Barrel Strength

In an earlier post your correspondent referenced an article which discussed how the leftist media frame the political discourse.  This framing extends well beyond the “media”.

August is the month of festivals in Edinburgh including Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Book Festival, Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Edinburgh Mela, Edinburgh Television Festival, Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival to name a few.  This is sufficient to induce your correspondent to leave his Highland lair for Edinburgh, the world’s first City of Literature, a permanent designation conferred by UNESCO.

The Edinburgh Book Festival, in the words of the organiser, is “a magical, pan-global cornucopia of words and idea in our gorgeous garden each year” and purports to be a mainstream event.  Your correspondent is rarely affected by this piffle but is sufficiently intrigued to to visit a few of the events which are divided into several categories such as politics, fiction, nations, workshop, society, history etc.

This year there are eighteen events classified under the Politics category, and your correspondent attempted to classify them on the political spectrum.  Of the eighteen, eight would be classified as far left, four as left and five as either non-political or unknown given that it was difficult to ascertain their political orientation from the description.  One even might be classified as conservative, given that the speaker is a foreign policy advisor to Sen McCain, but it is doubtful given that the description states that “For the past few year, the liberal world has been divided and distracted by issues both profound and petty.  Western liberalism faces new, complex challenges and we need to choose whether we want to shape the future or let others shape it for us.”  It seems even here one has to pay lip-service to liberals to get a place on the podium.

Obviously the Book Festival is nothing more than an echo chamber for the Left and it is quite amazing how they have completely seized the discussion and framed the argument.  It is nevertheless amusing to read description of some of the events.

Lord David Owen, described in the event summary as “one of the most distinguished politicians of his day”, seems to channel Bush Derangment Syndrome when he “pinpoints the symptoms of a mental syndrome with damaging consequences including the tragic incompetence of the war in Iraq.”

The BBC’s business editor Rober Peston cuts through all the mindless droning on BBC and states “that the real power behind the throne lies with the super-rich who pay too little tax, add little value to the economy yet change our lives through their undue influence over our politicians.”

In an another event, Patrick Cockburn, an Irish journalist who won Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005 and the James Cameron Prize in 2006 for his reporting from Iraq, fulminates about the “chilling rise of Muqtada al-Sadr in the civil war.”  Perhaps Cockburn should consider changing his name to Cockup after reading that the” Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr plans to announce Friday that he will disarm his Mahdi Army, which was raining mortars on Baghdad’s Green Zone as recently as April.”  And these are just the first three events that are listed in the 76-page A4-sized climate-change-inducing brochure for a festival that purport to be balanced, but only exemplifies what passes for informed discussion on the left end of the political spectrum.  If you do decide to vist the Book Festival kindly consider attending the events designated for children, of which there are several, as they are likely to be the most intelligent.