Tag Archives: Social Media

02/22/16

#FreeStacy – Another Conservative Dissident is Banned and Put in the Twitter Gulag

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Stacy McCain

This weekend, I was shocked and saddened to learn that Stacy McCain of The Other McCain has been permanently banned by Twitter. Yes, my friends… another conservative dissident has been banished to the Twitter gulag. #FreeStacy is now trending, but Twitter won’t even display results for it. Their new Trust & Safety Council is the Twitter Ministry of Truth at work. Censorship y’all. By the way, Twitter elevated anti-GamerGate leader Anita Sarkeesian to its “Trust and Safety Council,” which put a big ole target on Stacy’s account I’m sure.

He had no warning, nothing. McCain just assumed it had to do with one of the leading “social justice warriors” who have been at war with #GamerGate since August of 2014 and thus with him. But Twitter won’t even tell him why he was shuttered over there. He switched to his backup Twitter account, @SexTroubleBook, and then it was banned as well yesterday. Someone really has it in for him. Not cool.

Here’s Stacy on the #GamerGate saga:

As I have said for years: Being notorious is not the same as being famous, but it’s better than being anonymous.

That is to say, I don’t often complain about being hated or misunderstood. It comes with the territory. I started out in the news business as a $4.50-an-hour staff writer for a tiny weekly newspaper in Austell, Georgia. Most people have no idea what I did before I got involved in political journalism as an assistant national editor for The Washington Times in 1997, or even have any idea of the work I did there. The vast majority of people who read my blog or follow my Twitter feed have no knowledge of or interest in my personal “backstory.” It’s not about me. I am not the story. I am the guy telling the story, or I am the guy making jokes about the story. I understand that. But I think some people in the New Media era lose sight of this reality.

Politics is like football. It’s a team sport. Until I was in my mid-30s, I was a very partisan Democrat. Bill Clinton (who I voted for in 1992) cured me of my Democrat loyalty. During the 1990s, I began a rather deep autodidactic study of politics, history, economics, philosophy, etc. My politics are conservative, my economics are Austrian, my faith is Christian. It’s that simple — and certain people HATE me for it. But those people hate everybody who is not a Democrat. Fine. I understand that kind of hate, having once been a Democrat myself, but Democrats think of their personal hatred as “social justice.” And so I understand them better than they understand me.

However, it’s not about me. . . .

Continue reading →

11/20/15

Politico Exonerates, Blames Snowden for Paris

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Some of our media, including the publication Politico, seem totally confused about the role of NSA defector Edward Snowden in the crimes of the terrorists who murdered and maimed hundreds of people in the Paris attacks. The verdict is in: he has bloody hands.

In a November 16 story, “Blaming Snowden for Paris,” David Perera of Politico insisted that no evidence had surfaced that the “revelations” of NSA defector Edward Snowden had “made a difference” in the case of the Paris terrorist attacks, and there was no evidence the perpetrators had “used encrypted communications to conceal their activities.”

Once again, the publication had gotten ahead of the facts in this story, prejudging the case in order to get Snowden off the hook for facilitating the activities of the Islamic State, or ISIS.

Politico is the same publication that alleged that GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson had admitted fabricating an offer of a West Point scholarship, only to reverse course and drop the claim in a rewritten version of the same story.

Only 24 hours later, after exonerating Snowden, the publication again reversed itself, running an interview with Michael Morell, the former acting head of the CIA, who said the Snowden revelations not only helped the Islamic State but probably contributed to the Paris attacks.

Morell stated, “First, ISIS went to school on how we were collecting intelligence on terrorist organizations by using telecommunications technologies. And when they learned that from the Snowden disclosures, they were able to adapt to it and essentially go silent…And so, part of their rise was understanding what our capabilities were, adjusting to them so we couldn’t see them. No doubt in my mind. And the people who say otherwise are just trying to defend Edward Snowden.”

As embarrassing as this was, the original Politico story had referred to “journalist Glenn Greenwald” as “a Snowden ally” who was arguing “that U.S. officials had complained of difficulty tracking terrorist communications long before the NSA whistleblower emerged.”

It’s true that the terrorists had been evading the NSA before Snowden went to Russia, but that was beside the point. What Morell and others were pointing out is that Snowden had made it easier for the terrorists to plot to kill Europeans and Americans.

Rather than being a “journalist,” Greenwald is a political extremist who speaks before Islamist, Marxist and libertarian groups. He has, for example, been afeatured speaker at conferences sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Cato Institute and the International Socialist Organization. At one of these conferences he declared that al Qaeda’s 9/11 terrorist attacks on America were “very minimal in scope compared to the level of deaths that the United States has been bringing to the world for decades—from Vietnam to illegal wars in Central America…”

He is more than a “Snowden ally.” He is a mouthpiece for Snowden’s illegal disclosures and an accomplice in his alleged espionage activities.

A former gay pornography executive, Greenwald was the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award, named in honor of the left-wing journalist identified as an agent of influence for Soviet intelligence. At the awards ceremony, Greenwald said that Soviet agent Stone “pioneered what modern journalism ought to be.”

Snowden is supposedly a “whistleblower,” but that is a false designation considering that he illegally leaked classified information and fled to Russia rather than face up to the authorities and take his punishment. He is specifically charged with espionage.

Despite the claim about encrypted communications not playing a role in the attacks, Politico had itself reported on November 16 in a separate article that “Terrorists linked to the so-called Islamic State are employing encrypted Internet services—including a new generation of mobile messaging apps—that the authorities do not have the technological capability to break, according to intelligence sources, public comments by senior officials, and evidence disclosed in recent criminal trials.”

By November 18, Cory Bennett of The Hill newspaper had identified and cited a 34-page ISIS manual on how to conceal communications from the NSA and other intelligence agencies. Bennett noted that the Arabic document was translated and released by analysts at the Combating Terrorism Center, an independent research group at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

“It includes warnings to avoid Instagram because it is owned by Facebook, and Dropbox because former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sits on its board of investors. Famous government leaker Edward Snowden has also criticized Dropbox over its privacy, the document notes,” added Bennett.

In other words, the Islamic State is taking Snowden’s advice and openly citing the NSA defector’s expertise on planning terrorism against the West. The reference to Snowden is clear in the translation.

This means that no honest journalist can claim that Snowden’s activities have not helped the terrorists who want to kill us.

Bennett wrote a separate story noting evidence first developed by NBC News that ISIS had set up a 24-hour “help desk” to advise terrorists about encrypting their communications in order to evade authorities.

In the NBC News story, Josh Meyer quoted counterterrorism analysts affiliated with the U.S. Army as saying that the ISIS help desk is “manned by a half-dozen senior operatives around the clock” for the specific purpose of “helping would-be jihadists use encryption and other secure communications in order to evade detection by law enforcement and intelligence authorities.”

Now that it has been definitively proven that Snowden’s disclosures have aided ISIS in planning acts of terror, it is time for the media to start examining the Snowden network that AIM has been exposing for several years now. All of his apologists, including such figures as Fox News contributor Andrew Napolitano, should apologize to the world for rushing to the defense of this despicable character, who now clearly has blood on his hands.

It was Napolitano who had declared, “I would describe this man [Snowden] an American hero, as a person willing to risk life, limb and liberty in order to expose to the American people one of the most extraordinary violations of the American principles, value judgments and the Constitution itself in all of our history.”

The evil genius of Snowden’s collaborators was to frame his defection in terms of alleging that he was a “whistleblower.”

He didn’t risk his life or limb but has given up his liberty in return for KGB protection in Moscow.

Citizens of France and possibly the United States, however, will be giving up their lives and limbs so that Snowden can be honored as a hero by Napolitano and his ilk.

02/19/15

Onward, to Defeat!

By: William Palumbo

Will America’s war against ISIS be the first we enter with the intention of losing?

On Tuesday, Breitbart.com carried an extremely salacious piece of news that, judging by the relatively small number of comments, went right over the heads of most readers. Reported Breitbart:

“The Obama administration is revamping its efforts to combat Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) propaganda. ISIS and its supporters produce “as many as 90,000 tweets and other social media responses every day,” reports The New York Times.

An empowered Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, currently a small component of the U.S. State Department, will spearhead the new campaign to fight the ISIS propaganda machine.

Rashad Hussain, a Muslim American with close ties to the White House, will replace Alberto Fernandez, the center’s director, according to The Times.”

The article goes on to cite several curious parts of Mr. Hussain’s biography that place him in close proximity to the Muslim Brotherhood. For the uninitiated, the Brotherhood is an international totalitarian organization which seeks to establish a global Islamic state (i.e., Caliphate) … just like ISIS, whom Hussain is supposed to be battling (in cyberspace, that is).

We’ll soon add some more color to Mr. Hussain’s connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate groups in the United States, but first a few comments regarding the absurdity of social media “warfare” with savage headchoppers.

How Not to “Fight” a Fake War

It has been a surprise to many in America how well-produced, sophisticated, and professional ISIS’s media campaigns have been. Certainly, the influx of western jihadis have given them sufficient talent and technological know-how to put together their slick slaughter videos and catchy Twitter memes. Lest you forget about their savagery for even a day, the news media and Twitter will shove it right back into your face.

Which, considering our government’s capabilities, raises more than a few questions about the actual strategy to defeat ISIS. The U.S. government and social media platforms are masters at censorship. Post something highly offensive on Facebook or on Twitter and these companies will, more likely than not, remove it. There is photo recognition software that surely can be programmed to detect severed heads and black Shahada flags, and immediately flag them (no pun intended) for review. And there are a thousand ways that government internet monitoring can track activity online and cripple the user. Just ask Edward Snowden. Just ask Sharyl Attkisson.

Finally, remember that Facebook Turkey recently conceded to censor Turkish citizens who criticized Islam (and, more than likely, their fascist leaders, Recep Erdogan).

In conclusion, if Obama and the geniuses who are allegedly fighting ISIS were serious about winning the cyberwar, they’d just implement the tools we all know they have at their (literal) fingertips and shut them down. But they don’t.

Of course, if the same people were serious about winning the actual war (read: killing ISIS, not retweeting them to death), they’d also be doing just that. Instead, they’ve been ordering air strikes that have been described as “pin-pricks” since August, and while they dither ISIS has gained control of massive amounts of additional territory in Syria.

Deliberately Surrendering to the Headchoppers and Child Killers

All of this begs the question, what is the Obama administration doing with ISIS? It should be remembered that this same administration armed and trained Syrian rebels in Qatar. Only then did the world get “ISIS.”

This brings us back to Obama’s new propaganda chief against ISIS, Rashad Hussain. As noted by Breitbart, in December 2013 the Egyptian political magazine Rose El-Yousef profiled Hussain as one of six Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators in the Obama administration. At the time, the Investigative Project on Terrorism wrote of Hussain that he “maintained close ties with people and groups that [Rose El-Yousef] says comprise the Muslim Brotherhood network in America.”

That’s an understatement.

Here’s a healthy dose of facts pertaining to Hussain’s role in the Obama administration and his association with Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the United States:

  • Hussain was appointed Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Countries by Obama in   February 2010.
  • In 2013, Hussain met with Abdullah Bin Bayyah at the White House. Bayyah is a Vice President of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS). IUMS is headed by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is banned from entering the United States.
  • In 2013, Hussain was a Forum Speaker at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, held in Doha, Qatar. This event is co-hosted by the Brookings Saban Center, and the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
  • In 2012, Hussain attended the U.S.-Islamic World Conference in Doha, Qatar. With him were future Presidential Chief-of-Staff Denis McDonough, Imam Mohamed Magid (President of the Islamic Society of North America, ISNA), and Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah.
  • In May 2009, Mr. Hussain was one of the speakers at a Leadership Summit of the Council for Advancement of Muslim Professionals (CAMP). Many of the sponsoring organizations of that event are tied to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood including Islamic Relief, Amana Mutual Funds, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. (From GlobalMBWatch.com)
  • In 2008, Hussain co-authored a paper for the Brookings Institution, Reformulating the Battle of Ideas: Understanding the Role of Islam in Counterterrorism Policy.   This paper explicitly calls for the American government not to reject political Islam, but to utilize Islamic scholars and Islamic “policymaking” to reject “terrorism.” It also recommends that “policymakers should reject the use of language that provides a religious legitimization of terrorism such as ‘Islamic terrorism’ and ‘Islamic extremist.’” (Brookings has taken millions of dollars from the Muslim Brotherhood government of Qatar.)
  • In 2004, Hussain spoke at a Muslim Students Association’s (MSA) conference in Chicago. There he defended Sami al-Arian, a Palestinian activist who had been indicted by the Department of Justice for racketeering, calling it a “politically motivated persecution.”

 

Dissembling and Procrastination from Obama and his Puppets

In October, former CIA Chief and Secretary of Defense (both positions held under Obama) Leon Panetta expressed what should have been treated as an incredible opinion. The war against ISIS, Panetta stated, would be a “30-year war.”

Let’s state the obvious: if you’re planning a 30-year war, are you planning victory, or a prolonged, dragged out, and humiliating defeat? The Nazis were defeated in much less than 30 years’ time, and ISIS right now is no German Wehrmacht. Not even close… not yet, anyway.

That stupefying statement by an Obama-appointed public figure, as unbelievable as it was, was actually trumped this week by State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf. Harf, speaking after the world had recently witnessed the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot and the mass beheadings of Coptic Christians in Libya, claimed that the United States could “not kill ourselves out of his war. We need in the medium and longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it is lack of opportunity for jobs.” ISIS certainly seems to believe they can kill themselves out of this war, whether the murdered are men, women, or children.

But not according to the U.S. Department of State. Instead, to defeat ISIS, Libyans need jobs (or something, right Ms. Harf?). This is just too ironic, considering that the Obama administration is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and there are a record number of Americans long-term out of work.

How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Jihad

Americans aren’t all that familiar with Islam, jihad, honor killings, or the Muslim Brotherhood. According to the most recent U.S. Census, less than one million people in the United States speak Arabic at home.

So, maybe it makes sense to listen to the government of Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928, when it states publicly that ISIS is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The shock value here is minimized when one remembers that Al Qaeda, Hamas, Boko Haram, and the Taliban are all Muslim Brotherhood spinoffs.

Then again, other spinoffs of the Brotherhood include CAIR, ISNA, MPAC, and the MSA. Rashad Hussain, the chief architect of a bogus cyberwar strategy against ISIS, is a well-known associate of these groups going back more than a decade. It’s a matter of public record.

Not even in 30 years will this “strategy” defeat ISIS. It’s not designed to. It’s designed to defeat us.

As an infamous 1991 memo of the Muslim Brotherhood stated, “The Ikhwan (i.e., Muslim Brotherhood) must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Obama consistently defends Islam, yet has no problem lecturing Americans about the Crusades (which ended long before Columbus sailed to the Americas). If we the people don’t get serious about stopping this modern day jihad soon, the sabotage from within will soon be complete.

02/18/15

Congress Fiddles While the World Burns

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The Obama administration may be on the same side as the Muslim Brotherhood, but at least we know where they stand. Congress, by contrast, sounds tough and does nothing.

Consider the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who has issued a “seven-point plan” to defeat Islamist terrorism that includes countering Islamist ideology. He gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute called, “An American Strategy for Victory in the War Against Islamist Terror.” Unfortunately, he had the opportunity to go on the offensive more than two years ago when he rebuffed requests to hold hearings into Al Jazeera’s expansion into the United States.

Once known as the mouthpiece for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Al Jazeera has earned the label “Jihad TV.”

There used to be a time when the U.S. was on-guard against foreign influence and propaganda. During World War II, we had a congressional panel known as the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which exposed the Communists, the Nazis and their agents operating on American soil. A particular focus of HUAC was foreign propaganda activities.

Just two years ago, when the Chinese bought AMC movie theaters, they went for approval to a federal panel known as CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. The Chinese Dalian Wanda Group Co., known as Wanda, announced after the review that it had received all necessary regulatory approvals in the U.S. and China for the planned acquisition of AMC.

Wanda is described as China’s largest investor in cultural and entertainment activities. AMC operated 346 theaters with 5,034 screens, primarily in the United States and Canada.

One can argue that AMC should have been barred from such a purchase. The legitimate fear is that China is using its entertainment operations in the U.S. to propagandize the American people. Selwyn Duke, in an article on China’s increasing power and influence in Hollywood, has a list of films in which characters or plot lines have been changed to accommodate the Chinese regime and its censors.

By contrast, Al Jazeera completely bypassed the CFIUS process. McCaul’s committee should have held hearings into evidence that Al Jazeera is not a legitimate news operation but rather a conduit for propaganda from terrorist groups. McCaul had received a letter—signed by media critics, journalists, academics, and national security and Middle East experts—requesting hearings on Al Jazeera’s purchase of Al Gore’s Current TV. In a display of arrogance, he didn’t even bother to respond.

The issue is not Al Jazeera’s small audience. It’s the nature of that audience and the ability of the channel to reach terrorist-minded Muslims with anti-American messages.

Foreign channels do not have the right to provoke terrorism on American soil. If they are legitimate news operations, they may have the right to broadcast in the U.S. But they are also required under the law to register as foreign agents and label their broadcasts as foreign propaganda. Al Jazeera has not been forced to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The law was originally passed to counter Nazi propaganda activities, but applies to all foreign entities that attempt to manipulate an American audience.

Now that awareness is growing about how terrorists are being inspired and recruited, McCaul is sounding concerned. He should be. He was AWOL in 2012 when Al Jazeera was dramatically expanding its operations in the U.S.

There are two dangers with Al Jazeera. One is the transmission of pro-terrorist propaganda. The other is that the channel could be serving as cover for agents of foreign terrorist groups to operate as “news” personnel while gathering intelligence and recruiting agents.

In his remarks explaining his new strategy, McCaul noted the case of “a would-be attacker who wanted to target the U.S. Capitol here in Washington D.C.” He added, “The barbarians, I believe, are at the gate…and it is time for this nation to confront them.”

We don’t know if the ISIS sympathizer, Christopher Cornell, was a fan of Al Jazeera. That’s something which should be examined. But it is interesting to look at Al Jazeera’s coverage of this case. The channel ran an “analysis” piece by Ehab Zahriyeh suggesting that the culprit wasn’t a jihadist, but instead had “social and emotional issues” and was a victim of entrapment by the FBI. By contrast, in the North Carolina case, where a truly deranged individual killed three Muslims over a parking space, Zahriyeh reported that the attack was evidence of “Islamophobia.”

Al Jazeera’s Zahriyeh had also reported that Houston’s Quba Islamic Institute “was set ablaze,” in another apparent “Islamophobic” act. It turned out the culprit was a homeless person with an extensive criminal history for charges like drug possession and prostitution. It appears that he started the fire to stay warm and it got out of control. Zahriyeh featured the comments of Ibrahim Hooper, communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front. CAIR can always be counted on to find evidence of “Islamophobia,” even when none exists.

So this is how Al Jazeera “reports” the news. It is designed to inflame, provoke and mislead.

It turns out that Zahriyeh worked previously at Press TV, an English-language Iranian government propaganda channel. He was at Columbia University in New York City to cover the opening of the Center for Palestine Studies, an outfit characterized by “hostility toward Israel.”

McCaul had a chance to investigate Al Jazeera more than two years ago and he balked. As we documented at the time, Al Jazeera and its sponsor, the government of Qatar, hired several lobbying firms to stop any probe of Al Gore’s deal with the Muslim Brotherhood channel.

Hence, McCaul’s new proposal to take the fight to the enemy by countering “domestic radicalization” and undermining “the insidious ideology at the core of Islamist terrorism” has to be taken with a grain of salt. No plans have been announced to probe Al Jazeera.

We have consistently argued that allowing Al Jazeera to operate in the United States, during a global war against Islamic terrorism, is akin to fighting the Nazis while allowing their spokesperson, Axis Sally, to run a broadcasting operation in the U.S. In this war, by contrast, McCaul and others treat Al Jazeera as a legitimate news organization deserving of First Amendment protections. They refuse to investigate its links to the Muslim Brotherhood and various terrorist groups.

Yet McCaul wants people to think he’s going to get the bottom of the global jihad problem. In his headline-grabbing speech, McCaul said, “Overseas terrorist groups aren’t yesterday’s extremists, moving messages between couriers and caves. They are tailoring their hateful ideology toward Western audiences on social media, recruiting homegrown fanatics, and fueling a ‘jihadi cool’ subculture. Already, their propaganda is leading to an uptick in homegrown terrorism. For example, there have been more than 90 homegrown terror plots or attacks in the United States since 9/11—and nearly three-fourths of them have taken place in the past five years. Many of the suspects were radicalized at least in part by online Islamist propaganda, including the Boston Marathon bombers.”

McCaul doesn’t mention Al Jazeera. Yet, the channel is available on DIRECTV, Comcast / XFINITY, Time Warner Cable, DISH, AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS, and Bright House Networks.

McCaul declares that “…we must defend the Homeland against domestic radicalization,” adding, “We are entering an era of ‘do-it-yourself’ jihad, and terrorists are finding it easier to encourage individual attacks rather than sneak operatives into our country. But we are alarmingly unprepared to address the threat of homegrown terrorism.”

On the latter point, he’s correct. But he’s been part of the problem. He’s talking about himself and his committee.