Al Jazeera was eager to promote the debunked lie that Rick Santorum compared same-sex marriage to bestiality:

He has argued against same-sex marriage arguing that could open the door to other unacceptable relations, equating homosexuality with bestiality or pedophilia.

Simply reading or listening to Santorum’s quote would prevent anyone from making so grand a logical leap:

“Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality–”

Now, does it sound to YOU as though Santorum was categorizing homosexual-male-sex as “man on dog”? Negative. To anyone with basic reading comprehension skills, it is clear Santorum was actually cautioning that he is not equating gay marriage with other prohibited-marriage categories such as “man on child” (individuals marrying minors) and “man on dog” (individuals marrying animals).  Regardless of one’s views on gay marriage, or Santorum’s own, he did not, in any way, slam male-on-male sex as “man on dog.”  It seems those who actively read that visual picture into Santorum’s comments need to get their heads out of the gutter and, ironically, stop revealing their own homophobia in even making the connection.

At that point, Santorum was interrupted by the interviewer who apparently joked that he/she was not expecting to hear a U.S. Senator use the term “man on dog.”

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From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

In a major blow to Al-Jazeera’s drive for acceptance and respectability in the West, the government of Israel says that one of the channel’s correspondents has confessed to acting as an agent of the terrorist group Hamas. The Israeli government also claims to have uncovered a network of Hamas operatives using Al-Jazeera as a cover.

The U.S. State Department designates Hamas as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” and states that it “was formed in late 1987 as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Hamas does not recognize Israel and its founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. The group considers Israeli settlers and civilians legitimate military targets.

Samer Allawi, a Palestinian who ran Al-Jazeera’s Kabul, Afghanistan, bureau, was released, sentenced to time served, and agreed to pay a $1,400 fine. He was arrested on August 9 and held in an Israeli prison. Various press freedom groups had clamored for his release.

Some commentators are saying that the treatment of the Al-Jazeera correspondent is evidence of a tougher policy by Israel toward Qatar, an Arab dictatorship which completely finances Al-Jazeera and selects its news and editorial personnel. A classified report prepared by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and leaked to the Israeli media in August outlined Qatar’s more radical stance in the Arab and Muslim world and noted evidence of more frequent Hamas visits to Doha, the capital, and funding by Qatar of Hamas.

A story on the Israelnationalnews.com website about the report also indicated that Israel may start restricting the activities of Al-Jazeera correspondents inside Israel. It said, “Qatar is also the home of Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera, which the Foreign Ministry considers extremely anti-Israel. As a result, the Ministry has worked in recent months to prevent reporters from the network from operating in Israel, and has stopped giving them visas. Currently, the only way for an Al-Jazeera reporter to enter Israel is using a passport from a country that has full diplomatic relations with Jerusalem, but the Ministry is seeking ways to keep these individuals out of Israel as well.”

Although the emir of Qatar pours hundreds of millions of dollars into the channel, making it effectively a propaganda machine for the regime, he prohibits a free press and free elections at home. Bloggers critical of the royal family are simply taken away and tortured, while Al-Jazeera turns a blind eye and deaf ear to their fate.

But because the country hosts a U.S. military base, it enjoys a moderate and even pro-Western reputation. Qatar uses expensive public relations and lobbying firms like Barbour, Griffith & Rogers (BGR) and Brown Lloyd James.

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In the ignoble quisling tradition of “Hanoi Jane,” Max Blumenthal recently traveled to Lebanon to trash the American media, denounce Israel, and reinforce conspiracy theories about the power of the “Israel lobby” in U.S. politics.

Blumenthal, who is linked to Media Matters for America, told the host of “Transit” on Lebanon’s Future TV that the American media censors criticism of Israel: “There’s no mainstream American television program, cable program, that would allow me to speak as freely as I’m speaking to you right now about some of the issues that I talk about.”

He added, gratefully, that he’s reached a global audience through Al Jazeera, which “everyone watches in the United States.”

Shortly thereafter, Blumenthal slammed Israel: “[D]uring the Second Lebanon War, when Israel was attacking this country, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister at the time, went to Jewish groups in the United States and said: ‘Every Jew in the world is fighting this war.’” (My emphasis.)

Blumenthal did not mention that the war was started by the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, which targeted Israeli civilians, Jewish and Arab, throughout the war.

There are two reasons for Blumenthal’s bias and cowardice: first, his own far-left agenda; and second, the fact that Hezbollah dominates Lebanese politics and media today. Blumenthal had the “courage” to attack the American media and American democracy on Arab television, but didn’t offer the slightest criticism of Hezbollah or terrorism in general on television in a society where he knew he could suffer real consequences. (Hezbollah members were recently indicted by the UN in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, who founded Future TV.)

The rest of the interview is filled with lies, demonstrating Blumenthal’s willful ignorance of the peace process and his enthusiasm for tales of “extremely radical” Jewish political donors who he claimed are “sheep for the directors of AIPAC” in U.S. congressional elections.

Blumenthal told viewers in a country whose politics are overshadowed by a tottering Syrian dictatorship, a murderous terrorist mafia and a meddling Iranian theocracy that American democracy is a sham in which the “Israel lobby” writes legislation that the Congress hurries to pass on its behalf. Along the way, he slandered Christians who support Israel and referred to George W. Bush as “the most white president” in American history.

Blumenthal also proudly proclaimed that he will never work as a “staffer” in the American media. Perhaps he could join Cynthia McKinney as a contributor to Iranian state TV?

From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

A journalist for Al-Jazeera has been arrested on suspicion of being an agent of the Palestinian terror group Hamas. The journalist, Samer Allawi, Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Afghanistan, is a Palestinian. He was apprehended by Israeli authorities as he attempted to leave the West Bank.

The detention of Allawi, a major development in the media wars over the future of the Middle East, is not the first time that Israel has detained journalists from the channel. During the 2006 war in Lebanon, several Al-Jazeera journalists working in Israel were apprehended and warned about providing military information to Hezbollah, another terrorist organization. The accusation was that Al-Jazeera journalists were reporting the specific location of Hezbollah rocket strikes on Israel, enabling the terrorists to more accurately aim their weapons. In total, Hezbollah rained an estimated 3,970 Katyusha rockets and longer range missiles on military and civilian targets in Israel. The rockets have no internal guidance system and needed to rely on spotters or media coverage of their strikes to increase their accuracy.

This kind of activity earned the channel a lawsuit, filed by the Israel Law Center in the U.S., accusing Al-Jazeera of facilitating the deaths of Israeli and American victims of the war. Judge Kimba Wood dismissed the suit, claiming that the victims had failed to show Al-Jazeera had the specific intention of aiding Hezbollah.

Since its inception, however, Al-Jazeera has functioned as a mouthpiece for terrorist organizations, including but not limited to al-Qaeda. Tayseer Alouni, the channel’s Afghanistan correspondent during the 9/11 attacks, was apprehended by U.S. military authorities and turned over to Spain, his native country, where he was prosecuted, convicted, and jailed as an agent of al-Qaeda. Al-Jazeera defended him and paid his legal fees.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

The Arab-funded Al-Jazeera is hosting a two-day inaugural “Al Jazeera U.S. Forum” in Washington, D.C., featuring Bob Woodward of The Washington Post among the celebrity journalists. But of particular interest is Politico’s revelation that Republican Senator John McCain showed up at the opening night of the forum to praise the channel’s coverage of the Middle East.

“Over dinner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. John McCain praised Al Jazeera’s role as a catalyst in the Arab Spring uprisings before a room of journalists …” the publication reported. In fact, the “Arab Spring” has resulted in a government in Egypt that is less friendly to the U.S. and more accommodating to the Iranians and the terrorist group, Hamas.

This was a shocker because the day before, on Sunday, The Washington Post had finally gotten around to publishing a semi-critical article on the channel, noting its double-standards and open bias on the matter of revolutions in the Middle East. The Post even acknowledged that WikiLeaks had released a U.S. cable describing the channel as a foreign policy instrument of Qatar, the Middle Eastern dictatorship which financially sponsors it and selects its personnel.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid.

Al-Jazeera is spinning the newly released “Guantanamo files,” saying they show that dozens of enemy combatants detained at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay were innocent. But that’s not what the previously secret documents say about one high-profile detainee, Sami al-Hajj, an Al-Jazeera journalist released from Guantanamo after legal intervention by his Soros-funded lawyer and protests from human rights and press freedom groups.

The controversial allegations against this former “enemy combatant,” as detailed in this document, are being denounced by al-Hajj’s lawyer as “false and discredited allegations.”

But they show that U.S. officials suspected high-level cooperation between Al-Jazeera and al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The charges also raise serious questions about why officials of the Obama Administration are currently praising the channel and cooperating with it.

The document says about Sami Muheidine Mohamed al-Haj, known as Sami al-Hajj and Prisoner 345, “His involvement as a money courier, involvement in the transfer of weapons and leadership position within the Muslim Brotherhood, along with his numerous connections made through Al-Jazeera and his pro-jihadist propaganda activities, illustrates his intelligence value.”

The detailed Department of Defense document, posted by WikiLeaks, is designated, “SECRET / / NOFORN / / 20330404DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE HEADQUARTERS, JOINT TASK FORCE GUANTANAMO U.S. NAVAL STATION, GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA APO AE 09360” (more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

With much of the world in shock over the brutal Palestinian murders of five members of an Israeli family, the Al-Jazeera Forum ^[1] in Doha, Qatar featured Osama Hamdan, a top member of the political bureau of Hamas, a group that considers Israeli settlers and civilians legitimate military targets.

Americans attending this event included Steve Clemons ^[2] of the George Soros-funded New America Foundation. He has been a cheerleader for Al-Jazeera and his blog ^[4] features a “Watch Al-Jazeera Now” ad. He reports ^[5] that he was at the Al-Jazeera Forum as a “guest” of Al-Jazeera, apparently meaning that the terror channel paid his way and accommodations.

The U.S. State Department designates ^[6] Hamas as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” and states that it “was formed in late 1987 as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Hamdan was on a panel with former Obama adviser Robert Malley of the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group. The title of the panel was, “Palestinian national strategy in the new Middle East.”

Another American participant in the Al-Jazeera Forum was Ahmed Rehab ^[7], executive director of the Chicago Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood spin-off.

A report on the event noted ^[9] that several speakers declared that “the fall of dictatorial regimes that were allies of the US and Israel could motivate the Arab streets to strengthen calls for liberation of Palestine …” The phrase, “liberation of Palestine,” is a euphemism for the destruction of the state of Israel.

This is not the first time that the channel has given Hamdan a platform. Al-Jazeera’s Andrew Wander interviewed the Hamas leader ^[11] at a previous Al-Jazeera Forum so that he could define Palestinian “resistance.” He described how civilians, in addition to Israeli soldiers, become terrorist targets. He expressed no regret over this.

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Over the past couple of months, a lot of readers of my website, AtlasShrugs, have been asking me why I go on these consistently belligerent TV shows to discuss Islam, knowing that:

• It is going to be a hostile environment;
• I will be debating liars, deceivers and Islamic supremacists;
• I will be defamed, smeared and slandered;
• The playing field will be grossly unfair;
• I will be interrupted, cut off, and rebuked;
• I will be given much less time than my opponent.

I will tell you why. It is an opportunity, however compromised. Voices like mine, Robert Spencer’s, Wafa Sultan’s and Ibn Warraq’s are never heard in the mainstream media. The truth is hidden from the masses, and the media’s criminal negligence is cloaked in good intentions. Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

This is guerrilla warfare in the information battlespace, in the war of ideas. These media opportunities were hardly perfect, but they were something. Why make perfect the enemy of the good? They were better than the traditional blackout on our freedom- defense initiatives. It was a shot, and I was taking it and running with it, no matter how disgusting it all was.

From the media’s perspective, the Ground Zero mosque was an historical phenomenon. For the first time, a major news story became the most important national and international news story without the media. Think about that. Unlike the fringe pastor in Florida, who tweeted a Qur’an threat and the media descended like locusts to a Florida backwater to create a news story, a narrative, the Ground Zero mosque was not shaped by the media, not covered by the media — not at first anyway. (more…)

Libya has apparently decided that, if they’re going to have a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, they’re going to own it. So in between using the UNHRC to spread antisemitic organ harvesting libels, they’ve dispatched a ship in the direction of Gaza. This is actually the second time in three years that they’ve tried to break the Israeli blockade, the intention being to establish a pipeline between Hamas and their Tehran sponsors and to build an Iranian port on the Mediterranean Sea. Because the Iranians, they’re humanitarians too.

When Israel intercepted the Turkish flotilla two months ago, it took five or six news cycles before the media’s beatific unarmed activists were proven to be lunatic death-worshiping jihadists. By then the anti-Israel narrative had already hardened, though Reuters gamely kept trying to hide the evidence and the New York Times continued hyperventilating about how “angry Israeli commandos” turned a “ship of protesters into a bloodbath” – just in case.

Now there’s this Libyan ship Amalthea, which may or may not end up reaching Israel. If it does, and if there’s a confrontation, the media coverage won’t exactly swing wildly in Israel’s direction. Instead you’ll see the same mostly lame attempts to whitewash the same mostly pathological jihadists. Except in this case there’s already tape on the whole lunatic death-worshiping thing, courtesy of an Al Jazeera interview with one of the passengers:

Here then, is the evidence that the media will be ignoring tomorrow, today: (more…)

Yesterday, Newsbusters ran a story with this headline:

WaPo Finally Runs Story on NASA Administrator Bolden: Eight Paragraphs On Page A13

From the article:

In a June 30 interview with “Talk to Al Jazeera,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden revealed that President Obama had tasked him with “find[ing] a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”

The media largely ignored the story, with a few exceptions, such as Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer.

Among the media outlets that blacked out the controversy was the Washington Post, which didn’t cover the Bolden controversy until today. Even then, the paper printed on page A13 a brief 8-paragraph item by the Reuters news wire:

This information alone is enough to make you want get a new subscription to the Washington Post just so you can have the satisfaction of canceling it, but it gets worse… and worser.

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Andrew Sullivan is not a huge fan of Israel; he is entitled to his opinion.  However, his latest column about the incident in the waters outside of Gaza makes up the facts. Honestly, in the case of most of the posts Sullivan writes about Israel, Andrew is living in his own reality, where truth and facts do not matter.

The Atlantic columnist begins his latest example of creative writing begins with the first paragraph.

Maintaining the siege and blockade of Gaza (because its citizens elected a government Israeli abhors), and strafing it with military might over a year ago, is not exactly what one expects of a civilized Western state. To then go on the offensive against a flotilla of aid ships, trying to bypass the blockade, and killing at least ten people aboard is bordering on insanity…

There are at least three bald-faced lies in that  paragraph. First, the blockade was established to stem terrorism from Gaza (perhaps Sullivan forgot the five thousand rockets sent from the strip into Israel from 2005-2009).

His comment “Strafing it with military might over a year ago is not what one expects of a civilized Western State.” is also wrong.  That is exactly one should expect from a western state.  If rockets landed in Andrew Sullivan’s backyard, I guarantee that he would expect Obama to start “strafing” the offending party. (more…)

The first images of the clashes aboard the Mavi Marmara early Monday morning were broadcast by Al Jazeera English, which had an embedded journalist, Jamal Elshayyal, aboard the ship. What is remarkable about the footage is that the only attack it depicted was of the passengers upon the Israeli commandos, using bars and knives. The footage did not show the soldiers shooting. Yet the images were described as an Israeli attack.

The images were beamed around the world, inciting a mob to storm the Israeli embassy in Turkey, enraging anti-Israel crowds throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and inflaming Western public opinion. Yet the footage did not depict what Al Jazeera claimed it did, and in fact Israel was later able to use the same images to show the violent way in which its troops were confronted (the other five ships were stopped without incident).

Similarly, the infamous footage of 12-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Al-Dura at the start of the second intifada in September 2000 did not actually show the boy or his father being shot by Israeli troops. Charles Enderlin, the journalist who reported that Al-Dura had been shot and killed, was not actually present on the scene. He relied on the explanation provided by the embedded Palestinian cameraman who filmed the event: (more…)

I’ve interviewed many celebrities, politicians and sports stars over the years. I’ve grilled George Soros, been threatened by Mike Tyson and had fun with Jason Alexander. I’ve never interviewed a President of the United States, but I’d welcome the opportunity and the responsibility. Who wouldn’t? During his first year in office, Barack Obama did 158 “exclusive” interviews. I don’t know how you do 158 “exclusives,” but basically that means he sat down, one-on-one with everybody from Katie Couric to Al Jazeera. Al Roker never got an exclusive, but there’s plenty of time this new year to make that happen.

Since many people have gotten on that “exclusive” list, I’d like to give it a shot. We can do it when he comes to Las Vegas, or I’d foot the bill to fly to his place in D.C. to make it happen. If the President wants the questions in advance, I’d tell him to read this column, I’ll put some of them here. I’ve never been one to put questions in writing before I do an interview, certainly not for the person I’m interviewing, and I’ve never really even done it for myself, so this is rather unique for me to put this much planning into an interview.

But if I had fifteen minutes with the President, I’d ask him some question that he’s probably never been asked by my friends in the activist old media who have actually gotten the opportunity to talk to him and pretty much wasted it. So, here goes, my questions for the President: (more…)

It would seem that the Associated Press wants to consider its January 25 story by Devlin Barrett (“Feds detail Christmas Day attack”; also saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes) the last word on what occurred in the hours immediately following Flight 253’s landing in Detroit on Christmas Day.

But if that’s indeed the case, Barrett’s report also serves to prove that the wire service had no business revising originally accurate reports to remove what were apparently inconvenient facts relating to the incident.

To refresh by way of my Big Journalism post on January 15, AP’s initial reports on Christmas afternoon and early Christmas evening told readers that “the man claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over U.S. soil,” and that it had even used the M-word (“Muslim”). But, I wrote, by the middle of the next morning, “The supposedly solid AQ connection somehow became tenuous and unproven,” and the M-word was gone.

This scrubbing conveniently gave the Obama administration precious time during the weekend that followed to regain its bearings after significant initial clumsiness. Ultimately, I noted that AP’s revisions “allowed the President of the United States to inform us (on the Tuesday after the attack), without challenge and as if it was a recent discovery, that — shazam! — the attack might have had something to do with AQ.” (more…)

Back when George W. “Miss Me Yet?” Bush was President, liberals exercised their right of free speech ad naseum to complain about how Bush was taking away their right of free speech. So you might expect that a liberal or two would express at least a little concern when freedom of expression in the western world is threatened in reality, instead of in theory. After all it’s happened just across the border in Canada and it’s happening right now, just across the pond in the Netherlands.

Try searching MSNBC or the Daily Kos for information about the Geert Wilders trial. Find anything? Me neither. Democratic Undergound, to their credit, did run a version of the story, although the fact that it was Al Jazeera’s version is disappointing, if predictable. A commenter or two even dared to suggest that perhaps Wilders should be free to criticize any religion he wants, including Islam. That kind of heresy was, of course, quickly slapped down with replies like this one:

It’s informative that your ideological hostility, towards major religions, leads you to sympathize with this rightwing European xenophobe: the fact, however, that you can patch his anti-Islamic rants into your own simplistic worldview, does not really qualify as evidence that Wilders is “on trial for telling the truth.” He is on trial because a court decided his remarks might violate the criminal law against incitement to hatred. (more…)