There is a worthwhile article in the Washington Times today, "One subject publishers in Britain will not touch" (thanks to Steve), about anti-Semitic and anti-Israel prejudices in the British media -- which attitudes of course play into the hands of the global jihad. At one point the piece quotes the always superbly insightful Melanie Phillips on the media's double standard, which is still all-pervasive and applies to the United States as well:
At the Guardian, where she later served as news editor, she found herself increasingly at odds with the conventional wisdom. "I used to have this argument at the Guardian, which amazed and horrified me. I used to say, 'Why do we make a front page splash when the Israelis kill five Palestinians, when the murder of thousands of Muslims by Muslims is a nib on page seven? It's a double standard.' And they would say, 'Of course it's a double standard because we hold Jews to account by Western standards. We can't judge the Third World by our standards.' When I first heard this argument I was gobsmacked [stunned], because to me it was racist. It's moral and cultural relativism."
Hmmm. I wonder, by whose standards did they report the genocide in third world Rawanda?
I love the word "Gobsmacked", reminds me of the wildly more popular phrase, "Bitch slapped".
Gobsmacked:
Adjective
Definition: flabbergasted, astounded, shocked; also written gob-smacked.
Etymology: from gob `mouth' + smacked `clapping hand over in surprise'
Bitch-slapped:
Verb
Definition: to slap someone with an open hand, esp. in an attempt to put them in their place or cause humiliation
Example: Corporate America was bitch-slapped by the stock market. (Or CBS took a bitch slapping for lying about the Bush memo).
Etymology: from black English, slapping a person as a pimp would slap a prostitute
(Normally I reject ebonics or slang useage, but this word is so plesantly descriptive that I make an exception to the encroachment of Ghetto speak into the English language.)
What more can I say about the media, except that they deserve a good bitch-slap for being dhimmis and cant't stand them anymore.
I had never heard the phrase Bitch slapped until now (other than some song with a line slap-my-bitch-up was it by Eminem?) but Gobsmacked is a good English working class description.
The item itself explains a great deal and also applies to the Bleedin' Biased Corporation.
By the way Andrew that was an interesting site you pointed me to the other night.
Granny Weatherwax
Which site was it again?
Double standards. We here all kinds of complaints about right/conservatives who screw up where islam is concerned- but only praise and support for the people on the left who wish to tear us down.
Andrew
It was American Catholic Org.
I like St Anthony at the search engine and Saint of the Day.
Oh, okay, so the 3rd world can just slaughter away all they want and we shouldn't complain. We're not supposed to hold them up to any standards because they don't have any. Western standards are obviously more civilized.
But isn't this patronizing? Racist? Demeaning?
How convenient for the "3rd world". They can get away with anything they want, murder as many people as their black hearts desire, and it's just expected stuff. Not to be fussed over too much. Never to be criticized, no matter how disgusting. They're laughing at us. Thanks to idiots like those at the al-Guardian.
It is difficult to describe to supporters of Israel -- Jews and non-Jews alike -- outside of the UK, just how pervasive and palpable is the contempt for Israel amongst Britain's citizenry, particularly the intelligentsia and academic elite. Like Melanie Phillips, I have been ostracized for my political views and I have lost count of the number of times I have had to defend against all of the insipid anti-Semitic canards -- Jewish control of the media, the power of the Jewish lobby, Jewish political campaign contributions, the Jews in George Bush's cabinet taking the country to war in Iraq at the behest of Israel, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
What is ironic but no longer astonishing, is that many of those spouting this garbage are themselves Jewish. Anti-Semites have found the ideal beard with which to hide behind when they point to books by Chomsky and Finkelstein or articles by Judt or boycott campaigns orchestrated by Steven Rose as "proof" of Jewish malversation. Why otherwise they ask, would Jews condemn "their own"?
Sad to say, this is where modern Britain stands today: an elite that have lost the will to criticize the abhorrent cultural and religious practices of "the other" and a citizenry dumbed down by the BBC and coerced to fall in under threat of prison sentences.
I hope that Melanie Phillips will be able to find her publisher but I am not optimistic that many in the UK will take her admonition to heart.
"We can't judge the Third World by our standards."
That's BS - of course we can, and we have, and we should.
The suggestion above that leafletting be conducted from airplanes calls to mind that quixotic Icarus, Lauro de Bosis, son of a famous father, winner of a poetry prize for his own poem "Icaro," and intimate friend of the inimitable monologuist Ruth Draper.
In 1930 Lauro de Bosis rented a small plane, filled it with anti-Mussolini leaflets, flew over and again over the streets of Rome, throwing those leaflets out. Some were picked up and read; many were seized by the Blackshirts or Balilla and destroyed.
Fascist planes rose in the sky. De Bosis, his mission accomplished, flew out over the Mediterranean, and disappeared.
There is a Lauro de Bosis Lecturesip at Harvard, arranged by Gaetano Salvemini. Who, hearing of the Lauro de Bosis Lectures, will think to find out about Lauro de Bosis, or Ruth Draper, or Giustizia e Liberta of the Rosselli brothers(mentioned, by the way, in Oriana Fallaci's recent books on the appeasement of Europe), or of the refugee scholar Salvemini -- or of what Fascism was, and is, all about.
Perhaps the leafletting idea, if only to garner media attention, is a good idea. Perhaps it could be called the Lauro de Bosis Brigade. For the threat posed by Mussolini, il Granitico, clown and murderer, to European civilization has been equalled, indeed surpassed, by the threat from the adherents, "moderate" and "immoderate," of the belief-system of Islam.
Ibn Warraq's essay comparing the defining features of Fascism with the defining features of Islam can be found at www.secularislam.org, or by googling "Ibn Warraq" and "Fascism" and "Islam." It is worth reading, printing out, distributing to others.
I am willing to work with other interested parties to leaflet any part of Europe by rented airplane.
Btw, everyone: Am I behind the times, or is the newest left-wing nut theory that Al-queda does not even exist, and was made up by the 'neo-cons'?
At last I have an insight into all those middle class left wingers who oppose Israel. Those loony left wing Guardian readers are labouring to impose a global communist infrstructure by attacking the "western state of jews"; in the same vein of toppling capitalism and the rest of the west. Its all beginning to make sense now!
Israel symbolises the 'struggle' between 'capitalist pigs' and the self-proclaimed 'enlightened ones'... Just a thought.
This Iranian woman was spared from death only because the accusers family spared her life after she spent 7 years in prison.
However, if she was in fact defending herself from rape, as I think is highly likely, then she spent 7 years too long behind bars.
Furthermore, more Moslem women should be inspired by her example of fighting back (not, the murder, but the fighting back against the violiation of her basic human rights)against the repression facing them by Islamic teachings.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&e=6&u=/ap/20050112/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_saved_from_death
Speaking of double standards-
Here's a curious scene. (Didn't Mohammad have a dream in which he was given a choice between milk and wine and he chose milk, thereby sealing the lips of Muslims to the grape forver?)
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/starscene.asp?edition_id_1&categ_id=6&article_id=11253#
Just to underscore my post above, there's Prince Harry making a "fashion statement":
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40716000/jpg/_40716791_sun203ok.jpg