More on World Vision bigotry

My recent post about World Vision was sparked by the news that they have now gone into the business of promoting global warming. That really was the last straw. See my comment here. Up until that time I had kept my disquiet about them to myself as I think their model of uniting a particular donor with a particular recipient is one that probably does much good and I didn't want to knock that. I was myself a World Vision donor in the '90s but pulled out when they started making anti-Israel statements. So my enquiries to them in 2006, which I have recently posted, were really a probe to see how deeply their antisemitism went. And since I do already donate to Israeli causes, a favourable reply from them would have met with a favourable response from me. But, as Jesus said, "By their fruit shall ye know them" and at the end of their high-flown talk, the result was certainly antisemitic: A refusal to help Jews. Below is some history of their political bigotry. In typical Gramscian style, their leadership has obviously now been taken over by the Left.

The organization’s Brief History of the region repeats many of the standard Palestinian myths and distortions. For example: “In 1948 a war broke out resulting in the establishment of Israel on 77% of historic Palestine.” Pointedly, in using the passive tense, the authors of this summary fail to mention the Arab invasion that led to the war. Similarly, the profile offers no background or context to the 1967 Six Day War that led to Israel’s control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip simply stating: “In 1967 Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.”

The current Palestinian campaign of violence is blamed solely on Israeli policies leading to Palestinian ‘disillusionment’, Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount and the failure of Camp David. World Vision, strangely, quotes an Israeli death toll of 302 in the period September 2000 to March 2003, some hundreds less than the accurate figure for that time. By quoting a significantly higher Palestinian death toll and ignoring the terrorism that was responsible for the deaths of Israeli civilians, World Vision promotes an amoral equivalence between perpetrators and victims of terror, and offering no context to the loss of life. Instead, Israeli security measures are described as “a policy of sealing entries and exits to cities, villages, and towns as a form of collective punishment of the Palestinian population.”

World Vision’s casual attitude towards Israeli security is demonstrated in a December 17, 2002 news article “Bethlehem has little to rejoice about at Christmas” which states: “Bethlehem's population of 120,000 is under collective punishment. The reason given by Israel for re-entering Bethlehem is because the last suicide bomber to blow up a bus in Jerusalem was from the Bethlehem area.” Other news archives demonstrate a lack of context behind events. For example, a January 5, 2004 news article “World Vision helps 245 homeless families in Rafah” claims that “One hundred homes were demolished and another 70 were severely damaged during an Israeli army incursion on October 10th,” failing to mention the terrorist activities and weapons smuggling tunnels that prompted the Israeli military operations.

World Vision’s response to Israel’s security barrier also displays almost no acknowledgement of this impact of this obstacle in preventing terror. For example, Tim Costello, Word Vision Australia’s Chief Executive described the barrier as “part of the problem, not part of the solution”, in a July 14, 2004 op-ed in The Age (Melbourne). Costello evokes the highly politicized and inappropriate claim that the barrier “is reminiscent of the Cold War and Eastern Bloc oppression.” (Costello’s comparison reflects the Palestinian propaganda effort to compare the Berlin Wall, designed to keep citizens from fleeing, with Israel’s security barrier, which saves the lives of its citizens.) These issues are noted in Colin Rubinstein’s response to Costello, who also points to reliance on the faulty advisory decision of the ICJ, in response to the highly politicized indictment from the UN General Assembly.

Analysis of World Vision International’s website also reflects the clear political agenda, with little attention to entirely legitimate Israeli security concerns, as well as a total disregard for the effects of Palestinian terrorism on the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Thus, World Vision’s activities in the region reflect a strong political bias, with a high level of misunderstanding and negative attitudes displayed towards Israel, while encouraging or at least condoning terrorism and incitement. This agenda is entirely inconsistent with the claimed emphasis on “economic development and promotion of justice”.

More here. See also a follow-up here

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The Axis Of Liberal Media Bias

The Leftist substitution of abuse for rational consideration of the facts that is described below will be familiar to most conservatives. The facts are just too threatening to Leftists. Facts threaten the imaginary world that they rely on

Conservatives have suspected for years that traditional journalists take news cues from liberal bloggers. Stories about secret, online gatherings between said bloggers and journalists have fueled those suspicions.

Now a Brigham Young University political scientist has confirmed that the axis of liberal media bias runs straight from lefty blogs into the mainstream press. He surveyed journalists about their blog reading habits. Here's the summary (via Instapundit):

[Professor Richard] Davis also queried more than 200 journalists to learn how they use blog content in their coverage of political news. Most journalists were aware of influential blogs on both sides of the political spectrum, such as Daily Kos and Talking Points on the left and Michelle Malkin and Instapundit on the right. Despite equal awareness, journalists spend more time reading posts in the liberal blogosphere.

For example, more journalists know about Michelle Malkin than Talking Points. Yet twice as many journalists actually read Talking Points than read Michelle Malkin.

"When journalists take story ideas from blogs, those ideas naturally will come from blogs they read," Davis said. "These reading patterns suggest journalists may be getting primarily one view of the blogosphere."

Lefty bloggers and liberal journalists undoubtedly will dismiss the finding because it does not, and cannot, prove cause and effect. But the hostile online encounter I had recently with a former co-worker is all the proof I need.

Our discussion started on Facebook when conservative friends of mine criticized Obama in the comment section of an article I had posted to my profile. My colleague took offense that people would mock the president. I agreed that some Obama-bashing has been shameful but wondered why he hadn't voiced the same concern during the eight years of vicious ridicule heaped upon President Bush.

His response: "Mean things were said about Bush, but they do not come close to some of the things that talk radio has said about Obama and his wife!!!" (Yes, he used three exclamation points.)

Doesn't that sound like something he might have read on a liberal blog -- the sweeping generalization about talk radio with no evidence to support it? I thought it did, so I suggested that he expand his information horizons by reading all about the "Bush Derangement Syndrome" documented so thoroughly by Malkin, Charles Krauthammer and others. I was sure my colleague wouldn't continue claiming that Obama has had it worse than Bush if he just saw the evidence.

I was wrong. He promptly cussed me and dumped me as a friend on Facebook.

I've worked with dozens of journalists inside the Beltway over the past 18 years, and I'm glad to report that most of them aren't that close-minded. But my former co-worker's hostility to the mere suggestion that he gather information from sources on both sides of the political spectrum speaks volumes about how willing some journalists are to parrot the talking points of the nation's left wing.

SOURCE

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India hearts Israel

For a good reason. Indians have been fighting off Muslims for centuries

A study undertaken on behalf of Israel's foreign ministry by an international market research company found that India is the most pro-Israel country in the world, beating out the United States by two percentage points.

The study, undertaken as part of the "Branding Israel" project, looked at what it calls the world's 13 most important countries and included 5,215 interviewees. Asked a series of questions, participants graded their sympathy for Israel on a 1-to-10 scale. Some results, given in terms of percentage expressing sympathy to the Jewish State:

58% India
56% United States
52% Russia
52% Mexico
50% China
34% Great Britain
27% France
23% Spain

Comment: The Indian statistic is not the only striking one - note the continent of the countries clustered at the bottom and how much lower their numbers than those of Russia and China. Just as the U.S government should rethink its military alliances, so might Israelis take a fresh look at the globe.

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HOW BIG IS WAL-MART

1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart every hour of every day.

2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!

3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St.Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.

4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.

5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the largest private employer. And most speak English

6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the World.

7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger & Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only 15 years.

8. During this same period, 31 Supermarket chains sought bankruptcy (including Winn-Dixie)..

9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world..

10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had 5 years ago.

11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at a Wal-Mart store. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 billion.)

12. 90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Wal-Mart

Let Wal-Mart bail out Wall Street. Better yet . . . let them run the damn Government

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ELSEWHERE



Google bias again? As regular readers here will be well aware, I put up a weekly roundup of the posts on Brookes News. Gerry Jackson, editor of Brookes News, has just emailed me as follows: "You might find this interesting. For some time Google results for Brookesnews have been shrinking. I was once about 40,000-odd: I am now to about 1,740. At this rate Brookesnews will soon disappear from Google’s data base. Incidentally, a Yahoo search brings more than 47,000 results for Brookesnews". I have just checked that myself -- as Google results vary a lot from time to time -- and found over 5,000 hits via Google, but that is still way down on the 47,000 I found via Yahoo.

Interesting that former members of the military whom the Left trot out as "antiwar" usually turn out to be fakes. Michelle Malkin has the lowdown on the latest such.

Pelosi admits waterboard briefing: "Under pressure to explain conflicting stories, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that in 2003 she was told waterboarding and other tough tactics were being used on suspected terrorists and did not object to them, even as she defiantly accused the CIA of lying to her and Congress about the use of such controversial techniques during 2002 briefings. The CIA said it stood by its record of the 2002 briefing that showed, based on recollections of agency employees, that Mrs. Pelosi was briefed that techniques had been used on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah. "It is not the policy of this agency to mislead the United States Congress," said George Little, a spokesman for the CIA.

Pelosi's got ants in her pants: "Nobody's having more fun watching Nancy Pelosi squirm than the ants in her pants. The dowager queen of Capitol Hill was shocked - shocked! - by what's been going on at Guantanamo, and reveled in telling everyone so. Now it turns out that maybe she wasn't so shocked after all. When she was told soon after 9/11 that some of the prisoners there had been deprived of sleep and "waterboarded" she did not object. Like everyone else back in the day, she was terrified that 9/11 was merely a prelude to something really, really bad. The speaker has told so many versions of what she knew about what was going on at Guantanamo, and when she knew it, that all we know now is that she can't keep her stories straight... None of the members who served with her on the House Intelligence Committee support Miz Pelosi's remarkable claim of brainwashing. Other congressional colleagues, trying to defend her, have had to clarify their clarifications about what they said about her imaginative stories. Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, attempted to defend the speaker with the argument that what someone said seven years ago must be measured against the temperature of the times in the wake of 9/11, when nearly everyone was terrified of a "second wave" of attacks. But Democrats have to be careful with this line of argument, lest they arouse speculation about just why there has been no "second wave." Could it be because someone named George did what was necessary, even introducing vicious terrorists to good bathing hygiene, to prevent that "second wave"?

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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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