Bloodthirsty Liberal

Check out this headline

Israel claims woman hurt in rocket attack

JERUSALEM (CNN) — A woman was injured Saturday when a rocket landed in northern Israel, a spokesman for the Israeli police said.

The Israel Defense Forces fired artillery toward the source of the fire, an army spokesman said, but he could not say from where the rocket originated.

Officials said the rocket landed in the Western Galilee region of northwestern Israel, which borders Lebanon.

The Lebanese army said two rockets were fired from Lebanon toward Israel, but they failed to reach Israeli territory. According to the Lebanese army, the rockets landed east of Naqoura, a coastal town just north of the border with Israel.

Israel claims??? Israel does not have a history of lying about rocket attacks, so there is absolutely no reason to write it that way. The media just drips with bias. That must be what they mean when they talk about “professional ethics“.

Update: They double-suck. They could have published this photo, but chose not to:

Security officials Sat. removing the remains of a Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon that struck northern Israel. (Yaron Kaminsky)

I suppose that is an alleged rocket? Huh? Are you listening CNN?
- Aggie

The other day I quipped (yes, quipped) that President Obama gets good reviews the old-fashioned way: he buys them.

Little did I know:

Brian Tierney is CEO of Philadelphia Media Holdings, which publishes Philadelphia’s Inquirer and Daily News and has missed loan payments since June. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s spokesman says Tierney has had “a number of conversations” with Rendell about receiving state money that “could come from a number of revenue streams.”

The Wall Street Journal designated this “the worst bailout idea so far” and “nuts in eight different ways,” noting that the investors Tierney led in purchasing the two newspapers put up only 20 percent in equity, making them typical of “Americans who borrowed too heavily during the credit mania.” In response to Rendell’s spokesman saying that newspapers are “the lifeblood of democracy,” the Journal said “newspapers aren’t the lifeblood of anything if they are merely an adjunct of the state” and are “dependent on the politicians [they are] supposed to cover.”

In a remarkably maladroit letter to the Journal, Tierney said “the overwhelming majority of our employees” — truck drivers, advertising salespeople, etc. — whose jobs would be saved by government money “have no influence on the editorial content” of the papers. So: Even if the papers’ survival, and therefore the jobs of reporters and editorial writers, would depend on the government’s good will, the papers would remain independent because reporters and editorialists are a minority of the papers’ employees. Good grief.

George Will says “good grief”. I say “holy s**t”.

Perhps you thought the pillars of Democracy would erode slowly, that we could spot—and perhaps repair—the damage before it went too far.

You were wrong.

In one election, we have handed over our hard-won liberties to a populist charlatan. He is guilty of betraying the founding principles of this country—but no more than we.

In fact, however, the erosion has been going on for a long time. The Left (including the media) submerged the Bush presidency in an acid bath for eight years. Clinton’s priapic cavortings weakened the office before that. What does it say about us that George H. W. Bush was our last consensus leader—and he served only one term. Reagan? That was a lifetime ago.

We’ve been on top of the story of the abdication by the press of its objectivity and responsibility. But they used to deny it. Not anymore.

Barack Obama may be violating the Constitution by annexing the US census. He sure as hell has to be violating the Constitution by annexing the US press.

I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful legal relationship:

War crimes charges brought abroad against Israeli soldiers and officers involved in Operation Cast Lead are nothing but “legal terrorism,” Col. Liron Liebman, who heads the military prosecution’s international law department, said Wednesday.

…

There is little chance that war crimes charges abroad will end in conviction, or, for that matter, in acquittal, since procedural issues will end up derailing the allegations before they reach that stage, Liebman told Haaretz. But that doesn’t much matter to those bringing the charges, he said.

“The goal is achieved when the charges are publicized,” Liebman said. “The objective is to cause damage to morale, more than legal damage.”

In Spain, for instance, legal charges are being brought over the Gaza war. Liebman says this is no coincidence: The country was the site of major protests against Israel while the fighting was taking place.

We charge accessories to murder with the crime itself. Why not here? The ICC, ICJ, Ice-T, CiC, JCC, and other courts of inquisition are accessories to racial incitement and genocide. How do they plead?

And if they are guilty of “legal terror”, can we not also accuse (and summarily convict) the BBC, NPR, the Economist, the New York and LA Times, etc. ad nauseum with journalistic terror? Don’t even bother pleading, fellas. You’re going inside.

It’s time Israel fought back in these other realms of terror. They can bleed you just as much.

Oh yes, we must not forget: religious terror

In lifting the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson who has been accused of Holocaust denial last month, the Catholic Church also readmitted a priestly society that openly propagates virulent anti-Semitism, according to a probe by a Belgian Jewish newspaper.

The Roman Catholic Church excommunicated The Society of St. Pius X in 1988 along with Williamson and three other member priests, declaring their consecrations were “unlawful” and “schismatic.”

…

In a research performed after the readmittance, a team of journalists from Joods Actueel, an Antwerp-based Jewish news publication, found what they describe as “a slew of anti-Semitic content” on the society’s Web sites in five languages.

The probe whose results were made public on Thursday, found that the society’s official U.S. Web site described Jews as “the enemy of man, whose secret weapon is the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy,” adding that “heads of Jewry have for centuries conspired methodically and out of an undying hatred against the Catholic name.”

The South African site said that “Jews have come closer and closer to fulfilling their substitute-Messianic drive towards world dominion.” The Irish site asks whether “the Jews are guilty of Deicide,” answering: “We must say yes.”

The site from Germany, a country with strict limitations on anti-Semitic speech, clarifies that “contemporary Jews are for sure guilty of the murder of God, as long as they don’t recognize Christ as God.”

The Belgian site accuses Jews of “still believing they are the chosen people” while “awaiting world domination.” The Austrian site warns that the Jewish organization B’nai Brith is “found everywhere” and “commands the entire world.”

I wouldn’t call the Catholic Church schismatic; I’d call it schizophrenic.

Judea Pearl tries to make sense of his son’s murder, and fails

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?

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.

Think about it.

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.

…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.

…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.

And there you have it. The participation among political figures, university professors and journalists in bringing us this nightmare.

It is all worth reading. All of it. But it is a tough way to begin your day.

- Aggie

The Guardian eulogizes a dead terrorist:

The Guardian, eulogizing a Hamas terrorist commander killed by Israel, branded the fierce supporter of suicide bombings who sent his own son on such a mission as “a man of the street” and “something of a hero.”

…

The obituary lauds Ghayan as “one of Hamas’s top five decision-makers,” and that he had been viewed by many to be more significant than Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. It says Ghayan, primarily associated with the Hamas military wing, was “highly regarded as an Islamic academic.”

…

The final line of the obituary reads: “Nizar Rayan, political leader, born 6 March 1959; died 1 January 2009″.

Israel’s Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Ron Prosor, said he was not surprised by the tone of the obituary.

“This is not the first obituary and it seems it won’t be the last that The Guardian grants to Hamas terrorists.”

Pol Pot, political leader, read Proust in the original and was quite fond of Double-Stuff Oreos.

To borrow from cartoonist Simon Bond, I invite contributions toward 101 Uses for a Dead Terrorist.

To start, a toast rack:

He interviewed his own daughter on camera and pretended she was an ordinary college student

Viewers had no idea.

But that wasn’t a set-up, right? That’s part of The Integrity Of The Profession Of Journalism.

On Friday’s “Hardball,” Chris Matthews interviewed a number of student members of the group Concerned Youth of America.

One of those students — Caroline — is his daughter, a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Did Matthews disclose that fact as he interviewed her?

Not so much.

One tipster tells FishbowlDC that “Matthews, at the asking of his daughter, instructed the producers not to name her.”

Here is what Matthews asked his daughter, and how she answered (bolds are mine):
Story Continues Below Ad ?

(at the 0:35 mark)

Chris Matthews: And what happens after the bailout. (The national debt is) $11 trillion, right?

Caroline Matthews: If you keep on spending like this, our generation, in like 20 to 30 years, the debt will get to like 53 trillion dollars.

(at the 1:00 mark)

Chris Matthews: How come politicians don’t talk about this?

Caroline Mathews (away from camera, causing Chris Matthews and cameraman to hastily move to her): Because people aren’t - because it’s not an attractive issue. People want to say - Politicians worry about being voted for, and you know, the people want taxes to be cut, and they want entitlement programs. And that’s how a politician gets elected. They’re not going to get elected by saying we’re going to have to make sacrifices, which is what we’re going to have to do.

We all know that journalists are fair and balanced and only want to get the voice of the ordinary person out there, right? Because they would never try to influence the debate, right?

Give me a used car salesman any day. They smell better.

- Aggie