Newsweek Trashes Flag

Via World Net Daily, we find this story providing more evidence of Newsweek’s anti-Americanism. This cover story ran in its Japanese edition, while over here the magazine ran an insipid piece, Oscar Confidential, Hollywood’s Hottest Stars Together. Meanwhile, in Europe, the magazine ran another cover entitled: America Leads, but is Anyone Following?

Riding Sun, an American blogger living in Tokyo has the whole story.

Riding Sun says:

It’s one thing for Newsweek to actively promote the notion that America is a “dead”, “rotting” country overseas. But it’s quite another thing indeed to hide those efforts from its American readers. If Newsweek really thinks America is dead, and our flag belongs in the trash, why won’t it tell us?

If I were to offer Newsweek a suggestion, it would be this: Any story or cover you’re ashamed to run in America probably shouldn’t be used in other countries, either.

I agree. Furthermore, Newsweek demonstrates outright contempt for Americans by dishing up pablum to its American constituency—while trashing America abroad in so-called “hard news” pieces.

It’s really time to ask, what value is the MSM adding here? It undermines us abroad, manipulates stories for its own political agenda, and “dumbs down society” by overemphasizing the role of celebrities.

Now Rush Limbaugh is joining in the hue and cry over thePepsico president’s comparison of the United States to the middle finger. Power Line has been all over the case, noting prior anti-American speeches by this woman, Indra Nooyi.This lady was born in India and was fortunate enough to come to the United States, where she received the advantages that enabled her to rise to her present position.

Maybe, given this story about the behavior of Ms. Nooyi’s countrymen, the United States should take on the role of the middle finger of the world.

Neal Boortz gives his opinion about the Pakistani government’s insistence that we need to be more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims. It’s a rip-roaring piece. Here’s a bit:

Sorry, pal. I’m not buying it. I getting just a bit beyond the point where I’m all bent out of shape trying to understand Islamic sensitivities. If there is something about your religion that should make me feel badly about poor Muslims getting their feelings hurt, you had better get it out there on the table now. All I see is a religion that seems to take great pleasure in passing condemnations and “death sentences” on various people around the world for all sorts of meaningless infractions of some great system of Islamic law.

I’m just not going to get all worked up worrying about the sensitivities of devotees of a religion that will stone a woman to death for adultery, while letting the man go unpunished.

Sensitivity would not be the word to describe how I feel about a religion that is in some way involved in more than 95% of the actual shooting conflicts and wars around the world.

He goes on to clarify Condi Rice’s statement that we would never disrespect the Koran:

Secretary of State Condi Rice had something to say about those false reports of desecration of the Koran. Rice says “Disrespect for the holy Koran is something the United States will never tolerate.”

Sorry, Madame Secretary, but there is something a bit unnerving about your statement. If the violent world that is the Islamic religion is, in fact, based on the words of the Koran, than disrespect has been duly earned. We enjoy freedoms in this country, and that includes the freedom to “disrespect,” as you put it, the Islamic religion and it’s holy book.

It is laughable that we would be groveling before people who have no tradition or understanding of the concept of “freedom of conscience”. After all, they kill people for converting away from Islam!

It is sheer blindness to pretend that Muslims respect the religious beliefs of others. These are the people, after all, who wiped their rear ends with pages from the Bible while holed up in the Church of the Nativity.

I’m disgusted with Newsweek for defaming our soldiers—and possibly putting them in danger. I’m angry that they chose to print a piece slamming our military rather that writing the real stories about the heroism of our troops.

That said, if we start unduly focusing on causal connections between expressions of freedom of speech and wholly unwarranted and depraved behavior of Middle Eastern nutjobs—then I fear we will censor ourselves merely to placate evil. Look at some of the other news stories that have been used as an excuse for rioting and murdering by these people. Remember the female Muslim reporter in Nigeria who was blamed for riots because of the piece she wrote about the Miss World contest?

I’m with Neal Boortz on this one. Newsweek should suffer the consequences of shoddy, false reporting designed to manipulate us in the service of its liberal agenda. Journalism, as a whole, should revisit its ethical position regarding reporting when the country is at war.

Meanwhile, we should recognize the truth about a culture that justifies rioting because of a news story like this one.

I’m going to leave it to the other bloggers to beat up on Newsweek about the lies it published. When I first heard the story of the riots—it wasn’t the Newsweek story in Periscope that caught my attention, it was the fact that in the 21st Century there are people who think that the act of flushing pages of the Quran down the toilet justifies running through the streets committing mayhem and murder!

The fact that these people are capable of such acts, should not be lost in our discussion of this event and we should not tiptoe around this fact in an effort to placate Muslims who, as a group, are the most responsible for the desecration of religious sites in modern times! What about the the giant Buddahs in Talibanic Afghanistan? What about the ancient Christian Churches being destroyed in Kosovo? What about the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem that Muslim terrorists used as a bathroom a few years ago?

Did you see the Buddhists run amok over the destruction of their religious icons? Do you see Christians thousands of miles from Kosovo and Bethlehem rioting and murdering over the desecration of their sites. Did Jews in New York rampage down Wall Street when Joseph’s tomb was desecrated in Israel by Muslims?

When Sinead O’Connor tore up a picture of the Pope on national television years ago, Christians burned her CD’s—but they burned up their own copies that they bought with their own money. They didn’t rush about shrieking and killing people. We overcame that appalling sort of behavior over reports of apostacy and hereticism quite a while back in our history.

Why are we going about walking on eggshells to placate crazy people by assuring that, “no—it isn’t true that we flushed the Quran down the toilet”, when we should be saying—”not it’s not true, but, even if it were—how does that justify barbaric behavior?”

Perhaps we should ask ourselves if it is justified—or even possible to shepherd people with so little impulse control down the path to liberty. Our American experiment has been successful, so far, because we have valued reason over emotionalism and justice over group identity.

Why should we spend our money and our young soldiers’ lives for people who conduct themselves in this manner?

I agree with Robert Spencer when he says:

The question here is one of proportionate response. If a Qur’an had indeed been flushed, Muslims would have justifiably been offended. They may justifiably have considered the perpetrators boors, or barbarians, or hell-bound unbelievers. They may justifiably have issued denunciations accordingly. But that is all. To kill people thousands of miles away who had nothing to do with the act, and the fulminate with threats and murder against the entire Western world, all because of this alleged act, is not just disproportionate. It is not just excessive. It is mad. And every decent person in the world ought to have the courage to stand up and say that it is mad.

It is mad—and if we ignore the fact that the “hearts” we are trying to win in Islamic countries are capable of this behavior—we are mad as well. Let’s not bury this because of our satisfaction at being proven right about the corruptness of the MSM.

Update: Andrew McCarthy says it better than I do. (ht Dhimmi Watch)

The whole “newsweek lied, people died” thing bothers me too—as it does Andrew McCarthy. Why are we adding leftist-inspired leaps of logic to our political arsenal? Won’t that create legitimacy for the next leftist blowhard a la Teddy Kennedy who claims that criticisms of activist judges will cause assassination? Yes, it’s downright fun to throw well-deserved dirt back at the cruds in the MSM, but why legitimize such discourse?

Were I defending Newsweek against some Afghan victim, I’d argue “new and independent cause” which means, “the act or omission of a separate and independent agency; not reasonably foreseeable, that destroys the causal connection, if any, between the actor omission inquired about and the occurence in question and thereby becomes the immediate cause of such occurrence.”

The only question to be resolved about that defense is whether it is reasonable to expect Newsweek (or any person) to foresee that the story would provoke people to behave as if they have the brains of killer bees. I don’t know—is that reasonably forseeable?

If so, then a large percentage of the world population is in a really sorry state.

I’ve written several times about Dr. Jack Wheeler’s To the Point weekly newsletter. I enjoy it so much, I have become an affiliate—hence the button on the left side of my blog that takes you to my page. It costs a small subscription fee that is well worth it.

There is a free article on the site this week that discusses a painful condition being suffered by our soldiers as a result of parasites spread by the bite of sand-flys. In fact, the cure has been worse than the condition—up to now.

Dr. Wheeler has run across a possible cure without the horrible side effects. If you know any soldiers suffering from this—you may want to pass this information on to them.

Blogging has been light lately. I’m trying to get through several books like Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals, The Complete Works of Francis A Schaeffer, A Christian Worldview and Mark D. Roberts’s No Holds Barred, Wrestling with God in Prayer. I’m also finalizing a powerpoint presentation for one of the associations to which some of my clients belong. And, I’m handling some short deadlines at work.

I am also taking private Spanish classes from a Venezuelan lady who is married to an American. On occasion, she and I discuss Hugo Chavez. She recognizes that Chavez is destroying her beautiful country—and she is concerned about her family who remains there.

Last night, after my lesson, she discussed current events there. She told me that Chavez has been providing oil to Fidel Castro. I asked her how Castro was paying for it. She told me that Castro is sending so-called ” medical experts” to Venezuela to “help” the Venezuelans.

I hadn’t noticed any news stories on this. I came home and did a google search and found this:

Under Chavez, Venezuela in 2000 began selling 53,000 barrels of crude a day to oil-import-dependent Cuba under preferential terms, allowing the island to withstand tough economic times that began with the Soviet Union’s collapse more than a decade ago.

A Venezuelan oil company spokeswoman said Thursday that it has since increased oil shipments to Cuba to 80,000 to 90,000 barrels a day.

Communist Cuba, in turn, has sent 14,000 Cuban doctors to work in Venezuelan state-run clinics located in poor neighborhoods.

Tonight, I looked at the Paxety Pages and saw this post about the matter. Juan Paxety sums up information from an anti-Chavez blogger with the following:

fidel is rejuvenated with new friends in leftist governments across Latin America. He has sent secret police and other agents disguised as medical personal to help hugo control Venezuela. He has negotiated a shipbuilding contract that will be put in the most anti-chavez province in Venezuela, then Venezuelan troops were sent in immediately. fidel is working hard to get his doctors and other medical personal into other Latin American countries.

No wonder my teacher is concerned about her family.

This is happening so close to us—and yet, as Juan points out—we are essentially ignoring the situation. I am ashamed that I rarely think about that part of our hemisphere—even though a credible threat against our President’s life seemed to unfold down there during his recent visit to Chile. We should perform a blogospherical tap dance all over Chavez’s head and Juan is right to call us on our neglect.

Update:

Oh—and go look at this post by Juan:

fidel castro and hugo chavez are teaming up again – this time they plan to send eye doctors across Latin America.

Juan points out that these so called “medical experts” of Castro are his secret police!

I’ve been following the story about the disgustingly depraved behavior of the student-heckler at Ann Coulter’s speech at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas this past Tuesday. After a couple of days of hearing and reading about this, I decided that I should check out what the local newspaper has to say about the incident.

I haven’t subscribed to the Austin-American Statesman for years because of what I perceive as an extreme liberal bias—not only on the editorial page—but also in the hard news stories. I quite enjoy the at least once-a-year telephone call I get asking poll questions about the paper. I always politely and fully answer the questions—perhaps a bit too fully for the interviewer who is generally asking multiple choice questions. My views of the paper were confirmed today when I checked the online version.

The paper didn’t cover Ann’s speech or the incident until today—with only a short blurb in something called the Central Texas Digest (free registration required):

Heckler arrested at Coulter speech
A heckler was arrested Tuesday night during a lecture by conservative speaker and writer Ann Coulter at the LBJ Auditorium at the University of Texas, campus police said. Ajai Raj is charged with disorderly conduct, a class C misdemeanor, police said.

The lack of coverage did not sit well with some of the readership who e-mailed the editor with protests the editor discusses on his blog (free registration required):

Two e-mails have arrived this morning from readers irate that we didn’t cover the heckler who interrupted a lecture by TV personality Ann Coulter Wednesday night at the LBJ School over at UT. We did, as you’ll see by following the link and scrolling down to the third item.
One e-mailer, a regular, criticized the “Pravda on the Lower Colorado” for failing to publish anything on the heckler. He was wrong, as he often is.
The second was more nuanced. He wondered why we didn’t do more with the story:
“The article in yesterday’s Statesman re decreased newspaper circulation here and around the nation should be no surprise to anyone who uses the Internet as a tool to widen news awareness horizons. A case in point: today’s Statesman gives but one mildly-worded column inch to the arrest of a U.T. English major for disorderly conduct at Ann Coulter’s recent lecture. The Statesman elected to provide no details of the incident whatsoever. One has to go to the Internet to read what actually happened, and it’s in plain ‘view’ on a number of news websites, ie. Drudge, and blogs. The virulently obscene question this ‘Pride of the U.T. English Department’ asked Ms. Coulter is the best clue to the political ambience in our overwhelmingly liberal universities. Your editors didn’t have to use exact quotes, but they could have easily worded around it thereby giving the story much more effect, unless, that is, they didn’t want to embarrass U.T. even more. It’s a real cesspool down there.”

He’s right. Internet use affects newspaper circulation for the worse. The implicit question is whether the dustup at UT deserves more space than we gave it. In other words, it’s a question of news judgment. We decided it was not, and I’m comfortable with that.

The fact that Sean Hannity made hay of the incident, as if Ann Coulter were some lonely voice forced to cower in the face of a “virulently obscene question,” is laughable. Ms. Coulter soldiered on, and the viral spread of her ordeal around the blogosphere this morning is proof that she emerged not just unbowed, but unbloodied, too.

The last paragraph by the editor misses the point clearly laid out by the e-mailer. The story is not Ann Coulter’s reaction to and survival of the actions by this heckler. The story is that ideological thuggery has been incubating on the campuses of this country’s universities and is now breaking out into vulgar behavior and assault—all in an attempt to intimidate and to squash participation in the market of ideas by conservatives and even liberals who refuse to conform. The editor’s response is pathetic. Had the heckler been a member of the KKK disrupting the speech of Al Sharpton, I am certain that the paper would have focused on the threat such an action poses to free speech, instead of lamely claiming there was no story because Al Sharpton was a grown man able to handle it.

On the other hand, the paper does cover the speech given by Justice Scalia at Texas A&M University—my alma mater. I can assure you that the vast majority of students at Texas A&M—whether Republican or Democrat (though I assert that Texas A&M is “red flyover country while UT is decidedly more blue)—would not stand by and allow a heckler to spew filth and make vulgar gestures at a guest on campus—and they wouldn’t wait for security to handle the situation either. Just try walking on the off-limits grass near some of the war memorials on campus if you want to know what I mean.

When I was a freshman at Texas A&M in 1974, William Kunstler spoke. If there was a student present at that speech who agreed with him—it wasn’t evident to me. Nonetheless, all of the students who asked question of Mr. Kunstler were extremely respectful and polite.

Getting back to the Austin American Statesman’s story of the speech by Justice Scalia, (free registration required) it is clear that Justice Scalia was treated with great courtesy and respect by the students at Texas A&M. Of course, the reporter has to unsheath a claw to take a swipe because of that fact:

“Societies only mature, they never rot,” Scalia quipped, to the delight of the laughing audience.

During a question-and-answer period, Scalia only received softball inquiries. One questioner identified himself as a member of the Young Conservatives of Texas and the next as a member of the Texas A&M Young Republicans.

That led Scalia to ask: “Am I totally preaching to the choir?”

To that, many in the crowd laughed, and applauded. (emphasis added)

So—a “dustup” at a speech of a well-known pundit and best-selling author taking place at a major university located in the paper’s home town is not news—but students acting respectfully and actually enjoying a speech by Justice Scalia a hundred miles away is news? I think that both stories are newsworthy—but one can be twisted to take a dig at the more conservative students of Texas A&M.

This is why I refuse to spend money on the local newspaper.