Glenn Greenwald Goes All Out in Defense of Professor Joseph Massad's Anti-Semitic Screed

I'm a firm believer in free speech, and if it was me I wouldn't have taken down Columbia Professor Joseph Massad's vile essay attacking World War II-era supporters of a Jewish homeland as "Zionist anti-Semites." But I wouldn't be going to bat for such vile people either. Not so for Glenn Greenwald, who's been on a Twitter jihad attacking Al Jazeera for removing Massad's hate-piece.

Al Jazeera publishes an article by Columbia Professor Joseph Massad, then deletes it when usual suspects complain electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abun…
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 19, 2013

If you want to read the Joseph Massad Op-Ed published then deleted by Al Jazeera, it's still herem.aljazeera.com/story/20135127…
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 19, 2013

If Al Jazeera is going to delete an Op-Ed it itself published, shouldn't there be some explanation?Did someone err in publishing it?
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 19, 2013

If you only want to publish things that don't upset anyone, please don't go into journalismelectronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abun…
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 19, 2013

Jane Mayer: "'Chilling' isn’t quite strong enough, it’s more like freezing the [journalism] process into a standstill.” #ChillingEffect
— Freedom of the Press (@FreedomofPress) May 19, 2013

One thing I refuse to do is explain difference b/w a) objecting to censorship of Argument X & b) defending Argument X electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abun…
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 19, 2013

I don't know why, but it always shocks me that so many people can't distinguish between "X shouldn't be censored" & "I agree with X"
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 19, 2013

I emailed Al Jazeera earlier today for some explanation on this - still no answer: they have to provide one electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abun…
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 19, 2013

Al Jazeera now deleted the mobile version of the Massad Op-Ed, too- who would do this without explanation?electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abun…
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 20, 2013

Dear Al Jazeera: if you think you can delete your Op-Ed, refuse to comment & have everyone move on, you're very wrong electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abun…
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 20, 2013

There are a lot of great journalists at Al Jazeera, many of whom are very upset by the deletion of the Massad Op-Ed.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 20, 2013

Here's the problem for Greenwald: Even the most ardent free speech advocate would still recoil from defending Massad --- because people like this are perverting the history of the Holocaust in promotion of a second Holocaust against the Jews. William Jacobson has the story, "Al-Jazeera runs then deletes anti-Semitic screed by Columbia Univ. Prof. Joseph Massad":

Even Mondoweiss, yes Mondoweiss, the harshest of websites when it comes to Israel, had trouble stomaching Massad’s arguments:

Well, with Massad we’ve come a long inverted way. He sees the Jewishness that most Jews celebrate as colonial and – criminal.

Massad stops short – I think – of a Euro-American Jewish Zionist conspiracy to dominate the world.

Understanding Jewishness at war with the world and with Jewishness itself. It’s a tough sell.

Now the Massad article is gone from Al-Jazeera (h/t @GlennGreenwald). Spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was not too much for Al-Jazeera initially, but perhaps the attention called to the screed was too much. I’d be curious if the article ran in non-English versions of Al-Jazeera and if it has been removed there.

More at the link. And really, if Mondoweiss has second thoughts, then, boy, that's really gotta be some over-the-top screed.

In any case, check Greenwald's timeline for updates.

Obama's White House Counsel Learned of Illegal #IRS Targeting Weeks Ago

Yes, and of course the president was completely out of the loop. Completely!

Hey, I guess there's something to be said for incompetence. "We're not dishonest, just bloody stupid."

At WSJ, "Obama's Counsel Told of IRS Audit Findings Weeks Ago":

The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday.

That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time.

In the week of April 22, the Office of the White House Counsel and its head, Kathryn Ruemmler, were told by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general's report was nearing completion, the White House official said. In that conversation, Ms. Ruemmler learned that "a small number of line IRS employees had improperly scrutinized certain…organizations by using words like 'tea party' and 'patriot,' " the official said.

President Barack Obama said last week he learned about the controversy at the same time as the public, on May 10, when an IRS official revealed it to a conference of lawyers. The president's statement drew criticism, focusing attention on his management style and whether he has kept himself sufficiently informed about the agencies under his authority.

Others, including veterans of previous scandals, said the counsel—whose role is to advise the president on all legal matters concerning his job and the White House—was right to avoid telling Mr. Obama about the audit's early findings. Doing so could have caused a new storm by creating the appearance of meddling in an independent investigation that hadn't yet concluded, former officials said.

The White House, which declined to make Ms. Ruemmler available for comment Sunday, wouldn't say whether she shared the information with anyone else in the senior administration staff.

The new detail doesn't help answer some fundamental questions about the IRS scandal, including how it began and who, if anyone, in the administration was aware of the severity of the inspector general's probe before last November's presidential election.

Instead, it focuses attention on the White House's handling of the matter, which has blown up into the kind of crisis that could persist.

Actually, I suspect Obama was completely updated about that report and chose to lie about it in a cover-up of his administration's tyrannical harassment of political enemies.

Whistle-blowers are going to come forward. It's just a matter of time. And Americans want the truth. It's long past time we hear it.

IMAGE CREDIT: Zook Zangsten.

It Isn’t Watergate, but It Is Nixonian

At WSJ:

WASHINGTON–Veteran journalist Bob Woodward accused Obama administration officials of invoking the worst instincts of former President Richard Nixon in their response to last year’s deadly attack on two U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya.

“This is not Watergate, but there are some people in the administration who have acted as if they want to be Nixonian, and that’s a very big problem,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The longtime Washington Post journalist, whose reporting on the Watergate burglary led to the resignation of Mr. Nixon in 1974, questioned the Obama administration’s editing of talking points requested by congressional leaders days after the Sept. 11, 2012 attack killed four Americans, including Chris Stevens, the American ambassador in Libya.

Last week, the White House released emails that documented a charged debate over what the administration should say publicly about the attack. Officials at the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency raised concerns about releasing details that could undermine the evolving investigation. The State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, also objected to providing details that members of Congress could use to “beat up” the administration for not responding to CIA security alerts from Libya.

The final talking points, used by United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice on the Sunday morning talk shows right after the attack, stripped out references to specific militant groups, including al Qaeda affiliates, that were suspected of involvement in the Benghazi attack.

“This is a business where you have to tell the truth–and that did not happen,” Mr. Woodward said.

Well, yeah.

They're a bunch of pathological liars, from Obama on down.

More at that top link.

'The world has become a disgusting place...'

Yes it has.

Via Miss Qadeeri on Twitter:

First Rhode Island and now Minnesota. The world has become a disgusting place. Marriage equality is a joke.
— Madeena. (@Miss_Qadeeri) May 14, 2013

Pallywood's Muhammad al-Dura Wasn't Killed in Second Intifada

At My Pet Jawa, "IDF Investigation Concludes: Pallywood's Muhammad al Dura Was Not Killed," and Jihad Watch, "Second intifada symbol Mohammed al-Dura didn't really die in 2000 shooting."

And from Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "Why the al-Dura Blood Libel Still Matters":

There have been many good accounts of this affair, including this piece by Nidra Poller published in COMMENTARY in September 2005. I’ve also written about it on our blog several times, including this piece from last year about the French court case. Yet even before those were published one of the first Western accounts of the al-Dura affair got to the heart of this problem. James Fallows’s June 2003 article in the Atlantic, “Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura?” pointed out not just the fact that there was good reason to doubt the initial version of the story but that the facts wouldn’t change anyone’s mind because of the iconic status of the photo allegedly depicting the boy and his father. Indeed, he seemed to suggest in a deconstructionist spirit that objective truth was itself impossible since both sides sought to create their own facts in order to prove they were right.

RTWT and ollow the links

Melissa Debling and Daisy Watts

At Zoo Today, "Melissa Debling and Daisy Watts present: 69 of the rudest pics you'll see all year!"

Love this pic 💋 twitter.com/daisywatts/sta…

— Daisy Watts(@daisywatts) May 18, 2013

And check out Daisy Watts on Twitter.

BONUS: Some Rule 5 at the Daley Gator, "DaleyGator DaleyBabe Denise Milfort and an overdue Rule 5 Link-a-Round."

And Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup," and "If All You See……is local and sustainable produce, you might just be a Warmist."

E.W. Jackson Wins Virginia GOP Lieutenant Governor Nomination

This dude is rad!

At Big Government, "E.W. JACKSON WINS GOP NOMINATION FOR LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR IN VIRGINIA."

And flashback to last year, at PJ Media, "Bishop E.W. Jackson: ‘It Is Time For a Mass Exodus from the Democrat Party’":

More at BuzzFeed, "Republican Virginia Lt. Governor Nominee: Obama Sees World “From a Muslim Perspective”" (via Memeorandum).

And at WaPo, "Va. GOP picks conservatives for fall ticket; black minister is lieutenant governor choice," and "Va. GOP settles on Cuccinelli, Obenshain and Jackson for November ballot":

RICHMOND — Virginia Republicans shook up the outlook for the November elections Saturday, choosing Chesapeake minister E.W. Jackson to run for lieutenant governor alongside their gubernatorial pick Ken Cuccinelli II and attorney general nominee Mark D. Obenshain. Jackson became the GOP’s first African American nominee for statewide of

fice since 1988, overcoming six other hopefuls for the No. 2 spot on the ticket after four dramatic ballots lasting nearly 10 hours. He bested several candidates with deep ties to the state party, more money and long records in elected office, appealing to the more than 8,000 delegates in the Richmond Coliseum as a grass-roots crusader for the Constitution and social conservatism.

Before the balloting, the crowd erupted as Jackson vowed to “get the government off our backs, off our property, out of our families, out of our health care and out of our way.”

Jackson never trailed, leading after the first ballot and holding on despite sustained attacks and determined horse-trading by his opponents. He was joined on stage by Cuccinelli and Obenshain after 10 p.m., projecting an image of Republican unity at the conclusion of a fractious convention.

VA politics is where the action is for 2014! This is going to be fabulous!

More at Memeorandum.

Sunday Cartoons

An Obamagate-palooza, at Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

Also at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES," and at Randy's Roundtable, "Friday Night Funnies."

More at Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Stupid Pet Tricks."

Cartoon Credit: William Warren.

Yahoo's Tumblr Porn Problem

I'm not on Tumblr, but when I was searching for Kelly Brook photos awhile back it wasn't long before I was "tumbled" to a lot of disgusting pornography.

At Business Week, "If Yahoo Buys Tumblr, What Will It Do With All That Porn?":

If Yahoo! succeeds in its attempt to acquire Tumblr, it will end up with one of the hottest Internet properties in today’s Web, with access to the coveted youth market and a foothold in mobile.

It will also wind up with a whole lot of porn.

Tumblr has many options for people interested in artsy photography or teenaged musings. Then there are Tumblrs with such names as We Want Porn, Above Average Porn, Defcon Porn, Porn Gif Haven, POV Porn, Porn and Weed, and When Tumblr porn goes wrong.

It will be fun to see how these are integrated into Yahoo News.

Tumblr’s terms of service are pretty clear: Sexual material is welcome. It just asks that such posts be tagged as NSFW, noting that its users include many people “from a variety of locations, cultures, and backgrounds with different points of view concerning adult-oriented content.” (And, presumably, some people who work in offices with open seating plans.) The one exception is that Tumblr does not want to host people’s pornographic videos. Even this seems to be more about bandwidth than morality.

“We’re not in the business of profiting from adult-oriented videos and hosting this stuff is … expensive,” the company explains.

Tumblr does have standards. It objects to bigotry, sexually suggestive content including minors, anything that promotes self-harm, or gore that is posted just to be shocking.

Well, it's not like you can't find porn on the Internet. Maybe Marissa Meyer will crack down. We'll see.

Also, at AllThingsD, "Why Yahoo Doesn't Think Tumblr Has a Porn Problem," and "Yahoo Tumblrs for Cool: Board Approves $1.1 Billion Deal as Expected ."

Senior White House Adviser Dan Pfeiffer on IRS Scandal: 'The law is irrelevant...

Via Instapundit, "OBAMA AIDE: Legality of IRS targeting conservative groups “irrelevant”."

Plus, at Gateway Pundit, "OH GOOD GRIEF… Top White House Official: “It’s Largely Irrelevant” Who Doctored Benghazi Memo (Video)," and "Top Obama Official on Bengahzi: I Don’t Remember What Room Obama Was In – “It’s a Largely Irrelevant Fact” (Video)."

Rob Ford Crack Scandal

The Toronto Star's got a punishing editorial, "Rob Ford crack scandal: Time for mayor to step down."

And at Blazing Cat Fur, "Toronto Mayor Rob Ford owes his supporters a serious explanation over crack cocaine allegations."

#RememberWhenBarackObama

At Twitchy, "#RememberWhenBarackObama: Time for a trip down gaffe-paved memory lane."

#RememberWhenBarackObama hated everything that #Bush did, only to quadruple down on them as president? twitter.com/Shaughn_A/stat…

— Shaughn (@Shaughn_A) May 18, 2013

Willful Defiance: LAUSD Caves to Political Correctness on School Discipline Policy

Here's Sandy Banks, the far-left black feminist columnist, at the Los Angeles Times, "Troubled youths deserve more effective discipline than suspension":

The limits on student suspensions approved by the Los Angeles Unified school board this week may burnish the district's progressive credentials, putting L.A. in the forefront of a national shift away from zero-tolerance policies that ban kids from campus for minor offenses.

But the measure, which forbids suspensions for "willful defiance," has also shown how complicated and emotional the issue of student discipline can be. The two school board members who voted against it have markedly different perspectives that rarely make them allies.

The ban was prompted by national research that suggests suspension is a tool capriciously used and that it unfairly penalizes black children, who tend to be punished more severely and for less serious offenses than other students.

In Los Angeles Unified, blacks account for 26% of the district's suspensions, but only 9% of its students. That imbalance troubles Supt. John Deasy. He championed the measure, backed by community groups who consider suspension a "push out" practice that creates a "school-to-prison pipeline" for black and Latino students.

Yet the school board's only African American member, Marguerite LaMotte, voted against the ban, and lectured the students who crowded the board room to support it.

"I'm going to vote 'no' because it will give you the wrong message," she told them. "I'm not going to give you permission to go out and act crazy and think there are no consequences for your behavior."

LaMotte represents the region with the most black students in the district. She sees toleration of bad behavior as a disincentive for good behavior, a soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations deal.

"We love you," LaMotte told the students. "But there's a path you have to walk."

Board member Tamar Galatzan represents a suburban chunk of the San Fernando Valley with the most white students in the district. She didn't need to give a speech; her hard-edged 'no' made her feelings clear.

"It frustrates me," Galatzan told me later, "to hear all the protesters talk about the rights of the students who are causing problems in class, and there's nobody that's talking about the rights of the other 35 students who are trying to get an education."

I've heard grumbling like that from parents and teachers, who imagine good kids held hostage by troublemakers, out of discipline's reach.

The problem is that the troublemaker and the kid who wants to learn just might be the same student. And tough love feels like no love if we bounce them out of school...

Yes, because the troublemaker kids are really victims!

She goes on:

"Willful defiance" is a very broad label that can cover anything from wearing baggy pants to fighting to mouthing off in class. The category accounts for almost half of California's 700,000 yearly suspensions, and more than one-third of those in LAUSD.

Critics say it gives school officials too much discretion and too little incentive to work with struggling children.

"Teenagers misbehave. They make mistakes, bad choices, a lot," said Jose Huerta, principal at Garfield High. "We react to that. The kid disrespects a teacher, says the F-word in class and you don't know what to do. So you kick him out until you figure it out.

"And you miss a chance to help a kid who may be crying out for help,"

The ban is part of a broader push to move away from suspensions as a disciplinary tool. Research shows they do more harm than good, depressing achievement and alienating students who don't see incentives to improve.

The resolution is loaded with timelines and noble concepts like "restorative justice," but short on guidance for a teacher wondering what exactly she's supposed to do when Johnny curses her out in class.

School board President Monica Garcia doesn't see that as a drawback. Schools need to find ways to engage students who feel angry, disrespected, unloved. "I'm expecting that an educated adult ...can create [disciplinary] alternatives that don't say to a student 'You don't deserve to be in school.'"

Yes, and it's no surprise that statistics show the 53 percent of public school teachers cite discipline problems as a reason for leaving the profession. (And teachers at LAUSD charter schools have especially difficult challenges.)

But hey, "restorative justice"!

Here's the Times' report from this week, "LAUSD board could ban suspensions for 'willful defiance'."

I'm surprised this comment squeezed by the newspaper's moderators:

"And a disturbing finding has surfaced: African Americans are bearing the brunt of the harsh discipline policies. Statewide, black students are three times as likely as whites to be suspended; in L.A. Unified, 26% of those suspended in 2010-11 were African Americans although they make up 9% of students."

Notice the Orwellian phrasing here. Suspensions just happen, unrelated to student conduct. The only possible explanation for a racial disparity in suspenions is racism. Carefully avoiding the fact that black students are EARNING the suspensions because black students are COMMITTING INFRACTIONS at a much higher rate. But at the L. A. Times you are not allowed to commit truth if it reflects badly on blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, or homosexuals.

The average black IQ is 85. The average white IQ is 100. Low IQ is closely correleated with poor impulse control, high time preference, poor ability to foresee consequences, low ability to retain previously imparted information, lower ability to engage in delayed gratificiation, and even lower empathy. We should EXPECT, not be shocked, by blacks causing trouble and getting suspended more often. Nor should we consider it unjust any more than the overwhelming portion of prison inmates being male a reflection of "sexism" in the justice system. The fact is, men are overwhelmingly more likely to commit violent crime.

Yes, Orwellian language.

It's all Orwell these days, from the White House on down. Truth is thought crimes and hate speech.

Mid-level Officials in the White House and the State Department Do Not Call the Shots — They Carry Out Orders

From Andrew McCarthy, at National Review, "The 10 P.M. Phone Call: Clinton and Obama discussed Benghazi. What did they say?":

‘What would you be focusing on in the Benghazi investigation?” I spent many years in the investigation biz, so it’s only natural that I’ve been asked that question a lot lately.

I had the good fortune to be trained in Rudy Giuliani’s U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. Rudy famously made his mark by making law enforcement reflect what common sense knew: Enterprises take their cues from the top. Criminal enterprises are no different: The capos do not carry out the policy of the button-men — it’s the other way around.

So if I were investigating Benghazi, I’d be homing in on that 10 p.m. phone call. That’s the one between President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — the one that’s gotten close to zero attention.

Benghazi is not a scandal because of Ambassador Susan Rice, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, and “talking points.” The scandal is about Rice and Nuland’s principals, and about what the talking points were intended to accomplish. Benghazi is about derelictions of duty by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton before and during the massacre of our ambassador and three other American officials, as well as Obama and Clinton’s fraud on the public afterward.

A good deal of media attention has quite appropriately been lavished on e-mail traffic between mid-level administration officials in the days leading up to Sunday, September 16. That is the day when Ms. Rice, a close Obama confidant, made her appalling appearances on the Sunday-morning political shows. Those performances were transparently designed to mislead the American people, during the presidential campaign stretch run, into believing that an anti-Islamic Internet video — rather than a coordinated terrorist attack orchestrated by al-Qaeda affiliates, coupled with the Obama administration’s gross failure to secure and defend American personnel in Benghazi — was responsible for the killings.

Fraud flows from the top down, not the mid-level up. Mid-level officials in the White House and the State Department do not call the shots — they carry out orders. They also were not running for reelection in 2012 or positioning themselves for a campaign in 2016. The people doing that were, respectively, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton.

Continue reading.

Sabine Jemeljanova Bikini Crew

Via Twitter:

Warning Graphic: Sryian Rebels Execute Regime Loyalists

Man, that's painful. I mean for the dudes getting shot, to say nothing of those watching the damned video.

And who knows if these are regime forces, loyalists or civilians? They're dead now.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Today in Syrian Atrocity - Our Aid Recipients Execute 2 of Assad's Men - Graphic Content."

Kitten Freaks Out Over Lizard

Pretty funny:

Deer Crashes Through Bus Window

The deer makes it out of the bus. Bruised and battered, but still alive: "On camera: Deer crashes through bus window."

White House Should Try the Truth

From Charles Krauthammer, at the Washington Post, "Let the facts speak for themselves":

Note to GOP re Benghazi: Stop calling it Watergate, Iran-contra, bigger than both, etc. First, it might well be, but we don’t know. History will judge. Second, overhyping will only diminish the importance of the scandal if it doesn’t meet presidency-breaking standards. Third, focusing on the political effects simply plays into the hands of Democrats desperately claiming that this is nothing but partisan politics.

Let the facts speak for themselves. They are damning enough. Let Gregory Hicks, the honorable, apolitical second-in-command that night in Libya, movingly and grippingly demolish the president’s Benghazi mantra that “what I have always tried to do is just get all the facts” and “every piece of information that we got, as we got it, we laid it out for the American people.”

On the contrary. Far from assiduously gathering and releasing information, the administration was assiduously trying to control and suppress it.

Ezra Klein 'may turn out to be one of the stupidest people ever to be given column inches in a printed medium of any variety...'

Jeff Goldstein slams WaPo's juicebox moron, "BREAKING: The Scandals are Falling Apart!":

The fact is, Klein is right, but not for the reasons he wants us to believe. That is, his premise — that a scandal is only a scandal if high-level political figures fall — is true. But his implication — that because Obama and Holder and Hillary Clinton likely won’t fall, we aren’t in the midst of any scandals — is cynical, disingenuous, and largely exactly what you’d expect out of a useful idiot who fancies that he’s respected by those whose approval he so longs for.

The truth is, Obama and Holder and Hillary Clinton likely won’t fall because they will find protection in the arms of the ruling class, while lower-level functionaries will act as fall guys and scapegoats. And that’s because it is, as I’ve been saying, not a real two-party system any longer, but rather the ruling class vs. the rest of us.

Congress never pressed the IRS issue. Boehner is resisting calls to impanel a special committee on Benghazi, and the AP, once they get over the butt hurt of realizing that, for all the cover they’ve given progressives, ObamaCo just really isn’t all that into them, will go right back to fluffing up the President, rationalizing to themselves that they are making a sacrifice to the greater good. There has been no special prosecutor called for in the House to look into the IRS; the Senate is giving us Carl Levin and Max Baucus as investigators — two men who themselves engaged in the very conduct that politicians are now pretending to be outraged by.

So let’s not be coy: if the scandals fall apart it won’t be because no scandals existed, as Klein wants to pretend. Instead, it will be because the ruling class and their parasitic fluffers like Klein care more about the furtherance of big government statism than they do about truth or justice or the people they ostensibly represent or keep informed while working diligently to do neither.

Well, I'd add further that Klein's also wrong on the basic facts at hand. But read his idiocy at Goldstein's click through. These scandals indeed reach up to the highest levels, contra the juicebox moron. And top players have lied on the record, from the president on down. As more whistle-blowers come forward we may approach smoking gun territory. The pathetic press lapdogs will still cover for the administration, but voters are not fools. The ultimate reckoning will come at the polls next year and in 2016. Never let a scandal go to waste.