In the final Presidential debate, Sen. John McCain was non-specific in calling for exposure of Sen. Barack Obama's history with and relation to the actions of ACORN, which is alleged to have coerced bankers to issue mortgages to underqualified, credit-risky, minorities. The defaulted loans are fundamental to the US investment banking disaster. Today, AP confirms the FBI is investigating ACORN for suspicion of voter-registration fraud.
A second senior law enforcement official says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election.
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, says it has registered 1.3 million young people, minorities and poor and working-class voters — most of whom tend to be Democrats.
There are concerns about the nature of Sen. Obama's qualifications, ideologies, influences, and financial supporters which the mainstream media has avoided reporting about- which have been spotlighted in the new-media and the blogosphere.
Barack Obama poses with Kenyan relatives. Blogger "All the Latest News" writes: "The major reason that Obama will not release his birth certificate is that his father’s race is not listed as “black” but as “Arabic” which is how many Kenyan passports from the 1960s were issued."
CNN reporter Richard Allen Greene designates 'fact'-checking websites as the final arbiters of online truth from fraud. But as the article points-out, former Pennsylvania Attorney General Phillip J. Berg (currently challenging Obama's naturalization qualification in the courts) who has vetted the the 'fact-checkers'?
The Obama rumors have spurred action both for and against the Illinois senator -- including a suit filed in Pennsylvania arguing that he is not eligible to be president because he is not a "natural-born U.S. citizen," and a Web site at isobamamuslim.com that contains a single word: "No."
Philip J. Berg illustrates how hard it is to quash rumors once they spread.
The Philadelphia-area lawyer, who filed the suit against Obama's candidacy, is aware that the Web site FactCheck.org has examined Obama's Hawaii birth certificate and ruled it kosher.
But he doesn't believe it.
"FactCheck.org is owned by Annenberg of Chicago, where Obama sat on the board," the lawyer said, dismissing the Web site's verdict.
FactCheck.org describes itself as a "nonpartisan, nonprofit 'consumer advocate' for voters." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
There are other legitmate criticisms and investigations of Sen. Obama which the media intentionally ignores or chooses to downplay due to their own political biases, claims Melanie Phillips, in her column in Britain's The Spectator, this installment entitled, "Pinch Yourself."
The contrast between, on the one hand, the huge amount of material about Obama’s radical associations that has been published in on-line journals and in a few brave newspapers, and on the other the refusal by big media to address it and to vilify those who do, becomes more astounding by the day.
The Obamaniacs are spinning the relationship between Obama and William Ayers, former of Weather Undergound Terrorism Inc, as of no consequence because this was supposedly a chance acquaintance and because the educational project they worked on, the Annenberg Challenge, was a worthy one.
Stanley Kurtz now nails that canard by showing how, through the Annenberg Challenge, Obama and Ayers channelled funds to extremist anti-American Afrocentric ‘educational’ programmes which were a carbon-copy of the world view of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s black racist mentor who, under pressure, Obama was forced to repudiate. These programmes promoted, amongst other radical ideas, the ‘rites of passage’ philosophy which attempted to create a ‘virtually separate and intensely anti-American black social world’ in order to ‘counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Euro-centrically oriented society.’
One such teacher taught that, ‘The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy.’
Kurtz concludes:
However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright.
No surprise there, since back in June Kurtz pointed to evidence that Obama shared the black racism of the Trinity United Church of Christ. In this article Obama was reported as rejecting ‘integrationist assimilation’ and wanting to channel black rage more effectively into political organisation.
Kurtz dug out a chapter in a 1990 book called "After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois" in which Obama sketched out how radical black churches could be harnessed to help radicalise the black population. As Kurtz wrote:
So it would appear that Obama’s own writings solve the mystery of why he stayed at Trinity for 20 years. Obama’s long-held and decidedly audacious hope has been to spread Wright’s radical spirit by linking it to a viable, left-leaning political program, with Obama himself at the center. The revolutionizing power of a politically-awakened black church is not some side issue, or merely a personal matter, but has been the signature theme of Obama’s grand political strategy.
You have to pinch yourself – a Marxisant radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States. And apparently it’s considered impolite to say so.
Anti-Semitism on the Rise in Europe by Dale Hurd, CBN News Senior Reporter, broadcast on The 700 Club, Thursday, 6 March 2008 - and streams on CBN News. DemoCast was credited in this TV news report (see below).
When the judge ordered France2 to turn over all of its footage of the incident, it also showed the boy moving his arms and peering through his fingers after he was supposed to be dead.
But Muslim rage at the original France2 news story led to countless reprisals against Jews around the world. It was even mentioned by terrorists as a reason for the beheading Daniel Pearl.
Scott Jacobs, Editor at DemocracyBroadcastingNews.com, says the France2 story "globally defames the Jewish nation, Israel, with a fabricated icon of hypocritical brutality and immorality; and criminalizes Jews and their State to justify pariah / punishment."
Full article and/or video from ABC Family Channel's "The 700 Club" here.
Prof. Richard Landes, chronicler of the Al Dura Affaire via The Second Draft, is the academic authority on the problem and the ramifications:
"Israelis repeatedly express astonishment at why Jews from the diaspora care about setting this record straight when they just wish it would go away. When they realize how powerful the impact not only on Israel, but on Jews around the world, they express surprise.
As Karsenty later explained to the judges, “The day after al Durah, one of my employees came into the office and challenged me, ‘Look at what your army has done, murdering an innocent child!’” In Brussels, a rabbi was attacked the next day on the way to New Year’s services, never having seen the footage.
That’s the core of the blood libel: a Jew deliberately murders an innocent child, and all Jews everywhere are held responsible. Five days later crowds of immigrant Muslims and European leftists would hold a huge banner aloft in Place de la République with a "Star of David = Swastika = picture of the al Durahs behind the barrel," shouting “Death to Israel! Death to the Jews!”
In related news, 'Ron Hogan on Media Bistro writes a review of philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy who appeared at NY's 92nd Street Y. He weighed in on the ways that anti-semitism has reconfigured itself for the 21st century.
"I am a few months younger than Israel," Lévy quipped at the start of his speech, but he cannot remember any moment in his lifetime when the nation seemed "as lonely, as vulnernable, and as threatened" as it is now, particularly as the anti-semitism that he sees at the root of much anti-Zionist rhetoric has become more openly expressed. "The dikes are broken," he warned, citing the UN conference at Durban and the boycotts being mounted against book fairs in Paris and Turin which have chosen to honor Israel's contributions to world literature.
So what can Jews do against this pernicious worldview?
"Respond blast for blast," Lévy urged, and dismantle this new anti-semitic rhetoric before it coalesces into a political movement with real power. (As he noted, the new anti-semites are openly looking to acquire nuclear weapons, and if they get them, they plan to use them.) He also called upon Jews to strengthen their alliances with other persecuted groups, and to work whatever influence they could muster to ensure that moderate Muslims prevail in that religion's internal struggle with fundamentalism. (He even suggested that the Koran might benefit from the application of Talmudic reading.) And, he noted, "the morale of Israel is at its best," and ready to deal with this threat. "The best defense is attack," he said, citing Clausewitz, "and the best attack is confrontation."
As Europeans continue to downplay the connection betwen the press' systemic libeling of the Jewish State (deconstructed in the case of France2TV's Mohammed-al-Dura libel suit) and the climate of anti-Semitism throughout Europe, the Paris suburb of Bagneux delivers yet another pathetic proof: an anti-Semitic torture crime from the same town that Ilan Hamili was tortured to death in two years ago.
The European Jewish Press reports, "Six youths from the southern Paris suburb of Bagneux, aged 17 to 25, are accused of locking up 19-year-old Mathieu Roumi in a storage room on February 22, beating and sexually tormenting him.
Aged 17 to 25, the six youths -- who knew the victim -- had falsely accused him of stealing from them in order to lure him into a trap, judicial sources said. Once he arrived in the apartment of one of his aggressors, the young man was handcuffed on a radiator and beaten.
With a pen, the aggressors scrawled "dirty Jew" and "dirty faggot" on the face of their victim. Later they forced him to swallow down cigarette butts and to suck a condom on a stick.
The man's ordeal reportedly lasted nine and a half hours. He was later hospitalised "in a state of shock". The Jewish community of Bagneux is comprised of some 100 Jewish families."
Who created the climate for this 'special punishment' of Jews in France? Israel-vilifying at the expense of Palestinian sufferage has been the narrative in European media reporting for years. The Intifada was created by Yasser Arafat in part to publicly damn Israel by creating that image for journalists.
Though the Palestinians were presumed to be provoking these damning events (few, like, Prof. Richard Landes revealed that they were even staging them. But no one believed that the press themselves would actually demand video that was damning - to help the underdog Palestinians by turning the world against Israel (simultaneously feeding their feed their blood-lust against the Jews).
Even the French courts, upon forced examination by Charles Enderlin's libel suit against Philippe Karsenty, wish to reject the Zionists' claim of journalistic conspiracy. But famous ballistics expert, Jean-Claude Schilinger, finds that the Israeli forces could not have killed Mohammed al-Dura. He further finds that there was no evidence that Muhammad was actually even killed, nor his father injured, as reported by Enderlin on France2.
Why is exposing the press' fraud & complicity in the al-Durah case so significant? Is it just because the Palestinian blood-libel results in antipathy towards French Jewish citizens? 1) The case reveals the corruption and complicity of the trusted, objective, journalistic industry- which the public relies upon to deliver truth and reality, instead turning them into agents of propagandized blood-libel; which created a self-perpetuating, media-vilifying against Israel and it's perceived Christian supporters. Charles Enderlin may consider himself Jewish, but he marches to the 'Liberal' Media party cadence; in this case, 'sympathize with the Muslims: victims of natural, villainous, Jewish oppression. Hence, the Europeans eliminate their inherited guilt of their grandparents' having turned-in their Jewish neighbors for torture and genocide because they didn't believe in Jesus as Messiah.' Hence, the world can no longer trust its independent journalistic institutions (AP, AFP, Reuters, and the local news outlets which parrot their stories) to represent objectivity in cases involving 'imperialistic Judeo-Christian America and Israel;
2) It globally defames the Jewish nation, Israel, with a fabricated (seemingly incontrovertible) icon of hypocritical brutality and immorality; and criminalizes Jews (and their State) to justify pariah-punishment from all ethical people;
3) It mollifies the world from challenging Islamic political and social imperialism- whether manifested in:
a) the quest for the cultural and relgious Islamicization of Western societies,
b) the Muslim crusade to 'reconquer' Jerusalem by establishing "a Palestinian State," with Jerusalem as its capital; and even
c) Iran's apocalyptic Mullahs' impending triggering a global nuclear war, seeking to conquer the Islam-rejecting, America, and the State of Israel in the name of Allah the Almighty."
4) The libel verdict against fraud-exposer Philippe Karsenty represents a victory against truth and reason. This portends for ill for Jews during a period when an Islamic-Western oil-axis influences public sentiments about either not offending Muslim sensibilities (fundamentalist oil-price setters, defamation-litigating front-groups like CAIR, MPAC, and MSA or the abundance of Muslim immigrants worshipping in Muslim Brotherhood-extremism-inculcating outposts), or pleasing the West's new bosses - as politcal Islamist equity (thereby influence) permeates throughout Western economies, institutions, and society.
Consequently anti-Semitism in the US is increasingly rabid and spreading. But, as in Nazi Europe leading to World War II, it portends the decline of ethics and reason in society. Islamism is on the march. What is scapegoating for, if not to deny an inconvenient reality?
In this anniversary OpEd in the Wall St. Journal, Judea Pearl calls the press to uphold the standard of dignity that Danny died maintaining.
Who serves today as the moral compass of society, and, like the ancient prophets, risks his or her life by exposing corruption, institutional injustice, terrorism and fanaticism? The journalist.
The shocking element in Danny's murder was that he was killed, not for what he wrote or planned to write, but for what he represented -- America, modernity, openness, pluralism, curiosity, dialogue, fairness, objectivity, freedom of inquiry, truth and respect for all people. In short, each and every one of us was targeted in Karachi in January of 2002.
This new twist of killing journalists for what they represent has changed the course of journalism as well as the rest of society.
It was through Danny's face that people came to grasp the depth of cruelty and inhumanity into which this planet of ours has been allowed to sink in the past two decades. His murder proved that 9/11 was not an isolated event, and helped resurrect the age-old ideas of right and wrong, good and evil. Moral relativism died with Daniel Pearl in January 2002.
And unarmed journalists in regions of conflict became many times more vulnerable. They are no longer perceived as neutral, information-gathering agents, but rather as representing political or ideological entities. The press and media has indeed become more polarized and agenda-driven. Journalists today are pressured to serve the ideologies of those who pay their salaries or those who supply them with sources of information. CNN's admission, in 2003, that it concealed information about the Iraqi regime in order to keep its office in Baghdad is a perfect example of this pressure. In the recent Gaza chaos, Western news agencies have willingly reported Hamas propaganda stunts as truth.
One of the things that saddens me most is that the press and media have had an active, perhaps even major role in fermenting hate and inhumanity. It was not religious fanaticism alone.
This was first brought to my attention by the Pakistani Consul General who came to offer condolences at our home in California. When we spoke about the anti-Semitic element in Danny's murder she said: "What can you expect of these people who never saw a Jew in their lives and who have been exposed, day and night, to televised images of Israeli soldiers targeting and killing Palestinian children."
At the time, it was not clear whether she was trying to exonerate Pakistan from responsibility for Danny's murder, or to pass on the responsibility to European and Arab media for their persistent de-humanization of Jews, Americans and Israelis. The answer was unveiled in 2004, when a friend told me that photos of Muhammad Al Dura were used as background in the video tape of Danny's murder.
The Pakistani Consul was right. The media cannot be totally exonerated from responsibility for Daniel's murder, as well as for the "tsunami of hate" that has swept the world and continues to rise.
Surely they have an obligation to expose villainy and excess. This is what journalism is all about. But in a world infected with fanatics who run around with lit matches, journalists cannot simply pour gasoline into the street and pretend they bear no responsibility for the inevitable explosion.
The Gloria Center's Barry Rubin penned this must read expose into Reuters News Agency's editorial practices on stories involving the Jewish State of Israel:
...The World Bank annual reports are entitled "Intifada, Closures and Palestinian Economic Crisis." They make the very simple point that the intifada--an armed Palestinian war on Israel--leads to closures and thus the combination brings on a crisis. The reports are quite careful in pointing out all the factors that led to the Palestinian economic decline. They do not say the losses were strictly due to Israeli curbs on movement. On the contrary, the 2003 report for example, written at the height of the violence, says the closures and movement restrictions are pretty insignificant. (see it here).
This specific example of dishonesty matters because the approach we see here--predetermining the story, ignoring most of the factors involved, blaming Israel--sets a pattern for a whole raft-full of stories:
Why is there no peace? Israel doesn't give enough concessions. Often there is no mention of Palestinian hardline positions, behavior in not keeping commitment, terrorism as a key element in the failure to achieve peace. Most important of all, there is endless talk about what Israel can or should give for peace but far less about what the Palestinians must give: end of conflict, full recognition of Israel, return of refugees to a Palestinian state, a real end to incitement and terrorism.
Why is there suffering in Gaza? Israel's restrictions. Far less mention of Hamas hard line, openly genocidal stance, constant aid to terrorist attacks and rocket firing, refusal to meet even minimal international requirements.
Why are Palestinians, to quote the Reuters story, "Deprived of dignity"? No mention of a corrupt government and gangs of gunmen who couldn't care less about their well-being, and a strategy that starts unwinnable wars. It's all Israel's fault.
It is bad enough that this kind of coverage is shaping the way that many in the West see the Middle East. What is really horrible is that these articles are being deliberately written to do so.
From media watchdog, HonestReporting: Not all cases of slanted reporting are instantly clear. It's often helpful to take a step back and examine a news organization over a long-term period. Subtle elements of bias such as headline or photo selection then become clearer. In our second in-depth media analysis, we studied six months of reporting from the New York Times, one of the most popular and influential newspapers in the world.
The New York Times: April-September 2007 - Summary of Findings:
Balance: Despite an evenly balanced selection of stories on Israel and the Palestinians, the New York Times gave far more weight to Israeli military incidents in text location, headlines and photo selection than to Palestinian attacks. More than 60% of images sympathetic to one side or the other favored the Palestinians.
Consistency: Israeli and Palestinian actions were not treated consistently in choice of language. Israel or the Israel Defense Forces were the subject of strongly worded, direct headlines in 18 out of 20 cases (90%). However, in the 20 cases where the Palestinians were responsible for attacks, the language was mostly passive and the group responsible was only named in eight instances (40%).
Context and Accuracy: Inaccurate statements or important context that would give readers a fuller picture of news events was often omitted. Terms such as "militants", "occupied territory," and "illegal settlements" were used without providing a proper explanation.
Melanie Phillips' coverage of the "27 minutes of hitherto unseen footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah which the court had required France 2 to produce. For readers who are unfamiliar with this scandal, I wrote about it here, here and here. Suffice it to say here that the iconic image of the child Mohammed al Durah, pictured crouching with his father behind a barrel next to a concrete wall in an apparently vain attempt to shelter from the gun-battle between Israel and the Palestinians that was raging around them before he was allegedly shot dead by the Israelis, served to incite terrorist violence and atrocities around the world after it was transmitted by France 2 at the beginning of the second intifada. Yet it is clear to anyone looking at this in detail that the whole thing was staged, not least from the devastating evidence here which shows the boy raising his arm and peeping through his fingers seconds after the France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin said he had been shot dead.
After Philippe Karsenty, founder of the French online media watchdog, Media Ratings, accused France 2 of staging the al Durah ‘killing’ and called for the resignation of both Charles Enderlin and France 2’s News Director, Arlette Chabot, France 2 and Enderlin sued Karsenty for defamation, and won. In a disgraceful piece of judicial cronyism after the gratuitous intervention of the then French President Jacques Chirac, the court decided against Karsenty and in favour of France 2 and Enderlin. Karsenty appealed; the judge ordered France 2 to produce the unscreened footage of this incident; today it did so.
Well, sort of. What it actually produced was 18 minutes out of the 27 it was required to bring forward. From this footage, which according to France 2’s Palestinian cameraman was filmed during an implausible 45 minutes of continuous shooting by Israeli soldiers, there is no evidence that anyone at all was killed or injured -- including Mohammed al Durah who by the end of the frames in which he figured seemed to be still very much alive and unmarked by any wound whatsoever.
The drama of today’s hearing was enhanced by the appearance of Enderlin himself, who until today had not graced this case with his presence. As the film was shown to a packed and overheated (in every sense) courtroom, Enderlin and Karsenty offered rival interpretations of the images on the screen. If Enderlin thought he would thus demonstrate the inadequacy of Karsenty’s case, he was very much mistaken. On the contrary, parts of his commentary were so absurd that the courtroom several times burst into incredulous laughter.
Enderlin offered only a vague, rambling and unconvincing explanation of why he had only produced 18 minutes of footage rather than the 27 he claimed to have received from his cameraman in Gaza (Enderlin himself was not in Gaza when these events occurred). After the hearing Professor Richard Landes, one of the people who had already seen the contested footage, said that two scenes had been cut out which clearly showed that the violence had been staged -- including one in which a Palestinian preparing to throw a missile is suddenly picked up and carried into an ambulance despite showing no signs of injury. This scene, said Landes, was filmed by Reuters, who actually filmed the France 2 cameraman filming it. Yet there was no sign of it today.
What struck me very forcibly about the 18 minutes overall was that, although this was supposed to have been filmed during continuous firing by the Israelis for 45 minutes, much of the footage consisted merely of a violent demonstration by stone throwing youths, many of whom who appeared to be enjoying the exercise. One child was pictured riding a bicycle through the melee. There was no evidence of any of them being killed or injured. From time to time, to be sure, youths were dragged onto stretchers and into ambulances – but there was no sign of anyone actually being shot, no-one falling under fire, no sign of any blood or injuries whatever. The nearest it got to an injury was a sequence in which a young man coyly pulled his shirt open a little to provide a glimpse of a neat red circle on his stomach, which he claimed was a (rubber?) bullet wound. But since he appeared to be in no pain whatever and was grinning throughout his turn for the camera, this seemed an eminently implausible way for someone who had just been hit by gunfire to behave.
There were many very strange things about this footage which just didn’t add up. When it came to the footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, the following stood out:
* This sequence was not a continuous narrative but was repeatedly broken up and spliced onto footage of other scenes from the demonstration;
* Although the France 2 cameraman had told a German film-maker, Esther Schapira, that he had filmed six minutes of the al Durah father and son under continuous Israeli fire, the footage of them lasted for less than one minute;
* There was a camera tripod next to them;
* There was no evidence of the boy actually being hit;
* At one point, people in the crowd cried out that the boy was dead, while he was sitting up large as life clinging onto his father with his mouth wide open;
* After he was said to be dead, he moved his arm (the sequence I have already reported which has been available on the web for years).
The Appeal Court is not due to give its verdict in this case until next February. As of today, such are the fresh contradictions and questions thrown up by the showing of this footage it would seem that France 2 has painted itself into a corner from which it will find it increasingly hard to escape.
But this scandal goes far beyond France 2. Soon after it transmitted the 55 seconds which showed the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, it helpfully sent various news agencies three minutes of the footage of this incident – including the frames in which the ‘dead’ child is seen moving, but which of course it had not broadcast. For reasons which invite speculation, not one of these agencies broadcast it either. Had they done so, there would have been no ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah and untold numbers of subsequent deaths would have been avoided.
It is therefore not surprising, but no less shocking, that with a couple of heroic exceptions the mainstream media has until very recently ignored the evidence suggesting that a monumental and deadly fraud was perpetrated here, indicators which have been around for years. As of today, the Karsenty case has been totally ignored by the mainstream French media.
It is also deeply troubling that the Israel government ignored this evidence for seven years, that it is only very recently that its press spokesman Danny Seaman said the incident was staged, and that even now certain representatives of the Israel government are playing a most ambiguous role in defending their country against this modern, blood libel.
The ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah was swallowed uncritically by the western media, despite the manifold unlikeliness and contradictions which were apparent from the start, because it accorded with the murderous prejudice against Israel which is the prism through which the Middle East conflict is habitually refracted. This scandal has the most profound implications not just for the media, not just for the Middle East conflict but for the western world’s relationship to reason, which seems to grow more tenuous by the day.
Prof. Landes and Philippe Karsenty spoke outside the courtroom about the video evidence presented and omitted which confirm "the al-Dura hoax."
Boston University Professor Richard Landes, who has viewed all the original footage of the alleged shooting that day, attended France2 TV News' Charles Enderlin's subpoenaed evidence footage. Coverage from Augean Stables:
"Then we viewed the rushes with a preamble and running commentary by Enderlin, with comments by Karsenty. It was something of a circus. But it did give me an insight into how Enderlin’s mind works. He explained about Sharon’s provocative visit to the Temple Mount on the 28th, and the riots that ensued on the 29th in the West Bank, and how everyone expected the rioting to spread to Gaza the next day, “because that’s how it works.”
And sure enough, when we see the tapes, we see scene after scene of people being evacuated into ambulances. We don’t see them hit, we don’t see their injuries, but we do see them taken to ambulances, and Enderlin explains: “The Israelis are firing with rubber bullets.” Now there’s no evidence that the Israelis are firing. But because Enderlin expects violence, when he sees Palestinians evacuated in ambulances, he concludes that they have been shot by Israelis.
Most of the material was inconclusive or boring, and I patiently waited for the material I’d seen. Then, at about 15 minutes on the time code, Enderlin announces that there will be a break and we will see the final scenes. That’s when I knew he had cut the scenes. Sure enough, the screen went blank, and then began the final three minutes...
Now there are at least two scenes that I remember specifically, one of which we have documented by Reuters. One scene that wasn’t there I described as follows:
At another point, a boy faked a leg injury, but instead of drawing big kids who could pick him up and rush him past the cameramen to an ambulance, he only attracted little kids. He shooed them away, looked around, and, seeing that no one was coming to evacuate him, straightened up and walked away without a limp.
Indeed this scene provoked a snort from the Israeli cameraman working for France2 who was watching the film with me and Enderlin at the time.
When I asked him why, he said, “because it looks so fake.”
“That’s my impression as well,” I responded.
Enderlin commented, “Oh, they do that all the time. It’s their cultural style. They exaggerate.”
“But if they do it all the time, why couldn’t they have staged Al Durah?” I asked.
“Oh, they’re not good enough.”
Now ultimately, this is my (B.U. Prof. Richard Landes') word (and possibly, if they remember and have the courage to come forward, those of Denis Jeambar and Daniel Leconte), against Enderlin.
But the second piece I remember is actually documented by Reuters (video sequence).
Past photographers, among whom we find Talal abu Rahmah, with his France2 equipment.
Talal is in close, for maximum effect. Note the fellow on the far left who’s in for the ride. He’s seen smiling in the video.
And then run back right in front of the Israeli position (where he was presumably shot) and loaded on the ambulance right in front of the Israelis.
Israeli position in the background. No one is afraid of being hit by them.
Pajamas Media Parisian blogger Nidra Poller provides eyewitness commentary to fill in the blanks of Prof. Landes' participation in viewing France2 TV News' Charles Enderlin's subpoenaed 'master' b-roll video evidence presentation at the trial:
"Reading an excerpt from the cameraman’s testimony under oath—”I filmed 27 minutes of the incident that lasted 45 minutes—” the judge asks why there are only 18 minutes on the CD. The seasoned France 2 journalist gives a garbled excuse...
So how did the 27 minutes boil down to 18? Enderlin denies that anyone ever said there were 27 minutes… and then says there was some irrelevant material that he chopped off the day after the incident.
The judge presses the point, asking Rosenzweig and Landes to estimate the duration of the footage they viewed. They both attest to more than 20 minutes… Rosenzweig remembers someone mentioning 27. Karsenty’s lawyer concludes for the record: something is missing.
The raw footage was not so raw. And it was barely al Dura. If we take the cameraman’s word for it, given under oath a few days after the incident, not something but everything is missing. This is supposed to be the raw footage of the al Dura death scene. What we get is raw footage of Palestinian youths throwing stones, firebombs, and burning tires at the Israeli outpost. And provoking no reaction, except for one teargas bomb. Real provocations alternate with those familiar fake battle scenes with instantaneous ambulance evacuations...
As Charles Enderlin switched on his anchorman’s voice and stonewalled, his legal team—Maître Amblard, who has been handling the cases for the past year, reinforced by a tall dashing Maître Pierre Olivier Sur and the scowling Guillaume Weill-Raynal— stood squarely in front of Landes and Rosenzweig, blocking their view of the screen...
Suddenly everything is confused. The timeline skips from 14’20 to 17’00. We see the beginning of the al Dura news report as it was broadcast. The avocat général fiddles with the controls, the image winds back, forward. We’re back at the interview. The commentary is confused. Is Charles Enderlin saying the fire was coming from the Palestinian positions?
Finally—it’s not clear how—we get to the al Dura footage. And all we see is what you got in the original September 30, 2000 broadcast. It’s spliced. But we recognize the details. Karsenty interrupts every few seconds to point out the anomalies. No blood. The boy is holding a red kerchief to make it look like blood. The soldiers were supposed to be firing at them for 45 minutes, the wall is intact, there are a few holes. Round holes, shot head on.
Charles Enderlin and Talal Abu Rahma have consistently claimed that the Israeli position was directly opposite the targeted man and boy. It is not true. Enderlin stands in front of the judge and says everything and the opposite about the positions. He does not reply to a single objection raised by Karsenty, raised by other analysts repeatedly over the past seven years: The father’s arm is intact, he claims he was hit nine times by high power bullets, his muscles smashed, his bones crushed. No blood on his white t-shirt. Voices in Arabic shout “the boy is dead! the boy is dead!” He is sitting next to his father, eyes wide open.
Charles Enderlin standing in a French court explains: Oh, that’s something cultural. In their culture, when they say “the boy is dead” they mean he is in danger of dying, that he is in a very dangerous situation, he might die. The judges smile.
We reach the end of the scene as it figured in news reports, the point where Charles Enderlin said, “Mohamed is dead, his father is critically wounded.” We might ask what that means in his culture…because the scene continues for another three seconds in which we see the boy who is lying on his stomach with his hands over his eyes, turn, lift his elbow, shade his eyes, look at the camera, and slowly return to his prone position.
Philippe Karsenty interrupts every few seconds, leaps up, points to the screen, asks for a slow forward, backward, forward. The boy is moving. He is alive."
As demonstrated by Ahmadenijad's regime, Islamists fabricate a 'Jewish enemy,' influence foreign journalists to reflect demonization, and manipulate racism-averse Western audiences into embracing Islamist imperialist 'victims'.
Part 1 of 4:
Systematized anti-Semitic propaganda is historically used to unite and control masses under dogmatic rule, (i.e. Nazism, Islam, sects of Christianity). Muslim countries are using it to brainwash the Muslim world, and the foreign journalists who report to the world from there. This sociopathic anti-Semitism is sublimated into anti-Israel or anti-Zionist biased reporting and resulting sentiments.
In the year since Britain's Channel 5 audiences first watched "No Excuses for Terror?," how much progress has been made recognizing the roots of Islamic terrorism? British journalist David Aaronovitch debunked the double-standard of justifying Islamic terrorism as 'Israel/Palestine-inspired.' Why does the West hyper-criticize and punish Israel for defending against Palestinian terror, in contrast with Arab countries' far more egregious treatment of Palestinians?
In (Black) September 1970, Jordan's King Hussein killed 5,000 Palestinians in refugee camps in Jordan - with no Western political or economic repercussion.
In 1976, Syria's President Assad (supporting Christian militias) killed 3,500 Palestinians in camps in Lebanon. In 2007, mayhem between the Lebanese army and Fatah Islam militants in the Nahr el-Bared ('Cold River') Palestinian refugee camp killed 250 innocent civilians and Lebanese soldiers.
"... Jordan, which has nearly 1 million Palestinian Arab refugees, nor Syria, which is harboring tens of thousands. The secret police mandate runs wide and deep for Palestinian Arab encampments in those two countries. Indeed, back in September 1970, the late King Hussein of Jordan spent nearly a year disarming the camps in his country by burning them down— and won universal Arab applause for doing so. The late, unlamented Yasser Arafat was undeterred when he fled to Lebanon, from which he once used the camps to stock arms, indoctrinate his people in terrorism, and, eventually, wage war on Lebanon and Israel — until he was kicked out and forced to move to Tunisia.
Yet in the face of such Palestinian Arab irresponsibility — and of a 15-year Lebanese civil war largely provoked by its Palestinians — the rest of the Arab world has insisted that Lebanon remains an exception to the rule of sovereignty.
What motivates the Muslim world and Western world to single-out Israel for condemnation? In contradiction to Western presumptions about Islamic enmity originating from perceptions on the Israel vs. Palestine crisis, David Aaronovitch reveals Islamic countries' institutionalized Nazi-esque propaganda techniques (repeated by Muslim reporters for global press agencies and satellite channels serving the Muslim world, e.g., BBC in Arabic, Al-Jazeera Int'l, CNN Int'l, Link-TV, Mosaic-TV, Bridges TV, al-Manar TV) which brainwash the publics against Jews as a faith. The foreign Western journalists in the Middle-East, upon constant exposure to this anti-Jewish state droning, absorb and reflect this bias back to their home audiences through their editing (e.g., France2TV and the Mohammed al-Dura fauxtography Affair).
Watch Aaronovitch hosting this documentary on Channel Four, "Blaming the Jews". Part 1 of 4:
CNN's moral equivalence runs amok. The Media Research Group's Matthew Balan writes on newsbusters.org: The AP's David Bauder wrote positively of Christiane Amanpour and the upcoming minseries in an article on Monday {1}. Bauder mentioned Amanpour's treatment of a "fundamentalist Christian group" called BattleCry in the miniseries (a preview of this can be viewed on YouTube [2]). The following excerpt is another clue which supports the theory that Amanpour and CNN have their "moral equivalence" hat on.
The segment on Christians explores BattleCry in some depth, digging at the roots of an organization that fights against some of the cruder elements of popular culture and urges teenagers to be chaste. In noting how girls at some BattleCry events are encouraged to wear long dresses, Amanpour asks the group's leader how it is different from the Taliban.
Encouraging modest dress is the same as forcing girls out of school, beating women who don't wear burkhas, and publicly-executing offenders?
Joe Scarborough: "I am upset a little bit about something right now. And I went on TV Newser and I and saw that CNN and Christiane Amanpour, they’re going to study religious extremism. She’s got this special. She’s going to be on Larry King tonight. I'm going to be watching ‘cause I'm going to be watching it because I’m going to be a little bothered if they're trying to say that there is moral relativity. They’re going to study Muslim extremism, then Christian extremism, because we know Christians have, have slaughtered thousands of people across the globe in bombings–"
Willie Geist: "Oh, yeah."
Scarborough: "–and Jewish extremism. [Willie Geist starts laughing.] I’m sorry. Come on! It is okay to say that, right now, the vast majority of religious extremists are members of one faith. That doesn’t mean that every Muslim is a terrorist. That doesn’t even mean that even 99 percent of Muslims are terrorists. But to do a three part series on Muslim extremism, Christian extremism and then, uh, Jewish extremism? Is this Rosie O'Donnell or is this Christiane Amanpour? You understand what I’m saying here, Willie? I mean, come on."
Willie Geist: "Well, there are Christian extremists. There are Jewish extremists, but it means an entirely different thing to be a Christian extremist and a Muslim extremist these days. I think the evidence proves that."
Scarborough: "Right. Yeah, exactly. If you're a Christian extremist, then when you send your daughter to school, her, her, her dress is below her ankles and it’s weighted so in case she jumps up, the dress stays down. Much different than the other type of extremism that we're talking about. So, I’m just a little bothered by it."
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is the Chairman of the Board of Fellows of one of Israel's leading think tanks, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
He has devised a new project which exposes how much of the world's media present Israel and the Middle East conflict in a negative light.
His project reveals that the same filters applied to foreign reportage about any ordinary country (in this case, Holland) would create a similarly negative public impression.
Jamie Glazov interviews Dr. Gerstenfeld in Frontpage Magazine.com's "Distorting Israel."
"Trevor Asserson, (is) a leading British litigation lawyer. He has undertaken a number of well documented studies which detail the BBC’s systematic bias against Israel. This is particularly important because the BBC is probably Europe’s most influential media and as Asserson has outlined, a major distorter of information on Israel. The credibility of Asserson’s work has recently increased even further. In past months, the BBC’s manipulations have been exposed in many other fields. This forced them to suspend several employees and inter alia, to apologize both to the British Queen and Prime Minister Gordon Brown. ...
To cover the entire field of anti-Israel media bias is a mission impossible. The methods are almost infinite and vary from crude to subtle ones. There is also a cumulative effect of such distortion. Therefore paradigmatic pilot studies of systematic bias are so important.
Asserson has done that remarkably by investigating such an important media as the BBC. I understood that even better when I interviewed him for one of my books Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss?
Asserson listed in great detail how the BBC regularly in its reporting on Israel, broke many of the 15 legal obligations it is committed to under its monopolistic charter. These include that the media has to be fair, respect the truth, should not broadcast its own opinions on current affairs or current policy, ensure that opposing views are not misrepresented and not let the audience gauge the reporter’s personal views. He listed hundreds of examples of breaking these rules. The list is far too long to be exposed here.
To mention one, there was a huge contrast in how the BBC reported on the British soldiers in Iraq, who were described in warm and glorified terms, whereas Israeli troops were painted as faceless, ruthless and brutal killers.
There are hundreds of ways to be unfair in one’s reporting. One of the most powerful is omission of crucial facts and context of certain actions. If one starts from the false assumption that Israel, through an aggressive war, has conquered Arab territories in 1967 while omitting the genocidal statements against Jews of Palestinian Arab leaders since about 1930, the non-acceptance of the Arabs to create a second Palestinian state in addition to Jordan in 1948 and also ignores the genocidal Arab invasion of the former Palestinian Mandate territory in 1948, one has laid in a simple way the infrastructure for diabolizing Israel.
Harvard Professor Marvin Kalb's interview on Israel Broadcast Authority. He exposes how Hezbollah fabricates news and manipulates the global media (& public opinion) by victimizing Arabs and vilifying to create an 'inversion of reality.'
Today's media circus-teers should take a lesson from the Ancient Greeks, Victor Davis Hanson reminds us.
"The Greeks believed that insolence naturally leads to bullying, or hubris. This arrogance induces a mad behavior called ate. Finally, that recklessness earns well-earned destruction unleashed by the god, Nemesis..."
Hubris and Nemesis, claims Hanson, were a key factor in the fall of pompous broadcast host, Don Imus. In the Duke University scandal, he applies it to those who derived benefit from the allegations, including reverse-bigot plutocrats, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, and the news media.
"Three Duke players were unjustly accused of rape and sexual offense by an African-American stripper. Local district attorney Mike Nifong, some of the Duke humanities faculty, the Duke University president, and the ubiquitous race hustlers Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all swarmed on a perfect scandal for political advantage and self-promoting sermonizing.
After all, beer-drinking, rich, white lacrosse athletes were supposedly brutalizing a poor woman of color, forced by her povertyto submit to them sexually.
Despite no evidence, the accused students were charged with felonies. The coach is long gone, and the entire team was disbanded for the year.
The academic mob added its own rush-to-judgment, easy condemnations. Then District Atty Nifong won re-election as a populist crusader against supposedlyracist preppie sex-offenders. Seemingly ignoring evidence that the victim was making the charges up, this lynch mob wentheadlong into mad excess.
Then, wham, Nemesis hit them, too."
Hubris and Nemesis also play significant roles in reporting about political Islam ('Islamism') and Israel. The news media's mis-depiction of the two Palestinian Intifadas (1988-1991 and 2000 til present) has damaged itself and western society through its own hubris. By scapegoating Israel for presumed amorality against a perceived (but Arafat-crafted) Palestinian rebellion, the roles of the Israelis as occupiers and the Palestinians as those seeking to liberate occupied West Bank and Gaza were permanently cast. The news media have largely interpreted any global Muslim aggression to be consistent with that story and that motivation.
Since 9/11, in spite of the evidence of the global, Islamist imperialist movement's reliance on media manipulation to influence international policy (bin-Laden videos) the news media still goes out-of-their-way to rationalize the imperialist movement within Islamism by exaggerating the culpability of the "Zionists"(e.g., evidenced in Reuter-gate staged and doctored photos from Lebanon) and their imperialist ally, the U.S., also mis-characterized as an "unwanted occupier and oppressor."
Public sentiments of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are strong world-wide, concomitantly mollifying the West against standing firm to defeat Jihadist imperialism in the Middle East and uprooting it domestically, as France has exemplified.
Marvin Kalb, in the Harvard Study, "The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict," gives evidence that "the Arab narrative is one of a continuing conflict with Israel, one battle leading inexorably to another with intervals reserved for rest, training, recruitment, and the acquisition of new weaponry. Therefore, the conflict ends only when Israel ends."
An arrogant, Western media's prideful scapegoating of Israel continues to mollify the West against the truly malevolent imperialism which continues to challenge freedom around the globe, Islamism.
"Because the harder they come, the harder they'll fall ... one and all." - Jimmy Cliff
Watch intrepid Palestinian-affairs analyst for The Jerusalem Post, Khaled abu Toameh, expose systematic bias among the foreign-press industry to whitewash Palestinian corrupt theocracy to conform to their outlets' anti-Israel world-view.
Mr. abu Toameh just completed a speaking tour of California universities. In this Wall St. Opinion Journal column, he exposes the terror games Hamas is playing to elicit western financial support.
In this video interview filmed exclusively with DemoCast several months ago, Mr. abu Toameh reveals that Palestinian leaders (e.g., the Fatah and Hamas regimes, not Israel, however) have condemned Palestinians to suffer by prioritizing institutionalized, Islamist imperialism against Jews and Israel. He contends that the world should realize that:
1) we have been fed a systematized media-distortion of the reality about the Arab-Israeli conflict;
2) that the Palestinian Administration, and not Israel, are to blame for the poor state of Palestinian conditions;
3) that the Palestinian quest to conquer Israel is directed as a division of the global, Islamist imperialist crusade.
The news media covering Israel and the disputed territories, by intentionally not reporting the Palestinian Authority's tyranny & corruption, have been complicit in failing to contradict empathetic notions of Palestinian victimhood as a constant result of Israeli immorality. Mr. Toameh contends that Yasser Arafat co-opted a naiive news industry through a deftly-managed, mis-information campaign to create Palestinian provocateurs in order to demonize the defender, Israel, through news reporting.
Like other Islamist regimes (e.g., Saddam, Iran, Saudi Arabia) the Palestinian Authority fosters fundamentalism (and terrorism) to distract their societies from their developmental failures- contrasted with modernity- represented regionally by Israel, whom the news media conveniently, religio-culturally scapegoat. This whitewashe the imperialist political nature of the global Jihad, to extend social and political control of the West to the authoritarian, Islamist political movement.
Again, Israeli Gloom is Misplaced by Edward Luttwak in The First Post
Claims Israel failed in Lebanon are premature - just as was similar condemnation 30 years ago, Future historians will no doubt see things much more clearly, but some gross misperceptions are perfectly obvious even now.
Exposes in 'The Times' - a self-serving scenario by Anshel Pfeffer in The Jerusalem Post
For Israel to be the first country to use nuclear weapons, even limited ones, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki is almost unthinkable. Diplomatic repercussions aside, there is no guarantee that an untried and unproven technology will work as planned. And even if the operation is carried off, Iran may have dispersed enough of its nuclear materials and installations to alternative sites that it would be able to resume the program quickly. That they would definitely do, with Israel's nuclear cat already out of the bag.
There are still valid arguments for Israel going ahead with a military operation against Iran, perhaps even a non-conventional one. But the current leadership, which is still reeling from the Lebanon war and which prefers Sderot to suffer a couple of Kassams a day to getting entangled in another bloody operation in Gaza, is hardly the leadership to take Israel into a daring operation so far away.
Instead the government would prefer to rely on the vague promises of US President George W. Bush that he won't leave office in two years with the Iranian threat still intact. But since the US cooperated with the ineffectual watered-down Security Council sanctions resolution that was finally passed last month, Israeli fears have grown that the administration has lost the stomach for another front in the Middle East. Perhaps a few stories of the crazy Israelis' plans to go it themselves, and even use some of their own nukes in the process, might convince the Americans that it would be better if they did the job themselves.http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467682486&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Francisco Gil-White of Historical and Investigative Research in Norway's journal, Argument.
We are about to see another great genocide of the Jewish people because that is what the Western ruling elites do in order to oppress us all. Which means this: if they succeed, and they kill millions of Jews again, we are next.
This will repeat the pattern of World War II except that I fear this time we will not recover, because Islamist terrorism is growing fast and this ideology is hard to distinguish from that of the German Nazis, preaching as it does the extermination or slavery of infidels. The way to defend the West -- now as always -- is to band together in defense of the Jews, but Westerners seem unable to outgrow the millenarian propaganda that has polluted their minds, produced by the Western ruling classes that are sponsoring the growth of Islamist terrorism. The liberties and protections Western workers have won in the last two centuries will be permanently lost if this process is not quickly reversed.
Rush to wrongly chastise Israel over 1982 settlement reveals State Dept's prejudice against Jewish State. From the NY Sun:
"Indeed, before the State Department even said that Israel should abide, why didn't they first check? Or why haven't they checked by now? And the same question can be asked of the New York Times. They editorialized and wrote about the story. They have reporters in Israel. Why didn't they first check?
It seems increasingly clear that the settlement isn't new. And yet between the State Department, the AP, the New York Times, and others, for two days Israel was repeatedly attacked and accused of violating a peace agreement. We're reminded of the Winston Churchill line that "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
Will the Times and the AP apologize for printing incorrect stories, and for misinterpreting the State Department statement (as State claims)? And will the State Department apologize at a minimum for not contradicting erroneous claims made in its name? "
Evidence exonerates Israel from propaganda used to vilify Israel and justify Palestinian intifada. Mohammed al Dura was a conspiracy of Arafat and French TV news bureau.
"Ahamadinejad's Western Allies" by Daniel Johnson in The New York Sun
"It began with Israel and it will only end with Israel!" It was the authentic voice of the British Broadcasting Corporation, or at least one of its most renowned and respected presenters, at a cocktail party last week. The Iraq Study Group, he declared, had finally sounded the death knell of the Bush doctrine. A chastened president would now have to kick out the neocon kids and listen to the "grownups." And the top priority would now be the unfinished business not just of 2001, but of 1967 and even of 1948. Had not James Baker himself — the most grown-up of all the grownups — endorsed both the return of the Golan Heights and the Palestinian right of return in his celebrated report?
The BBC now has a huge audience in America as well as in the rest of the world for its endless reiteration of the implied thesis that the Jewish state is the root of all evil — not only of war in the East but of terrorism in the West too — and that the " Israel lobby" rules in Washington.
The BBC has reported this gathering of ghouls as if it were a mere eccentricity of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rather than the culmination of a concerted policy intended to accomplish nothing less than the delegitimization, and ultimately the destruction, of Israel. ...
Such an open advocacy of genocidal anti-Semitism by a state of 70 million people is rare enough, but this one is backed up by a $50 Billion-a-year oil income, much of which is being spent on a huge program to create weapons of mass destruction and a levée en masse of terrorist "martyrs."
In the final Presidential debate, Sen. John McCain was non-specific in calling for exposure of Sen. Barack Obama's history with and relation to the actions of ACORN, which is alleged to have coerced bankers to issue mortgages to underqualified, credit-risky, minorities. The defaulted loans are fundamental to the US investment banking disaster. Today, AP confirms the FBI is investigating ACORN for suspicion of voter-registration fraud.
Barack Obama poses with Kenyan relatives. Blogger "All the Latest News" writes: "The major reason that Obama will not release his birth certificate is that his father’s race is not listed as “black” but as “Arabic” which is how many Kenyan passports from the 1960s were issued." 
