Regular readers will remember with a wince the silly outbursts that singer Annie Lennox made during Operation Cast Lead. Lennox slammed Israel, totally ignored the Hamas rockets and complained that the television news reports of the operation ruined her Christmas ‘as a mother’. Well, exactly. It’s all about you isn’t it Annie? She didn’t leave it there, either. She also promoted and attended an anti-Israel demonstration that was co-organised by the British Muslim Initiative, whose President was quoted on Al Jazeera television as saying he hates “the evil Jew”. Nice.
Lennox was roundly mocked for the naivety of her remarks and has unsurprisingly proved reticent to comment on the issue ever since. However, this coming week she will appear on the BBC’s Hard Talk programme where she will tell viewers that she has changed her mind and has now decided ‘both sides are right and both sides are wrong’. Gee, thanks for that Annie.
I will close with a tale from a showbiz gathering of celebrities like Simon Cowell and leading journalists like Rebekah Wade and Piers Morgan. Cowell mischievously proposed that they compile a top 10 of showbiz divas. At number six was Annie Lennox. Her (unnamed) nominator explained: ‘She was breathtakingly grand and offensive to me. I was shocked. But then other big stars told me she’s always like that.’
She is a candidate to join this lengthy list of dumb stuff said about the Middle East.
Absolutely. Both sides are right, both sides are wrong. Hamas terrorists are the same as Israel. Murderers are bad but so are doctors. Rape is wrong but so is not raping people. Who were we to criticise Saddam for being a dictator when Gordon Brown has never been voted in as Prime Minister? Who is anyone to take a moral stance on anything? We’re all as bad as each other.
Do we think that the particularly harsh winter ruined Christmas ’09 for Ms Lennox? I do hope it didn’t.
Duvid – where are you?!
It’s George Galloway i feel sorry for-the news report of Annie Lennox change of opinion will ruin his week ‘as a wanker ’
Good to see the poisoned dwarf Sarah Teather in that photo too. My MP, but not for much longer! haha. I write to her often about her absurd anti Israel views and actions and even met her recently in the House of Commons where she told me that we should negotiate with Hamas, but admitted to never having read their charter, when I asked her. Seemed she didn’t know about the bit calling for the death of all Jews. It struck me that she spoke from a position of unique ignorance, to steal a phrase for a very wise man.
In that photo they look like they’re lined-up to be told whether they’re through or not on the X Factor.
Artists should create art and leave politics and policy to the wonks. Or donate lots of money and shurrup.
Hi Chas. Annie who? Cannot remember any songs by her, but do remember she’s a Scots has-been. Perhaps a famous Scots singer might suffice, like Harry Lauder or Andy “Donald Where’s Yer Troosers,” Stuart. Then there is Scots traditional, like “Annie Laurie”. Duvidl is working on it.
Alright. let Gorgeous George raise a bottle of Four Crown, White Lightning or Llanlich wrapped in a brown paper bag to this well-known ballad:
Annie Belongs Tae Glasgae
(To the tune of “I Belong to Glasgow”)
(Hat tip: Harry Lauder/Will Fyffe)
Annie belongs tae Glasgae
And there she should remain.
She dooks her hair in the peroxide bucket
And croaks this wee refrain:
She’s only an ordinary working gal;
In her ear a Hamas fly,
But when she stops kerb-crawlers in Saucihall Street
They look and just speed on by.
GG is – controversially – teetotal. So he can raise a bottle of Irn Bru to that song.
Me? I raise a glass of Diet Coke to it – and to you Duvid. You’re very cool. I do like you!
Glad Chas has told Duvidl about the gorgeous one being teetotal. See Youtube for Will Fyffe’s performance and to find out what he thought of teetotallers.
One supposes the bottle in the brown paper bag could always be passed on to Red Ken behind him, who Duvidl knows is partial to a wee dram.
Incidentally, who is the one in the middle, and is that a gimp-mask he is wearing?
It’s all about you isn’t it Annie?
This should win some sort of prize -is there a prize for deliberately misconstruing someone?
But for someone who fawns over purveyor of garbage(Cowell),purveyor of lies and spousal abuser(Wade) and purveyors of lies and a shameless toady of those who already have too much power and influence(Piers Morgan)perhaps no more can be expected of you Chas.
Do you think you might be a power worshipper Chas?
How silly – I didn’t fawn over them, I merely quoted a story involving them. That said I do have admiration for Cowell’s achievements. As for the other two, Morgan is very good at what he does and to be honest I don’t know all that much about Wade. So no I clearly haven’t fawned, though it is true that I don’t go for the whole automatic envy thing in the face of others’ success.
blahblahblah. Wade’s coming to get you and she ain’t no softee like Afghan Ross Kemp.
That said I do have admiration for Cowell’s achievements.
Jedward?
Morgan is very good at what he does
As I said,toadying.That’s what he does! Salivating over the Gucci loafers of millionaires in Dubai.
Listen,you admire who you want to.I just think it’s rather telling,that’s all.Let nobody say I’m not prepared to meet you halfway-or to put it another way
“Whenever you accept our views, we shall be in full agreement with you.”
Now who said that?
“Whenever you accept our views, we shall be in full agreement with you.”
Now who said that?
Westlife?
Actually,it was Long John Silver’s understudy.
Clue:eyepatch…
If you look at the picture it’s of individuals at the end of their careers ( I am hoping in Tethers case ) looking for a new platform so they can still seek media attention. I long since dumped my Lennox c.d’s.
I’m A little suprised at Annie having once being married to an Israeli. She should know what the score is out there. Maybe it’s something very deep seated.
Talking about craving publicity she ‘s been on t.v. today waffling on about womens day. What she maybe needs is a good old multiple whatsit… With Tether though I think you coudn’t get a volunteer for that mitzva.
This is often the problem with the Israel “issue” in that many people get involved but from a reactionary standpoint, rather than looking into the matters more deeply….or logically. The disagreements I have had over Israel (and I have had many) is from people not actually knowing what they are talking about. They know nothing of the history, nor of the conflicts etc. It is most depressing!
While Labour and the Conservatives were buzz-wording ‘proportionality’ And one Lib Dem after another stepped up to the plate on Galloways ‘Viva Palestina’ stage to say “I have come here on behalf of Nick Clegg today.” Remember Sarah Teather and co:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeZFTkl_sWU&feature=PlayList&p=C029BF1406F02BB8&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=23
What were the ‘Nazis’ saying?
“Israel’s Gaza Affair”
by BNP Leader Nick Griffin
January 6, 2009 – By BNP News
We have said nothing, quite simply, because it’s nothing to do with Britain, and therefore nothing to do with the British National Party. That is the simple answer to the number of newer readers who have emailed recently to ask why this website has said nothing about the current number one international news topic – Israel’s targeted but massive air and ground response to indiscriminate but relatively feeble Hamas missile strikes on Israeli civilians.
The fighting in Gaza is not a proper concern for a British political party – especially at a time when the Bankers’ Bust threatens the livelihoods of millions and what little remains of the social cohesion of our own country. One of the core tenets of our nationalist philosophy is that Britain should keep completely out of other people’s quarrels and wars unless there are clear issues of our own national interest to give us the right, and our government the duty, to interfere.
Beyond that, as nationalists and not imperialists, we recognise the right of every other people under the sun to seek to secure self-determination on a patch of earth that is their historic and spiritual homeland, and the duty of every government of such a nation-state to protect its citizens from terrorism or oppression.
That includes both the Israelis and the Palestinians, but while we instinctively would suggest that a land-for-peace, two-state solution is the most likely way to square their very differing ambitions, in the end it is entirely up to them whether they make peace or continue fighting from now until Judgement Day. It really isn’t any of our business.
A superficially logical argument has been made by several of our readers to the effect that the endless television coverage of dead or injured Palestinian children (the anti-Israeli bias of the leftist BBC is particularly marked) will inflame Islamist extremists against not only Israel but also against other Western states, including the UK and our soldiers currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The reality, however, is not only that our troops should not be there in any case (and never should have been, for thy are two patches of howling desert that have nothing to do with Britain) but that Islamist ‘extremists’ need no ‘inflaming’. The massively influential Wahhabi and Deobandi sects behind most Sunni ‘extremism’ were alive and kicking, against the West in general and Britain in particular, decades or indeed a century before the state of Israel came into existence.
Indeed, the destruction of Israel (which is the generally stated aim of all the far-left and Muslim demonstrators screaming and on occasion rioting outside the Israeli Embassy in London, and the generally unstated aim of the far smaller number of neo-Nazi cranks siding with them on the Internet) would most definitely not placate a single hardline Muslim.
One of the fundamental lessons of the West’s long and at times desperate defence against Islam’s institutionalised aggression, sexual predation and imperialism, is that every victory for Islamic fighters reinforces the hysterical certainty in the word of the Prophet and in Islam’s self-proclaimed destiny to conquer the entire world.
The destruction of Israel would not send Islam back into a peaceful slumber, but would merely inspire and radicalise a whole new generation of Jihadist fanatics with the idea that the hour of their final triumph against the ‘Crusaders’ had been signalled by the collapse of the latter’s ‘Zionist outpost’ on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. This would lead as a direct and immediate consequence to:
1) Renewed acts of ethno-religious cleansing against the non-Muslim remnants of the earlier populations of the Dar al Islam (lands which have already submitted to Allah);
2) A fresh confidence in the plan to re-partition India and establish a contiguous ‘Moghulstan’ taking in Pakistan, the Kashmir, huge swathes of northern India and Bangladesh;
3) A stepping up of the pressure through demographics and violence to reconquer further swathes of the Balkans and the southern edges of Russia;
4) Even more strenuous efforts to hasten the conquest – by demography, immigration, conversion, subversion and, when the time is right, force – of Western Europe and, a generation or so later, North America.
While Israel’s no-holds barred self-defence undoubtedly gives Islamist recruiters good material with which to radicalise some of their less motivated brethren, Israel’s extinction would provide them with even stronger arguments in favour of Jihad. The most elementary study of their rhetoric shows that they do not regard Israel as the great enemy, merely as the catspaw of Christendom. They may be right or they may be wrong, but that is what they believe; the destruction of Israel would therefore make them even bolder and more aggressive. Thus while we would oppose any move to entangle Britain in war on behalf of Israel, it is in our clear national interest that it should survive.
Whether that survival is made any more or less likely by responding on such a scale to the cynical provocations by Hamas is another matter, but that judgement is for Israelis to make at the ballot box, and not for us.
Westerners should concentrate on the key matter that concerns us. Our people must understand that Islam is not a mutated version of Christianity with a pacifist core in which the Meek will inherit the earth; it’s a creed of War and the Sword. It is inflamed by victory, and encouraged by successive advances. Once they start fighting, the only thing its followers understand is defeat. The centuries in which Islam has slumbered have all followed massive defeats which shattered the conceit that its date with Destiny and world domination was just around the corner.
Tours, Lepanto, Vienna, and even in its lesser way Omdurman, all show that Islam defeated is Islam tamed. The burning of the ancient Library of Alexandria, the obliteration of Christian North Africa, the Islamist genocides in India, the destruction of Byzantium, the repeated rape of the Balkans, the ceaseless efforts to take Europe – all show that when Islam takes a foot it wants a hundred miles.
That is the nature of the great Beast of our times. It can be defeated and put back to sleep. Its modern prestige and especially the power of the Sunni and Shi-ite fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia and Iran is based on one thing. It certainly isn’t military prowess, as the American, British and Israeli machines have all shown over and over again. Nor is it about guerrilla warfare successes of the kind seen in Afghanistan and Lebanon, which may yet emerge in Gaza.
The real motor of Jihad is oil money. The move to a post-oil world will be difficult even for the West, but once it is properly underway the resulting crash in the income of the fundamentalist paymasters of Islamic expansionism and terror will force them to stop worrying about conquering the world and to concentrate on looking after their own people or risk ending up riddled with bullets.
It can’t happen too soon, and developing the technologies and economic model needed to wean ourselves off oil, and the perpetual growth superstition it has fostered, is the very best way to deal with the instability of a Middle East that should have nothing to do with us. In the meantime, we will go back to ignoring Gaza and concentrate on the things that matter to our people.
http://bnp.org.uk/2009/01/%E2%80%9Cisrael%E2%80%99s-gaza-affair%E2%80%9D-by-bnp-leader-nick-griffin/
I would fault him on the first sentence but it falls far short of calling for a Holocaust.