AIM conference dissects Obama, media, global warming and more

As Ann told you on Friday, she and I attended a conference put on by AIM, Accuracy in Media, to celebrate their 40th anniversary on Friday.  As bloggers we got a free pass. I’m pleased to see that “journalists and bloggers” are a category now, in the eyes of many. It was a packed schedule, one speaker after another, and most of them were very good. Here’s a brief summary:

Cliff Kincaid, AIM’s editor, went through some influences on Obama’s thinking, including Frank Marshall Davis, a mentor and black role model to the young Barack Obama. He was a Communist who was under surveillance by the FBI. Kincaid introduced Trevor Loudon, somebody Ann and I were excited to see.

Trevor Loudon is a New Zealander whose blog is at http://newzeal.blogspot.com/. If you’ve never heard of him it’s because our media are so timid; because Loudon had the scoop on Obama’s leftist past in great detail all during the presidential campaign, when most journalists refused to look into Obama’s background and ideology at all. Glenn Beck discovered him, though, and used his material extensively.

Trevor Loudon pointed out that the left’s goal is to infiltrate and take over mainstream institutions. To see what the Democratic Party will do next, read the People’s Weekly World or another Communist newsspaper, because that’s where the radical-left-controlled Dems get their agenda.

Asked about upcoming revelations, Loudon said he has a lot more on staffers in the Obama administration. In addition, he will write about foreign involvement in the Obama campaign and administration. In answer to a question from Ann, he said that the Apollo Alliance (a group covered extensively by Glenn Beck and others) was formed to unite the labor and environmental movements, who were often at odds. The notion of Green Jobs is a tactic to suck working-class people into the radical movement. Did you know $500 million of the stimulus bill was earmarked for green jobs? I didn’t, though I note that last week a woman I know who is still in an electrician’s training course was snapped up by a solar energy company less than 24 hours after she sent in her resume.

Andy McCarthy spoke about the administration and the left’s attack on the CIA and on the war on terror. He said the Department of Justice is obsessed with partisan concerns. If there is an attack on the U.S. there will be a lot of questions asked about why this could happen.

A panel on global warming was interesting. The moderator said they had tried to get somebody who believed in man-made global warming for the panel but couldn’t. So we heard from three others: Marc Morano is a science writer and former advisor to Senator James Inhofe. His website is http://www.climatedepot.com/. He gave us this amazing quote from our own Senator Ben Cardin, who called cap and trade “the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time.”

Ann McElhenney, maker of a new documentary film about the global warming, Not Evil Just Wrong, a refutation of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth.  Her next project is a film showing the indoctrination of children into environmental radicalism in schools, and she asked for the public to send her examples.

Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to Margaret Thatcher, gave a dizzying array of facts showing how wrong the conventional wisdom is on global warming, and also how persecuted those are who try to present the truth.  He said we are going from the age of enlightenment into a new dark age. His YouTube clips are here. All three panelists were very knowledgeable as well as entertaining. 

Tony Blankley, former White House policy analyst for Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich’s press secretary when he was Speaker of the House, spoke at lunch. He said he was shocked at the media during the presidential campaign. Not for their leftism, which is no surprise, but their lack of shame at their open lack of objectivity. Journalism school used to teach that there was an adversary relationship between the media and government officials, but that no longer seems to obtain.

Blankley sees the democratic nature of the digital media as a good sign. The left and the right will unite to defend the freedom of the Internet.

Next was a panel on ACORN. Anita MonCrief, former ACORN employee and whistleblower, told her personal story. She was working with a New York Times reporter during the 2008 campaign, but the editors killed the story which would have been published shortly before the election. She is being sued for $5 million by Project Vote, an ACORN affiliate. Her story and her defense fund are here.

Hans von Spakovsky is a former member of the Federal Election Commission and a legal analyst at the Heritage Foundation. He pointed out that the widely publicized congressional cutoff of ACORN’s funding was only a temporary measure that expires October 31. He related ways to deal with ACORN legislatively and judicially. Members of Congress have issued reports and called on the Department of Justice to investigate, but this will not happen in the Obama administration. There are several bills in Congress to defund ACORN now and in the future.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, longtime reporter on election fraud, talked about how ACORN could have gotten away with so much for so long. He said it as based on racial guilt, even though ACORN is actually like a plantation, with a few white people at the top making a lot of money, and lots of blacks at the bottom doing the grunt work for low pay. He said this might be a situation where a special prosecutor is needed that is independent of the administration.

We stayed for one more speaker, Jonah Goldberg of National Review and author of the excellent best-seller Liberal Fascism. He titled his talk “Two Cheers for Incivility” and pointed out that much of what the left bemoans as incivility is actually just criticism of their policies. He is optimistic about the future for conservatives and points out that the insults hurled at the right are signs of the panic and desperation of the media.

He said that for a while journalists all wanted to be opinion commentators, but there is a shift to wanting to report facts. There is a big market for new facts. The team that uncovered the ACORN outrages posing as a prostitute and a pimp, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, are admired by young people. Some think they’re great, but many more think they’re cool, and that is probably more important.

We left after that, missing the final panel on the New Media and the Future of Journalism. It seems to be on a C-SPAN website, here.

It was a good day, and my main criticism is that it was so poorly attended that those at AIM responsible for that should be horsewhipped. It would have been easy to fill up the room with young journalist or congressional staff if anyone had put a little thought and work into it. I’ve only seen a little of it on C-SPAN, so I don’t know if the cameras panned the sparsely-populated audience as they often do. But since it is on C-SPAN, presumably it will get seen by many more people, as it should.

Just one more bit to make the obvious connection to this blog. We are part of the new media, and coverage of the downside of refugee resettlement is almost nonexistent in the mainstream media. We are one little piece of the new ability of citizens to present information that sometimes finds its way into public consciousness and sometimes even makes it into larger media outlets.

Away today

We are away today and one of us will give you a full accounting (or at least a partial one) when we return.   Suffice it to say it should be a good day and we are very much looking forward to it.

Just a reminder for new readers, we review our comments before posting them so especially while we are away  it can be hours before we get a chance to do that.   We post most of them.   However, since I’m on the subject, we don’t post the ones from people around the world telling us their refugee stories and asking for help getting into the US.  We have no connection to the government or the NGO’s in the resettlement business.

Comment worth noting: ‘Mad in Maine’ wants to know what she can do

In response to my post this morning about another immigrant food stamp scam, this one in Utica, NY, here.    Frustrated ‘Mad in Maine,’ a lady we met a few days ago (here), is asking what she can do.

Back again and getting Madder in Maine.

We’ll pay for public defenders and use tax dollars to keep them in jail/prison. Our tax dollars are probably the money they’re going to use to bail out as well. I say send them home. If they can’t follow the rules here, they shouldn’t be here. I have to follow the rules.

This is another thing that’s really grating my cheese today. I have to budget $100 for our weekly shopping trip that will include groceries for the next week (and hopefully a few things I can put in the freezer for upcoming meals), toiletries, paper products (toilet paper, as I refuse to use leaves even in Maine) and cleaning and maintenance products. I’ve heard of some refugees (of all nationalities) using food stamps to buy grocery items that they then turn over to the resturants and shops their families/friends/neighbors own, to ultimately sell back to us!!

Mortgage payment due, car insurance due, electric bill due…I still haven’t turned the furnace on though.
And I’m about to lose another part on my old car…hopefully it will hold out until next payday.

I guess I have a really big question: Is there anything I can do to help put a stop to all of this?

Mad in Maine

First, I don’t think any one person can stop all this, look at ACORN for example, people have been investigating the fraud there for years and finally it took one daring effort by a couple of brave young people to finally push the whole issue into the mainstream.  Few of us are going to become James O’keefes or Hannah Giles, but we can do our  little bit within the framework of our lives.   My first admonition to ‘Mad’ and everyone else, is to find your role and focus like a laser on it.   I don’t know you, ‘Mad in Maine’, or what sort of person you are or how much time you have so these suggestions are for you and all of our other angry and frustrated readers to think about.

1) Write a blog.  Don’t just run your mouth with your opinions, but pick a topic and become an expert on the topic (you can still throw out your opinions!).  Research and provide a service to your readers.  Eventually, if you are patient, what you do will have an impact.  You could for instance write a blog about welfare/food stamp/home health care fraud in Maine, or the whole US.  Or, write a blog about immigration issues in Maine.  There is enough material out there for that for sure!  And, there are very few real investigative reporters anymore, so this is a sorely needed job.

Don’t be deterred by computer technology.  Blogs like this one are really simple and free.  Oh, and one more thing.  To fit blogging into your life, you can write posts as often as your schedule allows.

2)  Get involved in local and state politics.  Goodness knows you have a couple of US Senators in Maine who need their backbones stiffened from time to time.   I don’t know what city you live in, or are near, but you could get involved there too.

3)  Write letters to the editor.  I was at a meeting this past weekend and a few people told me they set google alerts for some topic (like illegal immigration) and then when they see an article, even in another state, they write a letter to the editor in response.

4)  Join a group that is fighting for the same things you are, and become involved enough to run a local chapter.  Maybe a local Tea Party, Beck’s 9/12 Project, Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA and so forth.

5)  I know some people who have built e-mail lists and they send out articles daily to their lists on given topics.

6)  Here is a suggestion for the ’skulker’ personality.  Pick a subject that you are personally passionate about.  I’m thinking more about local type issues.   Dig into documents, use the Freedom of Information Act or your states open government laws, attend meetings of groups you oppose or are promoting what you object to, and basically gather information to make a case someday to expose the whole corrupt business–whatever it is.

7)  If you are someone most comfortable in a circle of local people, get together with others who have the same concerns and jointly make a plan for what you can do.

Those are just a few ideas.  But, I need to emphasize again, don’t get frustrated if you can’t work at this every minute of the day. Don’t be a gadfly either.  Pick your project, focus and know that you are doing your little piece to save America.  I hope that helps!

I’ll be traveling…

This is just a note to let all of my internet friends know I will be away for a few days and likely will not have internet access.  I enjoy getting your e-mail communications and just didn’t want you to think I was simply not responding.   I should be back on-line by Thursday evening.  Ann

American newspapers deceive foreign media, and they don’t like it

Mark Steyn has a post on The Corner, Don’t Blame Us, Blame the Newspaper We Copied It Out Of, that deserves attention.

The USS Neverdock notices an emerging global trend: newspapers suckered by the Washington Post and the New York Times. Down under, the Sydney Morning Herald has retracted its “original” “report” of the Van Jones resignation:

A week ago, the Herald ran a story which, in its essence, was not true. The paper did not know this. It was the unwitting victim of a distortion created at The Washington Post, which produced the original story. 

We’ve commented frequently on reports in the media that leave out the most relevant and interesting facts. Ann has posted on any number of puff pieces on refugees in local newspapers in which the reporters don’t or won’t look below the surface. Those who do real reporting are heroes, and we’ve given them lots of space, most notably Brian Mosely and the Shelbyville (Tennesee) Times-Gazette.

Mark Steyn mentions a second retraction, this one from the Irish Times which was snookered by a New York Times story. And here’s his perceptive bottom line:

Of course, neither the Sydney Morning Herald nor the Irish Times are “unwitting victims” of the Washington Post and New York Times. It’s their choice to copy blindly any slab of hooey appearing in the Post and Times that happens to suit their prejudices without checking it for themselves. As the Neverdock points out, if you can’t do as well as some blogger using Google, maybe you shouldn’t be in the news business.

That’s exactly right. We get most of our information here at Refugee Resettlement Watch from poking around the Internet. Once we got started, of course we began getting information directly from people in the know, so that in some ways we became somewhat more like traditional reporters. (I should say Ann is, since I don’t do much original reporting.)

When you look at all the recent stories that the mainstream media have ignored or minimized, you do have to wonder why these media outlets exist at all. The Van Jones scandal and resignation, the undercover films of ACORN employees encouraging what they thought was a brothel using underaged girls, the huge Washington march on Saturday — these were covered well and thoroughly by websites, bloggers and Fox News — and little else.

Blogger power! The blogger who first spotted Communist Van Jones is from New Zealand

Update September 11th:  After reading this post go to Family Security Matters and learn more about “coercive utopians,” here.

I’m going to keep nagging my friends and fellow freedom fighters to start their own blogs and dig for the facts and expose them because the mainstream media has given up its investigative role leaving the job wide open.   Keith Olbermann has announced he is going after Glenn Beck over the Van Jones affair but it seems to me that he will have a heck of a time going after every blogger around the world.   The guy who first discovered self-avowed revolutionary Van Jones is from New Zealand!   Thank you Trevor Loudon!

From Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media:

Loudon tells me, “I began to investigate Van Jones after seeing several separate pieces of information. I first came across the name in the mid 1990s in a New Zealand socialist publication which had a small clip about Van Jones-a Yale educated lawyer involved in STORM-Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. The name stuck.“

While researching the far-left think Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which Loudon considers the Obama administration’s “ideas bank,” Loudon found a piece by IPS staffer Chuck Collins recommending Van Jones for a top government job. A September 26, 2008 article, posted on the IPS website by Chuck Collins, offered 22 names they thought would make suitable appointments for an Obama administration. He included, “Van Jones, of the Ella Baker Center, to direct the Commerce Department’s new ‘green jobs initiative.’”

Remember that this was before the election.

I’ll be adding Loudon’s New Zeal to our blogroll and start visiting daily!   Here in the US, Gateway Pundit did lots of great work on this too.

What has all this got to do with refugees and immigrants?  The Open Borders crowd is aligned completely with the Communists* (aka Progressives) now seeded throughout our government (Van Jones is the tip of the iceberg), and with the mainstream environmental groups, unions, church groups (the religious Left) resettling refugees and even some big businesses (for a full list of the Open Borders lobby, go here).  The Alinsky strategy calls for the poor and angry to be the fuel for the revolution—immigrants fit the bill nicely.   Immigrants are Alinsky’s “Have-nots” in the battle with the “Haves.”    See previous posts here and here on the subject.  For everything we have written on Alinsky go to our category ‘community destabilization’ and scroll back to the beginning.

* Readers, I’m of the age where the word Communist is almost as bad a word as, well you know!   I grew up being discouraged from even uttering the “C” word in describing anyone, but since Jones and others are now using the word about themselves, I guess its o.k. for us to use it too!  Marxist, anarchist, revolutionary are all back in use!

Everyone must write a blog! Like this one in Nashville!

Someone just now brought this great blog to my attention—it’s called ACT West Nashville.   ACT is the American Congress for Truth and Nashville is fortunate to have a very active ACT  chapter! 

It reminds me that I haven’t done my harangue recently to tell you all you must write your own blog.  They are simple to set up and you only need to write when you feel like it.  But, they are so important in gathering the FACTS especially since there are very few investigative reporters left these days.   You become the reporter!

Did you see Glenn Beck last Friday?   He told all of us to gather facts, dig through documents, look for connections and expose them without fear!   The mainstream media isn’t going to do it, so we have to! 

Great job ACT West Nashville!

We can’t help!

Although we have clearly posted in the column on the righthand side of this page that we are NOT a government resettlement agency, we are getting comments with increasing frequency from people all over the world in difficult situations and most are looking to get into the US.   I’m sorry but we can’t help.

Cable problems, again!

Just a heads-up that I am having cable problems and if you don’t see a new post, or wonder why I haven’t answered an e-mail, or your comment isn’t posted, know that I am sadly off-line.

Thomas More Law Center announces victory in free speech case

Internet jounalists won an important victory in a Texas Appeals Court decision handed down last week.   Hat tip:  Bill.   In the case an internet journalist had been sued by seven Islamic organizations because of an article he had written about two organizations that themselves did not challenge his assertions that they were connected to radical Islamic groups.   From the Thomas More Law Center:

ANN ARBOR, MI – On July 16, 2009, seven Texas-area Islamic organizations lost an appeal of the unanimous ruling of the Texas Second Court of Appeals at Forth Worth, which protected the free speech rights of internet journalists and at the same time dealt a blow to the legal jihad being waged by radical Muslim groups throughout the United States. The Islamic groups asked for a reconsideration of the appellate court’s recent decision through what is known as an en banc opinion (appeal to the whole court, not just a panel of the court). The Court ruling, in a per curiam (in the name of the whole court) two page opinion, upheld the dismissal of the libel lawsuit filed against internet reporter Joe Kaufman by the seven Islamic organizations.

The lawsuit against Kaufman was funded by the Muslim Legal Fund for America. The head of that organization, Khalil Meek, admitted on a Muslim talk radio show that lawsuits were being filed against Kaufman and others to set an example. Indeed, for the last several years, Muslim groups in the U.S. have engaged in the tactic of filing meritless lawsuits to silence any public discussion of Islamic terrorist threats. This tactic, referred to by some as Islamist Lawfare uses our laws and legal system to silence critics and promote Islamic rule in America.

It was a lost opportunity when the groups Kaufman supposedly maligned didn’t sue Kaufman, presumably making the judgement that they would have much to lose in the discovery process.

Kaufman, a full-time investigative reporter, has written extensively on Radical Islamic terrorism in America. He was sued because of his September 28, 2007 article titled “Fanatic Muslim Family Day” published by Front Page Magazine, a major online news website. Kaufman’s article exposed the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and the Islamic Association of Northern Texas (IANT) ties to the radical terrorist group Hamas. 

Kaufman’s article called ICNA a radical Muslim organization that has ties to Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. According to Kaufman, ICNA is an umbrella organization for South Asian-oriented mosques and Islamic centers in the United States created as an American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) of Pakistan. 

Significantly, neither ICNA nor IANT, which were mentioned in Kaufman’s article, sued Kaufman. It is speculated that ICNA and IANT were afraid of being subjected to pretrial discovery.

We are media (at least in Texas).

In what should be welcome news to internet journalists, the Appellate Court specifically rejected the Plaintiffs’ contention that Kaufman is not a “media defendant.” The Court held that the Texas statute that gives procedural protections to traditional electronic and print media, including the right to a pretrial appeal, also covers internet journalists. Thus, the Texas Statue entitled Kaufman the right to appeal the lower court’s denial of his motion to dismiss the frivolous libel claim before a time-consuming and expensive trial. Most parties have to wait until after a trial before they can appeal an unfavorable lower court ruling.

Ah, free speech—-America’s bulwark against tyrants!