LA Times: Why we won't release the Khalidi video
I have discussed more times than I care to recall the Los Angeles Times' refusal to release the video of Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi's going away party when he left Chicago. Among those present at the affair were 60's radicals Billy Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and a young Senator from Chicago named Barack Hussein Obama. The rumor - indeed the assumption - is that Obama said lots of not very nice things about a small Middle Eastern country whose back he claims to have these days.
The video was reported on during the course of the 2008 campaign, and the Times has refused then and since to release it. Breitbart.com has offered a $100,000 reward for the video, and the LA Times responded in a column by James Rainey this past Friday. This is
Breitbart's response to the Times (Hat Tip:
Shy Guy).
There is nothing fantastical about suggesting that the reason that the Times didn’t originally report Obama’s words at the event, or the more radical words of the evening, was to protect their beloved presidential candidate. Given the Times’ track record of Obama defense, it’s the only rational conclusion to draw.
But Rainey’s condescension continues. “In what will doubtless be a vain attempt to quell the bleating from the political fringe, I offer here a review of the trust history of the ‘Khalidi tape,’” he writes. What was that history that would shed light on the Times’ non-transparency? Not much. He rehashes the original Peter Wallsten story labeling Obama a quasi-moderate, without evidence to support that view. He then states:
In the case of the Khalidi video, the unnamed source agreed to share the illuminating bit of video evidence with Wallsten, but only with the understanding that the reporter could not reproduce or rebroadcast the images. The journalist had to make a decision: Do I agree to that condition and get to see evidence that no other reporter has seen of Obama meeting with Palestinian Americans? Or do I insist on a full public release of the video, with the likely outcome that the source would share nothing?
...
Well, then, where’s the transcript? Why is it that the source was comfortable divulging the video to the Times, but not to a less Obama-friendly source like Breitbart News for far more money? Asking the Times to hand over a transcript, and asking the source to hand over the tape, is far from “fringe.” It’s an attempt to vet a candidate that the Times clearly had little interest in completely vetting.
Good question. Don't expect the Times to answer,
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, campaign 2008, Campaign 2012, liberal media bias, Los Angeles Times, mainstream media, Rashid Khalidi
Uber-Leftist LA Times promotes anti-Semitic meme
The article and picture above (the two guys with Kippot are actually both Lubavitchers) are from the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the Republican National Convention. The Times is promoting the meme that
Jewish money is the sole funding behind the Republican party.
Promoting the worst anti-semitic stereotypes, a front page LA Times article on the influence of money in the Republican Party prominently features Jewish donors and, for emphasis, adds a photo of two men wearing Kippot (see below, 8/30/12, pp. 1, 8). As to the many individuals who give the vast majority of funds to the GOP and are not Jewish, the LA Times declines to identify their religi0n. Blatant anti-semitism is characteristic, and underlies much, of the virulently anti-Israel coverage in the LA Times.
But would you expect otherwise from the Leftist media?
Labels: anti-Semitism, Los Angeles Times, mainstream media, Republican party
Release of Obama - Khalidi tape unlikely
You will recall that during the 2008 US Presidential campaign, the Los Angeles Times had, but would not release, a tape of former PLO spokesman
Rashid Khalidi's going away party when he left Chicago for Bir Zeit on the Hudson. It is alleged that at said party, much hostility toward Israel was expressed, and that one Barack
Hussein Obama - then a State Senator from Illinois - was present and a part of the festivities.
The tape came up again recently when it was contrasted with the Times' release of thousands of private emails written by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
But don't expect the Times to suddenly have pangs of conscience and release the video says Roger Simon. There is no way this uber-Liberal newspaper is going to do anything that could
harm the re-election chances of Barack
Hussein Obama.
Perhaps because I live in L.A. and know the LAT well, have written for it on occasion, I am far less optimistic than Stanley that such a revelation would occur. Though better written than the lefty blog, the L.A. Times is barely three degrees to the right of the Daily Kos and many times more stodgy. The Times admits mistakes less often than Markos Moulitsas. And I suspect their editorial board would rather see the return of the McNamara Brothers, who dynamited the Times building in 1910, than do anything that might possibly harm the reelection of Barack Obama.
This is true even though the L.A. Times seems to have had little problem with Wikileaks or in disseminating their leaked information. It’s not just the Palin emails. Blabbing is fine as long as it’s on the proper side.
Meanwhile, Peter Wallsten, the man who received the clandestine tape from a mysterious donor and wrote the original attenuated LAT article on the Khalidi party (“Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Obama“), has moved on from the Los Angeles Times to the Wall Street Journal and, now, the Washington Post and he isn’t talking. (At least to me. I called him some time back, but the moment I broached the subject he essentially hung up.) These days he’s cheerleading for Obama at the WaPo with “daring” articles like “White House seeks to connect with young voters” with smiling photos of you-know-who.
No, in all probability, the only way we will ever see the tape or read even a redacted version of the transcript is courtesy of one of the better second story men on the West Coast or a retired KGB agent. (The Mossad need not apply. They will be blamed anyway.)
This is a shame because events are conspiring to make the production of this tape increasingly important, if only to clear the air. Among the soi-disant activists backing the second flotilla currently revving up to bring supposedly needed supplies to allegedly impoverished Gaza is one Rashid Khalidi. He has been raising money in support of one of the vessels with a familiar name: This year’s American vessel, named The Audacity of Hope after US President Barack Obama’s best-selling book, is being organized by an American group called “US Boat to Gaza.”
Obama links to the Audacity do not end there, however. Prof. Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a friend from Obama’s time in Chicago, is among the supporters of an appeal launched by the group last week.
“We must raise at least $370,000 in the next month,” a statement on US Boat to Gaza’s Web site read indicating it doesn’t have the money needed to sail yet.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Los Angeles Times, Peter Wallsten, Rashid Khalidi, Roger Simon, Sarah Palin
The pro-Democrat double standard at the LA Times
You will recall that in October 2008, the
Los Angeles Times suppressed a tape it has in its possession of former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi's departure party from Chicago. Among those present at the party were Billy Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Barack
Hussein Obama. According to an article in the
Los Angeles Times, what went on at that dinner would have
taught us a lot about the current President of the United States.
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."
Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.
And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.
Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.
At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."
One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."
...
At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
But the Times
refused to release the videotape in the run-up to the 2008 Presidential election. Could that videotape have influenced the 2008 election? We'll never know for sure.
Fast forward two and a half years. The Times still hasn't released the video, but this week it released
24,000 private emails belonging to Sarah Palin (Hat Tip:
Memeorandum).
Would those emails have been released if they belonged to Barack Hussein Obama or Hillary Clinton? Would the video have been released if it were a video of Sarah Palin with the head of the John Birch Society? (I doubt any such video exists).
A bunch of hypocrites....
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, liberal media bias, Los Angeles Times, Rashid Khalidi, Sarah Palin
The 'moderate' Muslim Brotherhood
Bret Stephens compares the attempts by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to pass itself off as '
moderate' to similar efforts by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979.
It's what the good people on West 40th Street like to call a "Times Classic." On Feb. 16, 1979, the New York Times ran a lengthy op-ed by Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton, under the headline "Trusting Khomeini."
"The depiction of [Khomeini] as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false," wrote Mr. Falk. "What is also encouraging is that his entourage of close advisers is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals."
After carrying on in this vein for a few paragraphs, the professor concluded: "Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third-world country."
Whoops.
The Times is at it again. Last week, the paper published an op-ed from Essam El-Errian, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Guidance Council, who offered this soothing take on his organization: "We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians." Concurring with that view, Times reporter Nicholas Kulish wrote on Feb. 4 that members of the Brotherhood "come across as civic-minded people of faith."
Read the whole thing.
Of course, the New York Times is not the only group that's been suckered by the Brotherhood. So has the
Los Angeles Times. And so, frighteningly, has President Obama's Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper, who just last week called the
Muslim Brotherhood '
largely secular.'
What could go wrong?
Labels: James Clapper, Los Angeles Times, Muslim Brotherhood, New York Times, taqiyya
