Men of No Appearance and a Jooooooo..ess

Carefully documented (for eg. here, here and here) by Tim Blair, and reported by none other than the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), Men of No Appearance have been hitting the streets of Sydney in rage. Note that they are the perpetrators of crimes.

Contrast this with how they describe the victim of a strangulation and disposal in a wheelie bin (moreover in the first sentence):

An elderly Holocaust survivor strangled to death and dumped in a wheelie bin was a "very timid and very kind" woman who never bothered anyone, neighbours say.

Also notice the description of the investigation:

Police have mounted an unusually big investigation, with a team of more than 20 detectives questioning local residents and shopkeepers about the murder.

No doubt, because the Elders of Zion have tapped the Commissioner on the shoulder. Maybe it is unusually large. But thats besides the point.

The SMH sees it fit to give a good description of the victim of a crime and the nature of the police investigation in this particular instance. The question I have is, why doesn't the SMH report the contents of actual police reports of incidents involving Men of No Appearance accurately to its readers?

For the dummies (dhimmis): it might be something to do with the ethnicity of the perpetrators/victims.

Update [28 December 2006, 5:49PM EST]: Notice how News Limited is reporting the story? No mention of an "unusually big investigation". More accurately they report that a Strike Force has been assembled to investigate the apparent murder:

Strike Force Miriam, comprising detectives from State Crime Commands Homicide Squad and Rose Bay Local Area Command, has been formed to investigate the death.

SMH still sticking with "unusually big investigation".
Update [29 December 2006, 9:51AM EST]: The SMH has dropped the "unusually big investigation" line. Instead it mentions that 20 detectives have been allocated to investigate this apparent murder:

Twenty detectives were assigned to investigate a death that was burdened by added sorrow once details of Mrs Schweitzer's life story emerged.

No mention of the Strike Force set up to investigate her death.

Iraq: Children being cooked

Just when you thought the bloodshed in Iraq could not be worse. I think, hope and pray we've hit rock-bottom. From the Barnabas Fund's email newsletter:

...Christians like the thousands of frightened Iraqis who face Christmas in the context of escalating anti-Christian violence. In the most shocking report from Iraq we have received, a toddler was kidnapped in Baghdad in October 2006. The mother could not afford to pay the ransom, and so the kidnappers killed the child. They returned the body to the mother. The little child had been beheaded, roasted and was served on a mound of rice. In another incident a 14-year-old Christian boy was held down by his limbs and beheaded, or, as Iraqi Christians have described it, “crucified”. His Muslim attackers called him a “dirty Christian sinner” and chanted “Allahu akbar” (Allah is great).

This is the most barbaric of the events that the email discusses.

Stunned by the viciousness of this attack, earlier this evening, I called Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Barnabas Fund. He is a world expert on political Islam and his organisation clearly understands the Eurabia and Dhimmitude concepts seeking to assist Christians in the Dar-al-Islam (from Dhimmitude) and Dar-al-Harb (from Suicidialism).

He personally confirmed the veracity and accuracy of this information. There seems to be a complete and total media blackout of these massacres. Patrick is not sure why this is the case. He also seems to be circumspect about the nature of blogs to help him get his message out saying, in his usual self-effacing manner, that they are not nice to him. So brilliant bloggers, unite. Bring this catastrophe to light and make people aware of the suffering of Christians in Iraq. Let's not have another Armenia/Aramean genocide on our hands.

For those with the means, please donate some money to the Barnabas Fund's Christmas Appeal 2006 - Iraq. For those that are not able to contribute financially, please pray, and pray ceaselessly for justice to be served on those driving the violence and pray for the protection of those on the receiving end of the violence.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Update: Here is the newsletter and the email in full.

Update II: Healing Iraq has spot reports from around Iraq regarding the upsurge in violence. Mohammed @ Iraq the Model on the same. This is not surprising and should have been expected. The US is flailing around trying to find someone to "help" them reduce the violence. Think Iran, Think Syria. Well, it would be at precisely this time that Iran and Syria would push the US's head under the water, by instructing their Iraqi proxies to increase their attacks, increasing pressure on the US to acquiesce to their demands. (H/T: LittleGreenFootballs). Interestingly, no mention of the suffering the Christians are facing. This probably reflects how marginalised they have become, even in the eyes of supporters of peace and stability in Iraq.

Update III: I have been provided further information by the Barnabas Fund supporting the claims made above. Understandably, due to the security of the eyewitnesses, I have been asked to preserve confidentiality.

What is Truth?

A couple of months ago, I wrote a fairly long post on truth and clarity in the context of the lack of truth and clarity by elements of the MSM and the respect of it by Donald Rumsfeld:

If Brookes has his head firmly wrapped around what the WIF is about, then Shields has a tinfoil hat glued to his head. He ends by rationalising his incoherent, inconsistent, contradictory babble with the following:

And now they say, "Well, what do we got? We've tried terrorism. We've tried -- the only thing we have to offer is fear itself."

Perhaps Shields was upset by the following piece of total non-nuance and political incorrectness from Donald Rumsfeld:

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and about our country. America is not what's wrong with the world.

I'm sure Shields response has the same philosophical backbone as that worn by Pontus Pilate when he replied rather condescendingly to Jesus, the bearer of Truth:

What is truth?

According to Ravi Zacharias, there are three tests of truth:

1. Logical consistency;
2. Empirical adequacy; and
3. Existential relevance.

Much of what is wrong with today's society is a result of people's rejection of one or all of these tests. For example, with regards to Shield's babble in the aforementioned Shields and Brookes session, Mark Shields has jettisoned the first and second tests and therefore made a mess of trying to test the third criteria.

So, if the West's agenda setters are unable to discern fact from fiction, what does this say about the existential survival of the West?

AP - Moral Ambiguity

Anything wrong with this?

AP infers by its sentence structure that a violent backlash (presumably by Sunnis and Baathists) against the verdict in Saddam's war crimes trial is equally morally egregious to Saddam's presumed death penalty.

What is wrong with this world? Has justice lost its meaning? Has victory for the victim become a vacant ideal?

Interestingly, this AP piece does not report that the verdict handed down by an Iraqi Court will be subject to an automatic review by another judicial panel.

The AP is seriously not interested in justice. It is interested in ensuring that it sticks up for the right-to-life of a murderous, unseated dictator.

Update: Saddam gets the noose. Automatic judicial review pending.

Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced Sunday to death by hanging for war crimes in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail, as the former leader, trembling, shouted "God is great!"

Sexy Ford

This is the entirety of a letter that I wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald editor several days ago (it was not published):

Dear Editor,

I am disappointed by the lack of balance and accuracy in Michael Gawenda’s article “Senate fight about race a strain on southern comfort” (26 October 2006).

The Republican National Committee has produced and aired an ad depicting the Democratic challenger for a Tennessean Senate seat, Harold Ford, as someone who is in bed with the pornography industry (excuse the pun) and who is seduced by a white porn star. Gawenda’s notes that this sort of political advertising would “...shock even Australia’s seasoned political apparatchiks.”

Gawenda notes that the election is about “character”. Precisely. This is what the ad tries to address. The ad, among other things, mocks Ford’s policy position on the legal rights of illegal combatants in the War on Terror, his high tax policies and his dislike of US second amendment rights to possess firearms.

According to Gawenda, Ford is “handsome and charismatic” and wears “smart suits and two-colour shirts”. I suppose these are Gawenda’s benchmarks for “character”. On this basis, should we consider Ken Lay as an exemplar?

In an article about race and US politics, I also find it startling that Gawenda’s journalistic piece fails to report the “dirty tricks” perpetrated by the Democrats, particularly because of Gawenda’s extensive experience at covering US politics. A case in point is a Democratic TV ad funded by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee portraying a black Republican candidate for Governor of Virginia as a minstrel and referring to him as “Sambo”.

For the record, both ads were withdrawn. But Gawenda does not report that either.

So I was reading "The Inquirer" section of The Australian this morning. Geoff Elliott had almost one entire broadsheet page dedicated to covering the supposed racist smear against Harold Ford Jnr (can't find it online). This article again failed to mention the dirty racist smears being perpetrated by the Democrats in Election '06. It also failed to mention that the ad has been pulled or that the RNC (contrary to my implication above) has no control over the ad.

I'm not going to complain about the balance of Elliott's piece as it is not reporting, but opinion. But I would have thought that factual accuracy would still be a necessity. The World News/Opinion sections of the Australian need some serious looking over. First Chulov's significant errors and shifting accounts, now Elliotts mistakes.

Its good to see the Editorial teams of both major Australian newspapers up to the task of acting as Gatekeepers.

ABC Feels, AT Facts

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has a web article on the how Michael J Fox is being "hounded" by conservatives in the U.S. with respect to his political ad on stem cell research. However, I haven't noticed a prominent piece on the claims being made by Michael J Fox in his ad. Instead, they cover this ad with the following touchy-feely:

In a heart-wrenching TV commercial, the once fresh-faced Canadian-born star writhes and twitches, struggling to hold his head still to look into camera.

Controversy has been stirred as a result of conservative talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, claiming that Fox was faking while the ad was being recorded. He has since apologised. Needless to say, this sort of commentary is unhelpful.

However, this sort of commentary by a gynecologist and obstetrician published by the American Thinker is educational and does a much better demolition job of Fox's claims on embryonic stem cell research. For instance:

The plain fact is that embryonic stem cell research is proving to be a bust. There are currently 72 therapies showing human benefits using adult stem cells and zero using embryonic stem cells. Scientifically-minded readers can review this medical journal article on the status of adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell therapies are already being advertised and promoted while no such treatments are even remotely in prospect for embryonic stem cell research.

Read it all if the facts interest you. The ABC isn't interested in facts.

Update: The ABC story is largely sourced from AFP. Interestingly, the ABC excerpt snips the scant factual critique contained in the AFP article:

Limbaugh's fellow conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity told ABC's Good Morning America Wednesday Fox was fair game.

The actor, who also starred in political drama "Spin City" had "a right to speak up, but he also has a right to be criticised," Hannity said.

"What's unfortunate and deceiving about the ad is that this is about the federal funding of embryonic stem cells," Hannity said, arguing members of Congress had no jurisdiction over the issue.

Chesterton: Uncandid Candid Friends

G.K. Chesterton in his book "Orthodoxy" (1908) on uncandid candid friends:

I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back - his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly...what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens...A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is...what I have suggested: he is an uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor, for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it...

The personification of the uncandid candid friend changes over time, as do the characters traiterous to their own nation. Yet, their forked tongues and fake sympathy do not.

The global Left (with a few notable exceptions) are the uncandid candid friends of today. They pronounce our defeat in Iraq and wanting a retreat, not because of their care and concern for the soldiers on the ground, but because of their joy in seeing the US and its allies defeated.

Everytime I read Chesterton, I hang on his profound paradoxical statements, his ability to pierce complexity with his sharp tongue and the enduring lessons he teaches.

Western Media - Shills for Enemy

Now let's see. We have AP summarising Ahmadinejad's speech as "Iran Leader says U.S. abusing U.N. power". In that article, we have the following statement regarding the U.S. President's speech:

Bush directed his remarks to the Iranian people in a clear insult to the hard-line government.

Two problems:
1. The U.N.'s cost of operations is overwhelmingly paid for by the U.S. When Iran starts putting more of its petro-dollars into the U.N. can Ahmadinejad squeel unfair.
2. Why would a free western media outlet use the speech of its enemy to denounce its leader?

We live in Orwellian times.

Men of No Appearance and a Jooooooo..ess

Carefully documented (for eg. here, here and here) by Tim Blair, and reported by none other than the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), Men of No Appearance have been hitting the streets of Sydney in rage. Note that they are the perpetrators of crimes.

Contrast this with how they describe the victim of a strangulation and disposal in a wheelie bin (moreover in the first sentence):

An elderly Holocaust survivor strangled to death and dumped in a wheelie bin was a "very timid and very kind" woman who never bothered anyone, neighbours say.

Also notice the description of the investigation:

Police have mounted an unusually big investigation, with a team of more than 20 detectives questioning local residents and shopkeepers about the murder.

No doubt, because the Elders of Zion have tapped the Commissioner on the shoulder. Maybe it is unusually large. But thats besides the point.

The SMH sees it fit to give a good description of the victim of a crime and the nature of the police investigation in this particular instance. The question I have is, why doesn't the SMH report the contents of actual police reports of incidents involving Men of No Appearance accurately to its readers?

For the dummies (dhimmis): it might be something to do with the ethnicity of the perpetrators/victims.

Update [28 December 2006, 5:49PM EST]: Notice how News Limited is reporting the story? No mention of an "unusually big investigation". More accurately they report that a Strike Force has been assembled to investigate the apparent murder:

Strike Force Miriam, comprising detectives from State Crime Commands Homicide Squad and Rose Bay Local Area Command, has been formed to investigate the death.

SMH still sticking with "unusually big investigation".
Update [29 December 2006, 9:51AM EST]: The SMH has dropped the "unusually big investigation" line. Instead it mentions that 20 detectives have been allocated to investigate this apparent murder:

Twenty detectives were assigned to investigate a death that was burdened by added sorrow once details of Mrs Schweitzer's life story emerged.

No mention of the Strike Force set up to investigate her death.

Iraq: Children being cooked

Just when you thought the bloodshed in Iraq could not be worse. I think, hope and pray we've hit rock-bottom. From the Barnabas Fund's email newsletter:

...Christians like the thousands of frightened Iraqis who face Christmas in the context of escalating anti-Christian violence. In the most shocking report from Iraq we have received, a toddler was kidnapped in Baghdad in October 2006. The mother could not afford to pay the ransom, and so the kidnappers killed the child. They returned the body to the mother. The little child had been beheaded, roasted and was served on a mound of rice. In another incident a 14-year-old Christian boy was held down by his limbs and beheaded, or, as Iraqi Christians have described it, “crucified”. His Muslim attackers called him a “dirty Christian sinner” and chanted “Allahu akbar” (Allah is great).

This is the most barbaric of the events that the email discusses.

Stunned by the viciousness of this attack, earlier this evening, I called Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Barnabas Fund. He is a world expert on political Islam and his organisation clearly understands the Eurabia and Dhimmitude concepts seeking to assist Christians in the Dar-al-Islam (from Dhimmitude) and Dar-al-Harb (from Suicidialism).

He personally confirmed the veracity and accuracy of this information. There seems to be a complete and total media blackout of these massacres. Patrick is not sure why this is the case. He also seems to be circumspect about the nature of blogs to help him get his message out saying, in his usual self-effacing manner, that they are not nice to him. So brilliant bloggers, unite. Bring this catastrophe to light and make people aware of the suffering of Christians in Iraq. Let's not have another Armenia/Aramean genocide on our hands.

For those with the means, please donate some money to the Barnabas Fund's Christmas Appeal 2006 - Iraq. For those that are not able to contribute financially, please pray, and pray ceaselessly for justice to be served on those driving the violence and pray for the protection of those on the receiving end of the violence.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Update: Here is the newsletter and the email in full.

Update II: Healing Iraq has spot reports from around Iraq regarding the upsurge in violence. Mohammed @ Iraq the Model on the same. This is not surprising and should have been expected. The US is flailing around trying to find someone to "help" them reduce the violence. Think Iran, Think Syria. Well, it would be at precisely this time that Iran and Syria would push the US's head under the water, by instructing their Iraqi proxies to increase their attacks, increasing pressure on the US to acquiesce to their demands. (H/T: LittleGreenFootballs). Interestingly, no mention of the suffering the Christians are facing. This probably reflects how marginalised they have become, even in the eyes of supporters of peace and stability in Iraq.

Update III: I have been provided further information by the Barnabas Fund supporting the claims made above. Understandably, due to the security of the eyewitnesses, I have been asked to preserve confidentiality.

What is Truth?

A couple of months ago, I wrote a fairly long post on truth and clarity in the context of the lack of truth and clarity by elements of the MSM and the respect of it by Donald Rumsfeld:

If Brookes has his head firmly wrapped around what the WIF is about, then Shields has a tinfoil hat glued to his head. He ends by rationalising his incoherent, inconsistent, contradictory babble with the following:

And now they say, "Well, what do we got? We've tried terrorism. We've tried -- the only thing we have to offer is fear itself."

Perhaps Shields was upset by the following piece of total non-nuance and political incorrectness from Donald Rumsfeld:

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and about our country. America is not what's wrong with the world.

I'm sure Shields response has the same philosophical backbone as that worn by Pontus Pilate when he replied rather condescendingly to Jesus, the bearer of Truth:

What is truth?

According to Ravi Zacharias, there are three tests of truth:

1. Logical consistency;
2. Empirical adequacy; and
3. Existential relevance.

Much of what is wrong with today's society is a result of people's rejection of one or all of these tests. For example, with regards to Shield's babble in the aforementioned Shields and Brookes session, Mark Shields has jettisoned the first and second tests and therefore made a mess of trying to test the third criteria.

So, if the West's agenda setters are unable to discern fact from fiction, what does this say about the existential survival of the West?

AP - Moral Ambiguity

Anything wrong with this?

AP infers by its sentence structure that a violent backlash (presumably by Sunnis and Baathists) against the verdict in Saddam's war crimes trial is equally morally egregious to Saddam's presumed death penalty.

What is wrong with this world? Has justice lost its meaning? Has victory for the victim become a vacant ideal?

Interestingly, this AP piece does not report that the verdict handed down by an Iraqi Court will be subject to an automatic review by another judicial panel.

The AP is seriously not interested in justice. It is interested in ensuring that it sticks up for the right-to-life of a murderous, unseated dictator.

Update: Saddam gets the noose. Automatic judicial review pending.

Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced Sunday to death by hanging for war crimes in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail, as the former leader, trembling, shouted "God is great!"

Sexy Ford

This is the entirety of a letter that I wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald editor several days ago (it was not published):

Dear Editor,

I am disappointed by the lack of balance and accuracy in Michael Gawenda’s article “Senate fight about race a strain on southern comfort” (26 October 2006).

The Republican National Committee has produced and aired an ad depicting the Democratic challenger for a Tennessean Senate seat, Harold Ford, as someone who is in bed with the pornography industry (excuse the pun) and who is seduced by a white porn star. Gawenda’s notes that this sort of political advertising would “...shock even Australia’s seasoned political apparatchiks.”

Gawenda notes that the election is about “character”. Precisely. This is what the ad tries to address. The ad, among other things, mocks Ford’s policy position on the legal rights of illegal combatants in the War on Terror, his high tax policies and his dislike of US second amendment rights to possess firearms.

According to Gawenda, Ford is “handsome and charismatic” and wears “smart suits and two-colour shirts”. I suppose these are Gawenda’s benchmarks for “character”. On this basis, should we consider Ken Lay as an exemplar?

In an article about race and US politics, I also find it startling that Gawenda’s journalistic piece fails to report the “dirty tricks” perpetrated by the Democrats, particularly because of Gawenda’s extensive experience at covering US politics. A case in point is a Democratic TV ad funded by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee portraying a black Republican candidate for Governor of Virginia as a minstrel and referring to him as “Sambo”.

For the record, both ads were withdrawn. But Gawenda does not report that either.

So I was reading "The Inquirer" section of The Australian this morning. Geoff Elliott had almost one entire broadsheet page dedicated to covering the supposed racist smear against Harold Ford Jnr (can't find it online). This article again failed to mention the dirty racist smears being perpetrated by the Democrats in Election '06. It also failed to mention that the ad has been pulled or that the RNC (contrary to my implication above) has no control over the ad.

I'm not going to complain about the balance of Elliott's piece as it is not reporting, but opinion. But I would have thought that factual accuracy would still be a necessity. The World News/Opinion sections of the Australian need some serious looking over. First Chulov's significant errors and shifting accounts, now Elliotts mistakes.

Its good to see the Editorial teams of both major Australian newspapers up to the task of acting as Gatekeepers.

ABC Feels, AT Facts

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has a web article on the how Michael J Fox is being "hounded" by conservatives in the U.S. with respect to his political ad on stem cell research. However, I haven't noticed a prominent piece on the claims being made by Michael J Fox in his ad. Instead, they cover this ad with the following touchy-feely:

In a heart-wrenching TV commercial, the once fresh-faced Canadian-born star writhes and twitches, struggling to hold his head still to look into camera.

Controversy has been stirred as a result of conservative talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, claiming that Fox was faking while the ad was being recorded. He has since apologised. Needless to say, this sort of commentary is unhelpful.

However, this sort of commentary by a gynecologist and obstetrician published by the American Thinker is educational and does a much better demolition job of Fox's claims on embryonic stem cell research. For instance:

The plain fact is that embryonic stem cell research is proving to be a bust. There are currently 72 therapies showing human benefits using adult stem cells and zero using embryonic stem cells. Scientifically-minded readers can review this medical journal article on the status of adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell therapies are already being advertised and promoted while no such treatments are even remotely in prospect for embryonic stem cell research.

Read it all if the facts interest you. The ABC isn't interested in facts.

Update: The ABC story is largely sourced from AFP. Interestingly, the ABC excerpt snips the scant factual critique contained in the AFP article:

Limbaugh's fellow conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity told ABC's Good Morning America Wednesday Fox was fair game.

The actor, who also starred in political drama "Spin City" had "a right to speak up, but he also has a right to be criticised," Hannity said.

"What's unfortunate and deceiving about the ad is that this is about the federal funding of embryonic stem cells," Hannity said, arguing members of Congress had no jurisdiction over the issue.

Chesterton: Uncandid Candid Friends

G.K. Chesterton in his book "Orthodoxy" (1908) on uncandid candid friends:

I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back - his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly...what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens...A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is...what I have suggested: he is an uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor, for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it...

The personification of the uncandid candid friend changes over time, as do the characters traiterous to their own nation. Yet, their forked tongues and fake sympathy do not.

The global Left (with a few notable exceptions) are the uncandid candid friends of today. They pronounce our defeat in Iraq and wanting a retreat, not because of their care and concern for the soldiers on the ground, but because of their joy in seeing the US and its allies defeated.

Everytime I read Chesterton, I hang on his profound paradoxical statements, his ability to pierce complexity with his sharp tongue and the enduring lessons he teaches.

Western Media - Shills for Enemy

Now let's see. We have AP summarising Ahmadinejad's speech as "Iran Leader says U.S. abusing U.N. power". In that article, we have the following statement regarding the U.S. President's speech:

Bush directed his remarks to the Iranian people in a clear insult to the hard-line government.

Two problems:
1. The U.N.'s cost of operations is overwhelmingly paid for by the U.S. When Iran starts putting more of its petro-dollars into the U.N. can Ahmadinejad squeel unfair.
2. Why would a free western media outlet use the speech of its enemy to denounce its leader?

We live in Orwellian times.