NEW RIOT IDEOLOGY: RESULTS THROUGH COERCION:

Coates, who lived in fear of black street toughs as a teen, sees the police as a greater threat to black well-being than the drug “crews” and gangs roaming the streets of West Baltimore today. His vision, in part, is to free gang-ridden areas from the malign grip of white standards and aggressive policing. Coates has adopted his father’s view that “our condition, the worst of this country’s condition – poor, diseased, illiterate, crippled, dumb – was not just a tumor to be burrowed out but proof that the whole body was a tumor, that America was not a victim of a great rot but the rot itself.” Not even a hurricane of violence, says the new riot ideology, justifies a vigorous police presence in black localities.

The cops, complains Coates, “lord over” young black men with “the moral authority of a protection racket.” There is a touch of truth in this. But, Coates goes on, the problem with the police “is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.” The solution, he implies, is a black population released from the ideals of the American dream and from the “false morality” of white Americans.

A man, a city, a movement and a moment have met: Baltimore has, for the time being, been liberated from American morality. Let’s judge Coates’s vision on how that plays out.

Coates won’t pay the price when it fails. And it will.

STOPPING WITH THE MURDEROUS SAVAGERY WOULD BE A GOOD START: Iran’s Rouhani says it’s up to Muslims to correct Islam’s image.

MIKE DITKA ON PEYTON MANNING REPORT: AL JAZEERA ‘NOT CREDIBLE’ AND ‘GARBAGE,’ CBS SPORTS NOTES:

Former Bears coach and current ESPN analyst Mike Ditka lashed out at Al Jazeera, calling it “not credible” and a “garbage” news organization.

Via Pro Football Talk:

“I love Peyton Manning, I mean, I think he’s a real man and a real credit to the game of football,” Ditka said. “Here’s the thing that bothers me: Al Jazeera is not a credible news organization. They’re out there spreading garbage. That’s what they do. Yet we give them credibility by talking about it. They’re garbage. That’s what they are.”

Ditka, an outspoken conservative, has a strong take, but he’s not entirely accurate. Al Jazeera is known as a credible news organization that has been recognized with multiple Peabody Awards in broadcasting. It’s not doing itself any favors with its sourcing on its Manning report, considering Charlie Sly, the pharmacist cited in the documentary that will reportedly run on Al Jazeera, recanted his story to ESPN when he realized that it had used information he had “made up” to Liam Collins, a British hurdler and the undercover reporter who he says was trying to get into the supplementation business.

The Broncos and Colts both came out strongly against the report as well — it’s getting more and more difficult to believe the story could have any hint of truth.

Good to know that the people who brought you “fake but accurate,” and global cooling, and stories that defined Godwin’s Law consider Al Jazeera “a credible news organization” — well, as credible as CBS, I guess. Old media sure knows how to circle the wagons when the chips are down.

In the meantime,  “Al Jazeera Sports should probably just stick to the National Buzkashi League,” Iowahawk quips. Heh, indeed.™

Related: And to bring this post full circle, “CBS Muslim Panel Accidentally Includes Professional Leftist Obama Operative.”

IT’S FASCISM ALL THE WAY DOWN: U. Haifa Arab students shout down Yale supporter of coexistence.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Islam and Minnesota: Can we hear some straight talk for a change? “But how about those ‘Minnesota men’ who keep getting arrested for trying to join jihadist organizations or commit terrorist acts? They must be studiously ignored.”

THIS IS A TRANSNATIONAL PHENOMENON: “Left-wing extremism never seems to lead to any arrests.”

DELAYED BY THE HOLIDAYS, my Zaevion Dobson piece will be in the USA Today print edition tomorrow.

HASKELL WEXLER DIES AT 93; TWO-TIME OSCAR-WINNING CINEMATOGRAPHER AND LIFELONG SOCIALIST ACTIVIST:

One of the few cinematographers to have received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (in 1996), Wexler won his first Oscar for his black-and-white photography on “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” director Mike Nichols’ 1966 debut starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

His acceptance speech was among the briefest in Hollywood history: “I hope we can use our art for peace and for love. Thanks.”

He won his second Oscar for “Bound for “Glory,” director Hal Ashby’s 1976 movie starring David Carradine as legendary singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie.

Wexler also received Oscar nominations for best cinematography for the 1975 film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (shared with Bill Butler), “Matewan” (1987) and “Blaze” (1989).

Among Wexler’s other feature film credits as a cinematographer are “The Thomas Crown Affair,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “Coming Home,” “Colors” and “The Babe.”

He also was visual consultant on George Lucas’ 1973 classic “American Graffiti.” And he received an “additional photography” credit on Terrence Malick’s 1978 film “Days of Heaven,” for which cinematographer Nestor Almendros won an Oscar.

Wexler made his feature directorial debut with “Medium Cool,” a low-budget 1969 film that he wrote and for which he served as a producer and as the director of photography.

Described by Wexler as “a wedding between features and cinema verite,” the drama about an emotionally detached TV news cameraman was partly shot in Chicago during the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention.

At one point, as the camera inches closer to a tear-gas cloud and a wall of police officers, a voice off-camera famously can be heard warning, “Look out, Haskell — it’s real!”

It wasn’t — the voice was dubbed in after the shoot to add to the “truthiness,” as a later entertainment industry leftist who blended reality and socialist fantasy would say. But taken on its own level, Medium Cool (heavily influenced by an earlier sixties movie about a cameraman, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up) is a fascinating movie. Antonioni’s  Blow-Up, despite its setting at the height of swinging mod-era London is a hypnotic, uniquely timeless film. Wexler’s Medium Cool is very much of its era; watching it is a time capsule to the ugliness of 1968 and the assault on ossified New Deal Democrats by the radical new left of the 1960s, as I wrote at Ed Driscoll.com back in 2012:

As a result of the Chicago riots that Wexler filmed, the 1972 Democratic convention was a much different affair than Chicago in 1968, as Steve Hayward noted in the first volume of his two-part Age of Reagan series:

The Democrats had chosen Miami as their convention site in 1972 for the same reason the Republicans had chosen it again: The main convention sites were across a causeway from the mainland, which made it easier for police to prevent any large Chicago-style protest or riot from forming. It was unnecessary. In Ben Wattenberg’s memorable phrase, “There won’t be any riots in Miami because the people who rioted in Chicago are on the Platform Committee.” The Leftist writer I.F. Stone agreed: “It was joy to be at the Democratic convention this year. … I felt I had lived to see a miracle. Those who had been in the streets of Chicago were now, only four years and one convention later, in the delegates’ seats in Miami.” Just to make sure, though, Jerry Rubin, one of the leaders of the Chicago riots who was inside the convention hall in 1972, told a reporter: “If George McGovern doesn’t win the nomination, we are going to have Chicago right there on the convention floor.” Wrecking the Democratic Party may have been what many “new politics” activists had in mind all along. Rolling Stone’s Hunter S. Thompson wrote that “the only way to save the Democratic Party is to destroy it.”

Call it fundamental transformation, to coin a phrase.

JAMES LOVELOCK: If you’re not all-in for nuclear power, then you’re not really worried about climate change.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE: College Student Claimed She Had Been Raped in a Park- But She Forgot About One Key Fact. “Police were initially suspicious when they discovered that the man she accused was already in jail during the times of the alleged attacks.”

Plus, a rare degree of accountability: “Mizra has been sentenced to two years in prison for the false allegations.”

AT AMAZON, Year-End Deals Galore.

DON SURBER: Firefox Is This Year’s Darwin Award Winner.

In March, Mozilla — parent company of Firefox — hired Brendan Eich as its CEO, only to publicly humiliate him and force him to resign over a $1,000 donation to the Proposition 8 effort, a 2008 ballot initiative a majority of Californians supported. Three board members also resigned.

Nine months later, Mozilla is in trouble, because of a boycott (I stopped using Firefox) and the vacuum in leadership left by his departure. . . .

Any company dumb enough to lose a CEO (and three board members) over demands from political hyenas deserves to fail.

They give the Darwin Award to those who kill themselves stupidly before they procreate. The corporate cup should go to Mozilla, for sacrificing its corporate leadership to liberal pagans.

Yep.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Turn Your Blog Into A Six-Figure Moneymaking Machine.

AL JAZEERA UNDER FIRE AFTER SOURCE BACKS OFF PEYTON MANNING DOPING CLAIM:

Charlie Sly, the source behind the Manning allegation cited in the investigative report, “The Dark Side,” posted a video late Saturday saying that he had been videotaped without his knowledge or consent by Al Jazeera’s Liam Collins, a former British hurdler.

“The statements on any recordings or any communications that Al-Jazeera plans to air are absolutely false and incorrect,” Mr. Sly said on YouTube. “To be clear, I am recanting any such statements and there is no truth to any statement of mine that Al Jazeera plans to air. Under no circumstances should any of those statements recordings or communications be aired.”

* * * * * * * *

Mr. Sly told ESPN’s Chris Mortenson that he was purposely dropping famous names and giving false information to Mr. Collins in order to “determine whether this guy was legitimate or just trying to steal some knowledge about the business.”

Mr. Sly said he was a pharmacy intern in 2013 at the Guyer Institute in Indianapolis, where Mr. Manning received treatment for an injury in 2011. The Al Jazeera report identifies Mr. Sly as a pharmacist.

“When I was there, I had never seen the Mannings ever. They were not even living there at that time,” Mr. Sly said. “Someone who worked there said they had been there before. That was the extent of any knowledge I had. I feel badly. I never saw any files. This is just amazing that it reached this point.

The Al Jazeera report alleges that the Denver Broncos quarterback received shipments of human-growth hormone [HGH] mailed to his wife, Ashley Manning.

The Denver Broncos quarterback told ESPN that he had received legal therapy under Dr. Guyer, including nutrition and oxygen therapy, “but never HGH,” adding that, “My wife has never provided any medication for me to take.”

Both the Denver Broncos and Mr. Manning’s former team, the Indianapolis Colts, issued statements Sunday in support of the quarterback.

“Knowing Peyton Manning and everything he stands for, the Denver Broncos support him 100 percent,” the team said. “These are false claims made to Al Jazeera, and we don’t believe the report.”

The statement continued that, “Peyton is rightfully outraged by the allegations, which he emphatically denied to our organization and which have been publicly renounced by the source who initially provided them.”

Jason Cole of Bleacher Report tweeted, “Obviously haven’t seen the Al Jazeera report on Peyton Manning, but idea he’d have HGH delivered to his wife as a cover seems pretty stupid.”

Related:

    “You’ve got a global — a set of global networks — that Al Jazeera has been the leader in, that are literally changing people’s minds and attitudes…Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news…You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads, and the kind of stuff that we do on our news…Which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.”

—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 3 March 2011, as quoted in an NPR article headlined, “Clinton Lauds Virtues Of Al Jazeera: ‘It’s Real News.’”

At least at the moment, this news isn’t looking too real.

(Via Hot Air.)

GERARD VAN DER LEUN: Happy Birthday to Me: In My Extreme Age.

FINDING OUT HOW FAST A RENTAL CHEVY SUBURBAN CAN GO. “Inadvertently, this also proves why you should never buy a former rental car.”

DEALS ON Schlage Electronic Deadbolts.

Plus, today only at Amazon: 69% Off “How I Met Your Mother:” The Complete Series.

And, also today only: Up to 80% Off Calvin and Hobbes, Wimpy Kid, and more on Kindle.

Plus: Save On Select SanDisk Memory Products.

THIS IS COOL: A Failproof Motorcycle Airbag Suit.

ALSO, LEFTIES: The people most likely to refuse to have their children vaccinated tend to be white, well-educated and affluent, researchers report.

No, really: “It’s those communities with the Prius driving, composting, organic food-eating people.”

AT AMAZON, trade in your old stuff, get new stuff.

FLASHBACK: The Navy’s Pegasus-Class Hydrofoils.

GEORGE WILL ON “THE FOOLISH ‘THEISM’ OF GOVERNMENT ENTHUSIASTS” IN THE WASHINGTON POST, aka, almost everyone in the Washington Post not named George Will:

Presidential campaigns inflate expectations that power wielded from government’s pinnacle will invigorate the nation. Thus campaigns demonstrate that creationists threaten the creative ferment that produces social improvement. Not religious creationists, who are mistaken but inconsequential. It is secular creationists whose social costs are steep.

“Secular theists” — economist Don Boudreaux’s term — produce governments gripped by the fatal conceit that they are wiser than society’s spontaneous experimental order. Such governments imposed order suffocates improvisation and innovation. Like religious creationists gazing upon biological complexity, secular theists assume that social complexity requires an intentional design imposed from on high by wise designers, a.k.a. them.

And even allegedly conservative newspapers aren’t immune from its symptoms: “The Wall Street Journal Hates Ted Cruz. Here’s Why.”

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Polymer Embedded With Metallic Nanoparticles Enables Soft Robotics.

“YOUTHS” RESPONSIBLE: Kentucky’s Mall St. Matthews Shuts Down After Brawls Involving Up to 2,000. “Businesses were in the process of closing their doors, steel grates, and you had juveniles that were not allowing businesses to close up — [they were] climbing on the grates.”

No one was arrested.