Ilana Mercer is not taking kindly to her white-supremacist leanings being outed.
Mercer devotes her entire Sept. 2 WorldNetDaily column to attacking me, weirdly focusing on a couple of ConWebBlog posts instead of the much more comprehensive article I wrote on Mercer's views.
One of her complaints about said blog posts: that I "omitted quotation marks" in excerpting from her column. Actually, it's clear that the indented text is the part being directly quoted, though it's partially obscured in one post by the placement of a picture of Mercer. Still, the direct quote is preceded by a paragraph ending in a colon, which is also a common indicator that I'm directly quoting someone.
Mercer then decides to defend the indefensible in portraying militant South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche as an "innocent":
Krepel began his litany by accusing me, on June 12, 2011, of lionizing Eugene Terre'Blanche, the murdered leader of South Africa's Afrikaner Resistance Movement. This daughter of an anti-apartheid activist (me) also stands in the dock for "pining for the days of apartheid," and helping to hide Terre'Blanche's "group's history of violence and white supremacism."
In the "War on White South Africa," I had reported on the manner in which the controversial 69-year-old Mr. Terre'Blanche was bludgeoned to a pulp with pangas and pipes by two black farmhands. The old Afrikaner had not threatened anyone
But Terry Krepel bays for the blood of Terre'Blanche, who "reaped what he sowed." Or so writes Krepel of Terre'Blanche's "violent life" and "violent death."
What, then, of the many farming families who've met a similar fate?
As my book "Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa" documents, South Africa's farmland is a vast burial ground for thousands of farmers. How does Krepel dismiss their deaths? And why does Krepel conceal that the Terre'Blanche killing bore the telltale signs of a farm murder?
Do these victims deserve the fate that befell Terre'Blanche?
(See, Ilana? The above section is indented. That means I'm directly quoting you.)
Of course, I did not celebrate Terreblanche's death; I merely pointed out that Terreblanche lived a violent life -- he once beat a man into a coma, and he led an invasion of a South African black homeland that resulted in the deaths of 37 people -- and it's unsurprising that his death was violent as well.
Mercer, while calling herself the "daughter of an anti-apartheid activist," couldn't quite serve up a blanket condemnation of South Africa's apartheid regime:
People fuss about apartheid having denied the majority its democratic rights (the vote). Denying people political privileges does not necessarily amount to depriving them of natural justice.
As explained in the book, apartheid "did more than disenfranchise the majority; it denied the majority's economic freedoms. Citizenship rights, after all, are not natural rights. It is natural rights that the law ought to always and everywhere respect and uphold.
"In its police state methods – indefinite detention without trial, declarations of a state of emergency – apartheid destroyed the individual defenses of equality before the law, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus and various other very basic freedoms. That the apartheid regime contravened natural justice by depriving Africans of rights to property and due process is indisputable as it is despicable." (Page 231)
Disputes about democracy notwithstanding, there can be no disagreement over Krepel's crappy journalism.
(Again, indented text means direct quote.)
Any criticism she has of apartheid, however, is contradicted by her behavior, whether it be defending Terreblanche, her repeated suggestions that blacks are too stupid to run a country, and and her association with the website VDARE, which its editor describes as "white nationalist."
I've been engaging Mercer and others in the comment thread at thebottom of her article. As of this writing, she has yet to acknowledge that Terreblanche was a violent white supremacist, nor has she explained her other "white nationalist" associations.
Kennedy Derangement Syndrome Watch Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham has long been a Kennedy-hater, to the point of helping his MRC colleagues repeatedly misrepresent a statement by the writer of a profile of Ted Kennedy to portray it as praise when, in context, it was meant to be criticism.
So it's no surprise to see Graham whine in a Sept. 2 NewsBusters post, under the headline "Will the Network 'News' Ever Stop Kennedy Shoe-shining?" that "The network news divisions just never stop making deals to promote the Kennedy family and the omnipresent Kennedy mythology and mystique," further complaining that an upcoming Kennedy special on ABC "carries the usual assumption that every last American finds it endlessly fascinating to ponder the lives of these allegedly heroic, historic, and glamorous people."
This comes, by the way, from the same organization that does quite a bit of shoe-shining of the mythology and mystique of Ronald Reagan, devoting entire reports to burnishing his legacy.
This Exists: 'Newsmax Health Special Report: Cheney’s Heart Dream Explained' Topic: Newsmax
Yes, Newsmax really did devote an entire article to this:
Dick Cheney raised plenty of eyebrows with his recent revelation that he had a prolonged dream while undergoing heart surgery in which he was strolling in a beautiful Italian village and drinking coffee.
Cheney’s strange vision does not surprise renowned heart surgeon Dr. Chauncey Crandall, who has had many patients tell him about similar, incredibly realistic dreams they experienced during cardiac surgery.
“We don’t usually talk that much about it, but I’ve had many, many heart transplant patients that when they awakened, they went through story upon story of these vivid dreams,” said Dr. Crandall, chief of the cardiac transplant program at Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and author of Newmax’s “Heart Health Report.”
Oddball, interesting item, sure. But "Newsmax Health Special Report"? Please.
WND Finds Another Anti-Gay Book to Tout Topic: WorldNetDaily
Any organization that would tout a discredited, rabidly anti-gay book like "The Pink Swastika" -- and then pretend it hasn't been discredited -- is up for pretty much any anti-gay tripe.
And so, WorldNetDaily has latched onto something called "A Queer Thing Happened To America" by Michael L. Brown. WND promotes it in an Aug. 30 article:
There are plenty of pro-family, anti-"gay"-agenda books out there ... but this one is considered so radioactive that no publisher would touch it.
Why?
Mainly because Dr. Michael Brown tells the story of the pro-"gay" sea change in American culture almost entirely with reference to sources that no pro-"gay" activist could dispute.
He tells the story in their own words.
Well, obviously, a publisher did touch it, since it exists in book form; therefore, it isn't that radioactive.
The book seem to be all about gay-bashing and denying that those doing the gay-bashing are being hateful in doing so:
"Hate" means: "To hold to Judeo-Christian principles and values; to stand for biblical morality; and to take issue with homosexual practice."
The pro-alternate lifestyle tactic is to "make the person with whom you differ into a small-minded, mean-spirited bigot. The playing field becomes unequal, and your ideological opponent becomes a monster whose ideas are unworthy of serious discussion..."
"Things have shifted so dramatically – they have literally been turned upside down – that it now appears that no matter what you say and no matter how carefully and graciously you say it, if you dare to differ with the GLBT agenda, if you believe that it is immoral for a man to have sex with another man, if you do not support same-sex marruage, then you are an extremist, a bigot, a Nazi and a jihadist."
Brown brought one of the sleaziest gay-bashing smears to WND in the form of an Aug. 28 column that sought to liken gays to pedophiles:
Consider, for example, this statement from the late John Hopkins professor John Money: "Pedophilia and ephebophilia (referring to sexual attraction felt by an adult toward an adolescent) are no more a matter of voluntary choice than are left-handedness or color blindness. There is no known method of treatment by which they may be effectively and permanently altered, suppressed, or replaced. Punishment is useless. There is no satisfactory hypothesis, evolutionary or otherwise, as to why they exist in nature's overall scheme of things. One must simply accept the fact that they do exist, and then, with optimum enlightenment, formulate a policy of what to do about it."
Now, go back and reread that paragraph, substituting the word "homosexuality" for "pedophilia" and "ephebophilia." How interesting!
[...]
In point of fact, all the principle arguments commonly used to normalize homosexuality have been used to normalize pedophilia and pederasty, as I documented in painstaking (and painful) detail in "A Queer Thing Happened to America," where I also made clear that I was not equating homosexuality with pedophilia but was instead comparing the arguments used to normalize both.
Brown also regurgitates Judith Reisman's attacks on Alfred Kinsey, even though her work has been discredited as well.
Brown, like WND, is clearly interested much more in gay-bashing than facts.
Newsmax's Ruddy Can't Quite Give Up Middle East Dictators Topic: Newsmax
In his Aug. 30 column, Newsmax editor Christopher Ruddy's praise for moves to get rid of Middle Eastern dictators is weirdly tempered by their supposedly good side.
Ruddy writes that while Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was corrupt, he was also a U.S ally:
At the time of the Cairo demonstrations, I praised President Barack Obama's decision to move against the Mubarak regime and push for his ouster. Since then, the developments in Egypt are worrisome and should create anxiety about what's next for Libya, Syria, and other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia.
We should not forget that Mubarak was, in fact, a staunch ally of the U.S. over three decades. He kept alive the Camp David peace accords signed by his predecessor, Anwar Sadat. The peace with Israel was a cold one, but real nonetheless. He also kept Islamic radicalism at bay.
Still, Mubarak, his family, and cronies were corrupt and his regime fell under its own weight after a popular uprising, and perhaps with a helpful push from the Obama administration.
Now, Mubarak, on his death bed, is being tried in a Cairo court, lying in a cage. This image of Mubarak in a cage seems a terrible symbol of what happens to leaders that befriend the United States and champion their interests.
Similarly, while Ruddy condemns Syria's Assad regime for crushing protests, it's mitigated by keeping the peace with Israel:
With Egypt and Libya cooked, the Obama administration appears anxious to overthrow the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. But we need to ask again, Who replaces al-Assad?
Al-Assad is a dictator, but we should note several things. First, he and his father, have kept stability along the Syrian and Israeli border since war lasted erupted in 1973. It appears Syria has been anxious to modernize and even to be accepted by Western powers, but it has been rebuffed for several reasons.
Nevertheless, the al-Assad government’s recent efforts to crush civilian protesters should be universally condemned.
Al-Assad himself had been educated and trained as an ophthalmologist in England. The young al-Assad who took power in 2000 after the death of his father appeared to bring a whiff of fresh air into Syria.
Ruddy concludes: "The U.S. would be wise to go slow in demanding regime change, until we have a clear plan on who replaces the 'bad guys.'" Does Ruddy really think that support for the U.S. and their allies somehow make repressive dictators somehow less "bad"?
Corsi Is Even More Rabidly Birther Away From WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
It appears that the birther stuff Jerome Corsi pushes when he's away from WorldNetDaily is even more crazy than what he publishes there.
Media Matters found a video of a presentation Corsi gave to a tea party group in Arizona, in which he peddled his birther conspiracies. Corsi had this exchange with an audience member:
WOMAN: Does it concern you that he doesn't look a thing like Sr -- Obama Sr. -- but he does look a lot like Malcolm X?
[Laughter from audience. Man off camera says "that's a good one."]
CORSI: There's no proof that he is Malcolm X's son. He does not look like Barack Obama Sr. at all, and I've had a lot of questions as to whether he's the father. Want to know what I think? I've always thought the father was Indonesian. There's an Indonesian look alike very much like Barack Obama, and I think his characteristics are more Indonesian than they are -- and she might have met some Indonesian at [unintelligible] bar one night and that might be how it happened.
Media Matters also notes that Corsi's activism site, 1776 Nation, is planning a "Millionpatriotsmarch" in Washington Oct. 1 that at this writing is falling well short of that goal; only three people have said they're attending.
CNS' Jeffrey Still Gallup-Mining, Inventing Arcane Measurements to Attack Obama Topic: CNSNews.com
It seems Terry Jeffrey really doesn't have anything better to do as CNSNews.com editor-in-chief than mine Gallup polls for into he can use to attack President Obama and promote conservatives. He has cranked out a couple more Gallup-related articles this week:
Meanwhile, Jeffrey is continuing to find ever more arcane ways of manipulating economic numbers to make Obama look bad. Jeffrey asked in an Aug. 31 article: "Will Barack Obama become the first president in the post-World War II era during whose term real gross domestic product never grew in any quarter at an annual rate greater than 4 percent?" Of course, that's not a standard measurement of presidential economic competence; Jeffrey appears to have just made it up.
Because Jeffrey continues to obliterate the line between news and opinion at CNS, he writes in this "news" article:
For Obama to match that, the economy would need to be growing at 6.3 percent right now.
So, why isn't it?
Perhaps it is simply because people who in other periods would be investing their money, taking risks, building businesses, creating jobs and making themselves and their neighbors wealthier people are holding back out of the reasonable fear that under President Obama, there could be escalating government taxation and regulation, which would make their hard work and investment not worth the risk.
Looks like someone cares a lot more about scoring political points than reporting facts objectively.
UPDATE: Jeffrey pounded out yet another Gallup-related article:
I appeared on Episode 8 of Media Matters' Blogdome! podcast last week to talk about the right-wing freakout over the Canadian origin of the bus President Obama used on his recent Midwestern tour.
Molotov Mitchell Defends His Embarrassing Rap Video Topic: WorldNetDaily
Molotov Mitchell devotes an extra-long edition of his weekly WorldNetDaily video to reading, mocking and rebutting an essay by California-Berkeley professor Elizabeth Abel's critique of Mitchell and his crew's embarrassing anti-Obama rap "One Term President."
We can't find a copy of the critique ol' Molotov claims to be reading from on the Internets, but in Mitchell's version, Abel is criticizing the implicit racist and anti-Muslim tone of the video. That seems to be more in-depth analysis than is deserved for anything Molotov does, much less this silly video, but Mitchell gamely tries to make Abel look as bad as possible while defending the indefensible (he insists that "I'm sick of smelling like a mosque after Ramadan" "is a funny line, and you know it").
But then, Mitchell misspells "Berkeley" in the final on-screen text, so what does he know?
Horowitz Spews Obama Derangement At Newsmax Topic: Newsmax
Back in 2008, David Horowitz warned against succumbing to Obama Derangement Syndrome over Barack Obama's election as president, asserting that birthers are "embarrassing and destructive" and "essentially arguing that 64 million voters should be disenfranchised because of a contested technicality as to whether Obama was born on U.S. soil," which he said is "not conservatism; it is sore loserism and quite radical in its intent." But now, Horowitz is succumbing to a different strain of ODS.
In an Aug. 29 interview with Newsmax, Horowitz declared that Obama "basically despises America," adding:
Obama is a radical of his (Horowitz’s) generation and actually is a product of the worst part of the 1960s, he said. Obama was a close political ally of 1960s radical and later education professor Bill Ayers, who Horowitz knows very well given his own background as a former leader in the New Left.
“I don’t think Obama cares about this country and I think he is intent on bankrupting it and diminishing our military to the point where we are a second-rate power,” he said. “He is already the most dangerous president we’ve had in modern times.”
Horowitz charged that Obama has surrendered the Middle East to the Muslim Brotherhood.
“There will be a war there soon and he’s responsible and that’s because he basically despises America and wants us to lose in these global conflicts,” he said.
Horowitz also believes that American exceptionalism is in danger under Obama.
“We are a unique country,” he said. “The left under Obama is destroying that uniqueness. The Obamacare is not even a disguised plan to turn this into a socialist country and make everyone a dependent of the state. In history we are really unique where we have been a nation of individualists, distrustful of government, jealous of our liberty, and the Obamaites are systemically destroying our liberties.”
What was that Horowitz once said about sore loserism? Never mind.
WND Tries To Spin Taitz Lawsuit Dismissal As Conspiracy Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh does his best to turn a summary judgment against birther lawyer Orly Taitz into a conspiracy in an Aug. 30 WorldNetDaily article.
Not only does Unruh not explain what a summary judgment is -- a finding of facts by a judge where the outcome is obvious -- he attempts to paint Judge Royce Lamberth as obstructionist in Taitz's lawsuit attempt to release Barack Obama's Social Security files:
He concluded that there's no real interest in determining whether the Obama Social Security Number is genuine or fraudulent, and the need for secrecy for the president trumps all else.
"The SSA explained that the Privacy Act of 1974 ... protects the personal information of social security number holders," he wrote. "The SSA determined ... the plaintiff had identified no public interest that would be served by disclosure."
"Plaintiff makes no secret of her intention to use the redacted Form SS-5 to identify the holder of social security number xxxx-xxx-4425 – or, as plaintiff puts it, to confirm her suspicion that the president is fraudulently using that number," the judge wrote.
But Lamberth wrote in the case against Michael Astrue, Social Security commissioner, whether Obama is using a fake number isn't his concern.
"Even if plaintiff's allegations were true, an individual's status as a public official does not, as plaintiff contends, 'make exemption 6 irrelevant to him and his vital records.'"
Lamberth's ruling is much more clear, and less conspiratorial, than Unruh portrays it. Lamberth stated that Obama's status as a public official does not make him exempt from privacy regulations that govern release of Social Security documents and the "secrecy" every other American expects from Social Security:
Plaintiff’s allegation that the requested Form SS-5 is associated with a public official does not diminish the privacy interest at stake here. Even if plaintiff’s allegation were true, an individual’s status as a public official does not, as plaintiff contends, “make exemption 6 irrelevant to him and his vital records.” ... To be sure, a public official’s “privacy interests may be diminished in cases where information sought under FOIA would likely disclose ‘official misconduct.’” ... But plaintiff’s unsubstantiated allegations, without more, do not persuade the Court that therequested information “would likely disclose” official misconduct, id., and thus do not affect thecalculus here.
WND thus proves once again that it hates Obama so much that it cannot tell the honest truth about any birther-related issue.
NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Revolving Door Topic: CNSNews.com
Right-wing activists have used CNS as a way station to do "reporting" before moving on to more right-wing activism. Read more >>
Farah Can't Stop Misleading About 'Natural Born Citizen' Definition Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his Aug. 29 WorldNetDaily column:
Two candidates for the job are mentioned over and over again – two wonderful, charismatic public servants whose only problem is they are not constitutionally eligible to be president.
They are Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.
Don't get me wrong. I like both of these guys. If I were eligible to vote in Florida or Louisiana, I would vote to re-elect them. I would support either one for almost any job in America. But there is one job for which they are, by chance of birth, 100 percent, totally and inarguably ineligible to hold office – and that is the presidency of the United States.
Why?
Because both are sons of parents who were not U.S. citizens when they were born.
It's just that simple. To be a natural born citizen means to be the offspring of U.S. citizen parents at the time of birth.
Farah is misleading. As he surely knows, the Constitution contains no definition of "natural born citizen," and and no U.S. court has explicitly defined the term as it applies to presidential eligibility.
Thus, Farah's claim that Rubio and Jindal -- and, by extension, Barack Obama -- are "totally and inarguably ineligible" because they are "sons of parents who were not U.S. citizens when they were born" is merely an opinion expressed by a non-lawyer, not the undisputed fact he portrays it as.
Which means WND is misinforming its readers again. Anyone surprised?
WND Cites Philandering Adulterer To Attack Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Aug. 27 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh cites "a former FBI special agent in Washington" to claim that "Infiltration of the federal government by members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood is worse than some have warned recently." But Unruh won't tell you that the agent's personal life has discredited him and cost him his job at the FBI.
Unruh writes:
Former FBI special agent John Guandolo says Obama's ties to agents for the Muslim Brotherhood are even more extensive.
"The level of penetration in the last three administrations is deep," he said. "For this president, it even goes back to his campaign with Muslim Brotherhood folks working with him then."
Equally alarming, the Brotherhood also has placed several operatives and sympathizers within key positions in Homeland Security and the U.S. military, notes Guandolo, a former Marine Corps officer.
The veteran federal agent says such infiltration threatens national security, because the U.S. leadership of the international Brotherhood has outlined a secret plan to "destroy" the U.S. and other Western governments "from within."
Note Unruh's credibility-building descriptors for Guandolo -- "former Marine Corps officer," "veteran federal agent." But Unruh doesn't mention why Guandolo is no longer with the FBI.
Talking Points Memo reported that the married Guandolo resigned from the FBI after superiors found a list he wrote of his sexual conquests with agents and a confidential source. Notably, Guandolo had an affair with a key witness in the corruption case of former Louisiana congressman William Jefferson while simultaneously soliciting a $75,000 donation from her to an anti-terrorism group. Even Guandolo admitted that he may have jeopardized the Jefferson investigation with his sexual behavior.
Given WND's long-documented hatred of deviant sexual behavior, why is it quoting a philandering adulterer as a trusted source?
The rest of Unruh's article is problematic as well. It carries the subheadline "FBI: Penetration by radical agents worse than thought," though Guandolo is no longer an FBI agent.
Unruh also repeats attacks by so-called "Muslim reformer" Tarek Fatah on Obama administration members Dalia Mogahed and Rashad Hussain. Unruh uncritically passed along Fatah's claim that Mogahed "writes (Obama's) speeches"; in fact, she's a researcher who was consulted on Obama's 2009 Cairo speech.
Unruh further wrote of Mogahed:
Also helping with the president's speeches and policies toward Muslims is Mogahed, whose pro-Islamist statements have been posted on the Muslim Brotherhood's website, ikhwanweb.com.
Obama appointed the hijab-wearing Mogahed to the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. On a British television program, Islam Channel, Mogahed defended Shariah law, the barbaric Islamic legal code that treats women as second-class citizens.
Muslim women actually "associate gender justice or justice for women with Shariah compliance," she argued. "It is 'only a small fraction' that associate Shariah with 'oppression of women.'"
She added that Muslims should work to integrate Islamic law into public law.
In fact, in the interview Unruh is presumably referring to, Mogahed did not defend Sharia law; Mogahed said that she was "sure there are people out there" who believe that "the United States and Britain and other countries should be open to, the concept of, you know, integrating Sharia into laws in Muslim-majority societies," and she did not discuss what "a lot of Americans ... think" about Sharia law.
Unruh also claimed that Hussain (whom Unruh quotes Farah misidentifying as "Hassain") "has raised suspicions" because he once "defended Brotherhood leaders like Sami al-Arian." Unruh didn't mention that Hussain later stated that his statements about al-Arian were " ill-conceived or not well-formulated."
Unruh also portrays Hussain as a "devout Muslim" who "has told Afghans the antidote to Islamic violence 'is Islam itself,'" without mentioning Hussain's long record in opposing terrorism.
CNS Falsely Attacks Obama Nominee Over VAT Topic: CNSNews.com
Fred Lucas writes in an Aug. 29 CNSNews.com article:
President Barack Obama’s nominee to chair the President’s Council of Economic Advisors has supported a European-style consumption tax that taxes every stage of production for a good or service, a policy generally called a Value Added Tax, or VAT.
Alan Krueger, a Princeton University economist, called for the Value Added Tax in a commentary for the New York Times in January 2009. The White House, however, has said that President Obama would not consider such a tax.
“Why not pass a 5 percent consumption tax to take effect two years from now? There are many different ways to implement a consumption tax, but for simplicity think about a national sales tax,” Krueger wrote in the Times piece published on Jan. 12, 2009, shortly before Obama took office.
The consumption tax differs from a “Fair Tax” proposal or national sales tax proposal that has been considered in recent years by U.S. politicians who want to replace the income tax. The VAT would be a levy that adds to the current tax structure.
In fact, as Media Matters details, Kruger didn't express support for a VAT in that Times article; he specifically stated that "I pose it only as a suggestion for serious discussion; I'm not sure it is the best way to go."
Lucas further messes up by stating that "The VAT would be a levy that adds to the current tax structure." Actually, Krueger stated that over time, "income taxes or corporate taxes could be reduced and the revenue replaced by the consumption tax."
