Friday, August 23, 2013
"Al-Jazeera America": The very name gives me the heebie-jeebies. What does Al-Jazeera have to do with America?
Everything, if the cheers and happy talk of the American press corps are any measure. Entranced, media critics have greeted the rollout of "AJA" as that of just another news company, not the propaganda arm of monied Qatari despots. But no matter how many American journalists "anchor" Al-Jazeera America's news desks, a 24/7 Muslim Brotherhood channel is now beaming into living rooms across the country. There is no changing the fact that Al-Jazeera's leading personality is the Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
In dispensing Islamic clerical wisdom, Qaradawi has called for the murder of U.S. soldiers and Jews.
Earlier this year on his own popular Al-Jazeera show, Qaradawi also affirmed the Islamic penalty for "apostasy," or leaving Islam: death. Qaradawi, meanwhile, isn't just a big man with the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Jazeera. He is also a prized personage in Qatar. In a public ceremony in June, Qatar's new emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, "planted a kiss on Al Qaradawi's head and then his shoulder," Gulf News reported.
But you could have fooled the U.S. press corps. The headlines this week read like Al-Jazeera press releases: "Al Jazeera America Promises a More Sober Look at the News" (New York Times); "Al Jazeera Promises Meatier News" (Associated Press). "To be sure, the network has a handsome look," The Washington Post critiqued.
NPR is about as close as we get to hard-hitting on the network's launch, which is already a bad sign.
"Critics say Al-Jazeera will have trouble shaking its image in the U.S. at least, as a news source with terrorist ties," Celeste Headlee said by way of introducing Brian Stelter, the media reporter for The New York Times. Was she talking about Al-Jazeera's terrorist tilt -- or maybe the 2008 on-air birthday party Al-Jazeera threw for Palestinian terrorist Samir Kuntar, who in 1979 killed four Israelis, including a 4-year-old girl whose head he bashed against a rock until she was dead?
We don't know. "Terrorist ties" don't come up again.
"This is going to be a straightforward, down the middle, just-the-facts-ma'am style of television news," Stelter explained. Of course, if terrorism didn't come up in the NPR interview, the "diversity" of the on-air talent did. Stelter said, "One of the (Al-Jazeera America) primetime anchors, Joie Chen, said to me when I interviewed her last week, 'I would challenge you to find any television news operation that's more diverse than we are.'"
The perfect metaphor for all of the skin-deep analysis.
This latest installment in the long fall of American journalism began last year when Al Gore sold his Current TV network for $500 million to Al-Jazeera -- instead of to Glenn Beck. The price tag, of course, was even higher than the $400 million the last emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani (father of the Qaradawi-kissing new emir) pledged to Hamas, also last year. But who's counting -- at least in the media?
Beneath any veneer of luxury, Qatar is a brutal dictatorship where a poet who criticized the emir was sentenced to life in prison. Al-Jazeera's coverage of the sentencing, by the way, was practically non-existent. (The poet's sentence was later commuted to 15 years.) Naturally, emirate-owned media protect the emirate. Come to think of it, it's against Qatari law to criticize the emirate or Islam.
Meanwhile, it is a 21st-century fact that tiny Qatar spends large sums of money to combat its image problem in the rest of the world. It spends even larger sums on war to shape the world itself. Al-Jazeera America and Hamas, in other words, are only part of the picture.
Other attempts to buy influence would include donations to the Clinton Foundation (between $1 and $5 million, as of 2008) and the Brookings Institution (between $2.5 and $5 million in 2012 alone).
War is far more expensive.
In Libya and in Syria, we have seen influxes of Qatari cash adding up to billions of dollars to bankroll not "seasoned" American anchors but al-Qaida-linked jihadists. In Egypt, Qatar has backed Muslim Brother Mohammed Morsi from the start. Such interventionist advocacy, of course, meshes perfectly with President Obama's support for these same "Arab Spring" movements -- part of the reason Americans don't seem to know which end is up anymore.
I'm sure Al-Jazeera America will be happy to explain.
Busted. Stone-cold busted. Just as I suspected, "progressive" pranksters at Oberlin College have been definitively unmasked as the perpetrators of phony campus "hate crimes" that scored international headlines in March. The blabbermouth academic administrators who helped fuel the hysteria are now running for cover.
The Associated Press, The New York Times, MSNBC, Yahoo News and the Huffington Post were among the media outlets that trumpeted the story of supposed racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism run amok at my alma mater. Throughout the winter, anti-black and anti-gay graffiti, swastikas, and a shadowy figure in a "KKK hood" surfaced on the tiny campus outside Cleveland, Ohio. Black Entertainment Television News decried the hate outbreaks and "KKK sighting."
Because of my firsthand knowledge of Oberlin's long history of self-manufactured hate-crime incidents, the fake-hate-crime alarm bells went off immediately for me when I read the reports. Back in the 1990s, race-obsessed nutballs at Oberlin College cooked up a horrid hate-crime hoax. Asian-American students claimed that a phantom racist had spray-painted anti-Asian racial epithets on a campus landmark rock. It turned out that it was a warped Asian-American student who perpetrated the dirty deed.
Student newspapers were filled with complaints about imaginary racism. One Asian-American student accused a library worker of racism after the poor staffer asked the grievance-mongering student to lower the blinds where she was studying. A black student accused an ice-cream shop owner of racism after he told the student she was not allowed to sit at an outside table because she hadn't purchased any items from his store.
My suspicions about the latest "hate" crime were bolstered by police statements that the "KKK hood"-wearing menace was actually a female student wrapped in a blanket. Hollywood darling and Oberlin alumnus Lena Dunham was undaunted, however, in ginning up emotional calls for Obie solidarity on Twitter, which the AP dutifully reported as "news." My warnings and reports on previous Obie hoaxes, alas, were not deemed AP-newsworthy.
The orgy of self-flagellation swelled. Liberal grievance-mongers applauded the administration's decision to shut down classes. Faculty, students and opportunists took to the airwaves and the Internet to bemoan "white privilege," institutional bigotry, lack of diversity, yada, yada, yada.
And now, the rest of the story. According to police reports published by Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller News Foundation this week, two students had 'fessed up to most of the incidents (and fellow students suspect they are responsible for all of them). The Oberlin Police Department identified the hoaxers as Dylan Bleier (a student worker bee for President Obama's Organizing for Action and a member of the Oberlin College Democrats) and Matthew Alden. Bleier told police the pair posted inflammatory signs and a Nazi flag around campus to "joke" and "troll" their peers.
Investigators "caught them red-handed" trying to circulate anti-Muslim fliers, and a search of Bleier's email confirmed he had used a fake account to harass a female student. Cops told Oberlin President Marvin Krislov, but he failed to pursue any criminal action. The two students were removed from campus before the bogus "KKK" brouhaha and news-making shutdown.
Krislov not only remained silent about the two pranksters, but he also stoked the fires of political correctness and helped fuel the false notion that real bigotry had pervaded the campus. The spring edition of the Oberlin College alumni magazine opened with a self-congratulatory essay from Krislov titled "A Fitting Response."
After perversely bragging about the "national and international news" headlines on the "bias incidents (that) disrupted our campus community," Krislov clucked that "similar things have occurred at other colleges." Which, of course, is inadvertently true. As I've reported for 20 years, American college campuses are the most fertile grounds for fake hate.
Krislov then praised "students, faculty, staff, alumni and fellow Oberlin residents" who "turned hate into an opportunity to educate." Of course, "hate" had nothing to do with it. And the police reports suggest that Krislov knew it. The rash of "intolerance" that littered the Oberlin campus was a symptom of juvenile delinquency and perverse self-delusion. Instead of examining their guilt in coddling hate-crime hoaxers, Krislov giddily promoted new efforts "strengthening the emphasis on diversity."
There are other adults who deserve to be called out. As Cornell law professor and blogger William Jacobson, who has pressed the administration for months about the cover-up, notes: "Oberlin continues the wall of silence which delayed for months disclosure of the hoax. It's time for Oberlin to reveal who knew what, and when, particularly as to the oversight exercised by the Board of Trustees."
Sad to say, this is the sorry state of liberal arts colleges in America today: Extreme identity politics, multiculturalism and pedagogical self-indulgence are creating a generation of race trolls enabled by tenured cultural Marxist punks raking in beaucoup bucks. The bursting of the higher-ed bubble can't come fast enough.
Outgoing FBI chief warns of U.S.-based jihadis bringing jihad home from Syria
Every threat he discusses in this article emanates from Islamic jihad, the one threat he cannot and will not name. "Outgoing FBI Director Warns of Americans Traveling to Syria and Bringing Terrorist Tactics Home," by Pierre Thomas, Jack Cloherty and Mike Levine for ABC News, August 22 (thanks to Kenneth):
The outgoing director of the FBI gave a sobering assessment Thursday of the current threats facing the U.S. homeland: A biological weapon of mass destruction detonated inside the country and a plane downed in mid-flight are viable scenarios. Americans now traveling to war-torn Syria could bring terrorist tactics home with them.Hmmm, and what is likely to be the motivating ideology behind all three of those? That is not something we are allowed to investigate or discuss, on pain of charges of "hatred" and "bigotry."
Terrorism has "changed so much since the days after Sept. 11th," director Robert Mueller said in a rare interview with ABC News' Pierre Thomas.
In particular, Mueller said, the threat emanating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan has now "migrated" to places like Yemen, Libya, Egypt and Syria. In Syria, a near-civil war has reportedly killed more than 1,000 people and is drawing fighters from around the world, including the United States.
"[When] you have individuals traveling to those venues, you are concerned [first] about the associations they will make, and secondly about the expertise they will develop and whether or not they will utilize those associations, utilize that expertise, to undertake an attack upon the homeland," Mueller said. "So, yes, we are concerned about that, and, yes, we are monitoring it."
Places like Syria may end up harboring "radical extremists who want to do harm" to the United States, according to Mueller.
In fact, the FBI has increasingly been chasing what turned out to be dubious threat streams tied to the Al Nusrah Front in Syria, according to counterterrorism officials. Just weeks ago, the FBI was notified of intelligence indicating that the Al Nusrah Front would be launching an attack in the nation's capital during August, but the intelligence and the threat were ultimately deemed to lack credibility.
"The possibility of a plane being taken down ... tends to keep us awake at night."
Next month, Mueller is leaving the FBI after 12 years at its helm. James Comey, a former senior official in the Justice Department, will replace him. Mueller was on the job for about a week when the Sept. 11 hijackers changed the country – and the FBI – forever.
It's "the possibility of a plane being taken down, and the possibility of a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist or terrorist group who are not afraid to launch it" that "tends to keep us awake at night," Mueller recounted.
He said days like Sept. 11, 2001, and those with news such as the 2009 Ft. Hood attack, the Benghazi attack last year, and the Boston Marathon bombing in April are some of the most difficult for the FBI.
"Anyone who looked and saw those pictures was horrified at the killing and the devastation," Mueller said of the Boston Marathon bombing, which killed three, including an 8-year-old boy, and injured more than 260 others.
Still, Mueller said "the fact of the matter is" there will be cases in the future like that of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, cases in which the U.S. government has received some negative information about a possible terrorist, but can't find enough to do anything about it within the letter of the law.
"That is going to happen," Mueller emphasized....Of course it is, because the FBI is still forbidden to study anything about jihad, and so its ability correctly to evaluate intelligence about jihadists will only continue to atrophy.
Boy, Did I Get That One Wrong
“The first thing I did after I read the article … checked my calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day,” said Average _Joe56. “Imagine my surprise when it wasn’t.”
GQ4U had the same reaction: “An anti-liberty article in Personal Liberty Digest? Am I on Candid Camera?”
TheOriginalDaveH, one of our most frequent posters, asked, “What? Did I wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Is Chip really arguing against the 4th Amendment?”
GiveMeLiberty,OrGiveMe Death (don’t you love his pen name?) was more emphatic: “Chip, have you lost your ever-loving MIND????? Seriously, you claim to be a conservative and you think stop-and-frisk is okay????? What the heck, dude, that is just wrong.”
Karolyn, another frequent correspondent, summed up her disappointment in just 10 words: “So now Chip is an advocate for the police state!”
A lot of folks were less kind than these examples. The cause of their ire was my defense of the stop-and-frisk program by the cops in New York City and my criticism of a Federal judge who found much of it unConstitutional.
You know what? I was wrong. My readers, bless their libertarian sentiments and uncompromising principles, are right.
I got blinded by two things. The first was the distorted logic the judge in this case exhibited. The second was the undisputed fact that major crime in New York City has plummeted.
Here’s one example of the kind of tortured thinking U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin showed in her ruling. She said that the police were justified in stopping and questioning David Floyd, the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit. And it was even okay when they searched the pockets of his outer garments.
But they went too far, she ruled, when they also frisked his pants pockets. Searching his jacket was okay, but not his pants? Give me a break.
So let’s go back to the basics: the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (Yes, in answer to one reader’s rhetorical question, I have heard of them. In fact, I keep a well-thumbed copy of both in my top desk drawer.)
Here’s what the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.That’s as clear as our Founding Fathers could make it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t clear enough to keep the courts from permitting some incredible abuses. So today, 80-year-old grandmothers can be groped at an airport in the name of security. The NSA can collect information on the emails and phone calls of virtually every American in the name of combating terrorism. And the police can stop, question and frisk anyone they want in the name of fighting crime. All they need to do is claim to have reasonable grounds for their suspicions. They don’t even have to believe that a crime has been permitted by the suspect – merely that some sort of criminal behavior may be going to take place.
All of this is perfectly okay with the Federal courts, which have repeatedly sided with the authorities in permitting stop-and-frisk programs. Even Judge Scheindlin, whose ruling led to last Friday’s column, found the basic premise of stop-and-frisk to be acceptable.
But the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have ruled in favor of many things that we Constitutionalists know are flat-out wrong. For most of the past century, the Federal government has acted as though the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution simply don’t exist. Time after time, the Supreme Court has supported massive expansion of Federal programs and power, no matter how much they have to twist and distort the Constitution to allow it.
And let’s not even get into the 2nd Amendment, which promises all of us that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” Of course it is infringed all of the time. And nowhere are there more restrictions on our Constitutional right to bear arms than in New York City.
The most recent example of the Supreme Court’s tortuous logic in justifying yet another expansion of Federal power is when Chief Justice John Roberts said that the abomination known as Obamacare is Constitutional because it is a tax. So what if President Barack Obama and it supporters in Congress repeatedly denied that this was the case?
What about the claim that stop-and-frisk helps reduce crime? That’s the argument favored by its supporters, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg. (As one critic pointed out, “The first clue is that if you agree with Bloomberg on ANYTHING, you must immediately check yourself. The next thing you know, you’ll be agreeing with [Jesse] Jackson and [Al] Sharpton.” Ain’t gonna happen, medbob.)
Best-selling author Ann Coulter is one of many conservative commentators who support stop-and-frisk programs. In her syndicated column, “Stop and Frisk Policies Are Saving Lives,” she said that murders in the Big Apple were averaging about 2,000 a year when Mayor Rudy Giuliani took office in 1994. There were 714 – a decline of almost two-thirds – by the time he left office seven years later. And the number of murders has continued to fall, dropping to 419 murders last year.
That’s a big improvement. So it should come as no surprise that many of the citizens of New York City approve of stop-and-frisk. They think it makes them safer. And it probably does – at least from hoodlums and street criminals.
But remember what Benjamin Franklin, that very wise Founding Father, said. “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
How many Americans are willing to exchange some essential liberty for a little temporary safety? Or to ask it another way, how many will exchange much of their independence for security? I’m afraid the answer is a whole bunch of them.
But not among the readers of Personal Liberty Digest™. You are a proud, feisty and independent crowd, and I’m grateful for it… and for you.
So thank you, DavidForward, for saying, “It takes an honest man (or woman) to admit they may have made a mistake and reevaluate their position. Congratulations on proving you are such [an] individual! Personal integrity and common sense are sorely missed in our devolving police state; keep up the good work, honest thoughts, and evaluations.”
Thanks, too, to TheOriginalDave, who wrote, “Wow. I’m impressed. Not many people will own up to their errors. Thanks, Chip.”
And to frequent commentator Vicki, who wrote, “Thank you, Chip. We were wondering ‘cause you have always been a staunch supporter of individual liberty for all.”
I still am and always will be, Vicki. But I’ve got to admit, I blew it this time. Thanks to everyone who made sure I didn’t get away with it.
Next week we’ll be back taking aim at the enemies of liberty. I hope you’ll join us.
Until then, keep some powder dry.
Op-ed:
Senseless black on white crime...and NO outrage from 'supposed' black leaders
By: Diane Sori
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Because they were bored…22-year-old Chris Lane, here in the US from Australia on a baseball scholarship, was visiting his girlfriend in Oklahoma. Last Friday, out on a jog in the wee hours of the morning and minding his own business, Lane was shot dead from behind by two black teenagers (the third teen was an accessory to murder after the fact) for NO other reason than they were bored…bored to the point where killing an innocent white man became a thrill with NO remorse felt all.
In Marietta, GA, sweet precious little 13-month-old Antonio West was
being pushed by his mom in a stroller when she was approached by two
black youths. “Give me your money or I’m going to kill you and I’m going
to shoot your baby and kill your baby,” said De’Marquise Elkins, and he
did just that…shooting this innocent baby right between the eyes as his
mom watched on in horror … powerless to intervene because this piece of
human garbage had dropped her to the ground with bullets to her legs.Last month, walking home through a Milwaukee park, Christopher Simpson was savagely beaten just about to the point of unconsciousness by a group of young black men outraged over the recently handed down NOT guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. Shouting, “This is for Trayvon Martin,” according to those who witnessed the attack, these angry young black men didn’t stop beating Simpson until others came to his aid.
All white victims…all black perpetrators…and if Barack HUSSEIN Obama
had a son would he look like any of these young black men or is that
comparison reserved only for when it’s a black youth killed in
self-defense by a white man.And these are just three recent examples of many recent black on white crimes that the media tries to keep silent…that our president, the man who stirred up all the racial tensions in the Zimmerman case, chooses to completely ignore…and that the infamous race-baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton either remain silent on or just give passing lip service to these black on white crimes.
“This senseless violence is frowned upon and the justice system must
prevail,” Jesse Jackson said after the murder of Chris Lane. ‘Senseless
violence is frowned upon’…’the justice system must prevail’…words said
with NO passion…NO outrage…NO feeling whatsoever…just an obligatory
statement made for his photo-op de jour after a number of conservative
commentators questioned why black leaders like himself…leaders who were
so ‘out there’ in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting were
silent on the truth about Lane’s murder.Remember Jackson’s race baiting written statement in the Chicago Sun-Times in regards to the Trayvon Martin shooting, “We need a national investigation of the racial context that led to Trayvon Martin’s slaying,” Jackson wrote. This hypocritical man wants a national investigation into the self-defense killing of a teen found with HCP in his system…a killing that had NOTHING to do with race…but he just ‘frowns upon’ the cold-blooded admitted thrill killing of white Chris Lane.
And so after his hurriedly issued ‘frown upon’ statement…a statement which basically excuses the murder of Chris Lane, Jackson
can now get back to his profitable ‘hate whitey’ business, for in his
eyes justice is only served when whites are held accountable for the
deaths of young (guilty) black men, but when young black men get
restless it seems whites are fair game.And what can I say about Al Sharpton…the mouth that spews out more words of hate and contention then most of the other white-haters combined…a man who uses race as his calling card to stir up violence where none existed before…a rich black man feeding off the backs of poor blacks who are too blind to see that they’re being used for his own personal gain…NOT a word from this man about Chris Lane, Antonio West, or Christopher Simpson for he’s probably hard at work thinking of a way to at least twist Lane’s death into being of his own doing, after all the two black teenagers were just being boys…and boys will be boys you know (and I say that with all sarcasm intended).
But make NO mistake about it for if Chris Lane, Antonio West, and
Christopher Simpson had been black and their accused had been white, Al
Sharpton would be marching, protesting, and demanding that justice be
served…and selling Tee-shirts, coffee mugs, and photos along the way.And if truth be told it’s these very ‘supposed’ black leaders and others of their ilk who are the ones responsible for the failures of some black youth, for these men preach hate and self-perceived injustices as they feed upon the myth that white Americans owe black Americans for injustices done long before anyone alive today was even born. These men have with malice used that myth to divide America into ‘them’ and ‘us’…into black and white…painting black youths as victims…victims that feel they have the right to lash out at those they’ve been taught to see as the reason for their failures.
These ‘supposed’ black leaders absolutely refuse to even entertain the possibility that the culture of black youth itself…a culture built upon the assumption that it’s acceptable if NOT outright required to be a thug…along with attitudes and values built NOT upon self-responsibility but upon self-destructiveness, which in and of itself begets failure and might be why so many young black men turn to violence, especially violence against whites, for they see violence as the only way of achieving self-importance.
And these ‘supposed’ black leaders continue to feed into this destructiveness for they have cultivated a culture where the rule of law does NOT apply to them and’ killing for the thrill of it because they were bored’ is made excuses for.
The George Zimmerman trial was a media circus…the killers of Chris Lane, Antonio West, Christopher Simpson, and the many other whites killed by angry young black men will most likely be buried deep within the newspapers and NOT reported on at all by the Obama controlled media.
How sad for the victims families and how sad for us all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)