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/

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

*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/

Act For Australia

Click HERE to follow @ActForAustralia
Affiliated with Brigitte Gabriel’s Act! For America.
http://actforaustralia.com
 
 

Operation YouTube “Islamism” Smackdown

Please update your favorites, bookmarks, and blogrolls!
Also please follow @ladyravensdc on Twitter!

What is YouTube Smackdown?

The YouTube Smackdown project provides a coordinated method for reporting jihadi terrorist videos to Google/YouTube and requesting that they be taken down. These jihadi videos are used for, among other things, recruiting future jihadis and showing them how to commit acts of terrorism. You can join the project by following the instructions on the site.

Why did YouTube Smackdown move to a new URL?

The Smackdown site moved from Google Blogger to WordPress after Google deactivated the account of one of the project’s associates.

Be careful about Google Plus!

The admins of 1389 Blog suggest that, if you do any counterjihad blogging, if you comment on counterjihad forums or blogs, or if you prefer to use a nom de plume, nom de guerre, or nickname instead of your real name online, that you do NOT sign up for Google Plus. Google currently forbids the use of pseudonyms or nicknames on Google Plus. If Google finds anything objectionable about your Google Plus account, they may decide to disable not only your Google Plus account, but also your Gmail account, your Google Blogger account, your YouTube account, and whatever else you have registered with Google. When you try to get it reinstated, they may become very intrusive indeed.

Please retweet!

If Nazis, Commies, and Soros are on your side, YOU ARE WRONG! http://shar.es/bqJGY http://shar.es/bqJ7w http://shar.es/bqJrd #iamthe53

Click on the image to view the original tweet on Twitter. I would very much appreciate a retweet!

A variation on this theme…

Click to view and retweet the above message!

Follow 1389 on Twitter!

Also, be sure to follow me, blog admin 1389, on Twitter. Those tweets bring you a much greater variety of counterjihad, political, and economic news links than any of us could possibly put on this blog. You’ll also find occasional links to offbeat news and humor!

Scapegoating the Jews

Over a week ago, we warned about this: ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protestors Blame ‘Jewish Bankers, Billionaires’. Neither Obama nor the union bosses nor the Democrats nor any other spokesmen associated with the “Occupy” movement have disavowed or apologized for these outbursts.

Now the actual neo-Nazis are out in the open.

Weasel Zippers: American Nazi Party Declares Its Full Support For Occupy Wall Street’s “Courage” And “Dedication” To “Fighting Judeo-Capitalist Bankers”……

(h/t: bumr50)

Much more here.

Anti-Semitic Protester at Occupy Wall Street – LA

Click here to view the embedded video.

(h/t: WeaselZippers)

Uploaded by ReasonTV on Oct 14, 2011

Here’s one of the protesters Reason.tv spoke to at Occupy Wall Street in Los Angeles on October 12, 2011. She identifies herself as Patricia McAllister and as an employee of Los Angeles Unified School District.

“I think that the Zionist Jews, who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government… they need to be run out of this country,” she said.

For the full coverage of this protest, please go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sV-Io_gfL4.

Says refugee000:

Krauthammer was on the money…this is becoming scapegoatism…ala 1932 Germany.

Occupy Chicago Joins Destroy Israel Anti-war Peace March

(h/t: Vlad Tepes)

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Occupy Movement: The Rise of the New Nazi Party?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by xdm45acp on Oct 13, 2011

The New Nazi Party

Parting shots from the good guys:

Blues Brothers: “I hate Illinois Nazis!”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Watch the famous scene in which Jake and Elwood force the Nazis to jump off a bridge.

#YouMightBeAFleabagger Twitter Hashtag

John Difool says:

Be sure to get your digs in @ #here:
http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23YouMightBeAFleabagger

This hashtag reportedly originated with David Burge at Iowahawk.

Click to view and retweet the above message!

Also see:

Zombie: More Anti-Semitism at Occupy Los Angeles

The Blaze has the story:

Meet The 53%. Who are they? The term 53% refers to the people who are actually paying taxes for themselves and the rest of the country.

The 53% is a group of responsible young people organizing across the country. However, this group is not camping out in parks around the country and demanding the entire capitalist system be destroyed. These men and women have jobs (most of them work at more than one job in order to make ends meet), but they are talking about attending the Minneapolis Occupy Wall St. protest scheduled for today – Friday, October 7th.

Here’s a statement from their web page:

So, like, when you’re, like, community organizing for solidarity and stuff, it’s totally cool to have this little hashtaggy thingy when you’re on twitter, so other people, like, totally know what you’re talking about and stuff. So if you’re, like, totally gonna spread the word about being one of the 53% of people who actually, like, pay taxes in America and don’t just, like, hang out protesting stuff all day… like, here’s the hashtaggy thingy. See you at the protest! #iamthe53

[…]
Mike Wilson told us the group was in the very early stages of organizing, but it is happening online – mostly because they have jobs, families, and a sense of personal responsibility. And the 53% have responded to the people alleging to represent 99% of the country. Based on these photo messages, the 99% is patently wrong in their claim.
[…]
The history of the hashtag for this movement has been tracked to the Twitter account of Kevin Keder and this tweet from early October.

@keder
Kevin
Here’s an idea: Use the hashtag #iamthe53 if you are among the 53% of working people who pay federal income taxes.

To get your picture and story on the page of The 53%, all you need to do is post it with the hashtag #iamthe53 and Mike Wilson will find it and post it on the site.

Much more at “The Blaze”.

Make no mistake.

This government in coalition with the Greens cannot handle any criticism whatsoever, and even though most of the media here has a demonstrably left-wing bias this isn’t enough for them.

The Greens are a Marxist/Totalitarian party, who support BDS in Australia – even though some deny it.

The Labor Party is showing its true totalitarian/Fabian Socialist roots.

Not only are they introducing a National Broadband Network that will be obsolete by the time it is completed – read ‘censorship’, but now they want to censor our media.

Of course it goes without saying that this is an attempt to censor any conservative-leaning writers and bloggers.

Their disregard for democracy knows no bounds.

I have often wondered if I will ever see another election in this country, and the USA as well.

These people must know they will be thrown out of government and yet it doesn’t bother them one bit!

Both have very low approval figures.

Maybe they know something they don’t want to let us in on.

Note as mentioned in the article below, this also gives them an excuse to go after the Murdoch press Downunder.

The Australian: Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has floated a government-funded media regulator

NEWSPAPERS could face scrutiny from a government-funded regulator as a result of a new media probe, but they would not fall under government control, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said today.

Senator Conroy confirmed a single media regulator overseeing all print, online and broadcast media could be one of the changes to flow from the government’s independent media inquiry launched yesterday.

He agreed the days of the Australian Press Council, which he called a “toothless tiger”, could be numbered

But he rejected the suggestion a single regulator would hand the government control of newspapers.

“That’s absurd. The government doesn’t have any more control or reach about how Channel Nine or Channel Ten or Channel Seven or even the ABC under the existing laws today,” he told the ABC.

“To suggest that because the Press Council might become a more professional organisation of part of a merged entity that suddenly the government has got more control is just wrong.”

Senator Conroy said the inquiry covered a specific area not covered by a separate review looking at the convergence of media types.

He said Labor had set the terms of reference, staring down Greens Leader Bob Brown who wanted to use the inquiry to further his campaign against News Limited, publisher of The Australian.

Senator Brown continued his attack News Limited today, accusing it of mixing news with opinion and of conducting “witch hunts”.

“This (inquiry) is in the public interest,” he said.

“It’s the public that absorbs the information and that depends upon the media for information in a healthy and functioning democracy and we need the media and it’s a very important part of our lives.

“The Murdoch empire is relentless about wanting inquiries into politics and politicians, and that’s how it should be, but they don’t like it when it’s the other way around.”

And furthermore it seems that bloggers and tweeters could also be at risk.

From the press conference yesterday of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy:

Journalist:

But you’d also have to define who could be complained about and what the penalities would be once they were complained about? A tweeter, a blogger, a…

Conroy:

Well, as you said. Now you’re canvassing areas that I think will be richly canvassed in the inquiry, and these are the sort of… these are, the questions is… you’re asking all the legitimate questions.

Further reading:

Andrew Bolt’s take.

There is much more to the story behind the widely-hyped coverage of the Murdoch/News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

The real story is all about who owns the gatekeepers to the world of information: the excessive concentration of ownership of the major media and entertainment outlets, even the supposedly “conservative” ones. It’s also about what YOU can do to make an end-run around those self-ordained gatekeepers to get your message across.

Short Little Rebel: Who Is Rupert Murdoch & Who Controls The News?

I began this article to address the growing scandal in England over media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World Newspaper. This English tabloid, its managers, reporters, private investigators & even the London Police have been embroiled in a phone tapping scandal that began in 2006 when police investigations discovered that Prince William’s private phone messages had been hacked by the newspaper. One editor & one private investigator were convicted in 2007 and jailed in the incident. But the allegations & investigation are far from over. Only days ago, new allegations against the paper claim that it also tapped into two murder victims’ home phone messages (deleting some) in 2002, the private home messages of victims of London’s 7/7 attacks and even the home messages of dead soldiers’ families’ home messages.

This is news in and of itself. However, as I investigated the matter further, I couldn’t help but come across Rupert Murdoch’s larger story - the story of a multi-billionaire who ‘owns’ one of the largest news organizations (including Fox & its affiliates) in the world:News Corp.Sources have it that Murdoch’s News Corp. reaches about 1/4 of the earth’s population. Allegations, some of which is confirmed by Murdoch himself, say that he uses his organizations to reflect his own personal political agendas.In some years, he has supported Hillary Clinton & Barak Obama in the United States and Tony Blair in England – all leftist politicians. Other years, he has supported conservative individuals such as Bush and David Cameron of England. The Sun, one of Murdoch’s English papers, crowed its success in swinging a critical election in England. Murdoch himself is on tape bragging about how he ‘tried’ to affect certain elections and failed.

I disagree with Short Little Rebel on this one matter: GWB (and, indeed, the entire Bush family) and David Cameron are not conservative, but center-left.

Many political figures of today represent themselves as conservatives, but any reporter from 1910 would have recognized them all as flat-out Bolsheviks, as do I. (If you have any doubts, please review the list of recommended policies in the Communist Manifesto.)

Astounded that one man could control so much information, I was led to wonder, “Who owns the rest of the news media?”There are six top news media outlets:  GE who owns NBC, MSNBC & TeleMundo; News Corp which owns FOX, the Wall Street Journal & the N.Y. Post; Walt Disney (again, who knew?) which owns ABC; Viacom, whose only news venture appears to the an Indian media company, Global Broadcast; CBS; and finally, Time Warner which owns CNN. I researched the stock market to see who owned them. While each has individuals, like Rupert Murdoch, who own large stakes, it is the institutions which own the lion’s share. As I looked through these institutions, I saw an eerie pattern of ownership emerge. I have provided links for your information. Do you see the same pattern I saw?

Seeing the patterns, I decided to create a series of charts which would track what news outlets each of these institutions controlled.
[…]
The results left me speechless. ALL of the news media are PRIVATELY owned by six or so families and/or groups: the oldest & the richest of all people. Both the liberal & conservative press belongs to them. They share ownership equally. The scheme they have used to purchase ALL the news media outlets is disgusting, people of America. While it took me an entire day of intensive research through the stock exchanges, it wasn’t that difficult to re-engineer the information and backtrack the ownership to a tiny number of people. When I looked at my final charts, I wasn’t sure what disgusted me more – the fact that they don’t even bother to really hide the information or the information itself…

Read the rest and view the charts!

No, Fox News is not a conservative news network!

Fox News has never even claimed to be conservative. Of course, I can see why Fox News might seem conservative, compared to the hard-left “alphabet” networks, New York Times, Washington Post, and the supposedly “independent” wire services. But then, the vulgar propaganda/infotainment spewed by the mainstream networks belongs in the same category with the Soviet-era Pravda, or perhaps the English-language version of al-Jazeera. It doesn’t take much to seem “conservative” compared to that.

And Fox News certainly isn’t getting any better these days. While Glenn Beck was right about many things, he was completely mistaken about a few other things (which I won’t go into here). He certainly wasn’t perfect, though, on the whole, he did much more good than harm, and I certainly miss his presence on Fox News. He was spot on with regard to George Soros and with regard to the Caliphate.

At this point, conservatives looking for network news coverage do not yet have anywhere else to go besides Fox News. Arguably, it’s better than nothing, but not by much!

It would not be going too far to say that Fox News has lost whatever punch it once had, simply because it has become the target of outright blackmail:

PJM: The MSM’s ‘Media Matters’ Blackout

The MSM is enjoying a very quiet laugh at the expense of one of their competitors: the Fox News Channel. They’re not saying a word about the all-encompassing, possibly illegal abuse Fox News is experiencing at the hands of the George Soros-funded (to the tune of $1M) Media Matters for America.

Media Matters was co-founded by current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, something which she proudly proclaims. Her fellow founder is David Brock, the fallen conservative journalist who thereafter drifted leftward. Media Matters is an alleged media “monitor,” describing itself on its website thusly:

Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation (emphasis mine).

Around March of this year, Brock announced Media Matters was dramatically diminishing said “cross section” by openly declaring “war on Fox.” (The official announcement came just after Soros’ $1M check cleared.) The above link is to the only mainstream outlet I could find that mentions this story.

Brock says Media Matters will hound Fox News with “guerrilla warfare and sabotage.” For instance:

Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy, or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor.

This isn’t “media analysis.” This is a multi-million dollar leftist PR hit squad. Brock is doing all of this because he claims Fox News has become the titular head of the Republican Party.

And herein lies a legal problem for Media Matters.

Media Matters is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)3 organization. Esteemed attorney C. Boyden Grey explains what that means…

More here.

The sad part is that Fox News has apparently capitulated to this pressure by swinging more and more to the left. Instead, they should be going after Media Matters, and everyone associated with it, with everything they’ve got. But considering their ownership, it is easy to see why they are capitulating.

Oh, and by the way, Fox Detroit seems to have capitulated to the leftist powers-that-be in much the same way: Big Journalism: Fox Detroit Apologizes for Exposing Big Labor.

What about the blogosphere and other “alternative media”?

Well, that depends. As with Fox News, the problem with many of the “bigger” non-liberal blogs, websites, and news forums is that after awhile, the people who run them tend to lose their moxie. They become afraid of losing advertisers; no longer being invited to meet prominent figures; antagonizing stockholders, owners, or financial backers (especially those with Islamic or other foreign ties); or being censored in other ways. Some people are also, by nature, afraid of confrontation, especially when it involves expressing disagreement with their friends and colleagues, or with associates whom they thought were friends.

So these high-profile bloggers and admins begin to pull their punches:

• They practice self-censorship about acceptable topics for news coverage, and how those topics should be addressed – especially when it comes to the counterjihad.
• In place of hard news and controversy, they draw traffic with eye candy and “fluff”.
• They may continue to copy and paste relevant material from, or publish links to, various news sources, but they refuse to draw the obvious conclusions from those news stories, or to allow their commenters to draw any conclusions that might make someone uncomfortable.
• They avoid everything that might draw unwanted attention from some governmental body, pressure group, or even other bloggers and commenters.

If you really want to see the full range of topics for news coverage and debate, you’ll have to visit some of the “smaller” blogs too. Yes, you’ll have to use your own judgment about the quality of news and the validity of opinion on each blog, but then, you should be doing that with ALL sources of information!

Get involved!

“Alternative media” is INTERACTIVE media. You don’t have to just sit there and listen and be spoon-fed. It’s YOUR job to help report the facts as you see them, wherever you happen to be. You can start your own blog if you like, but you can also comment on existing websites or blogs, or you can join a team blog or forum. You can also use other social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as face-to-face contacts, to promote worthwhile blog posts and news articles to everyone you know.

On 1389 Blog, the admins, team members, contributors, and commenters are all volunteers. We abide by certain rules (stated in the comment policy) so it isn’t a free-for-all, but we cover stories and views that the bigger blogs won’t talk about. Most of us blog and comment under our screen names – it isn’t about promoting ourselves, it’s all about the message. And at this point, we don’t sell ads, and we have no plans to do so in the future, so we don’t have to worry about losing a source of revenue. Comments are moderated, but we make a point of putting comments through in a timely manner.

Much the same is true of 2.0: The Blogmocracy, which is a team blog/forum. I’m one of the contributors there also. You’ll have to register to comment there, but registration is free, it is ALWAYS OPEN, and takes just a minute. Comments are posted immediately. Guest bloggers are welcome. There’s also a regular call-in radio show. Consider this an invitation!

There are many other good “smaller” and/or noncommercial blogs like these – which is why 1389 Blog posts so many links in the sidebar.

Also see:

• PJM: How Network News Helped Bring About the Crash

  When we seek out the causes and culprits of our current economic crisis, there is one area in need of reform that should not be overlooked: the mainstream news media. It is not too much to say that the people in the NBC, ABC and CBS news operations were major contributing factors to the crash of 2008 and are helping to pave the way to future economic troubles now.

  In the book Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon, authors Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner tell how, in the early nineties, faulty or skewed studies by ACORN and other groups fed the idea that there was pervasive racial bias by mortgage lenders, with blacks and Hispanics being unfairly rejected for loans. “The findings lit up the media, confirming many people’s suspicions about banks’ lending practices,” the authors write of one such study. In fact, properly interpreted, the data suggested that banks were making their loans not on the basis of race but on the basis of credit-worthiness. But as the misinformation confirmed left-wing ideas, the media pressure was on for a government fix…

• PJM: Alternative Media is Today’s Free Press
  

  On their own initiative, Americans are cutting through the trivia and the propaganda
  […]
  Rather than acting as an agent of protection against an intrusive government, today’s mainstream media — or big media, as I call it — seeks at best merely to entertain us. At worst, it has become an unofficial agent of the state, acting almost exclusively on its behalf.

  Whether or not big media intends to promote the government is irrelevant, for the net effect exists regardless. The point is that it has defied the system as it was designed, begetting a serious problem.

  Fortunately, even those who torment us cannot defy the natural order of things, so again we find the rules of cause and effect at work. As man, in his natural state, seeks to be free and resists the authoritarian nature of the state, inevitably alternative media was born…

• Blogmocracy: The Saudi Money at News Corp/Fox News Speaks Up
  

  Just wondering out loud…It would be interesting to know if the Saudis have any control on what goes on in the US arm of News Corp/Fox News…

• Review of “Page One: Inside the New York Times”
  (h/t: Blazing Cat Fur)

  In the weeks before the release of the documentary Page One, New York Times columnist David Carr, the film’s unofficial star, attracted a bit of publicity by appearing on Bill Maher’s HBO talk show, where he called the residents of America’s “middle places” – the “red” states, and Kansas and Missouri in particular – participants in what he called “the dance of the low sloping foreheads.” He was responding to Maher’s assertion that these are not America’s “smart states,” and allowed himself a bemused, self-satisfied smile as he basked in audience approval after his observation, doubling down on the gibe by coyly adding “Did I just say that aloud?”…

From: Beth Shaw beth@resourcefulearthnews.org
Sent: Fri, June 17, 2011 4:26:51 AM
Subject: Together we Can Stop Environmental Pressure Groups from Killing Jobs and Prosperity!

Taking on the powerful Green movement is no small task. The Environmentalists are well-funded, have power and influence with the current Administration and their supporters can be fanatical when it comes to their opposition to harvesting the abundant resources within the United States.

Yes, we all want pristine landscapes, plush forests and clean, clear streams. But we also see that the increasing costs of gas, oil and electricity is breaking the back of the middle class. We all understand the need to be responsible in the manner in which we retrieve the natural resources that we have in abundance in the United States, understanding that our modern life-style requires the use of those resources if we are to survive. We can have the use of those resources without damaging our beautiful Earth!

Unfortunately, we are being prevented from harvesting these resources through the abuse of regulations by ‘green’ activists groups like ‘Stop the Drill’ and ‘No Dirty Gold’.

Oddly, the environmental concerns and activism of these groups seems to stop at the borders of the United States while other countries are given funds to mine and drill as well as promises the minerals they retrieve from the Earth will be bought by the citizens of the United States.

The Environmentalists have by-passed any semblance of commonsense in order to promote their causes costing Americans jobs and prosperity.

What can we do??

Resourceful Earth is launching on Friday in Minneapolis at the fourth annual Right Online conference.

You can help by signing this petition. Follow Resourceful Earth News on Twitter and Facebook and use your blogs as part of this grassroots movement to put a stop to the abuse of government regulations that are killing jobs and leaving us dependent on foreign resources for our energy. It’s up to us! Join us and help us restore American independence!

Washington, DC, June 17, 2011 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment this week launches Resourceful Earth, a new project that will oppose political barriers to natural resource production. Resourceful Earth will take on campaigns by well-funded environmental pressure groups that abuse federal and state regulations and pursue endless lawsuits to block or hinder hardrock mines, coal mines, oil and gas drilling, timber production, farming, and ranching.

CEI’s new grassroots activist website, ResourcefulEarth.org, will educate and empower Americans to promote access to natural resources and oppose special interests that abuse the regulatory process to block new projects. The first two campaigns targeted by Resourceful Earth will be Earthworks’ No Dirty Gold, which opposes gold mining, and Oceana’s Stop the Drill, which opposes offshore oil.

Read more ……

Let me know if you are including an article on your blog so we can promote your blog post!

Thank you so much!

Beth Shaw
Resourceful Earth News
beth@resourcefulearthnews.org

Jesse Lee’s Twitter icon: Fascism with a smile!

Drudge didn’t seem to have this, so I emailed it to him…

HuffPo says Obama appoints “Director of Progressive Media & Online Response”.

According to HuffPo’s description of a memo that THEY received from the White House, his tasks include “helping coordinate rapid response to unfavorable stories” and “pressing to make the administration more popular on the web”.

Jesse Lee’s twitter is http://twitter.com/#!/jesseclee44.

For what it’s worth, I say that Mr. Lee’s duties constitutes propagandizing and campaigning on the taxpayers’ dime. And I say that now ALL Obama supporters on ALL forums may RIGHTLY be called “government trolls” operating under the marching orders of their new field commander. Whereas until now, that was just an insulting speculation.

I meant it about the Obamaphiles. They are officially trolls. Every Obamaphile, every time, every forum.

Happiness is: watching a leftist strategy backfire.

Like “Crash The Tea Party”, or even… dare I say it… Splattergate!

By the way, I pointed this out on HuffPo and they promptly deleted me.

– Chuck
http://twitter.com/ResistTheJihad
http://www.youtube.com/user/ResistTheJihadists

“OK, turning on the White House Twitter machine that they issued me in 3… 2… 1…”

The derogatory comments garnered by Jesse Lee’s first attempt to post on Twitpic are well worth reading. Evidently, a significant proportion of the online community isn’t buying his propaganda.

Also see:

• The Jawa Report: New WH “Truth” Czar: Jesse Lee The Terminator
• Meet the White House’s New Story Squasher & ‘Director of Progressive Media’

Hear The Truth…

No, this is not my own parish church, but I did take the photo above.

I am certainly not the only one to notice that any attempt to predict the time and date of the Apocalypse is un-Scriptural:

Weasel Zippers: About That Whole Rapture Thing Yesterday …

News of the predicted apocalypse spread around the world. Observers in various time zones made a game of disproving the prediction:

Telegraph (UK): Apocalypse not right now: ‘Rapture’ end of world fails to materialise

Reports of the end of the world appeared to have been exaggerated today.

By Bonnie Malkin, in Sydney, and David Barrett

Inhabitants of New Zealand, scheduled to be among the first to meet the apocalypse according to a US fundamentalist preacher, this morning confirmed they were still in existence as the appointed time was reached in their time zone.

There were also unconfirmed reports that Tonga has, thus far, failed to boil into the Pacific.

Eighty-nine-year-old tele-evangelist Harold Camping had prophesied that the “Rapture” would begin with powerful earthquakes at 6pm in each of the world’s regions, after which the good would be beamed up to heaven.

This morning, Kiwis confirmed there were no signs of the dead rising from the grave, nor of the living ascending into the clouds to meet Jesus Christ.

Twitter users were disappointed by the absence of Armaggedon.
[...]
Vicky Hyde, spokesman for the New Zealand Skeptic Society said she was confident the Rapture was not imminent.

“These kind of predictions come up particularly in times of economic or social uncertainty – which is pretty much almost every year actually, you can track them, whether it’s commentary impacts or the rapture or giant space aliens or something.

“And the only thing they have in common is they are all wrong,” she said.

Camping spread his message of doom via Family Radio, which has a network of 66 radio stations and online broadcasts.

After today’s day of reckoning, he said non-believers would suffer through hell on earth until October 21, when God would pull the plug on the planet once and for all.

But after incorrectly predicting the end of the world in 1994, Camping’s prophecies have been met with derision. And it seems this time he was wrong again…

Sadly, some desperate souls looked forward to the predicted apocalypse, not because they wanted to be in the presence of God, but because they have given up on coping with life on Earth:

Patterico: Rapture Fails to Materialize; Losers Hardest Hit

Get out your small violins:

Keith Bauer, a 38-year-old tractor-trailer driver from Westminster, Md., took last week off from work, packed his wife, young son and a relative in their SUV and crossed the country.

If it was his last week on Earth, he wanted to see parts of it he’d always heard about but missed, such as the Grand Canyon and the Painted Forest. With maxed-out credit cards and a growing mountain of bills, he said, the rapture would have been a relief.

Hey, if you have a family and are deep in debt, the only rational thing to do is take a week off and travel around because you think the world is about to end.

Really too bad that Mr. Bauer couldn’t find the “relief” he sought.

Others saw the media brouhaha as an occasion for some interactive comedy:

Nothing Like A Good Prank…

Blogmocracy 2.0: After The Rapture
By Bunk X

[Tip o' the Tarboosh to CR.]

All I can think of is “that poor damned dog.” Of course, it could be that The Day of Rapture is different for canines, and one day there will be a leash laying on the ground beside a collar while its owner stands there dumbfounded.

Mongoose, also on 2.0: The Blogmocracy, had thought of a good way to prank gullible passers by: leaving pairs of old shoes outdoors, and putting dry ice in them to create rising vapor. Mongoose told me why that plan went awry:

@ 1389AD:

That is what I was going to do but when I got to Goodwill there were no shoes left.

Someone stole my idea! (b–tards…)

Also see…

• Photojournalist Zombie went to the source to chronicle the Media Circus of Biblical Proportions at Armageddon HQ. Rival groups of protesters, pranksters, and placard-bearers turned out in force at the Oakland headquarters of Harold Camping, the radio preacher who started it all by predicting the end of the world on June 21. (Some pictures NSFW.)
• Ed Morissey at Hot Air asks: Is the Rapture schadenfreude turning sinister? He points out that the misguided and panicky activities of Camping and his followers have become an opportunity to ridicule Christians in general, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with this.

Tiberge at Gallia Watch has kindly provided us with updates on the counterjihad rally in Lyon that took place on May 14, 2011. (See previous articles here and here.)

Gallia Watch describes its mission as follows:

To help you stay au courant of what French patriots are doing and saying in this time of turmoil and loss of nationhood. This website is for those with a limited knowledge of French and a boundless interest in saving European cultures from extinction. Leave a comment or send an e-mail to galliawatch.

If you’re a counterjihad blogger, this blog belongs on your blogroll.

Despite the Rain…

The Rally for Freedom, organized as a response to the ban of the originally planned anti-halal demonstration, took place today (Saturday) in Lyon despite the rain. (It’s pouring here on the East Coast also.) Novopress sent this report at 3:30 p.m. Lyon time:

The “Rassemblement pour la Liberté” is in full swing at place Saint-Jean in Lyon. It is taking place under a heavy rain that did not discourage numerous defenders of freedom of expression from coming out but it did interfere with the videos we had planned on showing you.

According to a police source, this demonstration attracted 550 persons despite the bad weather. The organizers counted 600 participants.

The article gives the Twitter address for those who were following the event live.

There were several speeches. Among those who spoke were Philippe Vardon, Jean-David Cattin, Arnaud Gouillon, Fabrice Robert, and also a leader of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson, who spoke for the first time in France.

A reminder that this gathering took place at the urging of the Bloc Identitaire and Rebeyne [the Lyon branch of the Bloc] after the incredible ban of the “Pig March” by the Prefect of the Rhône.

You can review my earlier article here.

Top and below, two of the first photos of the event.

Lyon, May 14, 2011

This two-minute video gives some idea of the demonstration organized by Rebeyne, the Bloc Identitaire of Lyon. The “Rally for Freedom” had begun as the “Pig March” against the widespread distribution of unlabeled halal meat, but when the Prefect banned the rally on grounds it contravened “laïcité”, it was reorganized as the “Rally for Freedom” and got the green light from the Prefect. Despite bad weather, the rally unfolded without serious confrontations, but there were a few broken windows and a counter-demonstration by left-wing activists whose stated goal is to unite against the “extreme right”.

H/T: François Desouche