To be fair, the Times has an occasional story about the difficulties facing Christian communities in the Muslim world, but they typically underplay the extent of the ethnic cleansing. The victims are not only Egyptian Copts and Iraqi Chaldeans:
Over 70 Christians arrested in Iran during Christmas
In the early morning hours after Christmas day, the Iranian government arrested 25 Christians in Tehran and other locations. They also planned to detain sixteen others, but were unable to locate them. There are also unconfirmed reports that the authorities have arrested over 50 other Christians. According to BBC Persian, the Governor of Tehran has vowed to arrest more evangelical Christians.
One of those detained was able to make a call to friends from an unknown location on the morning of the arrests, leaving this message -
"Unfortunately early this morning the authorities came to our homes. They arrested us and many other believers. I want to ask you to pray for us.We are sure God will never leave us or forsake us. God bless you. Sorry for giving you bad news over Christmas, but I believe God will do something for us."
...
None of them have been granted any legal representation. No charges have been made, though it is clear that they were arrested for their active Christian faith.There has been a gross lack of due process. The government authorities have not provided any written documents as to the reason for the arrests, any record of the items confiscated, and family members are not allowed to visit the detained.
Islam has a long history of attempting, often successfully, to re-write history. The Palestinians do all in their power to deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem (and for those with short or absent memories, Jewish Synagogues and Christian Churches are usually destroyed or turned into Mosques whenever they come under the control of Muslims; Jews were not allowed to worship or visit their religious sites when the "moderate" Jordanians controlled the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem.) The Persian Muslims are just doing what their co-religionists have done so many times before:
Esther's tomb downgraded as pilgrimage site
The Jewish Telegraph Agency reports that the Iranian authorities have officially downgraded the tombs of Esther and Mordechai in Hamadan as official pilgrimage sites. According to Jonathan Tobin (below), their revisionist inversion of the Purim story means that Iran has declared war on Biblical Jews:
(JTA) -- Iranian authorities have downgraded the status of the tomb of Esther and Mordechai, while an official state news agency has publicized the Purim story as a Jewish massacre of Iranians.
Officials recently removed the sign that identified the mausoleum of the biblical figures in the central Iranian city of Hamadan as an official pilgrimage site. The removal of the sign signifies that its status has been downgraded, according to reports.\
The actions come about two weeks after a group of about 250 militant students surrounded the tomb and threatened to tear it down. Their threats were in response to alleged Israeli excavations under the Al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Yaakov Kirschen summarizes:
The MSM also ignores stories that highlight the barbarity of "modern" Islam:
Fatwa: "It Is Permissible to Have Sexual Intercourse with a Prepubescent Girl"
This is another fatwa from IslamOnline.net, which again is the sixth most popular Islamic website on the internet, according to Wikipedia. As the author of this fatwa points out, this ruling is entirely based on the Qur'an and the example of the prophet, who is considered the perfect example for Muslims in all ages. How many young girls have been and continue to be abused due to Muhammad's perverse actions in having sex with a nine-year-old, which now must be made permissible for all Muslims? (See the original Arabic here.)
One of the pillars of Western anti-colonialist Leftism is an increasingly overt anti-Semitism; the Huffington Post is one of the largest political sites on the web and it is an increasingly inviting home for anti-Semites; here are two review/summary articles for your perusal. As the old adage (or my updated version of it) has it, twice may be a coincidence but a hundred stories starts to look like a pattern:
The Huffington Post's Jewish Problem
Articles about anti-Israel, anti-Semitic hate at HuffPost - and its response
Another pillar of current Leftism which especially appeals to the Liberal-by-Temperament cohort, is Anthropogenic Global Warming. Again, in the interest of fairness, the Times has not completely ignored all of these stories. For example, there have been many stories, with pictures, documenting the Australian floods and the UK's snows, yet little explanation of how the bureaucracy's embrace of AGW has contributed to the misery.
Richard North, et al, at EU Referendum, have done a wonderful job documenting the "global warming" in England and around the world; they have also been building a case that concern over global warming has led to a mis-allocation of resources that have led to avoidable death and disaster for millions.
Finally, for a fascinating story that would be front page news everywhere if the people involved were a different nationality and the story line did not contradict the current AGW narrative, consider the extraordinary events that have been taking place in the Okhotsk Sea:
The rescue operation in the Okhotsk Sea has now been resumed, but it was set back more than was at first admitted yesterday when the towing cables broke. As we now learn, the towing equipment was damaged as well. But, with little more detail, almost like the old days when the TV shut down every night and all you got was the station card, all the Russian media is offering are stock photographs of the Okhotsk Sea.
The blogosphere is not only disintermediating the political process, but more importantly, it is changing the way news is gathered and reported. We no longer must depend on the MSM for their pre-filtered "news".
Certainly, the stories I have linked today are in areas of particular interest to me. Yet, prior to the internet, I would have been blind to the developments and would have had little choice but to accept what my perceptual apparatus (the MSM, especially the New York Times) revealed to me about the world beyond my front door. As the song says: I was blind but now I see.
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