“The High Price of Telling the Truth About Islam”

How Making a Documentary Defending the Rights of Muslims
Turned my Worldview Upside Down

By Eric Allen Bell

A strange thing happened to me today when I was driving past the Federal Building in Los Angeles. There were a crowd of people assembled there with signs which said that Israel is an aggressive force in the Middle East and that Iran is being picked on. As I stopped at a red light I heard a man with a mega phone lead the protesters in a chant charging Obama with genocide. I saw many young people and several Muslim women with their heads covered. It was an anti-war demonstration that probably a year ago I would have supported. But although I am not in favor of military action, I know that Iran is not another Iraq, and that in fact there is more going on here than the overly-simplified picture that the protestors were painting, as cars drove by honking in support. As the light turned green another sign caught my eye – a picture of the Twin Towers burning which read “911 Was an Inside Job”. As I looked at a sea of Palestinian flags and college kids banging on drums I felt a certain frustration – frustration based on a series of events that have changed my world view.

In the Summer of 2010, having recently escaped Hollywood, CA to take a much needed break from my profession as a film maker, I was driving in my car listening to a story on NPR. It seems the people in my new home of Murfreesboro, TN were up in arms over the proposed construction of a 53,000 square foot mega mosque, to be built in their small town in the middle of the American Bible Belt.

I listened carefully, to the sound bytes, of those who had shown up to a town hall meeting to voice their opposition and, as someone who was rather new to the South, I was surprised by what I was hearing. “America is a Christian nation and there is only one God and his name is not Allah and his son is Jesus Christ” and “America is a Christian Nation” and “These Muslims do not share my values and I don’t want them in my backyard”. Growing up in Southern California, I had never heard anything like this before in my life. And I started to follow the story with great interest.

On the outer edge of town, off a small country road, there was a large parcel of land, right next door to a Baptist church, with a big sign that read, “Future Home of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro”. Over the past 6 months that sign had been defaced twice. Once it was broken in half and another time the words “Not Welcome” were spray painted over it.

Rutherford County, which includes Murfreesboro, only has a little over 100,000 residents and yet the area boasts nearly 200 Christian churches. Having not been much of a fan of Islam or Christianity or religion in general (and that’s putting it mildly) I saw this as something of a David vs. Goliath story – with fanatical Evangelicals bullying a peaceful Muslim population, which had been in the community for over 30 years without there ever being any trouble. And, after learning that in July there was to be a big parade down Main Street to the town square, protesting the construction of this new mosque, I decided someone really needed to make a documentary about this. And even though I had gone to Murfreesboro to escape the film world for a while, it seemed pretty clear that if I did not document this in a movie, no one else would. I wanted to show the world what I was seeing. So I put together a small film crew and began production on a documentary I would title, “Not Welcome”.

I had never seen more American flags assembled together in one place than I had on that hot July morning as the anti-mosque crowd gathered at the base camp to prepare for the parade. Many of the marchers showed up wearing red, white and blue. I had 4 cameras covering the event with one crew embedded with the Liberal activists who were going to counter-demonstrate and the rest of the cameras with me, embedded with those who were to march against the mosque. I conducted several interviews in the school parking lot where locals and those who had driven for hours gathered, prepared to march against what they perceived to be not only a threat to their way of life, but also something of an insult given the events of September 11, 2001. Two Congressional candidates, both promising to “stop the Islamic training camp” showed up and used this opportunity to campaign, one of whom even gave a speech through a mega phone reminding folks to vote for him if they wanted to stop Sharia Law from coming to Murfreesboro. The pastor of Baptist church gathered everyone together in prayer, and the parade took off down Main Street with signs that read “Google the Koran” and “Stop Homegrown Terrorism” and someone in the crowd handed out hundreds of small Israeli flags as several hundred Southerners marched against the mosque.

About six months later I had accumulated over 300 hours of footage, interviewing the parade organizer, both Congressional candidates, the Mayor, the Imam at the mosque and several of its board members, numerous concerned residents on both sides of the issue, Muslim residents, city council members, a Christian Zionist lobbyist who was organizing the opposition to the mosque – and I had even filmed weeks of court proceedings, as a local group had filed suit against the County to stop them from issuing any construction permits to the Islamic Center. The court proceedings were truly a circus as a country lawyer in loud suit with a bow tie argued that Islam is not a religion and that he was prepared to take this matter to the Supreme Court if necessary. That legal action had failed and failed miserably. And although many of the townspeople did in fact have a number of very valid concerns, I felt that those whom they had chosen to represent them were not their best foot forward. In many ways, for the people of Murfreesboro, TN this turned out to be an international embarrassment – given the level of interest from the press.

Also, someone tried to set fire to some construction equipment at the site of the new mosque and the student activist group, calling themselves “Middle Tennesseans for Religious Freedom” put together a candle light vigil where hundreds of townspeople showed up in support of tolerance. A few young men showed up in a pickup truck and honked their horn repeatedly throughout the vigil. Their clothes seemed to indicate they had spent the work day hanging drywall. And when they put up a huge sign in the back of their truck which read “No Mosque” while misspelling the word mosque, I did not hesitate to film them but to also sort of taunt them, in order to provoke a good response on camera. And I got it. One of them said we should suspend the Constitution and went on to say that “All them Mooslums should be shipped home” even the ones who were born here.

Adding more fuel to that fire was an incident that took place when I attempted to interview Kevin Fisher at a Tea Party event on the town square. It was my opinion that in order to avoid accusations of being bigoted, the money interests (a Christian Zionist organization called Proclaiming Justice to the Nations) chose the only person of color, already involved in this issue, to lead the parade and to be a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Kevin Fisher was an African American college dropout, who worked as a prison guard and became a passionate opponent of the new mosque, after his wife divorced him and became, you guessed it, a Muslim convert. When I approached him on the square with a crew that included 4 cameras, saying only “Hi, Kevin” he dialed his cell phone and called 9-1-1 saying that he was being “racially harassed”. This not only made the headlines of the local paper but the incident, including audio from the 9-1-1 call was played over and over that night on the local evening news. This became something of a running joke, when I was recognized at the grocery store in Murfreesboro for instance, people would often point at me and say, “Hey, stop racially harassing me” and then we would all have a big laugh. And Islamic blogs such as Loonwatch.com were only too happy to run an article about how an opponent of the mosque was “playing the race card” against a filmmaker who was just trying to ask questions.

CNN breezed through town and produced a quick hit piece painting all of the mosque opponents as uneducated rednecks and the Islamic community as everyday people who were being wrongly persecuted. Soledad O’Brien’s producer offered to buy some of my footage from me with the explicit promise that their piece was going to be called “Islam: In America” and would not focus more than a few minutes on Murfreesboro. After an inside tip that this producer was lying to me, I confronted him and got some rather vague answers. So I declined to license him any of my material. And sure enough, the CNN documentary did in fact focus exclusively on Murfreesboro and was called “Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door”. Somehow Hollywood, with its usual backstabbing tricks, had managed to find me hiding out in Tennessee.

I had accumulated a lot of good quality footage. That, combined with the increasing number of physical threats to me personally while filming in large crowds, and death threats that had arrived via email (causing me to look over my shoulder everywhere I went and making it necessary to spend a small fortune on private security) told me it was time. The writing was on the wall. It was time for me to leave Murfreesboro, hire a professional Editor and get to work on assembling my footage to create a feature length documentary for theatrical distribution.

Before I go any further, I should mention that, while all of this was happening, I had become involved in the story itself. I took sides. I sided with the Islamic community in their legal right to build a house of worship and when I was interviewed by the local papers (it’s not every day that a small town like this has someone shooting a documentary there) when I was asked where I stood on the issue I never hesitated to give my point of view. And after a time my point of view was sought out by larger newspapers and several local and syndicated radio programs – mostly Conservative and mostly taking issue with my stance. And I was also invited to write several pieces for Michael Moore’s blog as well.

Although I had left town to edit, there continued to be letters to the editor on a few of the local papers saying that I should leave TN and go back to where I came from. I could not believe the cartoonish way in which those who opposed the mosque were making their case. I felt like I was on the right side of this thing – absolutely certain. But in fact, I was wrong.

Everything I have told you up until now – this version of my story – is exactly how I was seeing things up until something changed. I went home to Los Angeles, showed my 25 minute short version of the documentary to some distributors and backers, and did the usual dog and pony show that had worked so well to raise funds, for other motion picture projects I had been involved with in the past. And sure enough someone said they would back the completion of the movie. It was decided that the focus would be on “the enemy at home” that being what we were calling “Apocalyptic Christianity” (as there was concern about using the word “Zionism” in “Christian Zionism”). The Murfreesboro issue was to be used as something of a jumping off point to take a look at the expanding influence of the End Times Evangelical lobby in the United States and how they use their influence to manufacture consent for the bombing of oil rich Islamic countries and to influence policy on social issues. The theme would focus on the problems we have in America, with our own religious lunatic fringe, rather than on a peaceful group of non-Christians who just wanted to build a place of worship.

After writing a few articles for Michael Moore, I also wrote for a liberal blog called Common Dreams and I wrote over a hundred articles for the Daily Kos, a liberal blog so popular that they receive over one million visitors a day. I felt I was protecting the underdog, going after the bullies. I really believed that I was on the right side of this thing.

But something kept nagging at me on a gut level. Something about all of this didn’t quite feel right. The Arab Spring, which I supported, started to degenerate into the Islamist Winter, and I grew more and more concerned. I flew back to Nashville to shoot a conference on whether or not Islam was conducive with Democratic Values and on the way to my hotel room I learned that my cab driver was from Egypt. I asked him how he felt about the fall of Mubarak, a dictator worth over $70 billion dollars while so much of his country was living in poverty and he told me he was concerned. Concerned? Wasn’t this good news? The cab driver was a Coptic Christian and he told me that he feared for his family back home. “If the Muslims take control, and they will, it will be very dangerous for my parents and my sisters. I’m scared for them right now”. After that conversation, I started to pay more attention to the news coming from the Islamic world in the Middle East.

Over the coming months I watched as the Muslim Brotherhood gained political power in Egypt. I saw that cab driver’s worst fears come true as Coptic Christians were attacked by Islamic mobs. I saw Tunisia institute Sharia, the brutal Islamic Law. After Libya fell, the Transitional Council also instituted Islamic Law. The nuclear armed Islamic government of Pakistan arrested and punished those who cooperated with the United States in killing Osama Bin Laden. A woman under the Islamic government of Afghanistan faced execution for the crime of being raped. Similar news stories emerged from Iran. A man who typed “there is no god” as his Facebook status in Indonesia, the largest Islamic country in the world, was arrested for blasphemy. Several Muslim men in England were arrested for handing out leaflets to Londoners demanding that homosexuals be executed by hanging for violating Islamic Law with their lifestyle.

And it struck me. Even though these angry townspeople in Mufreesboro, TN had not articulated their concerns very well, they were only half wrong. I remember meeting Frank Gaffney and interviewing him in front of the courthouse and asking him if he really thought that the peaceful Muslims here actually presented a real threat to America and he said no. That caught me off guard so I asked if he really thought it was a credible threat that a community that makes up about one percent of the United States population was just going to suddenly rise up one day and try to take over the country and force Sharia Law onto all of us. Again he said no. Then he told me I was asking the wrong questions. He suggested that I was only looking for answers that would support the conclusions I had already arrived at. He said he had, after much research, arrived at a different set of conclusions and he challenged me to look a little deeper. He gave me a report to look at and many, many months later I did look at his report.

It was at this time that I went to my backers and told them that we were not making an honest documentary. I felt that everything I had put into the 25 minute short version (the one I used to raise the completion funds) was true, but only half true. It was critical that we also show the very real threats that exist within Islam. We needed to show that what is happening to these small communities of peaceful Muslims in America were the exception to the rule. I wanted to show what happens to countries when they gain a Muslim majority, how women are treated, that homosexuals were executed, that free speech did not exist, that the forced Islamic Law was not consistent with Democratic Values – anything and everything I could think of that ought to strike a chord with the Liberal mindset. And the response I received was, “Eric you are starting to sound like an Islamophobe. We don’t want to make a movie that promotes fear. Let’s just stick with the existing plan, okay?”

I fought and I fought. I showed them a book called “The Truth About Mohammed” but was struck down since the author was a man named Robert Spencer and my backers pointed out that the Southern Poverty Law Center named his “Jihad Watch” site as part of a hate group. I asked them to watch a documentary called “Islam: What the West Needs to Know” and pointed out that I had researched independently and verified the truth of what was being presented there, but they would not even watch this documentary as they were sure in advance that it was “hate speech” and “propaganda designed to spread fear”. It probably goes without saying that by now I was very frustrated. I showed my new backers several verses from the Koran that call for the killing of infidels and was told that these verses were probably being taken out of context. I showed them a video clip from MEMRI TV of a young Egyptian child reciting a Hadith that calls for the killing of Jews and was told that “you can’t trust MEMRI because they have an agenda”.

I mentioned the popular Islamophobia watchdog site “Loonwatch” and how I had noticed a pattern of deflecting all criticisms of radical and violent Islam by calling anyone who publicly raises these concerns a “Loon” and how I felt this was an intentional effort to provide a smoke screen for the terrorists. I also noted that everything Loonwatch said was in lockstep with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and how CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation – the largest Islamic charity at one time, which was found to be funneling monies to Islamic terrorist organizations. I also noted that CAIR had ties to both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and that Al Qeada had come out of the Muslim Brotherhood. I expressed my concerns that the Egyptian Imam of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro might have ties to the MB, something I had failed to properly investigate. But since CAIR had the support of Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman’s show, Democracy Now, I was told that I had my facts all wrong. It was also pointed out to me that if CAIR was allegedly some kind of terrorist front then why do they still have a special tax status and why are they still around? When I said I do not know but it was possible that the government might prefer to watch them out in the open rather than risk them going underground I was told that my judgment was sounding less and less clear and that maybe I needed to take a step back from the project for a while.

As a last attempt I showed them footage of the Imam in Murfreesboro condoning stoning, admitting that Mohammed had stoned someone to death, saying that women cannot be trusted with money because they are irrational. Then I pointed out that a board member of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro was investigated after pictures from his MySpace page had surfaced indicating his strong sympathies for Hamas. I was reminded that Hamas was also a political party which was voted in Democratically and that I needed to make a choice – either stick with the original blueprint or else give the money back and go find myself another backer. So I did. I walked. If I can’t make an honest documentary then I’m in the wrong business. I didn’t want to add to more of the noise that’s out there – I wanted to make something that told the truth, even if that truth is hard to swallow.

It’s funny because I run a website called Global One TV, which has had about 23 million visitors so far, and the theme of this blog is that “Inward Revolution Creates Outward Revolution”. And here I was, having to take my own medicine. My own inward revolution – the questioning of one’s conclusions in search of a deeper truth – had lead me to a very strange place. I thought of the famous Nietzsche quote that says “When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you”. And with nothing left to lose, I used my position at Daily Kos to go about telling the truth.

In January of 2012 I wrote 3 consecutive articles for the Daily Kos. The first was entitled “Loonwatch.com and Radical Islam”. Here I pointed out the how Loonwatch only deflects criticism of radical Islam. I was also critical of Islamic theology while noting over and over that most Muslims were peaceful. The comments section of Daily Kos made me feel like I was attending my own funeral. It was like a public stoning. There wasn’t much in the way of responding to any of the points laid out in my article but hundreds of comments accusing me of being “right wing” a “bigot” and an “lslamophobe”. This was disappointing.

The next day I received an email from Loonwatch.com with an article showing my name and a photograph of my face, going out to much of the Islamic world, calling me the “Loon at Large”. This article was picked up by IslamophobiaToday.com and TheAmericanMuslim.org – later being repurposed by numerous Islamic blogs around the world, including in places where we all know what happens to anyone who is perceived to be the enemy of Allah or who dares to “insult” Islam.

My next article sought to further substantiate my point with regard to these wolves in sheep’s clothing calling themselves “Islamophobia Watchdog sites” and their first line of defense, that being a blogosphere of liberal lemming infidels who are pre-programmed to blurt out the word “Islamophobe” on cue. That article was called “How and Why Loonwatch is a Terrorist Spin Control Network”. And as you might have guessed, this piece was met with the same mob mentality of those who, rather than read the article and criticize it on its merits, instead shot the messenger with charges of “Islamophobia”. There were also 2 Daily Kos articles written in response attacking me personally, another Loonwatch article where someone suggested I must be from TN and have no education, etc. And once again, my name was put out on the street through a network of Islamic Blogs, including the landing page for CAIR, using a form of Islamic double speak which translated to any serious Jihadist means “enemy of Allah” and “insulting Islam”.

Given the incredible density of the popular Liberal mind, how the readers of my articles were unable to see how their beliefs of Islam were in direct conflict with human rights, gay rights, women’s rights and basic Democratic Values, I wrote a final piece called, “Are You In Favor of Human Rights?” and that one of course got me banned from Daily Kos. It should be noted that in one of the Loonwatch.com articles the author, a person simply calling himself “Danios” demanded that DKOS silence me and provided a link for its readers to email the editors of the Daily Kos, demanding that this “Islamophobe” be censored. And it worked – once again proving the oil and water relationship between Islam and tolerance for free speech.

Things got even stranger from there. Robert Spencer himself wrote me an email and we had a rather interesting dialogue. It became apparent almost immediately that there was nothing about this man that was even remotely hateful. So when Robert Spencer asked if I minded if he reprint my email in response to his on Jihad Watch, I said “sure, why not?” Once that surfaced, the friend count on my Facebook fan page dropped suddenly. Friends and acquaintances told me I had become a hatemonger, a fear monger and an Islamophobe. I pointed out that an Islamophobe is someone with an irrational fear of Islam but there was no reasoning with anyone so deeply indoctrinated into the tyranny of political correctness.

And almost right on cue the news story broke about the NYPD using as a training video a documentary narrated by a devout Muslim who opposes terrorism and jihad, someone who has advised law enforcement and served in the military and as a physician to highly placed members of the United States government. That documentary was called “The Third Jihad” and the story surfaced that CAIR was calling this film “Islamophobic” and demanding that the NYPD pull it right away, which of course they did. CAIR demanded the removal of the head of the NYPD and the liberal blogosphere sang backup – most notably with articles on Huffington Post calling “The Third Jihad” propaganda, hate speech and of course more “Islamophobia”. When I posted a link to this documentary on my Facebook page I was met with more charges of being an Islamophobe by people who had only recently told me how much they had been inspired and influenced by my writings.

After Jamie Glasov of FrontPage Mag – part of the David Horowitz Freedom Center – reached out to me to ask me to be on his radio show (which I agreed to) I surfed the web a bit trying to get a better sense of who exactly David Hororwitz was. It became clear almost immediately that we do not share the same political views, but one thing Horowitz did say that came through with stunning clarity was an assertion that there was an unholy alliance between the Left and Islam, with radical Islam using the Liberal media to create a smoke screen for it – a place where radical can appear moderate and receive Liberal support. He also went on to say that in many Universities across America that students were being radicalized, indoctrinated into the far Left. And I remembered something. Nearly all of the organizers for the college aged activist group who demonstrated in favor of the new mosque in Murfreesboro were either Socialists or Communists. These were kids and they all seemed to share one Professor in particular who was something of a mentor to them, a Socialist who always seemed to be hanging around their college parties, infiltrating into their social scene, taking the smarter and more articulate ones under his wing as their campus group called simply “Solidarity” grew in numbers – in fact recruiting quite a few students while organizing in favor of the mosque. Yikes.

So here we are today, as news that Kuwait goes Islamist and the NYPD answers to CAIR, an arm of a terrorist organization, out of concern for political correctness. Have I become a Conservative out of all of this? Not really. I still oppose the invasion of Iraq. I still feel that all wars should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. I still think that George W. Bush was one of the worst things to happen to America in my lifetime. I still support marriage equality. But I’m also still pro-life. Do you see a trend here? I support human rights and oppose anything which I perceive to be in violation of human rights.

Where do I stand on Islam? Let’s look at its founder – a man who raped a 9 year old girl, a slave owner, a leader who ordered people to be tortured, for adulterers to be stoned, for countless nonbelievers to be beheaded, a killer, a warmonger who spread his “religion of peace” by the sword, a man who suffered from hallucinations of voices telling him to do violent things, a tyrant, a homicidal maniac perhaps the equivalent of 100,000 Osama Bin Ladens. And this sadistic lunatic is considered to be the “ideal man” in Islam. What more needs to be said about Islam than that?

So in this climate where innocent people are killed when Korans are burned, when there are riots and bomb threats and killings over cartoons that offend Muslims, when a novelist such as Salman Rushdie is advised by Indian intelligence authorities that it is unsafe for him to enter the country to attend the world’s largest literary festival, when Muslims outside the festival threaten violence such that the festival organizers decide to cancel even patching in a video of Rushdie for the conference, in a world where a man, Theo Van Gough, was shot a couple dozen times in broad daylight, then stabbed, then had a sword rammed into his heart on the sidewalk of a European street simply for making a 10 minute film about the mistreatment of Muslim women – in such a world that is constantly terrorized by Islamic militants whose insanity is co-opted by an army of Liberal bloggers who make excuses for them – who tell us that 911 was probably our fault – what will become of my documentary when I finish it?

How will “Not Welcome” be received? Will movie theaters refuse to show it, just like those many bookstores who removed the Danish cartoons from their shelves? Will film festivals be afraid to screen it? Will my life be in danger? Will some lunatic Islamic cleric issue a Fatwa ordering my death? Will CAIR gain even more political influence and work within the system to get it banned as “hate speech”? Will critics fear for their lives and thus refuse to review it?

Is the Liberal view that Stealth Jihad is just some whacky conspiracy theory really true? Who will win – free speech of the savagery of a growing mob hell bent on Jihad? I can only tell you this. I will not back down. I will not be bullied, threatened, coerced or terrorized by the “religion of peace”.

We each have a responsibility to the other people on this planet, and especially to those whom we will leave this planet to after we are gone. And this sometimes means taking an unpopular stand in order to protect the rights of innocent people. Loonwatch, CAIR and the other numerous terrorist spin control networks – you’ve not seen the end of me. Not by a long shot. As the saying goes, “You have a right to swing your fists, but that right ends when your fist connects with my nose”.

And by the way, I still believe that unless they break the law, the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro has a legal right to build their house of worship. We don’t have to like it, but then again the First Amendment was designed not to protect popular ideas – as they don’t need protecting – but to protect unpopular ideas as well. This is something you won’t find in any Islamic country and it is also something worth protecting – even when the so-called “religion of peace” tries to shut you down.

Peace,

Eric Allen Bell

READ MORE: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/07/the-high-price-of-telling-the-tr…

Answering Muslims has the story:

This is horrifying. Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization) is a worldwide network of police departments established to help countries capture criminals who cross borders. Saudi Arabia recently used an Interpol alert to have Hamza Kashgari arrested in Malaysia, where he fled for his life after Saudis began calling for his death. By helping the Saudis capture Kashgari, Interpol has become an international Sharia enforcement unit. People who flee the Muslim world to escape punishment can now be rounded up by Interpol and returned to their countries to face Islamic penalties for apostasy, criticizing Muhammad, etc.

THE GUARDIAN–Interpol has been accused of abusing its powers after Saudi Arabia used the organisation’s red notice system to get a journalist arrested in Malaysia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained at the airport “following a request made to us by Interpol” the international police cooperation agency, on behalf of the Saudi authorities.

Kashgari, a newspaper columnist, fled Saudi Arabia after posting a tweet on the prophet’s birthday that sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats. The posting, which was later deleted, read: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you … I will not pray for you.”

More than 13,000 people joined a Facebook page titled “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari”.

Clerics in Saudi Arabia called for him to be charged with apostasy, a religious offence punishable by death. Reports suggest that the Malaysian authorities intend to return him to his native country.

Kashgari’s detention has triggered criticism by human rights groups of Malaysia’s decision to arrest the journalist and of Interpol’s cooperation in the process.

Jago Russell, the chief executive of the British charity Fair Trials International, which has campaigned against the blanket enforcement of Interpol red notices, said: “Interpol should be playing no part in Saudi Arabia’s pursuit of Hamza Kashgari, however unwise his comments on Twitter.

“If an Interpol red notice is the reason for his arrest and detention it would be a serious abuse of this powerful international body that is supposed to respect basic human rights (including to peaceful free speech) and to be barred from any involvement in religious or political cases.” (Read more.)

Posted by David Wood at 3:47 PM

Saudi Sheikh weeping as he demands that Saudi Columnist Hamza Kashgari gets executed

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by TheNonAwaitedMahdi on Feb 7, 2012

Sheikh Nasser Al Omar pleads to the king that Saudi writer Hamza Kashgari gets executed for supposedly writing “shameful” comments about prophet Mohammed on Twitter.

Save Hamza! Sign the petition.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/death-calls-for-saudi-poet-and-blogger/

The New York Times has gone all in for Islamic infiltration and the stealth jihad. By now, we have all come to expect an outpouring of hard-left/pro-jihadi/anti-Semitic/anti-Christian propaganda flooding the Anglosphere from not only the New York Times, but also the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Time Magazine, Newsweek, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, PBS, NPR, the CBC in Canada, the BBC and the Guardian in the UK, the ABC in Australia, the AP and Reuters wire services…the list seems endless.

We are so used to it that too few people bother to complain any more as the naked anti-Semitic and pro-Islamic enemy propaganda in the NYT grows ever louder.

Is The NYT’s Agenda to Normalize Islam in the West?

by Phyllis Chesler
Israel National News
January 25, 2012

On a single day, the New York Times has been known to publish anywhere from two to six anti-Israel articles, editorials, op-ed pieces, and letters. Today, I see a new danger arising in their pages.

After spending a year proclaiming the triumph of democracy and the miracle of the Arab Spring and, as PM Netanyahu has just noted, refusing to document the existential danger in which Israel finds herself, the Newspaper of Record has now begun the process of normalizing Islam in North America and Europe. Its pro-Muslim “multicultural” agenda is, paradoxically, another form of racism, but I quibble.

Yesterday, there were at least three articles (3,200 words, four photos, one illustration), devoted to Islam in America and Europe. A 934-word op-ed article titled “How to Integrate Europe’s Muslims” by a Boston College professor is a veritable manifesto of appeasement and racism disguised as a rational call for integration and fairness. Jonathan Laurence suggests that Muslims will be “integrated” into Europe if they are allowed to study Islam at state-sponsored schools, continue their Muslim religious practices, veil women, speak Arabic, Persian, Dari, etc. In his view, this will fend off “fundamentalism” and magically lead to reciprocity in terms of tolerance towards infidels and apostates and to the abolition of Islamic gender and religious apartheid.

According to Canadian professor and author, Dr. Salim Mansur, multiculturalism and the appeasement of tribalism defeats the possibility of citizenship and amounts to a form of “soft bigotry.” As Pascal Bruckner has phrased it: “Multiculturalism is the racism of the anti-racists; it chains people to their roots.” Immigrants are kept confined to their “group” and not encouraged or expected to become “individuals” and “citizens” of a modern democracy.

As we may all recall, the 2011 Goldstone recantation did not make the front page of the NYT; it was buried on page 8. But today, a 1,200 word article, entitled “In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims” is on page one. It continues on page 23 with two photos and it takes up 3/4^th of the second page. The article condemns the use of the film, The Third Jihad, as a “training” device for 1,489 police officers. What is so offensive about this film, which is narrated by a (truly) moderate Muslim, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician and former American military officer? First the film has been funded by Orthodox Jews and Zionists (horrors!). Second, it dares suggest that Muslims have launched a war against the West, a “third jihad.” And, there is “ominous” music. Then “Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, children lie covered by sheets…”

Is this reporter unfamiliar with the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries and with the Islamic terrorist attacks against Muslim and infidel civilians and against Western military and civilian targets?

…There is an Islamic/Islamist war that has been declared against the West as well as against both Muslim and infidel civilians, but it is one that the Paper of Record refuses to acknowledge, or to fight or win.
[...]
Why have papers likes the Times become so obsessed with protecting the religious rights of one single minority group at the expense of every other religious group, including members of moderate and anti-Islamist Islam, and at the expense of women, who represent approximately 53% of the world’s population? Are they, too, possibly being funded by leftists and by Arab oil magnates? Or, do they simply hope to be?

Just wondering.

Read it all here.

What about the one network in the US, namely Fox News, that so many rely on to present conservative voices when no other network will? Those days may be gone soon. Last September (see Fox News “Fair and Balanced”? Bzzzzzt, WROOOOONG!), I challenged its undeserved reputation as a “conservative” and/or even-handed news outlet. More recently, Speranza of 2.0: The Blogmocracy also asked, Is Fox News heading left? Indeed, on Fox News, we are hearing fewer and fewer of those voices, and more and more apologists from the left.

I have had no further use for Glenn Beck after he openly began to shill for that amoral and self-serving RINO candidate, Mitt Romney. That said, if George Soros has the power to censor a major television network and cause him to be fired, that is truly dismaying. The audience of Fox News should determine, through their ratings and their patronage of advertisers, whether Glenn Beck continues to be offered a spot in its lineup.

How George Soros Sacked Glenn Beck

by Cliff Kincaid on 19 Oct 2011
A recent interview of Fox News chief Roger Ailes by Howard Kurtz suggested that the channel is becoming less conservative by design. The real question, not addressed in the piece, is whether the relentless attacks on the channel by George Soros-funded groups have anything to do with this change in the direction of the popular channel and the demise of the Glenn Beck program in particular.

On Glenn Beck’s new TV program, carried on the Internet, Beck himself seemed to indicate this was the case. Talking about Orson Wells, his career, vision and his “Citizen Kane” movie, Beck said, “One of the biggest things [he taught me was] he picked a lot of ill-advised fights, sometimes risking his entire career against titans of industry. It did occur to me recently maybe I should have considered that little part of his life a little more before I locked horns with George Soros.”1 The implication is that Beck’s battle with Soros left him without a job on Fox News.

If this is the case, then we have reached a point in the United States when a private individual has obtained the power to prevent the most popular cable news channel in the country from subjecting his financial and political influence to scrutiny. It is important to see how this was done.

In fairness, Fox has covered Soros after the end of the Beck program. But Beck was doing so in a systematic manner by devoting whole shows to the topic. The sheer magnitude of organizations financially supported by the billionaire makes such an analysis necessary. That is what America’s Survival, Inc. we are doing through our Sorosfiles.com project.
[...]
Beck, who had one of the most successful programs on the channel, left Fox News on July 1, 2011, and launched his own Internet TV show, which appears to be a success in terms of paid subscribers. But some are saying that its influence pales in comparison to the perch that Beck had on Fox News. Clearly, the “progressives” who feared Beck were far more concerned about his Fox News Channel program than his Internet venture.

At the recent “Take Back the American Dream Conference,” held October 3-5. 2011, in Washington, D.C., former Obama “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones claimed that Beck wasn’t on television any more. He said this in the context of admitting that his exit from the Obama Administration, in response to charges made by blogger Trevor Loudon and Beck and others, had been a traumatic time for him.

In fact, of course, Beck is on television, albeit Internet TV. But the point was that Beck was gone from cable television, which was much more of a powerful position in terms of the resources he was able to bring to bear to expose figures like Jones. It is a sign of Beck’s declining influence that Jones was rehabilitated and emerged at the conference as director of the “Take Back the American Dream” movement.

As Howard Kurtz told the story, there has been a “course correction” at Fox News and that the change was “quietly adopted at Fox over the last year” because of the problem posed by the “inflammatory rhetoric” of Glenn Beck, such as “his ranting about Obama being a racist.” Ailes was quoted as saying that this had become a “a bit of a branding issue for us.”

There was no ranting from Beck on this topic. His comments were based in part on Obama’s own statements on racial issues, such as his attack on the police for arresting a black professor, Henry Louis Gates. Obama called the police “stupid,” without knowing the facts about Gates’ obnoxious behavior.

The implication is that Beck was fired – technically a deal was reached in which Fox News said Beck would “transition off” the channel – because of charges that Beck was a racist. But Beck had accused Obama of racism in the summer of 2009 and lost his show over a year later. Something must have happened in the meantime. That “something” was that Beck picked a different target – billionaire George Soros.

It’s true that Beck had been the subject of an advertiser boycott, organized by a group called “Color of Change,” founded by Van Jones, but he still had the number three show in cable news. Howard Kurtz reported Beck still had “monster ratings.”
[...]
Much, much more here.

Glenn Beck Staff Threatened by Soros Operatives

Private Investigator says Beck Staff Threatened by Soros Operatives; News Corporation Failed to Protect Employees, Forcing Beck’s Ouster
…[Cliff] Kincaid recently learned of a private investigator, Douglas J. Hagmann, with information that the Soros role in Beck’s ouster was deeper and more insidious than previously realized. In order to further the public’s right to know as to how the First Amendment right of freedom of the press is being manipulated and subverted by covert forces in U.S. politics, Kincaid asked Hagmann, who is the CEO of Hagmann Investigative Services, Inc., and director of the Northeast Intelligence Network for permission to pass on this information. He has agreed, as long as the identities of the sources of information are deleted. There are several sources with information about strange goings-on at News Corporation in regard to the Glenn Beck matter, in which the most vulnerable of the news channel staff members have come under pressure not to report certain facts and information about President Obama personally. But Hagmann says the tipping point in the matter of Glenn Beck leaving the channel came when Beck began a series of programs on Soros, labeled by Beck the “Puppet Master” behind Obama and the progressive movement.

Hagmann informed Kincaid of the following:

“One of my sources, beginning in the first part of 2011, told me that the corporate leadership of News Corporation (the parent company of Fox News) began to put pressure on Glenn Beck — and especially his support staff — about certain topics that were considered ‘off limits.’ This source stated that Beck was advised not to focus on George Soros, as there were certain fiduciary relationships he was not privy to between Soros and either News Corporation or one or more of their board members/corporate staff.”

Hagmann went on, “I was informed that News Corporation and/or Fox News Channel officers actually had a meeting with Soros representatives, during which company officials were advised to stop subjecting Soros to on-air scrutiny. This pressure eventually forced Beck off the air, as the Fox News Channel personality became concerned about the physical safety and security of his own personnel.”

Hagmann added that his sources stated that it was Beck’s concern over the safety of certain staff members, the most vulnerable and exposed among them, who were being overtly intimidated. He stated that one young woman, who became a primary source after being vetted and determined to be credible, was genuinely afraid, not only for her career but for her life and the life of her child. It was surreal, she told Hagmann, that she could be subjected to intimidation through surveillance and veiled threats because of her position to Glenn Beck. At some point, Hagmann added, it appeared Mr. Beck knew he could protect himself and his family, but not everyone involved in the program. “I strongly suspect, based on my professional experience as an investigator for the last 26 years, that Mr. Beck made a tremendous career sacrifice for the safety of others. That speaks volumes about Mr. Beck’s integrity, character and concern for others,” added Hagmann.

ASI President Cliff Kincaid said that investigator Hagmann’s information, while non-specific at this point because of concerns over revealing the identities of sources, is extremely troubling, as it concerns the ability of the American people to get access to information of a critical nature…

Read it all here.

Also see:

• Manufactured Anger Over Islamo-realistic Film Designed to Whack NYPD Into Dhimmitude
• ‘The Third Jihad’ Producers Reply to New York Times Articles

Yahoo! News: Popular Websites to Go Dark Over SOPA Controversy

“Like” us on Facebook.com/TrendingNow and follow me on Twitter @Knowlesitall!

If you have anything you want to look up on Wikipedia, you’d better do it today, or you’re going to have to wait a full 24 hours to get your answer. Why? Well, Wikipedia will be leading a number of high-profile websites going dark on Wednesday to protest two controversial bills in Congress. SOPA, also known as the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House of Representatives, and PIPA, the Protect I-P Act in the Senate, are designed to crack down on the illegal sharing of movies and music on the Web. However, critics say the anti-piracy legislation is censorship and would force sites to police the online world.

On Twitter, Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, confirmed that all of Wikipedia’s 3.8 million English-language articles will be unavailable from midnight Eastern time tonight until midnight Wednesday. Anyone who visits the site will be redirected to a banner that reads “The Internet must remain free.” Also joining Wikipedia in going black are Reddit, Minecraft, Craigslist, and Boing Boing, among others. Craigslist has posted a message at the top of its city homepages with a link to “help put a stop to this madness” of SOPA and PIPA.

The Obama administration, as well as Congress, seem to be listening to the critics. In a blog post, the White House said it would not support “legislation that reduces freedom of expression … or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” And House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said a vote would not come up for SOPA until a consensus is reached. By the way, if you’re a fan of any of the sites that are planning to participate in the blackout, don’t worry: You can still tweet about it as much as you want. Twitter will still be up and running. In fact, CEO Dick Costolo tweeted this about the sites choosing to go dark: “Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.”

More here.

Learn more:

• PJM: SOPA and Protect-IP: A Line-by-Line Analysis of the Bills We Must Kill
• Mashable: Why SOPA Is Dangerous
• Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA): Stealth tool to shut down political speech and the Counterjihad

Stop by and take a look!

As of this writing, Bare Naked Islam is at www.endtimestoday.com.

The domain name will soon be changed to barenakedislam.com (as of January 17, 2012, it is not up yet).

More here:

• HillBuzz rails against WordPress’ decision to wipe Bare Naked Islam off the web
• Hooray! You found me!

*JDL* ACTION
Tuesday, January 10
7:00 – 8:30 pm
***RSVP***
cosheroff@cija.ca
George Ignatieff Theatre
 15 Devonshire Place
Toronto

MAP

I (Meir Weinstein, National Director,Jewish Defence League of Canada) am very concerned about the direction of CIJA. There will be a Town Hall on January 10 put on by CIJA which will deal with the issue of Section 13. One of the key note speakers is Richard Warman. This man wants the video Fitna to be classified as hate. This would mean that the showing of ‘Third Jihad’, ‘Obsession’ and other videos that expose radical Islam would fall under the same classification. And this classification would be a danger to the Jewish Community. CIJA must have to answer. A Jewish Group must represent the Jewish People and not selfish individual interests.

Information about CIJA Town Hall:

Is the right to free speech absolute?  Where do we draw the line between speech that is merely offensive and speech that is worthy of prosecution?

Questions such as these will form the subject of an upcoming Town Hall debate between Nathalie Des Rosiers and Richard Warman regarding Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the controversial hate speech provision.  The Town Hall, hosted by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), will take place on January 10, 2012 from 7:00-8:30pm at the George Ignatieff Theatre in Toronto.

Section 13 labels as a discriminatory practice, worthy of prosecution, for a person to communicate messages using telephone or Internet that may expose others “to hatred or contempt” because of their race, religion, ethnic group or other similar category.

At the Town Hall, Nathalie Des Rosiers, General Counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, will argue for the repeal of Section 13 and Richard Warman, one of Canada’s foremost human rights lawyers, will argue for its retention.   Community members are encouraged to attend this lively debate, question the experts, and help to shape policy on this important issue.

RSVP to the event

* * *The JDL will attend this Town Hall and intends to ask very direct questions to Richard Warman.  And it is vital that JDL force major Jewish Groups to cut their ties with the false left.  There are links on Richard Warman’s web site to groups and people that support ‘Israel Apartheid Week’.  Now is the time to cut the ties with the false left.

For more information on the event and Section 13: http://ow.ly/8ktWc

The live webcast: http://www.cija.ca/resources/webcast/
IF viewing the webcast, questions can be sent online through the live stream or Twitter using the hash tag “#Sec13″

CIJA Twitter: http://twitter.com/CIJAinfo
CIJA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cijainfo

http://www.cija.ca/community-2/freedom-of-speech-and-hate-speech-in-canada-a-delicate-balance-2/

BARE NAKED ISLAM Temporary Stay of Execution

The people at WordPress were kind enough to allow BNI to stay up until January 10th, four more days past the January 6th deadline.

Due to the massive content of this website including tens of thousands of photos and videos, my future webmaster needs some extra time to get the new site at barenakedislam.com up and running.

Got Twitter?

Follow @barenakedislam for updates.

If this censorship takes effect, it would apply to everyone using Google Blogger, Google Orkut, Google+, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, and the other sites mentioned, whether residing in India or not.

‘Clean up your website’: Indian court orders Facebook and Google to remove ‘anti-religious’ content

(h/t: Nilk via GoV)

Social websites including Google and Facebook have been ordered by an Indian court to remove all ‘anti-religious’ and ‘anti-social’ content within six weeks.

On Saturday a Delhi Court ordered 22 social networking sites, including Yahoo and Microsoft, to wipe the objectionable and defamatory contents and file compliance reports by February 6, 2012.

The order will raise serious questions about how users’ posts and opinions will be edited, censorship and freedom of expression.

On December 22 Judge Kumar had issued summonses to the social networking sites, demanding they remove photographs, videos or texts that might offend religious sentiments, the Hindustan Times website reported.

The order comes a day after a criminal court issued summonses to the sites for facing trial for allegedly webcasting objectionable contents.

Santosh Pandey, appearing for complainant Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi, told The Hindu Times after the court hearing that the websites have to submit a report to the court by February 6 describing the action they had taken to remove the contents from the websites.

Representatives of Yahoo India Pvt Ltd and Microsoft told the court that they had not got copies of the order and complaint against them, but Qasmi’s counsel told the court that he would supply the relevant documents to them, according to the Hindustan Times.

The order comes at a controversial time as IT minister Kapil Sibal had recently discussed with representatives of some of the companies ways to guarantee the offensive contents are not posted.

India Today quoted him as saying: ‘There were some demeaning, degrading, clearly pornographic depictions of gods and goddesses which no reasonable, sensible person anywhere in the world would accept, on any site.

The minister insisted he was not smothering free speech but was suggesting screening possible ‘incendiary’ material.

The Hindu Times reported Facebook India, Facebook, Google India Pvt Ltd, Google Orkut, Youtube, Blogspot, Microsoft India Pvt Ltd, Microsoft, Zombie Time, Exboii, Boardreader, IMC India, My Lot, Shyni Blog and Topix were all given the order.

A Google spokesperson told the website: ‘We comply with valid court orders wherever possible, consistent with our long standing policy.

‘We’re yet to receive the details of this order and can’t comment on this specific case.’

Additional Civil Judge Mukesh Kumar passed the order on a suit filed by Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi seeking to restrain the websites from circulating objectionable and defamatory contents.

More comments/photos here.

BNI will be on RADIO JIHAD tonight at 6:15PM EST

On Our 1/2/2012 Show our special guest will be Bonni – creator of the Bare Naked Islam website. CAIR took credit this week for causing word press to shut down her website although WordPress denies they were influenced by CAIR.

On this show Bonni will be giving The Radio Jihad Network an exclusive interview on what really happened. We will also explore who CAIR is, how small they really are, why the FBI severed ties with them, and name several of the CAIR people who have been arrested and/or deported for aiding and abetting Islamic terrorist groups or general criminal behavior.

Corey Saylor and Ibrahim Doug Hooper of CAIR always have an open invitation to call in.
Tel: 1-347-857-1380

Listen Live or get podcast here: RADIO JIHAD

HillBuzz: WordPress Shuts Down “BareNakedIslam” After the CAIR Bears Threaten Violence Against WordPress Staff

[...]
The WordPress hosting service has deleted the site “BareNakedIslam” after receiving threats of violence from CAIR, Islam’s PR wing that operates in the United States and aggressively targets anyone who speaks the truth about “the religion of peace” — which is neither religious nor peaceful, but instead is a militarized criminal enterprise at war with western civilization.

I want to give you some personal insight into what it was like to deal with WordPress when HB was a WordPress-hosted site.

At least once a week towards the end of our time on the WordPress hosting service, WordPress would lock me out of the HB account while it “investigated” some complaint submitted by Obama acolytes who were determined to shut down anyone who opposed him and what he is doing to our country. The people who run WordPress are devote Obama cultists and kept locking me out of the HB control mechanism to intimidate us to stop writing about Barack Obama.

These lockouts would also happen following nearly every article we wrote about the weaponized death cult that is Islam. I was never told who was behind it, but someone out there would file TOS (terms of service) complaints about those articles, and WordPress would suspend my access to HB while they “investigated” them.

I was forced to pay a retainer to an attorney who’d swat back against each of these suspensions; it got to a point where we’d have these things cleared up and completely removed in under a day, because we got so used to them.

What’s very interesting to me is that WordPress governs itself with a complete and obvious political agenda with these sorts of things because it does not handle TOS complaints in the same manner when it’s someone they agree with politically that is being complained about. For instance, there are several websites out there that are dedicated to attacking both HB and myself on a personal level, where the authors defame me, have organized an effort to make me unemployable, have encouraged fellow Leftists to go after my employers so clients will not hire me as a freelancer, and where these hate sites have actively directed people to come after me physically here in Chicago. I’ve filed repeated complaints against these WordPress-hosted sites with WordPress, and every time I have been given a form letter response that “WordPress does not get involved in these matters and you need to take this up with the courts”.

That’s a stark contrast with WordPress.com making the clear and distinct decision to shut down BareNakedIslam, in the same way WordPress.com repeatedly blocked my access to HB (and on several occasions, mysteriously made this site disappear for a day or two as well).

This is why I made the decision to move HB to a paid server early in 2011 so that WordPress could not delete the site whenever they wanted, like they did to BareNakedIslam. During the 2008 campaign, Google’s Blogspot hosting service was caught deleting anti-Obama sites during the Democrat primaries. They were forced to stop when too many people noticed what they were doing and put it together that a concerted effort was underway to eliminate all opposition to Obama.

The same thing is happening now, with sites targeted for standing up to Islam.

Muslims attempt to terrify people into keeping quiet about the medievalist, barbaric agenda of “the religion of peace” in much the same way that the members of the Church of Scientology have for years attempted to terrorize anyone who exposes their cult for what it truly is. Because Muslims go a step further than Scientologists and threaten gruesome death to those who speak out against Islam, entities like WordPress cave to their demands and censor anything that does not praise “the religion of peace” and apologize for its death toll.
[...]
Read it all here.

Update: BNI temporarily reinstated, but only until January 6.

Maggie’s Notebook: Bare Naked Islam Reinstated – Bare Naked Islam Support: A Suggestion for Bloggers and Commenters

A last minute update. Reader TW informed me of a Tweet that Bare Naked Islam is back up on WordPress.com but must be gone by January 6th. A tweet says WordPress claims CAIR had nothing to do with their expulsion.

@barenakedislam

SHOCKER! WP has reinstated my blog and say CAIR did not pressure them. But they still want me gone by Jan 6

Read the latest BNI post here and note that while WordPress.com says CAIR did not pressure them, BNI says CAIR bragged about it all over the web.

Read it all here.

This message arrived from someone associated with Bare Naked Islam:

Of course we are looking at WordPress to tell us why, but it seems their staff is conveniently on holidays until Jan 2nd…[still were there to take her site down, we note].

I am hoping the site can be brought back with another server if this one keeps caving in to CAIR, or whichever variation is forcing the issue.

The last time BNI was taken down, CAIR was to blame.

For what it’s worth, you can email WordPress Support at support@wordpress.com.

We would suggest that counterjihad bloggers make plans to obtain independent hosting if at all possible. WordPress.com, Google Blogger, and other free hosting sites are more subject to outside manipulation.

Zilla has more details.

DeMaura and Segal: All Candidates Should Be Concerned About SOPA

During the waning days of the 2008 presidential race, there was an important but overlooked occurrence on the John McCain campaign. In mid-October, the McCain campaign awoke to find that its Web videos and online advertisements were disappearing from its YouTube page.

The culprit turned out to be a major television network claiming they owned portions of the videos and that posting the clips was a violation of copyright law. Even though the campaign, and many others in the online community, believed the content to be privileged under the “Fair Use Doctrine,” the videos were pulled down.

Fast-forward more than three years, and a new piece of legislation is making its way through Congress that would make it easier for online campaign content and websites to be taken down. Even more concerning, if passed, this bill would allow opposing campaigns or campaign committees — not just the original content provider — to pull down websites harboring “infringing content.”
[...]
Here’s a plausible campaign scenario under SOPA. Imagine you are running for Congress in a competitive House district. You give a strong interview to a local morning news show and your campaign posts the clip on your website. When your opponent’s campaign sees the video, it decides to play hardball and sends a notice to your Internet service provider alerting them to what it deems “infringing content.” It doesn’t matter if the content is actually pirated. The ISP has five days to pull down your website and the offending clip or be sued. If you don’t take the video down, even if you believe that the content is protected under fair use, your website goes dark.

Much more here.

No to Censorship – Stop SOPA!

Tue 20 Dec 2011 09:02:11 AM UTC — annaleena

Only a week ago we were happy about winning the lawsuit in Florida, and praised the courts in the US for favoring the freedom of speech. And now comes the SOPA.

SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives in October, and has awakened heated debate in the press since. The objective of the bill is to weed out piracy on the web, but the way it does it, is more than questionable. This is how Wikipedia explains it:

The bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites.

In practice, if the SOPA gets passed, any website operator could get blocked from ad revenue, search traffic, and web traffic in the US, if it was found to enable or facilitate copyright infringement. It doesn’t take much to do that: a few infringing links could get the whole site blocked.

Sites hosting user-generated content, such as WOT, would be at a great risk. SOPA would force them to police their users’ behavior and filter content, a task that in many cases is impossible. For example reddit, the popular social news site, has stated that SOPA would mean its end.

Even worse than losing reddit and many other wonderful sites, is what SOPA could do to the whole online ecosystem: fewer startups entering due to the legal risks, and censorship becoming the new standard for the whole web. Is that the path we want to take?

Dear community members in the US. Please contact your representatives, and ask them to oppose the SOPA. Piracy is to be fought against, but this is not the way.

Check this infographic for more information of the effects of SOPA.

From: Meir Weinstein defence18@gmail.com
Subject: Jewish Defence League Open letter to the Jewish Community
To: jdl@jdl-canada.com
Received: Sunday, December 18, 2011, 2:12 PM

For Immediate Release: Jewish Defence League Open letter to the Jewish Community

The following article, written by Bernie Farber, Hateful words can hurt, is a misguided attempt to defend the terrible law known as Section 13. The article placates the false left and the author lacks a clear understanding of the new anti-Semitism as explained in pipeline_of_hatred. Section 13 is not an effective measure to use against the new anti Semitism but has been used to silence many pro Israel supporters.

The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, in a new report released in cooperation with the European Jewish Congress, establishes that 2009 was a record year for anti-Semitism. “The year in the wake of Operation Cast Lead was the worst since monitoring of anti-Semitic manifestations began two decades ago in terms of both major anti-Semitic violence and the hostile atmosphere generated worldwide by the mass demonstrations and verbal and visual expressions against Israel and the Jews,” note the institute’s scholars. The anti Jewish campaign was lead by so called ‘progressive’ left wing and radical Islamic groups.

The total number of “violent anti-Semitic incidents” was 1,129, compared to 559 in 2008. That does not include threats, insults, graffiti signs, slogans, “and demonstrations featuring virulently anti-Semitic content.”

What’s more, the institute documents only cases that show “clear anti-Semitic content and intention.” Also, many Jews, fearful of reprisal or skeptical about the outcome, prefer not to file complaints.

“Thus, the number of incidents, both violent and verbal, might actually be far higher than the figures presented here,” write the researchers.

The Roth Institute report is one more worrying reminder that anti-Semitism, the congenital disease afflicting the Jewish people, has metastasized. This new strain is particularly conducive to the currently dominant multicultural environment, especially in western Europe.

As Melanie Phillips reported in The Spectator of London, the key motif in the ³new antisemitism² is ³Holocaust inversion, with the Israelis being demonized as Nazis and the Palestinians regarded as the new Jews. Israel and the Jews are being systematically delegitimised and dehumanized a necessary prelude to their destruction with both Islamists and Western media using anti-Zionism as a fig leaf for prejudices rooted in both medieval Christian and Nazi demonology. This has produced an Orwellian situation in which hatred for the Jews now marches behind the Left¹s banner of anti-racism and human rights, giving rise not merely to distortions, fabrications and slander about Israel in the media but also to mainstream articles discussing the malign power of the Jews over American and world policy.² The Portuguese Nobel prize-winning author Jose Saramago’s suggestion that Israel was guilty of recreating Auschwitz in Ramallah is symptomatic of the current mood. Indeed, comparing the actions of Israel to those of Nazi Germany has become almost de rigueur in Europe. Demonstrators marching through the streets of European capitals and North America today routinely carry placards that label Israeli Leaders as “the new Hitler”, and call the Israeli response to the terror inflicted on its citizens “genocide”.

It is no coincidence that the present spate of anti-Semitism was triggered by Operation Cast Lead. Nor is it a surprise that the most violent incidents – where identification was possible – were perpetrated by Arabs or by Muslims and that these attacks took place in western Europe, the bastion of multiculturalism.

It is the position of the Jewish Defence League that Section 13 has become an aggressive tool for radical Islam which follows the dictates of the OIC (Organization of Islamic States). In effect, the article written by Bernie Farber does not help the Jewish community defend against the new anti Semitism but rather offers a tool to the OIC in its goal to rid the world of Israel.

The Jewish community needs strong leadership prepared to fight back with new tools against the new form of anti Semitism. This leadership must never placate those very groups that seek to promote the agenda of radical Islam.

With love of Israel,

Meir Weinstein
National Director Jewish Defence League of Canada
www.jdl-canada.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Dec 15, 2011

Serial litigant and Stormfront member Richard Warman launched a blizzard of lawsuits today, against The National Post and the backbone of the northern blogosphere – Ezra Levant, Kate McMillan, Kathy Shaidle and Free Dominion. He’d laid low for a few weeks, contenting himself with empty threats against McGill students, but he has now made his move. Ezra Levant lays out the legal challenge very clearly, Glenn Reynolds offers some advice, and Jay Currie adds an important point:

“Warman is betting all the marbles here. His credibility and the credibility of the CHRC are now in play. Warman was the CHRC’s creature and, I suspect the evidence will show, the CHRC became his creature as he casually crossed the line between investigator and complainant.”

Precisely. It’s not possible to take a stand against the Canadian Human Rights Commission without also talking a stand against Richard Warman. He has been the plaintiff on half the Section 13 cases in its entire history and on all the Section 13 cases since 2002. There are 30 million Canadians yet only one of them uses this law, over and over and over again, which tells you how otherwise irrelevant it is to keeping the Queen’s peace. Section 13 is, in effect, Warman’s Law and the CHRC is Warman’s personal inquisition and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is Warman’s very own kangaroo court. Whether or not the motivations were pure and pristine when this racket got started, at some point his pals at the CHRC and the “judges” of the CHRT should have realized that the Warmanization of Section 13 doesn’t pass the smell test: Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done, and when you see what’s done at the CHRC you understand it’s a cosy and self-perpetuating romance between a corrupt bureaucracy and its favoured son.

So taking on the CHRC means taking on Richard Warman. I believe my colleague Charlie Gillis will have a piece on Warman in this week’s Maclean’s, on sale tomorrow, so the spotlight isn’t going to be dimming anytime soon. In the meantime, I hope SteynOnline readers will support Ezra, Kate, Kathy and Mark and Connie at Free Dominion. They are private citizens like Richard Warman. Unlike him, they have not been enriched by tax-free awards of significant five-figure sums for entirely mythical “pain and suffering”. So please go on over to the various websites and make a donation, as my pal Michelle Malkin did earlier today. In Kathy’s case, you might also consider buying a copy of her book Acoustic Ladyland: it’s in a good cause, but you’ll get the better end of the bargain because it’s a great read.

- Mark Steyn

Ezra Levant with Marc Lemire: freedom of speech

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Dec 15, 2011

Marc Lemire, the target of Canada’s speech mandarins for 8 years, joins Ezra Levent to discuss, amongst other things, the activities of federal employee Richard Warman.

Then Ezra is joined by Chris Schafer of the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

Much as I want to see Section 13 and the CHRC go down in flames, I strongly advise against strengthening any “hate propaganda” or “hate speech” provisions in the criminal code. That could result in prison sentences, rather than merely civil fines and sanctions, imposed on counterjihad activists and anyone else who violates the standards of political correctness and multiculturalism.

Also see:

• Freedomsite
• @marc_lemire on Twitter
• Canadian Constitution Foundation

The next video shows that the efforts to censor any honest discussion of immigration, multiculturalism, and the threat of Islam are not paying off. Note the silly reference to Muslims as an “ethnic group.”

Canadians take a dim view of islam: poll

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Dec 15, 2011

G** dammit Babs Hall! The peasants are expressing their opinion, AND IT’S THE WRONG ONE! Get in there and imprison them until they hold correct views.

Why We Blog – And How You Can Help

This is one reason why we cover so much Canadian material on the US-based 1389 Blog. One of the missions of our blog, from the get-go, was to fight for free speech for the Counterjihad. Any Canadian counterjihadists who want to make themselves heard should feel free to contact us. All we need is your knowledge and expertise. You need not use your real name!

Michael Coren with Connie Fournier of Free Dominion

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Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Dec 14, 2011

She thought somebody was playing a trick on her. When Connie Fournier tore open the letter from the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) on the afternoon of July 18–a Wednesday–she read that a complaint had been filed against her and the website she runs with her husband Mark, Free Dominion (www.freedominion.ca). The letter was dated July 16, two days before, and postmarked the 17th. It said she had until the 18th, that very day, to reply. “At first we thought it was some kind of joke because it didn’t seem right that we would be asked to respond in that kind of time frame,” Fournier says. As it turned out, it wasn’t a joke. But it still had a punch line–the letter didn’t say what the complaint was about which made it impossible to respond to, even if she had time.

Sensing that perhaps it wasn’t a joke, the next day the 41-year-old mother of four who makes her home in Kingston, Ont., called the CHRC. “It was like pulling teeth trying to get a real person on the phone,” Fournier says. When she finally did and read the complaint number to the woman on the other end, she was told it couldn’t be right because it was supposed to have one more digit in it. So maybe it was a joke? No; using the last name of the complainant in the letter, they finally determined it was in fact real. Several hours later, Fournier was able to contact someone at the CHRC who knew what was going on; he had the complaint in front of him on his computer screen, he told Fournier. But he wouldn’t tell her what it was about. He said he would have to mail it. They settled on having the CHRC fax it to Fournier’s lawyer the next day, Friday–two days past the official deadline.

When Fournier finally got to see the complaint she discovered it had been filed back in June. Marie-Line Gentes, a college teacher in Quebec, was charging that Free Dominion, a conservative discussion forum, was fostering hatred towards Muslims. Why this was of concern to Gentes was not explained because Gentes stated in the complaint that she herself was not a Muslim. On top of that, it didn’t assert that Fournier had written anything untoward. The target was something someone else had written on the site.

The complaint cited comments written on Free Dominion by Saskatchewan activist Bill Whatcott. For instance, in one, Whatcott wrote, “I can’t figure out why the homosexuals I ran into are on the side of the Muslims. After all, Muslims who practice Sharia law tend to advocate beheading homosexuals.” Whatcott also posted links to another website hosting a digital version of a pamphlet he distributed in Edmonton last year that called the Muslim prophet Mohammad a “man of violence.”

- Western Standard