The London Times Slimes America

Once relentlessly accurate and highbrow, the London Times has degenerated into a dishonest anti-American tabloid.

I stopped reading it years back when it published a photo of Marilyn Monroe on the autopsy table 2 weeks after death, with a caption sneering that she was no longer beautiful.

The managers & writers may have changed since then, but the bias against decency and truth remains. After the 7/7 bombings, it spent weeks publishing leaks and smears to undermine London’s cops struggling to contain Islamic terror.

It’s always been anti-American, in a whiney sort of way, but now it scents blood and is in full cry, regardless of the facts – as exposed by Michelle Malkin.

Last Thursday it published as part of an “expose” of US war crimes in Haditha a grim picture of the murdered Iraqis captioned:

Victims in al- Haditha. The US is carrying out two enquiries. (AP)

But the Times lied – the AP caption actually read:

“Insurgents in Haditha executed 19 Shiite fishermen and National Guardsmen in a sports stadium.”

After the blogoshere picked up on the lie, the Times removed the photo, giving this explanation:

The Times June 01, 2006

‘Massacre Marines blinded by hate’
From Tim Reid in Washington

Corporal claims that his comrades, who were accused of killing Iraqi civilians, lost control

[Note: This story originally appeared with a picture whose caption erroneously described the scene as of the alleged incidents in al-Haditha. The image was in fact from a separate incident involving Iraqi insurgents]

The Times is still deceiving – “involving Iraqi insurgents” implies the picture is of “Iraqi insurgents” executed by Americans. An honest correction would have apologized for the original lie and explained the victims were innocent Iraqis from Haditha murdered by terrorists. But I guess that wouldn’t have played well with the “Evil US” story.

The Times stepped up the pressure. Its online front page yesterday headlined this:

Tales of US dishonour

This Memorial Day week has been overshadowed with stories of the massacre at al-Haditha, which if proven, will impact on a scarred military
Third claim of atrocity rocks servicemen

Today, it has two stories:

From their Washington journo:

Focus: America’s shame

The elite of the US army, the marines, stand accused of butchering 24 Iraqi civilians including women and children. If proved, the massacre could change the course of the war in Iraq. Sarah Baxter reports from Washington

As his stomach churned, Roel Briones mechanically clicked the button on his digital camera. With every shot, he felt his humanity was being tested. The dead, he said, “ranged from from little babies to adult males and females.

Sounds pretty grim, unless you soldier on to Page 3 of this 4-page diatribe, which admits:

…Briones claims to have erased his photographs…

So what’s left is hearsay. Some story.

The Times backs up this nonsense by playing the Abu Ghraib card:

The horrors really are your America, Mr Bush
Andrew Sullivan

‘This is not America.” Those words were President George W Bush’s attempt to explain the horrors of Abu Ghraib prison on the Arabic-language network Alhurra in 2004. He spoke the words as if they were an empirical matter, but a cognitive dissonance could be sensed through them.

If the men and women who tortured and abused and murdered at Abu Ghraib did not represent America, what did they represent? They wore the uniforms of the United States military.

No Andy, the abusers (not torturers) did not represent America, that’s why they’re now in jail.

Fortunately, the circulation of the Times is declining relative to the market leader – the Telegraph – which is honest.

Blair Reaps Whirlwind

In another heartening example of democratic feedback, Brit armed forces are forming a union to protect them against political abuse by Blair’s government. The pols say the union will be bad for discipline, but they undermined that discipline by hanging Brit soldiers out to dry.

Defence chiefs fear that the creation of an independent military “trade union”, being launched tomorrow, will lead to soldiers voting on whether or not they should go to war.

The creation of the British Armed Forces Federation (Baff) follows claims that many of Britain’s 250,000 troops no longer believe that their best interests are represented by “an increasingly politicised chain of command”.

The clamour for an independent federation comparable to that of the police has gained momentum after allegations that troops accused of war crimes in Iraq were “hung out to dry” by defence chiefs, even though virtually all of the accused were subsequently found to be innocent.

In a controversial move, Baff intends to set up a legal “hotline” which will advise service personnel under investigation not to co-operate with military police until they have full legal representation. Many soldiers questioned over incidents in Iraq, ranging from road traffic accidents to allegations of murder, have complained that they were interviewed by military police without being informed that they could have a service or civilian lawyer present to advise them.

The suffering of Trooper Williams and his fellow victims of political persecution has not been in vain.

Denmark’s Lesson For Europe

Pundits who consign Europe to future servitude under Islam are wrong, because they ignore the feedback mechanisms that underpin democracies.

Here’s an object lesson from Denmark, the nation victimized in the Toon Riots (my ellipsis & sequencing):

…Denmark has been changed, in ways many would not have predicted a short while ago.

The slow-motion crisis began in September with publication of a dozen cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.

Small protests occurred in Copenhagen over the cartoons, and Mr. Rasmussen (the Prime Minister)… declined even to meet with ambassadors from Islamic countries who were demanding that his government take action against the newspaper over the cartoons.

Tensions soared and Muslim governments lodged protests after…Danish Muslim leaders toured the Middle East in December with a portfolio of the cartoons (that) included clearly offensive drawings of Muhammad that had not been published.

Muslim countries announced boycotts of Danish goods — a severe blow to an economy long reliant on exports.

The violence began in early February, when angry mobs set fire to Danish diplomatic posts in Syria and Lebanon. Protests tied to the cartoons resulted in deaths in Afghanistan, Somalia, Kenya, Pakistan, Nigeria and Egypt.

The sight of Danish flags being burned was particularly traumatic (to Dames): The Danish flag is believed to be one of the oldest in the world, a symbol of national identity dating back to the 13th century.

Just 3 months later, the consequences are clear, and they’re good for Denmark and its integrated Muslims, and bad for jihadists.

“…it was certainly an unusual thing for a small country such as ours to find itself the focus of such a heated situation,” Prime Minister…Rasmussen acknowledged in a recent interview in his Copenhagen office.

Mr. Rasmussen’s center-right government, the focus of considerable domestic and international criticism in handling the “cartoon controversy,” is stronger of late in the polls, while the center-left opposition Social Democrats founder. The populist Danish People’s Party, coalition partner with the prime minister’s Liberal Party, also gained because of its tough stand on immigration issues.

(The) foreign-policy spokesman for the Danish People’s Party, argued that the domestic debate, carried out with characteristic Danish bluntness, had been a healthy exercise.

“We have always praised how most of the Danish Muslims reacted in this affair,” (he) said. “It was only when this became a big issue with the dictatorships in the Middle East and in Asia that the world had a problem. “This is an issue that you can’t deal with in a dictatorship, [but one] that we have proven we can talk about here in a democracy,” he added.

Yet, Denmark’s single most popular political figure is a Muslim, Naser Khader, a Syrian-born moderate member of parliament who founded a post-cartoon movement — called Democratic Muslims — to promote the peaceful fusion of Danish values, political liberty and Islam.

It gets better – the guy that fomented violence against the country that that had given him refuge is moving on.

Meanwhile, the Copenhagen imam whom many here blame for fanning Arab and Muslim fury last winter, just as it appeared the fires had been contained, announced May 11 that he was leaving Denmark for the Palestinian territories because of the intense criticism directed at him.

If he tries the same tricks there, I’m sure the ISF will welcome him with open arms.

These heartening events show that democracies won’t tolerate barbarism in their Islamic communities, and that those communities contain decent people that understand the rules of assimilation.

France seems to be heading in the same direction. I wish I could say the same for the Brits and Germans.