Journalists Recall Tsunami Disaster
Editor & Publisher: Journalists Recall Tsunami Disaster
Frontpage magazine calls attention to a Saudi Terror Conference. Disturbingly, the participants are not the opponents of the monarchy... they include the monarchy (hat tip: JihadWatch).
| “This perverse ideology [Wahhabi Islam] has spread all over Saudi Arabia, in the schools, the mosques … [and] satellite channels… There’s a videotape now circulating in Saudi Arabia of a boy age 10 or less [in a Saudi orphanage]. He is asked, 'who is your role model?' And he answers, 'Osama Bin Laden.'” This damaging statement was not spoken by an opponent of the Saudi regime, but by Saudi Prince Khaled Al-Faysal on Al-Arabiyya TV on July 14th.
As part of MEMRI’s TV Monitoring Project (www.memritv.org), Saudi government-controlled television channels are continually monitored. These channels include shows with leading Saudi religious figures, professors, members of the royal family, government leaders, and intellectuals. Constant themes include calls for the annihilation of Christian and Jews, rampant anti-Americanism and antisemitism, and support for jihad. ...it is important to review the content of the Saudi media, particularly TV, as it relates to terrorism and hatred toward non-Muslims. A recent example of hatred for Christians and Westerners is Saudi TV’s coverage of the tsunami disaster... Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajjid, Imam of the ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Mosque in Khobar, claimed first to Al-Majd on January 1 that Allah’s took revenge on the "criminals'" celebration - the Christmas holidays - and elaborated on January 6th that “perversions” during the Christmas holidays were to blame. Sermons from Saudi mosques frequently contain calls to fight non-Muslims. In a sermon from Medina broadcast on Saudi TV channel 2, Sheikh Saleh Bdeir said on June 25: “The enemies of Islam, the Jews, Christians, atheists, and those from among the infidel Westernized who are enslaved by them within the Muslim community, never cease attacking the Islamic nation.”... In the early summer, Saudi Sheikh Dr. Ahmad bin Abd Al-Latif, a professor at Um Al-Qura University, was asked on Saudi TV if it is permitted under Islamic law to pray for the annihilation of Christians and Jews. He answered, "… Cursing the oppressing Jews and the oppressing and plundering Christians and the prayer that Allah will annihilate them is permitted.” Saudi cleric ‘Aed Al-Qarni spoke on Saudi Iqra TV channel on December 12 about why Jews and Christians will burn in Hell: “The Jews take pride in something they lie about; the Jews and the Christians… They say: 'Oh people, we, the Jews and Christians, are the sons of Allah…' They are lying, [may] Allah's wrath [be] upon them… If you are truthful, will Allah burn you in hell for your sins?… You will be punished for your lies.” Calling for the throats of Christians and Jews to be slit and their skulls shattered, Al-Qarni told Iqra TV on December 26: "We Muslims should be rebuked. One billion two hundred million … are incapable of taking action … of harming the Jews… I pray to Allah that He will make the enemies fall … and that He will destroy the Jews and their helpers from among the Christians… We curse them … and pray that Allah will annihilate them, tear them apart, and grant us victory over them… Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered. This is the path to victory, to shahada...” Citing a hadith. In a lecture on January 9th that aired on Iqra TV, Al-Qarni explained that Jews, “the brothers of apes and pigs,” and Christians should not be slaughtered only if they convert to Islam. |
Hugh Hewitt pounds Howard Kurtz flatter than a penny on a railroad track after the 5PM express. Kurtz, of course, had busily refuted the Fineman proposition that the mainstream media is truly another political party. Hewitt's salvos are among the loudest and most powerful blows to land on Kurtz, but by no means the only ones.
To combat this, Kurtz cites a string of Clinton scandals, which is not responsive. It isn't that major media refuses to cover news --though the studied indifference to big stories like Kerry's repeated and vehement claims to have been on an illegal mission to Cambodia on Christmas Eve in 1969 or his fabled "magic hat," or the claim of having met with every member of the U.N. Security Council etc etc went almost completely uncovered by the Kerry cheering section in MSM-- it is that they act like the home town referee in the big game with the cross state rival. The refs will call most of the flagrant fouls committed by the home team, but they'll miss the close calls, or they will see the out-of-towners holding whenever they really need to. Dems get the home-field advantage --all the time, in every game, and even on some flagrant calls. Notice that Howard's list doesn't include Juanita Broaddrick? I love to remind people that editors at the Los Angeles Times deleted a reference to Broaddrick from a January 2001 George Will column about Bill Clinton. Such is the power of the home-town ref. And does Kurtz really want to argue that the MSM has followed up on the Rich pardon? Sure, the MSM covered the Clinton travails, and Keith Olberman compared Ken Starr's looks to those of Himmler's... ...To hell with metaphors, MSM is a party, using Webster's third definition: "a group of persons who support one side of a dispute, question etc." ...[Admitting] deep and significant bias in the news gathering and production operations of MSM would require a remedy. It would require a remedy because it contradicts the central claim of MSM to be objective. Nobody wants "objective" news that is really "partisan." The remedy would be the hiring of counter-partisans, which would really rebalance the very unbalanced MSM. But there are only so many jobs. Start hiring center-right journalists, and center-left journalists are going to go looking for work. ...Power is not often surrendered. But is often involuntarily ceded, and that is what happening as we sit here, with the blogosphere draining media credibility day by day. To stop the hemorrhaging, MSM is going to have to repopulate their ranks with voices and bylines credible to the center-right... |
If CBS thought its unfinished report would close the door on Rathergate, they were sadly mistaken.
...Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today, calls out CBS for its inaction:
Interestingly and somewhat ironically, the paid advertisement for Neuharth's screed promotes NBC's Nightly News with new anchorman Brian Williams. Williams strikes a skeptical look for the camera, a hilarious counterpoint to Neuharth's scolding. He gazes out from the page as if thinking, "That's all you got?" ... ...Neuharth isn't the only one taking CBS to the woodshed today. Charles Krauthammer at the Washington Post also considers their response completely unaccpetable and says so in much stronger terms than Neuharth:
If Les Moonves hoped to bury this scandal by using a supposedly independent panel, he finds himself very much in error... ...The four fired employees reportedly will fire wrongful-termination lawsuits against Viacom and CBS, a development we should all support. Not that the four didn't deserve to get fired, or even that their terminations were unfair in light of the escapes of Heyward and Rather; they all clearly deserved termination for incompetence at the least, and Mapes for a breathtaking record of lies and misleading statements connected to the story which should destroy her credibility for all time. No, the depositions and testimony of the lawsuit will finally force CBS and its executives -- including Dan Rather -- to come completely clean about the collapse of the once-dominant broadcast news outlet, and the mainstream media in general. |
The inevitable slide of today's left continues...
| ...What accounts for the growing conservatism of college students? After 9/11, many collegians came to distrust the U.N.-loving left to defend the nation with vigor. As of late 2003, college students backed the war more strongly than the overall American population. Notes Edward Morrissey, "Captain Ed" of the popular conservative blog Captain's Quarters, these kids "grew up on . . . moral relativism and internationalism, constantly fed the line that there was no such thing as evil in the world, only misunderstandings." Suddenly, on 9/11, this generation discovered that "there are enemies and they wanted to kill Americans in large numbers, and that a good portion of what they'd been taught was drizzly pap."
Yet a deeper reason for the rightward shift, which began well before 9/11, is the left's broader intellectual and political failure. American college kids grew up in an era that witnessed both communism's fall and the unchained U.S. economy's breathtaking productivity surge. They've seen that anyone willing to work hard--regardless of race or sex--can thrive in such an opportunity-rich system. "I'm only 20, so I don't remember segregation or the oppression of women--in fact, my mother had a very successful career since I was a kid," one student observed in an online discussion. "I look around and don't see any discrimination against minorities or women." Left-wing charges of U.S. economic injustice sound like so much BS to many kids today... |
Charles at LGF provides the following take on John Kerry's visit to the Middle East. The short version? I don't know if he violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice by meeting with Madame Binh in 1970 and '71. But I do know such an act didn't smell right then... and his recent actions smell worse today. Check it:
Fresh from his whirlwind tour of Arab dictatorships in Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, and Egypt, John Kerry wants us to know that they are very frustrated with US policies.
ArabicNews.com says Kerry “admitted the US committed terrible mistakes,” in a meeting with the Grand Imam of Al Azhar University: Kerry to Al Azhar Grand Imam: Washington commited terrible mistakes in Iraq.
The Grand Imam of Al Azhar is on record supporting suicide bombing as a legitimate form of “resistance” against “occupiers.” He has also said that suicide attacks against coalition forces in Iraq are permitted under Islamic law. Are these some of “the steps necessary to be able to advance the stability of Iraq?” I am now feeling an immense sense of relief that John Kerry is not President of the United States. |
I'll admit that Ann Coulter often comes off a shade too vitriolic for my personal tastes. Nonetheless, she's always interesting to listen to -- even when she's the proverbial bull in a china shop. In her latest column, she rips CBS a new bodily orifice and -- for good measure -- holds their head in the toilet and then flushes - repeatedly.
Hugh Hewitt reports that he received an email that claimed to capture last night's Top 10 list from Letterman. As Hugh says, even if it wasn't... it shoulda been:
10. Stories must be corroborated by at least two really strong hunches. 9. "Evening News" pre-show staff cocktail hour is cancelled until further notice. 8. Reduce "60 Minutes" to more manageable 15-20 minutes. 7. Change division name from "CBS News" to "CBS News-ish" 6. If anchor says anything inaccurate, earpiece delivers an electric shock. 5. Conclude each story with comical "Boing" sound effect. 4. Instead of boring Middle East reports, more powerball drawings. 3. To play it safe, every "exclusive" story will be about how tasty pecan pie is. 2. Not sure how, but make CBS News more like "C.S.I." 1. Use beer, cash and hookers to lure Tom Brokaw out of retirement. |
The "non-biased" folks at CBS -- and the vast majority of other mainstream media all-stars -- somehow didn't report upon this interesting and -- one would think -- quite important news. I guess they just forgot. Yowzer, Dan, it's hotter in this studio than the July Fourth Chili cook-off in Austin, TX!
| WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. government ran a $1 billion budget surplus in December, helped by a rise in corporate tax payments, the Congressional Budget Office said in its latest budget report released on Friday. The surplus, which compared with an $18 billion deficit in the previous December, helped create a smaller fiscal deficit for the first three months of the 2005 fiscal year, than in the same quarter of the prior year. |
| "CBO is projecting that the deficit will narrow slightly to $348 billion in 2005″
Hows that for liberal media bias? In only a far left extremist mind could a whopping 16.7% reduction in the deficit in a single year as "narrowing slightly." Now a little math lesson for the mathmatically challenged donks. Bush has said his goal is to cut the deficit in half by 2009. Now we know that would be impossible with that paltry 16.7% reduction yearly cause Reuters said its just such a slight reduction. Get your calculators out, if you extrapolate that paltry 16.7% for each year until 2009 what number do you come up with? The answer is 168. As in the deficit will be at 168 billion in 2009. Well well well, even you donks can figure out thats a 60% reduction in the deficit from last year. |
Martin Fowler recently solicited input from participants in an enterprise software workshop. The topic? Preferred software layering principles (hat tip: John Lim). Participants were free to suggest principles and vote on any with which they agreed or disagreed.
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* Business layer only uses abstractions of technological services. 14/0 * Layers should be testable individual. 12/0 * Separation of concerns. 11/0 * Layers are a logical artifact that does not imply distribution between layers. 11/0 * Low coupling between layers, high cohesion within them. 10/0 * Inbound external interface modules (eg web service handlers) should not contain business logic. 10/0 * User interface modules should contain no business logic. 10/0 * Business logic layers contain no user interface and don't refer to user interface modules. 8/0 * No circular references between layers. 8/0 * Layers may share infrastructural aspects (eg security) 7/0 * Layers should be shy about their internals. 8/0 * Lower layers should not depend on upper layers. 6/0 * Adaptability: be able to change. 2/0 * Layers should be substitutable. 2/0 * Layers should be independently maintainable and versioned. 2/0 * A layer should be wary of exposing lower layers to upper layers. 1/0 * Layers can have multiple adjacent upper layers. 2/1 * Every layer should have a secret. 3/2 * Layers should be agnostic of consumers (a layer shouldn't know who's on top of it.) 4/4 * Prefer layers to interact only with adjacent layers. 4/4 * Always wrap domain logic with a service layer. 4/5 * Layers should only interact with adjacent layers. 2/3 * The domain layer should not talk to external systems - the service layer should do that. 2/3 * Changing a lower level layer interface should not change upper layer interfaces. 2/5 * There are at least three main layer types: presentation, domain, and data source. 3/9 * Separate development teams by layer. 1/22 * Layers should have separate deployment units (eg separate jars or assemblies for each layer). 0/7 * Rethrow exceptions at layer boundaries. 0/15 * Distribute at layer boundaries 0/18 |
I wonder if Barbara Boxer will break down and cry, while standing on the Senate floor, as a protest against the outrageous cheating in the Washington Gubernatorial election?
| Democrat Christine Gregoire will be sworn in as Washington’s Governor today, possibly thanks to voters such as Mary Coffey, James Courneya and Rosalie Simpson. Why do we mention them in particular? Because, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently reported, they’re all dead–and have been since well before the first absentee ballots were even mailed out.
Revelations of the formerly living casting ballots in elections isn’t new to American politics, although it’s something most of us thought was a relic of the late Richard Daley’s Chicago. But this isn’t the only jaw-dropper to have come out of Washington’s gubernatorial race, which Ms. Gregoire claims to have won–on a third recount, by 129 votes–over Republican Dino Rossi. Now Mr. Rossi is contesting the result in state court, hoping a judge will find enough evidence of fraud or incompetence to order a revote, a prospect Ms. Gregoire calls “absolutely ludicrous.” Mr. Rossi certainly has a mountain of evidence on his side. In December, officials in King County, which includes Seattle, discovered 573 “erroneously rejected” absentee ballots, plus another 150 uncounted ones that showed up in a South Seattle warehouse. There were reports that hundreds of voters were registered in storage rental facilities and private mailboxes, that felons had voted, and that military ballots were sent out too late to be counted. Then we learned that several hundred provisional ballots had simply been fed into voting machines, making it impossible to authenticate their legality. Now it turns out the number of votes cast in King County exceeds the total number of voters by about 1,800... |
The always-useful News.com reports that the promise of enterprise acceptance of open-source technologies is helping to reshape the IT services market. A host of new companies are jumping on the OSS bandwagon, hoping to deliver design, development, and support services.| PHP/Java Interoperability - Bridges the gap between PHP and Java by providing a practical, efficient means of leveraging existing Java/J2EE applications. Rather than launching a separate Java Virtual Machine (JVM) instance for each Java call, Zend Platform uses a single JVM, requiring minimal server resources and making composite PHP/Java applications a reality. PHP/Java Interoperability makes interoperability between your applications practical. |
Gee, I wonder why Berger was, by his own admission, pilfering and destroying documents? If you want your blood pressure to stay within its normal systolic/diastolic range, please don't read the last line of the following article from the Post.
| The criminal probe into why former Bill Clinton aide Sandy Berger illegally sneaked top-secret documents out of the National Archives — possibly in his socks — has heated up and is now before a federal grand jury...
...Berger admits removing 40 to 50 top-secret documents from the archives, but claims it was an "honest mistake" made while he vetted documents for the 9/11 commission's probe into the Twin Towers attacks. Berger has also acknowledged that he destroyed some documents — he says by accident... ...The documents include multiple drafts of a review of the 2000 millennium threat said to conclude that only luck prevented a 2000 attack. That story conflicts with Berger's own testimony to the commission, in which he claimed that "we thwarted" millennium attacks by being vigilant — rather than by sheer luck, as the review reportedly suggests. The probe was touched off last spring when stunned archives staffers reported seeing Berger sneak classified documents out of a top-secret reading room in his pants and socks while vetting Clinton-era items for the commission. They then ran a sting operation in which they coded some documents and confirmed they were missing when Berger left. The documents were classified Code Word, the highest security classification, above Top Secret. The commission report makes clear that Berger had a habit of writing candid notes in the margin of memos, sometimes flatly rejecting plans for action. He nixed a plan to capture Osama bin Laden with one word: "No." |