Students in classrooms were taking exams. Others were registering for classes for the coming semester. Still others enjoyed snacks or meals, alone or in the company of friends. Just an ordinary day on an ordinary university campus. But something wasn't ordinary. On this day, there was a monster about.

 

 It is a given that television networks put profits above pride, but ABC has reached a new low in its sponsorship of Rosie O'Donnell. The daytime talk show host recently joined the world of "truthers" - people who believe that 9/11 was an attack staged by America's own government.

On ABC's popular The View, O'Donnell lent her expert opinion that it is impossible for the World Trade Center's building 7 "to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved." To say otherwise, she added, "is beyond ignorant." (When she isn't offering instruction on the fine points of structural engineering, O'Donnell entertains by hanging upside-down from a rope.)


If this all sounds like the howling of a rabid dog, O'Donnell isn't alone in the kennel. A recent poll from the Scripps Research Center found that more than a third of Americans believe that 9/11 was an "inside job." Those who actively promote the idea, though, are more than mere laughable loons. They bear resemblance to another particularly virulent conspiracy nut - the Holocaust denier.


It may be coincidence that O'Donnell's 9/11 denial has manifested itself in such close proximity to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "Holocaust conference" of last December, but she sounds a lot like many of its participants.

Both profess interest in the pursuit of truth.

Mahammad Ali Ramini, advisor to Ahmadinejad, announced that he would chair a committee to find "the truth on the genocide of Jews." O'Donnell says that she is merely "trying, as always, for a rigorous truth."

And both profess total objectivity in that pursuit.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki made an offer to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to send "independent investigators" to visit former Nazi death camps - people "who are not sympathetic" to the Nazis nor "to the Zionist regime."

"I have begun doing exactly what this country, at its best, allows for me to do," wrote O'Donnell on her blog. "Inquire. Investigate."

Yet, for both, "truth" precedes "investigation."

The Holocaust, Ahmadinejad said at the start of the "conference," is a "myth."

The terrorist attack of 9/11, said O'Donnell at the mere outset of her "inquiry," "is impossible."

Both make shameless use of fabricated math and science.

"The number of victims at the Auschwitz concentration camp," said Australian Holocaust denier Frederick Toben, "could be about 2,007. The railroad to the camp did not have enough capacity to transfer large numbers of Jews."

"I do believe that it's the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel," said O'Donnell. "It is physically impossible."

And both cite "studies" or "experts" without actually citing any studies or experts.

"All the studies and research carried out so far have proven that there is no reason to believe that the Holocaust ever occurred," said former Iranian interior minister and Hizbullah co-founder Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour.

"Look at the films, get a physics expert in here from Yale, from Harvard, pick the school," said O'Donnell.

The worlds of deniers O'Donnell and Ahmadinejad intersected more overtly when the former defended the latter's hostage-taking of 15 British sailors and Royal Marines who, O'Donnell ruled by fiat, "went into Iranian waters and they were seized by the Iranians." O'Donnell added her expression of sympathy for mass murderers the world over: "Don't fear the terrorists. They're mothers and fathers."

Only one with the most sinister sentiments toward the country that gave her so much for so little could express such warm regard for its most determined enemies. And therein lies the real similarity between Holocaust deniers and 9/11 deniers. The "theories" of both, which could otherwise only be explained as serious psychopathology, are but expressions of venom and bile. The former hate Jews (and, often, the United States); the latter hate the United States (and, often, Jews).

White House press secretary Tony Snow's description of Ahmadinejad's conference as "a platform of hatred," then, applies as well to the current incarnation of The View.

Which leads to this question: If ratings were strong, would ABC allow, say, David Duke to host a show on which he preached his doubts about the Holocaust and his fondness for Nazis? Stay tuned and the answer will soon be revealed - by whether and how fast the network pulls the plug on O'Donnell.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7050

 

By Steven Zak

You've read all the strategies for countering Kim Jong Il: Everybody ends diplomatic relations (fat chance); cut off his fuel (tell that to Hugo); kick him out of the UN (is that a bad thing?) ... 

Here's a more realistic idea. Dictators thrive on ego -- you know, the huge posters, looming statues, everything designed to create the illusion that some schmuck is larger than life.

So counter his own propoganda with some of our own: Drop 100,000 DVD players into North Korea, each loaded with a copy of "Team America: World Police," which shows Kim as the whiny-voiced cockroach that he is. Equip each player with a battery so it can be used by anyone without electricity (like the 200,000 people in concentration camps who probably don't get to see many movies).

The Team will provide the inspiration the North Korean people need, and it won't be long before they rise up and say: "Take that, terrorist!"

Posted by Steven Zak

Sure, Mark Foley's fall conjured lies from the left, but with plenty of support from the right. Everyone knows, for instance, of the dishonest campaign ad by Democratic congressional candidate Patty Wetterling, in which she describes Foley's behavior as "predatory" and Foley as a man "who used the internet to molest children." But why shouldn't a lefty be hysterical, even if inaccurate, when the moralistic right is behaving much the same way?

Michelle Malkin concurred that Foley's behavior was "predatory" and "lecherous." Tony Blankley called for Denny Hastert's resignation in the service of "traditional moral values." And numerous conservatives have described Foley's interest in male pages (or is it just his interest in males?) as "creepy," "disgusting," "sickening" and "repulsive."

Moralists on high horses -- all you've accomplished was to feed the Democrats' fire.

Most of the to do, of course, was over an IM (Instant Message) exchange between Congressman Foley and a male page that ABC news released on Tuesday, which IM consisted largely of flirtation and overt sex talk. We now know that the page was 18 -- a legal adult anywhere -- not 16 as ABC News had reported (though the age of consent in D.C. is 16 anyway). And that Foley's advances were welcomed and reciprocated by the page.

But worse: reports now indicate that the page was leading Foley on in order to have a laugh, with fellow pages, at Foley's expense. Well, they got their laugh -- and lost Foley his job, ruined his reputation and destroyed his life and legacy.

So who's the real "predator" here and who's the victim? What do you say now -- Michelle? Tony?

But doesn't the whole IM exchange still feel "creepy?"

Well, it should feel creepy to invade someone's privacy -- to peer in the window at flirtation between two consenting adults. And admit it -- you find flirtation between two men far creepier than you would if the chat were between a middle-aged man and a willing 18-year-old female high school hottie. Just a tad homophobic are you, you upstanding upholders of "traditional moral values"? 

To those peeping-Tom moralists hellbent on condemning not only Foley but Hastert and others, how do you feel now that the truth has come out? Now that you know you've been had? (Some of you still feel morally superior: Noel Sheppard in the American Thinker, for instance, reiterates that all should be "indeed repulsed" by Foley's behavior.)

Even before the facts were known, too bad so few of you had any sense of proportion. You might have reflected that sex chat with a young man clearly old enough to take care of himself -- even if he hadn't been 18 -- was hardly equal in import to, say, a drunken and debauched senator leaving a young girl trapped upside down in his Oldsmobile at the bottom of the Poucha Pond. 

But now the damage from your high-toned moralizing is done. Creepy.

Posted by Steven Zak

 "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Fuels Terror," read the front-page headline in Sunday's Los Angeles Times. The war in Iraq "has made global terrorism worse," reports the Times, "according to a sweeping assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies" in a classified government document.

And all this, says the Times, is according to "a government official familiar with the document."

In other words, the Times hasn't read it, doesn't know what it says, and doesn't have a clue whether the anonymous "official" has given an accurate or even unbiased read. But that doesn't stop them from making this the top headline story.

Agenda journalism? Naah.  

In the same Sunday edition, on the editorial page, the Times complained about the compromise reached between the McCain gang and the White House over what the Times calls the administration's "proposal to redefine Common Article 3" of the Geneva Convention concerning "cruel" and "degrading" treatment of terrorists. (Question: How can a terrorist be even more degraded as a human being than he has already chosen to be?) The Times describes the compromise as "tortured" and urges Democrats to "resist a stampede." In other words, the Times seems to be characterizing said compromise as a Bush steamroll job over McCain.

Yet two days earlier, the Times ran this front-page headline: "Bush Bows to Senators on Detainees" and described this as "a major concession to" the McCain gang. That headline must have been satisfying for them to run, since it says, essentially, "McCain wins, Bush forced to admit he's wrong."

Trouble is, as the Sunday editorial makes clear, the Times doesn't believe that assessment to be accurate.

But if only that headline and characterization were accurate, it would be bad for Bush. So even though they themselves didn't believe it, they ran it. 

Posted by Steven Zak
 
I just can't help but wonder what Popeye would have done if the E. Coli spinach scare had occurred in his day. He'd have gotten his butt kicked up and down the street, that's what.

I know, I know, he always ate canned spinach, not bagged. And come to think of it, even before eating it, he had the strength to burst the can open with one hand, so he was a formidable opponent even without it (though he no doubt got that way by eating spinach on a regular basis, thereby maintaining his strength).

So I'm forced to re-evaluate: If the spinach scare had occurred in Popeye's day, somebody would have picked a fight with him, expecting him to be weak, and he would have kicked that hapless person's butt.

The lesson here seems obvious: Maintain your strength. And when you're attacked, kick your attacker's butt like there was no tomorrow.

Posted by Steven Zak

I challenged Hugh Hewitt and others for their stance re Mel Gibson ...

http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/19240/Gibson_Syndrome_--_%3Ci%3EFriends_of_Israel_Go_Wobbly%3C%2Fi%3E.html  

... and for trivializing or otherwise deflecting criticism of Gibson after his rant re Jews. I recognized Hewitt and the others (Prager and Medved) as the champions of Israel and of Jews that they most certainly are, but argued that they were misguided in feeling at all defensive on behalf of Gibson, if for no other reason than that, far from the conservative some take him to be, Gibson is an avowed admirer of Michael Moore and shares the latter's anti-war view.

Yesterday I read a report at NewsMax, citing the Hollywood Reporter, that Gibson, in an interview re his forthcoming film about Mayan civilization on the brink of collapse, compared said civilization to America. "The precursors to a civilization that's going under are the same, time and time again," said Gibson. "What's human sacrifice if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?"

What does Gibson have to do or say to get conservatives to back away from him completely and without reservation -- appear with Cindy Sheehan chanting "Bush lied, people died, and the Jews -- who are behind all wars everywhere -- made him do it"?