Sunday, January 02, 2011


Cultural Winners and Losers, 2010

2010 may have been an encouraging year for political conservatives, but it wasn't so rosy for America's culture. The most depressing result was the Second Circuit Court of Appeals granting our television networks the right to employ the nastiest curse words in front of children at any hour of the broadcast day.

In her opinion, Judge Rosemary Pooler insisted that the TV networks weren't pushing the envelope like "a petulant teenager angling for a later curfew"; they were good people with a "a good faith desire to comply with the FCC's indecency regime." The judge should win some sort of Alice-in-Wonderland prize for declaring the absolute opposite of all the evidence right in front of her face. Here are my other choices for other cultural winners and losers this year:

Loser: Perhaps inspired by Pooler, CBS put out a sitcom with the title "(Bleep) My Dad Says." Critics were bored. Viewers flushed it.

Winner: Tim Tebow. The quarterback's heartwarming pro-life ad with his mother during the Super Bowl was so winning, and so un-political, you could see why CBS would allow it.

Losers: The radical feminists who protested this ad as a vicious sermon without seeing it. How embarrassing. Let's add Chicago-based sports marketer John Rowady, who sneered Tebow was ruining his career in Advertising Age magazine: "His promotion of his 'belief system' has built a perception throughout the league that he has a long way to mature from a business perspective, especially in the fast lane of the NFL."

Tebow wasn't harmed: He was drafted in the first round by the Denver Broncos, and at year's end, he was starting and leading the Broncos to victory.

Winner: Sandra Bullock. Defying the Hollywood odds, she won an Oscar for her heartfelt portrayal of Leigh Ann Touhy, whose Memphis family adopted a black teen named Michael Oher and loved him into college and then a starting job with the NFL's Baltimore Ravens. Critics hated the film, but America loved it. One reviewer found it "contrived, storybook-sweet, credulity-straining and -- um, true."

Loser: Fox's "Family Guy" is always looking for a new low in sick jokes. They found one when baby Stewie and his dog, Brian, were accidentally locked in a bank vault. The baby orders the dog to eat the contents of his diaper. When the dog actually eats the baby feces, the baby vomits and then says, "Got some dessert for you." The dog then eats the vomit. The dog also licked the baby's rear end clean, so Stewie could boast to the otherwise empty vault that the dog "French-kissed my bottom clean."

Earth to Judge Pooler: Networks never "push the envelope"? Millions of children are exposed to this garbage.

Loser: Garry Trudeau, who scheduled a comic strip on Christmas Day that spewed hate at God. A female soldier said her chaplain "yells at God a lot." A female social worker replied: "He deserves it. In my extremely humble opinion."

Winner: Charlie Daniels. His blazing violin graced an ad for Geico, and his new album, "Land That I Love," underlined the strong emphasis on patriotism in his music. That's a snapshot of his career, a love affair with his country that he has expressed in song, both here and everywhere our military serves, for more than a half-century.

Loser: Louis CK, promoted by Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" as "one of my favorite comedians." As they were joking about being bleeped by censors, Louis said, "I was going to say that the Pope f---ed boys and I didn't have time." After sick laughs, he insisted he was serious: "I do think he does. Can I defend that before we go away? ... Well here's the thing. He lets other people do it," and you are either outraged, or you are participating in it. Oddly, Stewart later held a "Rally for Sanity" to condemn vicious insults.

Winner: family films. Studio heads were shocked again by surprise hits like the remake of "The Karate Kid," which grossed more than $175 million. None of the top 15 movies received an "R" rating. Six of the top 15 movies were animated, and at No. 1 in box-office receipts (with more than $415 million) was G-rated "Toy Story 3." A St. Petersburg Times critic suggested it wasn't just the best film of the summer; it could be Best Picture of 2010. Quality doesn't have to equal perversity.

Children are good at nagging and dragging their parents to the cineplex. Someone in Tinseltown should just wake up and smell the popcorn.

SOURCE






Reforming voices in the Middle East

AMID calls for jihad emanating from websites and television channels in the Muslim world, a counterpoint has emerged: fierce Arab self-criticism and openness to the West.

Although small in number compared with fundamentalists in the media, Muslim liberals have been able to expose the Arab world to a totally different, often shocking, way of seeing itself.

"Why do the Arabs boast of their courage when in fact we are the most cowardly people on earth?" Iraqi researcher Mohammed al-Khodari said last month on al-Jazeera TV, the leading news channel in the Middle East. "Of all peoples, Arabs are most likely to resign themselves to injustice, oppression and persecution."

Referring to a photograph of a suicide bomber, he said: "This backward man, this low-life, who is the product of the Arab peoples, blew himself up in Iraq, at a [church] mass, among people who were worshipping God. His family and his people are proud of him."

Lebanese journalist Ziyad Noujeim, interviewed on Lebanese station OTV in October, said the distortions in Arab society began with denial. "We refuse to admit there is a problem between Christianity and Islam. We say 'they live in brotherhood' but every 10 years they fight one another and leave behind 25,000 casualties. We say that everything is fine with the Lebanese family but not a single man is with his own wife. You cannot tell which man is married to which woman. We refuse to say 'Israel', saying instead 'occupied Palestine'.

"Our entire culture is based on two things and two things alone: lies and denial. We blame everything on Israel. If one day Israel is eliminated, what would we do?"

A damning analysis was voiced by a prominent writer in Bahrain, Dihyaa al-Musawi, in an interview posted on YouTube. "We have a gallows culture in which we try to hang a thinker, a poet, every day. We are against creativity and civilisation. We have not developed to the point of admitting defeat, cultural defeat. In the past we had a civilisation but we are regressing. We export violence. We terrorise whole countries. Our pulpits have become booby traps for the public by generating hatred towards 'the other'."

Sheik Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari, former dean of Islamic law at Qatar University, attributes the backwardness of the modern Arab world to the disappearance of critical thinking and the resultant absence of accountability.

"Despite the defeats we have suffered for half a century [an apparent reference to the wars with Israel] we have not learned a thing" he said on Abu-Dhabi TV.

"We say that Israel is the enemy and that we hate it, but let's ask ourselves why Israel is always victorious. It is because it has a tradition of accountability."

Although Israel was the victor in its war with Hezbollah in 2006, said al-Ansari, most Arabs chose to believe otherwise. "Would you believe that after the war Israel, despite all it had achieved, established a committee to examine the accountability of the government because it hadn't achieved a total victory; just 80 per cent instead of 100 per cent? We, on the other hand, are still proclaiming from the rooftops that we won."

Although Israel is a target of vilification in the Arab media, it is not infrequently portrayed, as by al-Ansari, in a positive context as an example of a modern society from which Arabs could learn.

"People talk about how Israel attacked Gaza [in Operation Cast Lead two years ago]," said interview host Faysal al-Qassem on al-Jazeera. "By God, if Gaza revolted against any Arab ruler, would there be anything left of it?"

The ideological ferment within the Muslim world has been monitored for more than a decade by the Middle East Media Research Institute, from which the quotes and video clips mentioned in this article are taken.

Menahem Milson, a co-founder of MEMRI and professor emeritus of Arab studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says Arab reformist views were expressed with increasing vigour in the Arab media following the 9/11 attacks on the US. "Enlightened Muslims in Arab countries and elsewhere came to realise that because of the extremists, Islam and all Muslims are viewed as backward. They realised they must rectify the damage."

Mainstream Arab media such as al-Jazeera are still anti-West and anti-liberal in their orientation, Milson says, but they do from time to time provide a platform for reformist views. "They want to preserve their image as pluralistic and professional channels." As for the effect of reformist views on the Arab world, it is too soon to assess, Milson says.

Some jihadi internet forums have warned Muslims living in the West to stay away from Christmas celebrations, presumably including Santa Claus in the shopping mall. One forum member with a grievance against the Egyptian-based Coptic church gave a list of Coptic churches in Australia and other countries and provided an illustrated manual for homemade bombs. Another had practical suggestions for creating blackouts in Western cities "a Christmas gift not to be forgotten".

Several Muslim countries, including Egypt, have shut down jihadi stations and websites that threaten their regimes.

In the past year, however, MEMRI has determined that YouTube has become the portal of choice for jihadi clips, surpassing websites administered by jihadists. These clips have found an audience among disaffected Muslim youths in the West.

Following protests in the past few months from several US congressmen, YouTube has pledged to remove content inciting violence.

The battle between fundamentalists and reformers in the Arab world is nearer the beginning than the end. It is one that will engage the attention of the West as if its future depended on the outcome.

SOURCE





BBC ARE IN VIOLATION OF THEIR CONTRACT

Following on from the complaint about 1 particular programme where the BBC do not dispute lying, though their assertion that having broadcast 10s of thousands of hours pushing catastrophic warming alarmism & zero hours devoted to scepticism they had maintained the "due balance" required in their guidelines we come to their "Charter & Agreement."

These are the legal basis of their claim to the right to our money. The Agreement pdf sits alongside the Charter providing detail of what the Charter means. In it we find that the previously discussed Editorial Guidelines ate not merely guidelines but written into their legal duties.
44. Accuracy and impartiality

(1) The BBC must do all it can to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality in all relevant output.

(2) In applying paragraph (1), a series of programmes may be considered as a whole.

(3) The UK Public Services must not contain any output which expresses the opinion of the BBC or of its Trust or Executive Board on current affairs or matters of public policy other than broadcasting or the provision of online services.

This is essentially the wording used in the "guidelines" and if they are in breach of it they have no legal validity.

Beyond the simple issue of breach of contract lets look at the European Declaration of Human Rights
ARTICLE 10

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

So if the BBC have failed to show due balance, across their broadcasting they have also interfered with the human rights of all those whose views have been suppressed. If, for example, they have had UKIP spokesmen on significantly less than 4 times as often and BNP ones significantly less than twice as often as Green ones they clearly not only defrauded supporters of the former but interfered with their human rights.

If the evidence that we are experiencing catastrophic global warming is less than 10s of thousands of times greater than the evidence of severe snow then their claim to have maintained "due balance" is false & they have defrauded all their licence payers for over a decade & not only have no right to demand money from them, until they have proven themselves honest, but I suspect, have a legal duty to refund that money.

If they have and are totally censoring reporting of racial genocide, something which Damian Whyte of "BBC Information" promised to deny & when presented with the facts specifically then found himself unable to do, then they have clearly breached the duty of "due balance" (they have also made themselves complicit in crimes against humanity but that is meat for another time). and are not entitled to demand payment from the public, indeed they owe money.

That they have censored to promote warming alarmism, one particular [political party & racial genocide appears to me to be indubitable. I believe that there are many other subjects on which such accusations could be made with a degree of credibility greatly exceeding the "balance of probability" standard used in civil courts. It seems easily provable that, even by the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt" they have censored & lied in these instances.

If somebody not only defends a licence fee prosecution of the BBC but counter sues for previous year's payments they would also be able to call a number of top executives & Trust members & make them testify, under oath, how the decisions to censor everything from the weather to NATO police's Crimes Against Humanity were taken. That opens whole new cans of worms. I suspect it would go viral online, though unmentioned by the MSM.
Labels: British politics, Government parasitism, Media

SOURCE (See the original for links)






Some are Still Arguing for Civil Trials for the Uncivilized!

How to treat terrorists at Gitmo

John Bernard

Every once in a while, I am questioned about my stand on one element of this ongoing debate or another and the question is almost always couched in such a way as to bring discredit to this particular viewpoint. I find that interesting in general because I am not thin skinned and because this argument is not difficult to follow. Because it is not difficult to follow, it forces people to consider their true nature and their true allegiances.

I have always maintained that my sole concern is for our Warriors. This is not some misguided plea to protect Warriors from the dangers of warfare, it is in fact an attempt to protect them from the negligence and agenda of those in our own government. So when I receive the occasional hand wringing diatribe that so often allies the hand wringer with the enemies of this nation and our Warriors, I feel compelled to 'chew butt'.

What follows is an answer I gave to one such person who is morally conflicted about the handling of prisoners at Gitmo. Of course she has no particular moral conflict with the way our Warriors are treated by their own government, foreign prosecutors, the national media, the lies perpetrated by dirt bags hiding behind the doctrine of Taqiyya and left wing nut cases that are looking for any opportunity to help dismantle this country.

As Follows:

First of all; there has never been any actual evidence of 'abuses' of the dirt bags being held at Gitmo. The only thing there has ever been is unfounded accusations generally levied by someone on the left trying to push their agenda or someone with an ax to grind.

Second, and most importantly; we are talking about 'people' content to cut the heads from their 'enemies' and in general anyone who doesn't agree with them or take a knee to their demon god, Allah. These people are not covered by our Constitution because they are not Americans. They are not covered by the Geneva Conventions because they do not represent any nation or its people and they do not wear a uniform. The 'non-uniformed' clause in the Geneva Conventions is generally accepted to mean protection for civilians. By definition, civilians do not involve themselves in armed conflict and certainly not by siding with unrepentant murderers.

The only people still arguing for the 'entitlement of respect' of these dirt bags, are those arguing from the safety and sanctity of their well protected American homes - protected by the very Warriors they so easily cast to the wolves while denigrating this country and its foundational underpinning.

These 'people' cross borders and do harm to any and all as they and their religious ideology see fit. As such and with the support of my prior two points; they should expect no quarter from any sovereign nation or it's government or their armed forces.

The whole bloody argument over Military Tribunals versus Civilian Court is a straw argument based on a faulty definition of who these dirt bags are and how they 'should' be covered by our Constitution. This argument is generally levied by those in our society lacking intestinal fortitude and who believe in one big happy world - without borders.

So for those who may be reading this who think that way, listen up; this is a world of sovereign nations, with flags, unique systems of jurisprudence, a well identified citizenry and borders. Any person(s) who desires to do harm to the citizens of this nation - of their own accord or in accordance with the doctrines of their demon god should beware...governments do not 'bear the sword in vain' (Romans 13). If you/they want to test the sanctity of this nation and this government, you/they deserve to be treated as no better than a piece of rotting meat! The elected 'leaders' of this country should get their confused thoughts in alignment with this as well.

This should always have been done in a Military Tribunal and EVERY piece of evidence garnered - by whatever means it was gathered, should be admissible. These 'people' deserve nothing, should expect nothing and their 'supporters' need to consider who and what they are; citizens of this nation or allies with unrepentant, ideologically motivated murderers.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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