Al Franken Wins

After a ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court that Coleman cannot file further challenges, we now know that:


So now Norm Coleman has conceded:

Republican Norm Coleman has conceded to Democrat Al Franken in Minnesota's contested Senate race, ending a nearly eight-month recount and court fight.

Coleman announced his decision at a news conference in St. Paul, hours after a unanimous Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that Franken, a former "Saturday Night Live" comedian and liberal commentator, should be certified the winner.

"The Supreme Court has made its decision and I will abide by the results," Coleman told reporters outside his St. Paul home.

This means the hissy fit is truly and finally over. Except, of course, for the one Bill O'Reilly is going to throw.

About Ricci

Supreme Court Decision in Ricci Makes It Hard For Employers to Comply with Anti-Discrimination Laws

from Civilrights.org Latest Posts

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court imposed a new standard on employers seeking to comply with federal employment discrimination laws in its 5-4 decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, a race discrimination lawsuit against the city of New Haven, Connecticut.

Ricci involved the claim by one Latino and nine White firefighters that the city's decision not to certify the results of a firefighter promotion test discriminated against them.  After the test was administered, the city had found that it had a discriminatory effect. The city concluded the test was biased and, after extensive consideration and five public hearings, chose to abandon the discriminatory exam, in order to avoid facing a discrimination lawsuit.  Two lower courts agreed that the city made the correct decision.

However, the Supreme Court ruled, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy,  that the city violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender, and national origin, by not certifying the test.  In doing so, the Court created a new standard that gives employers very little room to rectify situations where a policy is found to have a discriminatory effect after the policy has been applied.

Read the full article at the link above.

History of Racism, Lies & Yellow Journalism at the Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a tabloid rag in the U.K.


The paper was accused of warmongering before the outbreak of World War I, when it reported that Germany was planning to crush the British Empire. Owner Northcliffe created controversy by advocating conscription when the war broke out. ^[10] On 21 May 1915, Northcliffe wrote a blistering attack on Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War. Kitchener was considered a national hero, and overnight the paper's circulation dropped from 1,386,000 to 238,000. 1,500 members of the London Stock Exchange ceremonially burned the unsold copies and launched a boycott against the Harmsworth Press. Prime Minister H. H. Asquith accused the paper of being disloyal to the country.

In 1924 the Daily Mail published the forged Zinoviev Letter which indicated that British Communists were planning violent revolution. Many believed this was a significant factor in the defeat of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party in the 1924 general election, held four days later.

In early 1934, Rothermere and the Mail were editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the radical National Socialist British Union of Fascists^[14]. Rothermere wrote an article entitled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", in January 1934, praising Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine"^[15].

Rothermere was a friend and supporter of both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, which influenced the Mail's political stance towards them up to 1939.^[18][19] Rothermere visited and corresponded with Hitler. On 1 October 1938, Rothermere sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany's invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that 'Adolf the Great' would become a popular figure in Britain.

The paper enjoyed a period of journalistic success in the 1980s, employing some of the most inventive writers in old Fleet Street including the gossip columnist Nigel Dempster, Lynda Lee Potter and sportswriter Ian Wooldridge. At this time the paper officially supported the apartheid policy of South Africa.

The Daily Mail considers itself to be the voice of Middle England^[29] speaking up for "small-c" conservative^[30] values against what it sees as a liberal establishment. The Mail takes an anti-EU, anti-mass-immigration, anti-abortion view, based upon "traditional values", and is pro-capitalism and pro-monarchy, as well as, in some cases, advocating stricter punishments for crime. It also often calls for lower levels of taxation. The paper is generally critical of the BBC, which it argues is biased to the left.^[31]

The Mail argues in favour of managed migration^[36][37] while criticising what it calls Labour's "open door" immigration policy. Some opponents (including ex-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone) call the Mail's treatment of issues, such as asylum seekers, racism.^[38]

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) criticised the Mail for what the ACPO says is misquoting information about immigration in order to support the newspaper's anti-mass-immigration position and warned that media campaigns against immigrants could lead to a risk of "significant public disorder". ^[39]

Also see: http://www.angrymob.uponnothing.co.uk/home/43-somethingmademeangry/368-daily-mail-racism

Watch for These Articles

Expose of Bill Warner's anti-Islam racism


Expose of Peter Oliver (you know him as Glen Reinsford) owner of thereligionofpeace[dot]com, his dozens of aliases and 55 criminal convictions. The acount of his crime spree through AZ, CA, TX and GA.  Plus a big surprise that you never would have expected.


Update on Right Wing Extremism


Right Wing Media and Violence

Update on Grace Church's Marriage Scam and use of counterfeit Nikes to pay slaves in Gabon.

Update on Joe Kaufman

We had previously written about Joe Kaufman here , here and here. We documented his hate speech and deceptions at his “Americans Against Hate” site (a very ironic title) and his ownership of the deceptive “Terror Free Oil”.

In a recent interview, Kaufman adamantly denied being associated with Muslims Against Sharia, a group posing as reformed Muslims, who in reality are extremist Jews acting as agent provocateur.

When interviewed, Joe denied being associated in any way with Muslims Against Sharia (MASh).  His statement was: “I have never had anything to do with that organization.”

However, more evidence has come to our attention that directly links Kaufman to MASh. On the blogging service known as Blogger, authors have bio pages that show what blogs they either own or write for.  This page cannot be faked, it requires either direct ownership of a site or a double opt-in verification as an author for the site, where the owner sends an invitation to the prospective author, then the prospective author must click on a link to verify that he or she is confirming their status as an author for the site.

At http://www.blogger.com/profile/05321737374542193176 , which is Kaufman’s Blogger bio site, you will find his listing as an author of MASh as the second blog listed. This is definitive evidence that Kaufman is indeed an author of the hate site at MASh, despite his denials.

 

Other information about Kaufman, including his support of the terrorist organization “JDL” (we exposed JDL at: http://www.chasingevil.org/2006/12/jdl-kahane.html ) can be found at: http://www.loonwatch.com/2009/06/kaufman-o-meter-2-moved-by-kahane/

At this link, you can find such facts as:

In a now infamous article titled A Kahane Legacy Lost Kaufman wrote a eulogy admiring the late Rabbi Meir Kahane and expressing angst and deep sadness at his loss while affirming that the ideology that Meir Kahane developed was correct.

It is an embarrassing article for Kaufman especially since he attempts to now posit himself as a mainstream American patriot when in fact he has supported radical violent/racist ideologies and participated with banned organizations such as the JDL founded by Kahane and designated a terrorist organization by the US State Department.

[J]oe Kaufman has been on the Anti-Muslim scene for quite a while now and is dubbed by the far Right-Wing FrontPageMag as, you guessed it…another one of their ”Investigative Journalists.”  That he has been influenced by Meir Kahane and the Kahanist ideology is well documented, as is his love and angst for Kahane.


In the past he has been known to contribute to the terrorist organization founded by Kahane known as JDL (Jewish Defense League) while others accuse Kaufman of at the very least being a former member of the JDL.


Kaufman’s unsavory associations and views are quite real and they are only dangerous to America if you’re stupid enough to swallow his conspiracy theories but other than that he is simply a half-baked paranoid conspiracy theorist, some what along the lines of the “9/11 Truthers.”
In every nook and cranny there is a “Mooslim”…hiding and ready to get ya…so beware and be afraid. Be veryyyy afraid goes his story.


In this special LoonWatch series we will detail the exploits and punchlines that Krazy Kaufman throws out there and attempts to pass on as serious journalism, commentary and investigation.

Read the full article at: http://www.loonwatch.com/2009/06/kaufman-o-meter-2-moved-by-kahane/

 Also see:

Kaufman-O-Meter #1: “Nuke the Mooslims!”

http://www.chasingevil.org/2006/12/jdl-kahane.html

http://www.chasingevil.org/2007/02/is-terror-free-oil-really-snake-oil.html

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/46278

Technorati Tags:joe kaufman, muslims against sharia, islamophobia, hate mongering, racism
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Afterlife Update

Breaking News from the Eternal News Network: 



Heaven is funnier (Ed McMahon), and a beautiful earthly angel has moved to heaven (Farah Fawcett).  Meanwhile, Satan is screaming "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" (Michael Jackson).

Tea Parties and Right Wing Extremists

Beck gives credulous interview to Texas secessionist, who says Tea Parties are a great place to recruit

from Crooks and Liars by David Neiwert

You can view this video at the link above by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

Last week Glenn Beck scoffed at the notion that he had been promoting the notion of state secession, somehow overlooking the fact that he had in fact been promoting the notion of state secession.

So yesterday, to further demonstrate his skepticism, he invited on his Fox News program a fellow named Dan Miller, who runs the Texas Nationalist Movement. As you can see, he provided two full segments of the show to an interview that most kindly could be called “credulous,” and less kindly would make a crude reference to teabagging.

And indeed the Teabaggers’ Parties was an important topic, because Beck raised it himself at the end:

Beck: You actually believe the Tea Parties are, um, are the “gateway drug” to secession. Is that true?
Miller: Well, I think that’s definitely the case for a lot of folks. Because, you know, the Tea Parties have been about venting frustration and anger with what’s going on in Washington, D.C. And what we’re seeing here is a lot of people are looking for solutions, and the solution for Texas is Texas, independence.
Beck: Unbelievable.

Well, it's nice of them to admit that the Tea Parties in fact have been a prime recruiting ground for all kinds of extremist right-wing belief systems, most notably those arising from the "Patriot" movement of the 1990s.

Because there were some noteworthy aspects to this interview that went unmentioned on the air:
-- The Texas secession movement in fact has long been the most significant arm of the far-right "Patriot movement" in that state since the 1990s, when it was responsible for various armed standoffs with law-enforcement authorities and a range of domestic-terrorist acts.

As Media Matters noted when Gov. Rick Perry voiced his sympathy for the movement by appearing with Miller and other members of the movement during the Tea Parties promotion:

The Texas Nationalist Movement is not a random group. In a 2005 article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] described the secession movement in Texas as "very hard-line anti-government groups whose views involve anti-government conspiracy theories." Their associates have been responsible for numerous acts and attempted acts of terrorism.
... During the last two decades, members of the Republic of Texas have been arrested numerous times in the course of planning - or carrying out - what can only be described as domestic terrorism:
* In 1997, Richard McLaren, former president of the Republic of Texas, kidnapped his neighbors leading to a week-long standoff between the police and "antigovernment separatists." The standoff ended when McLaren and his four followers surrendered. "After the surrender, a sixth Republic member [was] killed in a gun battle with police, while a seventh elude[d] authorities for four months before being captured."
o During the standoff, McLaren told the New York Times: "We are at war with the United Nations and all foreign entities. We are not at war with the American people, but we are at war with the Federal agencies which have no jurisdiction here." Another Republic of Texas member, who identified himself as Lieut. Richard Keys of the Republic of Texas Defense Forces, said the hostages "were prisoners of war, held under provisions of the Geneva Convention."
* Prior to the standoff in 1997, the New York Times reported that the Republic of Texas demanded "$92 trillion in 'war reparations' from the Federal Government, and it has 'ordered' Gov. George W. Bush and all state legislators to vacate the Capitol building in Austin, none of which seems likely to happen any time soon....The members have passed at least $3 million of worthless but official-looking Republic of Texas checks, and they are simply ignoring state-ordered fines and orders to cease and desist...This month state officials shut two public buildings in Austin because of a bomb threat that they said was linked to the group."
* In 1998, according to SPLC, "Leaders of the so-called Republic of Texas, an antigovernment separatist group whose leader ha[d] been sentenced to serve 111 years in prison, tried to purchase a four-story building and compound to serve as the group's 'capital,' officials [said]. An IRS spokesman [said] Jacques Jaikaran, who face[d] up to three years in prison and $75,000 in fines on a tax evasion conviction, tried to arrange the purchase of a building near Houston that feature[d] machine-gun turrets, a bomb shelter and an operating room."
* Also in 1998, the Republic of Texas plotted to assassinate President Clinton using biological weapons. According to the SPLC, "Officials [said] the men planned to use a cactus thorn coated with a toxin like anthrax and fired by a modified butane lighter to carry out the murders. One man [was] acquitted of the charges, but Jack Abbot Grebe, Jr., and Johnnie Wise - a 72-year-old man who attended meetings of the separatist Republic of Texas group - eventually [were] sentenced to more than 24 years in prison."
* In addition, "according to an affidavit, Wise and Grebe told an FBI informant that they planned to modify a cigarette lighter so it would expel air instead of propane in order to fire a cactus needle tipped with anthrax, botulism or the AIDS virus."
* In 2000, members of the group planned an attack on the Houston Federal building. The SPLC reported, "Federal agents arrest[ed] Mark Wayne McCool, the one-time leader of the Texas Militia and Combined Action Program, as he allegedly [made] plans to attack the Houston federal building. McCool, who was arrested after buying powerful C-4 plastic explosives and an automatic weapon from an undercover FBI agent, earlier plotted to attack the federal building with a member of his own group and a member of the antigovernment Republic of Texas, but those two men eventually abandoned the plot. McCool, however, remained convinced the un [sic] had stored a cache of military materiel in the building. In the end, he [pled] guilty to federal charges that [brought] him just six months in jail."

Moreover, as the TNM's own Website explains, the current movement is a direct descendant of these radicals and has not disassociated itself from them at all. It's mostly in the process of trying to mainstream those beliefs -- and it's finding fertile ground not merely at those Tea Parties, but on Glenn Beck's Fox News show.

But another point about this stands out: The Texas secession movement became active in 1995 and was engaged in various threatening and violent acts through 2000. Then, for the next six years, it became completely dormant, not raising its head again until 2006.

Now, that couldn't have had anything to do with the fact that the President of the U.S. during those years was in fact the former governor of Texas, could it?

Because otherwise, one would have to conclude that we're looking at a pack of bellyachers who hated the federal government until one of their own was running it, and only returned to the business of bellyaching after that same person had completely botched the job, creating an economic disaster that required the feds to take drastic steps about which the bellyachers could easily bellyache.

Though of course, such a point would never occur to Glenn Beck.

Read the full article and view the video at the link above.

This Week In Civil Rights History

This Week in Civil Rights History: Title IX Becomes Law

from Civilrights.org Latest Posts

This week we commemorate the 37th anniversary of the enactment of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which banned gender discrimination from all education programs and extracurricular activities in federally funded schools.

While the law did not originally make any reference to athletics, it is famous for altering schools' athletic policies to increase female participation in sports and establish gender equality in athletic budgets and competitions. Before the law passed in 1972, girls made up only 7 percent of high school sports participants. Now, more than 40 percent of high school athletes are female, according to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations.

Title IX has also dramatically improved educational opportunities for women and increased their participation in higher education. Before the law passed, 42 percent of college students were women.  During the 2003-2004 school year, women composed 57 percent of the students in universities and colleges. It also has become easier for women to assume higher-skilled positions in their occupational fields, such as corporate executives, politicians, and college presidents.
 

Another Incidence of Domestic Right Wing Terrorism

This is another right wing domestic terrorist incident, with a Minuteman leader and a neo-Nazi working together in a plot to rob drug dealers to finance an armed revolution against the government, along the way murdering a mother and child. Of course, the right wing pundits still deny that there are any right wing terrorists, and waste their time trying to convince readers that the recent DHS warning about increased right wing attacks was inaccurate.  For the full article and video, click on the link below.

 

Wingnuts unhappy because CNN calls Shawna Forde's killer Minuteman gang 'extremists'

from Crooks and Liars by David Neiwert

Matthew Balan at Newsbusters is unhappy because a CNN chryon identified Shawna Forde's killer-Minuteman gang "extremists", while Rick Sanchez talked a bit about how Forde had been a player in the movement:

A chyron which accompanied a report on CNN’s Newsroom program on Wednesday about the arrest of a leader of an organization inspired by the Minuteman Project, referred to her and her accused accomplices as “extremists.” Despite qualifying how the largest Minuteman organization had distanced itself from the suspects, anchor Rick Sanchez questioned how she became a “player in the anti-immigration movement.”

OK, so if Balan doesn't want to call Forde's gang of thugs "extremists," what would he call this?

Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.

"She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government," he said.

... "She sat right here on my couch and told me that she was going to start an underground militia. This militia was going to start robbing drug-cartel dealers — rob them and steal their money or drugs," Metzger said.

... Investigators think the May 30 robbery was intended to be the first in a series of such attacks intended to fund the border-watch group and a new venture, O'Connor said. Forde planned on starting a business of helping free kidnap victims in other countries, he said.

Oh, and then they shot a 9-year-old girl and her father to death in cold blood.

And yes, Forde indeed was a player in the Minuteman movement, appearing on TV as a Minuteman spokesperson and onstage with Jim Gilchrist here in the Northwest.

What, exactly, does Balan think Sanchez should have reported?

Now, Sanchez never suggests that the larger Minuteman movement might be riddled with extremists, but that seems to be what Balan is accusing him of doing. Or at least sidling up too close to that proposition.

Well, tell ya what, Matthew: We'll gladly say it here. The Minuteman movement is and always has been an extremist movement, and so it is no surprise to see it devolve in its decaying phase into a radical and violent one.

Oh yes, and you know what else? It's a big moneymaking scam, too.
But I guess you're unhappy unless they're described as a big "neighborhood watch." Yeah, that fits 'em to a T, eh?

Here's what's actually noteworthy about all this: Unlike CNN, you'll never see this story reported on Fox. In fact, I haven't seen a single mention of this story on Fox TV. Gee, I wonder why that is. Well, no I don't.

Senate Apologizes for Slavery

Senate Passes Resolution Apologizing for Slavery

from Civilrights.org Latest Posts

Today, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution apologizing to African Americans for slavery and segregation.  The resolution was introduced by Senator Tom Harkin, D. Iowa, and Senator Sam Brownback. R. Kan.

In the resolution, the Senate "expresses its recommitment to the principle that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and calls on all people of the United States to work toward eliminating racial prejudices, injustices and discrimination from our society."

Wade Henderson, president and CEO of LCCR, said: "Slavery and the western slave trade are crimes against humanity and will forever be known as our republic's original sin. A formal apology by the U.S. Congress for the dehumanization and racism wrought by both the enslavement of African Americans and for Jim Crow segregation will admittedly never right such a grave wrong, but it is an important first step in acknowledging its tortured legacy.

For almost a century after our civil war, African Americans endured numerous civil and human rights violations including lynchings, deprivation of the right to vote, and other forms disenfranchisement borne out of virulent racism.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights commends Senators Harkin and Brownback for introducing a resolution that appropriately speaks to this past collective injustice. It represents an important advancement for civil and human rights, as well as for racial healing and reconciliation.

This Senate resolution – similar to one passed by the House last year – acknowledges the loss of human dignity and opportunity that continues to this day, and serves as a reminder for future generations that the evils of slavery and racial segregation can never be accepted again."

New Report on Hate Crimes in America

Today, LCCREF released a new report, "Confronting the New Faces of Hate: Hate Crimes in America," that analyses trends in federal hate crimes data, particularly the rise in anti-Latino hate crimes in the wake of the heated national debate over immigration reform.  The report also documents how extremists use the Internet, radio and other forms of media to promote their messages and recruit new members.

The report details how online predatory hate mongers such as Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, Peter Oliver of The Religion of Peace and others use the internet for lies, conspiracy theories and sometimes general lunacy in a push for far right-wing, Supremacist positions and to incite others to violence against minorities.

"In an increasingly diverse America, there is no civil right more fundamental to the working of American Democracy than protecting individuals from acts of violence because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or disability," said Wade Henderson, president of LCCR.

The Senate is expected to vote on their version of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which passed in the House in April, before Congress recesses in August. The bill will provide local authorities with more resources to combat hate crimes and give federal government jurisdiction over prosecuting hate crimes in states where the current law is inadequate.

Read the entire article and the report at http://www.civilrights.org/

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Updates Coming Soon

Watch for updates within the next few days on David Horowitz, thereligionofpeace.com, right-wing terrorists, and Grace Church. 

DHS on Left Wing Extremists

Animal rights and environmental extremists seek to end the perceived abuse and suffering of animals and the degradation of the natural environment perpetrated by humans. They use non-violent and violent tactics that, at times, violate criminal law. Many of these extremists claim they are conducting these activities on behalf of two of the most active groups, the Animal Liberation Front and its sister organization, the Earth Liberation Front. Other prominent groups include Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty; and chapters within the Animal Defense League USPER, and Earth First! USPER.

Anarchist extremists generally embrace a number of radical philosophical components of anticapitalist, antiglobalization, communist, socialist, and other movements. Anarchist groups seek abolition of social, political, and economic hierarchies, including Western-style governments and large business enterprises, and frequently advocate criminal actions of varying scale and scope to accomplish their goals. Anarchist extremist groups include entities within Crimethinc, the Ruckus Society ,and Recreate 68

Read the full report at: http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Leftwing_Extremist_Threat.pdf#page=4

Pammy's Paranoia

Pamela Geller's Paranoia Strikes Again

http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2009/05/pamela-geller-in-front-page-mag-islams.html reprints an article written by Pammy Geller, the holocaust denier and right-wing extremist over at Atlas Shrugs.

From Geller’s article:

Originally published at IsraelNationalNews.com, Pamela Geller's article describes the cover-up, or whitewash, of the role that Islam played in the cruel/brutal murder of a Parisian Jew, Ilan Halimi. What is happening to the story concerning the murder of this defenseless Jew, is akin to the media's penchant for describing honor murders of hapless girls and women by their male relatives, as simply being the victims of "domestic violence".

Islam, pure Islam, is the reason behind these brutalities, and those who attempt to dismiss it as such (attention UPI analyst, TOBY ARCHER), only helps to cover up the real reasons why it occurs, and prolong the suffering of the helpless at the hands of an intolerant, misogynist and violent political/belief system. Pamela describes Ilan's uncle, Rafi Halimi, account of "the gang phoning the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background."

That is the reason why Islam is being thrust into the center stage for scrutiny by the Counter-Jihad, due to its overt racist/supremacist ideology. Thankfully we have willing souls like Pamela Geller who truly cares about individuals, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, but is willing to address the hard issues, and take the ensuing flak from all quarters because of it. She's truly a star, and a mensch of human being. KGS

Islam's Homemade Concentration Camp
By: Pamela Geller
IsraelNationalNews.com Thursday, May 28, 2009

The abduction and murder in Paris of a young Jewish man by a gang of Muslim immigrants calling themselves the Barbarians shocked the whole of France in 2006. But now that the accused are on trial - silence.

=======================================================================

In reality, there are over 700,000 articles about this kidnapping on Google.  Despite the court’s ordering the trial to be closed (a common practice) due to the victim’s family’s request, hundreds of thousands of accounts have leaked out anyway. 

A Wiki article shows that the motive had nothing to do with any religious jihad, the motive was money. 

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilan_Halimi

Indications for money as a motive

• The kidnappers demanded ransom, initially EUR 450,000; this then dropped to EUR 5,000.
• The French police initially believed that anti-Semitism was not a factor in the crime.^[12]
• Youssef Fofana, who also denies being the mastermind of the kidnapping, has been reported to have said that it was only for the money, without any antisemitic motivation.
• As the investigation progresses, this gang appears to have been implicated in at least 15 other cases of racketeering.^[13] Posing as members of the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica or member of the French division of the PFLP, they threatened several high ranking CEOs including Jérôme Clément, président of the European TV operator Arte, Rony Brauman, former president and co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, and the CEO as well as another high-ranking member of a large company selling home appliances. They sent threatening pictures of an unknown man dressed as a middle-eastern Arab in front of a picture of Osama Bin Laden. In another case, the owner of a large grocery store was directed to pay 100,000 euros.

Indications for antisemitism as a motive

• According to then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, members of the gang confessed that they believed all Jews to be rich and it motivated them to target several Jews,^[14] culminating with Halimi.^[12] This starkly contrasts with the reality of the Halimi family's working-class circumstances; they and many other poor and working-class Jews inhabited the same lower-class banlieue as the attackers. ^{[15] [16]}
• The police reportedly found "Islamic fundamentalist and pro-Palestinian literature" during one arrest. However, the suspects are not known extremists, a police intelligence official said.^[6]
• Halimi's uncle Rafi told reporters that some of the telephone calls to the victim's family involved recitations from the Qur'an accompanied by Halimi's tortured screams.^[17]
• The French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin declared that the "odious crime"^[18] was antisemitic, and that antisemitism is not acceptable in France.^[17]

Other explanations

Police have attributed to the banlieues' gang subculture a "poisonous mentality that designates Jews as enemies along with other 'outsiders,'" such as Americans, mainstream French, and Europeans in general. "If they could have gotten their hands on a (non-Jewish) French cop in the same way, they probably would have done the same thing," a retired police chief opined. ^[6]

France has long had a problem with anti-Semitism, and with their very high unemployment rate, especially among young workers, France has seen an escalation in violent crimes with financial motives – robberies, kidnappings, burglaries, etc.

Instead of always claiming that the sky is falling, perhaps Ms. Geller should understand that here in the real world, sometimes a crime is just a crime, heinous of otherwise, it does not always involve a religious motivation and blaming an entire people for the crimes of a few.

Times Apologizes for Rumor-Mongering

Times Runs With Unsubstantiated Pentagon Rumors, Later Apologizes

Last week, the Times was forced to run a rare and lengthy correction on a poorly reported and misleading front page story about the recidivist rate among released Guantanamo detainees. That article the paper's public editor Hoyt said in his correction:

...demonstrated again the dangers when editors run with exclusive leaked material in politically charged circumstances and fail to push back skeptically. The lapse is especially unfortunate at The Times, given its history in covering the run-up to the Iraq war.

Of course, holocaust denier and White Supremacist Robert Spencer is running with the original Times story and “forgets to mention” that the Times has apologized and retracted it.

A Poem About Hatred

The author of this poem, Bob Allen, recently contacted me with this heartfelt poem and gave permission to reprint it on the Chasing Evil website.  

The poem is titled "Am I Less Human?" and can be found in its original format at http://www.hddweb.com/WWW0/95376/AM_I_LESS_HUMAN_PDF.pdf

Bob Allen grew up in the American South, where he saw firsthand the violence that goes hand-in-hand with hatred, bigotry and discrimination. He learned from witnessing these acts that it is wrong to be either abusive, violent or prejudice against others. Bob now lives in New Mexico with his wife and son, and has recently completed his book "Horse Whispering Savvy For People", which teaches people to communicate in harmony with one another.

On the Subject of Alexa Rankings

It's been a while since we looked at the Alexa rankings of the hate-monger, racist and White Supremacist sites versus the anti-racism sites.  Let's take a peek at Alexa and see what's been happening in their three month averaging.

First, the Racists

 

Atlas Shrugs, DOWN 4%

 

Gates of Vienna, DOWN 14%

 

The Religion of Peace, DOWN 13%

 

  

Jihadwatch, DOWN 4%

Now, the anti-racists

 

Gates of Vienna vs. The World, UP 80%

 

Chasing Evil, UP 90%

Conclusion, people are no longer taking the racists seriously, they are losing their readership, their supporters, their financing.  People are paying more attention to the anti-racists, who are exposing the racists and explaining why racism is wrong, no matter who you are.

Hal Turner Arrested for Comments on His Web Site

White Supremacist Hal Turner Arrested Again

Extreme Radio Host Hal Turner Arrested

from Little Green Footballs

 

Xbat radio star Hal Turner takes the fall: Internet radio host Hal Turner arrested.

Internet radio host Hal Turner — accused of inciting Catholics to “take up arms” and singling out two Connecticut lawmakers and a state ethics official on a Web site — was taken into custody in New Jersey late Wednesday after state Capitol police in Connecticut obtained a warrant for his arrest.


Read the full article at the link above.

The ADL Gets Overly Sensitive

The ADL writes: 

ADL Letter to Garry Trudeau: Doonesbury Comic Strip 'Maligns Judaism'

New York, NY, June 1, 2009 ... The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today released the text of a letter to cartoonist Garry Trudeau concerning his Doonesbury strip of May 31, 2009:

Dear Mr. Trudeau:
We agree with the numerous people who are contacting us that Sunday's Doonesbury misquotes the Bible, maligns Judaism, and promotes a Christian heresy, all within eight panels. It reinforces age-old stereotypes about Judaism that have been the cause of much suffering and pain over the centuries, and which have been rejected by a variety of Christian denominations over the last decades. 


Jesus' concern in the Gospels is with money-changers, not money-lenders. The money-changers converted the coins of the Roman Empire into the currency accepted by the Jerusalem Temple, as money-changers today convert dollars into Euros. To speak of money-lenders harkens back the stereotype of Shylock, when Jews were forced by Christians to engage in usury.


Christian teaching is clear: the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. Doonesbury's Reverend Sloan is guilty of promoting anti-Jewish stereotypes and biblical illiteracy. He owes both Jews and Christians an apology.

A couple of problems with the ADL's reaction to the Doonesbury strip: First, as with strong reactions to any cartoons - it's a cartoon, get over it!  Second, it was written as topical humor on the publics' anger at the big banks' getting richer while we get poorer (think bailout bonuses).  It promoted the funny point that the bankers' behavior is so egregious that it would even make Jesus angry, and it gave the implied example of Jesus' anger at the money-changers of the Temple.  The article above compares the money-changers to benign acts of "changing dollars to Euros", when in fact this threw Jesus into a rage because the practice was strictly forbidden, and part of the corruption of the Temple priests of that time period.  There is definately on heresy here.

The ADL does great and necessary work, but needs to get past being offended by cartoons. 

Baron Bodissey on How to Form a Terrorist Cell

See Baron’s detailed instruction manual at http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2009/06/building-distributed-counterjihad.html#readfurther

 

As an added bonus, here is Lex’s satirical graphic of Baron’s terrorist cell structures and networks with Baron as the only member: