Sunday 11 September 2011

Sunday Night is...9/11 after 10 with T S Eliot




...What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal...

Just so we don't forget:
Powerbase: On 13 September 2001 Lader [ex-US Ambassador] appeared on the BBC TV programmme Question Time in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. Both audience members and panellists were critical of US foreign policy during the programmme and Lader appeared to find the criticism overwhelming. Some reports said he had 'tears in his eyes'.

'At one point', reported the Daily Telegraph 'Philip Lader, the former American ambassador, who was on the panel, was slow handclapped by a section of the audience. He said with tears in his eyes: "I have to share with you that I find it hurtful that you can suggest that a majority of the world despises the US.' Lader went on:

"My parents were immigrants to the US. We have fought as a people and nation for the rule of law and I simply want to say that it saddens me how it is possible on this night, within 48 hours [of the attack], that because of animosity of feeling on political issues we can frankly abstract ourselves from the senseless human victimisation and suffering that has occurred."
Tam Dalyell MP, one of the panellists on the show complained when the BBC issued an apology about the programme:

Mr Dalyell said that the BBC had nothing to apologise for. He said: "I know what the feeling may have been, but I think it was representative. It was an audience who were a cross-section of people in London, for God's sake."

BBC Director General, Greg Dyke also 'personally apologised to the former US ambassador to Britain, Philip Lader, a panel member on the programme, for any distress he might have felt during some of the debate's fiercest exchanges.' Dyke said "I have today spoken to Phillip Lader, the former US Ambassador to the UK who was on the panel, and apologised for any distress the programme may have caused him."

This is before Afghanistan and Iraq. The people who hated the US hated it before it invaded either country, of course. And so it goes on. They hate it still and will go on hating it.

I did hear this programme. The audience booed Lader. Tam Dalyell claimed the audience was 'a cross section of people in London'.

Two days after 9/11?

Pull the other 5,992 legs, Tam. Meanwhile: this. Warning: a very distressing watch!

Just saying, like.



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