On The Third Hand

She Does Not Speak for Me

In fact, don’t just read, use that handy ‘e-mail this to a friend’ link at the bottom.

Hat tip: LGF. This needs to be passed around - because you won’t see it on CNN or MSNBC or any of the others.

[update] Here’s what another military mother, a ‘ Marine mom,’ has to say on the subject. It’s probably not all what either side wants to hear - but it’s definitely worth reading.

Damien Cave asks, “Where Are the War Heroes?” in this NYT piece:

One soldier fought off scores of elite Iraqi troops in a fierce defense of his outnumbered Army unit, saving dozens of American lives before he himself was killed. Another soldier helped lead a team that killed 27 insurgents who had ambushed her convoy. And then there was the marine who, after being shot, managed to tuck an enemy grenade under his stomach to save the men in his unit, dying in the process. Their names are Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta. If you have never heard of them, even in a week when more than 20 marines were killed in Iraq by insurgents, that might be because the military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II.

Many in the military are disheartened by the absence of an instantly recognizable war hero today, a deficiency with a complex cause: public opinion on the Iraq war is split, and drawing attention to it risks fueling opposition; the military is more reluctant than it was in the last century to promote the individual over the group; and the war itself is different, with fewer big battles and more and messier engagements involving smaller units of Americans. Then, too, there is a celebrity culture that seems skewed more to the victim than to the hero.

Collectively, say military historians, war correspondents and retired senior officers, the country seems to have concluded that war heroes pack a political punch that requires caution. They have become not just symbols of bravery but also reminders of the war’s thorniest questions. “No one wants to call the attention of the public to bloodletting and heroism and the horrifying character of combat,” said Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina. “What situation can be imagined that would promote the war and not remind people of its ambivalence?”

(Emphasis mine.) “No one” seems to be the media. Bloggers seem to disagree. You want to know where the war heroes are?

Well… here are some from Blackfive, who is also commenting on the article: Leigh Ann Hester, Brad Kasal, Paul Smith, Rafael Peralta, Jason Dunham…

And some from Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette: Sgt. First Class Paul R. (Ray, by the way) Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta And yet more from the Mudville Gazette: Marine Sgt. Leandro Baptista and Marine Sgt Willie Copeland and Lance Cpl. Joseph J. Tellez and Marine Pfc. Bryan J. Nagel… there are still more where those came from.

Chuck Simmins has a whole area dedicated to American Heroes.

And here’s a couple from me: Staff Sgt. Serena Maren Di Virgilio, Bronze Star with ‘V’ and Cpl. Victor Alfonso Rojas.

The heroes are covered - just not by the mainstream media.

Oh… and - again from Greyhawk - one of the heroes of the battle that made us realize we were at war: Rick Rescorla

At a time when all eyes are on London it might be instructive to view a slice of the Arab press this week.

Many of the leftest moonbats and appeasement monkeys would have you believe yesterdays strike in London is fueled by America’s foreign policies and Prime Minister Blair’s steadfast refusal to abandon America or President Bush.

But what truly fuels the terror in the streets and kills innocents by the thousands? The major portion of it comes from hate and an idealology of hate for anything in the West. The jihadist cut throats desire is to have every daughter in the West uneducated and circumsized. They want every Western symbol destroyed and reverted to somewhere in the 2nd century as was Afghanistan prior to the defeat of the Taliban. Victor Hanson nails it when he adds this.

Failed states in the Middle East — autocratic, statist, unfree, intolerant of women and other religions — blame the West for their self-inflicted miseries. Sometimes they are theocratic, like the late Taliban or the current Iranian mullahs. But more often they are dictatorial like the Syrians, Pakistanis, Saudis, or Egyptians, who all, in varying degrees and in lieu of reform, have come to accommodations with the terrorists to shift popular anguish onto the West and the Jews.

That is the Petri dish of Islamic fascism, an evil that will only disappear when the dictatorships that allow it or nourish it do as well. Whether the jihadists are in Iraq, the United States, or Europe, they all share a sick notion that someone else (the decadent Western oppressor and unbeliever) is responsible for their own poverty and backwardness rather than the fundamentalism, corruption, bias, and intolerance endemic to the Middle East.

One of the strongest jihadist cut throats allies is the Islamic Press. The Arabic Weekly Al-Ahram is a prime example. This week they have choosen to publish an account of an Al-Azhar approved 19th century biography of Prophet Mohamed. Nothing unusual in that, except, the author is a distant relative of President Bush.

Apparently the relationship to the current Bush isn’t in dispute but frankly I could care less. The only relevance a century old tome has today is Al-Azhar and Al-Ahram attempting to smear President Bush with a very wide and tenuous brush. No better example is this passage from the Al-Ahram article:

Islamic thinker Abdel-Rahman Abdallah El-Sheikh, who translated the text and provided the additional commentary, said, “the book is particularly interesting because it is part of the Library of Congress’s collection, and was written by a fifth generation great grandfather of [President] Bush; as such, it provides a clue of how the world’s ‘emperor’ thinks.”

Someone tell me how that provides any “clue?” Is President Bush channeling his five times removed great grandfather?

Or is it another example of the Arabic press dredging up anything and everything to divert attention from the real problems in the Arab world?

I know where I lay my bets.

Cross Posted within the Cranial Cavity

Good News from Iraq, Reuters Despairs

That is LGF’s headline, by the way, the Reuters headline was: “Australian freed in Iraq; bombs kill nearly 40“.

That’s balanced reporting, Reuters-style.

A lot is heard about the intrusion of advertising into the nations public schools. A few years ago the Seattle school system provoked a raging debate over it’s plans to allow advertisements on the uniforms, book covers, gym walls and sports fields. In Seattle’s case, and I suspect most, it was a question of money. Any ad revenue gained would be utilized to maintain programs that were threatened by failure to pass proposed tax hikes.

In recent years the debate has centered on soda vending machines and whether or not corporate logos should be openly displayed on them. The GAO even weighed in on the controversy with a report titled, “Commercial Activities in Schools,” that warned “marketing professionals are increasingly targeting children in school, companies are becoming known for their success in negotiating contracts between school districts and beverage companies.”

All of this leads to a question. Is the worst yet to come? Our neighbors to the north, Canada, may have the answer. And it’s not encouraging.

For the past several months, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., one of the country’s largest publishers of university textbooks, has been quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts.

“Reach a hard to get target group where they spend all their parents’ money,” says a McGraw-Hill brochure touting its planned ads. “Do you really think 18-24 year olds see those on-campus magazine ads? Do you really think they could miss an ad that is placed in a very well-respected textbook?”

The Whitby-based publisher, which has made presentations about its prospective textbook ads to more than a dozen advertising agencies, says in its brochure that ads can be purchased nationally or regionally, and “can be so targeted, you can even buy a specific major.

“We’ve never offered this before and we’ll only offer it to the right organizations,” McGraw-Hill’s brochure says. The company plans initially to charge as much as $1.40 per book, and the ads would be inserts, instead of being placed permanently alongside text.

The plan is not without skeptics, Randy Stein, a partner at Grip Media Ltd said, “There are some things that should remain pure and sacred. What’s next, university professors with logos on their blazers like NASCAR?”

With McGraw-Hill having a large presence in the US you have to wonder if this Canadian scheme to advertise in textbooks will migrate southward. It should be noted McGraw-Hill is only looking out for the kids, really… honest!

In a subsequent statement to the Toronto Star, MacDonald wrote that the publisher’s textbook ads have two purposes: to bring “beneficial corporate and social awareness campaigns to the attention of students” and to “generate revenue to support programs which help professors and teachers cope with the rapid changes in their environment.”

What type of rapid changes in environment are they talking about? Class size? Global warming? Frosty Canadian winters? And why do professors and teachers need ads to “cope” when any advertising is aimed at the students?

Why do I smell a little social engineering coming down the pike? And any beneficial corporate campaigns are all nicely wrapped up in that $1.40 price tag. The publisher is pitching to advertisers at the same time as it is trying to survive a recent sales decline. The company has seen a 7 per cent slip from the $95 million the company generated in 2002.

So beware US, this travesty may be headed your way.

Cross posted within the Cranial Cavity

I don’t have the media credentials of the Laughing Wolf (or half the eloquence). So, I’ll wish I did, and just say that on the subject of newsweek, he speaks for me.

And, speaking only for myself: I was not shocked or surprised. Just disgusted — and very much saddened. It was only a matter of time. We’ve not got a fourth estate here, we’ve got a fifth column.

Islamists step up campaign to stop Muslims voting

Not a smart move… what good does not voting do? You get to whinge about how you didn’t vote for the winner? But that’s not what caught my eye. It was the second paragraph here:

The extreme Islamist group accused of threatening George Galloway and hijacking a meeting of moderate Muslims is planning to step up its direct action campaign to stop fellow believers from participating in the election.

The Guardian can reveal that the gang of youths who stormed two election meetings this week are members of al-Ghuraaba, an offshoot of the now disbanded radical organisation al-Muhajiroun.

Emphasis mine. Can reveal? One must assume that before this radical organization was disbanded it was somehow preventing the Guardian from revealing anything about it? Perhaps all the Grauniad’s reporters were kidnapped by this now-defunct group and physically prevented from revealing anything about them?

Ok, I’ll admit that the can/may thing is a pet peeve of mine. But in this case, I’m not sure “may” is much better. Either way, I suspect that what they mean is: “we were too lily-livered to report on this until they went away".”

Every once in a while, a headline hits me with its blantant statement of the obvious. Like this one I just saw on Google News, from ABC:

Report: Child Deaths High in Poor Nations

I mean, really, did they expect child deaths would be low in poor nations? Where the people sometimes can’t even afford to eat?

And, as if the headline weren’t enough of reporting the obvious, in the body of the story, they make sure to mention that poor rural children in at least one country die at a higher rate than rich urban children. They didn’t mention any comparison between poor urban children and rich rural children, oddly enough. I suspect there might be a bias toward urban living on the part of that reporter…

It seems that Harry’s Place has been nominated for The Guardian’s “Backbencher’s political weblog awards”. Admittedly Harry’s Place is ‘on the left’ (did you think a right-wing blog would get nominated at the Grauniad?) But they are pro-liberation leftists and it would be kind of funny if they won the Guardian’s award… They are lagging a bit at the moment. The poll is at the Guardian link. (hint)

White House Admits 1st Blogger to Briefing

With an official credential hanging from his neck, a young man stepped into the White House briefing room Monday as perhaps the first blogger to cover the daily press briefings. He found the surroundings to be dilapidated and cramped and concluded that his morning at the White House was “remarkably uneventful.”

Via Kate at Outside the Beltway.

Old order of US media is cast adrift by anchor’s loss

… At the same time the credibility of the old network news has been undermined by scandals such as the CBS National Guard debacle last autumn.

The three network news bulletins now attract a fraction of the audiences they commanded when Rather started. These audiences are heavily dominated by the over-60s crowd (a fact attested to by the preponderance of Viagra and haemorrhoid unguent advertisements in their commercial breaks).

Last December Brokaw hung up his microphone; Rather will be gone next week; Jennings will not be far behind.

But who will be watching?

Good question.

Al Jazeera has a good effect on the Arab street.

He has some good points here.

… For example, Al Jazzera focused, as part of its coverage for the “deteriorated situations in Iraq” on every single demonstration against the interim government or the American presence in Iraq even if it was 10 people that are demonstrating! But this coverage, that was missed in the official Arab media most of the times, showed the Arab street an unusual scene. ‘Arab’ citizens demonstrating freely against their government and the supposed brutal occupiers under the eyes of police!

As they say, ‘read the whole thing’.

Hat tip to Chrenkoff, who has a good roundup of blog posts today. Scoot on over and check them out.