01/29/15

The Media, Hollywood and the Pro-life Cause

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Ronald Reagan said, “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” In that context, one fascinating banner at the recent March for Life referred to the “survivors” of the abortion on demand mentality. A Christian pro-life ministry exists to rally the living on behalf of those being denied the right to life.

But the odds are that you didn’t hear or read anything about their presence at this massive demonstration.

The group, Liberty Counsel, notes that the controversy over deflating footballs has garnered enormous media coverage, but the annual anti-abortion March for Life on January 22 got little attention.

“The network media snubbed hundreds of thousands of participants who journeyed to Washington, D.C., to mark the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. NBC and ABC completely ignored the March, and CBS dedicated 15 seconds,” Liberty Counsel pointed out in a message to supporters.

The group went on, “The intentional refusal to report on hundreds of thousands of people—dominated by youth—standing for life in our nation’s Capital is irresponsible.”

As both a regular participant in the March for Life and a media critic, I anticipated this virtual black-out. That’s why I went myself, armed with a video camera. If you’re tired of the coverage of deflated footballs, you can watch my short video from the March for Life that captures only a small part of the demonstration. The crowd was full of young people.

I tried to find the most interesting signs and banners, such as, “There’s nothing progressive about killing the innocent.” This banner shows the moral bankruptcy of the modern-day “progressives” who insist that unborn children have no rights.

I also liked “Je suis un enfant un naitre,” French for “I am a preborn child.” Delegations from France and Italy were at the rally.

But while the networks didn’t cover the march, it should be noted that Hollywood last year actually produced a pro-life film, “Gimme Shelter,” with powerful acting performances and well-known actors. The critics panned it. The audiences loved it.

Based on a true story, “Gimme Shelter” is about a pregnant teenager who finds help in a Catholic shelter for unwed mothers.

In real life, Kathy DiFiore turned her own New Jersey home into that shelter for mothers and their babies. She met with President Reagan, who thanked her for what she was doing. In the film, viewers catch a glimpse of the photo of Kathy Difiore and Reagan, taken on January 22, 1988, another anniversary of the March for Life.

DiFiore writes about the day that photo was taken, saying she told Reagan, “You are doing what our Founding Fathers did. You are bringing us back to God’s values. That is what you are doing and we thank you for that.”

Reagan told Kathy DiFiore and other members of the pro-life group meeting with him in the White House that the decision legalizing abortion-on-demand was wrong because “these children are already human beings [and] are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” He referred to remarks he had made in a telephone call to the March for Life, discussing how 24 prestigious doctors had responded to his comments that “These babies are human beings.”

Those were some of the comments he had made about unborn children feeling pain during an abortion. They deserve more attention, now that a vote on the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” was sabotaged by Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC).

At the time he made these remarks, Reagan had said, “there was an outcry—enraged criticism and angry denials. But criticism wasn’t the only response.”

The entire text included these comments about the science behind the observation that unborn children feel pain during abortions. Reagan said, “It so happened that I received a letter signed by 24 medical doctors, including eminent physicians like the former chief of pediatrics at the St. Louis City Hospital and the president of the New York State Medical Society. They discussed recent advances in medical technology and concluded: ‘Mr. President, in drawing attention to the capability of the human fetus to feel pain, you stand on firmly established ground.’”

A master communicator, Reagan effectively rebutted the “progressive” argument that the unborn have no rights. He said, “…our opponents tell us not to interfere with abortion. They tell us not to impose our morality on those who wish to allow or participate in the taking of the life of infants before birth. Yet no one calls it imposing morality to prohibit the taking of life after a child is born. We’re told about a woman’s right to control her own body. But doesn’t the unborn child have a higher right, and that is to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or would our critics say that to defend life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is to impose morality? Are we to forget the entire moral mission of our nation through its history?”

Today, however, the Reagan vision has been abandoned, even by some in the conservative media.

The Fox Business Network just gave a former MTV personality, who calls herself “Kennedy,” an hour a night to promote her extreme libertarian views. Regarding her abandonment of the conservative label, she has said, “Social conservatism was really bringing me down.” She became a “Gary Johnson libertarian,” named after the pro-pot, former New Mexico governor. Her book features a photo of her virtually naked on a horse, and even the table of contents is marked by obscenities.

Put forward as a role model for young people, she is a supporter of same-sex marriage and “pro-choice” on abortion. That is, “pro-choice” for the mother and not her child.

She says, “Abortion, to me, is an issue of personal responsibility.” No. Based on any objective standard, this issue involves two people.

The Daily Beast reports that Kennedy, “in a notorious appearance as a presenter on the 1994 Video Music Awards—simulated oral sex on her microphone. This, while an unsuspecting Rudy Giuliani, then mayor of New York, stood beside her on camera and, oblivious to Kennedy’s lewd sideshow, blathered on about how great it was to have the awards show back in Manhattan.”

A much better pick for a program on Fox would have been any of the young women leaders in the pro-life movement such as Kristan Hawkins, Lila Rose, or Kristina Garza.

In response to the virtual media blackout of the March for Life, Lila Rose of Live Action said, “The continued media blackout on abortion disregards the primary obligation of journalism: to accurately report, investigate, and tell truth without bias. While mainstream media perpetuate a silence on the March for Life, the unjust killing of 3,000 preborn children in the womb by abortion continues each and every day. We must speak for society’s littlest and weakest members, and give voice to those who are the victims of the greatest human rights abuse of our day.”

Wouldn’t it be great to have a young female pro-life voice like that on either the Fox News Channel or the Fox Business Network?

Instead, the trend is to go in a libertarian direction and play down those “divisive” social issues. Being pro-abortion, pro-gay, and pro-pot is now the “in” thing. This constitutes another attempt at demoralizing the pro-life side.

In his book, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation, Reagan told pro-lifers not to lose hope. “Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must not lose heart,” he said. “This is not the first time our country has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives.”

He added, “…we know that respect for the sacred value of human life is too deeply engrained in the hearts of our people to remain forever suppressed.”

But the abortion industry and its defenders in the media are doing their best to keep this sacred value suppressed, by outright ignoring it.

01/21/15

Fox News “Apologizes” to Radical Islam

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The disease known as political correctness has infected Fox News. First, anchor Bret Baier withdrew from a Catholic conference under pressure from his management and the homosexual lobby. Now, Fox News has bowed to pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood lobby, issuing an embarrassing “correction” that was not warranted for having reported factually on the existence of Muslim-dominated “no-go zones” in Europe.

These zones, which are better understood as Muslim-dominated enclaves or ghettos, were the scene of much-publicized violent riots in France in 2005.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) decided to target Fox News after several programs featured commentators who noted the existence of no-go Muslim-dominated areas where Islamic terror cells take root and find recruits.

In response to CAIR’s criticism, Fox News has apologized, even saying the coverage of the no-go zones was offensive. It is as if the forces of the global Jihad have acquired a veto over what appears on the air on the channel.

While CAIR’s pressure was certainly a factor in the capitulation to the Muslim Brotherhood lobby, another factor could well have been the influence of the Saudi billionaire, Alwaleed bin Talal, who controls an influential number of voting shares in the Fox News parent company. We noted that Alwaleed had prompted the Fox News Channel to dramatically alter its coverage of the Muslim riots in France after he admitted calling the channel to complain.

At that time, Fox News and other media outlets had noted that “Muslim riots” had erupted in the mostly Muslim suburbs of Paris and other French cities. These are some of the no-go zones. Acting offended, Alwaleed said he had called Rupert Murdoch to complain and that Fox News anchors changed the term “Muslim riots” to “civil riots.”

In the latest case, CAIR called on Fox News to stop using “Islamophobic commentators,” a smear term for critics of radical Islam, and focused on terrorism expert Steven Emerson’s description of Birmingham, England as “totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.” Emerson admitted he was wrong and had misquoted his sources.

Although Emerson exaggerated the problem, the fact is that Muslim groups and even gangs are known to be a problem in the city and a threat to some non-Muslims. In 2008, for example, two evangelists said they were threatened with arrest and warned by a police officer in Birmingham that they should not hand out Christian literature in a certain area of the city because they could get “beaten up” by mobs and charged with a hate crime.

At the time, a senior Church of England bishop, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, had warned about “already separate communities” in Britain turning into no-go areas. During a 2009 visit to the United States, he was reported to have said that “Christians have been prevented from advertising church events in these parts of town and even police have been reluctant to enter these communities.”

So while Emerson made a mistake, his basic point about Muslim intimidation of outsiders remains valid.

Evidence of the problem has been available for years. In Belgium, for example, the district of Molenbeek was investigated in an undercover capacity by Moroccan-Belgian journalist Hind Fraihi, who wrote a 2006 book, Undercover in Klein-Marokko (Undercover in Little Morocco). She found the area to be an essentially ungovernable hotbed of extremism, anti-Semitism, and a breeding ground for jihad. The book “shocked” Belgium, one television news reporter noted. “Many police officers are afraid that the state no longer wields authority here, at least not the sole authority,” the reporter said. “They know that Islamists view Molenbeek as subject only to Muslim law.”

This is the same general area where Muslim riots are reported to have just taken place, following the anti-terror raid by police that left two terror suspects dead. The suspected leader of the terror cell, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is described as a 27-year-old Belgian of Moroccan origin who once lived in Molenbeek.

The term “no-go zone” is certainly politically incorrect. For that reason, other more obscure terms have been put forward to refer to the Muslim-dominated areas. For example, the term “Territories of Identities in France” has emerged as one of the descriptions. One academic analyst traced their emergence in France to a French Socialist Party policy in 1981 which allowed foreigners to create their own “voluntary associations,” based on a supposed “right to difference.”

Another more popular term is “exclusion areas.” Whatever they may be called, there can be no doubt they exist. And that was the main point of the Fox News coverage. There was nothing to correct except for Emerson’s inaccuracy about Birmingham. And he had already apologized for that.

Yet, anchor Julie Banderas said in her on-air correction and apology that the channel was sorry for being offensive.

Banderas said the channel had “made some regrettable errors on air, regarding the Muslim population in Europe, particularly with regard to England and France.” She explained, “Now this applies especially to discussions of so-called no-go zones, areas where non-Muslims allegedly aren’t allowed in, and police supposedly won’t go.”

But she went on to distort what the channel had actually put on the air. She said, “To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country, and no credible information to support the assertion that there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion. There ARE certainly areas of high crime in Europe, as there are in the United States and other countries, where police and visitors enter with caution. We deeply regret the errors, and apologize to any and all who may have taken offense, including the people of France and England.”

Of course, nobody claimed on the air that these enclaves are “formal” or “specific” areas in the sense that the national government has decided to recognize or categorize them as such. In addition, they don’t “exclude individuals based solely on their religion” in a government-recognized legal sense. Rather, these areas take the form of segregated neighborhoods or enclaves. That was the point made by several commentators.

The dramatic correction from Fox News is proof that the Muslim Brotherhood lobby, of which CAIR is a part, has demonstrated clout at the channel, perhaps through figures such as the Saudi billionaire Alwaleed, who also happens to be a financial contributor to CAIR.

There’s no reason for the channel to pander to radical Islam in this dramatic fashion. Clearly, the dramatic Fox News correction of its coverage of the no-go zones was overblown and unnecessary, since Emerson had already admitted his mistake. As a result of the Fox News “correction,” many media outlets are now saying that the concept of no-go zones in Europe for non-Muslims has been thoroughly “discredited.”

What is desperately needed is more, not less, coverage of the Islamization of Europe. Fox should have let Emerson’s correction speak for itself and moved on.

Several observers point to the 1980 book, Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States, published by the Saudi-funded Islamic Council of Europe, as helping to develop this deliberate strategy of establishing Islamic enclaves in European countries that are marked by religious customs and rules. This is shariah—the supremacy of Islamic law.

Political figures can keep the debate going, even if the media now shy away from it. Bucking the tide of appeasement, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal framed the issue in specific and accurate terms in a January 15 speech in London, saying, “It is startling to think that any country would allow, even unofficially, for a so called ‘no-go zone.’ The idea that a free country would allow for specific areas of its country to operate in an autonomous way that is not free and is in direct opposition to its laws is hard to fathom.”

In a column, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney praised Governor Jindal, saying that he said what has been “the unsayable about Islam’s supremacist ideology known as shariah and the holy war, or jihad, it demands all of its adherents to engage in or support.”

However, it appears that the “unsayable” may now be left unsaid on Fox, a channel many conservatives have come to rely on for information about jihad. It’s “highly unlikely” that Emerson will “ever be booked again” on Fox News, a spokesman for the channel said.

If true, this will be a great victory for CAIR and its collaborators, including what Gaffney calls in a new report “The Global Jihad Movement.” The report identifies a victory strategy, in part by identifying the components of this movement, including CAIR.

For his part, Emerson has been consistently correct about the development of the Islamic extremist networks that now threaten America and the world. His latest film, “Jihad in America: The Grand Deception,” describes how Muslim Brotherhood fronts, such as CAIR, have pursued a strategy described in secret documents as the “Civilization-Jihadist Process” of destroying Western civilization from within.

It is this kind of work that has made Emerson into a target.

As far back as 1994, Emerson had served as the executive producer and reporter for the public television documentary “Jihad in America.” The film included previously unknown videos of the clandestine activities of radical Islamic terrorist groups in the United States. Oliver Revell, former associate deputy director of the FBI, stated that Emerson’s program had discovered details about these terrorist networks that the FBI didn’t have.

Emerson testified before Congress on the subject of “Foreign Terrorists in America” in 1998. It was five years after the first World Trade Center attack and three years before 9/11.

Emerson has been proven correct again and again about the terrorist problem we face.

But to make matters worse, Fox media reporter Howard Kurtz made much of the fact that Emerson was only a “guest” on the January 10 edition of the “Justice with Judge Jeanine” show, and not a paid contributor. It was as if he was also trying to separate Emerson from the channel.

For being right about the threat over the course of decades, Emerson deserves our thanks. We need more journalism of this quality. He deserves better treatment from a channel that has now clearly shown it could use more and not less of his expertise.

12/30/14

Obama: The Politician Without a Church

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

POLITICO has run a piece citing various claims that President Obama is a practicing Christian of some sort. Nice try. But the article is entirely unconvincing.

Obama isn’t prevented from going to a Christian church and doesn’t cite security reasons for not attending. Instead, he “worries that his presence detracts from other worshippers’ experience,” the publication said. We are told he reads scripture and prays in private.

In 2008, when he first ran for president, the Obama campaign insisted he was a “committed Christian.” Glenn Greenwald, who later became NSA defector Edward Snowden’s mouthpiece, found Obama’s claim so alarming that he wrote an article for Salon about it. Greenwald, whose anti-American outlook includes Muslim sympathies, was apparently deeply concerned that Obama could, in fact, be a committed Christian.

We now understand that Obama’s Christian claim was as phony as his promise, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

POLITICO reports that Obama has “attended Sunday services only occasionally, visiting a patchwork of congregations 19 times in all since taking office, according to a POLITICO analysis of White House pool reports.” Further down in the story we learn that “In all, Obama has gone to services on about 6 percent of the Sundays of his presidency and just once on Christmas Day, in 2011, which also happened to be a Sunday.”

Another insight into Obama’s religiosity is when he tries to quote from the Bible or make religious references. He once compared Mary and Joseph to illegal aliens. Even The Washington Post admitted that was false. On another occasion, he said, “The good book says, don’t throw stones in glass houses.” But the Bible has no such quote.

It appears that this man of deep faith, as described by POLITICO, doesn’t even read the “good book” he likes to quote from. So what has he been doing in those private prayer and Bible study sessions?

But the story goes beyond mere hypocrisy.

When questions emerged about Obama’s religious affiliation, in view of his Muslim background, his aides flatly asserted that he was a “practicing Christian” and was “baptized” in the Trinity United Church of Christ. We examined that claim and found it wanting. As we noted at the time, “People see him [Obama] playing golf on Sunday; they don’t see him going to church.”

Obama’s claim to being baptized in the Christian faith is found in his second book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006. Obama wrote on page 208, “I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized.” We argued that what Obama described sounds like a religious experience, but not what Christians regard as baptism.

Obama’s pastor for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, gave a speech in which he praised Marxism and faulted the media for claiming that communism and Christianity were somehow opposed to one another.

It also turns out that Wright’s church accepted Muslims as members. Wright told author Edward Klein that he “made it comfortable” for Obama to accept Christianity “without having to renounce his Islamic background.”

Obama is now on vacation in Hawaii, and the White House is releasing details about his daily activities. “Like most Americans,” the White House proclaims, “President Obama is a creature of habit.” But church or Bible study doesn’t appear to be on his list of priorities. His activities are said to include:

  • Daily morning workout at the Semper Fit Center at MCBH [Marine Corps Base Hawaii]
  • Golf at the Kaneohe Klipper golf course
  • Golf at the Mid-Pacific Country Club
  • Golf at the Ko’olau Golf Club
  • Golf at the Royal Hawaiian Golf Club
  • Dinner at Alan Wong’s Restaurant
  • Dinner at Nobu Waikiki
  • Dinner at Morimoto Waikiki
  • Visit Punchbowl Cemetery
  • Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay
  • Christmas Day: Visit service members at Anderson Hall
  • New Year’s Eve: Traditional talent show at home
  • Bowling at K-Bay Lanes at MCBH
  • Basketball at MCBH
  • Swim at Pyramid Rock Beach
  • Swim at Bellows Beach
  • Shave Ice at Island Snow in Kailua
  • Hike the Maunawili Falls trail

One writer, Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a self-described heathen, didn’t like the POLITICO story for another reason. He doesn’t even like the topic of Obama’s religiosity being discussed. “It doesn’t matter if Obama goes to church or not,” he wrote. “It doesn’t matter if he is even a Christian, or, as conservatives often charge, a Muslim. In a word, it is nobody’s concern but that of Barack Obama himself.”

Of course, if Obama claims to be a Christian, and the evidence suggests otherwise, it is a significant story. That’s because his alleged Christianity was a factor in his 2008 and 2012 victories.

In 2008, for example, Catholics voted for Obama by a margin of 54-45. In 2012, the margin was 50-48.

Now, with his recognition and bailout of the Castro regime, he can count on Pope Francis being in his corner. It’s quite an achievement for a politician without a church.

12/15/14

Women Jihadists In Pakistan

By: Farrukh H.Saif

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article entitled: Ready or Not They are Coming,” which was published by many blogs. In that write-up, I mention how ISIS is planting their roots in Pakistani society; it is really an alarming situation for religious minorities as well as modern Muslims.

But surprisingly, the Pakistani Army officials stated that: “There could be isolated cases where they are trying to show their presence or to become relevant, but I don’t see this growing into a major threat,” whereas these militants, who are either Taliban or al-Qaeda, were always a major threat to our country. The militants have entered into army installations dozens of times and twice into Pakistani airports where attacks took place. What If these militants joined hands with ISIS? Would this not be a threat to the Pakistani community? According to available information, many Taliban commanders have already joined ISIS, as well as many other Islamic groups and those who were associated with Al-Qaeda also accepted Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi as their Caliph.

However, the former Pakistani Ex-Interior Minister Rehman Malik claimed that he had documentary evidence about the presence of ISIS in Pakistan. He stated: “I have solid proof that ISIS has established its contacts with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan and it is quite possible that one of the Taliban’s leaders will soon be named as its chief in Pakistan,” he said. When asked about documents he possessed, the PPP leader said: “I will brief the nation about documentary proof and will make them public in a couple of days.”

And as of yesterday, one of the trustees of the Lal Masjid Shuhada Foundation “Ihtashamul Haq” filed a petition against the police; he claimed that after the release of a video message by students of Jamia Hafsa, the Islamabad Police have started harassing them.

The Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and Jamia Hafsa previously grabbed headlines in 2007 when the then President Gen. Musharraf ordered the army to hold an operation in Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa.

You will be surprised that these students of Jamia Hafsa released a video message in which they openly support ISIS. Here is the video and after watching it, if you still think that there is NO ISIS and that their supporters in Pakistan don’t exist, then you are living in a fool’s paradise.

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