Mike Berger From 911Truth.org On Scarborough Country - Video Inside

[YouCrazyDiamond]

I’m not sure that what happens on those shows would qualify as debate.

Unfortunately, in our ultra-competitive social structure, we look at debates as though they are always a contest to be won. (Remember the passage from George Washington’s farewell address?) However, there exists a need for forms of moderation, etc. to insure that we don’t destroy ourselves in our zeal for "victory at all costs."

The more honorable purpose of a debate is to come to a consensus or compromise when all is said and done. A debate only for the purpose of “winning” seems rather dishonorable to me.

As for a few moments on TV, it is more akin to a gladiator sport. But this must be done with an identifiable form of dignity that resonates well with the viewing audience.

So, when it comes to this TV medium, I say go forth and kick some serious ass … with dignity and class, of course.

[Gold9472]

WHO IS STEVEN EMERSON?

http://www.cair-net.org/html/emerson.htm

FOR BACKGROUND, SEE:

THE PRIME-TIME SMEARING OF SAMI AL-ARIAN
By Eric Boehlert, Salon.com, 1/19/2002

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...bba/index.html

HIGHLIGHT: By pandering to anti-Arab hysteria, NBC, Fox News, the Tribune Company and Clear Channel radio disgraced themselves -- and ruined an innocent professor's life.

...But what readers didn't know was that Fechter had recently befriended controversial terrorism expert Steve Emerson -- who has been accused of sloppy journalism and with having a pervasive anti-Arab bias -- and behind the scenes was remaking himself into a self-styled authority on terrorism...as a sort of dry run, Fechter wrote about the Oklahoma City bombing case. Taking the cue from his terrorist mentor Emerson, who made the same bogus claim on national television, Fechter pointed an accusatory finger at Muslims. Looking back, the glaring mistake should have raised a red flag among Tribune editors about their new in-house terrorist expert...

...Certainly the veteran terrorism expert and NBC news consultant, Steve Emerson would take credit, not blame, for Al-Arian's firing. Despite the fact no charges have ever been brought against the USF professor (on the contrary; he's met personally with both Presidents Clinton and Bush in recent years), Emerson has been branding Al-Arian a terrorist for close to a decade. During a 1996 speaking engagement in St. Petersburg, Emerson, citing anonymous sources, assured the audience that Palestinian radicals at USF were involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing...

...Despite that string of hollow indictments, producers at NBC's news magazine "Dateline" didn't hesitate to usher Emerson on the air last October for a segment to -- what else? -- accuse Al-Arian of aiding terrorists.

In her introduction, NBC's Jane Pauley recklessly stressed a connection between Al-Arian and Sept. 11: "We're told that it's probable, if not certain, that there are still terrorists among us. Now investigators say there is evidence that an organization with ties to Middle East terrorists may have been operating in Florida for as long as a decade."

The "investigators" turned out to be...Steve Emerson. In fact, NBC never interviewed a single law enforcement official for its Oct. 28 report. The "Dateline" piece consisted entirely of Emerson, who was given a prime-time platform to air his creative accusations. (Al-Arian refused to appear on the show.)

Emerson told "Dateline" reporter Bob McKeown that Islamic Jihad "had essentially relocated to the United States in the city of Tampa," where it was operating as "a shadow government" for the terrorist group.

Emphasis on shadow, since neither the FBI, the INS, the CIA, USF nor the Tampa police were ever able to uncover it. Only Emerson.

Of course, Emerson never mentioned that Judge McHugh had looked at these allegations in 2000 and found no wrongdoing. It's not clear whether McKeown even knew about the judge's ruling...

SEE ALSO:

EXPERT'S FINGER-POINTING TROUBLES MUSLIM GROUPS
By John Mintz, The Washington Post, 11/14/2001

...James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute and a longtime Emerson adversary, says the fact that 19 men from the Middle East committed a terrorist atrocity in no way substantiates Emerson's decade-long body of work warning of a U.S.-based Muslim threat to the United States.

"He's made his life's work discrediting Arab American and Muslim groups, and his obsession makes me uncomfortable," says Zogby...

...Emerson has made missteps. A day after the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed in 1995, he went on television theorizing -- wrongly -- that the culprits were Arab. Attempting "to inflict as many casualties as possible -- that is a Middle Eastern trait," he said in one interview, one of many statements his enemies call reckless and biased...

...Emerson can be his own worst enemy. Miami Herald reporter Martin Merzer once called him for comment on a case involving alleged terrorist sympathizers in Florida, and said he had written an earlier piece on the controversy. He said Emerson replied: "What perspective did you take, that this is a brutal Zionist plot against the weak, underprivileged Arab minority?" After sensing the new piece would be unflattering, Emerson sent a nasty letter about Merzer to his editor and local Jewish leaders.

In 1998, Emerson heard a Muslim activist planned to leaflet against him at a New York speech of his. He dashed off a withering seven-page response, which included the false assertion that in the 1960s one of his critics, California journalist Reese Erlich, "was charged with conspiracy to carry out violence in support of the Black Panthers." Emerson apologized and paid Erlich $ 3,000.

Emerson's enemies also cite an incident in 1996, when Emerson helped Associated Press reporters on a terrorism series. After the series ran, an alternative newspaper in Florida that has long criticized Emerson quoted an AP reporter saying he believed Emerson had misrepresented a memo about Arab radicals as an FBI-authored document...

STEVEN EMERSON'S CRUSADE
"Why is a journalist pushing questionable stories from behind the scenes?"

By John F. Sugg

http://www.fair.org/extra/9901/emerson.html

RECENT UPDATE:

POLICE, MUSLIMS REFUTE HERNDON LINK TO TERRORISM
By Jeannie Baumann, Herndon (Va.) Observer, 6/15/2001

The Herndon police chief has refuted a statement in a Wall Street Journal editorial [by Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes] that identified Herndon as the location of an organized terrorist cell connected to international terrorist Osama bin Laden...

...Herndon Police Chief Toussaint E. Summers Jr. said the police department contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation after the editorial appeared to verify the citing, and he said the bureau has no evidence of any al-Qaeda activity in the town.

"All we did was try to verify the information in the article, and there appears to be no truth to it at all..."

WHAT OTHERS SAY ABOUT STEVEN EMERSON'S WORK
This heavy-handed bit of racist manipulation [Rick Lazio's smear campaign against America Muslim groups] grew out of a story...inspired by the machinations of one Steven Emerson, a discredited "terrorism expert" last heard trying to pin the Oklahoma City bombing on the Arabs by noting that "inflict[ing] as many casualties as possible...is a Middle Eastern trait."

(The Nation, 11/27/2000)

"Preaching tolerance towards all Jews and intolerance to those Muslims you happen to deem radical is not fresh. Perhaps with more people like Emerson, we can succeed in keeping the Middle East riddled with conflict..."

(Scott Livingston, The Daily Free Press (Boston U.), 11/22/1999)

Alexander Cockburn writing in the Wall Street Journal, 6/14/1990

"Mr. Emerson's prime role is to whitewash Israeli governments and revile their critics."

Florida's Weekly Planet newspaper Senior Editor John Sugg quotes two unnamed Associated Press reporters who said Emerson gave them a document on terrorism supposedly from FBI files: "One reporter thought he'd seen the material before, and in checking found a paper Emerson had supplied earlier containing his own unsupported allegations. The two documents were almost identical, except that Emerson's authorship was deleted from the one purported to be from the FBI. 'It was really his work,' one reporter says. 'He sold it to us trying to make it look like a really interesting FBI document.'" (Weekly Planet, May 1998)

The Christian Science Monitor (1/22/96)

"Moreover, since the end of the cold war, Islam is increasingly described by a coterie of writers and policymakers as a new seedbed for anti-Western aggression, replacing communism. Some journalists have made a virtual industry out of this view. The most prolific is Steven Emerson, whose film 'Jihad in America,' shown recently on PBS, describes America as a training ground for Islamic terrorism. Muslims almost universally know and loathe Mr. Emerson's work, calling it biased and distorted. "

Leslie Gelb, President, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

Mr. Gelb called Emerson a "grand inquisitor" for trying to censor a CFR publication. (Forward, 5/10/96)

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)

"It's this sort of slippery use of evidence that makes people wary of Emerson's reporting." (EXTRA!, May/June 1995)

"There's more than a little bigotry in Emerson's obsession with Muslim terrorists." (EXTRA!, July/August 1995)

The Washington Post called Emerson a "pro-Israel researcher and author." Aug. 8, 1995

The Jerusalem Post said Emerson has "close ties to Israeli intelligence." Sept. 17, 1994

In a review of Emerson's book "The American House of Saud," The Economist (Feb. 8, 1986) reviewer wrote: "The conspiracy theory of history always finds believers -- blame the Jews, or the communists, or the blacks, and thus seek absolution. Mr. Steven Emerson...blames the Arabs..."

Professor Jack Shaheen, author of "The TV Arab"

In a commentary on "Jihad in America" in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he said: "'Jihad' is perilous television, pandering to stereotypes that feed collective hatreds."

Investigative Reporter Robert Friedman

"...Emerson says that all criticism of him is venal; he puts his critics into the same camp as the Muslim fundamentalists and extremists. There is no logical link between criticizing Emerson's biased reporting and being pro-fundamentalist. That's Emerson's conspiracy theory." (The Nation, August 28/September 4, 1995)

"He gets it wrong all the time. Emerson has no credibility left. He can't get on TV and most publications won't pick him up." (Weekly Planet newspaper, May 1998)

"For the first forty-eight hours (after the Oklahoma City bombing), Emerson was a fixture on radio and TV, waging jihad on Islam." (The Nation, May 15, 1995)

The New York Times Book Review

Said Emerson's 1991 book Terrorist was "marred by factual errors...that betray an unfamiliarity with the Middle East and a pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias." (5/19/91)

Security expert Vincent Cannistraro called Emerson "dishonest" and "Joseph McCarthy-like." Forward, 1/26/96 "Word has got around on what he (Emerson) is, that he's a paid polemicist, not a journalist." (Weekly Planet newspaper, May 1998)

Terrorism Expert Tony Cooper

During a televised panel discussion on the Dallas PBS affiliate following the airing of "Jihad in America," Cooper called Emerson's PBS program "propaganda" and said Emerson was a "stranger to the truth."

Journalist Jane Hunter

"There are thousands of ax-grinders in journalism, pushing tantalizing stories with few verifiable facts. Most collect rejection slips, but Steven Emerson finds one respectable media outlet after another for his work, which is sometimes nimble in its treatment of facts, often credulous of intelligence sources, and almost invariably supportive of the Israeli government." (EXTRA!, October/November 1992)

Media Critic and Journalism Instructor, Reese Erlich

In a radio commentary on "Jihad in America," he said, "Rather than illuminating a serious issue, the documentary uses McCarthyite techniques to attack a range of legal political and religious groups..."

Arthur Lowrie, Adjunct Professor of International Studies at the University of South Florida

"Emerson's two main themes were that an 'Islamic Internationale' exists and is directing an anti-Western terror campaign and that a network of Islamic terrorist cells exists throughout the United States. He failed to provide any hard evidence for either allegation." (Middle East Policy, 1995)

Chip Berlet wrote in 1995 in Covert Action Quarterly, a journal that investigates intelligence operations, "Emerson makes unsubstantiated allegations of widespread conspiracies in Arab-American communities and brushes aside his lack of documented evidence by implying it only proves how clever and sinister the Arab/Muslim menace really is."

The Center for National Security Studies has reported: "Steven Emerson has asserted that the FBI is severely restricted in infiltrating known extremist groups, that it has no terrorism data base like the CIA's, and that it is powerless to stop extremist groups from masquerading as 'religious' groups. All of these claims are incorrect."

John Sugg, Editor of The Weekly Planet newspaper - "It should be noted that Jihad in America was largely funded by the Carthage Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, widely referred to as right-wing think tanks."

"Emerson constantly attributes allegations of widespread Muslim conspiracies to unnamed intelligence sources. And, as has been reported in numerous articles...Emerson has been dead wrong on many of his most sensational stories."

Friday, March 20, 1998, in the Miami Herald^ - "The Secret War" By Martin Merzer

"...I call (Steven) Emerson, but we don't get off to a great start. I mention that I wrote a brief newspaper story about this affair last year."

"'Oh, really?' he says instantly. 'What perspective did you take? That this is a brutal Zionist plot against the weak, underprivileged Arab minority?'"....

"....In January 1996, during a public forum to air complaints about his and The Tampa Tribune's coverage, Emerson seemed to take delight in provoking the largely Muslim audience and then pointing to their angry reaction as proof of their instability."

End Part I

[Gold9472]

STEVEN EMERSON IN HIS OWN WORDS

ON THE DOWNING OF EGYPTAIR 990
EMERSON: Well, look, there are lots of reports out of Egypt today about what the pilot said, or what the relief pilot may have said: the Shahada, a prayer that someone says. It's a major tenet of Islam AND SOMETIMES IT'S SAID BEFORE YOU COMMIT AN ACT OF TERRORISM...(emphasis added) (NOTE - The "Shahada" is the Islamic declaration of faith.)

(CTV [Canada] Television, November 17, 1999)

ON THE ALLEGED PLOT TO BOMB NEW YORK CITY SUBWAYS
"The US has become occupied fundamentalist territory." (The Jerusalem Post, August 8, 1997, p. 9)

ON THE DOWNING OF TWA FLIGHT 800
Reuters news service quotes Emerson as saying he is "confident that a bomb brought down the plane."^ Emerson went on to say that the crash could be a plot by "the permanent floating (Islamic) militant international." (Reuters, July 31, 1996)

I have no doubt whatsoever, at this point, that it was a bomb that brought down TWA Flight 800 - not a missile, but a bomb..." (CNBC, RIVERA LIVE, August 23, 1996)

ON THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING
"This (the bombing) was done with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible. That is a Middle Eastern trait."^ (CBS News, April 19, 1995)

"Oklahoma City, I can tell you, is probably considered one of the largest centers of Islamic radical activity outside the Middle East."^ (CBS News, April 19, 1995)

ON ISLAM
In The Jewish Monthly (March 1995), Emerson wrote, "The level of vitriol against Jews and Christianity within contemporary Islam [Note he did not say "radical Islamic fundamentalism."], unfortunately, is something that we are not totally cognizant of...We don't want to accept it because to do so would be to acknowledge that (Islam)...sanctions genocide, planned genocide, as part of its religious doctrine." He added that "Unfortunately, nearly all (emphasis added) of the Islamic organizations in the United States that define themselves as religiously or culturally Muslim in character have, today, been totally captured or dominated by radical fundamentalist elements..."

"First, radical Islamic fundamentalism cannot be reconciled with the West. The hatred of the West by militant Islamic fundamentalists is not tied to any particular act or event. Rather, fundamentalists equate the mere existence of the West --- its economic, political and cultural systems --- as an intrinsic attack on Islam. The sooner Americans realize that no compromise or reconciliation is possible, the sooner radical fundamentalists will realize that the West cannot be manipulated."

"This means saying something that is politically incorrect: That all militant radical fundamentalists are potential members of this loose federation of terrorists."

The San Diego Union-Tribune, June 28, 1993

"Moreover, the traditional immunity given to religious institutions can no longer apply if the battle against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is to be won."

Detroit Free Press, June 27, 1993

ON PALESTINIANS
"The Palestinians are not interested in or capable of living in peace with the Israelis. Most Palestinians have sheer hatred for Jews."

"(intra-Palestinian attacks)...are indicative of the venom and brutality of Palestinian society."

Newsday, October 25, 1990

WHO STEVEN EMERSON WORKS FOR
"EMERSON: Right now, I am freelancing. I've left US News now -- it's about seven months. And I am working for publications as diverse as PENTHOUSE MAGAZINE (emphasis added) to the Wall Street Journal..."

(Transcript of interview on Booknotes program, Air date: May 13, 1990)

WHO WORK'S WITH STEVEN EMERSON
Senior Editor John Sugg of Florida's Weekly Planet newspaper noted the following about sources attesting to Emerson's credentials and characterizing American Muslim groups as allies of terrorists. Sugg wrote:

"These sources are Steven Pomerantz and Oliver 'Buck' Revell. Not noted is that Pomerantz and Revell are officers of the same institute, and that both have a close association with Emerson. They are hardly independent sources. In fact, the three spend most of their time nowadays quoting each other about what excellent terrorism experts they all are. Revell is prominent in Emerson's 'Jihad in America.'

"There's a fourth member of the association -- Yigal Carmon. A ranking member of Israel's intelligence and military establishment, he is considered to the right of even the current Likud government. As The Nation has reported (and never disputed by Emerson), Carmon was part of the 'gang of three' that spent much time lobbying Congress to derail the Middle East peace process -- and Carmon even stayed at Emerson's home on his visits to the United States. (The Nation, August 28/September 4, 1995 and May 15, 1995) Carmon is part of Revell's and Pomerantz's institute -- its 'Mideast Regional Director.' ...And Emerson even shuttles Carmon around to introduce him to journalists as an 'expert' on the Middle East.

"Of course, these four people spend their time (and make money) out of portraying Arabs and Muslims as terrorists...I don't think it's too extreme to conclude that, considering the involvement of a top Israeli spook with Emerson and his friends, we have something much more sinister going on than 'journalism' and an institute studying terrorism."

HOW OTHERS USE EMERSON'S WORK
"Islam is like a cancer eating away at the planet earth...That is why we, at Truth seekers, have launched a new crusade to combat the forces of Islam before it is too late...If you have any doubt as to whether Muslims in America pose a clear and present danger to our lives, liberties, and property, get the video entitled 'American Jihad' (sic) by Steven Emerson."

Truth Seekers mailing, February 1998

End

[PhilosophyGenius]

Emerson = Dueche bag

[PhilosophyGenius]

Anyways, when Berger started talking about the firefighters I immediatly thought he was talk about how they heard systimatic explosions going of in the WTC to help with the WTC 7 argument. But then he started talking about there radios or whatever.