecting from disclosure information gathered for the purposes of a criminal case. The defendant in this case was prosecuted as he publically displayed the offensive posters referred to in your request. As displaying this material was proven to be a criminal offence in a criminal court, and the graphic and violent images depicted in these posters caused offence in the neighbourhood in which they were displayed, there is a very strong public interest in these articles not being distributed any further.

This is truly Kafkaesque. Because it was deemed to be criminal we are not allowed to know why even though that was the very reason for my request. I was not even asking for a copy of the posters. All I asked for was information about their content. If we are not allowed to know precisely what was 'illegal' about them, then how is that possibly in the 'public interest'?

Surely it is in the public interest to know what we are now not allowed to say about Islam. Is it or is it not now a criminal offence to suggest that Mohammed was a pedophile, and if it is then is it also a criminal offence to suggest that Jesus or Moses was a pedophile? Is it now a criminal offence to display an image of the aftermath of an Islamic terrorist attack and state that this was an Islamic terrorist attack? Is it now a criminal offence to simply point out that Islam is a supremicist ideology? Is it a criminal offence simply to report on, say, incidents of Muslim anti-semitism?  At what point does it now become a criminal offence to say or display something that one person finds  'offensive' - and who exactly determines whether it is reasonable or not to be offended? The CPS have consistently decided that Jews being offended is never sufficient grounds for criminal proceedings, so what exaclty is different when Muslims are 'offended'? And why is it perfectly OK to perpetuate the myth that Jews are 'baby killers' (which you can see in posters at every anti-Israel demonstration and in posters, tea-shirts and badges sold openly throughout the West End of London) but possibly criminal to say that Muslims have committed acts of terrorism? Am I now committing a criminal offence by writing this blog?

Since the CPS are not even prepared to describe the posters, I suspect that what they really fear is that people may be angry to find out that you can now be imprisoned in the UK for expressing an opinion about Islam based on truth.