This has been going on for some time. Public, intimidating hangings of those the Islamic government deem "dangerous." Here, here, here, here, and this 16 year old here and now this. A VIDEO of a recent hanging. And the left can't stop defending these savages and inviting them to speak at our universities and college campuses. This is evil. Plain and simple. Hanging caught on video reveals Iran's crackdown on dissidents | Permalink | Comments (0)
We are in a war to the death – craven concessions won't win it (Must Read)
Saudi Textbooks Still Teach Hate, Christians and Jews are apes and pigs
For an exhustive critique of Islam and Mohammad go to http://www.prophetofdoom.net
I have found this site to be the most complete and rational review of Mohammad and the origin of his religion and its impact today. The complete book in PDF and HTML formats(The Prophet of Doom) and MP3 audiobooks is available at this site. I've listened to all the MP3 files and have purchased the hard cover book which is huge.
The "Burning of the Six" story may be disinformation or fraud:
Link to the backup site: http://floppingaces2.blogspot.com/
Capt. Jamil Hussein Gets Around - UPDATED
UPDATE - ASSOCIATED PRESS SOURCE EXPOSED AS FRAUD
More at Flopping Aces this morning: "Centcom has confirmed this Capt. Jamil Hussein is NOT a Police Officer nor is he employed by the Ministry of Interior:
More here. (scroll down) Via Flopping Aces; Posted by Kate at 12:12 AM | Comments (20)
The media fog of war
One of the top stories over the Thanksgiving holiday from the Associated (with terrorists) Press reported on six Sunni civilians burned alive as they left Friday worship services. The shocking dispatch received massive, global coverage:
(Hat tip: Steve H.)
The conflict between Sunnis and Shias is 1,400 years old. But did the killings the AP alleges took place really happen? Look, there's no denying blood is flowing in Iraq. But how much and whose and at whose hand? Self-appointed "spokesmen" in Iraq are skilled in the art of media manipulation. They--like many in the American media--have a vested interest in exaggerating the violence as much as possible.
Curt at Flopping Aces has one of two must-read posts on the unreliability of MSM war coverage relying on foreign stringers in Iraq. The claim of the burned-alive Sunnis comes from a single source, one Capt. Jamil Hussein. Be sure to read the official military press release, which notes that an Army patrol was "unable to confirm media reports that six Sunni civilians were allegedly dragged out of Friday prayers and burned to death. Neither Baghdad police nor Coalition forces have reports of any such incident."
Also take note of an intriguing e-mail Curt received from someone identified as a CENTCOM staffer in response to his questions about Hussein:
Unfortunately, we do not have a direct contact into the MOI (Ministry of Interior) so we cannot provide you with that. We have to work through a CF organization called the CPATT (Coalition Police Assistance Training Team), an MNFI organization that seems to be made up of retired police officers.Since September we have been engaging CPATT to verify the legitimacy and employment status of various MOI/IP spokesmen. Our contact at CPATT has been quite helpful, however, I know helping us is not his full-time job. Interestly, MOI has apparently issued an edict that no one below the level of Chief can speak to the media. We have reminded AP of this but without proof that these spokesman are not employees, they have pretty much ignored us. (If you were a reporter, would who give up a primo source because of rank? Probably not.)
I personally engaged CPATT about Capt. Jamil Hussein’s legitimacy within an hour of seeing the burning alive story — which we cannot verify from any source, but how do you prove a negative.
The staffer goes on to list a number of shady Ministry of Interior "spokesmen" quoted by the AP and other press whom the military is tracking and trying to verify.
Writes Curt: "Every name mentioned by Centcom has been quoted by the MSM for their stories. It’s dishonest reporting basically. They are relying on secondhand and sometimes thirdhand information to state a fact."
It's a habit that has produced decades of Theater of Jihad productions, from Pallywood to Fauxtography.
Which leads me to the second must-read post published over the Thanksgiving holidays from Patterico on a separate but related news item involving the Los Angeles Times and its possible reliance on unconfirmed enemy propaganda from an Iraqi stringer with ties to the insurgency. First, read this blog post at An Oar in the Water by Brian Duffy, who received an e-mail from a soldier disputing the LA Times' Nov. 15 claim of an "airstrike in the restive town of Ramadi killed at least 30 people, including women and children."
Now, read through Patterico's thorough, methodical investigation. The key points:
* The soldier claimed that there were no airstrikes in Ramadi that day, while the L.A. Times stringer claimed there had been an airstrike. When I checked into it, the weight of the evidence indicated that the soldier was right and the L.A. Times was wrong.
The military flatly denies that there was an airstrike — a denial that the L.A. Times has failed to report to this day. Several other media reports state that civilians died from small-arms fire and tank fire, and not an airstrike.
* The soldier claimed that only insurgents were killed in the fighting, while the L.A. Times claimed that women and children were killed. Once again, the soldier’s claims appeared to be true, and the L.A. Times claim false.
Other than the L.A. Times report, there is no evidence that women or children were killed in the attack. The available evidence, including other media reports and information through a contact at a Ramadi hospital, indicates that the bodies brought into a Ramadi hospital were all adult males. This fact is suggestive of the possibility that those killed were insurgents, not innocent civilians.
* The soldier claimed: “No houses were destroyed and only one courtyard wall was damaged”; by contrast, the L.A. Times stringer claimed that “at least 15 homes were pulverized by aerial bombardment.” There are no media reports with reliable firsthand accounts of pulverized homes.
Indeed, I found only one story (published by Reuters) in which a journalist claims to have been on the scene to report observations of the damage firsthand, and he said: “One small structure was burnt out in that street.” Once again, the objective evidence seemed to favor the claims of the soldier.
I also learned that one of the doctors quoted in the L.A. Times story has been quoted in other stories over the years — always telling the media that the U.S. killed women, children, and innocent civilians. Apparently, this doctor has never seen a terrorist or insurgent killed by U.S. forces — or if he has, the media isn’t interested.
I learned one fact that didn’t gibe cleanly with the soldier’s account: most news reports, and my own independent investigation, tended to corroborate the allegation that 30+ people died in Ramadi that night. However, according to all accounts (excepting that provided by the “Times correspondent in Ramadi”), those killed were adult males, killed by fire from tanks — not women and children killed in an airstrike. The fact that 30+ people died, if true, does not necessarily demonstrate the soldier’s account is false. Rather, it suggests that he may have been unaware of the full extent of the carnage caused by the shelling from the tanks.
In the end, I was unable to determine whether the e-mailing soldier was correct when he claimed that the L.A. Times is relying on propaganda supplied by a stringer with ties to insurgents.
However, I can say this: the journalists at the L.A. Times 1) have utterly failed to report the full extent of the military’s side of the story; 2) very likely got some basic facts about the incident wrong; and 3) have done an extremely poor job of explaining the possible limitations on their knowledge — what I like to call “telling the reader what you don’t know as well as what you do know.”
In addition, after talking with numerous sources who are knowledgeable about Iraq, I came away depressed about the poor quality of information we are getting out of that country. Embedded writers and bloggers like Bill Roggio, Michael Yon, Michael Fumento, and Bill Ardolino will continue to be absolutely critical to understanding what is going on in Iraq, and I encourage you to support embedded bloggers as much as possible.
Milbloggers are weighing in on the Times' flawed story here and here. See-Dubya ties the Times and AP stories together:
In both stories, the worst scenario is that the Western press is negligently or carelessly (I'm not ready to believe knowingly) passing along terrorist propaganda disguised as news. But even the best case scenario in each one involves some notable journalistic malfeasance. With Patterico, the LA Times story quite clearly refused to include CENTCOM's denial that the Ramadi airstrike ever happened. At FA, an e-mail from a CENTCOM media guy explains that the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior has recently cracked down on unofficial spokesmen within the national police, and that no one below the rank of Chief may speak with the media.
I have contacted the Associated Press for a response to Curt's post and to the CENTCOM staffer's e-mails. I'll update with any response.
What sayeth the LA Times? Contact the reader rep here.
While bloggers and a few mainstream journalists questioning sloppy war coverage (see Neil Munro's devastating piece in the National Journal) continue to try and hold the MSM accountable, what are media watchdogs whose job it is to police the industry doing?
Churning out pabulum like this, defending the use of dubious Iraqi stringers with terrorist ties.
Journalists in the legacy press are too busy trying to write the Bush administration's obituary to notice that they are writing their own.
MSM credibility, R.I.P.
Olmert Offers Appeasement, Palestinians Attack
Maybe there’s a master plan at work behind the scenes. That’s possible. But on the surface, this looks like a total collapse of will: Olmert says ready to free Palestinian prisoners. link: 133 comments There is an excellent synopsis of the situation at IRIS Blog: http://www.iris.org.il/blog/archives/2130-Olmert-Offers-Large-Territories-Based-on-Success-of-Cease-Fire.html
"When Barak was Prime Minister, I didn't think we could do any worse. I was wrong."
We stand with Israel, and this post of Carl's bears repeating for anyone who missed it.
I am a Republican, but am fed up with Rice and Co., and am upset with President Bush...
Bawer: Cat Stevens' Grim Message
Bruce Bawer has an article in the New York Sun on ASCAP’s Songwriter of the Year, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf “Death to Salman Rushdie” Islam: Sending a Grim Message. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)
Perhaps the barring of Yusuf from America and his expulsion from Israel were based on misunderstandings; perhaps he was misquoted on Mr. Rushdie, and perhaps the Jawa Report is mistaken. But Yusuf’s own statements on his own Web site are not so easily dismissed. On that Web site he claims that he “never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini,” even though he feels that Mr. Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” “destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis.” But then he adds the following: “When asked about my opinion regarding blasphemy, I could not tell a lie and confirmed that — like both the Torah and the Gospel — the Qur’an considers it, without repentance, as a capital offense. The Bible is full of similar harsh laws if you’re looking for them. However, the application of such Biblical and Qur’anic injunctions is not to be outside of due process of law, in a place or land where such law is accepted and applied by the society as a whole.” What does this mean? It means this: Yusuf is not against the idea of Mr. Rushdie being executed for writing a book. He is simply acknowledging that in Britain and other Western countries, the proper Islamic punishments do not apply. Yet.
What about women’s rights — about burkas and such? Yusuf writes on his Web site that his wife and four daughters all wear clothes “which modestly cover their God-given beauty.” He insists that “a woman’s beauty and form” should not be viewed by “males who are not closely related.” This view places him squarely in the mainstream of patriarchal Islamism, for whose adherents the covering of women is central to the theological principle that a family’s honor is founded in its women’s “modesty.”
And what about free speech? Yusuf supports an Islam that “wisely prohibits the vilification of what people hold sacred, in order that people do not vilify or mock God the Almighty.” In other words, he champions the same kind of Shariah-based censorship that obtains in Saudi Arabia and Iran and that was a way of life in Taliban-run Afghanistan. This is, in short, a man who opposes freedom of speech and women’s equality — a man who would have cheered the execution of Salman Rushdie. The decision to invite him to perform at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert — which is supposed to be a celebration of civilization’s highest values — sends a grim message about the values the Norwegian Nobel Committee exalts above all others.
For the new album, Atlantic Records was canny enough to remove the word “Islam” from his name; he’s simply Yusuf. And you’ll have to read pretty far down into the reviews to find anyone who knows—or cares—about his radical views.
09:55 AM PST | link: 101 comments
I don't think Westerners should waste hundreds of billions of dollars on exporting democracy to an Islamic country where it can never flourish, while Muslims are destroying democrcay in the West, no. As the examples of Iraq and "Palestine" are showing us, democracy has to be about more than just one man, one vote.
Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner strongly disagrees with a plea for a ban on parties seeking to launch Islamic law in the Netherlands. "For me it is clear: if two-thirds of the Dutch population should want to introduce the sharia tomorrow, then the possibility should exist."
This dilemma can be solved by stating the following: Our goal is not democracy in itself, meaning elections and one man one vote, but freedom of conscience and speech, respect for property rights and minorities, the right to bear arms and self-defense, equality before the law and the rule of law - and by that I mean secular law – in addition to such principles as formal constraints on the power of the rulers and the consent of the people. Free elections may be a means of achieving this end, but it is not the end in itself. We shouldn't confuse the tools with the primary goal.
Two central concepts in sharia are the notions of "blasphemy" and "apostasy," both incurring the death penalty. These laws are incompatible with the ancient Western ideas of freedom of conscience and of speech. Thus, sharia is anathema to the goals of democracy. Sharia is also hostile to equality before the law...
#47 find
"Don't tread on our abortion-on-demand and same-sex marriage platforms, and we don't give a flip what you do to your people. It's all about us".
As I have repeatedly screamed for anyone to hear - Radical Feminism WAS NEVER ABOUT WOMEN ! It is about establishing GENDER-BASED SOCIALISM!
Not at all about protecting or supporting women in their real lives. I was a member of NOW during the beginnings of the feminist movement. It is just another front for all manners of communism, socialism and all sorts of evil. It disguises itself in high-minded rhetoric but it is the same old crapola. Believe me.
I don't know where you got your quoted text from, but it is dead on, as was your comment.
Our Founding Fathers were under no illusions about democracy. They knew that it would lead to ruin. That's why they created a constitutional republic, NOT a "democracy."
In a pure democracy, nothing prevents the majority from confiscating the property of the minority. Nothing keeps the majority from denying the rights of the minority. Hell, there is absolutely nothing to prevent the majority from exterminating the minority.
The Founders knew that like the back of their hands. They wanted nothing to do with "democracy".
Pure democracy will lead inevitably to socialism.
It just drives me stark raving crazy when I hear American politicians from both parties prattle on about "democracy" as if it were the be-all and end-all of everything.
There used to be qualifications for voting. At first one had to own land in order to vote. There have also been literacy tests and poll taxes. These helped to winnow out people who would vote frivolously.
But, alas, in American history, these methods were often abused to prevent black people from voting. That was wrong. But the solutions were entirely wrong-headed.
The property-owning requirement: That discriminated against black people because black people weren't allowed to own property. Solution: Allow black people to own property. NOT throw out the property-owning requirement for voters.
Literacy tests: That discriminated against black people because it used to be illegal to educate black people. Solution: Get rid of those laws and allow the education of black people. NOT throw out literacy requirements for voters.
Poll taxes: There was nothing wrong with them. They were small fees to be paid when voting. They helped discourage people voting for frivolous reasons. As long as they were applied equally to everybody, there was no reason to get rid of them.
I don't want everybody voting. I don't want somebody with an 80 IQ cancelling out my vote. I don't want someone who thinks they have a right to the fruits of my labor voting for politicians who will confiscate my earnings to redistribute to them.
Pure democracy will lead inevitably to socialism.
For those who ask, "where are the feminists," author and feminist Phyllis Chessler speaks on this subject quite a bit. She is a fascinating woman and has a website at [Link: www.phyllis-chesler.com...]
The American feminists are too busy securing free daycare for the kids they decided not to kill. See, subsidized daycare for the spoiled American career woman is the big human rights issue of our day. What the "brown women" CHOOSE to do in their own societies is none of our business, you see.