Wikipedia: ‘Neturei Karta believes that the Messiah will usher in a Jewish theocracy to rule over the Land of Israel’

According to Wikipedia:

Founded in Jerusalem in 1937 by Amram Blau and Aharon Katzenelbogen, Neturei Karta was formed as an offshoot of the Aguda movement. Aguda, representing the most devout of the Haredi Jewish community in the Old Yishuv, was opposed to the secular orientation and nationalism of political Zionism, which the religiously devout members of Aguda believed represented a threat to their way of life and was a rejection of Torah law. However, Blau and Neturei Karta disagreed with Aguda’s accommodationist stance to Zionism in the 1930s in response to European antisemitism.

Professor Marc B. Shapiro blogs Sep. 18, 2024:

We have recently seen behavior by so-called religious Jews that is vile. I refer to the actions of Neturei Karta. Of course, we have all seen their antics in the past, but I think most of us looked at them as clowns and sick people that maybe we should feel sorry for. This is no longer the case. Now they are marching in support of the murderers of Jews, aligning themselves with the enemy, and attempting to destroy the State of Israel. They are doing this at the very time that Jews are being killed at war. It is true that in the past as well they openly aligned themselves with the PLO,[1] and R. Moshe Feinstein already in the late 1970s referred to Neturei Karta as reshaim.[2] But to be allied during wartime with Iran and Hamas is I think beyond what we have seen before.

Here you can see a video of a Neturei Karta delegation that went to Iran to pay respects after the death of President Raisi. Here a different delegation visits the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. to pay respects. Here they are in Qatar at the funeral of Ismail Haniyeh whose death they mourned in a public statement here. It is hard to imagine anything more obscene than this. What we have seen from Neturei Karta since October 7 goes way beyond making a hillul ha-shem.[3]

Until his death, the spiritual leader of this group was Rabbi Moshe Beck (1934-2021). Here you can see him showing his affection for the Iranian leader Ahmadenijad. In the ultimate obscenity, in his book Derekh ha-Hatzalah (Monsey, 2002), pp. 40ff., Beck actually explains why it is halakhically appropriate to congratulate terrorists on a “successful” operation, namely, when they murder Jews. Thus, it is entirely in line with Neturei Karta ideology for them to praise the October 7 “resistance.”

Over thirty years ago I was naive and thought that I might be able to have a productive correspondence with Beck. Here are three letters I received from him…..In my second letter I actually strongly protested how he referred to Rav Kook. In his response to this letter he also answers my question how he could cite from R. Reuven Margaliyot’s commentary on Sefer Hasidim when R. Margaliyot was a religious Zionist whose book was published by Mossad ha-Rav Kook. (I never said that he was a maskil). In my third letter I attacked him for degrading great Torah scholars and I mentioned that R. Aharon Kotler supported the State of Israel. I never said he was a Zionist. My point was that once the State of Israel was declared, with the lives of millions of Jews depending on it, anti-Zionism in the sense of opposing the creation of a Jewish state was now no longer relevant. Once the State of Israel was created, anti-Zionism came to mean working to destroy the Jewish state, and thus putting millions of Jewish lives at risk. Satmar anti-Zionism is religiously based but remains entirely theoretical, even eschatological, and Satmar has always been absolutely opposed to allying with anti-Semites and terrorists and their supporters.)

It is a copy of a letter sent to the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem from Aryeh Leib Weissfish. Weissfish was later to become famous as one of the leaders of the Neturei Karta, and strangely enough he was also a great fan of Nietzsche. You can read about his colorful career here, where it mentions how he illegally entered Jordan in 1951 to bring a message from the Neturei Karta that Jordan should invade Jerusalem and the Neturei Karta would be its ally in this. When he was deported to Israel he was put on trial and sentenced to six months in prison.

In view of the fact that during World War II there was a fear that Germany would invade the Land of Israel and that this would also lead to the Arabs persecuting Jews, Weissfish wrote to the local Muslim leaders to let them know that the Old Yishuv type of Jews that he is speaking about are not involved in politics and that they oppose the Zionists. They have always treated the Arabs with respect and he therefore requests that these Jews be protected. He also offers to provide the names of the families who should be given this special treatment.

…[W]hen it comes to Neturei Karta and those of a similar mindset, I was wondering about some halakhic and ethical issues… For example, can such people be counted to a minyan? Are you allowed to give charity to them, and if not, how about the children who will suffer through no fault of their own? Can the children of such a family be kicked out of a yeshiva? If these people have businesses, should we boycott them, again, causing the children to suffer for the sins of their fathers? Or should we just ignore these people entirely? These questions are not only relevant when it comes to Neturei Karta, for as we have seen since October 7 there are many other enemies of Israel and the Jewish people. Some of them who support Hamas are themselves Jewish. As far as I know, there has not yet appeared an analysis of how such traitors are to be regarded in Jewish law.

…Here is what Maimonides says about one who separates himself from the community, and it certainly applies to Neturei Karta (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:11):

“A person who separates himself from the community even though he has not transgressed any sins, but has separated himself from the congregation of Israel and does not fulfill mitzvot together with them, does not take part in their hardships or join in their [communal] fasts, but rather goes on his own individual path as if he is from another nation and not one of them [the Jewish people], does not have a portion in the world to come.”

…[Chaim] Bloch was very interested in apologetics and softening anti-Gentile passages that appear in the Talmud and later rabbinic literature. He even devoted an entire (very dishonest) book to this topic, Ve-Da Mah She-Tashiv (New York, 1962). In my post here I include a page from Bloch’s Heikhal le-Divrei Hazal u-Fitgameihem (New York, 1948), p. 9. Here Bloch invents an entire story about how before the war there was a collection of letters in Vienna dealing with the sections of the Talmud that were removed by non-Jewish censors. He tells us that R. Elazar Horowitz wrote a letter to R. Judah Aszod stating that R. Moses Sofer did not wish to print a Talmud with the censored sections. The reason R. Sofer supposedly gave was that it was divine providence that these passages were removed, and once they have been removed they should not be put back. Based on additional imaginary letters, Bloch tells us more fairy tales about other nineteenth-century rabbinic leaders who agreed that the censored passages should remain out, because of the antisemitism that could be generated by them.

Bloch’s forgery of the Gentile-friendly “Pour out your love” passage is no different than his other forgeries dealing with rabbinic texts that present a negative view of non-Jews and that were often cited in non-Jewish attacks on the Talmud and rabbinic literature.

Posted in Marc B. Shapiro, Neturei Karta | Comments Off on Wikipedia: ‘Neturei Karta believes that the Messiah will usher in a Jewish theocracy to rule over the Land of Israel’

Nikki Haley Would Have Lost

Mark Halperin says Trump supporters usually have no problem acknowledging all the problems with their candidate while Democrats for years couldn’t admit that Biden was senile. He says Nikki Haley would have lost the general election. He says Trump took the majority position on national security, economy and culture while Dems were too far left on these triangle.

Halperin says Kamala Harris should have realized she would have lost, that she was not cut out to be president, and she should not have accepted the nomination.

He says Biden should not have run in 2020 let alone in 2024 due to his senility.

“Trump is the best political candidate I’ve seen since Bill Clinton.”

“You never once heard Biden or Harris express outrage about people coming to the country illegally and then committing other crimes.”

“I’ve never once covered an incoming administration about which I’ve had so little sense of what will happen.” (Halperin)

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Decoding How The World Works (11-26-24)

01:00 All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=157926
06:00 America’s illegal immigration problem
08:30 Trump’s tariff threats against Mexico, Canada, China
14:00 Fake News Creator on Manipulating Media for the World’s Worst Humans | Phil Elwood, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44ACKKfolFE
24:30 Walmart turns its back on woke
34:00 Dennis Prager sounds like he’s in a coma, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=157917
36:45 Being a woman is easier | Nina Power, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tUD077Pml4
40:00 Psychologist Diana Fleischman, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Fleischman
42:00 If you want to be part of a community that looks after each other, join a religion
44:00 I thought the left was great at solidarity & compassion but the religious do it better in the real world
53:00 Kamala’s campaign makes excuses
57:00 Kip joins to discuss liberalism, feminism, mysticism
1:28:00 Why Has Trump disappeared from tv cameras?
1:34:00 Live From The Table: Ann Coulter. Immigration, Forgiving Trump, Worries About the “Crazy” Hard Right, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9RiDPbiiUA
1:35:00 Elliott Blatt joins to talk about seeing a homeless man’s beautiful red dog as the sun sets
1:56:30 Ann Coulter talks about her friend David Cole
1:58:00 Ann Coulter only wants the best looking immigrants
1:59:30 Understanding Trump’s picks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgv0lt5yO64
2:01:00 Donald Trump’s campaign was willing to say no to its special interest groups (such as the anti-abortion crowd) while the Kamala Harris campaign failed to do that
2:06:00 Does Kamala have a bright political future?
2:08:00 Trump Transition, Democrat Realignment, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T19MbNiZSm4
2:12:00 Trump merch is cool
2:13:00 The 2024 election was Starbucks voters (Democrats) vs Dunkin’ Donuts voters

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All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians

Here are some highlights from this 2024 book by Phil Elwood:

* On weekends, I traveled to universities around the nation to argue about what policies would lead to nuclear war. Rapid – fire reading of news clippings scored points in a round. So did biting insults lodged at your opponent in an attempt to trap them in a rhetorical mishap. You won by manipulating the news and calling it “evidence” to advance your argument. I won a lot.

* The Hill is a real – world version of debate team. Everyone talks fast, and there are winners, losers, and nukes.

* I’m certain I’ll be excommunicated from DC. I’ll have to return to Olympia. My parents will once again watch their son emerge at the Arrivals gate holding his plush toy Opus the Penguin, like a deadbeat Sisyphus. Instead, I’m promoted. Moynihan’s office makes one call, and I’m hired as a legislative correspondent for the senior senator from Michigan, Carl Levin. The happy hours continue. It’s amazing I get anything done with all the booze. Toward the end of my first year, the chief of staff hauls me into his office.
“I strongly suggest you get a college degree,” he says. “George Washington is off the table, clearly. What about Georgetown?”
Given my high school C average, Georgetown should be off the table, too. But it turns out Levin has considerable influence with the university. One letter from the senator and I’m accepted as a transfer student. I realize this is how the world works, or at least how this world does. It is not a meritocracy.

* I’m fascinated by this bloodbath, particularly by the criminals on the witness stand. Who helps them? Who prepped them for this massacre? Whoever it was, they aren’t good enough at their job. Where’s the consistent messaging? Why weren’t they expecting these questions? Why aren’t they repeating the same five lines over and over and over? Why are they just giving easy sound bites to the senator and the media?
I realize I’m probably the only person in the world who has this reaction to the Enron scandal.

* As the anchor nods like a concerned parent, I watch as [Jon] Powers’s words — my words — become legitimate in real time because he’s saying them on cable news. In an instant, ideas I thought up in a windowless office appear to become reality, certified by CNN itself. The audience doesn’t see me building the machine that creates this illusion. They don’t even know I exist. If a PR person appears on TV, it usually means we’ve fucked up.
As CNN broadcasts my message to millions of Americans, I realize my job isn’t to manipulate public opinion. My job is to get gatekeepers like CNN to do it for me. Once you have ink, your story becomes real. A conversation starts that didn’t exist moments before, a conversation nobody would think to have if you hadn’t started it. The public begins to accept something you created out of nothing.
And I have something reporters will always need: access to inside information. Information is the only commodity I control, but in this world it’s valuable currency. The media demand constant fuel. I can feed information to reporters and toggle how much they see. I feel as if I’ve put on a pair of night – vision goggles that reveal the hidden machines powering the world. I begin to see levers I can pull. The adrenaline that spikes feels stronger than any line of cocaine.

* My biggest client was the U.S. Tuna Foundation, which tried to get pregnant women to eat, you guessed it, more tuna. We paid off academics to argue that a certain form of molecular mercury was too large to cross the blood – brain barrier. The National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition maintained that women of childbearing age should eat at least twelve ounces of seafood per week. We were caught by none other than the New York Times : “Industry Money Fans Debate on Fish,” read the headline that exposed the whole nasty affair.

* PR firms employ two types of people: bureaucrats and operatives. Bureaucrats are the accountants. The conference call leaders. The digital paper pushers. Operatives infect newsrooms. Call reporters. Do whatever it takes to get ink. I have always been and will always be an operative.

* If you make one friend inside a newsroom, you can get them to introduce you to their colleagues. You can infect that newsroom.

* They know I have something juicy, an exclusive. They build their careers, and I do my job to spin a story for a client. I’m understanding better every day how influence works, and my own influence is growing.

* My industry is worth approximately $129 billion. We will do anything to earn those billions. The best journalists in the world aren’t always breaking stories because of their dogged reporting skills; they’re breaking them because they rely on people like me to feed them exclusive scoops. We use journalists to do our clients’ bidding. And then the public reads their stories and believes them because they are coming from a trusted news source and not a corporate bagman.
Sadly, we have the journalists outnumbered. Three hundred thousand people are employed by the PR industry in the United States, compared to an estimated forty thousand journalists.

* I engage in the equivalent of “insider trading” with the media on a regular basis. I don’t just talk to myself during this period. I use a group of a dozen journalists to field – test ideas. During my incubation period, I’ll call one or two of them and float a strategy by them that has not been given to the client. It’s always positioned as “What if, hypothetically, my client decided to do X … Would that be newsworthy?” And I make sure that all these calls are off the record. I’m not sure what a journalism school ethics professor would think of this practice.

* [Peter] Brown is completely comfortable with how the world works and his place in it. He understands the hidden machinery behind it all. He knows how to operate it. And he understands that the most important thing of all is how you look while you’re doing it. How you appear. He once told me, “We can’t just do a good job. We also have to appear to do a good job.”
And that’s public relations. If you can do that, then you can do whatever you want, and there won’t be any consequences. You can represent a dictator, and everyone still comes to your Christmas party.

* “Never let anyone tell you Americans don’t use the metric system. We measure our bullets in millimeters and our drugs in grams.”

* During media training, PR operatives learn that every story has three parts: a villain, a victim, and a vindicator. In this story, Mary was the victim, and when he murdered the drunk, George became the villain. In the PR business, we try to convert a villain into a vindicator or a victim as fast as possible. And that’s exactly what the town did when they found George “not guilty” sans trial. They made him the hero, a vindicator of battered women. The deceased drunk was switched from a murder victim to a wife beater who deserved to die. A villain. Every story needs a villain. Show me a good story without one.

* Gaddafi’s appearance before the UN General Assembly is what, in public relations, we call an inflection point. In Back to the Future Part II , Doc Brown uses a chalkboard to explain how a small event in the past can skew a time line, creating an alternative future. In public relations, we try to create alternative futures for our clients. We do this by capitalizing on an inflection point, a critical moment when the time line can skew toward, we hope, the positive. Gaddafi’s televised speech in front of world leaders has the potential to erase decades of bad press and negative public perception. If you manage the coverage right, you can serve up rehabilitation, goodwill, and a new image, all in a single news cycle. And the public will eat it up with a spoon. If a client is redeemed in the eyes of both Fox News and CNN, it’s as good as washing them in holy water.
Emerge, my client, reborn and rebranded — until the next scandal .
Every client, large and small, faces an inflection point. Some you create. Some are created for you. An inflection point usually comes after your client has shit the bed. Personally, I consider every crisis a golden opportunity. If my client lights their house on fire, you can be damn sure I’ll get the press to blame outdated fire codes. I tell clients, “Don’t be a hero. Always work to find a better villain.”

* I’m sending these reporters to a “terrorist rehabilitation camp” in Tripoli, Libya’s capital. There, they’ll meet Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who have changed their murderous ways, put down their Kalashnikovs and truck bombs, and who now study a reformed text of jihad called The Book of Correctional Studies . This is a propaganda tour for Saif Gaddafi. The general strategy boils down to Look! Gaddafi’s son is re – educating terrorists.

* The first thing I notice in Sarajevo are the bombed – out, shot – up buildings. I feel like I’m heading into an active war zone. A few hours later, while I’m riding a rumbling bus coughing its way down poorly paved streets, a Bosnian Muslim guide tells me that the Bosnians left their city this way intentionally. To let the world know what happened.

* I’ve done it for Gaddafi, and BLJ [Brown Lloyd James] is doing it right now for a host of other foreign baddies. Peter Brown’s creed “Everyone deserves representation” has been pushed to the extreme. In addition to the Gaddafis, BLJ’s clients have included Syrian president Bashar al – Assad; Ali Bongo, president of Gabon, who paid the firm in briefcases full of cash; and the Chinese Communist Party – funded China – United States Exchange Foundation. Though, in one pitch meeting, we did turn down the government of Sri Lanka after one of its senior officials referred to ethnic Tamils as parasites and advocated for their extinction.
I’m only one cog in the machine that powers this system. But I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I’m a very useful cog. In DC, penned up in a posh conference room, I can ignore these pesky moral concerns. Here in Bosnia, where you can feel the blood in the ground, it’s not so easy.

* PR pros invest a great deal of time and effort to bring hit pieces to fruition. Most often, clients want to see a hit piece on their primary competitor. Early on in my time working for Peter Brown, I needed to hit one of my clients’ political enemies. My adversary did not exactly follow the letter of the law. Their tax status and a few other legal t ’s and i ’s were not crossed and dotted. I knew this because my client knew this; he had the resources needed to obtain this information. All I needed was the appropriate messenger.
Washington is littered with nonprofit organizations founded with the ideal of changing the world for the better. But ideals don’t keep the lights on. Money does. My client knew this. A significant private donation yielded a press release from a legitimate nonprofit and a letter of inquiry to the Department of Justice. Suddenly, my client’s enemy was less concerned with my client and more concerned with their own growing legal bills.

* Clients ask for hit pieces all the time. Walmart likes to see negative articles about Amazon. So, in 2018, it hired PR pros to create the Free and Fair Markets Initiative (FFMI), which described itself as a “nonprofit watchdog committed to scrutinizing Amazon’s harmful practices and promoting a fair, modern marketplace that works for all Americans.” Don’t be shocked: FFMI was another astroturf organization. PR pros get well paid for creating these shell nonprofits — in this case, $250,000. FFMI put out a stream of content hitting Amazon: Labor issues. Controversial items being sold on Amazon. Scandals in the C – Suite. All highlighted in tweets, press releases, and media statements by the FFMI.

* BLJ is sending Vogue journalist Joan Juliet Buck to Damascus. The magazine is going to feature our client Asma al – Assad in its March 2011 issue, thanks to Peter Brown calling up his old friend Anna Wintour. The theme of the issue is “Power.” We’re using the wife of Syrian president (read: dictator) Bashar al – Assad to try to strengthen the relationship between the United States and Syria. It’s an American tactic: the First Lady is always more popular than the president, and she makes her husband look good by association.
The Vogue story runs under the title “A Rose in the Desert.” When I pick up a copy of the glossy magazine, I’m gobsmacked by the first line of the piece: “Asma al – Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic — the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies,” the writer gushes. In the first few paragraphs alone, the piece describes Mrs. al – Assad as “breezy” and “fun” and calls Syria “a secular country where women earn as much as men and the Muslim veil is forbidden in universities, a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings, but its shadow zones are deep and dark.”
The piece reads like the reporter spent a few days with Gwyneth Paltrow: “Asma al – Assad empties a box of fondue mix into a saucepan for lunch,” Buck writes. “The household is run on wildly democratic principles. ‘We all vote on what we want, and where,’ she [Asma] says.” (For example, her children voted to make the chandelier over the dining table out of cut – up comic books.) It’s rare that you send a journalist on a propaganda tour and they actually print the propaganda. But you won’t find any complaints from the flaks who set it all up.
The Vogue writer says Mrs. al – Assad likely has a “killer IQ.” Poor choice of words when describing a dictator’s wife. The article is chock – full of questionable journalistic choices. It quotes Bashar al – Assad himself saying he became an eye surgeon because there is “very little blood.” Vogue publishes photos of Assad playing with his children: he is dressed like an American president in jeans and a gray fleece.

* Part of my strategy in dealing with reporters is to express my agenda up front.

* Rule 1. Don’t believe the lie that “any press is good press.”

Rule 2. Don’t repeat the negative.
Tell me the first Richard Nixon quote that pops into your head. “I am not a crook,” right? You remember the line even if you weren’t born yet when Nixon said it. Everyone remembers the line. Those five words are perhaps the single greatest PR blunder in American history. Nixon repeated the negative, the first thing in media training we teach clients to avoid doing. If someone asks how long you’ve been beating your wife, you don’t say, “I’m not a wife beater.” You say, “I’m a good man.” Why deny when you can obfuscate?
Rule 3. Never wrestle with a pig in shit. *
Two things will happen. You’ll be covered in shit. And the pig will like it. Never get down and fight with an opponent who is beneath you.
Rule 4. Don’t kick someone when they are up.
An old saying in Washington. It’s too much work to attack a strong opponent. Know your place. Dotcom kicks whomever he wants: beloved CEOs, the entertainment industry, powerful lobbies like the MPAA.

* Remember my saying that you can’t very well take out an ad in the New York Times to sell heroin? Well, not unless that ad is penned by psychiatrist Sally Satel, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and unpaid advisory board member for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Satel’s 2004 New York Times piece was titled, “Doctors Behind Bars: Treating Pain Is Now Risky Business.” How is this for shifting the narrative? “Pain treatment itself is an area ripe for misinterpretation. Many patients who seek doctors’ help have already tried nonsteroid anti – inflammatory drugs, conventional opiates like codeine and even surgery, yet they are still in severe pain from cancer, degenerative arthritis, nerve damage or other conditions,” Satel wrote. “Large doses of medicines like hydrocodone (Vicodin), oxycodone (OxyContin), morphine or methadone may be required.” Satel actually plugged Oxy by name, and quoted a Purdue shill claiming that one in ten Americans in pain could benefit from a long – term, high – dose treatment with the drug. All I can say is well done.

* we have no idea how to [go viral]. Engineering a “viral moment” is like choreographing an earthquake. If it happens, it’s a shock. And it usually causes damage. Depending on the disposition of the engagement, attention to the wrong aspect of a narrative can be a self – inflicted wound. A lot of PR firms are extremely interested in creating “social media campaigns” and “influencer outreach” to buttress their earned media work. In my experience, you win the mainstream media, and the dog wags its tail: the social media mob follows. There are instances of the tail wagging the dog and social media driving the conversation, but that is the nightmare scenario. That is mob rule.

* Done right, a piece in the opinion pages of a newspaper can operate as a form of track – two diplomacy, one the American media provide free of charge. In an op – ed, heads of state or high – ranking government officials can communicate with each other when other lines of communication are compromised.

* The Nigerian administration wants to talk (and pay) its way out of a problem without acting. Richard Levick likes to say, “You cannot talk your way out of something you acted your way into.” In hiring us, the Nigerians wanted magicians who would “use their powers’” to will good press into existence. But I am not an alchemist. I cannot turn shit into gold. If terrorists kidnap hundreds of schoolchildren, and you do nothing about it, your PR guy cannot save you. It is as simple as that. If the client does not act, nothing happens. The Nigerians have apparently never learned Newton’s First Law of Motion: “Every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force.”

* One of the most fantastic examples of self – immolation is Bell Pottinger. In 2016, the British PR firm was putting up big numbers for some high – profile clients and mining the depths of hell for others. Flaks from the firm went to South Africa, a nation with a slightly complicated history of race relations, and tried to sow racial discord prior to an election. Once this came to light, the media were (rightfully) unforgiving. Bell Pottinger went from making over half a billion on a single contract with the U.S. government to shutting its doors over a single negative news cycle. This was not a case of flying too close to the sun; it was a case of believing you were more powerful than the sun.

* To structure an anonymity deal, you need a monopoly on the information a journalist wants. Check. Or you can position yourself as the second source confirming information they already have but cannot print without confirmation. I’ll also be helpful to Tau in this regard, as Psy’s spooks won’t be going on the record. And as shocking as this is, I am a reliable source. I have never given information to a reporter that I knew was false. Providing good information to Tau for years has earned me points with his editor, who also has to sign off on my anonymity.
Journalism would die without anonymous sources. They take risks to leak stories that check the power of the rich and powerful. But the sword has two edges. Anonymous sourcing is used by the powerful to advance their agendas. It is incumbent on the news organization, the reporter, the editors, and their corporate counsel to determine the veracity of the information and the informant’s motives. The majority of this responsibility falls on the reporter. While gathering information, they must understand how it fits into a broader agenda, should one exist. It almost always does.

* PR operatives gamble every time we pitch a story. Sometimes we lose. Just like any good gambler, we try to minimize our losses. To do that, we must know what can go wrong. The editor could blow the headline. The paper could break the embargo date. It could misquote your client. It could accidentally quote you. An off – the – record statement could bleed into the story. Your adversary might have the goods on your client. A regulator or government might step in and skew the story. Other news might eclipse your story. The reporter you are working with might get scooped. Your source could get cold feet. And finally, it might turn out that your client has been lying to you the whole time.

Posted in Books, PR | Comments Off on All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians

Dennis Prager Update

Nov. 12, 2024, Dennis Prager, 76, had a serious fall at his home and was taken to the hospital where he went in for emergency back and neck surgery.

Nov. 17, 2024, a post on radiodiscussions.com read: “According to other Salem Radio hosts, he hurt his back severely. Overall, however, they are being somewhat tight-lipped, so far, on details. For example, Bob Frantz, a host on WHK-AM 1420 in Cleveland, Ohio said that he can’t say more right now.”

Another post: “Social Media Freedom Foundation founder Jason Fyk also wrote in a post on X that he had spoken with Prager’s wife, Susan Reed, and wrote that the media executive’s “condition is far worse than I thought.””

Nov. 18, 2024, PragerU posts: “Here is the latest on Dennis. Progress has been slow, but steady. There’s still a lot of swelling and inflammation around his neck and upper spine. Until that recedes, it’s hard to get a good sense of where this is all headed. But, rest assured, the overall trend is positive. Patience is required. But, as we all know, having patience is hard. His body needs time to heal. Let’s give it to him.”

In a video uploaded Nov. 19, Julie Hartman asks Dennis’s adopted son Aaron: “What do you think he’s thinking right now about his situation?”

Aaron: “I don’t know if he’s aware of what’s going on.”

Nov. 21, 2024, Carol Swain posted: “Please continue to pray for Dennis Prager. His condition has changed in a not so great direction. He has been diagnosed with pneumonia. Pray for ⁦@SuePrager and the Prager family.”

Nov. 22, 2024, a post on Tigerdroppings.com noted: “Prolonged immobility greatly affects every system of the body (respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, skeletal, etc.) with immobility-related heart & lung complications sometimes causing death in already-compromised patients.”

A friend says:

It looks like once again, if you can avoid surgery you should do so. It’s always problematic at any stage. I don’t know how badly his back and neck were hurt, but if his surgery was for any length of time, the time under really can harm your respiratory system. We don’t know how strong his respiratory system is. He is a cigar smoker which generally affects the mouth and perhaps the throat, but if he inhales the smoke it may weaken his lungs.

It is not unusual after surgery for the patient to develop a respiratory infection, often pneumonia. It is not clear whether he has viral or bacterial pneumonia. Bacterial is more life threatening unless it is caught early enough to be treated with anti biotics.

It sure sound like he is in a medically induced coma, on a respirator and on IV heavy duty anti-biotics (such as vankomyacin, the anti-biotic of last resort).

In better times, Dennis Prager broadcasts from the Relief Factor Pain Free studio. I wonder if his doctors thought about slipping the poor bloke some Relief Factor? Imagine a right-wing radio host who could only turn for relief from the supplements he promotes?

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