Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Spot the difference
One is the lead-in to the (online, front page) Fox News report about the arrest (initiated by the joint efforts of british and Pakistani police) of the would-be trans-Atlantic terror bombers, the other is that of the New York Times.
Can you guess which is which?
Case One: "Warning that Britain faced a “deadly” and “enduring” threat from terrorism, British authorities announced today that 11 of 23 people held in connection with a suspected plot to blow up America-bound planes would be formally charged with offenses that included planning to bomb the airliners and conspiracy to commit murder.
"The decision to press formal charges came after days of growing public skepticism about the extent of the plot."
Case Two: "U.K. charges 11 in plot to blow up planes after police find bomb-making equipment, 'martyrdom videos'"
Hint: the NYT item is juxtaposed on the front page with photo and report on the Britain-Pakistan cricket imbroglio.
The "Protocols" are bullscheiss, don't be an ass!
A few years back retired Israeli judge Hadassa Ben-Itto might have seemed to clock off the paranoiometer by declaring, as she did recently in Ha'aretz, that:
The conspiracy against the Jewish people - the spreading of an evil tale (the alleged "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion") in order to prepare for another extermination of the Jews - must be dramatically exposed.Prior to 9/11, to Usama, to Ahmmadaboutjihad, snug as a bug in a protected western living room, we might have scratched our shampooed heads and wondered what kind of braindead f-wit could possibly believe in such crap.
That is: Ben-Itto. But what an American diplomat once said to her would sure ring true for a lot of people now:
"You (Jews) have not learned your lesson. Had you thoroughly read 'Mein Kampf,' you would have known what to expect. Again the writing is on the wall ... Wars do not begin on battlefields. Read the UNESCO treaty that declares, 'Wars start in the minds of people.'"The Nazi war against the Jews certainly started so.
In Germany, where the word "Anti-Semitism" first became famous through the literature of the "Anti-Semitic Party", Jews were seen, for example, at various times, as:
- Being responsible for the bubonic plague and sundry calamitous disease outbreaks;
- Having social behaviour - and physiognomy - akin to vermin and/or snakes (while simultaneously promulgating the moral collapse of civilisation through Jewish temptresses and prostitution);
- Unleashing and controlling evil communism while dominating capitalism through pound o' flesh-crazed Merchants of Venice, all of whom were in cahoots;
- Scheming subterraneously (through the aforementioned cahootists) to subjugate and kick the scheiss out of "The Goyim", even as "The Goyim" murdered, emasculated and kicked the general scheiss out of them in Russia, Spain, Germany and most European places one might care to mention - except, of course, when they were not banned, en masse, from living in such places and forced to wander to and beg entry somewhere else;
- Et Cetera, and the etc is a long and ugly one.
Now, says, Ben-Itto:
... (T)he Muslim world ... has picked up the Nazi torch ... and set for itself the goal of destroying our nation and people. And it says so openly, in public speeches by the president of a United Nations member country, in constitutions such as Hamas', in sermons at mosques.We of western mindset, and perhaps especially the Jews, have grown smugly confident that most forms of backward, bigoted and thoroughly un-PC thinking are passe, so much so that the "Protocols" was deemed in many quarters as not being worth hoisting for critical analysis or even looking at. As Ben-Itto astoundingly points out, millions of copies of the protocols are now published in every language ... except Hebrew!
Arabic editions (of the "Protocols"), whether printed in Iran, Syria or Egypt, are also distributed in Muslim communities in the West. They are featured in book fairs and sold discounted at shops.
Egypt, Syria and Qatar have produced television series based on the protocols and broadcast them throughout the Arab world during Ramadan, when the families come together to break the fast. Many popular soap operas, which target audiences of all ages, perpetuate the claim of a criminal Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
... Only recently I happened to meet an American doctor of Lebanese Christian descent at a hospital in the United States. When I asked him whether he is familiar with the protocols, he replied that he has the book at home, knows it well and indeed believes it. It is part of our culture, he said in perfect English, with an American accent and a straight face.
... (T)he edition printed in the U.S. in 2004 ... is sold in respectable book stores.
Laid before me is such a book. ... The book even deals with the issue of forgery.
The London Times, the first to expose the forgery in 1921, is called part of the Jewish conspiracy. Others who have exposed the forgery, among them a Russian princess and a French theologist, are portrayed as previously convicted felons.
...(T)he president of Iran, ... along with the rockets and nuclear weapons, ... orders the printing and distribution of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." His emissaries had the audacity to display an English translation ... at the Iranian stand of the world fair in Frankfurt.
Such an ostrich-like dose of denial certainly feeds many ills, not least of which is the leftist prescription of moral "equivalence" in all arguments for the Jewish state of Israel, for it is undeniable that:
If a similar protocols were to be published about Muslims, or any other minority or racial group, the streets would have been ablaze, as they were over a few measly caricatures in a Danish newspaper.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Benefit of the doubt is N/A for Mel
At the time of writing, I would update my original take on the Gibson billion-maker with what Chris Hitchens has to say now.
