Little Green Footballs has a post about the Palestinians using abandoned and now destroyed synagogues as rocket launch sites for strikes against Israel. The money quote is this paragraph concerning a spokeman for the “Popular Resistance Committees” —
Mr. Abir blamed the Jewish state for the desecration of the Gaza synagogues by Palestinian Arabs, claiming the decision to leave the structures intact was part of an Israeli conspiracy. Israel “left the synagogues behind so the world would see the Palestinians destroying them,� Mr. Abir said.
Beyond all the obvious insanity, is not Abir effectively stating that the Palestinians are so stupid that they would walk right in to this Israeli trap, despite its obviousness? I would say that when your best excuse is “we’re violent and stupid”, you might want to rethink a bit.
I do believe that the crucifixion was a Jewish conspiracy though. It had something to do with getting all the dumb Jews to convert to Christianity I think.
— Shmuel
Two Florida teenagers, Jeremy and Amber, ages 17 and 16 respectively, boyfriend and girlfriend — snapped digital photos of themselves engaged in sexual activity. They were prosecuted under state child porn laws, and convicted. . . . In Florida, Amber and Jeremy did not break the law by having sexual relations — even though they’re both teens — but the courts decided they were criminals for having documented it digitally.
If you click through the links you can find excerpts from the judicial opinions, which would be hilarious if the consequences weren’t so dire. The pinnacle is the argument that the convictions are necessary because there was a risk that the pictures might have been released and caused “Jeremy” and “Amber” problems later in life (unlike, say, a felony conviction for child pornography). Another comment that was very astute was the these two were tried as adults for pictures of themselves as children. Isn’t there some way we could convince the law enforcement and prosecutors who spent time on this to going after actual child pornographers?
The Wilson Gambit, or how a small cadre of fanatics launched a major propaganda effort via a complacent and frequently openly hostile Old Media. The article presents a strong case that Fitzgerald had as his goal not the investigation of the “leak” about Valerie Plame, but to indict as many members of the Bush Administration as possible.
“One thing Sheikh Sattar keeps saying is he wants al-Anbar to be like Germany and Japan and South Korea were after their respective wars, with a long-term American presence helping … put them back together,” MacFarland said. “The negative example he cites is Vietnam. He says, yeah, so, Vietnam beat the Americans, and what did it get them? You know, 30 years later, they’re still living in poverty.”
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The rhetorical overkill of the response was telling: The environmental movement is clearly afraid of this film, and it should be. Mine Your Own Business, Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer’s clear-eyed look at the true impacts of mining and the nefarious tactics of its opponents, exposes the self-satisfied delusions of the environmental Left, putting lie to a host of deadly, anti-growth canards and revealing the smug elitism of many green advocates.
This is, perhaps, not all that surprising. The ideas espoused by many greens are farcical enough to begin with. But even for someone used to their whoppers, it’s almost shocking the lies, misrepresentations, and condescending behavior that McAleeny manages to catch on film. With great care and thoroughness, the movie deconstructs the Left’s anti-growth narrative of pastoral tranquility and replaces it with something truly shocking: actual local sentiment.
It’s a big risk for activists to talk to the natives, because it might affect their good opinions of themselves and their efforts. Far better to wet-bar up in a good hotel to maintain a proper clarity of vision.
Despite the claim that Osama bin Laden isn’t a real muslim, when an Imam in Tulsa, OK, said so publically, he was booted out of his mosque and condemned by many other muslims. There is no evidence of support for his position in the ummah.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn has released a pair of bombshell reports on U.S. government broadcasting to Iran, writing to President George W. Bush that the broadcasts “undermine U.S. policy on Iran, often even supporting the propaganda of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
[…]
But the government’s interagency Iran Steering Group found in a report released by Coburn that neither network has been effective at representing the views of the U.S. government, a mission defined in VOA’s charter, let alone at promoting democracy.
[…]
The report found that Radio Farda, whose mission is to be a “surrogate radio” similar to the Radio Free Europe broadcasts to Poland during the Solidarity movement, “rarely takes a stance that could risk antagonizing the Islamic Republic.”
The radio’s “normal coverage of views inside Iran seems to vary between sympathetic and neutral with respect to the regime,” the report added. Before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took over as Iran’s president in August 2005, Radio Farda was known derisively inside Iran as “Radio Khatami,” after Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, the much-touted “moderate” Mohammad Khatami.
Rather than present original reporting from sources inside Iran, “the majority of the news read on Radio Farda is actually from the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), the official news agency of the Iranian regime,” the report states. “Residents of Iran do not need to turn to Radio Farda to receive IRNA news. This is probably one reason why Iranians do not turn to Radio Farda as a source of fresh news.”
The situation at the Voice of America, which is seeking to expand into a 24/7 television network, is arguably worse.
VOA’s Persian service rarely invites U.S. government officials to debate or even explain U.S. policy. But it has given ample air-time to top Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, and to anti-American advocates, the report found.
Why is it that we no longer seem able to find people to work in organizations like this who don’t have the moral fortitude to prefer their own country to hostile regimes? On the other hand, one does have to note that it was people very high up in the Bush Adminstration who decided to not confront the mullahs by providing evidence of their involvement in Iraq, and can’t remember official policy about Hamas.
In all of the convoluted political calculations detailed by the AP, there is not a single word, by any Democrat of any stripe, about what is best for the troops, for the Iraqi people, or for the security of the United States.
This is grim stuff, and I expect the domestic “anti-torture” lobby will be clamoring full-throated for the maximum legal sentence to be imposed on him, any day now… After all, one wouldn’t want to think they only condemn the Americans who interrogate our enemies, but don’t care about Americans in the service of Al-Qaeda who really do torture, beat, and threaten the murder of our allies …
Big Lizard reports that Old Media has used misleading numbers once again. In this case, by stating “4,000 people have died in Afghanistan in the last year” without labeling who those people are. Big Lizard has good evidence that most (if not almost all) of them were Taliban. If so, the number is an indication of how the Taliban are getting slaughtered, not how they’re doing well. But we can’t have that sort of thing in the newspapers, can we?
You know what really astounds me about this case?
Previous to the Duke Rape Case I had absolutely no idea that academic leftists disapproved so highly of underage drinking.
Particularly when these same people are also so very highly approving of first hand smoking of dope and the use of intravenous drugs.
And it’s astonishing how they disapprove of hiring of strippers yet they do approve of turning fellow female students into sexual objects. Something that I had thought was always verboten
— Ed
YouTube is fine with arguing against Christianity, but finds it unacceptable to do the same thing against Islam. I suppose Google wants to achieve the same level of respect and credibility as Old Media.
In speaking to reporters in Berlin Jan. 18, Rice, discussing the situation of Palestinians prior to 2000, said, “You had Hamas, of course, sitting out as a resistance movement, not at all, by the way, involved in the politics at all.”
Rice’s comments went largely unreported by the American media.
Hamas, responsible for scores of suicide bombings, shooting attacks and rocket firings, is classified by the State Department as a terror organization. The group’s official charter calls for the murder of Jews and quotes widely from the anti-Semitic creed, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Since winning Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, Hamas has refused to recognize Israel or denounce terrorism.
A State Department spokesman claimed Rice “forgot” to use the word terrorist when describing Hamas during her Berlin press briefing. The spokesman confirmed the State Department has not changed its policy of classifying Hamas as a terror organization.
“Forgot”, in this context, implies that it’s not something any one at State (including Rice) believes, it’s simply a PR exercise to make sure to put it in the sentences. If anyone has wondered why I am no longer a Condoleeza Rice fan, this story is an archetypical example of why not.
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Jeralyn Merritt has copies of Fitzgerald’s filing opposing the defense’s effort to call Andrea Mitchell as a witness.Shorter Fitzgerald: Since I never got around to asking Ms. Mitchell for her testimony under oath, it is not fair if the defense does.
Slightly Longer Fitzgerald: We don’t need Ms. Mitchell’s sworn testimony, since we can rely on her many public statements denying any involvement.
That is a pretty bold notion of jurisprudence, but it may represent a huge time-saver for police and prosecutors - just read the papers and if a person denies any involvement, well, case closed. Maybe in the day of Web 2.0, prosecutors can survey Facebook and YouTube to see if folks have posted denials there as well. “CSI-Miami” can become “CNN-Miami”. Cool.
That should save all the tedium of swearing people in - gosh, it must be tiresome for poor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has no doubt had to sit through thousands of people raising their right hands.
And it would save on downtown parking, since folks won’t have to come to court. It’s all good!
I have to agree that referring to Mitchell as a witness against Libby is a bit of a stretch, but it’s hard to argue that she’s not relevant, having worked for a key prosecution witness yet never having made a deposition.
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One might have hoped that, two weeks into the Libby trial, the basic facts of the case would be clear to the reporters and editors at the Washington Post.
One would be wrong.
Here is an utter howler from their Sunday effort:
Plame’s employment at the CIA was classified, making it illegal for any official to knowingly and intentionally disclose it. Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s 22-month investigation did not produce charges of that offense.
Special Counsel Fitzgerald has asserted that Ms. Plame’s status was classified and we have no cause to doubt him. However, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act requires more than that - my goodness, was it two years ago that Victoria Toensing and Bruce Sanford addressed these specifics on the very pages of the Washington Post? Briefly, in addition to having classified status a “covert” agent must have served outside the United States within the previous five years; the US must be taking active steps to conceal the agent’s identity; and the discloser must be aware of the agent’s status.
I used to think that Old Media lived in a bubble universe, but now I realize that it’s much finer grained than that, with small groups or even individuals living in their own bubble universes that don’t even touch those of other journalists.