The Media War on Israel

I’ve covered this pretty well, but Melanie Phillips is worth reading with this roundup of what’s not so funny about faked news.

To date, as far as I can determine, not one mainstream editor or proprietor has acknowledged this corruption of the western media. The scale of this corruption now threatens to have a lethal impact on the course of human history. Hatred now drives not just the jihadists but their western dupes, too. Truth and freedom are indivisible. The deconstruction of the former inevitably presages the destruction of the latter. This is the way a civilisation dies.

Flat Daddy

I find this touching.

“I prop him up in a chair, or sometimes put him on the couch and cover him up with a blanket,” said Kay Judkins of Caribou, Maine, whose husband, Jim, is a minesweeper mechanic in Afghanistan. “The cat will curl up on the blanket, and it looks kind of weird. I’ve tricked several people by that. They think he’s home again.”

Speaking of Inconvenient

First, an aside. I want to slap everybody who calls An Inconvienient Truth Algore’s PowerPoint presentation. It isn’t.

It’s a Keynote presentation. At least he knows which side his bread is buttered on. (And seems to be enjoying it.)

The movie I’d really like to see is an uncensored debate between Algore and this guy.

Better Late Than Never

I wrote a post two days ago. Somehow it got saved as a draft instead of getting published. I just pushed it through, and it appeared under the draft date, Aug 28.

Since it has so much good stuff, I’m linking to it here.

SJS

Sudden Jihadi Syndrome.

I’m shocked, shocked! to learn that the man who aimed his vehicle at, and hit, many pedestrians in Fremont and San Francisco yesterday is a Muslim. Not only is it hard to get the MSM to say it, but LGF has KTVU video where the reporter quotes a witness who said the driver called himself a terrorist, and then goes on to say that it couldn’t have been terrorism.

Naw. Mowing down people on purpose with your car couldn’t be terrorism.

Update:

According to one documentary filmmaker who interviewed a lot of future suicide bombers and their families, we should expect more until we

Stop being politically correct and stop believing that this culture is a victim of ours. Radical Islamism today is nothing but a new form of Naziism. Nobody was trying to justify or excuse Hitler in the 1930s. We had to defeat him in order to make peace one day with the German people.

Situation Normal

A little potpourri for you today. Global warming is over, animal rights wackos are still sick puppies and, in the jurisdiction of the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals at least, you’d better not drive anywhere if you intend to start a business with cash.

Oh, and an Iranian Mullah is coming to Harvard. The State Department thinks that’s just dandy.

Data Mining

No, not by the NSA. By ZabaSearch. Look yourself up.

It’s scary.

Update:

Apparently opting out is sort of possible:

In order for Intelius to ‘opt out’ your public information from being viewable on the Intelius website we do require faxed proof of identity. Proof of identity can be a state issued ID card or driver’s license. If you are faxing a copy of your driver’s license, cross out the photo and the driver’s license number. We only need to see the name, address and date of birth.

Please fax information to our customer service department at 425-974-6194.

If you are not comfortable doing this you can send us a notarized form proving your identity and we will be glad to remove this public information.

** Please note removing the data here does not prevent public records from sending us new information in the future. To permanently have your records sealed you will need to contact your county’s record
department.

It may be time to stop making county records so public. (I know it would cut down on the junk mail I get.) You can see the problem here, though. First you have to find out about each data mining company, like ZabaSearch, and then do something to be left out of their search. Nothing prevents another company from coming along and making the data available.

What fun.

Dear MSM

Wonder why we don’t trust you? Here’s why.

Rightwing bloggers are predisposed to distrust the media, as are most conservatives. The fauxtographers and defenders like Mitchell are giving us no reason to be encouraged. The mainstream press’ stock is in credibility. The right course is to answer, quickly and thoroughly, any credible charges against them, so as to preserve that stock.

Instead, with the notable exceptions of David Perlmutter and Jim Pinkerton, the mainstream media seems content to blame it all on the Grassy Knoll while half of its readers find news coverage is greener on the other side.

And if you just can’t handle all that reading (knowing what journalistic standards are these days) you can just watch Michelle Malkin’s video here.

Putting Toddlers In Charge

I’m now convinced that Ezra Klein was correct when he said

“I’m of the opinion that how to handle WalMart is among the two or three most important issues facing the country.”

Huh? Well, as James Glassman argues, the question translates to “Are we grownups or children?”

I think Ezra Klein has indeed identified an extremely important question, quite truthfully, one of the two or three most important issues facing the country. Are we adults or children? If we are to be adults of course we should also apply the same blindingly obvious logic to the minimum and living wage movements. As Costco proves, when companies pay more for the labor they hire, they hire less of it.

Manufacturing the News

Besides being wary of polls, which are usually just pollaganda, it’s worthwhile remembering that “news” stories are also generated by random error. Engram points out that recent fluctuations in casualties in Iraq are not the sign of either a “downward spiral” nor a big improvement that can be attributed to troop levels in Bagdahd.

In the meantime, we can expect that random fluctuations will drive the news. In July, that worked against the American effort to democratize Iraq (because the news was so demoralizing). In August, if current trends hold, it will work in favor. But it all averages out in the end. To know what is really happening, you have to ignore the monthly random error and focus on the longer term.

Unharmed?

I’m glad the Fox News reporters were released. At least they’re alive. For now. Just wait until they try to check out of the Roach Motel of Religions.

Unharmed?

You idiot! You total blistering (sic) idiot! Being forced to convert is a harm. It might be the oldest harm short of death – being forced to renounce your faith and your god. Millions of people – literally millions – have died rather than deign to utter words that would force them to give up their faith. No wonder liberal journalists are utterly baffled by fully half of the United States – they don’t think having to give up your religion is harmful. We are beyond certain that if Muslim prisoners at Gitmo were forced to convert away from Islam as a condition of their release, the New York Times would not be putting the phrase “released unharmed” into their lede.

Let’s say you have no faith to deny, and that you’ll say anything to be released. I can buy that. But unharmed? I don’t think so.

NB: He probably meant “blithering”. But some malapropisms are an improvement.

Fauxtography and al-Reuters

I’ve got a theory. Karl Rove is actually in charge of photo editing at Reuters, and is making them look like incompetent, biased morons just to ruin them. Probably so he can let Haliburton buy up their old office furniture for pennies on the dollar.

How else to explain this? More here and here.

[Note: This is an old post that somehow got saved as a draft rather than getting published. Just in case you think I’m behind on the news. Which I may be.]

Multiculturalism Alert

Geneive Abdo writes of her interviews with America’s Muslims.

Ismahan recalled similar experiences. In elementary school, she had tried to fit in. As an adult, though, “I know I don’t have to fit in,” she said. “I don’t think Muslims have to assimilate. We are not treated like Americans. At work, I get up from my desk and go to pray. I thought I would face opposition from my boss. Even before I realized he didn’t mind, I thought, ‘I have a right to be a Muslim, and I don’t have to assimilate.’ “

The article goes to desperate lengths to spin this as an upsurge in faith, and being different from “those” Muslims in Europe who have started killing their own countrymen. It may be true. But this should be raising all sorts of red flags.

Lack of assimilation is bad, even if the group in question isn’t part of a culture with violent, fascist tendencies. No matter how benign on the surface, multiculturalism, or the failure to culturally assimilate, is malignant. It is corrosive to the national fabric and destructive to peace.

Multiculturalism is death.

Update:

To the charge that American Muslims aren’t so well assimilated, one answers Yes, we are. He makes some fair points.

The whole issue of identity is really not as critical as that of modernity. Its reconciling tradition with modernity that is tricky. We all have multiple identities and we rarely “choose” one over another, but the conflict between modernity and tradition is sometimes trickier to navigate.

I think any kind of group identity can be a problem, but failure to modernize is really why goatherders are flying airplanes into skyscrapers. I don’t know how much I buy all of his apologetics (I haven’t followed all the links yet) but it seems worth a look. Ditto for the comments on that page.

Blue Helmet Hypocrisy

The UN likes to insist that it’s neutral. Being “neutral” to the UN seems to mean about what being “bipartisan” means to Democrats. For one thing, it means revealing troop movements on its web site.

Which troops?

Take a wild guess.

Martyr for Multiculturalism

A headteacher in England had his life ruined because he dared criticize multiculturalism – twenty years too soon.

Mr Honeyford had made the mistake of espousing anti-multiculturalism before it was socially acceptable to do so, just as it was once wrong to be an anti-communist before everyone became one. He lost his career because his tone was wrong, and he did not subscribe to the then “correct” views of a very thorny subject. Hell hath no fury like a bien pensant contradicted.

What if this showed up on a “right wing” blog?

Over at Huffpo, Russell Shaw postulates a pre-election terror attack, and opines that it just might be a good idea.

What if another terror attack just before this fall’s elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?

I start from the premise that there is already a substantial portion of the electorate that tends to vote GOP because they feel that Bush has “kept us safe,” and that the Republicans do a better job combating terrorism.

I’m going waaaay out on a limb here and guessing that if Mr. Shaw knew what I thought of his idea he’d whine that I was “questioning his patriotism.”

And about that, at least, he’d be right.

Saying So

The Patriot Post, which used to be called The Federalist has an excellent lead item today. They ask the question, “is Islam fascist?”. And the answer is yes.

Like other forms of fascism, Islam’s expansionist impulse would involve violence, subjugation to the state, and conformity to the ideology of the system. As Mohammed writes in the Koran, “Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection (Surah 009.029).” Further, Al Bukhari records Mohammed as saying: “I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah’.”

Read the whole thing. And if you haven’t subscribed to their email newsletter, shame on you.

What’s your tiny URL?

Perhaps this should be called tinyurlmancy.

I just typed in www.tinyurl.com/craig and found out I’m a “sport utility trailer”. My last name gets me to a book on AIX 5L Administration (whatever that is) on Amazon.

Aiming this lens at politics, I find this somehow comforting.

Try http://www.tinyurl.com/%5Byour name here] and see what you get.

Annie Get Your Goat

After reading about Ann Coulter’s crack regarding the 9-11 wives, I pulled her link from my home page and pretty much gave up reading her. Now I find a review of her book wherein Mark Steyn points out:

[I]t wasn’t until Ann Coulter pointed it out that you realize how heavily the Democratic party is invested in irreproachable biography…

“What crackpot argument can’t be immunized by the Left’s invocation of infallibility based on personal experience?” wonders Miss Coulter of Cleland, Sheehan, the Jersey Girls and Co. “If these Democrat human shields have a point worth making, how about allowing it to be made by someone we’re allowed to respond to?”

Now that’s a point worth making.

Maybe it’s time to reconsider.

There Goes the Neighborhood

Looks like Buttle’s World high-tailed it out of blogspot just in time.

Holy Warriors have moved in.

Socialized Medicine claims another victim

Imagine this: You take your nine-year-old boy to the hospital to get stitches in his finger.

Then he ends up dead.

It was only after other senior anaesthetists had rushed in to examine Tony, that one of the doctors finally lifted Tony’s mask and discovered one of the connectors inside it had slipped into the tubing and was blocking the airflow. Tony had suffocated to death.

Why? Because the NHS re-used the oxygen tube to save money.

Return of Green Helmet Guy?

I need some eyes on this. Zombietime has a smackdown of the Red Cross ambulance incident which includes a link to an ITV report on YouTube. It’s on his page at July 24th in the time line. Watch that video, and pause at ten or eleven seconds in. Doesn’t that guy, inexplicably holding the “victim’s” throat look awfully familiar?

If you think so, look for a link at the bottom of the linked post to contact Zombietime.

Tony Bennett, Grouch

I love Tony Bennett’s musicianship, and he’s always seemed to be a real gentleman. Maybe he got up on the wrong side of bed, or maybe he’s becoming a grumpy old crooner. He recently slammed America for its lack of culture.

Legendary singer TONY BENNETT has slammed his home country of America for not contributing anything other than jazz music to world art and culture. The IF I RULED THE WORLD crooner feels that Europe and Asia offer far more culturally than America does. Bennett says, “I have travelled around the world to Asia and Europe. They show you what they have contributed to the world. The British show you theatre, the Italians show you music and art, the French show you cooking and painting, and the Germans show you science. “The only thing that the United States, which is still a young country, has contributed culturally to the world is jazz – elongated improvisation. It’s tragic.” And Bennett feels that Americans don’t even appreciate the impact of jazz in popular culture. He says, “Fifty years from now people will be bowing to DIZZY GILLESPIE and CHARLIE PARKER, just like impressionist painters like MONET, who were starving in their day. The Americans don’t even know what they have come up with.”

Not so fast, Tony. I know it’s tre chic to consider European culture “superior” to American. And just turning on the TV is good cause for despair. But let’s look at Bennett’s points one at a time:

The U.S. is a young country. Our history goes back barely 500 years, and only about half of that as an independent country. But our roots go back to… Europe. Arguably we’re an extension (and, I’d argue, largely an improvement) of European culture.

Just Jazz? I’m a little amazed that he dismisses it as mere “extended improvisation”. I had the great privilege of attending a Dave Brubeck concert last weekend. Jeff Mock called Time Out “the high point of western civilization”, and I agree. It’s inspiring to find Brubeck and friends still at the top of their game at the age of 86. After ripping my guts out with a painfully beautiful, longing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Brubeck masterfully improvised a piano intro which reached deep into my brain and teasingly prodded my memory. “Wait. Do I recognize that? Yes, I do, I think. It’s…” And just at the precise moment that I (and everybody else) thought “Oh! It’s Take Five!” he broke into that famous 5/4 vamp and brought the house down.

For my money, if that’s “all” American culture has produced, it’s been five centuries well spent.

I cheerfully give the Italians their due for the gift of music as we know it. Europe gave us Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and on and on. But has Tony Bennet never sung Gershwin? Even in explosively creative periods, just how often did towering geniuses appear in Europe? For that matter, what great new cultural contributions have Europe and China made in, say, the last couple of hundred years?

Don’t forget movies. There’s an American contribution. And before you snicker about the lack of “culture” in American movies, and the vaunted superiority of “foreign films”, remember Sturgeon’s Law: “Ninety percent of anything is crap.” Same goes for music. Classics are classics because they float to the top and are worth remembering. Sit down and make a list of classic movies. It won’t be hard. And many will be American.

Tony’s lament about artists being unappreciated in their time is understandable – and ironic. The example he chose? France.

Get a good nap, Tony. Wake up on the right side of bed, and count your blessings.

Time to Bomb Iran?

Mario Loyola thinks the point of no return may have been reached.

The story in essence is that Iran appears to have blocked access by IAEA inspectors to an underground facility where it has been enriching uranium. So far as I know, both the U.S. government and the IAEA are refusing to comment on the story. But if true, this represents a point of no return, which Iran has staged deliberately to catch us off guard while everyone is studying its lengthy answer to the EU3+3 offer. In my piece in the current (August 28) print edition of National Review, I described precisely this eventuality as a point of no return, and argued that the United States should invoke preemption if this ever happened.

Update:

Loyola found out more about the AP story. It was, no surprize to anybody, “accurate but critically imprecise,” meaning that the tipping point has not been reached.

God and Man in the Dorm

If you follow The Corner you know about last week’s “dorm room” conversation (as Jpod called it) about religiosity and conservatism. Today Derb linked to a great summary by an obviously bright agnostic, Razib Khan of Gene Expression.

Mac Donald clearly believes that reason and skepticism, in concert with a healthy dose of empiricism, can serve as the grounding for a conservative & traditionalist worldview. I tend to agree, and, as an empirical fact I have met many individuals who lack a belief in God but are generally conservative. Where Heather stands apart has been her recent vocality in attacking the symbiotic relationship between American conservatism and religion over the last generation. I think Ponnuru is correct that the Republican party isn’t going to lose atheist & agnostic votes over their religiosity, we’re probably less than 5% of the population (most people with “No religion” are theists of some sort). Additionally, last I checked The Almanac of American Politics unbelievers only gave 20-30% of their votes for Republicans anyhow. Republicans worrying about losing the Jewish vote is a good analogy, Jews cast about 3 out of 4 votes in a given election for Democrats, and they are fewer than 1 out of 20 voters. But, there was a reason in the 1950s William F. Buckley expelled the anti-Semities from the conservative movement. In fact, there were two reasons:

1) The conservative movement included many Jews from the beginning. Frank Meyer, the father of fusionism being a prominent early example (Kristol and Podhoretz came on board in the 70s). Even if Jews are a trivial proportion of the “base,” they are numerous in the “braintrust.”

2) Jews are not the only group that rejects anti-Semitism, many American Christians are not particularly tolerant of this attitude. Though Jews did not form much of the base, those who would be turned off by anti-Semitism do (this was before the influx of philo-Semitic evangelicals, the conservative movement in the 1950s was a coalition of Jews, secularists and “High Church” Christians).

Includes updates and some interesting reader comments. I’m going to bookmark that site.

Update:

Derb notes

Razib wishes it known that he is an atheist, not an agnostic. Nice to know that a Madrassa education can do that.

And Heather Mac Donald has a wonderful reply to Novak about what’s what’s right and wrong with religion.

Funny Money

The Hezbos are giving away $12,000 in cash to help Lebanese families rebuild. Isn’t that nice?

Oh… Did I forget to mention that they, Iran and North Korea are all known counterfeiters?

(Follow the link for additional hilarity, like the Hezbo Engineers.)

Still Missing

Buttle’s World joins Michelle Malkin in a blogburst about the kidnapped Fox News crew.

My opinion: No news is news. So is unchecked terrorist thuggery against Western journalists. The disappearance of Centanni and Wiig is at least as newsworthy as–and far more threatening to our national security than–people falling off cruise ships or getting eaten by alligators or attacked by bees.

I can understand that perhaps Fox doesn’t want to raise the profile of their people while in captivity. But after a while silence sounds a lot like defeat.

I, a Muslim

A controversial Czech documentary, filmed in part by someone who wore a hidden camera to a Mosque, is here on LGF.

I wish they hadn’t used the visual technique of inserting video onto a computer screen (you’ll know it when you see it) because, although it looks obvious enough to me, it hurts credibility. And there’s nothing particularly surprising in there. But it’ll reaffirm suspicions for many. “Habib” is a brave man.

Pallywood

A nice little documentary over at Power Line illustrates that faked news footage is hardly a new nor rare thing in “Palestine”.

The Revolt Begins?

Seems that “Tory Homeland Security” is just as addled as our own DHS. Passengers who obviously (and wisely) mistrust the government to protect them decided not to get on a flight with two suspicous-looking middle-eastern passengers. The THS spokesman clucked his tongue:

“This is a victory for terrorists. These people on the flight have been terrorised into behaving irrationally.

“For those unfortunate two men to be victimised because of the colour of their skin is just nonsense.”

He confiscates deoderant from little old white women, and then calls this irrational?

I’m having a bad dream, and I’d really like to wake up now.