Category Archives: Media

UPDATED: Not Russia, But American Ally Turkey Is ‘The World’s Biggest Jailer Of Journalists,’ Frequently For LIFE

Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Journalism, Media, Middle East, Russia, War

If you’re getting your news from the American media, you probably don’t know that Turkey, so far an American ally, headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is massacring “Kurdish insurgents in Syria’s Afrin province.”

Turkish troops are capturing Kurdish villages, and killing members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Lots of civilians, no doubt, are perishing. Except that Turkish journalists are forbidden to report about their government’s atrocities ongoing.

When “Turkey’s army claims to have ‘neutralized’ over 2,000 YPG fighters in Afrin without killing a single civilian,” that’s what goes to press. “Not a single mainstream media outlet has question[s] the figures.”

Why?

Because “Turkey is the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, with over 100 currently behind bars.” (“Muzzling the Media No one in Turkey dares report accurately on the war in Syria,” The Economist, Mar 1st, 2018.)

On February 16th a court sentenced six media workers, including a prominent novelist, to life in prison without parole on trumped-up charges of involvement in an abortive coup in 2016. … The internet is no longer a safe space for dissent. In the past month more than 800 people have been detained for protesting against the war on social media.

MORE.

UPDATE: Trump turning on the Kurds to pacify the Turks. Us “moving to repair relations with Turkey, endangering ties with Kurdish allies.”

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UPDATE III (4/27): Land Confiscation? Fuhgeddaboudit! More Myth-Making About South Africa. This Time From The Economist

Africa, Crime, Individual Rights, Media, Multiculturalism, Private Property, Propaganda, Socialism, South-Africa

Here they go again. The know-nothing, groupie media.

South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, has only just announced he’ll proceed apace with land confiscation. But no sooner than a new South African tyrant shows his true colors, than old idiots show theirs. The Economist ignores—or is unprepared to wrestle with the meaning of—the despicable promise made by the new president. Instead, they get down to the business of perpetuating the myth of a multicultural, peaceful country bequeathed by Saint Mandela, and subverted by one man alone: Jacob Zuma.

But the reality is that, “In Africa, You Oust A Tyrant, Not Tyranny”:

The seductive narrative about the ANC’s new boss, Cyril Ramaphosa, gets this much right: There is nothing new about the meaningless game of musical chairs enacted throughout Africa like clockwork. The Big Man is overthrown or demoted; another Alpha Male jockeys his way into his predecessor’s position and asserts his primacy over the people and their property.

The delusions via The Economist:

Mr Ramaphosa steps into the presidency he will be able to tap a deep well of goodwill that he earned in his previous careers, as a trade unionist and then as a businessman. In less than two months since Mr Ramaphosa became head of the party, South Africa’s currency rose to its strongest level against the dollar in almost three years. The prospect of his presidency has already inspired some of the optimism that greeted that of Nelson Mandela, who was elected president in 1994 and who had wanted Mr Ramaphosa to be his successor.

After Mr Ramaphosa lost out to Thabo Mbeki, who was elected president in 1999, he told friends he would not be outfoxed again. His record as a negotiator, leading the ANC side in talks to end apartheid, had already marked him as patient and prudent, and he put both attributes to use in his long struggle to supplant Mr Zuma. Optimistic South Africans speculate that he may pick up Mandela’s mantle.

UPDATE I (3/12):

Right to self-defense?

Right to life?

And the carnage continues:

Socialism is the default position of the evil and the envious. And thus of most of humanity. Socialism is a secondary issue in South-African politics. It’s dumb to reduce race hatred etched on thousands of mutilated bodies to … Stalinism:

Joel Pollak:

Complete convergence of liberalism & conservatism on South Africa:

Handing over commercial farms to subsistence “farmers”:

Refugees:

It was on the cards. Always:

Didn’t have to “predict” land theft. The ANC was candid. They promised it.

UPDATE II (3/26):


Peter Dutton:


And always, RIP:

UPDATE III (4/5-018): Crime beloved country.

UPDATE IV (4/27): Ramaphosa is off to England, where his Highness will get the royal treatment.

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UPDATED (2/22): Townhalls And Discussion About School Shootings, One Constructive (Courtesy of POTUS Trump), Another Destructive (Via CNN)

Crime, Donald Trump, GUNS, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Reason

President Trump made a remarkable effort, EVEN HISTORICAL, hosting and listening to a discussion with victims of school shootings, including students and teachers from Parkland, Florida, as well as victims from the Columbine and Sandy Hook shootings.

Alas, CNN’s “legal analyst,” Jeffrey Toobin, pooh-poohed the event POTUS had held where a large group of school-shootings survivors exchanged views amicably, politely and so much more constructively than on any of CNN’s putrid panels.

3:09 minutes into this segment, a bereaved dad, Andrew Pollack, spoke about daughter Meadow Pollack, shot by “some animal” free to roam. “We should’ve fixed the schools,” roared Pollack. “I’m pissed!” The grieving Mr. Pollack focused the debate considerably. “It is not about gun laws. That is another fight, another battle. Let’s fix the schools and then you guys can battle it out whatever you want. But we need our children safe.”

True. We’ve arrived at a point where guards and metal detectors at the entrance to public venues—schools, amusement parks, concert halls, ballgames—are in order. Like in Israel.

UPDATE (2/22): I clean forgot to mention Darrell Scott, yet another bereaved parent from 1999, who runs a program emphasizing the promotion of connectedness and comity. He pointed out that diversity enforcement increases division and anger.

Conversely, the competing CNN TownHall, also with students, parents, lawmakers—but of a different stripe and temperament—showcased incivility and divisions. Boorish parent Fred Guttenberg berated a patient and stoic Sen. Marco Rubio.

To judge from what the rather mediocre students said at the CNN townhall, their education transmits sentimentality over reason, attitude and mush over canon and curriculum. They’ve been forced-fed a pedagogic diet of pop psychology by female teachers who promote every mythical, politically correct orthodoxy that pervades the Zeitgeist. Their parents were not that different. The apple never falls far from the tree.

With no moderation, if only for maintaining manners, from activist journo Jake Tapper of CNN, the students of Stoneman Douglas High hurled insults at Sen. Rubio and NRA representative Dana Loesch, showing themselves to be simple-minded, yet arrogant, liberals.

Loudmouth Sheriff Israel, of Broward County, was on easy street, surrounded as he was by the social justice warrior students of Stoneman Douglas High. None of these inquiring minds asked the sheriff about his department’s abysmal failures in stopping Nikolas Cruz.

Democratic Parkland congressman Rep. Ted Deutch regaled the predictable crowd with windy, empty, grandstanding. He got louder as the evening progressed and he saw Rubio isolated and Loesch desperately trying to please.

RELATED:

“6 things Marco Rubio said at the CNN town hall that made news in the US gun debate.”

“Trump suggests arming teachers as a solution to increase school safety.”

Nothing New About Parkland School Massacre. FBI Has Been Criminally Negligent In Almost All Of America’s Major Terrorist Attacks.”

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UPDATED (2/10): The Goldman-Sachs Wing Of The White House (Fox News Included) Likely Wants Gen. John Kelly Gone

Democrats, Donald Trump, Ethics, Feminism, Gender, Government, Law, Media

President Trump has no right to be “venting about Chief of Staff John Kelly,” who is an excellent man. But I bet “Jarvanka” (the Jared-Ivanka organism), and their Goldman-Sachs wing of the White House, are urging that the president purge one of the last good men in his administration. Once Kelly goes, of the old MAGA Guard, only Stephen Miller will remain. Then you’ll know the Trump Revolution is truly over.

The media, which has morphed into a Trump Scandal Watch, are baying for the general’s blood. The many fine things Gen. Kelly has done—defend Robert E. Lee as a great American hero, condemn Frederica Wilson for her anti-Trump tackiness—have riled the media.

They would like to think there is no political life after Kelly’s transgression.

Ditto Fox News. On grounds too stupid, weak and wobbly to dignify, a Fox News “writer” (Stephen L. Miller) is calling for the good general to go. It’s encouraging to read the antagonistic comments of the readers. Against Fox News’ neoconservative lefty, the commenters echo my opinion.

UPDATE (2/10): Another reason the left wants the irreplaceable Gen. Kelly replaced:

“John Kelly says some immigrants didn’t sign up under DACA because they were ‘lazy.'”

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