Desperate Measures: Anti-Islamic Advertisements to Hit NYC

RT
20 September, 2012

Anti-Islamic advertisements will go up across New York City’s subway system next week after a federal judge ruled that the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority could not legally refuse to host the signs on the basis of “demeaning” language.

As early as next Monday, ten NYC subway stations will showcase adverts declaring, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” The campaign was created by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an organization considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center watch group.

Pamela Geller, the executive director of the AFDI, stands by her signage despite rampant complaints circulating before the campaign has even begun.

“I will not abridge my freedoms so as not to offend savages,” Geller tells Sky News.

Geller has long advocated against so-called “Islamist propaganda” in America and has campaigned in the past to call for the shutting down of a Washington, DC museum exhibit that highlighted Muslim contributions to science. The installation was declared “Best Touring Exhibit” by the Museum Heritage Awards in 2011, but Geller claimed “It has indoctrinated hundreds of thousands of children into a rosy and romanticized view of Islam that makes them less appreciative of their own culture’s achievements and more complacent about Islamization in the West.”

For her overt actions waged against Islamic culture, the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League has said Geller “fuels and fosters anti-Muslim bigotry in society.”

Those ideals will be brought to New York subway stations next week despite a legal battle that ended in July with a Manhattan federal judge agreeing that the First Amendment allowed Geller to have her ads run in the metro system.

“I live in America and in America we have the first amendment,” Geller tells Sky News.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, responded to the outlet by condemning Geller’s actions, but agreeing with the federal judge’s decision regardless.

“Our basic position is that the first amendment means that everyone is free to be a bigot or even an idiot like Pamela Geller,” Hooper tells Sky. “We wish she wasn’t provoking and inciting hatred, but in America that’s her right.”

“We encourage Muslims to exercise the same right to publicly denounce such adverts. The real danger is the spread of hatred in our society, which can lead to attacks on innocent people.”

On the website for the AFDI, Geller critiques a journalist who has labeled her efforts as anti-Muslim, insisting that such a label “implies that every Muslim is a jihadi who wants to impose sharia and ‘eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within and sabotage its miserable house.’”

Defending her advertisements to KQED News last month, Geller said it was right to refer to Islamic worshipers as “savage,” because “any targeting of innocent civilians is savagery.”

“Mothers and children on a bus are targeted, and that is savagery. Kidnapping and murdering is savagery. The U.S. does not conduct war that way, and neither does Israel. Now, there is sometimes the accidental death of civilians, which is far different than the targeting of innocent civilians,” she said.

Previously, Geller told Huffington Post of her ads, “If I had my way, they’d be in every city in the United States of America and if I can get the funding, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

She has successfully campaigned to have the adverts included in San Francisco and is all but certain to expand to New York in the coming days. In California, San Francisco’s transit authority promised to donate the $3,400 Geller spent on advertising fees to the Human Rights Commission.

Libya militia leader: Heat-seeking missiles, other weapons stolen during firefight

Washington Post

BENGHAZI, Libya — The commander of a powerful Libyan militia said Monday that looters had stolen “a large number” of shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missiles from the militia’s base when protesters who called for dismantling the country’s militias overran the compound.

Ismail Salabi, the commander of Rafallah al-Sahati, a powerful Islamist militia in Benghazi, said in an interview that the missiles, used by fighters to “hit airplanes” and known to the U.S. intelligence community as MANPADS (man-portable air-defense systems), were stolen along with 2,000 semiautomatic rifles and ammunition, as the militia withdrew from its base amid a firefight early Saturday.

Saleh Jouda, a member of Libya’s elected General National Congress and the deputy head of national security, said the government did not have any information about stolen weapons aside from “between 1,000 and 2,000 guns.” He said the government had set up new security checkpoints to track down the weapons. But there was no evidence of new checkpoints in Benghazi on Monday.

The militias were carrying out arrests Monday of people believed to have been involved in the weekend incidents.

The clashes at Rafallah al-Sahati’s base followed a mass protest Friday, during which thousands of Libyans marched through Benghazi demanding the establishment of a strong national army and the dissolution of the hundreds of militias that have run Libya’s streets in the security vacuum since Moammar Gaddafi’s fall last year.

By early Saturday, protesters, aided by other government-allied militias, had overrun four militia bases, including Rafallah al-Sahati’s, and a base belonging to the extremist group Ansar al-Sharia, which many here have accused of involvement in the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulatethat killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

Libya’s militias consist largely of former rebels who in some cases have amassed large quantities of heavy weapons, stolen from Gaddafi’s arsenals over the course of Libya’s eight-month revolution. The country’s weak central government has yet to develop a clear plan to collect those weapons.

The president of the General National Congress told reporters Saturday that all of the militias would be absorbed into a unified national force, or required to disband. However, there is a fine line between the militias that already fall under the loose central command in Tripoli and those that don’t.

During Monday’s interview, Salabi referred to his militia at times as “the nucleus of the new Libyan army,” and at other times as an organization separate from and victimized by the national army. He also said that his group and two other government-affiliated militias are the only groups in Benghazi capable of reclaiming the stolen weapons.

“There is no organized militia that can get these weapons back, other than Rafallah al-Sahati, the February 17th [Brigade] and Libya Shield. We can attack the places where the weapons are,” he said.

It was unclear whose hands the weapons had fallen into. But Salabi suggested that clashes had broken out between rival militias over the looting of Rafallah al-Sahati’s weapons. “Most of the clashes were over who was going to get control of the weapons,” he said.

A senior Obama administration official said earlier this month that U.S. intelligence estimates that 100 to 1,000 MANPADS are still unaccounted for in Libya, despite U.S. efforts to destroy them. Intelligence officials believe that some of the MANPADS have been smuggled across Libya’s borders.

Glen Doherty, a former Navy SEAL and one of the Americans killed in the consulate attack, told ABC News last month that he had gone into Libya to track down MANPADS as a contractor for the State Department.

The United States and the Soviet Union stockpiled MANPADS during the Cold War. Although military aircraft now have countermeasures that have rendered the weapons largely ineffective in conventional battle, MANPADS continue to pose a serious threat to passenger planes.

Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libya is believed to have collected more MANPADS than any other nation that did not produce them, according to the State Department. During the country’s 2011 civil war, rebels seized troves of weapons from government depots. Many were later sold on the black market.Fearing that terrorist groups could acquire Libyan MANPADS, U.S. officials in November launched a $40 million effort to recover the missiles.

“In the wrong hands, shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles pose a major threat to passenger air travel, the commercial aviation industry and possibly military aircraft around the world,” Andrew J. Shapiro, an assistant secretary of state who oversees the effort said in a speech this year.“Not only could a successful attack against an aircraft cause a devastating loss of life, but it could also cause significant economic damage.”

Meeting with Libya’s president on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a strong endorsement of Libya’s democratic transition. She did not mention the Benghazi consulate attack during brief opening remarks heard by reporters.

Libyan President Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf thanked Clinton for U.S. support and said Libya bears “a grave responsibility for this tragedy.” He pledged to “expedite the investigation in the incident and to bring to justice the perpetrators.”

Magariaf noted that thousands of Libyans had marched in the streets to protest the attack. Those demonstrations “embodied the conscience of the Libyan people,” he said.

“What happened on [the] 11th of September toward these U.S. citizens does not express in any way the conscience of the Libyan people, their aspirations, their hopes or their sentiments toward the American people,” he said.

Earlier Monday, Clinton addressed the wave of often violent anti-American protests related to a YouTube video that mocks Islam.

“Dignity does not come from avenging insults, especially with violence that can never be justified,” she said in remarks to her husband’s Clinton Global Initiative development forum. “It comes from taking responsibility and advancing our common humanity.”

Anne Gearan in New York and Ernesto Londoño in Washington contributed to this report.

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‘Iran war speeds up Israel obliteration’

Published on Sep 22, 2012 by PressTVGlobalNews

A senior Iranian commander has warned that the Israeli regime will speed up its annihilation if it launches an attack on the Islamic Republic. 
“In case of an attack, the enemy will face a situation that it has never expected,” said Deputy Commander of the Iranian Army Brigadier General Abdolrahim Mousavi. 

The Iranian commander pointed to Islamic Republic’s military achievements, adding, “After all, our enemies are soldiers and they know that we have not revealed all our capacities, and if the Zionists make such a crazy move [to attack Iran], they will definitely speed up their annihilation.”

Obama Promotional Offer: Proof That Politicians Will Do Just About Anything for a Bit of Dough

Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
Sept 25, 2012

I am not one for playing sides in party politics, and this year’s highly uninteresting and vapid US Presidential race-to-the-death will certainly not change my feelings on partisanship.

When I was a child, I remember my first airline flight. It was on a Delta 747. On my way into the cabin the pilot kindly gave me a miniature model Delta plane. I recognized it immediately, knowing full well that it was about the coolest thing a kid could’ve had at that time in his life. Before take-off, I found a thick white paper bag in the magazine pocket in front of my seat. It had an odd wax coating around the interior. Then my father informed me what it was – a sick bag. For a 7 yr old, an airplane was probably the coolest place one could possibly be. “Why would anyone need a sick bag”, I thought.

Here’s one possibility…

In 2012, we’ve become so acclimatized to accept that 21st century politics will deliver more than its share sick bag moments. It’s that all too painful reminder of a plastic politician’s drive to fill the campaign coffers, and that slimy feeling one gets when one realizes that politicians – even incumbant US Presidents, will do just about anything for a bit of dough.

Until last month, I honestly felt that Obama’s rather disturbing “Seal Team 6 – ONE CHANCE“ re-election advert was this year’s political sick bag moment. It was an ad where the President pretends he hunted down and killed a cartoon terrorist who, by most accounts, passed away a decade earlier. That was embarrassing, but I never realized just how desperate these clowns were to fill their campaign pockets until I saw this latest “promotional offer” entitled, ‘Dinner with Barack’.

As staged PR events go, it has all the charm and sophistication of a Tony Blair book signing. You’d think that the President of the United States would already be cool enough, or powerful enough, not to have to resort to common viral contests to pull in the dollars. Is his support base in that bad a shape, or is this something else?

It’s not just the condescending celebrity marketing. It’s the affirmation that these days, even the President of the United States struggles with basic decorum, and appears to have no limits as to how tacky a campaign gimmick can be. The air of desperation in this particular marketing push boggles the imagination, and almost makes you want to vote GOP, if only to restore some semblance of order and dignity to the White House, even as you are fully aware that Mitt Romney will also come up short on that score too. This is as bad as it gets.

Dinner with Barack’s promotional ad lays out the contest rules: “No purchase, payment, or contribution necessary to enter or win. Contributing will not improve chances of winning. Void where prohibited. Entries must be received by September 25, 2012. You may enter by contributing to Obama for America here, by signing up for Quick Donate here, or click here to enter without contributing or signing up for quick donate. Three winners will each receive the following prize package: round-trip tickets for winner and a guest from within the fifty U.S. States, DC, or Puerto Rico to a destination to be determined by the Sponsor; hotel accommodations for winner and a guest; and dinner for winner and a guest with President Obama on a date to be determined by the Sponsor (approximate retail value of all prizes $4,800). Odds of winning depend on number of entries received. Promotion open only to U.S. citizens, or lawful permanent U.S. residents who are legal residents of 50 United States, District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and 18 or older (or age of majority under applicable law). Promotion subject to Official rules and additional restrictions on eligibility. Sponsor: Obama for America, 130 E. Randolph St., Chicago, IL 60601.”

Begging for Dollars

Barack’s bingo moment – one of those moments when you cringe, even if you’ve never been a fan of the First Family. But it’s a fair cop to ask what is it we are looking at here? Is it a contest? A lottery? A raffle? Can you enter at Wallgreens? 

Someone paid a DC or J Street PR firm a lot of money to come up with this one. If this ad is viewed as a holographic representation of the US political system as a whole, then there can be little doubt that the White House has lost the plot.

How this advert ended up in my box, I have no idea. Maybe it’s the change Barack was talking about in 2008 – lowering standards, lowering expectations seems to be in vogue in 2012.

Truth be told, Obama’s Applebees-style promotional ad does make one feel a bit exposed – like the feeling you get when you come home after being away and have 20 pizza flyers stuffed through your letter box. So it’s natural to feel a little cheaper having seen it.

And the disclaimer to die for…

“Contributing will not improve chances of winning…”

NOTE: Quite generously, though, Barack and the wife have offered to cover the airfare for the winner.

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