RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://melaniephillips.com/another-journalistic-scandal-so-wheres-the-outrage
Another journalistic scandal — so where’s the outrage?

A particularly egregious claim by proponents of anthropogenic global warming theory is that ‘the science is settled’ and that there is a consensus amongst scientists that the atmosphere is catastrophically heating up because of man’s ever-heavier carbon footprint. Egregious because, in a classic bit of circular reasoning, scientists sceptical of AGW have been systematically denied a voice in the press and on the airwaves, their exclusion thus ‘proving’ the alleged ‘consensus’ through their absence.

Until recently, it might have been assumed that the cause of such exclusion by the BBC was simple ideological bias. For the past two weekends, however, David Rose in the Mail on Sunday has been showing that something far worse has been going on. Yesterday, Rose revealed that the BBC was so deeply in the pocket of AGW scientists that its reporting of AGW was utterly compromised.

Trawling through the second tranche of leaked emails from the nerve centre of AGW theory at East Anglia university in ‘Climategate 2’, Rose discovered, for example, that the leading UK research unit on global warming, the UEA’s Tyndall Centre, had spent £15,000 on seminars for top BBC executives in an apparent bid to block climate change sceptics from the airwaves. Last week, Rose wrote a related story about the involvement of the BBC’s ‘environment analyst’ Roger Harrabin in those Tyndall Centre-funded seminars. Yesterday, Rose wrote:

‘The emails – part of a trove of more than 5,200 messages that appear to have been stolen from computers at the University of East Anglia – shed light for the first time on an incestuous web of interlocking relationships between BBC journalists and the university’s scientists, which goes back more than a decade.

http://www.steynonline.com/4647/treadmarks

Whenever I write in these pages about the corrosive effect of Big Government upon the citizenry in Britain, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere and note that this republic is fairly well advanced upon the same grim trajectory, I get a fair few letters on the lines of: “You still don’t get it, Steyn. Americans aren’t Europeans. Or Canadians. We’re not gonna take it.”

I would like to believe it. It’s certainly the case that Americans have more attitude than anybody else — or, at any rate, attitudinal slogans. I saw a fellow in a “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt the other day. He was at LaGuardia, and he was being trod all over, by the obergropinfuhrers of the TSA, who had decided to subject him to one of their enhanced pat-downs. There are few sights more dismal than that of a law-abiding citizen having his genitalia pawed by state commissars, but having them pawed while wearing a “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt is certainly one of them.

Don’t get me wrong. I like “Don’t Tread on Me.” Also, “Don’t Mess with Texas” — although the fact that 70 percent of births in Dallas’s largest hospital are Hispanic suggests that someone has certainly messed with Texas in recent decades, and fairly comprehensively.

The attack on the British embassy in Tehran came just days after the Iranian “parliament” voted to expel the British ambassador, and therefore reeks of official complicity. The attack—complete with an invasion of the grounds, looting, and a brief hostage-taking—is an always useful reminder of the nature of the regime in Tehran. These are thugs, whatever their religious titles.

As every nation will condemn this assault on an embassy (the Russians were very quick to do so, for example) we should take advantage of the event. Just a week ago, President Sarkozy of France said, “as Iran steps up its nuclear program, refuses negotiation and condemns its people to isolation, France advocates new sanctions on an unprecedented scale to convince Iran that it must negotiate….France therefore proposes to the European Union and its member states, the United States, Japan and Canada and other willing countries to take the decision to immediately freeze the assets of the Iranian central bank [and] stop purchases of Iranian oil.”

The French proposal is practical. Iran exports about 2.2 million barrels a day. If one assumes that half of it will still be delivered (mostly to Asia), the world oil market can easily absorb the loss of roughly a million barrels a day. It did so easily enough when Libya’s exports went from 1.3 million barrels a day in January to almost zero. With Libya returning to the market (exporting 350,000 barrels per day now) and spare Saudi capacity available, exclusion of Iranian exports would not create a crisis.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=247340

Like in other parts of the region, Saturday’s victory by ‘moderate’ Islamists bodes poorly for positive relations with Israel.
The Justice and Development Party (Hizb Al-Adala Wa At-tanmia), which is identified with the Muslim Brotherhood, has won the elections in Morocco held on November 26, 2011.

The party won 107 of the 395 parliamentary seats. According to a constitutional amendment, King Mohammed VI will have to assign the task of forming the government to the leader of the largest party – Abdelilah Benkirane, head of the Justice and Development Party.

This party is the political wing of the Uniqueness and Reform movement which represents the Muslim Brotherhood in Morocco. Its victory constitutes a further triumph for the Islamist movement in the context of the “Arab Spring,” so soon after the victory of the Ennahda movement in the Tunisian elections.

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/who-said-those-embassy-storming-thugs-in-tehran-were-students/?print=1

Who Said Those Embassy-Storming Thugs in Tehran Were ‘Students’? Posted By Claudia Rosett

In a must-read editorial, the Wall Street Journal corrects its brethren MSM on the identity of the thugs who just stormed the British embassy in Tehran — breaking windows, burning the British flag, ransacking offices, trashing a portrait of the Queen, and terrorizing the staff. The Journal notes [1] that the attack was not impromptu. “Police stood by, and Iranian state television broadcast events live.”

But, continues the editorial, “By some strange reflex, Western media insisted the attackers were ‘students.’ To Iranians who know better, they were the basij militia, the regime’s first line of defense. These thugs were called out to brutally put down the 2009 Green Revolution, a genuine student-led uprising.”

Exactly. So what was this strange reflex that caused so many members of the Western media — including CNN, CBS, ABC, the BBC, USA Today, the NY Daily News and even Fox — to describe them as “students”? I’m no mind reader, but I’m skeptical that in this case it was anything as deliberate as some sort of multicultural, values-neutral bias. More likely it was something at least as bad, and maybe worse. My guess is that they let Iranian propagandists do their thinking for them, pulling the “student” label straight off the Iranian broadcasts of the event.

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2614/obama-administration-bans-knowledge-of-islam

The Obama administration’s censoring of photographs of the late Osama bin Laden, lest they offend Muslims, is one thing; but what about censoring words, especially those pivotal to U.S. security?

The Daily Caller reveals that “the Obama administration has been pulling back all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam that some Muslim groups have claimed are offensive.”

The move comes after complaints from advocacy organizations including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others identified as Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the 2004 Holy Land Foundation terror fundraising trial. In a Wednesday Los Angeles Times op-ed, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) president Salam al-Marayati threatened the FBI with a total cutoff of cooperation between American Muslims and law enforcement if the agency failed to revise its law enforcement training materials. Maintaining the training materials in their current state “will undermine the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community,” al-Marayati wrote. Multiple online sources detail MPAC’s close alignment with CAIR. In his op-ed, Al-Marayati demanded that the Justice Department and the FBI “issue a clear and unequivocal apology to the Muslim American community” and “establish a thorough and transparent vetting process in selecting its trainers and materials.”