RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/

There’s a newsroom term, “re-topping”, which means changing the first few paragraphs to include the latest facts and, as inky sorts say, “advance the story.” Yesterday’s big yarn, just now being re-topped all over the world, was a beaut: according to Buzzfeed, the outlet which first aired the confected Trump-Russiagate dossier compiled by a Washington lobbying outfit paid by Hillary’s Clinton’s presidential campaign, “two sources” had confirmed that Donald Trump instructed former attorney Michael Cohen to lie under oath. This information was said to be in special counsel Mueller’s hands and would likely lead to the president’s impeachment.

If you are inclined to believe Mr Trump is the spawn of Satan and takes his riding instructions directly from the Kremlin, it was a bombshell. At the ABC, where there are no conservatives nor, apparently, experienced senior editors to restrain the leftist gusto of a groupthink newsroom, it became the day’s big story.

The same confirmation bias was also evident at the former Fairfax comics, now part of Nine, where early on Saturday afternoon the headline and blurb reproduced atop this post continued to preside over the home page.

Trouble is, the story wasn’t true and the source denying it was no less that Mueller himself, which suggests the Buzzfeed report was very, very wrong indeed. Throughout the so-called Russiagate investigation, Team Mueller has maintained a near-monastic silence on the progress or otherwise of its diggings and delvings. That it broke that silence to refute Buzzfeed’s bogus scoop is an indictment in itself.

How did the ABC and Fairfax react to the denial of the story they loved so much, a denial which first hit the wires in the wee hours of Saturday morning?

At the ABC, the initial report was re-topped, eventually, with word of Mueller’s disavowal. After that, the original story, with its references to “bombshells”, quotes from foaming Trump critics and charting of what readers were led to believe was the path to near-certain impeachment, well that was allowed to stand. It is almost as if some news-editing backbencher decided the old and wrong story was just too good to take down and spike, which is what should happen to reports that simply aren’t true. Unless there is an outbreak of old-fashioned journalistic rigour at the ABC, that bizarre re-topped blend of opening paragraphs denying everything follows, and at great length, can still be read here.

We live in an age in which irreversible character assassination is a public entertainment, the slanderers being for the most part well-bred, well-paid, intelligent and enjoying the tacit backing of social-media giants Facebook and Twitter. They raise lynch mobs in 140 characters and have established a worldwide Reich wholly antithetical to the freedoms of speech, thought and association.

There is no such thing as bad publicity, the showman Phineas T. Barnum used to declare about his invention, the “publicity stunt”. His logic was simple: the adhesiveness of the person’s name would cling to the public’s memory-cells long after the event that originally lodged it there had vanished. That, however, was before the conjuncture of social media and the internet had rendered the concept of forgetfulness as extinct as the toeless sloth. Together, the venom of Twitter/Facebook and the utter eternity of the web can today destroy a person’s good name as long as Halley’s Comet circles the Milky Way. Anyone caught in the jaws of social media’s 3 a.m. drunken abuse and the perpetual ubiquity of the internet is henceforth forever vulnerable, beyond the protections of memory loss, statutes of limitations or libel laws.

There are a couple of other ingredients to this mix that increase its lethality. The first is that the victim should be a foe of the liberal-left nexus of doctrinaire feminism, pseudo-egalitarianism and liberal-leftism. The second is that it helps if the proposed victim inadvertently steps a little out of line.

Believe me, I know.

Just over a year ago, my editors of the Irish edition of the Sunday Times of London asked me to write a piece about the pay differential between men and women in the BBC. Doing a background check, I noted that the two best-paid women in the BBC were Jewish. I was (and remain) one of the most fervent supporters of Israel in the Irish media, and I have long been both an admirer of the Jewish people and an amateur student of their many achievements. (These, by the way, include the first tank, Dassault aircraft, independent suspension, penicillin, streptomycin, the anti-polio jab, oh yes, and the Old Testament.) I admit that I clumsily strayed into what others might regard as anti-Semitic territory when I genuinely congratulated these two women:

Good for them. Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity. I wonder: who are their agents? If they’re the same ones that negotiated the pay for the women on the lower scales, then maybe the latter have found their true value in the market place.

The only query that my column elicited from the Sunday Times was whether I was certain they were Jewish. I replied I was.

Shortly after midnight, just minutes after my column appeared, someone in London began to tweet about my “anti-Semitic rant” through the sewer that is social media, and this gathered pace exponentially. While I slept, my career was effectively ended, and shortly after I woke I was publicly sacked by the Sunday Times editor without him even speaking to me. Over the next twenty-four hours, my reputation as perhaps the most stalwart friend of Israel in the Irish media and a repeated attester to the full horrors of the Final Solution was completely turned on its head.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272565/newsweeks-nina-burleigh-problem-ari-lieberman

Newsweek has a serious problem and it’s called Nina Burleigh. Burleigh, who despises Trump and maintains left-wing ideological proclivities, covers national politics for Newsweek. But on January 14, Burleigh distinguished herself in another way. She revealed herself to be a rabid conspiracy theorist and an anti-Semite to boot. Credit for the discovery goes to prolific blogger Aussie Dave from the blog Israellycool.

A twitter post by left-wing ideologue Sarah Kendzior prompted Burleigh’s bizarre conspiracy-riddled post. Kendzior expressed a desire to write a “thread of articles” on the “massive and horrific crimes that have been carried out with impunity by people in Trump’s camp…” That comment elicited the following disturbing response from Burleigh; “Israel, mossad, Chabad and black cube…you’re hitting the third rail of American journalism, Sarah.”

Headquartered in Crown Heights Brooklyn, Chabad is an orthodox Hassidic sect known for its outreach programs and message of inclusivity. But according to Newsweek’s national politics correspondent, Chabad along with the State of Israel, the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and Black Cube (a privately owned Israeli risk-consulting company) are the sources of “massive and horrific crimes that have been carried out with impunity by people in Trump’s camp.” In the conspiracy-laden world of Burleigh, a cabal of Jews or Jewish-related entities is conspiring with Trump and his team to inflict “massive and horrific crimes.” Such malevolent opinions are similar in tone and content to those found in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an early 20th century anti-Semitic forgery, which finds receptive audiences among the hard-left and radical right and throughout the Muslim world.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272512/ny-times-manafort-sent-campaign-data-russians-oops-daniel-greenfield

I’ll give the New York Times some credit. It may be a mostly worthless Democrat messaging machine that promotes racism and anti-Semitism, but at least, unlike the Washington Post, it still maintains some of its traditional habit of correcting errors after they appear.

A properly woke paper would embrace the errors, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez style, as being morally right, even if factually wrong.

A previous version of this article misidentified the people to whom Paul Manafort wanted a Russian associate to send polling data. Mr. Manafort wanted the data sent to two Ukrainian oligarchs, Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, not Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin.

But this sort of thing happens when you keep spinning conspiracy theories.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/07/media-completely-ignores-isaam-akel-american-brutalized-like-khashoggi/

A U.S. political establishment that was just months ago woke to anti-Semitism—it least when it might use that to dunk on Trump—has been missing in action about Isaam Akel.

An Arab man with deep ties to America dissented against an authoritarian Middle Eastern regime. As a consequence, he was held captive, reportedly beaten, and his life may be over.

No, his name is not Jamal Khashoggi. Unlike Khashoggi, this man is a U.S. citizen. And he was not consorting with or propagandizing on behalf of Islamists, but enraging them by consorting with America’s closest ally in the region.

While Issam Akel has not been made a cause celebre, perhaps he should be. An American resident of East Jerusalem, Akel was arrested by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in October 2018 and sentenced to life in prison with hard labor for allegedly committing the mortal sin of “selling a house to the enemy in Jerusalem.”

You see, according to the PA’s kangaroo court, Akel had the temerity to broker the sale of a house in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem to Ateret Cohanim. That organization seeks to acquire land to settle Jews in non-Jewish areas of the Old City, and in small pockets within heavily Arab neighborhoods.

Under “Palestinian” law, selling property to Israelis—namely, Jews—is punishable by death. There’s a long history of legal codification of such barbaric Jew-hatred, as catalogued by Rabbi Schmuley Boteach:

The concept of killing a man for doing business with a Jew was put into force by the Jordanians in 1948 during the kingdom’s occupation of Judea and Samaria. From there, it would be incorporated into the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)’s legal code in 1979, which enforced the penalty of execution on any of those ‘traitors’ caught ‘transferring positions to the enemy.’ Since then, the law has been further clarified. The term ‘positions,’ as it turns out, refer to any sort of land or real estate. ‘Transferring’ has been elucidated by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to include any act of ‘diverting,’ ‘selling,’ or even just ‘renting’ a property. As for the ‘enemies,’ this refers to ‘an enemy state or one of its subjects,’ which, coming from the PLO, refers explicitly to Jews. The law has been reaffirmed by Palestinian officials on several occasions — in 1973, 1979, 1997, 2010, 2014, and 2018.

It’s truly Nazi-esque. But a U.S. political establishment that was just months ago woke to anti-Semitism—it least when it might use that to dunk on Trump—has been missing in action.

http://politicalmavens.com/

There were two firsts in the NYT of Jan 5, 2019. One was the pronouncement by new congressperson Rashida Tlaib (D Mich) to her young son who congratulated her on her victory by saying, “Momma, look you won. Bullies don’t win” to which she responded, “Baby, they don’t. Because we’re going to go in there, and we’re going to impeach the motherf—er.” The other was the fact that the word was spelled out completely, something I had never seen in the Times. I googled to see whether that had happened before but came up short with references only to the Times’ squeamishness about printing the word and numerous examples of what permutations they used to avoid it.

Several thoughts occurred to me. Would they have done so if it was used to refer to Obama? to Lewis Farrakhan? Would they even have printed the “n” word to refer to those two? The answer to those questions is obvious – they would not have printed motherf—er in reference to anyone but the man who gets trashed in their pages every day. The picture that accompanies the article shows the congressperson smiling as she is sworn in to office with the American flag behind her and her young son in front of her – the boy looks like he is under 10. I don’t know any educated mothers who teach their children to refer to people with that word, especially not when it’s a person holding the highest office in our country. I hope that her son would be seriously reprimanded at school for referring to his teacher or principal that way; if this is the congressperson’s judgment when it comes to dealing with the son she loves, what might we expect when she must talk with adversaries?

Rashida was fortunate to have been born in this country of free speech and on occasion, to have been the recipient of government welfare to her family of 14 children while she was growing up. As a Muslim woman, she was able to go to college and Law School and be elected to the legislature of her state and her country. Regardless of how she feels about our current president, he has been duly elected and the least that can be expected from other elected officials is respect for the office of president, if not its occupant. The example that she sets for her children does not bode well for her civility in dealing with political antagonists, something borne out by the map in her office displaying the word Palestine where Israel is located.

The NYTimes regularly refers to the Trump rhetoric, blaming that for the increasing divisiveness in our country No Republican was ever quoted in the press of in the media referring to a Democrat president with that word and I can’t think of another politician who would refuse to apologize if their insult became front page news. Lately, people have resigned from both public and private sector jobs for less. Who would have guessed that a single 12 letter word printed in the newspaper of record could push the level of discourse to a new low – a debasement as damaging to our culture as the unrestrained person who was quoted.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13498/the-new-york-times-incentivizes-hamas-violence

While Hamas is happy to boast openly about their fighters tearing at the border fences in Gaza and hiding behind civilians to evade Israeli soldiers—the New York Times makes no mention of this. Israeli soldiers are portrayed as faceless killing machines, without a single reference to the fire kites, terror tunnels, rockets or cross border explosive devices utilized by the Palestinians, or to the double war crime of Hamas targeting Israeli civilians by firing rockets from behind Palestinian civilians.

These Israeli civilians are not occupiers or usurpers. They live in Israel proper not in occupied or disputed territory. This area was built from scratch by Israelis on barren desert land and the Israelis have a right to be protected from fire bombs and mobs determined to breach the protective fence. How would other nations respond to such threats? Certainly not by treating these dangerous mobs as peaceful protestors merely exercising their freedom of speech and assembly.

The Times’s absurd conclusion that the shooter may have committed a “war crime,” ignores the law of war crimes.

Contrast what Israel does with how the Palestinians treat terrorists who willfully target and kill Jewish children, women and other civilians. The Palestinian Authority pays their families rewards – in effect bounties — for their willful acts of murder. Hamas promotes and lionizes terrorists who kill Jews. But you would not know any of that from reading the one-sided New York Times screed….All in all, it is a shockingly irresponsible report.

In the Sunday New York Times — the most widely read issue of the week — the lead story was about a young Israeli soldier whose bullet ricocheted off the ground and killed a young Palestinian medic who had admitted to being a human shield and who was videoed throwing a smoke bomb. The next day— in the less well-read Monday issue — the Times reported on the murder and torture committed at the hands Afghan troops affiliated with and trained by the American CIA. The piece opens with the troops shooting and burning an entire family including a three-year-old girl. The number of deaths associated with these units (who at times were mistaken for ISIS) could not be verified but accounts put them at hundreds in one month. Apparently, the Times’s editors believe that the Israeli story, involving one soldier who shot one Palestinian under questionable circumstances, deserves wider coverage than deliberate massacres perpetrated by Afghan troops trained by the CIA.