Category Archives: Journalism

UPDATE II: One more Media Matters con man (A Liberal’s Moral Compass)

Classical Liberalism, Founding Fathers, Ilana Mercer, Journalism, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Morality, Natural Law, Propaganda, Rights, South-Africa

The following is excerpted from y “One more Media Matters con man,” now on WND.COM:

“Terry Krepel authors a website called ConWebWatch. ‘The focus of ConWebWatch,’ Krepel declares on the site, is ‘the ConWeb—large, well-funded, Internet-based conservative ‘news’ organizations [such as] NewsMax, WorldNetDaily and CNSNews.com.’ (I’ve inserted words in parenthesis so as to alert the reader to the edit. Accurate reporting should enable readers to distinguish editorial from authorial input.)

As a biographical note, Krepel adds that he ‘became employed by Media Matters for America in July 2004.’ At his Huffington-Post perch, Krepel is duly described as a ‘Media Matters senior editor.’ Media Matters for America purports to be a ‘progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.’

Our ace writer ought to have stated that he has been employed at Media Matters since 2004. ‘I became employed’ thus might be ugly English for, ‘I was once but am no longer employed by Media Matters.’ Conversely, perhaps this is a fellow whose intelligible written English is confined to the words ‘racial discrimination’?

Himself Krepel describes as ‘a veteran of 17 years in professional journalism as a newspaper writer, designer and editor. I know the ins and outs of the business and how it can be used and misused—and I see how the conservative Internet media is misusing journalism.’

His mission Krepel defines as documenting ‘the distortions, excesses and hypocrisy of these conservative media sites.’ Almost daily Krepel will dissect what Joseph Farah, Erik Rush, Aaron Klein, Jerome Corsi and others on WND.com and CNSNews.com have to say.

His method, crows Krepel, is to ‘hoist the conservative media on the petard of hypocrisy, accuracy and objectivity’ by ‘using their own words.’

Untrue; at least in my case.

Krepel has libeled me, but not by ‘using [my] own words'” … Disputes about democracy notwithstanding, there can be no disagreement over Krepel’s crappy journalism.”…

The complete column is “One more Media Matters con man,” now on WND.COM.

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

A newly formatted, splendid Kindle copy is also on sale.

UPDATE I (Sep. 2): With the same ease with which Krepel left-off quotations around my original words—so as to seamlessly introduce his interpretations of those words—so too could this purveyor of crappy journalism have suddenly “added” the required quotations, once exposed. In anticipation, I have captured the original (June 12) Krepel item. The omission begins with, “Washington and Westminster,” and ends with “the disaster that is post-apartheid South Africa.” Here it is in the original:

UPDATE II: A LIBERAL’S MORAL COMPASS. Terry Krepel thinks he has hit a home run on the Facebook thread at “One more Media Matters con man.” There, Krepel implies that Eugene Terre’Blanche deserved to die, even though the old man was the non-aggressor at the crime scene, and had served his time in jail for his past transgressions (which I am not here adjudicating).
Heaven’s! I’m speechless. All Krepel has demonstrated is that left-liberals (like himself) are every bit as blood thirsty and bereft of a moral compass as the neoconservatives they often critique.
Every remotely sane individual can see where this kind of sentiment leads. And every libertarian can see why the US is in such terrible moral shape. There is no difference between affiliates of the political factions as far as ethics go. “So long as my guy is killing off the guys I dislike—I’m WINNING”: That’s the pervading mindset. Justice be damned.

A Storm in a Nanny State

Democracy, Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Journalism, Liberty, Media, Private Property, Propaganda, The State

Take this post to be part of the blog series, “What They Do In Dictatorships.” In a highly evolved Managerial State such as ours, where the population has been cowed into submission, storms—even—Category 1 storms—give rise to forced evacuations. Just about half the country has been terrorized, or threatened into fleeing. It’s called “leadership,” and subjects seem to apprecaite being coaxed from their homes by lazy bureaucrats and oink-sector workers who’d rather run themselves, than stick around and do the job taxpayers pay them to do: rescue taxpayers.

In “bad” dictatorships—Libya being the latest one the US and its allies have just voided of a dictator—people might have been left in their homes. OMG. The horror! But not in the US, because the American Managerial State is so much more efficient in encroaching on its citizens than are these tin-pot dictators, whom we have built-up into mega-monsters in our infantile, Disneyfied minds.

In any case, the crappy media in this country forms a cartel of cretins. Such is the nature of this monopoly that all news outlets can safely decide to hype one story—in this case, the storm that petered out—and none of these media see the need to hedge their bets, or moderate the level of hysteria on this most fickle of topics: weather.

Here’s the definition of a “Category 1 storm”:

They “usually cause no significant structural damage; however, they can topple unanchored mobile homes, as well as uproot or snap trees. Poorly attached roof shingles or tiles can blow off. Coastal flooding and pier damage are often associated with Category 1 storms. Power outages are typically widespread to extensive, sometimes lasting several days. Even though it is the least intense type of hurricane, the storm can still produce plenty of widespread damage and can be a life-threatening storm.”

What They Do In Dictatorships

Democracy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Individual Rights, Journalism, Justice, Law, Media, Middle East, Private Property

The courts, stacked as they are with judges who work for the dictator, want to put a brave rebel behind bars for shooting a predator on his property. The rebel shot and killed a wild, extremely dangerous animal that thrives in the dictator’s country. All the tribesman did was to aggressively repel from human habitat a creature that had become brazen, making itself at home near the man’s children as they played. It used to be that these tribesmen instilled fear in encroaching creatures. But thanks to decades of cultural and legal emasculation under the dictator, the queered men folk are no longer licensed to protect home and hearth. If they do, they lose their liberty.

I bet you thought this was Anderson Cooper reporting from Libya, botching the job of journalism, as is his wont.

No, this is about an American, one among many (Jeremy M. Hill, 33), who pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court to killing a grizzly bear with a rifle on his 20-acre property near Porthill, Idaho, at the Canadian border.

Jeremy Hill has six kids, ranging in age from 14 years old to 10 months old. At least five were home when the grizzly was killed, Mike Hill said. The bears had gone after some pigs in a pen that the kids had been raising, Mike Hill said.

I wonder how many Libyans have been arrested for shooting wild animals that threatened their families.

If given the choice, I’d choose the right to defend my life and property over the vote, any day.

UPDATE III: Merciless Revolution & Its Masterminds (‘Crimes Against Libya – Redux’)

America, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Journalism, Just War, Justice, Law, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism

“The concept of a society is based on the quality of its mercy, of its sense of fair play, its sense of justice.” So Billy Hayes told his inhuman and inhumane Turkish jailers in “Midnight Express” (a film that surely represents Hollywood’s heyday).

Hayes’s (essentially Christian) protest against a merciless authority now, sadly, applies to the US (“NATO”) and its adopted surrogates around the world.

Once again the US is supervising, and/or lending imprimatur, to a French-Revolution like upheaval in a Muslim country.

(The blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious French Revolution, of course, bore no philosophical resemblance to the American Revolution.) Repulsive (deeply silly) Western journalists are darting about cheering like groupies for the amorphous entity the same “tards” have termed “Rebels.” America helped kill-off the extended family of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, who is on the lam, small children included. Now we’re whooping it up for those who want to do the same to Qaddafi.

Naturally, our enlightened “leaders” said not a word about the quality of justice former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak is receiving in another court that is masquerading as a court of law, but seeks to oblige the masses. This set-up (down to the caged defendant) also more closely resembles the French Revolutionary Tribunal, meting justice mercilessly by popular demand.

Under American auspices a stoic Saddam Hussein, noose about his neck, was hung (and heckled by a hooded Shiite executioner). Even more repugnant than that hasty hanging were the US-sponsored legal proceedings that preceded it. (All the obligatory denunciations of Hussein obtain here, naturally. Bad man. Bad man. Bad man.) That Tribunal, which was branded “made-in-America,” also had more in common with the French Revolutionary Assembly’s methods.

As Hayes said in that memorable scene, asking mercy from the merciless is “like asking a bear to sh-t in a toilet.”

UPDATE I: In answer to TL on Facebook: Would you feel you’d gotten due process sitting in a cage in court, being tried by the Muslim Brotherhood? Why the trials? Why not just begin your democracy with a pardon? I’m not the Christian; you guys are. What did i quote in the beginning of the post? If these new, Middle-East regimes are so magnificent, why not be munificent? Forgive and spend your money on building your society, not prosecuting crimes for which evidence in a court of law is impossible to muster.

UPDATE II: Compassionate Fascist: Yes, why haven’t anti-Semites like yourself (and others who bayed about the Jews having brought about an invasion of Iraq) pointed toward the Arab neoconservatives pushing lies about Libya in the media?

Fouad The Awful Ajami is not the only Arab agitating for ever more intervention.

UPDATE III (Sept. 5): “Crimes Against Libya – Redux.”