Can we get a recount? That’s the natural reaction to this headline in the U.K. Guardian: “Russell Brand voted world's fourth most influential thinker.”
Hannah Ellis-Peterson relayed "the comedian turned activist has now earned the nod of approval from one of Britain’s most influential current affairs magazines, whose readers have voted him fourth in their annual table of the world’s top thinkers."
On Wednesday's All Things Considered, NPR's Ari Shapiro spotlighted Cage, a British organization that ran to the defense of "Jihadi John," the ISIS member who infamously beheaded several hostages on video. Shaprio slanted toward Cage by playing four soundbites from two talking heads from the organization, as well as a clip from the terrorist himself, who has been identified as Mohammed Emwazi.
Haras Rafiq blasted the blame-everyone-but-the-terrorist mindset of many on the left on Thursday's New Day on CNN during a discussion of ISIS member "Jihadi John," who has been identified by several media outlets as Mohammed Emwazi. Rafiq singled out a British organization, CAGE, for their defense of Emwazi, who has personally beheaded several Western hostages: "I'm quite disgusted at the way that they've actually tried to co-opt the victim mentality as an excuse almost to try to justify this person's radicalization."
Friday's NBC Nightly News surprisingly (and perhaps, unwittingly) contradicted President Obama and his administration's talking point on combating extremism – that providing "job opportunities for these people" will discourage Muslims from joining terrorist groups. Correspondent Katy Tur's report on three British teenagers who may have traveled to Syria to join ISIS featured a counterterrorism expert who underlined that "they're not the disaffected. They're not necessarily unemployed youth. Instead, we're seeing educated young women who are engaged in politics."
Buttering up his February 12 guest Boris Johnson, Hardball host Chris Matthews told the London mayor that he's eligible to run for president, given that he was born on U.S. soil. But Matthews apparently forgot the residency stipulation in the Constitution, one criterion that Johnson doesn't meet.
British journalist David Rose is not a global warming denier. He said it is his belief that the world is warming and “that carbon dioxide produced by mankind IS a greenhouse gas, and IS partly responsible for higher temperatures -- and [I] have repeatedly said so.”
Yet, ever since Rose dared report on the Climategate scandal in 2009 he has been the victim of hatred and vitriol from the environmentalist left, in part because he is skeptical of some environmentalists’ pet remedies for climate change. His views on wind power and biomass is that they are “ruinously expensive and totally futile.”
Europe has been the target of numerous acts of Muslim terrorism, while its economies suffer and unemployment is rampant. The United States is still recovering from 9-11 and has been the object of a number of terrorist attacks/attempts since then. Yet in neither country is there a voice in mainstream television saying that right-wing parties might have a point when they advocate limits on immigration.
That was Joe Scarborough's point on today's Morning Joe: "I have yet to hear one person on American television or European television, mainstream, say these people [right-wingers favoring immigration restrictions] may have a point."
While the New York Times allows inflammatory race-baiters like Al Sharpton to get away with spouting about racial justice, and global warming activists like Al Gore can fly around the world with impunity before returning to one of their energy-sucking estates, the paper reliably plays the hypocrisy card against conservative politicians who fail to adhere to moral values.
Some remember NPR as the network that happily hosted (fake) Muslim extremist funders and told them of how horrifying America’s Christian conservatives were.
That Islam-indulging attitude also comes through in their “news” content. On September 15, NPR’s “Goats and Soda” blog carried this attention-grabbing headline: “Covering Up With The Hijab May Aid Women's Body Image.”
Sure, nobody expects The Washington Post Editorial Board to earn a “Profile in Courage” entry anytime soon. But with its Sept. 16 editorial on the systematic decades-long sexual abuse of children in Rotherham, England, the Board showed the same cowardice that enabled the Rotherham abusers.
According to the Post, “Sorting out why officials closed their eyes or looked the other way as an estimated 1,400 young girls were raped and brutally exploited from 1997 to 2013 will require Rotherham and the rest of Britain to come to grips with uncomfortable questions about race, class and gender.” But what about the uncomfortable questions about Islam? The editorial never mentioned that.
As the referendum for Scottish independence from Britain draws near, the New York Times continues to bang the drums for separatism.
In the heated run-up to the September 18 independence vote in Scotland, where Scots will vote on whether to separate from the United Kingdom after 307 years, the New York Times has planted its flag on the liberal, pro-independence side in its coverage, with jabs at the ruling Conservative Party and some old-fashioned Margaret Thatcher-bashing thrown in.