Open Letter to the L.A.Times

By Arlene Peck

For years, I've been a working member of the press. There was a time when I looked with pride at my life's accomplishments. Of course, those were the days when such men as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Morrow were the role models. In recent years, I've become increasingly alarmed with the trend that I've seen among those who consider themselves 'reporters' as well as those talking heads on the television's nightly news programs We listen to dumbed-down, usually attractive post-puberty 'experts' who can only speak in sound bites before they're interrupted by their co-anchor in the box. They talk about the Middle-East, but I'll bet if you put a map in front of them and asked them where that is, they wouldn't have a clue.

The CEOs of these companies wonder why their newspapers are going out of business. It's simple: it's the same as with the airlines. Lack of service. When the newspapers began to invent the news instead of reporting the news, the public had nowhere to go but to the call in to talk stations where there was at least a chance of hearing the truth.

The worst so-called" journalism" I believe, is practiced by the LA Times. For years, I've held on to my subscription if only because I am a columnist and felt that reading the morning paper was the only way to keep up with what was happening in the world so I might give my opinion on it; which is what a columnist does. A recent edition of the Los Angeles Times was the last straw! That Sunday's front page was covered with a picture of Jerusalem entitled, "The Struggle For Jerusalem." I'm surprised that they didn't use their resident anti -Semite to write the biased column against the Jewish state, but nevertheless it was pretty awful.

I'm not surprised when I see that the sympathetic slant of their series is for "the plight of the poor Palestinians." After all, that's what they do best. Everything, in my opinion, that they write has always been against Israel. For example when they write that Arab families are being "cut off for good from the city of birth" because of the "Israel barrier" which Israel "insists" is aimed at keeping out suicide bombers from entering. The concept that suicide bombers are homicidal mass murderers is foreign to the Times.

Their dumbing-down the issue is working. Israel was forced to build a fence to keep out the murderers that constantly came into Israeli cities to bomb their schools, pizza restaurants, buses and neighborhood markets at will. Prior to the barricade, we were reading in that same biased paper about how many Jews were being killed on an almost daily basis. Of course, why should I be surprised?: This is the same paper that instead of writing about how the open borders from Mexico have turned California into Mexifornia and our cities into places resembling third world countries. This same paper was also writing multi-page series about how the poor illegal immigrant families are being separated and forced to live in poverty. I wish our government had had the foresight that Israel is now showing before our country got so out of hand.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

GWB has gone soft: "To his credit, President Bush is not the type to say raison d'ˆtre out loud, but he nonetheless gave one to his administration in the 2002 State of the Union address. Having summarized the intolerable threats that arise when terrorists, rogue regimes, and weapons of mass destruction intersect, and having christened Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and their like the "Axis of Evil," Bush made a pledge: "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." That resolution - forged in the flames of September 11 and tempered by the realization that there are far deadlier weapons than jetliners - has been the central mission of Bush's presidency... Five years on, how goes the fight? North Korea has tested an atomic bomb; Iran is steadily increasing the size of its uranium-enrichment operation; and the "international community," if not quite an assembly of eunuchs, is doing its best to look like one. We should not fall into the distinctly unconservative error of supposing that every problem has a solution. It may be that, in vowing to defang Iran and North Korea, Bush set an unattainable goal. But we are right to ask whether he is doing everything possible to achieve this goal: and the answer to that question must be no."

Taiwanese dignitary gives China the finger: "The former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui, despised by Beijing for asserting the self-ruled island's sovereignty, paid his respects at the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo yesterday despite China's objections. Supporters of Mr Lee, who was educated in Japan and led Taiwan from 1988 to 2000, shouted "Banzai" (long life) when he arrived at the Shinto shrine. Some waved Japanese flags, while others shouted, "Taiwan forever." Yasukuni is seen by many in Asia as a symbol of Japan's past militarism. It honours millions of Japanese war dead, among them soldiers from Taiwan and Korea who fought for Japan, their colonial ruler at the time - but also convicted war criminals. But Mr Lee, 84, said his pilgrimage to Yasukuni was intended to pay respects to his elder brother, who died fighting for the Japanese during World War II. "It is completely personal; please don't think of anything political or historical," he said, speaking in Japanese."

Why is profit a dirty word?: "At a recent press conference Sen. John Kerry was upset as he snarled, 'Oil companies in America are reporting record profits. Record profits.' When did profit become a dirty word? I wish the oil executives would face the media. They could say something like: 'What are you complaining about? What do you think we do with our profits? Buy fancy cars and homes? Well, we do, actually, but nearly all the money goes to looking for more oil and following environmental rules that you want us to follow. You should want us to make more profit. Anyway, we make less profit per gallon than your beloved government takes in taxes.'"

Oil is not well: "As spring evanesces into summer and Americans take to the road in their gas-guzzlers, leaving their homes with air conditioners on high, it is perhaps an auspicious time to consider our energy needs. The presidential candidates, hustling for their parties' presidential nominations, tell us that they are going to make us 'energy independent.' At the same time they also tell us that $3.00-a-gallon gasoline at the pump is highway robbery. Some announce that they are going to investigate the oil companies. This is political schizophrenia. We cannot approach energy independence and maintain cheap oil prices simultaneously. In fact, in the near future neither goal is possible."

Montreal man killed by his brother for being a bad Muslim: ""He is a believer in Satan," said Najib Bellari about his brother El-Medhi, just after he stabbed him to his death at a downtown restaurant where he was working on October 24, 2005. This is what two of his coworkers declared about the 36-year-old defendent yesterday, during the trial for the murder of his brother, in front of judge Marc David. According to their testimony, from Najib Bellari's point of view, his elder brother was a bad Muslim. The man, El-Mehdi, 38 years old, was the elder brother of Najib. "It's the brother who started to speak. I couldn't hear, they spoke too low in a polite manner, then I heard Najib shout Leave! Leave!," testified Mr. Ibnzakour. Mr. Ibnzakour continued pointing out that the defendant took a kitchen knife, about thirty centimeters, and pointed it towards his brother. Mohammad Ibnzakour described the defendant as a scholar of Islam. "He has a good understanding of Islam. I would regularly ask him questions about Islam. He would answer. He taught me," he remembered. But Najib was also a conservative practitioner, who qualified those who were not observant as "deviant.""

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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