Michelle Malkin’s Blog banned from the UAE

I think someone has to remind the administration that, simply because we buy and sell from a country does not allow us to assume they are our friends. The UAE is a monarchy. We do not expect individual liberty and thought from such a form of government, and we can only trust them so far.

BANNED IN THE UAE

By Michelle Malkin   ·   February 20, 2006 09:44 AM
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By Michelle Malkin   ·   February 20, 2006 09:44 AM

A number of readers overseas have e-mailed that my blog is now inaccessible in the United Arab Emirates. B. writes: 

All internet users in the UAE have to use the government owned ISP, Etisalat. All web traffic is routed throught their servers where it is filtered, and some pages banned. Most of the banned pages are either porn, gambling or Israeli sites, but you have made the cut. Congrats.

 

One of Tim Worstall’s Dubai-based commenters sends a similar report.

Syrian Hit List: Journalists Targeted for Death; Not a Peep from U.S. Media

Debbie forgot to mention that the journalists in question are Lebanese journalists. As such, one can understand the lack of concern of American journalist for these foreign journalists who actually put their life in danger to report the truth; the Lebanese journalists certainly cannot be as important as an American journalist who has to face the White House Press Secretary daily.

By Debbie Schlussel

Our favorite source of Lebanese news, Ya Libnan, reports that Syria has a hit list of journalists. Syria, on the State Dept. Terrorist List, has a target: Freedom of the Press. The country is targeting journalists critical of Syria.

You’d think journalists all over America would be outraged and would cover this extensively, as they have the less worthy stories of leftist, pan-Islamist journalist Jill Caroll’s kidnapping or ABC Anchor Bob Woodruff’s injuries in Iraq. But you would be wrong. We had to go to a Lebanese site to find out about it.

Not a peep out of the Mainstream Media on Syria’s mafia-style plan to eliminate fellow journalists (with apologies to La Cosa Nostra for the comparison). Yet, whenever Syria raises the spectre of forcing Israel to “give back” (read: give UP, not back) the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms to Syria, the U.S. media is all over it, like Jake Gyllenhaal to Heath Ledger in “Brokeback Mountain.”

Saddam Translator: ABC Reinterpreted Tapes

 From Newsmax. I must say, I am both surprised and unsurprised. In fact, i am more surprised that this does surprise me; I guess that I still have not achieved full cynicism, yet, which is pretty good for someone my age.

The FBI translator who supplied the 12 hours of Saddam Hussein audiotapes excerpted by ABC’s “Nightline” Wednesday night now says the network discarded his translations and went with a less threatening version of the Iraqi dictator’s comments.

“What you heard on ABC News was their translation,” former U.N. weapons inspector Bill Tierney told ABC Radio’s Sean Hannity on Thursday.

“They came up with something different on a key element regarding terrorism in the United States,” Tierney insisted.

In the “Nightline” version of the 1996 recording, Saddam predicts that Washington, D.C., would be hit by terrorists. But he adds that Iraq would have nothing to do with the attack.

Tierney says, however, that what Saddam actually said was much more sinister. “He was discussing his intent to use chemical weapons against the United States and use proxies so it could not be traced back to Iraq,” he told Hannity.

In a passage not used by “Nightline,” Tierney says Saddam declares: “Terrorism is coming. … In the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction. What if we consider this technique, with smuggling?”

Tierney’s full translations are set for release this weekend by The Intelligence Group in Washington, D.C.

BBC Caves to Islamic Pressure

The UK Sun, reports that the BBC has caved in and is junking an already filmed episode of a hit series for fear of offending Muslims – because an al Qaeda terrorist is shot dead:

a £1million episode of hit drama Spooks in which an al-Qaeda terrorist is shot dead — in case it upsets Muslims. Filming the assassination plot for the MI5 drama took four weeks.

But actor Shaun Dingwall who plays a renegade Christian gunman, fears he could become a target for fundamentalists if the scene is aired.

In the episode, due to be shown later this year, a religious nut played by Shaun, 35, guns down the fanatic on the steps of London’s High Court.

But production sources admitted it could be canned. One said: “In the climate of Muslim fury over cartoons, Shaun isn’t sure about it all.”

Notice that nobody at the BBC seems to be the least concerned about offending Christians by portraying a fanatical, crazed, murderous Christian.

The Silence Was Deafening

On February 10, 2006, the Iraqi election commission verified the results of the Iraq’s December election. Notably, the final results did not change from last month’s tentative results, considering the frequent predictions of voter fraud and immiment collapse of the tentative truce between the Iraqi factions.

 Most notable was the absence of the Western Press which, most certainly, would have been present if there had been widespread reports of voter fraud, reports of terrorists being ‘demeaned’ in Iraqi prisons, or a sudden return of the clamor for the restoration of the previous dictator. Certainly, success is not news, while disaster is but, still, one would think that an important event such as the gaining of a new ally in the war on terror would have been news of major proportions. It wasn’t.

The Iraqi people have shown the world that they place their collective security above secular politics, that they want stability and a place in the world. That there will be problems in the future is almost a given, and the experiment could fail, but, to date, it has been on course, and deserves encouragement from all concerned. To see a people, like this, striving for freedom puts them in the hearts of all those who truely value freedom. 

 One again, the left in the United States and Europe show themselves to be on the wrong side of history. They do not see, or do not want to see, the seeds of victory implanted in this news story. Instead, they prefer to focus on images of doom, and quail hunting. We deserve better than this.

David Gregory Unplugged

From Hugh Hewitt:

T]he debate playing out in the blogosphere, cable airwaves and on talk radio pits the Vice President against an allegedly left-wing, overly cynical, prissy White House press corps in a tizzy because it wasn’t the first to know and angry because it hates the President and Vice President anyway.

That’s exactly right. And it comes from NBC’s David Gregory.
Gregory goes on to announce that this description is “nonsense,” but of course Gregory has not allowed himself to be questioned outside of his network. He doesn’t return calls and he won’t make himself available for questions about what appears to be his deep seated hostility for the vice president and the Administration.

A professional would have calmly assenbled the facts and asked specific questions from McClellan. Gregory’s overheated demands to know the president’s “feelings” about the incident revealed a great deal about Gregory’s bias and his talents. Soxblog suggested in his 2/15 post that those who know Gregory say he is wrongly judged on his meltdown this week, but unless and until Gregory is as willing to answer questions as he is to pose them, we can assume that what we saw is what he is.
Gregory is now caught up in controversy and he’s both stonewalling and trying to change the subject.

 

Liberals Upset at Cheney’s Fox Interview

Senator Chuck Schumer is upset that Cheney decided to go to FOX to explain his hunting incident:

“Doing an exclusive interview with any single news organization is not enough. The Vice President hasn’t had a press conference in three and a half years and he ought to have one to clear the air not only on this issue, but more importantly on the many other issues that have been shrouded by a veil of secrecy. The press corps and American people deserve answers, not avoidance from this Administration.”

Real Clear Politics suggests that he went to the network, because they have more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined … times two or three. I disagree, completely. Cheney went to Britt Hume for the interview, not necessarily Fox, but Brit Hume is on Fox because Fox is a class act. This is the ONLY venue where Cheney could get a respectful hearing on the matter. Considering the actions of the press in the past few days, he was quite correct on this.

As I said before, I might like Cheney, personally, but care little for him, politically. His actions demonstrated an obvious disdain for the White House Press corps, and I am sure he expected the reaction he got. He obviously cared far more for the fact that he might have killed his friend than what the press thought about him, and I respect him for that.

 

 

Spoiled Brat Media

Thomas Sowell expresses his disdain and disgust for the press.  These guys are typical of the type of graduates we are getting from our Universities; they all expect to be instant Edward R. Murrows, without having paid their dues. White House Press conferences have been reduced to shouting matches and ‘gotcha’ questions….and the newspapers cannot figure out why their subscriptions are in a nose dive. I have read our local newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune (called “the Red Star” by many here) has all sorts of reasons, including demographics and rising costs, but people are simply disgusted with the press.

The first revolt of the American colonists against their British rulers was immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson as “the shot heard round the world.” Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident has now become the shot heard round the Beltway. 

 The accidental shooting of Harry Whittington, while he was on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney, has nothing to do with government policy or the Vice President’s official duties but the mainstream media have gone ballistic over it nevertheless.

 They are also angry that the news was not given to them more quickly, which prevented it from becoming the feeding frenzy of the Sunday television talk shows. Whether this delay was deliberate or otherwise, it is being called a “cover-up” in the media, as if there were some crime to cover up.

 NBC White House correspondent David Gregory was shouting at White House press secretary Scott McClellan, as if Mr. Gregory’s Constitutional rights were being violated. It was a classic example of a special interest demanding special privileges — as if they were rights.

 There is nothing in the Constitution or the laws that says that the media have a right to be in the White House at all, much less to have press conferences.

 This has become a customary courtesy over the years, but courtesy is a two-way street, except for those in the media who act like spoiled brats, as if they have some inherent right to whatever serves their institutional, career, or ideological purposes.

 The media love to wrap themselves in the mantle of “the public’s right to know” but there is no such dedication to that right when it goes against the journalists’ own prejudices.

NY Times Publishes Hit Piece on the International Republican Institute but won’t let them Respond

Most Americans haven’t heard of the International Republican Institute, but for over 20 years IRI has helped advance democracy in the world. IRI has monitored elections in over 160 nations with little or no history in democracy — and supports democracy efforts in many others. But the New York Times published a lengthy piece, “Mixed U.S. Signals Helped Tilt Haiti Toward Chaos,” two weeks ago highly critical of IRI’s role in Haiti, accusing IRI of undercutting official U.S. policy there and worse. IRI’s president, Lorne Craner, penned a response to the Times‘ accusations but they have refused to print it without “substantive edits.” As a result, Craner responds to the New York Times in today’s Washington Times. Also, a point by point rebuttal may be found on the IRI web site.

ABC News to Air Captured Saddam Tapes

We are finally beginning to see the fruits of the efforts to translate the millions of pages of documents, and hours and hours of tape recordings captured from the Saddam regime after the war. This has obviously been a long process, as reliable translaters were very hard to find. ABC News  says it will be releasing 12 hours of these tapes this weekend.

No one really knows what will be revealed when all the tapes are translated, and they must be viewed carefully. Stephen Hayes, the author of the book  ”The Connection: How al Qaueda’s Collaboration with Sadam Hussein Has Endangered America“, and editor of the Weekly Standard puts this into context: 

So let’s take a step back and put this in context. Estimates from people involved in the document exploitation project tell us the U.S. government has in its possession some 2 million “exploitable items.” Of that number, less than 3 percent–somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 items–have been fully exploited. The information that will be made public by the end of this week–28 captured al Qaeda documents and 12 hours of audiotape from Iraq–will provide a glimpse of a fraction of a fraction of the total collection.

A hypothetical: If the tapes are in fact authentic, imagine that they include audio of Saddam Hussein talking about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Does this mean that Iraq actually had these weapons Saddam thought he had? Not necessarily. One of the leading theories about Iraqi WMD holds that Iraqi scientists misled Saddam about his WMD capability. These scientists, according to this theory, lied to their superiors for fear of reprisals if their lack of progress on WMD development was discovered. That Saddam believed he had these proscribed weapons is not proof that he did.

Similarly, on the al Qaeda documents: The scholars from West Point examine the relationship in the 1980s between the jihadists from the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the former Iraqi regime. Saddam supported and trained some of these jihadists in his effort to destabilize the Syrian regime. On the one hand, this data suggests that whatever their religious and ideological differences, the jihadists and the allegedly secular Iraqi regime were not opposed to cooperating against a common enemy. This view is supported by an al Qaeda document that reports, among other things, that Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy Ayman al Zawahiri sought assistance from both the Iraqi regime and Iran. On the other hand, another al Qaeda document sets forth “lessons learned” from the experience of the past jihadist-Iraq collaboration and concludes that such relationships can be counterproductive and are to be avoided in the future. It’s all very interesting and it will be helpful to learn more.

What these documents demonstrate more than anything else is that the U.S. intelligence community and the Bush administration should make document exploitation a high priority.