Category Archives: Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

UPDATE II: Media’s Sickening Sentimentality On Egypt

Conspiracy, Government, Iraq, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East, Reason

The following is an excerpt from my new WND.COM column, “Media’s Sickening Sentimentality On Egypt”:

“… I’ve finally figured out what it was that repulsed me so about American opinion-makers’ slobbering response to [the revolt that began in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and swept the Egyptian president, Mohammed Hosni Mubarak, from office.]

It was not so much that the media ignored the likely possibility that democracy in a country that has become progressively more Islamic since the 1950s might not have a happy ending.

It was not that the media pretended that the Muslim Brotherhood, also the “best organized opposition force in the country,” would not field a viable presidential candidate.

It was not that, in their jubilation, Anderson Cooper (CNN), Neil Cavuto (Fox News) and Christiane Amanpour (ABC) failed to mention the precedent set in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has deployed the democratic process to get the better of the country’s Maronite Christians.

It was not even the fact that the journalistic imperative to provide nuance, detail, and an economic and historic backdrop to the unfolding events was replaced, by the journalistic jet-set, with the telegenic drama of the man on the street.

None of this bothered me as much as the patronizing position these American reporters adopted; the neat bifurcation they managed to maintain between “Us” (the “free” men and women of America) and “Them” (those pathetic, shackled Egyptians).

The fact is that the heroic movement for democracy in Egypt dovetails with an ongoing flirtation with fascism in the U.S.; the twilight of individual sovereignty in the U.S. contrasts with its rise in Egypt. …

Read the complete column, “Media’s Sickening Sentimentality On Egypt,” now on WND.COM.

UPDATE I (Feb. 18): To the letter writer below: I am not a conspiracy theorist. Here is a post that explains why conspiracy is usually irrational.

“The premise for imputing conspiracies to garden variety government evils is this: government generally does what is good for us (NOT), so when it strays, we must look beyond the facts—for something far more sinister, as if government’s natural venality and quest for power were not enough to explain events. For example, why would one need to search for the “real reason” for an unjust, unscrupulous war, unless one believed government would never prosecute an unjust war. History belies that delusion.” …

UPDATE II (Feb 19): Daine: No; there are no conspiratorial. What we have are The Takers-–tax consumers—who want the Makers—the so-called rich—to support their parasitical life style. And the Über-parasites, the politicians, who make the most of this human nature.

UPDATED: Poor Pollyanna & The Liberal Media (Logan Assault Cover-Up)

Crime, Feminism, Gender, Islam, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East, Sex

CBS reports a shocker (not): The glorious revolution in Egypt was marred by the “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” of their chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan (via Erik Rush).

Someone has to say this: So deeply silly is the prototypical, progressive female in her fantasies of rescuing the world, that she discards reality. Logan’s rescuers, a couple of clever—presumably local—sisters, were no doubt clad in the traditional nosebags. Local sisters are not so careless as to dress immodestly in a country in which the majority (82 percent) supports executing adulterers. The left-liberal women of the West imagine they can walk around Africa or the Middle-East as free as birds, burdened only by overwhelming love for the locals.

The assault occurred on “the day Mubarak stepped down.” This poor, poor Pollyanna, and the men and women of the liberal media, will return armed with assorted rationalizations intended to solve inner-conflict: the rapists were Mubarak’s men; should be forgiven because of the circumstances, etc.

UPDATE (Feb. 17): Diana West questions the Logan assault cover-up, during which the 39-year-old journalist was called “Jew, Jew”:

Why CBS kept mum for four days about the brutal sexual assault of network correspondent Lara Logan by a Tahrir Square mob on Feb. 11 we just don’t know.

Did Logan, flown out of Cairo by a network-chartered jet to a U.S. hospital hours after the attack, request secrecy as a brutalized victim?

Were news executives, or even Logan herself, concerned that the bombshell news of the assault, which took place almost exactly as Hosni Mubarak was relinquishing all powers, would detract from the “jubilant” crowd’s “democracy” drama? Such a news blackout is hard to imagine if, for example, a star correspondent had been similarly violated by a mob of tea party-goers at, say, a massive Glenn Beck rally – and particularly if other correspondents had previously suffered unprecedented assaults and threats from the same crowd. A keening outcry would have arisen from the heart of the MSM (mainstream media) against the mob, accompanied by a natural zeal to investigate cultural or other reasons for the brutality. Not excuses. And not disinterest.

But in this singular Logan case we’ve seen both. First, only after news queries indicated the story was breaking did CBS on Tuesday release a brief rap sheet on the Friday crime. We were told of Logan’s accidental separation from her crew in the crowd. The prolonged assault by over 200 people “whipped into a frenzy.” The rescue by a group of women and 20 soldiers. What CBS didn’t mention – what was later attributed to an unnamed network source – was that as the thugs assaulted the 39-year-old journalist and mother of two, they shouted, “Jew! Jew!”

…

“Missing is any acknowledgement of the fact – the overwhelming, highly upsetting but nonetheless unavoidable fact – that Islam’s teachings on women and particularly Jews are literally hateful. And that’s the Quranic truth, as copiously expressed by the late Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, approximately Sunni Islam’s “pope.” As he put it, and with plenty of canonical support: Jews “are the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs.”

Read more: Media hushes up Islamic misogyny of Logan assault http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=264941#ixzz1EHiFNRTV

UPDATED: Bono Gives Go-Ahead to ‘Kill The Boer’ Chant

Crime, IMMIGRATION, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Racism, South-Africa

I know that few in the developed world care about the undeclared, ad hoc, genocidal, ethnic-cleansing of rural Afrikaners in South Africa, my old homeland (a least so the major, cowardly conservative publishers assure me). But (from their positions of relative safety), my American countrymen do care about Bono, the great benefactor of mankind, and are surely interested in what he has to say about the incitement to kill the Boers. (Fore more about these killings see “‘Kill The Fucking Whites’ On Facebook”)

Anyhoo, Bono is a chap who fronts a three-chord band of unimpressive droners. His ignorance about the teachings of the late Lord P. T. Bauer, the foremost authority on foreign aid, has catapulted him to a position of great prominence on matters concerning the undeveloped world. This is, after all, the Age of the Idiot.

On tour in South Africa, and amid the ongoing assault against the beleaguered Boers, Bono told the BBC that the ditty “Shoot the Boer,” “which was sung during the fight against apartheid” [and at practically every political rally since] had folkloric pride of place in South Africa, “like music supporting the Irish Republican Army.”

G-d must be otherwise indisposed. (I’m not a believer, but I know many of my readers are. “Respek.”) The God of the Jews was vengeful, when it came to meting out justice. If he were fully “engaged” (and I’m being as delicate as I can), he would surely have struck the bonehead Bono down for giving the killing of a vulnerable people the go-ahead.

Given the mesmerizing, often murderous, power of the chant—any chant—in African life, this is in fact what Bono has done. Does anyone remember the “‘Kill them before they kill you” slogan that helped excite Hutus to massacre half a million of their Tutsi neighbors? Apparently not.

Of course, banning an incitement to murder will do nothing to excise a dark reality embedded deep in the human heart. It is this reality that must be discussed openly vis-a-vis South Africa. I do this in
my book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons From South Africa from Post-Apartheid South Africa. It will be published on May 10, 2011.

UPDATE (Feb. 15): No matter how many times I write or reply to the question of, “Why don’t South Africans up and leave,” I get the same insular, derisive responses, or repeat questions. Again and again. The penny never seems to drop. So, I will excerpt again from “The Immigration Scene,” where it was explained that highly-skilled and educated South Africans can petition destination countries to emigrate. The rest haven’t a hope in hell of getting into the USA. However, even highly-skilled immigrants are weeded out indirectly in the American immigration system, which,

“selects for low moral character by rewarding unacceptable risk-taking and law-breaking … An example should clarify what I mean by ‘select for low moral character’: Most of our South-African friends, all highly qualified, upstanding family men and women, have opted to go to Australia or the UK. Why? Well, legal immigrants to the U.S. don’t ‘wait their turn,’ as the uninformed pointy-heads keep chanting. It is usually their qualifications that, indirectly, get them admitted into the country. The H-1B visa, for one, is a temporary work permit—and also a route to acquiring legal permanent resident status. However, if one loses the job with the sponsoring company, the visa holder must leave the U.S. within ten days. What responsible, caring, family man would subject his dependents to such insecurity and upheaval? As I say, most of the people we know would never contemplate breaking the law by remaining in the US illegally. And not because they’re dull or unimaginative (an ‘argument’ I’ve heard made by Darwinian libertarians, who praise immigration scofflaws for their entrepreneurial risk-taking, no less). But because they have the wherewithal—intellectual and moral—to weigh opportunity costs and plan for the future, rather than say ‘mañana’ to tomorrow and live for today. Unhip perhaps, but certainly the kind of people America could do with.”

The H-1B visa or the O-1 ‘Extraordinary Ability’ Visa are the most popular in gaining entry into the USA. They are predicted on a job offer and are not easily attained (as you will see, if you bother to read the above-linked article).

Other work visas are easily obtained if you’re a law breaker, speak Spanish, are uneducated, and are not Caucasian—there are very few rational ways of getting into the US. The US simply selects for low moral character and a lack of professional accomplishment in its immigration-policy proclivities and sympathies.

As for the family reunification system, in the case that a candidate has family in the US (see “Please, Can My Sister Become An Illegal Immigrant?”), old parents can come right away. The younger, productive siblings of a permanent resident, such as my sister, are last on the legal waiting list. With backlogs running to 4 million cases, she may have to wait well over a decade, if not two, to come to the US legally.

Since Third-World immigrants have larger families, they will crowd out the smaller family units of the Afrikaner or Anglo- South African in vying for this category of visa. Thus, the US immigration policies also favors the Third World.

Please search my blog– and articles archives under Immigration and South Africa if you want to find out more about how near-impossible it is for some of the hardest working people in the world to come to the USA legally. You can purchase my book, out on May 10, and read up about the odd illegal white South African being sent packing back to South Africa by American justices.

But do wake up about America; it opens its arms only to a certain kind of oppressed refugee.

UPDATED: The MEDIA Is The Message (Amanpour’s Anticlimax)

Ethics, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East, Pop-Culture, Propaganda

Good journalism doesn’t assert or hypothesize; it reports the facts dispassionately, and from all sides of a dispute. Alas, I have just heard Neil Cavuto suggest, casually, to a guest on his FoxNews show, that the Egyptian police are probably embedded in the crowds and causing the commotion. The stupidity of the American media’s mindset; the need to see matters in simplistic, either/or dichotomies—this alone should disqualify them from reporting on the news. But inherent in what I’ve said is a presumption of standards. These no longer matter in journalism (and in many more fields of endeavor).

Cavuto’s sentiments, shared by the media monolith, proceed from the assumption that the Egyptian protesters are as pure as the driven snow, and that, therefore, the aggression witnessed must be the handiwork of agents provocateurs. This, even though we don’t have reliable information from all sources to determine what is unfolding on the streets of Cairo. Neil could be right. But good reporting is not a chance affair. In floating assumptions, Cavuto, like almost every other journalist reporting on Egypt, is out of line. They are helping to cement opinion in the absence of facts. Where is Michael Ware when you need him? (http://www.mickware.info/2011News/2011News.php)

Ware is probably too manly for the girls at CNN. Which brings me to that channel’s Alpha Female: the vain, posturing, preachy Anderson Cooper. Remember when this narcissist had his crew film him lugging around an injured Haitian boy? Cooper was roughed up in Egypt (a good producer should have taken him to the woodshed a long time ago). So he turned that into The Story; found a safe haven, where he hunkered down, and whiled-away the evening broadcast repeating what he had endured. Like Cavuto, Cooper also allowed himself to carelessly hypothesize—this time about the possibility of a Tiananmen-Square type occurrence the following day. Quite a few of his colleagues in the “profession” referred irresponsibly (almost wishfully) to the Tienanmen Square massacre, vis-a-vis Egypt.

The American media colors events by refracting them through a sickeningly sentimental prism, often creating reality on the ground, instead of reporting on it.

Marshall McLuhan said that the medium is the message. Is that still true? It is not the technology that molds the events—technology facilitates and frees information. Rather, it is the jet-setting journalist whose persona and ideology propel his pursuits.

UPDATE (Feb. 6): AMANPOUR’S ANTICLIMAX. Via Larry Auster:

Watching Christiane Amanpour on ABC this morning, it appeared this woman devoutly wished a revolution along certain lines. It had to be a world-shattering, epoch-shaping event. For this media moment, she was brought forth, along with her male counterpart, Fareed Zakaria.
However this breathless, transcendent moment got bogged down in bureaucracy. In her interview with Egyptian Vice-President Suleiman, it became apparent that Muburak would not step down before September, that the Egyptian parliament would proceed in an incremental, step-wise fashion to implement reform, and that the government was asking the crowds to disperse and go back home to their daily lives and jobs.
So much for the orgiastic climax to the days of rage and the revolution. ‘Twas not the consummation devoutly to be desired.

The point being that this is not how news is done.