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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
MRC: Depicting Gays in Comics Is 'Propaganda'
Topic: Media Research Center

Kristine Marsh and Matt Philbin rant in an April 15 MRC Culture & Media Institute item:

Poor Sgt. Rock. Were he around today, the grizzled infantryman who’s WWII combat exploits thrilled a generation of boys might find himself sitting through sexual orientation sensitivity training in the post-Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell Army. And he’d be hard pressed to recognize his old DC Comics area of operations.

In an upcoming release, DC’s openly lesbian Batwoman character will be shown kissing her lover while proposing marriage. And now, Batgirl has a transgendered roommate. These are not your father’s comic books.

Like the rest of American pop culture, comic books have increasingly included pro-gay propaganda pieces aimed at the children and young adults who read them. Not to be outdone by DC’s super-heroic sexual diversity, Marvel released a comic a few weeks ago where “Wolverine and Hercules share a gay kiss,” as reported by The Huffington Post.  

Yes, Marsh and Philbin really seem to believe that depicting gays in comics behaving like other comic characters behave is "propaganda."

Marsh and Philbin also rush to the defense of right-wing sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card from "gay activists" who "have been hounding him as a 'homophobe' and 'bigot,' simply for affirming the traditional understanding of marriage."

They go on to lament: "Unsurprisingly, there’s no public uproar or call for writers to be fired for pushing their gay agenda, because what press this gaying of comics has gotten has been favorable." But they don't explain why gays must be treated as nothing less than evil, which is apparently their goal.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:56 AM EDT
David Kupelian's Solution to Obama-Induced Stress: Help From His Favorite Cult Leader
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Turns out we were right on the money when we pointed out that WorldNetDaily's Whistleblower magazine would be blaming the nation's overall stress on President Obama.

WND has published managing editor David Kupelian's essay on the subject, and it pretty much fulfills that promise:

After all, let’s face the hard facts: We just re-elected perhaps the worst president in history, someone manifestly obsessed with dismantling traditional, free-market capitalist America and transforming it into a socialist nanny state. That in itself is highly stressful – at least for the roughly half the population that still understands socialism always leads to a profound loss of freedom and prosperity.

Then there’s today’s relentless economic pressures: high unemployment (the actual rate is at least double that of the “official” government rate), foreclosures and bankruptcies, a stagnant growth rate, 11,000 new people signing up for food stamps every single day, rising taxes for the entire middle class whose net worth is simultaneously shrinking, ever-higher prices for food, gas and other essentials – and overshadowing it all, a galactic national debt burden, courtesy of a wildly out-of-control government unrestrained by either the Constitution or common sense.

That, too, is very stressful. Top it all off with an administration continually abusing the public for the sake of enlarging and consolidating its political power – for instance, by purposely making the “sequester” cuts hurt Americans, even our active-duty soldiers, as much as possible.

Make no mistake: This sort of stress on Americans is not only intentional on the part of Team Obama – it is strategic. Remember, these people are revolutionaries (that is, engaged in “bringing about a major or fundamental change,” as Merriam-Webster puts it) and utterly committed to replacing one societal structure – America’s constitutional, limited-government, free-enterprise system – with another – a socialist, wealth-redistributionist system run by an all-powerful government.

Such a radical change cannot be accomplished while Americans are calm, happy, content and grateful for their blessings. Citizens must be unhappy and stressed out. Indeed, widespread popular discontent has always been the required fuel for leftist transformation.

Just reading a few pages into Saul Alinsky’s notorious “Rules for Radicals,” one encounters repeated confirmation that the very key to radical “change” is keeping the populace angry, encouraging their grievances, stoking their resentments and making sure they are continually upset. That is the primary psychological dynamic of “community organizing” – and America today is led by community-organizer-in-chief Barack Obama, a long-time master practitioner and instructor in Alinsky’s neo-Marxist agitation methods.

Top radio talker Rush Limbaugh recently picked up on this normally unspoken aspect of Obama’s modus operandi: “I think he wants people to snap,” opined Rush. “I think Obama is challenging everybody’s sanity. Obama [is] literally pushing people to snap, attacking the very sanity of the country.”

Kupelian also writes that "during eras when society and families are stable, unified and fundamentally decent and moral – as, say, America during the 1950s – the stress level for each person is minimized, or at least not compounded by a perverse society." Yeah, blacks in the 1950s weren't feeling any stress about being systematically discriminated against, did they?

Kupelian's solution to all of this Obama-induced stress involves an old friend:

Like the constantly inculcated attribute of “resilience,” the military has also found the practice of “mindfulness” to be extremely helpful in overcoming stress. And the gold standard in this growing field is “Be Still and Know,” a simple and time-tested awareness exercise that been used in all five armed service branches for many years.

[...]

“Be Still and Know” was developed by Roy Masters, who at 85 is the patriarch of stress experts, having taught this method since 1960 to millions, his fans including everyone from movie star John Wayne to Internet journalist Matt Drudge. He also hosts talk radio’s longest-running counseling show, “Advice Line,” on Talk Radio Network. The author of 18 books, Masters was featured on the Sean Hannity Show to discuss his newest book, “Hypnotic States of Americans.”

Recently, all four of the audio exercises on the “Coping Strategies” CD have been released in a new civilian version on a dedicated MP3 player called, “The Cure Stress Device.”

“In today’s high-tech, wireless world,” said Masters, “a little, self-contained audio device the size of a credit card seemed like the best delivery system possible.”

In a recent message he tweeted, Masters summed up more than 60 years of work in just 140 characters: “Learn to endure cruelty and injustice without resentment and after the stress has passed you will find the fulfillment you have been seeking.”

Kupelian never gets around to mentioning it, but he used to work for Masters. We've documented that Kupelian used to edit a magazine for Masters' organization, the Foundation of Human Understanding, that appears to have served as a prototype for Whistleblower.

Masters may not be the best person to take relaxation tips from. He and his FHU has been accused of cult-like tendencies over the years; his followers have been called "Roybots." Masters moved his operations to Grants Pass, Oregon, in 1982 -- followed by 2,000 of his supporters, who proceeded to attempt to take over the town; that prompted a boycott of Masters-related businesses by some local residents. A July 1992 episode of Geraldo Rivera's TV show featured a former FHU member who said of the group: "The role of women is to be very submissive, quiet, never questioning, not thinking, no decisions." The ex-wife of one of Roy Masters' sons denounced Masters on a 1999 TV show, citing a "long history of Masters' denigration of women."

Plus, as WND news editor Joe Kovacs inadvertently confirmed, WND's original headquaters was located on a ranch owned by Masters' FHU.

So we have your usual WND non-disclosure of conflicts of interest and a whitewashing of the ugly truth about the man who Kupelian apparently idolizes. Par for the course for a "news" organization so desperate for credibility that it's still touting how some website nobody's heard of (run by a church where an associate pastor has been accused of raping a child) proclaimed it "trustworthy."


Posted by Terry K. at 1:24 AM EDT
Monday, April 22, 2013
Noel Sheppard Selectively Repeats Trump Tweets
Topic: NewsBusters

NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard spent part of his weekend being fascinated by the tweets of Donald Trump.

Sheppard devoted an April 20 post to highlighting a Trump tweet asking, "Is the Boston killer eligible for Obama Care to bring him back to health?" Sheppard added that "Alas, many of Trump's followers didn't see the humor in this and voiced their displeasure." Actually, it's Sheppard and Trump who missed the humor: As severl Twitter followers responded, the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, since he lives in Massachusetts, would be eligible for care under the health care plan put into place under former governor -- and 2012 Republican presidential candidate with prominent backing from Trump -- Mitt Romney.

The next day, Sheppard highlighted another tweet from Trump, this time asking, "What do you think of water boarding the Boston killer sometime prior to allowing our doctors to make him well? I suspect he may talk!" Sheppard did not voice his disapproval at either tweet.

By contrast, Sheppard completely ignored another, even more controversial tweet from Trump the same weekend. As Wonkette details, Trump rebutted a follower who complained about his views on the Central Park 5 case by retorting, "Tell me, what were they doing in the Park, playing checkers?"

In fact, the suspects who were originally convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park were exonerated were exonerated and released from prison after another person confessed to the crime. Trump later deleted the tweet.

Funny that Sheppard didn't want to interrupt his Trump-fluffing to tell the truth.

Posted by Terry K. at 3:38 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, April 22, 2013 4:33 PM EDT
WND's Robert Ringer: America 'Reached Its Apex of Virtuosity In The 1950s'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Robert Ringer writes in his April 17 WorldNetDaily column:

The collective was the life of prehistoric man – the life of the savage. As civilization advanced, however, families began to strive for self-sufficiency, which increasingly came to be considered virtuous. This was especially true of the United States, which probably reached its apex of virtuosity in the 1950s.

So why did things begin to slide backwards after that? I believe it was a result of a fascinating paradox. As the average person’s life has become ever more comfortable, there has been a natural evolution toward compassion. No civilized person – especially someone who is living well – wants to see other people suffer.

Unfortunately, this natural evolution toward compassion also dragged along with it the tenets of socialism.

Really? The time of segregation, sexism and a 90 percent top tax rate was the "apex of virtuosity"?


Posted by Terry K. at 1:50 PM EDT
CNS' Starr Unhappy That Gays Might Be Considered 'Extraordinary'
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr is rather prone to anti-gay freakouts. She has another one in an April 17 article over the thought that gays might be considered "extraordinary":

The White House announced it is expanding its “Champions of Change” contest, which “spotlights ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” to include gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.

The announcement posted on the White House website cites President Barack Obama posthumously awarding Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Milk, a gay man who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and later shot to death by a rival politician, served as the inspiration for the expanded contest.

Starr seems to think that gays have never done anything extraordinary ever. That that fits right in with her employer's anti-gay agenda.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:56 AM EDT
WND Pushes Another Dubious Claim From Walid Shoebat
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily continues its irresponsible behavior in reporting on the Boston Marathon bombings with an April 19 article by Bob Unruh, in which he uncritically repeats the unsubstantiated claim that Michelle Obama visited Abdul Rahman Ali Issa Al-Salimi Alharbi -- a former “person of interest” in theh bombing who has since been cleared -- while visiting a Boston hospital and meeting with victims of the bombing.

The only source Unruh cites for this claim is the notoriously unreliable Walid Shoebat -- who has been credibly accused of of lying about his own past as a self-proclaimed Islamic terrorist-turned-Christian -- who in turn cites a report in a Saudi Arabian newspaper named Okaz. Unruh makes no mention of Shoebat offering any verification of the claim other than citing "tweets from members of the Alharbi family."

Unruh is weirdly eager to boost the credibility of the unverified claim by talking up the alleged good reputation of Okaz:

The newspaper is more than half a century old and publishes out of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. It also publishes simultaneously in Riyadh.

One of the oldest newspapers in Saudi Arabia, it also is brave, taking on banned issues such as lesbianism in the repressive Islamic kingdom. Its circulation is estimated at about 150,000 and the online version was reported by Forbes Middle East two years ago to be one of the Top 10 online newspapers in the Middle East region.

In fact, all Unruh seems to have done is rewrite claims taken off the Wikipedia page for the paper -- ironic since WND has been trying to discredit Wikipedia for years.

Unruh also repeated a pair of false and/or libelous claims:

  • "WND reported earlier when an expert on terrorism said Alharbi, the original 'person of interest' in the Monday bombing, was going to be deported on national security grounds." He curiously didn't name his expert, Steve Emerson -- perhaps because his assertion has been discredited.
  • "WND had reported Wednesday morning that the Saudi student Alharbi shares the same last name as a major Saudi clan that includes scores of al-Qaida operatives." As we've documented, WND is implying without proof that Alharbi is a terrorist, which exposes it to a potential libel action from Alharbi if the claim is indeed false.

You'd think that a veteran of three decades in journalism, part of that time with the Associated Press, would know better than to write a story with a single source whose veracity is highly questionable, or to repeat claims that are demonstrably false or potentially libelous. But Joseph Farah is not paying Unruh to follow time-tested journalistic ethics.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:42 AM EDT
Sunday, April 21, 2013
MRC's Graham: Obama Was 'Petulant,' But Fox News Made 'Smackdown'
Topic: Media Research Center

Tim Graham wrote in an April 18 NewsBusters post:

"The Five" on Fox News Channel didn't cover more than a few seconds of President Obama's petulant Rose Garden attack on conservatives making Wednesday "a shameful day for Washington." The other networks, which define "news" as anything their Heroic President chooses to utter, including his March Madness picks, were shocked and appalled.

Graham failed to identify what, exactly, was petulant about what Obama said. But then, it appears Graham's petulance detector is way out of calibration, because he sees Fox's petulant refusal to air Obama's remarks as a principled decision, despite the fact that Fox cut away even before Obama finished his first sentence and, thus, could not know the full content of Obama's remarks.

Still, Graham claimed that Fox's Greg Gutfeld, during whose Fox show the channel quickly cut out of Obama's statement, "seemed to protest the brevity of their White House snippet." In reality, Obama-hater Gutfeld seemed to be realizing how bad this looks, even for such an anti-Obama channel like Fox, and this was merely an effort to paper over how partisan and petty the channel looked.

Graham goes on to proudly declare that Fox News "broke out its smackdown machine" in response to its refusal to air Obama's response, despite the fact that Fox's statements sure sound much more petulant than anything Obama said.

So: Obama responding to the failure of a Senate vote is "petulant," while Fox's petulance is principled. Got it, Tim.


Posted by Terry K. at 4:42 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, April 21, 2013 4:43 PM EDT
WND Columnist: Sandy Hook Survivors Are A 'Disgrace' For Seeking Gun Regulations
Topic: WorldNetDaily

The Sandy Hook parents and others running around this nation at taxpayer and DNC front group expense seeking to hold responsible an inanimate object for their grief are, quite frankly, a disgrace. They know perfectly well the truth about Sandy Hook, but they are lying to America. They would have us “sacrifice essential liberty,” to paraphrase Ben Franklin, not for temporary safety, but for their own momentary convenience.

And the truth is very inconvenient. Adam Lanza’s mother knew that her son was a danger. But she blamed “bullying” at the school (not, you will note, the individual bullies, just the process). She excused and enabled her son’s actions. She knew the course her son’s illness would take, yet she did nothing. And neither did anyone else in her circle of friends. She enabled her son.

Just as the Sandy Hook parents and others who have suffered a personal loss are enabling the sick hypocrites and demagogues in D.C. who are shamefully using these family members’ grief to destroy essential American liberties. Why? Because they find individual liberty and freedom from government overreach inconvenient to their hypocritical lives and careers. Stop dishonoring the memory of your loved ones. Stop dishonoring America. Tell the truth.

-- Craige McMillan, April 12 WorldNetDaily column


Posted by Terry K. at 12:22 PM EDT
Saturday, April 20, 2013
MRC Just Started Sending Reporter To Trial It's Been Haranguing Others To Cover
Topic: Media Research Center

Over the past couple of weeks, the Media Research Center has gotten a lot of mileage out of trying to shame broadcast outlets into covering the murder trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. It's a selective shame, of course -- the MRC has to focus only on broadcast networks and ignore inconvenient facts like how Fox News devoted the least amount of airtime of the three cable news networks to Gosnell's arrest in 2011.

The latest step in the MRC's campaign is an April 18 Culture & Media Institute article by Katie Yoder complaining that "besides the Media Research Center, an average of only 12 – 15 reporters appeared in the courtroom at a time on Wednesday, April 17."

What Philbin doesn't report in his article: April 17 was apparently the first anyone from the MRC attended trial proceedings.

We asked CMI managing editor Matt Philbin via Twitter if that was true -- that April 17 was the first day that an MRC employee attended the Gosnell trial in person. He responded: "Like we have the resources? We don't get Soros $." We'll take that as a yes.

By the way, Philbin's crack about "Soros $" is silly because a) ConWebWatch doesn't receive funding from anyone, let alone George Soros, b) the Scaife and Pickens money the MRC receives surely salves any wound it feels from not being a Soros beneficiary, and c) the MRC has a $12 million budget, and it couldn't afford to send someone from Washington to Philadelphia to cover the trial only until it could justify doing so as a way to further its anti-media activism? Apparently, the MRC has to save that precious cash for important things like Times Square billboards.

So while the MRC was spending money trying to rouse conservatives into harrassing the media to cover the Gosnell trial, it couldn't be bothered to spend money on a hotel room, a laptop and gas money to send someone to Philly to cover the trial until three days ago.

That cynical approach proves once again that the MRC doesn't care about journalism, except when it can be exploited to further its right-wing agenda.

 


Posted by Terry K. at 10:07 PM EDT
WND Columnists React to Boston Bombings With Muslim-Bashing, Obama Derangement
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily columnists have reacted to the Boston Marathon bombings and the revelation that the suspects were ethnic Chechens the way you'd expect -- with Muslim-bashing, immigrant-bashing, and Obama derangement.

Joseph Farah wrote:

Despite the collective hopes of the Big Media and government at all levels, the perps in the Boston Marathon bombings turned out to be … Muslims.

It’s almost impossible to list all those who speculated and conjectured that this was the work of “right-wing extremists.” It would even be more difficult to chronicle all the wishful-thinkers who hoped and wished out loud that the terrorists would be “white guys.”

What is the psychology that drives people to think in these terms? Or can it even be characterized as thinking?

There are conflicts all over the world, and the vast majority of them involve radical Muslims victimizing non-Muslims. That’s just a fact.

You could even go further and make the case that these conflicts have, with a few notable exceptions defined the history of the world for the last 1,300 years.

Farah added: "Right-wingers and Christian fundamentalists don’t use terror tactics. They’re not at war with America. For the most part, they’d like to preserve what’s best about America." We suspect that Barnett Slepian, Atlanta Olympics spectators and the former workers at the Murrah Federal Building have a different view.

Tom Tancredo, meanwhile, rants about immigration:

Americans not infected by the common disease Potomac Myopia can connect the dots. Ordinary folk assume that a successful immigration system should afford protection against jihadists, not a welcome mat. When citizens say they want our broken immigration system fixed, they think that means securing our borders, real enforcement of immigration laws and better screening against jihadists gaining legal status by way of a green card.

[...]

We granted asylum and eventual citizenship to young Muslim men who harbored a secret hatred for the United States. Does the FBI or anyone at Homeland Security know how many more terrorists-in-waiting there are among the thousands admitted through our humanitarian asylum policies?

Tancredo overlooks the fact that the two suspects came to the United States as children, have lived here more than a decade, and there's no evidence to date that  the suspects "harbored a secret hatred for the United States" at the time they entered the country.

And as usual, Larry Klayman is in his own league, spewing his usual Obama derangement:

It is now clearer than ever that the pro-Muslim actions and non-actions of our “First Muslim President” are coming home to roost – with a vengeance. After over four years of his administration, here is where we find ourselves today with regard to attacks and threatened attacks by terrorists and terrorist nations.

[...]

At first, Obama administration officials, as has become the norm, refused to implicate a possible Muslim terrorist plot, Obama himself describing the attack as a mere “tragedy.” Indeed, given the latent and actual claims of persecution of Muslims in this country by Obama and his allies, like the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), even conservative channels like Fox News shied away from using the “M” word until it was crystal clear who had perpetrated the bombing. For example, Bret Baier of Fox News almost choked Friday morning when he broadcast the names and backgrounds of the bombers and sheepishly revealed their Muslim roots. This politically correct sensitivity, orchestrated and furthered by Obama and his minions, has contributed to the rise of Muslim extremism in our country. Terrorists like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to avoid even the appearance of prejudice against Muslims, are even given scholarships to prestigious schools and entrees into other venues of American society, which they can use as cover for their plots. In short, Obama has set the tone and led the way in giving this green light to his fellow Muslims bent on terror.

Klayman is eager to blame Muslims forthings they clearly had nothing to do with, such as the ricin-laced letters to politicians and the Texas fertilizer plant explosion:

Nor was there hardly any mention on any station or other press entity of even the possibility that Muslim terror was involved in the huge explosion that occurred in West, Texas, where a fertilizer plant blew up Wednesday, just days after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Klayman asserted that West, Texas, where the explosion occurred, is "the former home of none other than former President George W. Bush." False -- Crawford, Texas, near which Bush's ranch is located, is more than 40 miles away.

Klayman also claims that  the ricin-laced letters have an "apparent similarity in timing and method to the Sept. 11, 2001, anthrax terror attack, which to this day have never been 'solved.'" In fact, officials agree that Bruce Ivins perpetrated the attacks (even if Cliff Kincaid still thinks the Muslims did it).

It's this level of attention to facts that make Klayman the failed lawyer that he is.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:51 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, April 20, 2013 10:09 PM EDT
Friday, April 19, 2013
WND's Claim That Boston Bombers Were Trained By Iran Is Unverifiable, Of Course
Topic: WorldNetDaily

When you're hiding behind a fake name and use only anonymous sources, you can pretty much write anything safe in the knowledge that it's unverifiable by anyone else.

That, in a nutshell, is the career of WorldNetDaily writer "Reza Kahlili," a self-proclaimed former CIA operative who's best known for peddling outrageous claims about Iran. That M.O. is all too clear in an April 19 article by Kahlili:

The two brothers who set off the bombs at the Boston Marathon Monday were assets of a bigger network out of South Asia and were set up to be burned so there would be no link back to their handlers – and Iran.

As reported exclusively on April 16, a source within the Iranian intelligence services told WND that the Islamic regime had links to Monday’s bombings and that Hezbollah terrorists and Quds Forces were involved in the shadows. That information was shared with U.S. officials.

A YouTube video posted apparently by one of the bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, though not yet confirmed, shows a belief in the coming of the Shiites’ 12th Imam, Mahdi, and the rise of an Islamic army with black flags out of Khorasan, a province in Iran.

Not a single claim Kahlili makes is corroborated with an on-the-record source. None. Kahlili could be making up all these alleged anonymous sources for all we know. Because he hides behind a fake name as well, that makes him doubly unaccountable.

But it also makes him the perfect WND employee, where promoting an agenda has a much higher priority than reporting facts.


Posted by Terry K. at 5:06 PM EDT
AIM's Kincaid Can't Let Go Of His Discredited Anthrax Conspiracy
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Cliff Kincaid has been pretty much silent about his conspiracy theory that Al Qaeda was responsible for the 2001 anthrax since authorities revealed that government scientist Bruce Ivins was likely behind it.

But Kincaid is back on the case in  his April 18 Accuracy in Media column, spurred by the ricin mailings that are reminicent of the anthrax attacks:

It is still not known, officially and by adjudication in a court of law, who sent the post-9/11 anthrax letters because the FBI completely mishandled the case. They ended up paying $6 million in damages to an American scientist, Steven Hatfill, who was falsely termed a “person of interest” and hounded by federal agents. The FBI later argued that another U.S. Government scientist, Bruce Ivins, was the lone culprit, and “closed” the case. But Ivins was also hounded by federal agents, and took his own life. His attorney, Paul Kemp, has strongly argued that the FBI falsely blamed Ivins and never proved its case against him. No charges were filed in what the FBI called the “Amerithrax” case.

In fact, the evidence suggests the letters were linked to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the al-Qaeda operatives behind them.

The 2011 book "The Mirage Man" by David Willman persuasively argues that Ivins was the man who perpetrated the anthrax attacks. Willman states that the letters were mailed from a New Jersey mailbox located outside the offiices of a college sorority Ivins was obsessed with, that Ivins made a career as a civilian microbiologist for the Army despite a history of mental instability -- a psychiatrist confied that Ivins was the "scariest" patient he had ever known -- and that Ivins had created the batch of anthrax that matched the material in the letters and had unrestricted access to it.

Kincaid has apparently never addressed Willman's conclusions in his work for AIM, and he makes no mention of Willman in this column.

Meanwhile, Kincaid is quick to blame Al Qaeda for the Boston Marathon bombings, apparently solely based on the fact that "an al-Qaeda magazine had recommended the use of the same kind of bomb used in the Boston massacre." He continues:

Equally important, terrorism expert Steve Emerson said on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program on Wednesday night that the Saudi national with a student visa apprehended after the bombing is being deported on “national security grounds” in what may be shaping up as a high-level cover-up of Saudi, or other foreign involvement, in the Boston massacre.

“This is the way things are done with Saudi Arabia,” Emerson said. “You don’t arrest their citizens. You deport them. Because they don’t want to be embarrassed…”

Before the bombings, Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) had drawn critical attention in a report to Obama’s recent decision to allow some Saudis to “bypass normal passport controls at major U.S. airports.”

Walid Shoebat reports that the Saudi national who was being detained belongs to a clan that consists of several al Qaeda members and that high-level Saudi government officials have intervened on his behalf.

There are powerful political and foreign interests who do not want such reports to be highlighted or pursued by U.S. authorities. That is why the liberal media will now begin attacking Emerson, Shoebat, and others questioning the official handling of the case.

Emerson is an anti-Muslim activist whose deportation claim has been discredited. Shoebat is an even more virulent anti-Muslim activist who has been credibly accused of lying about his past as a self-proclaimed former Islamic terrorist.

The question is not why the "liberal media" would legitimately question the veracity of Emerson and Shoebat. The question is why Kincaid still thinks they are credible.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:42 PM EDT
CNS' Starr Tries To Link Boston Bombings to Immigration
Topic: CNSNews.com

Right-wingers have been trying to suggest that immigration is somehow  to blame for the Boston Marathon bombings.

CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr joins that little parade, declaring in an April 19 tweet, "As terror attack in Boston unfolds -- on the day Napolitano testifies -- "Our borders are more secure than ever."

Given that the suspects are reportedly brothers from Chechnya who came to America several years ago as refugees, border security has nothing whatsoever to do with this.

Starr has apparently decided that her personal (and her employer's) right-wing agenda is more important than the facts.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:22 AM EDT
WND Upset The Muslims It Victimized Are Feeling Victimized
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jack Minor writes in an April 18 WorldNetDaily article:

While the hunt continues for those responsible for the brutal terrorist attack on Patriot’s Day in Boston, Muslim groups and their supporters already have part of the answer: They are the victims.

In an email this week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations – an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist-finance case in U.S. history – linked to a story in Religion News Service titled, “U.S. Muslims mobilize to prevent Boston backlash.”

Minor doesn't mention that one of the chief instigators of blaming Muslims for the Boston bombings is WND.

WND was quick to forward unproven, anonymous claims that Islamists were behind the bombings, even as it frowned upon speculation that right-wingers were behind them. WND's Aaron Klein libelously suggested a Saudi national who was questioned by police after the bombing (and cleared of any wrongdoing) is a terrorist. And WND promoted the discredited claim that the Saudi national was being deported.

Minor uncritically repeats those last two claims in his article, thus further victimizing the very same Muslims he's criticizing for fighting against victimization.

It must be nice to live like Minor does in a world of complete self-unawareness. But then, WND is not paying Minor to look at this objectively.


Posted by Terry K. at 7:18 AM EDT
Thursday, April 18, 2013
WND Promotes Discredited Assertion That Boston Bombing Suspect Is Being Deported
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joe Kovacs wrote in an April 17 WorldNetDaily article:

An expert on terrorism says the Saudi national who was the original “person of interest” in connection with Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing is going to be deported from the U.S. next week.

The foreign student from Revere, Mass., is identified as 20-year-old Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi.

“I just learned from my own sources that he is now going to be deported on national security grounds next Tuesday, which is very unusual,” Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism told Sean Hannity of Fox News Wednesday night.

Just one problem: None of that is true.

As CNN's Jake Tapper reported, the Saudi national questioned by authorities  is not a suspect and is not being deported. A second Saudi national from the Boston area is in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for being in violation of his visa, but he has no connection to the bombing.

Kovacs also uncritically repeats Aaron Klein's sleazy implication that Alharbi is a terrorist because he shares the same last name as "a major Saudi clan that includes scores of al-Qaida operatives." Kovacs doesn't even bother with any disclaimer that he has no evidence to prove that Alharbi is, in fact, a member of that clan.

Sounds like the basis for a libel lawsuit against WND by Alharbi is contining to grow. That's not the position WND wants to be in, but as its birther debacle proves, it's incapable of stopping digging activities when finding itself in a hole.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:13 PM EDT

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