From the fabric of shared experience...

Combat Papermakers posted this on their FB page: Israeli and Palestinian women come together to make paper and engage in a dialogue of understanding and healing...it's in London, check it out!

PEOPLE MUST SEE THIS

ISRAEL DESTROYS THE VILLAGE OF AL-ARAKIB...FOR THE THIRD TIME!

A Bedouin woman sits in front of her rebuilt home in al-Araqib after it was destroyed by Israeli forces, again. (Joseph Dana photo)

Max Blumenthal:

"In the middle of the night on August 10, residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib sent a panicked text message to Israeli activists in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Israeli police helicopters were buzzing overhead, surveying the scene ahead of what was likely to be a new round of demolitions." You can read Max's full report here.

Joseph Dana has also written an eloquent essay.


Max and Joseph collaborated on a video from the scene of destruction.

"You've got to be carefully taught..."

While Vermont hosted children of 3 faiths from Israel and Palestine - last week they attended a 10 day "Kids4Peace Camp" with Vermont children at Rock Point in Burlington - Max Blumenthal reported (in depth, with photos - taken by Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News) on Israeli high schoolers who have helped demolish a Bedouin village of Al-Arakib, as part of their summer service indoctrination.

It is not hard to imagine what lessons the high school students who participated in the leveling of al-Arakib took from their experience, nor is it especially difficult to predict what sort of citizens they will become once they reach adulthood. Not only are they being indoctrinated to swear blind allegiance to the military, they are learning to treat the Arab outclass as less than human...

[T]he scenes from al-Arakib, from the demolished homes to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who joined the mayhem, can be viewed as much more than the destruction of a village. They are snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying Israeli society as a whole to waste.

Other blogger/reporters have commented on Max's story, too: Mondoweiss; PULSE (cross-posted), Helena Cobban. I doubt NPR and other corporate press in the USA would cover this as much as Max has. I first read this when I saw Max had posted it on his Facebook. While there are more horrendous actions in Palestine/Gaza for sure, this was not pleasant to read while eating dinner!

People are determined to save Gazan lives

From Press TV

The next Freedom Flotilla will be much bigger than the first one, the head of a non-governmental organization says.

Yasser Qashlaq, the director of the Free Palestine Movement, said on Thursday that up to 50 ships could join the Freedom Flotilla II, the International Middle East Media Center reported.

Meanwhile, the movement, in cooperation with Reporters Without Borders, is organizing a new mission to send educational supplies to the children of the besieged Palestinian territory. Qashlaq said a ship would depart from Lebanon within a week.

Yeah, people are determined and stand in solidarity, but not if the Quisling Abbas can help it.

Raw footage of Mavi Marmara/Free Gaza Flotilla attack

Cultures of Resistance director Iara Lee, an American citizen, was part of a media contingent on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on May 30-31 when it was attacked by the Israeli commandos. The Israelis confiscated the camera equipment and communications technology of passengers on board. but Lee was able to smuggle out about an hour's worth of raw film footage.

Watch it, pass it on. Not for the fainthearted, but necessary to watch if you want to know the truth of what happened in attack. I am curious if the corporate media here and abroad will cover this film (there was a press conference yesterday at the United Nations in NYC.) This is no fake Hollywood terror/action film gussied up with CGI; this is real.

Israeli Attack on the Mavi Marmara, May 31st 2010 // 15 min. from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.

Shortly after returning home, Iara Lee wrote an Op-Ed about the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Click here to read the article. Yesterday she was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

Vermont Responds to Free Gaza Flotilla Massacre

Sam Mayfield writes on her blog,

"In response to this assault, dozens of people gathered in Burlington, Vermont on May 31 to mourn the dead and to express their sadness and outrage over Israel’s blatant lack of respect for international law.

"Two days later more than fifty citizens visited Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy’s office to insist that the US government not remain silent about the mishandling of innocent people in Gaza and the West Bank, humanitarian aid workers and human rights activists by the Israeli government anymore. Citizens stated that "The US is alone in our support for Israel" and demanded that the Senator not be complicit in Israels crimes against humanity any longer. Citizens also demanded an end to military aid to Israel."

Sam also made a video report.

Democracy Now! discusses Helen Thomas

Democracy Now! - June 8, 2010

JAMES ABOUREZK: Well, Helen has gotten more coverage over this than the killing of the nine Turkish aid workers who were killed by the Israeli commandos. I don’t really understand that disparity in coverage, but I kind of know how that goes, because I’ve been the target of Israeli propaganda myself over the years.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that her comments, for which she apologized, were problematic?

JAMES ABOUREZK: No, I don’t, to be very honest with you. If you understand what Helen was trying to say, is that there are Palestinians sitting in refugee camps all over the Middle East who cannot get back into Israel yet. Ashkenazi Jews from all over Europe are able to come freely, and from America, too, and I think that’s what she was referring to. They’re calling Helen a racist. There’s no way that she’s a racist. She never has been, never will be.

UPDATED: Helen Thomas Retires | Helen Thomas has nothing to apologise for.

UPDATE: Thomas has announced her retirement.

My reaction: Oof! Shock. Dismayed. Unbelievable. But she can say whatever she wants now. She covered the White House since JFK.

"[Helen Thomas'] comments [telling Israelis to leave Palestine and "go home" to Europe] do not reflect a desire to see Israel/Palestine judenrein, but rather an ominous sense of what a dangerous place Israel has become, and will only increasingly be, for its people," - Jack Ross, Mondoweiss

_________________

My original post from this morning.

From PULSE

The question posed at the end of the short clip is "Does Helen know that Jews lived in Israel way before the Holocaust?" The glaring fact of course is that before WWII and 1948, there was no modern state of Israel. It was Mandate Palestine: a land that was populated by a thriving Palestinian population, the majority of whom were driven out in their hundreds of thousands, with a great number murdered, by the zionist thugs who later established the state of Israel. This Prussia of the Middle East is propped up by gargantuan amounts of US military aid, refuses to make peace with its neighbours who have offered recognition of 1967 borders via the Saudi Peace Plan, has continued to encroach upon Palestinian land, regularly attacks its neighbours in assaults that kill hundreds, flouts international law, continues to build illegal outposts on stolen land, and has refused to define its borders to this day.

Thomas has nothing to apologize for. It is the Israeli regime, the illegal settlers (check out this charmer) and their enablers who owe the world -- particularly Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians -- an apology and restitution. At most, her choice of words may have been unqualifiedly quick and injudicious, particularly in the ill-advised choice of words `go home'. But `despicable', `beyond disturbing' and Judeophobic? The attempts to discredit her -- which include rightwingnut calls for her resignation -- are overblown. She'll probably win even more fans with her courage, and her regret for causing offence is in stark contrast to the unremitting racism and unstinting support for ethnic cleansing and expulsion from the Israel-at-any-cost camp, from whom there is no apology.

Paul Jay, Senior Editor of The Real News Network has a new blog on Canada.com, one of Canada's busiest news websites. This is an excerpt from his most recent blog post, "IN DEFENSE OF HELEN THOMAS - on apologizing to apologists."

Her apology was not enough to stop calls for her head from those who have wanted to shut Thomas up for years.

Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush's press secretary, led the call in an e-mail Friday to the Huffington Post saying Thomas' comments amount to "religious cleansing."

"She should lose her job over this," Fleischer wrote. "As someone who is Jewish, and as someone who worked with her and used to like her, I find this appalling."

Perhaps Fleishcher should also add that he is someone who knows something about apologies . . . being the leading apologist for the Bush administration as their war led to the deaths of at least one million Iraqis.

But Lanny Davis, former special counsel to and White House spokesman for President Bill Clinton, went even further than Fleischer. He issued a statement on Sunday saying Thomas, "has showed herself to be an anti-Semitic bigot."

Now, Davis should know something about apologies and apologists as well. TheHill.com reported that Davis led a lobbying effort against deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on behalf of Honduran business leaders. This is in defense of a regime that came to power in an illegal coup and is killing journalists and activists. Hmmm . . . defending those that kill activists . . .

We Shall Overcome

"It seems appropriate."

Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd, sings a classic to protest the Israeli blockade of Gaza. I was raised on songs like this one and my activism was nurtured by them!



Saw this over at PULSE (Thanks!) PULSE have been working around the clock to counter much of MSM's biased and/or flawed coverage of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla massacre. I suggest BI readers go there and spend some time reading PULSE's important reporting! The site is listed to your right on the sidebar.

Here's more by Mr Waters:

“Over the new year 2009-2010, an international group of 1500 men and women from 42 nations went to Egypt to join a Freedom March to Gaza. They did this to protest the current blockade of Gaza. To protest the fact that the people of Gaza live in a virtual prison. To protest the fact that a year after the terror attack by Israeli armed forces destroyed most of their homes, hospitals, schools, and other public buildings, they have no possibility to rebuild because their borders are closed. The would be Freedom Marchers wanted to peacefully draw attention to the predicament of the Palestinian population of Gaza. The Egyptian government, (funded to the tune of $2.1 billion a year, by us, the US tax payers), would not allow the marchers to approach Gaza. How lame is that? And how predictable! I live in the USA and during this time Dec 25th 2009-Jan3rd 2010 I saw no reference to Gaza or the Freedom March or the multi national protesters gathered there. Anyway I was moved, in the circumstances, to record a new version of ” We shall overcome”. It seems appropriate.

Roger Waters

Vote on Goldstone Report today

Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the sponsor of HR867, screams bloody murder against a report that has shown Israel committed atrocities against Palestinian civilians. Don't forget that the report also condemned Hamas's rocket attacks against Israel. Go here to see co-sponsors. They all know the truth, but not one gives a shit. Michael Ratner, writing yesterday at Mondoweiss, urges that Congress should first hear from Judge Goldstone and call him to testify before taking a vote,

This Resolution is a rush to judgment. It is a rush to judgment made on the basis of serious factual errors and mischaracterizations of the Goldstone Report. The Goldstone Report documents in a dispassionate and even-handed manner “violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and possible war crimes and crimes against humanity” committed by all parties prior to, during, and after Israel’s assault on the occupied Gaza Strip in December 2008-January 2009.

Amira Hass: One of Israel’s Greatest Journalists

H/T to Joseph Dana at ibn Ezra.

Don't mess with Helena Cobban

The Weekly Standard's Goldfarb smears Helena Cobban (one of the best journalists and analysts on contemprary ME affairs) and she replies to the assault.

So here's the thing that Michael Goldfarb and people of his ilk really don't seem to understand: For the vast majority of the people on God's earth today, Palestinians are just as fully human as Jewish people, and just as deserving as Jewish people of our compassion and our understanding.

That, it seems to me, is the true value of the "human rights" approach to world affairs. To understand that no one bunch of people, however described-- "Jewish", or "Arab", "American", "Burmese", "Georgian", "Muslim", or even "Quaker"-- is deserving, at a deep level, of any more deep human concern than any other people. To understand that all "peoples", as such, have made wonderful and distinctive contributions to the expression of full human flourishing, and that--even more importantly-- all human persons, whichever of these groups they self-affiliate with, are equally deserving of our concern and our objective judgment regarding their actions.

Palestinian rights deserve Anglican action

P U L S E has a post up (by David Thomson) commenting on an opinion column from Thursday, May 21, by Ben White, a regular contributor to the Guardian's Cif/belief. (Ben White has also written for the Anglican website, Fulcrum.) I had to chuckle at the comments on Mr White's Guardian piece. Ben White takes on "even handedness" of Anglicans [that typically Anglican - and sometimes maddeningly frustrating - "via media" approach to any theological, political or cultural controversy] regarding resolutions on Israel-Palestine at the recent Anglican Consultative Council meeting. Mr Thomson sees the heavy-handed influence of a pro-Zionist right-wing organisation in the Anglican Communion which has campaigned vigorously against Anglican efforts to promote divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel.

Ben White writes that “a obsession with even-handedness is stopping Anglicans taking a firm stand on Israel’s disregard for Palestinian rights.”

However I’d argue that the obsession with even-handedness is not a cause but an effect — an effect of paranoia induced by the Israel lobby, strongly represented in the Anglican community by Anglican Friends of Israel.

This group spread the fear that criticising Israel will damage relations with the Jewish community, even if this were so, should it stop the church’s quest for justice? They also use ‘anti-Semitism’ (or Judeophobia) and therefore the Holocaust, to create an atmosphere of intimidation saying Anglican peace activists are “singling out” Israel (thus implying there is no good reason to criticise Israel and the reason must be anti-Jewish racism). No individual or organisation wants to be threatened with anti-Semitism and have themselves compared to some of the worst criminals in history.

It’s sad that these tired old tricks are still accepted and work as a distraction from the real issues of colonialism, occupation, international law, basic morality and justice.

At the 14th Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting, held in Jamaica earlier this month, a resolution on the Middle East was passed, criticising the Israeli occupation. An original version of the resolution was originally submitted by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN)[JayV: APJN website], but as the language was felt by some to be too “strong”, a new resolution was put forward and adopted.

The resolution staked out a position based on international law, a rejection of violence as a means of conflict resolution, and opposition to Israel’s occupation and colonisation of the Palestinian territories.

It also called for a “two state solution”, and “lamented” the fact that Israeli policies in the West Bank “have created severe hardship for many Palestinians” and are “experienced as a physical form of apartheid”. There was an affirmation that a “just peace must guarantee the security and territorial integrity of both Israel and the future state of Palestine so that all the people of the area can live in peace and prosperity.”

For some, however, this call for two states living side by side – a state of affairs that would necessarily require one party to stop its domination of the other – was a cause for “dismay”. Anglican Friends of Israel released a statement (faithfully reproduced by The Times’s religion correspondent) which regretted how “once again”, Anglicans had “singled out Israel for criticism” without any “context” or taking into account “the Palestinian contribution to the conflict”.

Where the resolution condemned illegal policies like settlement building, the ICJ-condemned separation wall, and house demolitions, Anglican Friends for Israel saw a call for Israel to “lay down all measures which protect her citizens from Arab terrorism”. Apparently, not even Palestinian “interests” are served by such a “ghastly pronouncement”, which, the statement warned, “threatens to completely sabotage Anglican-Jewish relations”.

The resolution, passed “overwhelmingly”, was publicly backed by a number of those present, including the Anglican Church of Southern Africa Archbishop Thabo Makogba, who told the council how he had “lived under apartheid” and knew its “pain”. He went on to describe seeing the “‘the brutality’ in the West Bank and Gaza that ’segregates God’s people’.”

The original wording submitted by APJN had been specifically criticised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who took particular issue with “a section that ‘condemns the judaisation of the city (of Jerusalem) by the government of Israel”. The Archbishop was reported as saying that “judaisation is a word that I cannot, in conscience, accept”, since “it equates ‘the political machinations of the Israeli government’ with the people of faith in Jewish society”.

That there is a deliberate policy of judaisation in Jerusalem is not a secret in Israel; politicians and policy-makers routinely talk of strengthening the “Jewish character” of the city (and other areas too for that matter).

So in fact then, while Williams is right to critique the conflation of the Israeli state’s policies with “people of faith in Jewish society”, his target should be that very same Israeli state which in the name of Jews worldwide maintains a regime of racial exclusion.

The archbishop’s other concern, according to the same report, was to avoid saying anything in such as a way as to “jeopardise the Anglican Communion’s dialogue with the Rabbinate”. This was a worry also taken up by others, including the coordinator of the Anglican Communion Office’s Network for Interfaith Concerns, who helped produce the alternative resolution that was eventually passed.

The Anglican Church has trodden an uneasy path in recent years when it comes to words and actions on Israel/Palestine. Despite recommendations by the APJN to pursue divestment as means of opposing Israel’s occupation, this has never been followed through.

While many individual church members and ministers across the worldwide communion are active in working for a just peace in the Middle East, the senior leadership is typically shy of going much beyond hand-wringing statements of sorrow and “even-handed” reproach.

It is unfortunate that the division, such as in the case of this recent ACC resolution, is often expressed in terms of those seeking stronger expressions of protest over the Israeli occupation against those seeking to avoid tension in Jewish-Christian relations.

The two shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, of course. But even when these worries about interfaith dialogue are sincere (rather than a disingenuous smokescreen), how long can they hamstring serious action by the Anglican Communion in the face of Israel’s entrenched – and worsening – disregard for basic Palestinian political and human rights?

Cross-posted at Antemedius.

They're not pretending anymore

Israel has wiped Palestine off the map. It's already been done:

Posters have recently appeared in London Underground tube stations advertising Israel as a tourist destination. The map on the advert depicts Israel as incorporating the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.

VERY QUESTIONABLE CONNECTIONS

Helena Cobban/Just World News:-

Dennis Ross can no longer be judged to have even the minimum level of policy objectivity and neutrality that's required for this job. He served as an ambassadorial-level special coordinator for Arab-Israeli negotiations for both presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton. But since then, he has been appointed Chairman of the Board of an outfit called the Jewish People Policy Planning Instite, which has been-- as its masthead there proudly proclaims-- "Established by the Jewish Agency for Israel, Ltd." JPPPI is also headquartered in Israel.

For just some of the problems Ross's dual affiliations might cause, you can see on the current front page of its website a photo of "The Ambassador Dennis Ross presenting JPPPI's annual assessment to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert." Ross is doing this, obviously, in his capacity as Board Chair of this Israel-based body that was established by the Jewish Agency, a body that has played a key role in the leadership of the Zionist movement since well before 1948, and which enjoys very special relations with the State of Israel o this day.

For example, the Jewish Agency has been a major partner for successive Israeli governments in the building of Israel's completely illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. (As referred to quite casually in, for example, this 2005 report in the Financial Times.)

So if Dennis presents the JPPPI report to the Israeli Prime Minister today, and tomorrow he goes back to deliver a demarche from the US president on, say, Israeli settlement building-- how would that work?

More to the point, how can any of the rest of us, US citizens, have any confidence whatsoever that the "advice" Dennis Ross will be giving Secretary Clinton will be the kind of calm, objective, US-centric advice on Middle Eastern issues-- including Iran, Iraq, and quite possibly also Palestine-- that she and the rest of the administration all so desperately need?

PHILIP RIZK RELEASED

"My four days of imprisonment are nothing compared to the months and years of siege on Gaza, which is nothing else than forced imprisonment. The Gaza Strip is a different form of concentration camp."

Philip Rizk 4 days Egypt imprisonment from philip rizk on Vimeo.


philip rizk Gaza Siege from philip rizk on Vimeo.

You can now read Philip Rizk's blog.

"[M]y interrogators stole all my old email addresses and blogs, my domain name..."

HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE BECOMES THE FIRST U.S. COLLEGE TO DIVEST FROM ISRAELI OCCUPATION

Via PULSE-- Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, has become the first of any college or university in the U.S. to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

This landmark move is a direct result of a two-year intensive campaign by the campus group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The group pressured Hampshire College’s Board of Trustees to divest from six specific companies due to human rights concerns in occupied Palestine. Over 800 students, professors, and alumni have signed SJP’s “institutional statement” calling for the divestment.

NOBLESSE OBLIGE

Her Majesty The Queen of Australia will make a private donation to a fundraising appeal helping the victims of Australia's worst-ever wildfires that may kill more than 200 people, Buckingham Palace said. All well and good; it's called Noblesse Oblige PR.

Given that Britain ruled Palestine in the years 1920-1948 and provided arms to support Israel's December-January massacre of Gazans, I wonder if HM donated to the Gaza Appeal of the Disasters Emergency Committee; three of its 13 member agencies receive royal patronage: Help the Aged, The British Red Cross and Save the Children Fund UK.

Whenever there's a crisis, famine, tsunami, hurricane, flooding, earthquake, or other natural disaster, the Queen sends a condolence letter or a surrogate royal to show concern. But what about "tragedies" done in Her Majesty's name or supported/contributed by Her Majesty's Armed Forces?

But tell me, can you say Elizabeth is non-political?

Last April she organized a party for Israel's birthday, too, by inviting two of the community’s biggest charities the use of Windsor Castle for a special anniversary dinner: the UJIA and the JNF. 300 guests attended the celebration, the first major Jewish — “and kosher” — event to be held at Windsor Castle, in the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh.

A JNF spokesperson said dinner guests would be raising funds for both organisations, the first time they had worked together on such a scale. “We are so grateful to the Royal Family for giving us the opportunity to celebrate Israel’s anniversary, and for allowing us to stage this wonderful event in Windsor Castle.”

How's that fawning for you?

The Windsor Castle dinner was part of a series of celebrations in Britain to mark the Jewish state’s 60th anniversary.

THE SILENCING OF DISSENT II

The Independent has pulled Mark Steel's column this week. Here it is (thanks to Ten Percent):-WHERE’S MY COLUMN GONE?

Given that it takes me several months to collect together the documents needed to get my car tax, I’m amazed that anyone manages to assemble the hundreds of bits required to produce a newspaper every single day. Then something happens, such as John Updike dies, and the newspaper gets someone to write something about him, and right in the space where my own column was destined to appear. Couldn’t he have hung on for a few more hours and buggered up someone the following day? So, for anyone pining, this is what would have appeared had it not been for John Updike’s genuinely untimely death.

The BBC are right. If they broadcast that appeal for food and medicine to be sent to Gaza it WOULD be taking sides. The Israeli Defence force could legitimately say “We’ve gone to enormous lengths here to kill people, then you go and help to keep them alive. How do you square that with your remit to be neutral?”

So the BBC needs to look at other areas in which its ‘impartiality’ could be called into question. To start with they’ll have to scrap ‘Crimewatch’, which clearly takes the side of the murdered against the interests of murderers. Maybe they could get round this by having a new balanced Crimewatch, in which the police plea for witnesses to a crime, but then the presenter says “Next tonight - have you seen this man? Because Big Teddy and his gang are desperate to track him down and do him in for ringing us up earlier. So if you have any information please call us, where Nobby the Knife is ready to talk to you in complete confidence.”

It’s impossible to be entirely neutral about anything, especially with an appeal for money. Appeals are made for injured veterans of the Second World War, but I don’t suppose they’d take them off air if they got a letter to Points of View saying “Dear BBC, I’m a Nazi war criminal but I pay my license fee just like everyone else, and as such I was appalled by the biased images of the Battle of Normandy used to promote your financial appeal. There are two sides to every story you know, and I thought you had a promise to be impartial. So come on BBC, us Kommandants watch television as well!”

Appeals have been made for victims of wars in the Congo, Darfur and Bosnia, keeping people alive and thereby undermining the aims and efforts of the armies who tried to wipe them out. But if the current stance carries on, from now on if anyone feels their block of flats collapsing on them they’ll think “I hope this is an earthquake and not an invading army or we won’t get a penny via the BBC.”

Aware of the frail logic of not showing the appeal, the BBC have made some even stranger statements to justify their decision, such as claiming they couldn’t be sure the money would ‘get through’. Ah yes that must be it. If only Gaza was like the Congo or Darfur, where the Red Cross can pop along to the village cashpoint machines, draw the money out and get Janjaweed or Hutu militias to help them search for two-for-one bargains in the local Somerfields.

Luckily for the Middle-East, the American government has been less squeamish about this question of impartiality. For example in Bush’s last year he sent Israel 2.2 billion dollars worth of military aid, and there’s no record of anyone saying “This couldn’t be seen as breaching our impartiality in any way, could it?”

The problem is that when viewers are confronted with scenes of misery and destruction, they’re bound to ask what or who caused this, and if it was done deliberately. So the BBC couldn’t remain neutral. Either they allowed the appeal that would lead to those questions being asked, or they refused it, in which case they’re suggesting they shouldn’t aid the relief of civilians who’ve been bombed, starved and slaughtered, as on this occasion their plight can be justified. And it’s decided this time to be biased not towards the impoverished but towards the impoverishers.

Or maybe they’ve been under such a barrage of complaints lately they just panicked that in the middle of the appeal the presenter might say, “Oh and by the way, I shagged David Attenborough’s grandson. Anyway, back to the lack of clean water.”