Even Wikipedia is Biased
Does the Wikipedia entry on our new President have any references to major campaign news items such as William Ayers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and questions on his eligibility? Nope. And anyone who attempts to add these to his entries – with plenty of third party reputable news sources as backup – is banned from posting anything to the site.
Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil
Article in the WSJ by Judea Pearl, father Daniel Pearl the reporter who was murdered by islamic cowards in 2002.
By JUDEA PEARL
This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today’s world emerged after his tragedy?
Reuters/Corbis
Jimmy Carter.
The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.
Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of “the resistance.” Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.
No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny’s murder would be a turning point in the history of man’s inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.
But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of “resistance,” has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words “war on terror” cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.
I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism — the ideological license to elevate one’s grievances above the norms of civilized society — was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable “tactical” considerations.
This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man’s second nature. “In an unfair balance, that’s what people use,” explained Mr. Livingstone.
But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. “It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel.” Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.
Mr. Carter’s logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror. When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas’s rockets aimed at innocent civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a moment in her response: “They should end the occupation.” In other words, terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.
The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.
Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting him to 50 million viewers as Arab society’s role model. No mainstream Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera’s management continues to receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.
Some American pundits and TV anchors didn’t seem much different from Al Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a “resistance” movement, together with honorary membership in PBS’s imaginary “cycle of violence.” In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that “each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man’s terrorism becomes another’s resistance to oppression.” He then stated — without blushing — that for readers of the Hebrew Bible “God-soaked violence became genetically coded.” The “cycle of violence” platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror’s victims for violence as immutable as DNA.
When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables genocidal organizations like Hamas — the charter of which would offend every neuron in our brains — to become tolerated in public discourse, we should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.
At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.
The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, “Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza,” to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph — another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western minds.
Danny’s picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.
Mr. Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote cross-cultural understanding.
We’ve let the liberals/democrats have a say in the world. That’s what we’ve done that brought us to this. Funny, Jimmy Carter was nearly the worst president we’ve ever had, and he’s most similar in intellect and goals to Obama. God help us.
And the Liberal Press Actually Expect Us To Take Them Seriously?
From today’s Wall Street Journal:
FROM THE MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER’S CYBERALERT.
File this one under “Deluded Expectations.” During MSNBC’s coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, on Nov. 27, daytime anchor Alex Witt seemed frustrated that the election of Barack Obama 23 days earlier — and the accompanying “global outpouring of affection, respect, hope” — had not caused an end to terrorist violence.Talking with correspondent John Yang, who was covering the Obama side of the story, Witt conceded that while “you certainly can’t expect things to change on a dime overnight….There had been such a global outpouring of affection, respect, hope, with the new administration coming in, that precisely these kinds of attacks, it was thought — at least hoped — would be dampered down. But in this case it looks like Barack Obama is getting a preview of things to come.”
[This item, by the MRC's Rich Noyes, was posted Monday morning on the MRC's blog, Newsbusters.org]
It almost seems like a parody of liberals’ blind worship of Obama to actually expect that The One’s election would mean terrorists hanging up their bomb belts, peace around the world, lions lying down with lambs, and so forth. For his part, Yang delicately pointed out the more valid concern that “the enemies of the United States, those who don’t care for the United States no matter who’s leading it, would try and test the United States” during the transition from Bush to Obama.
Here’s the full exchange, that took place at about 2:55pm EST on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, after Yang reported on how Obama was being fully briefed by the Bush administration on the terrorist attacks:
ALEX WITT: You know, John, and it’s interesting because there are many who had such an optimstic and hopeful opinion of things, and you certainly can’t expect things to change [snaps fingers] on a dime overnight, but there are many who suggested that with the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration there would be something of a lull in terrorism attacks. There had been such a global outpouring of affection, respect, hope, with the new administration coming in, that precisely these kinds of attacks, it was thought — at least hoped — would be dampered down. But in this case it looks like Barack Obama is getting a preview of things to come.
JOHN YANG: He’s — it’s a rude awakening, a very, sort of, sober reminder of what he’s going to be facing in just a few weeks. And there is some concern also, there had been some concern, that during this period, during this, the transition period, between Election Day and Inauguration Day, that the enemies of the United States, those who don’t care for the United States no matter who’s leading it, would try and test the United States, would try to take advantage of this period, and I think that may be one thing that we’re seeing right now.
WITT: Okay, John Yang there in Chicago, following President-elect Barack Obama’s Thanksgiving Day dinner having been interrupted by all of this news from Mumbai. John, thank you very much.
Find the article on the Wall Street Journal’s website here.
The Nobel Prize of Obliviousness
Third time’s the charm…
First there was Jimmy Carter… sorry, just got back up from the floor. Jimmy freaking Carter got the Nobel Prize for his bang up job of bringing peace to the middle east. We should give him credit, it lasted thirty seconds longer than the previous cease fire. Not to oversimplify, but this is a former president who has broken with history and openly and repeatedly criticized a sitting president. It would matter if he had a single proud moment in office himself.
As if Carter wasn’t enough, next there came one of this generation’s greatest opportunist hypocrites, Albert Gore, inventor of Al-Gore-Tex, the fabric that allows abject failure in the political arena and a running and disturbingly accurate imitation of everyone’s grandmother (wonder if there’s more to that) to bead up and slide right off his career.
Taking a page from his own rain shedding fabric days, he figured there would be serious money in global warming (or is it global cooling this decade?) The smart thing his advisers came up with (we know he didn’t come up with it because he’s just a card reader like Obama) is the idea that instead of actually doing something about the “crisis” — like creating a green energy company or simply reducing the energy footprint of his mansion in Tennessee, or maybe leaving the private jet at home, or maybe dropping his convoy to a skeletal 10 gas-guzzling SUVs and Towncars burning ozone to and from every possible speaking engagement his handlers can schedule — anyway, instead of doing anything real about the “crisis”, his sage advisors said “hey, you could try your hand in the scary and accountable private sector for the first time since that 5 year stint at The Tennessean newspaper after college, or you could turn this lemon stretch of the natural environmental cycle into hysterically sweet solid gold lemonade in the bank.” And rain gold it has for the sweet talker from Tennessee. But a funny thing happened on the way to selling the Brooklyn Bridge…
Even Gore never imagined the clueless in Norway, adorned with nose rings of popular hysteria, could possibly be taken in by the shameless and insincere opportunism he embodied with the acting talent of, well, Al Gore. But they did. And those of us who thought that the Jimmy Carter prize was the last straw, certainly lost faith entirely in the judgment of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Which bring us to the third of the infamous leftists: Paul (“Bush would be Satan, if there was a God”) Krugman. He’s the nerdy kid who used to cry just being near a fight in school, let alone being in one. He’s a lone beacon to the dwindling pseudo-intellectual self-obsessed New York readership, and the formerly somewhat respectable paper that prints his vile bile. I imagine him at his desk, crying at the violence of his blind fury (because fury is scary) and yet smiling through his tears for the self-congratulatory vengeance he feels his words get him on the conservative that stomped his frailty or stole his girl in some former time. His bully pulpit provides a thick network of flaming and smoldering leftists to insulate his frantic and desperate anger, so he’s safe to blather on, reciting the socialist and leftist talking points like a male version of Surrender Poodle Pelosi but without the stones.
I imagine Alfred Nobel would certainly take his mighty invention and blow all of Scandinavia to the judgment seat of the Almighty if he were alive to be ashamed of the state to which this prize has devolved: prizes awarded to a forgettable president, a transparent money-grubber, and the poster child of desperately shrill.
With these offenses, the Nobel Prize is certainly less fair and reasonable but closely resembling an Oscar these days, as Oscars are won solely on crony or agenda popularity, rather than by merit as awards should be.
I guess that’s why Gore’s won both.
Krugman could win an oscar for crying on cue, but for him it wouldn’t be acting.
Burning down the house – what caused the financial crisis
Watch and rate the video on YouTube to keep it in front of the fence-sitters who don’t know this information.
CBS Intentionally/Unintentionally Mistranscribes Palin
Katie (aren’t her squirrel cheeks so cute!) Couric hacked her cute little way through a cute little string of interviews with future VPOTUS Sarah Palin. But something happened on the way back to the audience. A little error in transcription here and there, strangely at the times when the meaning is critical to her answers. I found it irresponsibly sloppy at best and outright crooked if intended to cause reader confusion on Palin’s positions.
| Katie Couric’s “CBS for Obama Victory” team transcription | Palin’s actual words |
| My understanding is that Rick Davis recused himself from the dealings of the firm. I don’t know how long ago, a year or two ago that he’s not benefiting from that. And you know, I was – I would hope that’s not the case. | My understanding is that Rick Davis recused himself from the dealings of the firm. I don’t know how long ago, a year or two ago that he’s not benefiting from that. And you know, I was – I would hope that’s the case. |
| I’m all about the position that America is in and that we have to look at a $700 billion bailout. | I’m ill about the position that America is in and that we have to look at a $700 billion bailout. At the same time we know that inaction is not an option. |
Don’t you find that fascinating? I do. I find it very curious.
It’s really hard to justify dropping the ball like this, obviously when the video that conflicts with your poor transcription is on the same page.
You can look at it one of two ways.
First, it was unintentional; the dense CBS News team couldn’t understand “that thick Alaskan accent”, even though I had no trouble at all picking out what she said with perfect clarity. CBS News must be employing a really unqualified transcriber.
Second, it was intentional; while much more devious if true, it certainly wouldn’t be beyond any common expectations of liberal CBS to play with the text a little to subtly shake credibility with very plausible deniability. CBS has been playing that game for decades.
Either way, it’s irresponsible to take words out or put words into the mouth of a candidate weeks before an election. Especially when the horse your money’s on is the other one. Shame on you CBS. Please correct the copy and fake-spank the lackey who was just following orders.
Obama Tried To Delay Iraq Withdrawl
Barack Obama has almost entirely escaped media scrutiny of his efforts to influence leaders in Iraq to delay scheduled troop withdrawals until after the election. I don’t think I need to tell you why he would do something so crooked and frankly disingenuous to the American people and their soldiers for political gain. This slippery weasel is truly the opportunist we all know he is.
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.
