Tag Archives: Gaza

Dr Shinichi Suzuki fraud claims slammed by music teachers as ‘scandalous’ – Sydney Morning Herald

October 29, 2014 By in Art, Business Administration, Education, People, Politicians, Politics, Society Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Shinichi Suzuki

Cover of Shinichi Suzuki

Following on from yesterday’s most popular blog, entitled Violin master Shinichi Suzuki ‘the biggest fraud in music history’ – Sydney Morning Herald, thanks to the eagle eyes of Seymour Lightman, at Probe Forensics, I am sharing the follow-up story of the Sydney Morning Herald.

via Dr Shinichi Suzuki fraud claims slammed by music teachers as ‘scandalous’.

Seymour simply advised:

No idea what’s what here, but maybe worth flagging this revisionist piece: apparently posted as a late update to the original story?

Both stories are well worth a read and some reflection. For me I really admire the Sydney Morning Herald for publishing both sides of this story. The point is that irrespective of whether the Dr Shinichi Suzuki fraud claims are genuine, his contribution to music has been outstanding and should stand separately to the questions about his early years.

Sadly, the mainstream media are often too quick to show just one side of the story. Take Israel and Gaza, for example, where the media is generally regarded as biased against Israel.

When I was a youngster, I thought that newspapers reported the news honestly and it was for editorials to share their political bias. I soon learned that I was naive.

Let me share another reflection on the same thread. Last night I was at dinner with a friend who had recently retired from a forty-year career at the BBC – he was involved in news operations, viz. delivering the news. I offered that their was too much bias in the mainstream media. My wife gave an example of a headline completely at odds from the main story. Our friend responded that the headline was an editorial decision – so the headline can give a pointed or political message, irrespective of the underlying story. He then moved to my blog and suggested that I was providing editorials of the news.

This started me thinking that with Twitters’ 140 characters, headline were these days much more important than the underlying story.

Any thoughts on bias in the mainstream media and, in particular, editorial decisions on headlines?

Opinion – EUROPA – PRESS RELEASES – The EU’s response to help fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa – John Gelmini

October 17, 2014 By in Healthcare, People Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Dr Alf makes an excellent point.

Frankly, there should be no EU aid, nor aid from the UK, unless it is for a medical/ humanitarian cause, like Ebola which carries a risk for our own people.

The EU budget itself is riddled with corruption, which is why no self-respecting accountant will sign-off the accounts.

Overseas aid is worse, with most of the money being diverted into the pockets of corrupt dictators and possibly officials within the donor countries.

Certainly all EU officials, UK Government Ministers, top civil servants etc, should have their bank accounts and those of their partners, wives, children, relatives and mistresses audited regularly once a year on an unannounced basis. Assuming that most were honest, nothing untoward would be discovered but if they were like the British MPs, who are fiddling their expenses more than ever, we would need to be ready to expand our prisons and make the judiciary work round the clock as they did in New York under Mayor Guliani when he was cleaning up that city.

Gaza needs some aid but whatever happens there, there is no deadly disease which we can catch from Palestinians, whereas with several African countries Ebola is spreading rapidly and with air travel and the possibility of Ebola mutating into a strain transmissible by air, the risks to us in the UK, Europe and America require that money is spent on making our response to Ebola faster and more robust.

Lord Winston has already said to the Government and MPs that the NHS needs to be ready for the possibility of a mutant strain of Ebola transmissible by air would create intolerable strain on the NHS. Perhaps, he has in mind the possibility of a flu epidemic,large numbers of pensioners cluttering up doctors surgeries and A and E Departments of NHS Trusts during the coming winter, then combining with an Ebola outbreak which would then overwhelm the already not fit for purpose NHS.

Dr Alf wonders, possibly angrily, why the amount of EU aid for Gaza is so great?

I suspect that it is for several reasons, one of which is to pander to Arab and Iranian opinion, to ensure energy supplies from a source other than Vladimir Putin and another is to throw a bone without being too obvious to those who see in Israel the source of all the world’s ills.

John Gelmini