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.

American free speech: an anchor for western civilization

Pat Condell reminds us that the US is an “oasis of freedom” and that the civilized world is counting on us to fight for our Constitution especially the first amendment as the Obama administration throws it away at the United Nations.   Listen to Condell here. Hat tip: BL.

American Conservative Union, CPAC, and why they didn’t defend free speech

I know this is getting away somewhat from the subject of refugees, but it’s not entirely so because we questioned way back in December of 2007 why the American Conservative Union’s, David Keene, was so intent on promoting the Kennedy bill which ultimately opened the door for more Iraqis to enter the US.   It didn’t strike us as a particularly conservative position in light of the tanking economy and our national security concerns.

And, we are interested because of our interest in Geert Wilders’ right to speak on issues considered by some to be politically incorrect as Judy just mentioned in her post earlier this morning.

We attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last February (here) to hear Wilders speak, but the speech really wasn’t at the CPAC meeting, it was just in the same hotel.  Now, all these many months later, Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch gives us more details on what actually happened at last year’s CPAC meeting.

I won’t go into what just happened this past weekend at the Western CPAC meeting, you can follow the links in Mr. Spencer’s post for that, but here is how Spencer describes how it came about last year that “conservative” organizers shut out Geert Wilders.

What does this have to do with jihad? Everything. The Ziegler video, with its depiction of Keene’s egregious behavior, gives a good opportunity to spotlight the failure of the conservative mainstream to deal with the jihad issue. David Keene is not only the head of the ACU, but also of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which I criticized at Newsweek last February for its Grover Norquist-mandated refusal to deal with the jihad or Islamic supremacism in any meaningful or effective way.

At the time I was interviewed by Newsweek, Pamela Geller was working tirelessly behind the scenes to secure a speaking slot for Geert Wilders at CPAC, but CPAC was dragging its feet. With that in mind, I told Newsweek that people were afraid to deal with this issue, and added at Jihad Watch that “Keene’s, or someone’s, priorities are seriously out of order. Wilders should be front and center at CPAC, and the defense of free speech its central theme.”

I didn’t know it at the time, but after I was interviewed by Newsweek and before their article appeared, Keene decided to honor Wilders at CPAC and give him an award. But when the Newsweek piece hit, with quotes from me as well as David Horowitz saying, “How is it possible that a conservative conference does not have a single panel on the threat from radical Islam?,” Keene was furious. He was so furious that he canceled the award for Wilders and refused to let him speak at all, saying he wasn’t going to look as if he was being pushed around by Robert Spencer. Suddenly a few remarks in Newsweek by David Horowitz and me were controlling David Keene’s world. Principles? Free speech? Jihad and Islamization? Pah. For Keene, it was just a schoolyard fight, and he was behaving like a schoolyard bully — as he does here with Ziegler.

Spencer also reminds us of the connection Keene’s pal, Grover Norquist, has to the Islamist movement in the US.    Follow Spencer’s links or search RRW for ‘Grover Norquist.’

With friends like these, who needs enemies.

Free speech under attack at Temple University

We’ve been following the hate campaign against Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who speaks out against militant Islam, for a while. Our posts on him are here. David Horowitz reports at FrontPage Magazine here and here on an attempt to stop Wilders speaking at Temple University in Philadelphia. (Temple is my alma mater so I’m especially interested in this.)

As part of its Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, and its campaign to Stop the Campus War Against Israel and the Jews, the David Horowitz Freedom Center is sponsoring  appearances by Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders at Temple and Columbia universities (October 20 and 21). The Muslim Students Association has issued a statement condemning the event and calling on the Temple Administration to close it down.

Here is part of the MSA’s statement:

Temple MSA speaks for the many Muslims and socially conscious students and faculty on campus when we say that the presence of Geert Wilders on our campus is a breech of Temple University’s pledge to ensure the wellbeing and safety of all students and faculty on campus. The Muslim population at Temple feels attacked, threatened, and ultimately unsafe that Mr. Wilders has been invited to voice his hate-driven opinions. The fact alone that backpacks are prohibited for entry to this event reinforces our argument that this creates an unsafe atmosphere where prejudiced, racist and vehemently hateful words will be disguised under the veil of academia.

Got that? Prohibiting backpacks shows that there will be hate speech. The only reason for the ban must be that people hate Muslims, not that any Muslim has ever carried anything dangerous in a backpack. But these Muslim students are lucky: they’ve gotten university administrators to do their work for them:

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the attempts to shut down the Temple speech of Geert Wilders which is being sponsored by a student organization called Temple University Purpose is the role played by three Temple University administrators who run the student activities program and who at a meeting last week pressured the TUP students to close down their event….These administrators told TUP leader Brittany Walsh that Wilders did not have free speech rights at Temple or in America because he was a foreigner.

I’m going to reproduce Brittany Walsh’s reply in full because it is so eloquent. We are fortunate to have students like her standing up for our rights.

“[You} stated in our meeting that Mr. Wilders is not an American citizen and therefore the First Amendment does not apply to him. The American Bill of Rights is not written to confer rights on Americans as to what they can do, but rather these American rights are conceived as limitations on government.  The Bill of Rights says Congress shall make no law abridging free speech and not once claims this only applies to American born citizens, but rather to all of man kind. Freedom of Speech has proved an essential tool in providing a medium for progressive social change in the United States; ie: Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Equal Rights Movement, Vietnam War protests, and even the Equal Human Rights Movement occurring right now in the U.S. advocating on behalf of the LGBT community. Throughout world history, we have witnessed the devastation caused when individuals are deprived of this Right to advocate on behalf of themselves. Many men and women have sacrificed their life or suffered severely to allow you and I to be free; thousands are still doing so today.

Furthermore, I would never dream of telling the Muslim Students Association that they may not practice their religion or espouse their beliefs, but I expect that same respect and consideration to be extended to all individuals and/or groups.  As was stated previously in our meeting, regardless of how I may, or may not, feel about what Mr. Wilders believes, I do believe it is his right to say it. Temple University Purpose will defend Mr. Wilders, and anyone else for that matter, against institutions and communities who attempt to silence them. The Right to Freedom of Speech is a fundamental right upon which this country was founded. Our founding fathers found that tyrants will always seek to silence those in opposition in an effort to squash non compliant beliefs and felt it to be of vital importance that men and women alike are protected from future governments, mob rule, and tyrants who seek to steal their voice. All of this being said, it would be a disservice to the Temple community, hypocritical of TUP’s mission, and a disrespect to all of those who have sacrificed for our right to invite Mr. Wilders to Temple, to rescind his invitation. The Temple community is being provided with a rare opportunity to have an open forum with a highly intelligent, though controversial, politician. Moreover, it is my hope that the community will come together, let their voices be heard, and participate in this educational experience being provided for them. Temple University Purpose plans to go ahead with the event on the 20th of October and hope we may do so with your support.” 

David Horowitz puts the matter in context:

Everywhere you look these days Americans’ most basic freedom is under attack by the jihadists of the international left. The infamous UN Human Rights Commission which includes the worst human rights violators on the planet (now joined by the Obama Administration) has recently passed a resolution against religious defamation — defined as linking Islamists to terrorism. At home Democrats have attached a “hate crimes” amendment which would make thinking a crime to the new defense appropriations bill. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been banned from owning a National Football League team on the grounds that he is a conservative and conservatives are hateful.

The speech is scheduled for today. I’ll give you an update when I find out what happened.

Update from Gateway Pundit, 10/21/09:  Radical leftists shouted down Geert Wilders at Temple University last night. The good little indoctrinated leftists chanted, “Hey Hey, HO, HO, this racist bull—-’s got to go.” They forced the university to shut down the event early.

Geert Wilders wins his case against Britain’s ban

The truth-telling Dutch politician Geert Wilders, whom we’ve written about many times, can now be allowed to enter Great Britain, the Telegraph reports.

Wilders challenged the decision by then home secretary Jacqui Smith which led to him being turned back at Heathrow Airport.

The ruling by the Asylum and  Immigration Tribunal means the head of the Freedom Party, who is accused of Islamophobia, could now be allowed into the country.

He was due to show his short film Fitna, which criticises the Koran as a ”fascist book”, at the House of Lords in February.

But Ms Smith said his presence had the potential to ”threaten community harmony and therefore public safety”.

It’s a sign of how far Britain has fallen that the normally sensible Telegraph calls Wilders a “far-right Dutch politician” in its sub-headline. Wilders objects to Muslims taking over western societies, and for that he is branded “far-right.” Oh well, Ann and I have been called the same thing; nowadays it’s a badge of honor. But I don’t think the Washington Times or Washington Examiner, which are somewhat equivalent to the Telegraph, would label us far-right.

Islam in Action: Blacks in Michigan attacked Muslim brother and sister; Christian group sues Maine

These posts from Islam In Action are a couple of days old, but I wanted to be sure to bring them to your attention.  The first is a story from Ann Arbor about Muslim kids being attacked on a school bus by black guys (where have I heard this before?).   Ah, the joys of multiculturalism.

Ann Arbor – The attorney for two Muslim teens attacked last month aboard a school bus is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to step in after Washtenaw County prosecutors decided not to file ethnic intimidation charges in the case.

The girl, 16, and her brother, 15, were attacked Sept. 8 after they left Skyline High School.

They said the incident began aboard a school bus and escalated after they got off the bus several blocks from their home.

The girl said a group of black teens removed her hijab, a traditional head scarf, and yelled ethnic slurs at her and her brother before punching her. The girl suffered a black eye and said she required stitches to the top of her head. Neither teen is being identified.

Maine lawsuit

The other good post on the same day is about Christian Action Network bringing a lawsuit against the State of Maine.

….the Christian Action Network (CAN) filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Maine for censoring a fundraising letter state officials claimed contained “an inflammatory anti-Muslim message.” Maine officials fined and banned CAN from mailing any future letters under the threat of criminal prosecution. Liberty Counsel represents CAN.

We told you about the State’s actions back in June, here.

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.

We were there — among hundreds of thousands in Washington

I got home a short time ago from the 912 March in Washington. Ann and I went, along with my daughter, on a bus from Hagerstown. Eight buses went from the Hagerstown area, and that’s a little sample of what was happening from all over the country.

You’ll hear widely varying estimates of the number of people there. I’ve been on a lot of demonstrations in Washington (because I used to be a leftist), starting with a civil rights march in 1958 and continuing with other civil rights demonstrations, and then peace marches (until I came to my senses in 1967).  I could hardly believe how large today’s march was. The original meeting place, Freedom Plaza at 14th and Pennsylvania, filled up so fast that the march to the Capitol had to start much earlier than planned to make room. Pennsylvania Avenue was packed, and it took hours to get all the people into the Capitol area. No, that’s wrong, because not everybody fit into those huge grounds in front of the Capitol and there were always people on the Mall and on the sidewalks blocks away.

I was at the famous 1963 civil rights march, where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech. That was estimated to be 200,000 to 300,000 people. In my opinion this one was bigger. I don’t think there were a million people, as some have claimed, but there were at least 350,000 and possibly many more. That is huge.

It was also the politest demonstration I’ve ever been to. Nobody was angry. I mean, they were angry at the government, but nobody seemed to have the kind of chip-on-the-shoulder anger that so many leftists have. It was good-humored. Also — and this was astounding — there was no trash on the ground. None. Unlike the Obama inauguration, unlike Woodstock, unlike even an ordinary crowd standing around, this event was as clean at the end as at the start.

Maybe that’s because there were no journalists strewing trash, or almost none. There was a Fox truck and a CNN truck and that’s all the TV we saw. When Ann and I went to a counterdemonstration to an ANSWER peace march in 2007, the streets were lined with trucks from every media outlet we’d ever heard of, and some we hadn’t. We were interviewed by Australian and German reporters. And that was a march of about 5,000 on ANSWER’s side and about 15,000 on ours. I know some people were interviewed today because I read some reports, but there was nothing like the coverage that peace marches routinely get.

I’ve just heard a few reports that lead me to believe some reporters accidentally went to Mars instead of the Capitol. One said there were Confederate flags in evidence, and Ku Klux Klan type signs. We spent a lot of time walking around looking at people and their signs, and we commented that there were no confederate flags. And I don’t even know what is meant by Ku Klux Klan type signs. Maybe the one that said “I’m not a racist — I hate Pelosi and Reid too.”

That was typical of the signs — original, and often funny. There were no mass-produced signs, and not more than a few of any one type. Here are some we saw:

      Spread my work ethic, not my paycheck.

     Chicago gangsters go home.

     Give me liberty, not debt.

     Thank God for Glenn Beck.

     Right wing extremist: Jefferson, Adams, Madison, me.

     Capitalism delivers what socialism can only promise.

     Read the bills or get off the Hill.

     Constitution: read, learn, live it.

Lots of signs about czars — 44 czars; Czar wars; Czars czuk; You’ll be czarry; and more.

Lots of signs about ACORN — ACORN: bringing brothels to your community; Congress investigate ACORN; shut ACORN down–cancer on our republic; and more.

I kept calling my husband at home to see what the media were saying. He didn’t go because he doesn’t walk well. He’s a bit crippled from his 5-1/2 years as a guest of the North Vietnamese government during the Vietnam war. But he also didn’t go because he was so moved by the idea of all these Americans coming together to oppose socialism and big government that he was afraid he would cry. He was thrilled to hear the reports from Fox during the afternoon.

Now I’m going to look for more reports. I hope some of them are true.

Addendum, 9/14:  After looking at aerial photos I have to update my estimate. I think there were a million people there, maybe more.  It is harder to estimate this than the usual demonstrations on the Mall. The Mall is a plain rectangle and you can just photograph from above and count, or count a small area and multiply. The west side of the Capitol has a lot of trees and you can’t see what’s under them unless you’re on the ground. The area is far from rectangular and is not continuous. And the crowd was spread far and wide beyond the west lawn.

Note from Ann:  On Judy’s point about how clean the Tea Party demonstrators left Washington, see Gateway Pundit’s photo essay on clean conservatives vs. filthy liberals here.

Robert Spencer on 9/11: “free people still live”

Writing at Jihad Watch in the early hours of the morning, Spencer addresses the truth.

The global jihad is not over. There have now been over 14,000 deadly attacks carried out since that fateful September 11 in 2001 by believers in Muhammad’s dictum that “Islam must dominate, and not be dominated.”

Yet as a society we are farther away than ever from recognizing how exactly to combat this foe. The “war on terror,” as restricted and misleading a concept as that was, is over. Yet the global jihad, and the stealth jihad in the West, is advancing on virtually all fronts. The President of the United States doesn’t appear to be overly fond of freedom of speech, even as the Organization of the Islamic Conference continues to war against that freedom. There is still no honest discussion in the mainstream media about what exactly we are facing. Self-censorship and fear abound in government, law enforcement, media, and elsewhere.

There is only one irreducible truth that gives cause for hope on this day, and that is that free people still live.

And tomorrow, on 9/12,  Judy and I look with great excitement and anticipation to being surrounded by thousands of our fellow freedom-loving Americans in Washington, DC.

Watch Glenn Beck tonight and every night!

The same Leftist agitators (following the Alinsky/Cloward-Piven strategies*) we discuss on these pages are going after cable news anchor Glenn Beck because he is showing how the Obama White House is grabbing power, driving the country to the Left and further into a command and control government run from Washington— directly from an elitist White House.  

They have organized a boycott of advertisers on Beck’s show, see this article at the Los Angeles Times today.  Note how the White House is directly behind trying to silence Beck’s free speech.

One of those companies pledging to not advertise on Beck is Wal-Mart.  We just told you that Wal-Mart has gone over to the Open Borders side on the illegal alien issue as well.

Spread the word that Wal-Mart is not a friend of average patriotic freedom-loving American citizens.

To better grasp this concept of big business now in bed with top-down government and the advocates of socialism (communism?) see this enlightening post Judy wrote back in June about “corporate fascism.”   For many of us it takes some reorienting of our thinking to grasp that the radical Left and big business are in bed together.  Make that a threesome with the unions.

* All of our posts on Alinsky/Cloward-Piven are located in our appropriately named category—community destablilization.