Using the Giffords' Shootings to Destroy Free Speech

Using The Giffords Shooting To Destroy Free Speech
by Pamela Geller
01/13/2011

Now it is clear that Jared Loughner was stalking Gabrielle Giffords for years, long before Sarah Palin and her supposed “target” electoral map. Now it is clear that Loughner’s classmates were afraid of him months ago.

One teacher wrote last summer: “Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.” A student wrote: “He frightened the daylights out of me. I kept saying to people, ‘I’m afraid he’s going to come into the class with a gun.' ”

Not only was he dangerous, he was a Leftist. Loughner’s high school friend, Caitie Parker, remembers him as a “political radical” who was “Left-wing, quite liberal.” Loughner also has a creepy “music video” up on YouTube, in which he is dressed as a terrorist and burns an American flag.


Now that we know it proves true what I said on Saturday at 4:16 p.m. (Atlas was first with the youtube channel): that Loughner was a Left-wing radical loon. Nonetheless, be warned. The Left is still trying to use this lunatic’s insane actions to try to shut us up.

That’s what the Democrats do. Two proposals are floating. One is designed to tamp down the political rhetoric. What does that mean? It won’t apply to the left -- that much is sure. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), said Sunday: “We are in a dark place in this country right now; the atmospheric condition is toxic. Much of it originates here in Washington D.C., and we export it around the country.”

His solution? Muzzle the Right.

This from the congressman who lied and said he heard a “chorus” of Tea Partiers use an ugly racial epithet. Yet no evidence -- none -- was ever found for this allegation. There were thousands of people there, with hundreds of video cameras rolling. Not one caught this “chorus.” So Cleaver eventually retracted his claim. But now he is proposing speech restrictions? You can’t make this stuff up.

And Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) plans legislation to make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening to a federal official.

First Amendment out the window. Free speech, as long as it is speech the fascists like.

And why is a federal official’s life more valuable than say, mine? I get death threats all the time using jihadic language and Islamic symbols. Let’s outlaw those too, eh?

The killer was a madman -- Loughner stalked Giffords for three years. The killer’s eerie note: “I planned ahead.“

Three years. That means that he started before Palin became a key national figure, before the Tea Party and before the 2010 Republican win. So all those charges are just hate propaganda designed to destroy our best people. Loughner was no conservative. He was nuts. Period.

Exception makes bad law. The father of the 9-year-old angel who was shot in the chest does not want restrictions on free speech.

Of course, gun control is also on the fascist agenda of exploitation of this mass murder. More Lefty lies to control and disarm the people.

As if gun control will improve mental illness. Yes, let’s take guns out of the hands of decent, law-abiding citizens. Amazing how the Republicans postponed all House business, yet the Democrats are rushing this legislation.

Consider this: The rabid obsession that the media and the Democrats have exhibited in hanging the Right with the Arizona slaughter of six by a Left-wing radical is a mirror inversion of the Democrats’ and media’s obsession with the silence on the religious motive behind Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s jihad at Fort Hood, which led to the slaughter of 14.

Major Hasan was a proud shaheed. He had come out as a jihadi on grand grounds. He had “Soldier of Allah” imprinted on his business card. Anwar al-Awlaki was his imam. He distributed copies of the Koran on the morning of this Islamic attack on the U.S. military base. Hasan screamed the war cry of jihad, “Allahu Akbar,” as he mowed down our soldiers at Fort Hood. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we had to be lectured, counseled and admonished for months afterward against “Islamophobia” (which is effectively the enforcement of Islamic law against blasphemy).

As our brave soldiers lay dying, many dead, the chief concern of Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey in the bloody aftermath was that “speculation could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.” That was the kickoff. A threat to diversity was the problem, not jihadis in the military.

The wreckage that is being caused by the media’s scorched-earth tantrum is a shock to the American system. If they get away with it, nothing will be the same.
Email, write, snail mail, call your congressman and say no to this. Why punish the American people by shredding the Constitution? Say no to the left’s attempt to use this tragedy to further Left-wing totalitarian aims.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs website and former associate publisher of the New York Observer. Her op-eds have appeared in the Washington Times, WorldNetDaily, the American Thinker, Israel National News and other publications.

Media Coverage By Moscow-Trained Obama Worse than Pravda

Media Coverage of FDI/SIOA Rally of Remembrance Worse than Pravda:
The Big Lie
The photo displayed on top is the pathetic anti-America, commie, leftist counter protest. Look. This is the sidewalk going back barely one block - not even. And no lanes across. The street is wide open.
Above: Tens of thousands converge on Ground Zero to stand for freedom and against the Ground Zero mega mosque. photos. The whole street (all lanes filled) blocks and blocks as far as the eye can see Looking at the Left.

Bucking Media and FBI Currents

One of the worst developments to emerge in the Ground Zero mega mosque attack is the platform being given to Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas funder groups on mainstream media news channels. These subversive organizations are working to destroy us. There are so many Muslims of conscience against this mosque, why would media choose subversives to represent the American Muslim community?

Would American media have promoted Goebbels or Himmler or Hitler sympathizers as representative of German Americans when allied forces were at war with the axis powers? It's the same thing.

FBI refuses to cave in to Hamas-linked CAIR's intimidation tactics over Spencer invitation

A month after the Hamas-linked Islamic supremacist hate group CAIR tried to intimidate the FBI into apologizing for inviting me to speak in Virginia some time ago, Politico noticed the story and asked the FBI about it. The FBI, which is on to CAIR, wouldn't throw the wolves any red meat.

"FBI defends invitation to Islam critic," by Ben Smith at Politico, August 31:

The FBI is defending its invitation to a prominent critic of Islam in America, who is also one of the leaders of the fight to stop a downtown Manhattan mosque and Islamic Center.

The Council on American Islamic Relations complained late last month that Robert Spencer, who runs the Jihad Watch site and is co-founder of Stop the Islamization of America, had spoken to the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force, a combination of state, federal, and local law enforcement centered in Norfolk, Virginia.

Spencer, along with his confrontational stand toward the New York project, has long been at odds with Muslim leaders for alleging links between American Muslim leaders and extremism. He has also been a critic of the religion of Islam itself, suggesting that the historical Mohammed, for instance, did not exist, and that the portrayal of him in the Qaran [sic] is of a "con man."

Highly compressed and tendentious. A fictional con man? This is what happens when ideologically biased reporters in a hurry try to summarize positions they don't understand.

"Our nation's law enforcement personnel should not receive training from the head of a hate group that seeks to demonize Islam and to prevent American Muslims from exercising their rights as citizens," said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, who also noted that Spencer and blogger Pamela Geller recently published a book subtitled, "The Obama Administration's War on America."

But the chief division for the Norfolk FBI field office, Phil Mann, defended the invitation to Spencer.

"We invite speakers who represent a variety of viewpoints and the special agent in charge of the Norfolk office has invited local Muslim leaders to speak to his staff. That doesn’t mean we enodrse [sic] our [sic] adopt the view of any particular speaker," Mann said. "Broad knowledge is essential for us to better understand and respond to the threats that we face. Knowledge also helps us defeat ignorance and strengthen relationships with the diverse communites that we serve." [...]

Spencer responded to a question about CAIR's attack with a link to his own press release on the matter, dismissing CAIR as a "hate group" and citing praise of his work from prominent conservatives.

Smith doesn't tell his readers, of course, that CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Nor does he mention that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case. Or that several of its former officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. Or that two of its other officials have made Islamic supremacist statements. Nor does he mention that CAIR also was involved in the Flying Imams' intimidation suit against the passengers who reported their suspicious behavior.

CAIR's attempt to intimidate the FBI and JTTF and dictate their choice of speakers contained numerous false charges, defamation, distortions, and outright lies about me, SIOA, and Pamela Geller.

CAIR has a long record of duplicity and deception. Although it has received millions of dollars in donations from foreign Islamic entities, it has not registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), despite spreading Islamic supremacist propaganda within the United States.

Although it presents itself as a civil rights group, CAIR actually has numerous links to Islamic supremacist and jihad groups. CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR's executive director) were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East. CAIR has steadfastly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.

Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror:

* Ghassan Elashi, founder of CAIR's Texas chapter, in 2009 received a 65-year prison sentence for funneling over $12 million from the Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation to the jihad terrorist group Hamas, which is responsible for murdering hundreds of Israeli civilians
* Mousa Abu Marzook, a former CAIR official, was in 1995 designated by the U.S. government in 1995 as a "terrorist and Hamas leader." He now is a Hamas leader in Syria.
* Randall Royer, CAIR's former civil rights coordinator, in 2004 began serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding al-Qaida and the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan and recruiting for Lashkar e-Taiba, the jihadist group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai jihad massacres.
* Bassem Khafagi, CAIR's former community relations director, was arrested for involvement with the Islamic Assembly of North America, which was linked to al-Qaida. After pleading guilty to visa and bank fraud charges, Khafagi was deported.
* Rabih Haddad, a former CAIR fundraiser, was deported for his work with the Global Relief Foundation (which he co-founded), a terror-financing organization.

In 1998 Omar Ahmad, CAIR's co-founder and longtime Board Chairman, said: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

After he received unwelcome publicity as a result of this statement, Ahmad denied saying it, several years after the fact. However, the original reporter, Lisa Gardiner of the Fremont Argus, stands by her story.

CAIR's spokesman Ibrahim Hooper once said: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."

So I asked Smith why he didn't tell his readers any of this. He responded by saying that he already had told his readers about CAIR, just yesterday, in fact -- and directed me to this piece, which, as you'll see, says nothing about CAIR's Hamas ties or anything else, but instead actually touts CAIR, weirdly, as an "alternative" to Hamas. Smith explained in an email to me: "I understand that you're asking me why I didn't restate the entire case against CAIR, and their response, your response to them, and so on, in my blog item. This is a complaint of a form I get five or ten times a day. I write a blog, and mostly take little bites of stories. I was writing a small item about your appearance -- and your prominence around the mosque issue, and your stance toward obama [sic], make that of modest interest to me, and to readers in general I think, beyond the context of CAIR's complaint -- to speak to the FBI. There are a lot of things I don't write every day, and the history and controversies around CAIR were, indeed, among them."

Every day, or any day. Par for the course for the mainstream media.

Gramps Makes Mess Media Tidies Up

Arianna Huffington, HuffPost

Second Update: McCain and Me: Hero Worship Dies Hard (But When It Does...)

Update: Through a spokesperson with the colorful name Tucker Bounds, McCain has denied telling me he didn't vote for Bush in 2000. "It's not true," Bounds told the Washington Post, "and I ask you to consider the source."

My sentiments exactly -- because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.

He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry's '04 running mate -- then later admitted he had, insisting: "Everybody knows that I had a conversation."

He denied admitting that he didn't know much about economics, even though he'd said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun.

He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record.

He denied that he'd ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.

And those are just the outright denials. He's also repeatedly tried to spin away statements he regretted making (see: 100-year war, Iraq was a war for oil, etc.).

So, yes, by all means, "consider the source."

Original Post: At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. "I didn't vote for George Bush" the man confessed. "I didn't either," his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband).

The fact that this man was so angry at what George Bush had done to him, and at what Bush represented for their party, that he did not even vote for him in 2000 shows just how far he has fallen since then in his hunger for the presidency. By abandoning his core principles and embracing Bush -- both literally and metaphorically -- he has morphed into an older and crankier version of the man he couldn't stomach voting for in 2000.

McCain's fall has been Shakespearean -- and really hard to watch for those, like myself, who so admired and even loved him. His nobility and his true reformer years have given way to pandering in the service of ambition.

But a large portion of the electorate hasn't noticed the Shakespearean fall. How else to explain The 28/48 Disconnect -- wherein only a die-hard 28 percent of voters still approve of Bush, but 48 percent say they'd vote for McCain, who is running on the "more of the same" platform?

The thing is, these voters clearly still think of McCain as the maverick of 2000, a straight shooter who would never seek the embrace of a man he couldn't bring himself to vote for, nor accept the regular counsel of Karl Rove, the man behind the vile, race-baiting attacks on him during the 2000 campaign.

And the main reason for The 28/48 Disconnect is the mainstream media's ongoing membership in the John McCain Protection Society. They too continue to party -- and report on McCain -- like it's 1999.

Look at the slack they cut him after his infamous stroll through a Baghdad market was revealed as an utter sham. James Frey was eviscerated for far less. Or the slack they cut him after his repeated confusion of Sunni and Shia. Or the slack they cut him when his promise to run a "respectful" campaign ran aground on his sleazy attempt to connect Barack Obama and Hamas.

Every time McCain screws up, the media jump all over themselves to make it better, as if grandpa had said something embarrassing at the dinner table and it needed to be smoothed over as quickly as possible.

The latest example came late last week when the Straight Talk Express hit an oil slick and skidded off the road. Click here for the blow by blow, but, in short, McCain implied that Iraq is essentially a war for oil, then tried to take it back, explaining that he was actually talking about the first Gulf War, then, when pressed, denied that he was actually talking about the first Gulf War.

And, by and large, the media gave him a pass. Chris Matthews called the original war for oil comment "an astounding development," but most everyone else was too busy picking over the bones of the Wright/Obama carcass to give it much play.

Interestingly, McCain's mental meltdown over the reason we invaded Iraq was prompted by a comment from a McCain supporter who said he hoped a group called "Swift Boats for McCain" would be formed to help McCain in the campaign.

The gentleman needn't worry. The group already exists. It's called "the media." And they are very well-funded, and highly motivated. The Swift Boat Media for McCain are, for instance, going to make sure that we hear a lot more about the nuances of Obama's decision to not wear a flag pin on his lapel than about McCain's ideas on a little thing like the Iraq war.

Witness the reaction to McCain's repeated declarations that he thinks we should be in Iraq for "100 years." The DNC had the gall to use McCain's own words in an ad, causing McCain to flip out: "My friends, it's a direct falsification," he said, "and I'm sorry that political campaigns have to deteriorate in this fashion."

So, to review: using a candidate's own words against him is off limits, but making disgraceful insinuations about Hamas and Obama isn't.

But instead of nailing McCain on the "deterioration" of his ethics -- to say nothing of his logic and reasoning -- the Swift Boat Media dutifully repeated his talking points, as in this AP lede claiming, without reservation, that the DNC ad "falsely suggests John McCain wants a 100-year war in Iraq."

McCain tries to wriggle away from his "100 year" comment by saying that he wasn't talking about a hundred year war, but a very long term commitment of U.S. troops, like we have in Germany or South Korea. Maybe so, but the last time I looked no one was blowing up American soldiers in Wiesbaden.

The New Yorker's Rick Hertzberg, a writer who hasn't drunk the It's Still 2000 Kool-Aid, sums up McCain's Strangelovian "vision": "McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal -- that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay."

The John McCain the media fell in love with in 2000 isn't on the ballot in 2008. And the proof has all but jumped up and grabbed the media by the throat: the ring-kiss of "agents of intolerance" Falwell and Robertson; the decision to make permanent tax cuts he twice voted against, saying he could not "in good conscience support" them; the campaign finance reformer replaced with a candidate whose campaign is run by lobbyists and fueled by loophole rides on his wife's jet; the hard-line stance against torture replaced by a vote allowing waterboarding; the guarded-by-a-battalion stroll through the "safe" neighborhoods of Baghdad; the use of Karl Rove as an advisor... and the embracing of the disastrous policies of a man he so abhorred he would not vote for him.

What will it take for the Swift Boat Media to realize that John McCain jumped the shark a long, long time ago?

Internet Censorship

Sixty years of brain washing and information control have pretty much sapped Americans of the desire to stand up and be heard. Almost as important, they have lost the ability to be heard to communicate.
Joining any blogging outfit one usually can observe a remarkable absence of debate. The participants often contribute cut and paste jobs from the mass media. Hardly a town hall experience, the talking heads of television have drummed the government's press releases into the minds of the populace.
To experience the freedom of speech potential of the Internet, the blogger can surf overseas. If he lacks foreign language skills, he can get English translations from the likes of Global Voices and Blogspot.
Attend the spirit of the young Egyptians who oppose Mubarek and the Arabs who stand against the Israeli line. You may even learn that Muqtada al Sadr embodies Iraq's best chance for freedom.

Impeachment? Are you Serious?

Heroic Assumptions Often Vaporize

Admittedly, the administration is totally corrupt and criminal. Expecting impeachment implies the other two branches function as checks and balances. Other wishful thinking includes heroic assumptions about law enforcement and fair elections.
The government controls the information fed the public by the pliant mass media. Who has the will and the power to impeach the highly placed perpetrators? Always, we should remember the nuclear weapons are in their hands. Innocent Americans are not that much different from ordinary Iranians.
We vaporize quickly.

The U.S. Establishment Media

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Most certainly, the press will pretend to be above it all ("this is not something that we, the sophisticated political journalists, care about, of course"). But they yammer about Drudge-promoted gossip endlessly, and then insist that their own chattering is proof that it is an important story that people care about. And because they conclude that "people" (i.e., them) are concerned with the story, they keep chirping about it, which in turn fuels their belief that the story is important. It is an endless loop of self-referential narcissism -- whatever they endlessly sputter is what "the people" care about, and therefore they must keep harping on it, because their chatter is proof of its importance.

They don't need Drudge to rule their world any longer because they are Matt Drudge now.

Every day, it becomes more difficult to blame George Bush, Dick Cheney and comrades for their seven years (and counting) of crimes, corruption and destruction of our political values. Think about it this way: if you were a high government official and watched as -- all in a couple of weeks time -- it is revealed, right out in the open, that you suspended the Fourth Amendment, authorized torture, proclaimed yourself empowered to break the law, and sent the nation's top law enforcement officer to lie blatantly about how and why the 9/11 attacks happened so that you could acquire still more unchecked spying power and get rid of lawsuits that would expose what you did, and the political press in this country basically ignored all of that and blathered on about Obama's bowling score and how he eats chocolate, wouldn't you also conclude that you could do anything you want, without limits, and know there will be no consequences? What would be the incentive to stop doing all of that?