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So which sort of giant are we talking about in Mark Rosenblatt’s new play? The Big Friendly type or something altogether more unpleasant? Very much that latter, as it turns out. This astonishingly good writing debut by the longtime director focuses on the fallout from a 1983 book review penned by Roald Dahl, the children’s author — played here, sensationally well, by John Lithgow.

The book, God Cried, was an account of the Israeli army’s siege of West Beirut in 1982; Dahl’s review was riddled with antisemitism, conflating the actions of the state of Israel with the will of the Jewish people. The play opens as Dahl is visited by his publishers (both of whom happen to be Jewish) for a tense lunch and pressed to retract or apologise. Eventually, after appearing — highly reluctantly — to concede some ground, Dahl doubles down by giving an interview to the New Statesman that is even more offensive.

The lunch is imagined; the interview comments, however, are verbatim. And Rosenblatt, in this terrific staging by Nicholas Hytner, carves his way nimbly through a thorny thicket of arguments about the interplay between prejudice and political viewpoint, between the artist and the art. Given the current conflict in the Middle East, the drama could not feel more timely.  

Rosenblatt is not unsympathetic towards Dahl, making plain his despair over the suffering of Palestinian children and touching on his personal tragedy (Dahl’s son was brain damaged in a car accident). But he also gives an unflinching account of the author’s blatant antisemitism and capacity for vicious behaviour. It’s a nuanced portrait, intent on unpicking the cognitive dissonance and blurred lines that can allow racism to flourish.

To begin with, Dahl comes over simply as irascible, grumbling about his painful back, the placements of Quentin Blake’s illustrations for his forthcoming book, The Witches, and the noise of the house renovations his fiancée, Felicity Crosland, has introduced. She and Dahl’s UK publisher Tom Maschler — Rachael Stirling and Elliot Levey, both brilliantly subtle — tiptoe around him, trying to impress on him the impact his views could have on his sales. But Dahl’s little digs at Maschler, a Holocaust survivor, suggest something nastier than backache. And when the representative of the American publishers arrives — Jessie Stone, a fictitious character — things become really ugly.

Romola Garai is great as Stone, still and clenched as Dahl pushes and needles her, until she suddenly lets rip in a blazing speech. In contrast, Levey’s Maschler remains emollient, reluctant to be drawn into the argument, but finally snapping at Dahl’s awful description of him as a “house Jew”.

And at the heart is Lithgow, quite superb as Dahl, rolling from avuncular charm to petulance to cruel sarcasm. Around him, Bob Crowley’s design sets a dining room table adrift in a sea of ladders and plastic sheeting: a room, like the grim issues raised in the play, unfinished.

★★★★☆

To November 16, royalcourttheatre.com

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The Official Project Censored Show

Muckraking Journalism and The Progressive Magazine; Updates on Julian Assange

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In the first segment, Mickey talks with Norman Stockwell, publisher of The Progressive magazine, founded in 1909. Stockwell discusses the vaunted history of the publication coming out of a golden era of muckraking journalism. We highlight some of that important history as well as address the current state of our so-called free press, coverage of Gaza, as well as stark signs that this election year may bring even more authoritarianism and militarism at home and abroad. We wrap by discussing the upcoming centennial celebration of the founder of The Progressive, “fighting” Bob La Follette, and his progressive presidential bid in 1924. Later in the program we’re joined once again by journalist Kevin Gosztola, author of Guilty of Journalism, for updates on the Julian Assange extradition case as Day X on his final hearings in the UK are upon us. Gosztola reminds us of the travesty of justice in the case against him and what it portends for press freedoms worldwide.

Notes:

Norman Stockwell is publisher of The Progressive magazine, a former manager at community radio station WORT-Madison, and a widely-published author. Kevin Gosztola is an independent journalist. He has covered the Julian Assange legal proceedings in the UK from their beginning, as well as other press-freedom and whistleblower cases, and has been a frequent guest on the Project Censored Show. His book on the Assange case, “Guilty of Journalism,” was published in 2023. Gosztola is also the editor of the Dissenter newsletter.

Video of the Interview with Norman Stockwell

Video of the Interview with Kevin Gosztola

Welcome back.

Beijing’s answer to the World Bank is backing a wave of renminbi bond borrowing by developing countries, Joseph Cotterill and I reported this morning. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is looking to capitalise on falling interest rates by supporting more issuance of so-called “panda bonds”, a move that comes after Beijing announced new rules for renminbi debt issuance by foreign entities in 2022.

For today’s newsletter, I took a broader look at how the AIIB has emerged as a key player in overseas development and the largest financing partner of the US-dominated World Bank. Here’s what that means for sustainability.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Beijing-backed development bank on growth spurt

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has grown rapidly since its launch in 2016. It is capitalised at $100bn, with China committing about 30 per cent of the funds and holding 27 per cent of voting power. At 110 members, AIIB is the world’s second-biggest multilateral development bank. While other G7 countries such as Germany and France are members, the US is not.

But the AIIB is invested alongside the Washington-based World Bank in projects ranging from power plants to railways across central Asia — keeping the US-China balance of power in the region in alignment.

AIIB president Jin Liqun said the bank planned to continue expanding its presence across Latin America and Africa. “We define infrastructure in a very liberal manner,” he told me in an interview, including digital skills and healthcare. For now, though, its primary focus remained in Asia.

AIIB’s existing projects

Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are major exporters of natural gas, and their steppes make large areas well-suited to wind energy. Yet, while they are rich in natural resources, Soviet-era grid infrastructure has strained power systems in central Asia, causing blackouts and potentially deterring foreign investment, as researcher Anna Jordanová has detailed.

In 2019, AIIB approved a $47mn loan for a 100 megawatt wind farm in Kazakhstan, the country where Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road infrastructure investment spree in 2013. The country is a major exporter of coal, oil, and gas, with total energy production that is more than double its domestic demand, as of 2018. Yet, Kazakhstan has endured frequent power outages, which have sparked unrest.

In 2020, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), whose largest capital contributor is the US, announced that it would also provide a $25mn loan for the project, which is based in a country often seen as the focus of the “new Great Game” between Russia and the US, writes Maximilian Hess, a political risk analyst.

China and the US are not the only investors vying to invest in energy infrastructure in countries with geopolitical significance. Gulf countries have also become major investors and developers in the region. AIIB has signed multiple loan agreements in Uzbekistan with Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy investment vehicle. Masdar is also building the region’s largest wind farm.

AIIB has supported a string of gas power plants in Uzbekistan, including $100mn in funding to a plant developed by ACWA Power, the Saudi national champion, and a €225mn loan last year. The investments, however, have drawn criticism from civil society groups, such as Germany-based Urgewald, which argued that the AIIB’s lending to fossil fuels “undermines the credibility of its climate and social policies”.

Asked about its investments in gas, Jin said: “We do not rule out gas, but we focus on renewables.

“If we finance a gas project, we should [see] a clear correlation between the gas project and phasing out coal-fired power,” he said. Growing energy demand in many emerging markets should be viewed as a positive development, Jin added, since it was partly the result of poverty reduction efforts.

Pain points

The AIIB and the World Bank’s extensive co-financing arrangements don’t necessarily indicate that it is a tension-free relationship — nor that every project advertised as sustainable is up to that billing, as the fossil fuel financing shows.

As the bank’s profile has grown, so too have concerns about its investments — especially following feedback from local communities.

A report last year by Amsterdam-based campaign group Recourse raised issues with AIIB’s accountability mechanism, noting that “in seven years, with 233 projects funded and over $44bn spent, the AIIB has yet to accept a single complaint from people adversely affected by its investments”.

The report highlighted one rejected complaint from critics of a gas power plant in Bangladesh, which received $60mn from AIIB. The complainants alleged that “middlemen” acquired the land for the plant “with intimidation and coercion, and at lower than market rates”.

The AIIB is also attempting to distinguish itself from the Belt and Road Initiative, which peaked in 2016 and saddled many countries with debt in return.

“The Belt Road Initiative was proposed by China, more or less at the same time as AIIB,” Jin said. “[But] these two different initiatives work by different governance and practice. Multilateral development banks like ours . . . we work like our peer institutions, such as the World Bank, and EBRD.

“Quite a lot of countries are grappling with debt problems. The big issue is, how could we help these countries attract external capital inflows without creating debt problems? Our answer is, we need to push for productive investment,” Jin said.

These issues will have to be tackled in the years ahead, but the collaboration by US- and China-led official sector financial institutions in some of the world’s most geopolitically contested regions may indicate that funding for international development will continue in spite of the increasingly antagonistic relationship between the world’s biggest economies.

Smart read

All the attention is on China’s cleantech manufacturing capacity. But Beijing is also exporting a “tsunami” of investment in renewable energy and transport electrification projects, Edward White and William Sandlund report.

The already fractious relationship between the Personal Finance Society (PFS) and the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) has been ‘blown apart’ again.

The CII announced yesterday (1 October) that its chief executive Matthew Hill and three other executives – Trevor Edwards, Mathew Mallett and Gill White – have been appointed to the PFS board.

The move has further increased tensions between members of the PFS and its parent body, the CII.

The debacle started with the ‘Christmas coup’ in December 2022, when the CII imposed its own directors on the PFS board in a highly controversial move.

At the time, the CII said it took action due to “serious and significant” governance failures at the PFS.

The PFS immediately hit back, slamming the CFII’s decision, with former PFS president Sarah Lord condemning the CII’s “aggressive” behaviour.

She also described the move as “disingenuous” and said it had been done without prior consent or warning.

Caroline Stuart resigned from her roles as PFS president and member director of the PFS board on 5 January 2023, saying the pressure was affecting her health.

There were also a series of resignations and appointments in the 12 months that followed.

Last year, the PFS and CII appeared to have resolved the dispute and both parties said they were working together.

However, this week the CII took action to flood the PFS board with its members once again.

In a statement, campaign group Our PFS, set up to ‘save’ the body following the Christmas coup of 2022, blasted the CII’s actions.

“It has been around a year since the last actions of ourpfs.co.uk, with a general feeling that issues between CII and PFS were in the process of being resolved,” it said.

“Unfortunately, this has been blown wide open again thanks to incredibly questionable actions taken by the Chartered Insurance Institute on 1 October 2024.

“OurPFS is urgently investigating and will be writing out with more details as soon as they are known.

“October 2024 may well turn out to be the month that defines the future of our professional body.”

Money Marketing has contacted representatives of the PFS for a comment.

On Tuesday evening, the Islamic Republic of Iran launched a large-scale ballistic missile attack on Israel, firing nearly 200 rockets across the country. Air raid sirens sounded throughout Israel, sending civilians scrambling for safety as the barrage unfolded.

Iran framed the attack as retaliation for Israel’s recent operations that eliminated senior Hezbollah members, including the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, during a strike in Beirut on September 27. While the media’s coverage of Nasrallah’s death—especially the disturbingly sympathetic language used to describe a terrorist leader—was flawed, the reporting on Iran’s direct assault on Israel struck a notably different tone.

The majority of media outlets adhered to the facts in their reporting of the incident, recognizing the unprecedented attack for what it was: a significant escalation initiated by Iran. Nevertheless, there were still notable and disappointing exceptions, which we will address later.

For example, both the Associated Press and Reuters published reports with headlines that accurately reflected the situation: Iran had attacked Israel in a move that risked igniting a wider regional conflict. Reuters included a photo gallery documenting the attack’s impact on Israeli civilians, featuring images of people seeking shelter by the roadside and the aftermath of a rocket strike on a school building in Gedera.

Meanwhile, The New York Times dedicated some of its coverage to the only confirmed casualty—a laborer from Gaza—highlighting his death and quoting his father’s remark that the attack “didn’t serve Palestinian interests.”

Hours after the attack, The Telegraph published an editorial that unequivocally identified Iran as the “aggressor” in the Middle East—a fact that should be obvious, yet is frequently overlooked in much of the global media’s coverage of the region.

Sky News and CNN both dedicated pieces to the dramatic moments their live broadcasts were cut short and their journalists ran for cover as missiles rained down, offering a glimpse into the harsh reality faced by Israeli civilians during such attacks.

Matt Gutman reported for ABC News from inside a shelter in Tel Aviv and described how civilians had been forced to rush for cover after receiving alerts of an impending attack.

Missile or missile fragment impacts in downtown Tel Aviv pic.twitter.com/q7OPhvRiZl

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) October 1, 2024

However, as previously mentioned, there were several disappointing exceptions in the coverage. One such example is the two separate BBC interviews featuring so-called “expert” guests. In one, British academic Andreas Krieg was given an uninterrupted platform to warn that the international community “must ensure Israel does not disrupt the regional order as we know it,” as it defends itself from attack.

Meanwhile in the BBC studio… pic.twitter.com/NyB10oAqet

— Jake Wallis Simons (@JakeWSimons) October 1, 2024

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Even more troubling was the BBC’s decision to interview Iranian academic Sayed Mohammad Marandi about the attack, just hours after the broadcaster acknowledged it had failed to adequately challenge Marandi during a prior interview with Mishal Husain on BBC Radio 4 in which he repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide.

Cited in @telegraph: “The Iranian-American academic, who is the son of the former Iranian health minister, has previously been called a “propagandist” and “mouthpiece” for the Iranian regime by HonestReporting, an organisation that works to combat prejudices in the media.” https://t.co/UO4qqbQflB

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 2, 2024

Having already been forced to apologize for letting Islamic Republic mouthpiece Seyed Mohammad Marandi spew his extremism and antisemitism on @BBCr4today, it takes a special kind of idiocy to allow him to do the same on your TV broadcasts as well.

But that’s @BBCNews for you. https://t.co/l8pcaBaf1O

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 2, 2024

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A final point remains to be made.

While the international media’s coverage in this instance was encouraging, it should not be the exception—it must become the standard.

Liked this article? Follow HonestReporting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to see even more posts and videos debunking news bias and smears, as well as other content explaining what’s really going on in Israel and the region.

Credits:- Noam Revkin Fenton via Flash90 – Wisam Hashlamoun via Flash90 – Zain Jaafar/AFP via Getty Images – Kyodo via Reuters Connect