And now, a word from the cinematic classic Masked and Anonymous:
Editor: So, are you still a journalist or a novelist?
Tom Friend: Same thing out here....
Editor: Make something out of it. And if you can't do that, sir, then make it up!
Yesterday the journalist/novelist Michael Kruse of the St. Petersburg Times, who is very good at making things up, said this about me:
Robert Spencer, who writes on a blog called Jihad Watch, told reporters Islam was here to take over America.
In response, I pointed this out here:
Kruse didn't think it necessary to note that when I said that "Islam wasn't here to worship and get along but rather to become the dominant religion in America," I was referring to a statement of Omar Ahmad, cofounder and longtime board chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, of which Mohammad Lutfi called himself an "honor member" (video coming soon). I attributed this statement to Ahmad. But by phrasing his report this way, as I am sure Kruse was aware, he made me sound like a nut, whereas if he had noted that it was a quote from the cofounder of CAIR, indicating that there are Muslims in America who say this sort of thing, his story would have taken on a substantially different cast.
When I wrote that, I had not yet watched the video above (which comes to us from Pamela at Atlas Shrugs, who has more videos and coverage of the September 3 Rifqa hearing).
You will see in this video that I refer to the statement by Omar Ahmad about Islam becoming dominant in the United States and the Koran being the only law in this country, and mention Omar Ahmad by name and identify who he is -- and all the while standing to my immediate left is none other than...Michael Kruse of the St. Petersburg Times. He is the one in the blue shirt with Seventies-style hair and a beard, taking notes with a blue pen.
So here it is on video: Michael Kruse was right there, he heard me attribute the statement properly, and then he made the decision to strip out the attribution and characterize the statement as if it were an out-of-the-blue assertion from a paranoid blogger.
That's what they call "journalism" these days!
I hope that Michael Kruse will now be asked by his employer to apologize. And then I hope he will be fired.
Fired? Kruse's employer is probably patting him on the back -- more "facts" for their no-doubt upcoming editorial to keep up with the Sentinel.
The funny thing is, when it comes to "children" (I know a 17 year old isn't a "child", but if she's still not allowed to do as she pleases, well ..) the media is uasually all shrill and hysterical and whatnot, and all kinds of laws get passed for the protection of children, and the newspapers are usually for it -
ie, public bans on smoking (oddly enough, even in bars, where children aren't allowed, even though they still say such measures are "for the good of the children"
or
The CRTC had once ruled quite a while ago that no Canadian channel should show anything more than mildly PG with the violence (except the news and hockey) before 9 pm "for the protection of children"
And so on. I'm sure others here could think of other ones. Anyway, if you're against these kinds of restrictions, then you're anti-family or anti-kid.
So, why is the media now ganging up on this "child" who is in clear and present danger of her life (not by second hand smoke, or seeing something nasty on TV, but by brutal violence, probably beheading)?
Has protection of Islam suddenly become the media darling, over and above their vaunted child advocacy?
It would seem so, if they're willing to send Rifqa to the sacrificial altar of PC/MC and Islamism.
I refer to these so-called journalists, these charlatans, and propagandists as SCRIBES. They are imbecilic scribes. Or imbe-scribes. They have no brains. They are only scribes. Nothing more. They do not meet the standard requirement of any real professional: use your brain. Only scribes. That's what they are. Scribes. Scribes.
"Our Time Has Come"
http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com/
If you do not believe in a spiritual battle, you are wrong.
The role played, not by the press, but by many in the press, in this country and in Western Europe (and Israel), in preventing their readers from finding out about Islam, and constructing policies that might, as a consequence, be far more effective and, not incidentally, far less wasteful -- if Americans understood the full meaning and menace of Islam they would want American troops withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, all aid to Muslims -- save for a small amount paid directly to this or that tribe or group to perform specific tasks against other Muslims - would be cut, and the dream of those who think of themselves as "anti-war" would be met, for the war of self-defense against Islam would be conducted much more efficiently, cleverly, cheaply, and without the large-scale use of the military. I suspect that Michael Kruse is against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not for the reasons that you or I are, and his irresponsibility -- his hand can be seen taking notes as you quote the founder of CAIR, whom you carefully name, but did his brain register what he was writing, or did he leave off, in a wonted spirit of negligence, the essential bit -- that you were not speaking in propria persona, but quoting the founder of CAIR?
What's wrong with these people? How mediocre and stupid are they, and why, when there are so many intelligent people -- including, for god's sake, intelligent reporters -- do the michael-kruses of this world, and their bosses, continue to operate?
And what about a systematic boycott of those papers -- the St. Petersburg Times, the Orlando Sentinel -- by their advertisers, who should be apprised of what these papers are doing, or not doing? Or, if the advertisers won't raise this issue, then why should not individuals, or groups, let those advertisers know that as long as they continue to advertise in the St. Petersburg Times, and the Orlando Sentinel, others will choose not to give them their custom.
And that can extend to others -- the people outside of the area who come as tourists. Perhaps they too will have made available to them, on-line, a list of all those who continue to advertise in those and other papers. Since an appeal to morality, justice, common sense, history, the ethics of jouranlism, and so on and so forth, appear to have little effect, then pressure on pocketbooks must be tried. I think it could work.
Starting with his name, Michael Kruse, is a fraud with criminal tendencies, perfect chronie for Dar Al-Islam.
Hugh asks: "What's wrong with these people? How mediocre and stupid are they, and why, when there are so many intelligent people -- including, for god's sake, intelligent reporters -- do the michael-kruses of this world, and their bosses, continue to operate?"
David Horrowitz, himself a one time leftist, writes:
Krause is mostly a sports writer.
Talking about Muslim oppression of women, there is an excellent article on Islamic misogyny and PC/MC indifference to it by the shrewd and clear-sighted Nick Cohen on 'Standpoint':
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/2041/full
"Islam wasn't here to worship and get along but rather to become the dominant religion in America"
...............
One need not consider it credible that Islam can entirely "take over America" for it to be a threat--although I'm sure that this seemed equally incredible to citizens of the Byzantine Empire in the 7th century, and considerably less incredible to citizens of that same empire six hundred or so years later.
Consider the Nazis' Third Reich--this was hardly the "thousand-year Reich" touted by its most fervent proponents, yet it was a horrific, destructive force that resulted in the murder of millions of people, and the destruction of much of civilized Europe.
Islam can be a great, destructive threat to the United States, even if it never takes over completely--as it may well in Europe and other parts of the world.
The most pressing issue here, though, is whether Islam is a credible threat to one little teen-age girl. Kruse seems much more loath to address this central issue, for some reason.
Robert,
Please be careful.That video started to remind me of that video of Oswald getting shot.
Let's face it, Kruse is a 3rd rate reporter who simply has no working knowledege of the subject of Islam and sharia..
Sadly we are going to find very few reporters who really do some research on a story before they make their copy. Kruse was only hastily and quite carelessly reporting what he thought he heard or saw. There are so many effective tools that a good reporter has at their disposal now and yet Kruse failed to make use of them. Did he ask for interviews with Robert Spencer, or Pamela Geller before going to press or any of those who have a working knowledge of Islam? Did he take a little time to actually research the ever growing incidents of honor killings in America and Canada in recent months and years? I doubt that he did.
Over the years I have given several interviews and was always amazed how inaccurate many of the stories where when they appeared in the press. The good thing is that you learn quickly who the good reporters are that take the time to get it right.
When a young girl calls out for help and feels threatened with death by the teachings of an archaic religion even though she says she still loves her family, shouldn't you at least give some credence to the possibility that she is telling the truth?
anonamustafa:
Thank you, but in all honesty, that issue is not something I care about.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Faculty members at schools of journalism around the country were almost all reporters or writers for magazines and newspapers, now have to pretend that they know all about the newer modes, the ones they never practiced, and as they do this, whistling in the dark so as to keep their jobs (but since everyone, including the deans, fits into the same archaic category, they will keep those jobs) and teach new generations of students who will practice their journalism, such as it is, directly on the Internet.
Well, the video above is most instructive. First, it shows the importance of YouTube, and of how telling events can be captured. Second, we now understand that the most important thing captured in the video above is not what the CAIR apparatchik, practicing taqiyya, said, nor even Robert's discussion of the unsavory connections that CAIR has, beginning with its cofounder and longtime chairman of the board Omar Ahmad. No, the most important thing, for all journalism professors and their students, and indeed for the general public, is to see, right there on the screen, a reporter, one Michael Kruse, standing right next to Robert Spencer (to his left), and with a pen and pad in hand, not writing as Robert carefully attributes the quote to Omar Ahmad, but writing down only the quote itself. And then we can compare -- we have it all recorded above -- what Robert Spencer actually said, with what Michael Kruse, in the St. Petersburg Times, reported him as saying.
Surely this is an excellent pedagogic tool, showing just how one wildly tendentious reporter can misreport so egregiously,
Use it, at Berkeley, at Columbia, at B.U., at Medill, at every school of journalism you care to name. Why, it ought to be required -- along, perhaps, with a session devoted to counting the "I's" in, say, the last 100 columns by the comical Tom Friedman. Oh, there's so much that can be done to educate students in what should, and what should not, be done.
Perhaps someone at the Walter Lippmann House will care to take note, too.
Oh, these days, the offenses are so rank, that eventually even those who have chosen to stand back, while feeling a vague and growing unease about both the practice of journalism, and the failure of American journalists to make clear Islam's doctrine and Islam's practice, for fear of giving offense, and out of a felt need to continue to propitatie the Idols of the Age.
But those Idols have crumbled into dust already. And the "offense" that might be given would be nothing at all, for by being Infidels, we already offend mightily, and telling some home truths to those who look to the press for accurate reporting and intelligent analysis would have no real effect on Muslims, while it might help non-Muslims to begin to understand, for example, why the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are idiotic, and why demographic changes in Western Europe are so scary, and why there is no "solution" --one-state or two-state or n-state -- to the Jihad, a war-without-end, being waged by Arab Muslims on the permanently imperilled Infidel nation-state of Israel.
Googling a bit, I discovered an interview with sports reporter Michael Kruse, who apparently has written a book about the last 16.8 seconds of some basketball name (the story does not put one n mind of such classics of reporting as John Hersey's "Hiroshima" or Rebecca West's "Black Hawk, Grey Falcon"), including the following excerpt:
Interviewer: Inform readers of who you are. How long have you covered sports? Do you primarily write about college basketball?
Kruse: I graduated from Davidson in 2000 and I’m a staff writer at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. Since I started down here in 2005, I’ve covered courts, business and done general assignment work — not sports — and at this point I’m on the paper’s “enterprise team” and report to the national editor.
Interviewer: What triggered you to write the book? Did this idea crystallize well before Davidson’s run last March?
Kruse: The basketball program was a big part of my experience at Davidson as a student — I covered the team for the school newspaper — but I really got sucked back in last year when I went back for a game in early December. Then I went out to California to watch the guys play UCLA. Then I pretty much didn’t stop.
It was just something I knew I wanted to watch.
Didn’t really know WHY other than I felt like it was interesting, and good, and SOMETHING was starting to HAPPEN, and I enjoyed seeing the people in and around the program and spending time with them.
That was the impetus.
Come March, though, tournament time, as the Davidson story developed the way it did, and certainly by the Kansas game — that’s where I started to think about a possible project.
More specifically: I was there in Detroit for the Kansas game as an alum, not as a reporter, so I was about 25 rows up behind the Davidson bench, and I certainly was close enough to watch that final play — but I had trouble seeing. I felt like I was blinking a lot, and straining, and then it was over. For me, someone who knew a lot about what had gone into creating that moment and to even having that chance, that SHOT, I thought pretty quickly after the game that it might’ve been simply too much to process in such a short, powerful burst of time.
But I wanted to know more.
I wanted to know if others for whom Davidson College and its basketball team are important had had similar experiences.
So I started to look into getting some leave time from St. Pete. The folks here were very gracious to give me three months to do my thing and also the promise of a job upon my return.
And then I started to do what I do.
Report."
I love that portentous "report." Apparently, outside of dribbles and baskets, this "reporter" is not to be trusted -- as we can see from the video above.
Perhaps his editors at the St. Petersburg Times can send someone along to monitor his "reporting."
Call it Kruse Control.
Is that Michael Kruse or is it Michael K. Ruse?
Ruse is a deceiver and one of Allah's plotters.
Ruse is a leftist in Obama's army and Obama is as much a megalomaniac as the Prophet(piss be upon him).
"I am the best of plotters. I deceived them with My guile so that I delivered you from them." Ishaq:323
"The Prophet said, 'I have been given five things which were not given to any one else before me. 1. Allah made me victorious by awe by His terrorizing my enemies. 2. The earth has been made for me. 3. Booty has been made lawful for me yet it was not lawful for anyone else before me. 4. I have been given the right of intercession. 5. Every Prophet used to be sent to his nation only but I have been sent to all mankind.'"
BukhariV1B7N1331
So look out America...the Prophet's declaration is coming and reporters like the leftist Michael K.Ruse are abetting the crime.
Americans we all need to wear "I'M PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN INFIDEL" ON 9-11 OR AMERICAN JIHAD.
Spencer said it before AND after that Omar Ahmad said it.
That makes this "reporter" twice the jackass.