Wednesday, August 31, 2005

America - Fox News Continues Gains

More and more people are getting the truth and that's good news.

Reuters reports.

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Fox News scored its largest audience so far this year in August, a month when most of the other cable news channels suffered ratings declines in comparison with convention-heavy 2004.

According to data released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research, Fox News tallied slightly more than 2 million total viewers in primetime during the month, a 32% improvement over its year-ago figures.

By contrast, CNN lost 19% of its primetime viewership (to 748,000), and MSNBC dropped 22% to 349,000 in August compared with a year ago. CNN's Headline News, on the strength of "Nancy Grace" and other primetime programming, jumped 117% to 449,000 viewers, making it the third-ranked news channel in primetime, overtaking MSNBC.

In the news demographic of adults 25-54, Fox News ruled again, with 541,000 viewers, up 12%, while CNN lost 9% to 236,000 and MSNBC was mostly flat at 145,000. Headline News averaged 160,000, up 111%.

Fox News owned 11 of the top 12 shows in cable news, with 2.5 million viewers for No. 1 "The O'Reilly Factor" (up 13%) and 2.2 million viewers for "On the Record With Greta Van Susteren." Greta Van Susteren's show, which has seen a major boost in the ratings with its coverage of the Natalee Holloway story in Aruba, saw a 36% boost in viewership.

CNN's sole entry in the top 10, "Larry King Live," saw viewership fall 27% to 1 million. "The Situation Room," which debuted this month, averaged 466,000 viewers, down 14% compared to the political-heavy coverage on CNN last year. On the other hand, "Nancy Grace" gave Headline News its highest month ever, with 738,000 viewers in August. That was just behind "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and "Paula Zahn Now"; "Paula Zahn Now" saw its total viewership rise 6% to 596,000, though its demo coverage was flat.

Fox News also won the ratings war in hurricane coverage Monday, according to Nielsen data released Tuesday afternoon. Fox News averaged 2.8 million viewers in total day -- a 247% increase over the same day in 2004 -- ahead of CNN's 1.8 million viewers and MSNBC's 679,000.

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Iraq - Good News Part 34

Chrenkoff's Good News Iraq - Part 34 is up.

Go have a look at all the good news the BBC and others refuse to tell the public.
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Iraq stampede kills 'up to 1,000'

Leave it to the BBC to politicize this human disaster.

So far, there have been at least 695 confirmed deaths, making the incident the single biggest loss of Iraqi life since the US-led invasion in 2003.


Why use that benchmark when there are others? Others, like the chemical attack on the Kurds which killed 5,000. It's not like they didn't know they had other benchmarks. The link to the Kurd story is a BBC story.

Because, the BBC want you to have the impression, that there have been other incidents where large numbers of Iraqis have died as a result of the US led liberation of Iraq.

UPDATE

In fact, as this report shows incidents of large scale civilian deaths have been caused by terrorists.

UPDATE

Initial reports suggested the stampede was caused by someone shouting there were suicide bombers in the march. But Iraqi President Jalal Talabani says mortars were fired into the crowd.

Talabani, in an exclusive interview with Interfax, said Zarkawi was behind mortar rounds that were fired into a crowd of Shias marching to a shrine for a religious festival and caused panic among them.

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Terrorism - The "grievance culture"

William J. Bennett takes a look at where we're going wrong.
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America - US Military a "mercenary Army"

That's according to Newsweek's Eleanor Clift.

Clift made the comment during a discussion about military recruiting efforts.

"But I think what we're coming to grips with is the fact that we actually have a mercenary Army," Clift said, according to a transcript of "The McLaughlin Group" program.

"And it doesn't have a nice ring to it. We call it 'volunteers,' but we're basically paying people to serve their country. And if you're going to pay people and have a mercenary Army, you're going to have to pay the market rate. And so the bounties are going up - more money for tuition, higher enlistment bonuses - and I think it's appropriate."


The Freedom Alliance wants a retraction and an apology from Clift. And they had this to say about her comments.

"It is a vile and thankless description of those who are responsible for defending your life and right to free expression," Kilgannon wrote in the letter.

"A professional wordsmith such as yourself should understand that mercenary troops have no loyalties, no ties and no bonds to any nation. They fight not for duty, flag or country but for selfish gain. They have no regard for political ideology and no respect for national interests. Often, at the first sign of resistance, mercenary troops turn and run."

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America - Navy Sets up Katrina Hotline for Families

Navy leadership is sincerely concerned for our Sailors and their family members in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. In light of the communication difficulties created by the hurricane, BUPERS has set up a 24 hour helpline for both Sailors and families to call for information regarding their loved ones.


The number is 1-877-414-5358

This line will be staffed 24 hours by active duty Navy volunteers and will have connectivity with Navy, FEMA and other government agencies. They will try their very best to answer questions regarding the status of Navy family members, but please be aware that communication in the region is still inconsistent. If you are a Command Representative and your command is located in the New Orleans or Gulfport area, please call the helpline and provide us with a contact number so command members can call and muster.

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America - Katrina: Corporations Refusing to Help

I certainly hope they rethink their decision.

But mainstream Web sites that had jumped to pull in money for the tsunami victims showed no evidence of repeating it here in the U.S. for Katrina's. Amazon.com, which raised more than $14 million for the American Red Cross in January via a donation link on its home page, didn't have one as of mid-day Monday. Nor did Google, Yahoo, MSN, or eBay, all of which hustled earlier in the year to put up donation links on their portals. (Google slapped up an "Information about Hurricane Katrina" link on its Spartan home page, but that led to news sources and stories.)

An Amazon spokesperson said that the online retailer had no plans to post a donation link on its site. "Each case is different," she said. "The Red Cross has essentially given over its entire site to donations. The tsunami came out of the blue, so it was an 'all hands on deck' situation, but the Red Cross has been getting ready for this and getting its message out there for several days."


So? Why should that stop them from helping raise funds? And when this is all over the Red Cross is going to have to refil its coffers.

I hope the bloggers can convice them to change their minds.

UPDATE

Seems at least some US corporations are stepping up to the plate.

San Ramon oil giant Chevron Corp. said it will give $5 million to disaster-relief charities in states hit by Hurricane Katrina.

UPDATE

Add another one.

Bayer Pledges $2 Million to Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort; Matches Employee Donations Dollar For Dollar


Somebody in the US call Amazon and the others and use these to shame them into helping.
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America - Blog for Relief Day

1 Sept. is going to be blog for relief day for the victims of the Katrina disaster.

You can sign up here.

Hurricane Katrina: Blog for Relief DayThursday, September 1

A day of blogging focused on raising awareness of and funds for relief efforts to aid those affected by Hurricane Katrina. See here for more information, and here for the TTLB Katrina topic page.
Participating Blogs194 blogs from 5 countries so far

Add your blog

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America - Katrina relief

Instapundit has a list of places where Americans can donate.

For those in Britain that would like to help with the disaster relief, The British Red Cross has this suggestion:

The American Red Cross has set up the Hurricane 2005 Relief fund to help respond to the disaster. To make a donation, go to www.redcross.org.

Please help.

UPDATE

Michelle has a great round up of help and practical advice.
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Debate With the BBC's Paul Reynolds on BBC Bias

Paul, here is an open thread for people to debate with you on the bias at the BBC using my Case Against the BBC as a reference.

Paul, if possible could we take each post one by one - we have plenty of time.

I may be out a good part of today, Aug. 31, but I will get back to you on any comments. As I said we have plenty of time.
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Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Britain - BBC1 records worst ever monthly ratings

The Guardian reports.

This report comes on the heels of an earlier report that the BBC's audience share has fallen to its lowest level for years.

"...the BBC's overall share of viewers dropped from 38.3 per cent in 2003 to 36.62 per cent in 2004, a fall of just under 4.5 per cent."


Seems the people of Britain have had enough garbage from the BBC and are tuning out in record numbers.

Hopefully, with the help of Biased BBC, The American Expat and your humble servant here, the BBC's viewing figures will be even lower this year.
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Iraq - Iraqi child death rates soar

Remember that BBC headline and article from back in 1999? It said in part:

Iraqi children under five are dying at more than twice the rate they were 10 years ago, a report by the United Nations' children's fund says.

The United States and the United Kingdom say the Iraqi Government is to blame for poverty and child deaths because it undermines the UN-backed oil-for-food programme.

However, Unicef says the international sanctions imposed on Iraq at the end of the Gulf war have also contributed.

Its report, compiled with the co-operation of Iraq, is the first survey of child and maternal mortality since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.
[ The UN and Iraq co-operated on the report. Just like they did in the oil for food scandal.]

First of all, we now know that Saddam used the oil for food money to enrich himself and his family to the detriment of the Iraqi people.

Secondly, we now know the UN was up to its eyeballs in scamming the oil for food program to the tune of billions of dollars. Money that could have helped these children.

Now comes news that, surprise, surprise, Saddam lied about infant deaths.

An August report by the Ministry of Health says that Saddam Hussein over-reported the number of children who died from 1992-2003 for political ends.

According to al-Dulaimi of the Health Ministry, the real figure for child mortality during the sanctions era was 870,240, rather than the 3 million reported by Hussein.

"Saddam Hussein used child mortality in a political game," al-Dulaimi said.


What are the chances the BBC will report this an set the story straight? Zero.

Bear in mind this same Saddam, that lied about infant deaths for politcal reasons, is the same Saddam that said he destroyed his WMD stockpiles the UN had indentified and tagged, without offering any proof but his own word.

Today, as back in 1999, the world are ready to believe a dictator, who murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people, maimed and tortured them, attacked his neighbors, some with chemical weapons, enriched himself and his family while his people suffered and died over America's word.

We can thank the BBC in large part for that.

UPDATE

Even those that work at the UN admit it's rotten to the core.
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Canada - CBC Off Air and No One Cares

I'd be willing to bet the same thing would happen if BBC employees were locked out.

OTTAWA (CP) — Most people didn’t notice the on-air disruption caused when 5,500 CBC workers were locked out of studios across Canada, a new poll indicates.

Ten per cent of respondents to the Decima survey said the labour dispute at the public broadcaster is “a major inconvenience” while 27 per cent called it “a minor inconvenience.”

Sixty-one per cent reported no impact at all.


It would be a huge impact to the world if the BBC went off the air. The anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-war bias coming from Britain would be greatly reduced. And that would be a good thing for the world.

See The Case Against the BBC.
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Britain - Transparency at the Guardian?

That'll be the day. Scott explains.

I would add one thing to this part in Scott's post.

Mr. Mayes then makes reference to the Guardian's editorial code - and raises the intriguing possibility (one of "a number of options") that, in the future, new hires will not only be asked to actually read it, but also to disclose any possible conflicts their employment may bring about. This implicit admission that employees have not until now been asked to do leads one to wonder just what purpose that code is now serving.


Surely the Guardian should require this of existing employees.
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Africa - US 'harming' Uganda's Aids battle

Blares this BBC headline with "harming" in scare quotes. Why would that be? Because Stephen Lewis, "The UN's special envoy on fighting Aids in Africa", never used that word. Nor did he accuse "the United States of endangering the gains Uganda has made in containing the disease."

You might infer that and then you again you might not. Since the BBC does not quote Lewis you can safely infer that Lewis never said any such thing. But it fits conviently into the BBC's anti-American bias.

Lewis may be unhappy about Uganda's policies but it's a leap to make the claim that the US is "harming" Uganda's Aids battle.

His [Lewis] remarks follow a report by US health campaigners saying the country was facing a condom shortage.


Later in the story the BBC note the campaigners in question are the US-based Center for Health and Gender Equity. The CHANGE organization have long opposed Bush's policies. This is from their mission statement:

The Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) is a U.S.-based non-governmental organization focused on the effects of U.S. international policies on the health and rights of women, girls, and other vulnerable populations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We believe that every individual has the right to the basic information, technologies, and services needed to enjoy a healthy and safe sexual and reproductive life free from coercion and preventable illness.


In other words, give us your money and we'll decide how to spend it.

So what is the US policy on how the money should be spent?

Acquisition and Assistance Policy Directive. Note this is a pdf document.

PROHIBITION ON THE PROMOTION OR ADVOCACY OF THE LEGALIZATION OR PRACTICE OF PROSTITUTION OR SEX TRAFFICKING (JAN. 2004)None of the funds made available under this agreement may be used to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution or trafficking. Nothing in the preceding sentence shall be construed to preclude the provision to individuals of palliative care, treatment, or post-exposure pharmaceutical prophylaxis, and necessary pharmaceuticals and commodities, including test kits, condoms, and, when proven effective, microbicides.

Seems pretty clear the US position is that it doesn't want its money spent on "promoting or advocat[ing]" prostitution and goes further to ensure money is not witheld for condoms.

In another article from the BBC we are told there are problems with the condoms themselves.

But after recent concern about the quality of the condoms, the ministry is now giving out far less and is sending condoms abroad for testing as it tries to acquire machines for checking condom quality locally.


But what is one of the root causes of Aids in Africa? Again from the BBC article we are told:

But the majority of young Ugandans do not make it beyond primary school and in a country where most people live on less than $1 a day, the link between poverty and sex is strong.

Rogers Kasirye works in the slums of Kampala with street children and teenage prostitutes. Poverty has forced many of them into taking risks.

"It is an economic problem. Many of the young people we are working with are surviving on sex, and the only option or barrier they have is the condom."

The Ugandan health ministry has been giving out about 80 million condoms a year, free of charge.


One of the root causes of poverty in Africa are corrupt dictators.

Condoms are one tool in the fight against AIDS as are education and abstinence. Ridding Africa of corrupt dictators should be another.

Doesn't the US have the right to have some say in how its money is spent? Just last week The BBC ran an article with this headline: "Uganda 'mismanaging' Aids money".

The UN itself has a long history of corruption and mismangement of money on a massive scale. The current UN oil for food scandal is probably the largest scam in the history of the world. As a result the days when America simply wrote a blank check to the UN are over.

Some people seem to be suggesting that the US should just blindly throw a ton of money at the problem in hopes that some of it will stick or at least a trickle will reach its intended target.

Whether you agree or not, in the face of widespread corruption and mismanagement, America has decided to exert more control over how its money is spent. Surely they have that right.
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Monday, August 29, 2005

America - Hillary tops presidential poll

In a poll of women only.

If the United States is ready for a female President, Hillary Clinton will be the front-runner in 2008, according to a new poll.

The New York Senator beat Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by 6% and First Lady Laura Bush by 10% to take an early lead in a potential race for the White House.

The hypothetical survey of 1,000 likely voters found that Clinton is viewed favourably by 42% and unfavourably by 43%.

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Israel - Another boy-terrorist caught

Told you Gaza wouldn't be the end of it.

A 14-year-old Palestinian was arrested after he was caught carrying three pipe bombs through the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus Monday afternoon.

The teenager set off the alarm of the metal detector positioned at the crossing, alerting soldiers manning the position.

He was found to be carrying in a bag three pipe bombs that were to be activated by a friction type detonator. The bombs were packed with explosives, as well as shrapnel and glass balls.


And

The Hawara checkpoint has become a notorious target over the past few months for teenage terrorists trying to smuggle bombs and arms into Israel.

Also on Monday, Palestinian security officials uncovered an unspecified number of rockets that were aimed at the Karni crossing in northern Gaza, in preparation for an apparent attack on IDF soldiers.

The Palestinian security officials informed the IDF of the discovery, but have yet to lay their hands on the combatants who were to launch the attack.


Nothing from the BBC on this yet.
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Scotland - zoo terror attacks threatened

Here's another terrorist organization that tolerant Britain is going to have to face up to sooner or later.

Robin Webb, a spokesman for ALF, said similar tactics would be used against Edinburgh Zoo. “The creation of a new enclosure for polar bears in Edinburgh would provoke deep anger throughout the animal rights and animal liberation movement,” he said.

“The zoo should think very, very carefully about going ahead with this as it and its contractors could find themselves becoming the target of a wide-ranging campaign.

“It would have to hire many service companies and outside contractors and all of these firms and individuals could be targeted to encourage them to pull out of this project. Targeting can cover anything that does not endanger life and would probably involve criminal damage and arson.”

Webb, a former member of the ruling council of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and who was filmed by an undercover reporter appearing to offer advice on how to make a bomb, added: “A place like Edinburgh Zoo relies on visitor numbers to survive and hopefully by putting the maximum pressure on them we can kill this deeply misguided and inhumane project stone dead.”


How many other groups are preparing their own terror campaigns to force their agenda on the rest of society? Regardless of the agenda, terror should never be tolerated.
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Scotland - Schools to get US yellow buses

According to the Sunday Times (UK).

They better plan on putting police on every one of them.

Up until this year, we had to take our son to school and pick him up becasue of the bullying. He was chased home with kids throwing rocks and apples at him the last time he took the bus.

He grew a lot over the summer and now is too big for them to pick on.

They should also consider putting CCTV cameras and flashing stop signs on the buses and make it a law that traffic has to stop - in both directions - while the kids are getting on and off the bus.
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Britain - Rushdie Blames Bush for Radicals

Muslim radicals that is.

Rushdie, who won the Booker Prize with his novel Midnight’s Children, went on to blame President George Bush for much of the radicalism in the Muslim world and said he had managed to spark a jihad — religious war — against the West.

“In the 1950s and 1960s, in Kashmir, there was no radical Islam,” he said. “It was a tolerant, a mystical type of Islam. Bush has now done what Bin Laden failed to do in starting a jihad.


Rushdie seems to have missed out on a few decades. The attacks on American embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole came before Bush was in office. And 9/11 happened just after Bush took office and long before Afghanistan or Iraq.

Perhaps Rushdie chould also explain why al Qaeda tried to crash a plane into parliament on 9/11? I dont't think Bush and Blair had even met yet.

What does Rushdie think bin Laden was planning to do with the thousands of al Qaeda terrorists he was training in Afghanistan while Clinton was in office? Wage peace?

Also in the article is this little nugget.

Senior Muslims who have recently appeared to support terrorism include Yaqub Zaki, deputy leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, who said earlier this month he would be “very happy” if there were a terrorist attack on Downing Street.


Is Zaki on the list for deportation?

Did you know there was a Muslim Parliament of Great Britain?

UPDATE

Zaki may be on the list soon.
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Britain - Iraqi Muslim in Miss England Contest

She'll have a better chance then should have had at being Miss Iraq under Saddam.

Mendly would not have stood much of chance in Saddam’s Iraq. The 2000 Miss Iraq contest was won by the dictator’s niece Fatima, even though she weighed 15 stone. The winners of the Miss Teen Iraq, Mrs Iraq and Miss Islamic Role Model contests that year were all related to Saddam.


Hey it's not all about looks, you know. But relations do count.
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Britain - Christians Test New Faith-hate legislation

Can you imagine Muslim reactions to something like this.

RELIGIOUS jokes will be told to hundreds of Christians today in an attempt to determine whether they would fall foul of the Government’s religious hatred legislation.


Here is one winner.

JESUS came upon a small crowd who had surrounded a young woman they believed to be an adulteress. They were preparing to stone her to death. Jesus said: “Whoever is without sin among you, let them cast the first stone.”

An old lady at the back of the crowd picked up a huge rock and lobbed it at the young woman, scoring a direct hit on her head. The young lady collapsed dead.

Jesus looked over towards the old lady and said: “Do you know, mother, sometimes you really p*** me off.”


Now that's funny. I dare say if you said someting like that about Islam, there would be riots.

Riots like these.

The Miss World contest has always emphasised the morality of its contestants, and after years of feminist protests reinvented itself with the women no longer judged on looks alone but also on personality and intelligence.

However, it misjudged the attitudes of Muslims to its values when it was held in Nigeria in 2002. The crowds reacted furiously when a journalist suggested that the Prophet Muhammad might approve of the contest. An estimated 250 died in the riots that followed.


They just have no sense of humor.
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America - Dominates Top 100 Universities

According to these rankings.

In fact, all the universities in the top 20 are American except for three. And out of the top 40, only 7 are not American.

Perhaps Justin Webb, of the BBC, would care to explain his comment that:

America is often portrayed as an ignorant, unsophisticated sort of place, full of bible bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry, a place lacking in respect for evidence based knowledge.

I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture, and that picture is in many respects a true one.


Yes you have Justin, you and the whole BBC crew.

via The Adventuress
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America - Rot at heart of UN revealed

The Times (UK) reviews an insiders book on the deep seated corruption at the heart of the UN. Something I've been saying for a long time.

Having worked for more than a decade in the UN secretariat, Pedro Sanjuan, a former political affairs director, argues in his book The UN Gang that America needs to get tough with “the crooks, the hardened criminals, the spies, the terrorist sympathisers, the nepotists and the racists at the UN [who] don’t like to be interfered with”.

Sanjuan warned last week that even John Bolton, the controversial new US ambassador, would find it hard to push through reforms without heavyweight political support from the White House and the US Congress. [...]

In an eyewitness account of what he describes as “thievery and other immoral excesses”, Sanjuan blames successive secretary-generals for encouraging a “culture of corruption” in the 1980s and 1990s.


So, why aren't there some checks and balances on the UN?

Sanjuan warned that US and other member states were virtually impotent when it came to checking up on activities in the secretariat. “Can a member state — the US, for example — ask to see the UN’s books, if any books are kept at all? The answer is a very diplomatically worded ‘no’.”


That should be at the top of the list of reforms.
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Britain - Rushdie Clashes With Galloway

The Guardian reports "Salman Rushdie clashed with George Galloway yesterday in a debate about TV and religion and a hypothetical small-screen adaptation of the novelist's controversial book The Satanic Verses."

Galloway toes the Muslim line that Islam is above being criticized.

"Mr Galloway, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, said TV executives had to be "very sensitive about people's religion" and if broadcasters did not show sufficient sensitivity they "had to deal with the consequences".

He said: "You have to be aware if you do [offend people's beliefs] you will get blowback. You should do it very carefully, especially if you are a public service broadcaster."

"Is that a threat?" asked Rushdie during the debate at the Media Guardian Edinburgh international television festival.

Describing Mr Galloway's argument as "craven", the author said: "The simple fact is that any system of ideas that decides you have to ringfence it, that you cannot discuss it in fundamental terms, that you can't say that this bit of it is junk, or that bit is oppressive ... we are supposed to respect that?"


The BBC aren't going to let Rushdie off with that without a little dig of their own.

Rushdie drew laughter from the audience at the special edition of [BBC]Question Time when he said TV rights to the novel were still available. "For the record, there is a French project to make a theatrical adaptation of The Satanic Verses, so maybe that's a start."

Andrew Neil, chairing the session, joked: "I hope it's not near my house."


Not only are we not allowed to criticize Islam but we must handle the Koran with kid golves. Or, as in the case of guards at Gitmo, white gloves. Why? Because, according to Muslims, we, as non-Muslims, are unclean infidels and deemed unworthy to touch the Koran.

The Koran is a book like any other book that was created by man and therefore is subject to the critical investigation that anyone wants to make of it. It's called freedom of speech. But Galloway, in his haste to Muslim appeasment, seems quite willing to have that freedom curtailed.

Rushdie 1 - Galloway 0
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America - Sheehan Shuffle

The Democrats made a huge mistake hitching their wagons to Michael Moore and they paid for it at the ballot box in the last round of elections, losing the Presidentcy, more seats in both houses and more govenorships.

Their making the same mistake hitching their anti-war hopes on Cindy Sheehan. While the anti-war biased reporting of big media make Cindy out to be the new Jane Fonda, that won't cut it in today's internet world where the facts can be checked.

The AP started and big media continue to propagate the lie that Sheehan became an anti-war protester after her son was killed in Iraq.

And big media continue to fail to inform the public, that despite Cindy's call for a meeting with Bush, that she has already met with Bush. Why would they do that?

This article about the meeting with Bush in 2004 is why.

The 10 minutes of face time with the president could have given the family a chance to vent their frustrations or ask Bush some of the difficult questions they have been asking themselves, such as whether Casey's sacrifice would make the world a safer place.

But in the end, the family decided against such talk, deferring to how they believed Casey would have wanted them to act. In addition, Pat noted that Bush wasn't stumping for votes or trying to gain a political edge for the upcoming election. [as opposed to the Democrats who are trying to make political hay out of the current Sheehan circus]

"We have a lot of respect for the office of the president, and I have a new respect for him because he was sincere and he didn't have to take the time to meet with us," Pat said.

Sincerity was something Cindy had hoped to find in the meeting. Shortly after Casey died, Bush sent the family a form letter expressing his condolences, and Cindy said she felt it was an impersonal gesture.

"I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis," Cindy said after their meeting. "I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith." [she now calls him the biggerst terrorist on the planet]

The meeting didn't last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son's sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.


Cindy had this final thought on President Bush in 2004.

The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.

For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.

For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.

"That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together," Cindy said.


What a difference a year makes, eh?
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Afghanistan - What's Missing?

Stinging from attacks by bloggers for their overt bias and continued story fabrication, the media rely a lot on "bias by omission". That is, leaving out critical details in a story so that the reader gets the opposite impression of the true story. It, along with stealth editing, is a favorite tactic of the BBC.

This AP article is another good example.

The reporter, Jim Krane, frames the story in the opening paragraph so as to make the reader believe that things are not going well for American forces in Afghanistan. He then uses that premise to explain France's additional support to coalition forces in the country.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - As the going gets tougher for the U.S. military in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region, one ally has stepped up despite a recent straining of ties: France.


"As the going gets tougher"? In what way? Krane doesn't say and he hopes you don't notice and will just take his word for it. Not in the age of bloggers Krane.

What Krane deliberately leaves out of his story is that Afghanistan is to hold elections in two weeks time and security is being beefed up in anticipation that terrorists will try and intimidate voters.

And we learn this from the San Diego article.

Attacks on the U.S. military so close to Kabul are rare and Friday's assault occurred less than a week after a roadside bomb in the capital exploded near a convoy of U.S. Embassy vehicles, wounding two American staff members.


What does Krane mean by "elsewhere in the region"? Again he doesn't say but I think it's fair to say he means Iraq. But here again, Krane doesn't tell us what he means by "getting tougher". If he means US troops casualties, they are running at about average. Which is propably why Krane didn't mention Iraq by name. He hoped you'd make the inference yourself without checking.

Not in the age of bloggers, Krane. Not anymore.
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Sunday, August 28, 2005

Iraq - A War to Be Proud Of

Christopher Hitchens tells us why.
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Britain - BBC Love Affair Over?

Seems more and more of the British public have finally had enough of the BBC's bias. You can read a lot more about the bias from the BBC here and here.

Back in January of this year, The Observe/Guardian reported bad news on its' evil twin, The BBC. "Figures published tomorrow will show that the BBC's audience share has fallen to its lowest level for years. Industry body Barb (the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board), will report that the BBC's overall share of viewers dropped from 38.3 per cent in 2003 to 36.62 per cent in 2004, a fall of just under 4.5 per cent."

Now comes word that even Prince Harry is to give the BBC a mighty snub.

Prince Harry is to give a wide-ranging television interview to mark his 21st birthday next month to the Sky satellite channel in a move seen as a calculated snub to the BBC. [...]

"The decision to allow Sky in on the act marks a significant change of policy which will inevitably be attributed in some quarters to the Prince of Wales's increasingly obvious sense of frustration with the BBC," a courtier told The Sunday Telegraph yesterday.


We feel your pain.

The Telegraph also take the BBC to task over their reporting on Iraq.

To listen to the BBC's coverage of Iraq's tentative steps towards a constitution is to become deeply depressed. The BBC creates the impression that the talks about the constitution are bound to fail. The country is heading towards civil war between the Shias, the Sunnis, and the Kurds: three irredeemably opposed groups itching to kill each other.


The BBC are deliberately creating that false impression. Take this from an earlier post:

Some of the media, like Justin's BBC even lie in their reporting on Iraq.

Paul Adams, the BBC's defence correspondent who is based at the coalition command centre in Qatar, complained that the corporation was conveying a untruthful picture of how the war was progressing. [...]

"I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering 'significant casualties'. This is simply not true," Adams said in the memo.

"Nor is it true to say - as the same intro stated - that coalition forces are fighting 'guerrillas'. It may be guerrilla warfare, but they are not guerrillas," he stormed.

"Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving 'small victories at a very high price?' The truth is exactly the opposite. The gains are huge and costs still relatively low. This is real warfare, however one-sided, and losses are to be expected," Adams continued.

Even some Iraqis are offended by the BBC's bias.

The BBC, however, appears to have hardly noticed that achievement. Most of its coverage emphasises the divisions between Iraqis. "May I ask you to describe me as an Iraqi, not as a Sunni," Doon al Zubaydi asked James Naughtie on the BBC's Today programme after he had been introduced simply as "a Sunni" - as if that designation and loyalty took precedence over every other.


The Telegraph concludes:

The Iraqis have a long way to go before their blueprint for a democratic future becomes a reality. But they are on their way to that goal. Hatred of President Bush, and scepticism about justifications for the presence of coalition troops in Iraq, seems to be blinding too many observers in Britain to the possibility that the US-led "occupation" may yet turn out to be Iraq's salvation. It has made democracy possible in a situation where the only other options are the nightmares of tyranny and civil war. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis are desperately eager to make democracy in their country real. We should applaud them for their zeal.


Instead the world's media, including the BBC, combined with the anti-war movement, in their blind hate of Bush and America, are doing all they can to deny the Iraqi's the freedoms they so dearly love.

The BBC shold pay a dear price for this by having the television tax and their charter revoked.
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America - BBC Painting a False Picture

BBC Washington reporter, Justin Webb, once bragged about the false picture he was painting of America.

America is often portrayed as an ignorant, unsophisticated sort of place, full of bible bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry, a place lacking in respect for evidence based knowledge.

I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture, and that picture is in many respects a true one.


One of his partners in crime, Paul Reynolds, tried to spin that into a defence of America. Such is the deep seated anti-Americanism that permeates the BBC.

Justin continues painting his false picture in his latest BBC article.

First, let's deal with the BBC's latest favorite bias tactic - bias by omission. Here is what Justin says about anti-war protester, Cindy Sheehan.

At the beginning of August, Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier who died in Iraq, set up camp in front of President Bush's Texas ranch, vowing to stay there until he agreed to meet her.


And at the end of the story.

President Bush cannot look Cindy Sheehan in the eye and tell her that her son died because the White House messed up.


Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that Bush has no need tell anyone he messed up in Iraq. What Justin deliberately fails to tell his readers, is that Sheehan has already met with President Bush.

Further, it would help with what Paul Reynolds likes to call "context", if Justin would tell his readers that Sheehan was a vocal anti-war critic before her son was killed in Iraq.

But all of these facts would get in the way of Justin's false painting, you see.

Americans are quite at home with gun ownership. We find nothing violent or dangerous about it. In fact, we feel quite the opposite. I know it's hard to understand and explain - especially to Britons. And Justin uses this in his pallet of false colors. Justin tries to set the scene up so that Sheehan is seen as a dove in bad man's land. It's the old, Bush comes from a gun slinging cowboy, sterotype. Tired and old - but effective.

And yet Cindy Sheehan has done it, and done it with huge success.


That "success" wouldn't be possible if not for the biased media who have almost a total blackout on good news from Iraq, while giving Sheehan all the coverage she wants and lying for her.

Though it is true that someone drove a truck over the encampment and someone else fired a gun in the air and told them to get back to where they came from.


"Drove a truck over the encampment"? Come on Justin, did someone really drive a truck over the entire encampment? I don't think so.

McLennan County resident Larry Northern (search), 59, faced $3,000 bail Tuesday after witnesses said he swerved his pickup truck in and out of a display of crosses set up on the side of the road by anti-war protesters.


Why would anyone do that? Because they are mad that Sheehan is putting the names of all US troops killed on the crosses and many family members of those killed don't want their names associated with Sheehans circus.

And on the gun firing.

Only a few protesters were near the scene at the time of the shotgun blast, and few were even aware of it. Alexander Ellison, 40, a stay-at-home mom from Minneapolis, did hear it.

``I was very concerned,'' she said. ``I have a child with me,'' referring to Ella, age 3. ``We've made ourselves a bit of a target.''

Kenneth Jones of the Crawford city police said firing a gun in the countryside is commonplace, and it shouldn't surprise or frighten anyone. Hunting season's coming up and guns are part of the culture in Texas, Jones said.


Strange as that may sound to Britons, it is commonplace in many parts of the countryside. America is full of wide open countryside that streaches for hundreds of miles in all directions - Justin even told us that.

But those predictable reactions have been trumped by other friendlier ones - culminating in an offer by one of the president's closest neighbours of a home for the camp in the safety of his land. A considerable snub to the most powerful man on earth in his own backyard.


"Predictable reactions" Justin? "Safety of his land"? Letting our bias show through a little aren't we?

And I think you'll find that the "offer" for their "safety" had more to do with a compromise between Sheehan, the police and locals due to traffic problems and over crowding.

After nine days of watching as one woman's protest has grown into a national event, dozens of the farmers and ranchers neighboring Bush's 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch plan to petition a county court in nearby Waco tomorrow, according to one, Pete Martinka. They want to prevent anyone from parking or stopping within two miles of the makeshift campsite erected by Cindy Sheehan, a 48-year-old woman from Vacaville, California, whose son, Casey, was killed in the war in Iraq. [...]

Part of the dissatisfaction stems from the campsite becoming a magnet for other causes, such as anti-nuclear and anti-trade activists and efforts to promote recycling.


In other words, moonbat city.

But what does Justin's BBC call those that exercise the same rights as Sheehan and protest against her - "conservative militants". No bias there, eh?

Justin continues.

Americans - even Texans - are rethinking the Iraq war, indeed rethinking war itself as a tool of foreign policy.

All the opinion polls this summer have pointed in one direction - out of Iraq.


Well gee, Justin could that possibly be because of the meida's totally biased stance against the war? Some of the media, like Justin's BBC even lie in their reporting on Iraq.

Paul Adams, the BBC's defence correspondent who is based at the coalition command centre in Qatar, complained that the corporation was conveying a untruthful picture of how the war was progressing. [...]

"I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering 'significant casualties'. This is simply not true," Adams said in the memo.

"Nor is it true to say - as the same intro stated - that coalition forces are fighting 'guerrillas'. It may be guerrilla warfare, but they are not guerrillas," he stormed.

"Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving 'small victories at a very high price?' The truth is exactly the opposite. The gains are huge and costs still relatively low. This is real warfare, however one-sided, and losses are to be expected," Adams continued.


The BBC are not the only media outlet lying about the war and the protesters. The AP is lying for Sheehan.

You can read a lot more about the bias from the BBC here and here. And be sure to visit Biased BBC and American Expat for more. In fact, check out all the blogs under the "UK Media Watch" section of my blog roll on the left.

The media and the left helped lose the war in Vietnam, don't let them do it again in Iraq.

UPDATE

Scott takes Webb to task as well.
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America - AP Lying for Sheehan

Angela Brown, a reporter for the AP, continues to lie for anti-war protester, Cindy Sheehan.

In the article Brown once again makes this false assertion.

Sheehan and other grieving families met with Bush about two months after her son died last year, before she became a vocal opponent of the war.


Brown continues to peddle this lie even though Powerline debunked it several days ago.

As anyone who has followed this story knows, this claim is utterly false. Sheehan has always been a "vocal opponent of the war;" her opposition had nothing to do with "reports of faulty prewar intelligence." By her own account, as we noted here, Sheehan was bitterly opposed to the war before her son Casey re-enlisted in August 2003:

"I begged Casey not to go. I told him I would take him to Canada. I told him I would run over him with a car, anything to get him not to go to that immoral war. *** The U.N. weapon inspectors were saying there were no weapons of mass destruction. So I believed all along that this invasion was unnecessary and that there was some other agenda behind it besides keeping America safe."

So, far from having been turned into a "vocal opponent" some time after her son's death, Ms. Sheehan already considered the war "immoral" before he re-enlisted in 2003, and she never did believe the intelligence about WMDs.


So much for MSM's vaunted fact checking abilities.
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Iraq - The Left Creating Another Vietnam?

I read a good rebuttal to that a few days ago and it went something like this:

Yeah, Iraq is like Vietnam except that the US captured Hanoi, the Viet Cong leaders are in jail, the entire country is liberated, 8 million citizens voted in their first free elections, the country is freely writing its first constitution and the death rate of American soldiers is about 10% of what it was in Vietnam.

That doesn't stop the left from trying to turn another sure victory into defeat - again.

The left are trying to make anti-war protester, Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, into their new poster child.

Then you have Jihad Jane Fonda lending her support to terrorists supporter George Galloway.

The left are always quick off the mark with their "we support our troops but not the war" chant. But the evidence proves otherwise.

For example, there are the anti-war protests at Walter Reed hospital where our wounded troops are cared for. The left are trying to disguise this as a "vigil for our troops" but here is what some of the signs they carry say.


The “vigil” got out of hand when signs like “Maimed for a Lie” (pictured above), “Enlist here to die for Halliburton”, and “Impeach George Bush” were paraded in front of the hospital.


No mistaking the anti-war message there.

Just like there is no mistaking the call to kill our troops in this anti-war protest picture.




And the left have a stand in for them to protest at military funerals - Fred Phelps.

Phelpls is a Christian preacher that says our troops are being killed in Iraq because of America's tolerance of gays. The left latch on to this and say Phelps is a right wing nut while they secretly are glad he is protesting at military funerals.

But is Phelps right wing? Do all on the left support gays and therefore oppose Phelps?

Log Cabin Republicans, who bill themselves as "the nation's largest gay and lesbian Republican organization", report that Gore is no friend to Gays.

Gore, who was quoted by the Nashville Tennessean in 1984 saying homosexuality is not "an acceptable alternative that society should affirm" and said in his 1984 U.S. Senate race that he would not accept money from gay rights organizations and that he opposed a "gay bill of rights," reportedly sought the support of the Phelps family in his 1988 presidential campaign, and invited the Phelps' to the Clinton-Gore inaugurations of January 1993 and January 1997.

It would seem not. In fact, here are a few family photographs of the Gore and Phelps family together.



Did I mention that Phelps ran for govenor of Kansas in 1990 - as a Democrat.

Phelps, undertaking a run for governor of Kansas, begins disseminating flyers attacking his gubernatorial competitors and other state politicians in unusually personal terms. He loses the Democratic primary, but garners 11,634 votes, 6.7% of the total.



Seems like a lot of Democrats in Kansas supported Phelps too.

The left, adided by the leftist media in America, are once again trying to turn certain victory into defeat. That is why it is worth repeating what the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had to say about them after Vietnam ended.

Even Giap admitted in his memoirs that news media reporting of the war and the anti-war demonstrations that ensued in America surprised him. Instead of negotiating what he called a conditional surrender, Giap said they would now go the limit because America's resolve was weakening and the possibility of complete victory was within Hanoi's grasp.


And they even praise by name those that aided their cause.

Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, received South Vietnam's unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement, he made clear the anti-war movement in the United States, which led to the collapse of political will in Washington, was "essential to our strategy."

Visits to Hanoi by Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."

America lost the war, concluded Bui Tin, "because of its democracy. Through dissent and protest, it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win."


And they're trying to do it again.
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Iraq - Terrorist Master Mind Killed

For some reason CNN lumped this story in with one about a prisoner release. The story contains more than one bit of good news.

Meanwhile, a man described as a "major facilitator of foreign fighters and suicide bombers into northern Iraq" was killed by coalition forces Thursday in Mosul, the U.S. military said Saturday.

Abu Khallad, a Saudi national, was found after intelligence sources and tips led Multi-National Forces to his location in Mosul.


And he was an important terrorist leader.

Recent detainees have said Khallad contacted recruiters in Saudi Arabia to coordinate the movement of foreign fighters and suicide bombers into northern Iraq, the military said.

Also, "once in Mosul, he allegedly directed the distribution of the foreign fighters and suicide bombers to the various terrorist cells operating in Mosul."

In addition, the military believes Khallad was active in supporting foreign fighters smuggled into the Mosul area, supplying them with money, weapons and bomb-making materials, according to information from detainees.

The resources, the detainees have said, were from donations to the same Saudi contacts who recruited the fighters and sent them to Mosul.


We are seeing a lot more of these tip-offs.
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Israel - Ten hurt in S Israel bomb blast

And as usual The BBC try and blame Israel.

Look at what is sandwiched between these two paragraphs about the attack.

Two of the injured are gravely ill. The blast - the first since Israel pulled its settlers out of the Gaza Strip - came during the morning rush hour.

Three days ago Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in the West Bank. The Islamic Jihad group had sworn revenge.

In the Beersheba attack, "a suicide bomber blew himself up on the street before he could get on a bus," police spokesman Avi Zelba said.


Got that? The evil Israeli's killed five plain old Palestinians and this suicide bombing is revenge for the outrage.

In the wake of the Hutton report the BBC, stinging from the sharp criticism concerning its bias, have resorted to more and more "bias by omission". That is, not giving you all the details so the story can be biased the way they want it slanted. In this case against the Israelis.

Here are some critical details the BBC don't want you to know about.

Five Palestinians were killed, including an Islamic Jihad leader who had orchestrated two suicide bombings, Israel's military said.


It's not as if the BBC didn't know about these details. And this isn't just a tit-for-tat attack as the BBC portray it. Here is more from The Baltimore Sun.

Islamic Jihad sent a suicide bomber into Tel Aviv in February and another into Netanya in July. Five Israelis were killed in each attack. The cell's leadership was traced to the Tulkarm area, and Israel has been hunting its members, saying that even under the truce, it has the right to take defensive measures.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the arrest raid targeted those fugitives. "They were planning a suicide bombing attack in Israel," he told Israel TV.

Palestinians said the Israelis opened fire first, and Mofaz did not deny it. "Weapons were drawn on the soldiers and gunfire resulted," he said.

According to Palestinian witnesses, young Palestinians were sitting outdoors, eating sunflower seeds and talking to a well-known militant leader, when undercover Israeli troops jumped out of a Mercedes.


If you just read the BBC story you get the false impression that Israel is the aggressor. Just what the BBC want you to think.
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Britain - Government 'wastes' African aid

But who does The BBC single out for criticism in their report? America. Natch.

The government has been accused of wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds of African aid.

The BBC's Five Live Report found more than £700,000 spent on hotel bills and meals for US workers in Malawi.


And who were these US workers?

US agencies which had been brought in as consultants included the National Democratic Institute (NDI), used on a project to improve the parliamentary committee system in Malawi.

The £1m donated to the project from US funds was used solely to pay for NDI staff there, the BBC report said.


Interesetingly, the BBC doesn't tell you who is behind NDI. They do provide a link to them but you have to go and investigate yourself. And when you do, you find out that NDI is a who's who of the Democratic party.

Madeleine K. Albright, Chairman
Geraldine A. Ferraro
Walter F. Mondale
Michael S. Dukakis
Richard A. Gephardt
Mario M. Cuomo

To name but a few.

Here is what NDI says about itself on its website.

NDI is proud to draw on the traditions of the U.S. Democratic Party. While the Institute's identification with the Democratic Party enhances its standing throughout the world, NDI programs are nonpartisan, fostering universal values and supporting democratic processes rather than a particular party or ideology.


I think it's what they call "context".
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Saturday, August 27, 2005

Britain - Catch and release

Do you remember Brendon Fearon? He was the burglar shot by Norfolk farmer Tony Martin. You may recall, Martin went to jail for killing Fearon's accomplice, while Fearon got three years and was released after half that time.

Both Fearon and his accomplice were career criminals. Fearon still is.

A man shot by the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin appeared in court accused of using a stolen card to withdraw almost £11,000 out of a cash machine.

Brendon Fearon, 35, of Newark, Nottinghamshire, denied six charges of using criminal property and four of possessing criminal property.


Fearon was bailed but...

"Mr Fearon was granted bail yesterday but remains in custody on another matter."

When will the courts learn?
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Islam - Standing Up To Muslims

There is a ground swell of change coming.

At first many people were reluctant to criticize Islam. It is after all a religion and most people are reluctant to criticize a religion; many Western civilizations were founded on religious tolerance. In the case of Islam that tolerance is growing thin.

Many of Islam's defenders rely on the false premise that Islam is like any other religion, including Christianity. The Bible they say is replete with calls to war, violence and intolerance. The difference is, Christians gave up those literal interpretations a long time ago. Not so Muslims.

One outward sign of this is the burqa, the head to toe black cloth with only a slit for a woman's eyes. I've always found it offensive; being a sign of woman subjugation by male Muslims. For me it always conjured up the image of a man leading a cow by a rope - docile and submissive - revolting. I've always been amazed at how silent the women's rights movement has been on the issue of Muslim women.

Italy has gone the furthest I think and outright banned the burqa, albeit for terrorist reasons.

Today, Matthew Parris, writing in The Times (UK) expresses his anger at the wearing of the buraq in today's society.

"Now, for all I knew, the woman had chosen to go out like this and would not have wanted to uncover her face; but still I felt it was not right in Sydney: not right for her and not right for the open society of which she was part. Whether or not she felt oppressed, the condition oppressed her and it should not be seen in the streets of a modern, liberal country. I realize that this sounds imperious but I record what I felt, and the feeling was strong.

My sense of offence was not directed at the woman herself or her family, any more than a worshipper in a mosque should feel annoyed at European tourists who have not taken off their shoes. Maybe they haven't seen the notice, understood the instructions, heard the word, taken the hint. Maybe somebody has failed to tell them that what they are doing just isn't done. [...]

And that was what was wanting in this case. It had failed to get through to this family and perhaps to the community from which they came that in a Western country, for a person to be swathed in cloth so that only the eyes can be seen, simply won't do; and that when, consciously or unconsciously, a woman may be under pressure to do this, then it doubly won't do. There should be no pressure on a woman to hide her face. It is outrageous.

For us in Britain, and perhaps more widely, I sense that the scares and atrocities of 2005 have caused a firming-up of attitudes among non-Muslims towards questions like this. Of course it is wrong to make inferences about security risks from the way people dress, and there is no evidence that veiled women are involved in terrorism. But it is not unreasonable to link fundamentalist Islam with repressive attitudes to women, and patience with fundamentalism is running short. Our culture, which has always been unhappy about those attitudes to the role of women, is less inclined than before to brush this unhappiness aside."


And those less inclined are starting to speak up.

In Britain "The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has called on Muslim extremists to leave the country."

Now, Australia joins the ranks of countries who have had it with Muslims who don't want to abide by the law of the land. Treasurer Peter Costello said on television:

"If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," said Costello, who is seen as heir-apparent to Prime Minister John Howard.


For those that cliam that Muslim women may want to wear the burqa, given the way they are raised, I'd say I'm not surprised. That still doesn't make it right.

The liberals and leftist that want to defend Muslim women's rights to wear these degrading outfits, like Tony Blair's wife, are siding with Muslim women's rights abusers.

The BBC's Panorama program exposing the Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim Association of Britain's radical side is more evidence that things are changing.
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America - Toasting the Troops

As I recently reported all accross America, Americans show their appreciation for our troops by picking up the tab at bars and dinners.

Powerline relates another such story.

Why are these stories important. They show how deep, widespread and heartfelt Ameirca's devotion to its troops really is.

MSM refuse to cover such tributes to our troops and instead, focus on their latest anti-war hero - Cindy Sheehan.

So much for supporting our troops.
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Britain - London Mayor Backs Suicide Bombers

Here is what Livingstone recently had to say about Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Mr Livingstone also defended Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the controversial cleric who visited London at his invitation last year and who had been scheduled to attend a conference in Manchester next month.

He said Mr al-Qaradawi was a "leading progressive Muslim" who was not actually going to the conference and who had condemned the London attacks.

Asked about Mr al-Qaradawi's apparent support for Palestinian suicide bombers, Mr Livingstone said the cleric's views had been misreported.


Really? Here is what Qaradawi recently said about suicide terrorists.

Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: "Dr. Said Ramadhan [Al-Bouti] stressed the legitimacy of defense, saying it is a legitimate right in Palestine and Iraq. I think that saying it is a legitimate right is not enough, because a right is something that can be relinquished. It is a duty. All scholars say that defending an occupied homeland is an individual duty applying to every Muslim. Reducing this duty to a 'right,' which can be relinquished, is a kind of depreciation.

"We must stress this point, and emphasize that it is the rights of those defending their homeland. It is not only a right, but also their duty. I am amazed by what Dr. Muhammad Rafat 'Othman said.

"This has nothing to do with suicide.


London's mad mayor, Red Ken Livingstone, also spreads the leftist myth that the CIA recruited bin Laden. When in fact bin Laden himself claims he never got help from the US. "Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help." - bin Laden in an interview with Robert Fisk.

This goes along with the left's other myth that the US armed Iraq. I love the look on leftist faces when I ask them what sort of equipment Saddam had. Russian MIGs, Russian Tanks, Russian AK47s, French Mirage Fighters, etc. etc. Try it, it's fun. They get all flustered, call you names and walk away.
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Media - The Credibility Crisis

Here is a fascinating poll on blogs.

Earlier this month, MSM put out three attack articles on blogs, warning of a "blogbust" and "over-hyping".

Now we learn according "to the most recent findings of the 11th Annual Euro RSCG Magnet Survey of the Media, done in partnership with Columbia University, the majority of journalists are using blogs to do their work, despite the fact that only 1% believe blogs are credible. "

So, are journalists lying when they say blogs are not credible or are they purposefuly using sources they deem to be not credible? Either choice does not bode well. I think we know the truth anyway.

Let's look at some of the statistics.

"Interestingly it is the journalists—not their readers—that are turning to blogs in record numbers. While the Euro RSCG Magnet study shows that more than half (51%) of journalists use Weblogs regularly—with 28% relying on them for day-to-day reporting, a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project Survey showed that just 11% of the U.S. population reads blogs."


Amazing figures when you consider that the same survey says only "only 1% [of journalists] believe blogs are credible".

Their claim that it's the journalists and not readers, who "are turning to blogs in record numbers", is a little suspect.

I don't know how many journalists there are in America, be we can deduce the number of blog readers. If we assume that you have to be on the internet to read a blog, then the number of readers comes from a pool of "202,888,307 Internet users as of June/2005, 68.5% of the population, according to Nielsen//NetRatings." Using the survey's 11% figure that would yield over 20 million readers. I doubt there are that many journalists in America.

And if the growth rate for internet uses remained the same over the next 5 years, those numbers will double. The number of journalists most certainly will not.

What is the impact of all of this?

“The fact that the media are using blogs for reporting and research also demonstrates that blogs have an enormous potential to not only influence the general public, but to influence the influencers – journalists and the media – as well.”


So while dissing bloggers in public, in private, journalists are relying on blogs. Look at these revealing statistics.

The study found that blogs have become a large – and arguably, increasingly integral – part of how journalists do their jobs. Indeed, 70% of journalists who use blogs do so for work-related tasks. Most often, those work-related tasks involve finding story ideas, with 53% of journalist respondents reporting using blogs for such purposes. But respondents also turn to blogs for other uses, including researching and referencing facts (43%) and finding sources (36%). Most notable, fully 33% of journalists say they use blogs as a way of uncovering breaking news or scandals. Few blog-using journalists are engaging with this new medium by posting to blogs or publishing their own; such activities might be seen as compromising objectivity and thus credibility.


Do editors and publishers know this?

How big an impact was Rathergate, exposed by bloggers, on the media? "Likewise, 78% believe that Rathergate has profoundly altered the media’s credibility."

But did any good come out of it? You bet.

Reporters’ commitment to maintaining their own credibility has never been stronger, and has perhaps skyrocketed due to the desire to rebuild the media’s credibility. Indeed, the growth in reporters who are excruciatingly careful in fact-checking their stories is startling – 93% of journalists reporting being so in 2005, compared with just 59% in 2003.


But even this raises serious questions.

We know the media, even today, is still faking stories and making things up. Krugman still works at the New York Times for pete's sake. If it's this bad today, how bad was it in 2003 when only 59% of journalists were careful in their fact checking?

One has to wonder at today's journalists fact checking abilities, if 93% say they "are excruciatingly careful", and yet they continue to make such gross errors.

What this proves is the MSM are no longer ignoring the elephant in the room. In fact, they are making a home for it.
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Friday, August 26, 2005

America - Newspaper Fakes Iraq Story

The student newspaper at Southern Illinois University claims it was taken in by a hoax. But nobody checked the participants for over two years!

The story was about a motherless little girl whose father gets shipped off to Iraq. The paper ran "letters" from the little girl begging him not to get killed - he does.

It was all fake.


This is the depth the left will plumb to try and turn America against our troops in Iraq.

UPDATE

The Chicago Tribune has the full story.
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America - Jihad Jane and George Galloway

What a pair.

Jihad Jane Fonda, formerly Hanoi Jane, is set to open for Galloway on his US tour.

Like a tick on a rat.
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America - Conservative Militants. The BBC calls those that oppose Cindy Sheehan "conservative militants". So, those that oppose the anti-war movement are militants. The BBC fails to point out that the anti-war movement is led by communists. Posted by Picasa

America - Conservative Militants

That's what the BBC calls those that oppose Cindy Sheehan.

Those who support Sheehan are merely protesters. "About a dozen protesters have continued the vigil in her absence."

And Sheehan is in a struggle.

Ms Sheehan, who reportedly broke down in tears after spotting a large banner with her son's face at the camp when she arrived there, is determined to continue her struggle.


But those that oppose Sheehan are conservative militants.

Her arguments against the war have sparked a heated controversy, and conservative militants from California are on their way to Crawford to launch a tour called "You don't speak for me, Cindy!".


And by the way BBC, they are coming from all over America not just California.

via American Expat.
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America - Americans Show Their Pride in Troops

Recently, I posted about how Americans show their appreciation to their troops by picking up the tab at dinners.

Here's another one.

Like I said, this happens all the time but MSM rarely report it.

Be sure and check out this heroes welcome for a Marine returning from Iraq.
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Blogger problems

If you are not able to see the editing tools on your create post page of blogger, the problem seems to be with the language setting. Here is an email I got from blogger.


Hello,
Currently, the rich text editing features are not appearing for some users who are viewing Blogger in languages other than English. We are working on this issue and will get it fixed as soon as possible. In the meantime, changing your interface language should help you get around this problem. Please visit this page:

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Unfortunately, the WYSIWYG feature doesn't work either.

I changed from English (UK) to English and the tools reappeared. When I changed back to English (UK) they vanished again. So, I'll use English till they get it sorted.
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America - Media: Lies and Damn Lies

Michael Graham was fired by WMAL Radio, an ABC Washington affiliate, for saying "Islam is a terrorist organization."

At first the station backed Graham and then under pressure from the Muslim terrorist front group, CAIR, they at first suspended him and then fired him.

WMAL insists they did not fire Graham and that his firing (which they deny they did) was not influenced by any outside party.

For its part, CAIR, claims it never called for Graham's firing, just a punishment.

But Graham has the goods on both of them.

Scroll down to this: ABC AND CAIR AREN'T LETTING THE FACTS GET IN THE WAY OF THEIR STORY.
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Britain - BBC Critics

Biased BBC, American Expat and your humble servant here have been listed in Wikipedia in the "Criticism" section under the BBC entry.

See here.

Here is how they portray us.

The URL http://www.biased-bbc.blog.com is home to a blog dedicated to reporting perceived BBC bias, and others (e.g., http://theamericanexpatinuk.blogspot.com and http://www.ussneverdock.blogspot.com) lead to blogs purporting bias at the BBC and other mainstream media organizations.

"Perceived BBC bias" and "purporting bias at the BBC"?

They obviously haven't read my latest post.
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America - Welcoming Home A Hero

While the world's leftist media champion's Cindy Sheehans anti-war circus outside Bush's ranch, they ignore how America welcomes home its heroes.
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America - Media Faking it - Again

File these two articles under Media Faking It.

First up, Jack Kelly catches the New York Times turning a good news story about Iraq into a bad news story.

Then, Powerline catches AP reporter Angela Brown, making things up to fit her story on Cindy Sheehan.

Will they ever learn?

UPDATE

Add New York Times faking it to the list.

That answers my question, doesn't it?
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Blogger Problems

Blogger seems to be having problems today. There are no editing tools available.

Hopefully, they'll fix it soon. In the meantime, blogging may be lite.
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Thursday, August 25, 2005

Iraq - BBC Cheering for the Terrorists - Again

And once again it's the BBC's Paul Reynolds leading the cheering.

"A race is developing to determine whether Iraq can evolve into a stable country before US President George W Bush's term ends in January 2009.

If the president pulls it off, he can leave the legacy he has been seeking in the Middle East - Iraq as the democratic example which justified the war and the cost.

If he does not, his presidency will be in large part judged by a failure in Iraq."


True, Iraq was stable before the overthrow of Saddam. Saddam was able to murder hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of his own people, torture them and fund and sponsor terrorists with impunity. So, what was it evolving into under Saddam?

Judged by whom? Reynolds, the BBC or the Democrats? I mean aren't "we" forgetting about Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, al Qaeda, the US economy and major legislation Bush pushed through?

Reynolds goes on to note faltering support for the war in Iraq.

"The president has been making speeches to rally faltering support among the US public and to try to reassure people that not only is he is holding to the course, which few doubt, but that the course is a clear one."

Could that faltering support be due to the left wing media's, here and in the US, biased coverage of the war? There is almost no reporting of the good news in Iraq. That job has been left almost entirely up to bloggers, most notably Chrenkoff's Good News Iraq series.

Or could it be because the BBC lies in its Iraq reporting? Paul Adams, the BBC's defence correspondent said:

"I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering 'significant casualties'. This is simply not true," Adams said in the memo.

"Nor is it true to say - as the same intro stated - that coalition forces are fighting 'guerrillas'. It may be guerrilla warfare, but they are not guerrillas," he stormed.

"Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving 'small victories at a very high price?' The truth is exactly the opposite. ...


The opposite of the truth is a lie.

The media did the same thing in Vietnam and turned certain victory into defeat.

Even Giap admitted in his memoirs that news media reporting of the war and the anti-war demonstrations that ensued in America surprised him. Instead of negotiating what he called a conditional surrender, Giap said they would now go the limit because America's resolve was weakening and the possibility of complete victory was within Hanoi's grasp.


And

Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, received South Vietnam's unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement, he made clear the anti-war movement in the United States, which led to the collapse of political will in Washington, was "essential to our strategy."

Visits to Hanoi by Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."

America lost the war, concluded Bui Tin, "because of its democracy. Through dissent and protest, it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win."


The world's media, including the BBC and reporters like Reynolds, are once again aiding and abetting our enemies in a time of war. Some call that treason. How many more died needlessly in Vietnam because of the media? How many more may die needlessly in Iraq because of the media?

Reynolds concludes:

Those the British have joined together have often split asunder or warred among themselves - India/Pakistan, Nigeria and Cyprus to mention but three.

So far at least Iraq has not joined that list.


No thanks to the BBC and Paul Reynolds.
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