Pamela Geller is up to her old antics, employing more over the top hyperbole peppered with frequent cases of verbal diarrhea. Now she is saying that the Holocaust was the fault of the Mooslims, and that the Nazis were just adopting “Jihad.”
Nazis adopted the Muslim idea of Jihad – total destruction and complete annihilation in the spirit of a Holy War.
Of course this was the next step for Pam, demonize the Muslims and Islam to its logical end, next she will be saying that Hitler was a Muslim. Where does she get this wild stuff, and then she claims that she isn’t a conspiracy theorist?
Pamela Geller seems to have stumbled on something that World War II scholars and Holocaust historians didn’t know, a fact that has been “suppressed” by the world in a conspiracy to further Islamic Jihad,
As the leading role the Islamic world played in the Holocaust comes out of the shadows and into the fore, and decent peoples recoil in repulsion, it is necessary for Islamic media, “scholars” and asshats-in-residence to rewrite history — as Islam has done so exceedingly and singularly well all throughout history.
Pam wants us to believe that the colonized Muslims in Africa and Asia somehow made the regular trip to Concentration Camps to gas Jews, and then went back home to be ruled by Europeans? Insane.
Other Insane stuff on her blog:
The not so new crusade against Muslim Chaplains in prison is also making the rounds on the anti-Muslim sites, and Pamela Geller is no exception. She lays it out succinctly as only a proud bigot can,
All Muslim Chaplains are Jihadists
Her insanity on Barack continues, calls him an “Usurper,” “Megalomaniac”, and something called “L-Dopa.”
This is the face of the Tea Party right wing, and Conservative blogs love her because she gives them what they want to hear; hate. At least it’s a good laugh.
Here is a blast from the past from Keith Olberman who recognized the insanity of Pamela Geller a long time ago.(hat tip: Pamela Geller)
You’re a complete moron if you watch this show, or if anyone you know watches it:
This guy (and his wife) are so unbelievably stupid that it hurts. Does he (and she) not realize that the Muslim Americans who are upset over this issue are not one and the same as Al-Qaeda or the Taliban? So this “mommy, they started it” routine doesn’t work. It only works for those who view the world in a binary way, Team Christian vs Team Muslim.
And does something become legitimate to do because Al-Qaeda or the Taliban do it? Way to take the moral high ground, douchebag.
Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York City, told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on Thursday that “hundreds of millions” of Muslims are terrorists.
Taking up the now-standard conservative political talking point, in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, that political correctness prevents the US from identifying Muslim terrorists as such, Koch said:
We’re afraid of calling them Muslim, Islamist terrorists. We’ll call them anything but. Because we don’t want to alienate Muslim countries. That’s ridiculous. Of course the vast majority of Muslims — there are a billion, four hundred million — are not terrorists, but there are hundreds of millions who are. They want to kill every Christian, every Jew, every Hindu who won’t convert. And we ought to put it on the table.
Host Neil Cavuto did not attempt to correct or even question Koch’s claim.
Joshua Holland at AlertNet gives Koch “the benefit of the doubt” and assumes Koch meant to say “hundreds of thousands” of Muslim terrorists. Even so, Holland argues, that suggests Muslim terrorists aren’t doing their job very well.
“Given that there were a total of around 9,000 fatalities worldwide resulting from Islamic terrorism in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is available), those hundreds of thousands must have been pretty damn incompetent,” he quips.
Koch was a Democratic member of Congress in the 1960s and 1970s, and was the Democratic mayor of New York for much of the 1980s. But in recent years he has taken to endorsing Republican candidates, including endorsing George W. Bush for president in 2004, although he endorsed Barack Obama in the general election in 2008. In his interview with Cavuto, Koch said he would fire National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter over the Christmas Day bomb attempt.
The following video was broadcast on Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto, January 7, 2010, and uploaded to YouTube by user therightscoop.
There is a eye widening new documentary out called “Waiting for Armageddon” which explores the Faith and ideology that close to 50 million Americans hold dear to their hearts and which also has a tremendous effect on the foreign and domestic policy of the United States.
Doggedly nonjudgmental docu “Waiting for Armageddon” delves into the faith of some 50 million Americans (including more than one president), exposing the central role of Israel in end-of-days scenarios, their impact on the volatile situation in the Middle East, and the confluence of national policy with biblical prophecy. From interviews with families awaiting the imminent arrival of the Rapture to evangelical tours of Israel, where Texans reverently sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” over the Sea of Galilee, the pic explores beliefs as pervasive as they are largely unexamined. “Waiting,” which bowed Jan. 8 at Gotham’s Cinema Village, could spark strong urban response.
Filmmakers Kate Davis, Franco Sacchi and David Heilbroner structure their docu around the four stages of the apocalypse, each headed by numbered scriptural placards: 1) the Rapture, when, in a microsecond, all true believers, living and dead, will be transported into the clouds with Jesus; 2) the Tribulation, during which untold horrendous catastrophes, ecological and man-made, will rain down upon those haplessly “left behind”; 3) Armageddon, when Christ will return with a sword to judge the sinners and the blood will gush as “high as a horse’s bridle,” to quote one comely software engineer, and 4) the Millennium, encompassing the 1,000-year reign of heaven on earth reserved for Christ and his followers (along with 144,000 converted Jews).
Within this general framework, the filmmakers capture adherents calmly discussing “future history” at church, around the dinner table, at “Pre-Trib” conventions, at Christian telethons raising millions for Israel, and, especially, on junkets to the Holy Land.
The unlikely alliance between Christian evangelicals and right-wing Israelis is predicated on their shared conviction that Jerusalem must remain entirely in Jewish hands. The pic’s representative of the Israeli wing of this coalition is a sneer-afflicted rabbi (dismissing Jesus as a second-rate skirt-chaser), in charge of rebuilding the temple supposedly predestined to supplant the Muslim Dome of the Rock. In the words of a savvy political researcher, one of the pic’s few dissenting voices, the evangelicals “want the Muslims to be evicted by the Jews, the Jews to rebuild the temple of Solon and then Christ to return and trump everybody.”
Waiting” sometimes plays like Bill Maher’s “Religulous,” minus Maher’s snarky mediating p.o.v. In their zeal to not misrepresent evangelicals, the filmmakers tend to record every discussion in mind-numbing C-SPAN-like detail and, more problematically, sometimes unintentionally wind up enabling an evangelical agenda; a shot of men praying in a mosque inadvertently reads as an example of “Islamofascist” behavior.
Still, the docu’s open-endedness offers something for everyone. For believers, it provides a sympathetic portrait of sane, educated families coping with what they perceive as the suffering of the world. For Jews, it sounds a wake-up call to the dangers of supporting a faction that counts as necessary an Israeli future of wholesale destruction and a choice between conversion or death. Lastly, for unrepentantly cynical secularists, it serves up delicious ironies (one “saved” Christian’s barely disguised glee at the prospect of a front-row seat for the upcoming carnage).
Camera (color, HD), Sacchi, Davis; music, Gary Lionelli; sound, Heilbroner, Roberta Dougan, Rich Cutler. Reviewed on DVD, New York, Jan. 2, 2010. (In 2009 New York Jewish Film Festival.) Running time: 74 MIN.
Stephen Colbert says all young Muslims should be given a colonoscopy.
David Edwards and John Byrne Raw Story
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
In a desultory rant Tuesday night, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert jabbed conservatives who are promoting racial profiling and more radical techniques after the failed Christmas bomb plot against a commercial jetliner.
“Every time a young Muslim man arrives at the airport, the TSA should respectfully take him aside and give him an involuntary colonoscopy,” Colbert quipped. “This cannot fail. Everyone knows that terrorists are all young, poor, disenfranchised Arab Muslims. Well, except the Christmas bomber, who is a middle-class well-educated Nigerian. Which, frankly, I don’t think is fair.
“We elected a black guy. What more do Nigerians want? I mean, ever since we elected JFK, the Irish haven’t terrorized us… So i guess we have to profile anyone who looks like a Nigerian too. Basically, all black people.
“And, I’m not saying all black people look alike,” Colbert continued. “I’m saying I can’t tell them apart. I mean, which of these guys is Kenyan? Of course, there was the dirty bomber Jose Padilla, so we’ll have to go after Hispanics too. Then there’s shoe bomber Richard Reid. God only knows what he is. Belgian? Patchouli? To be safe, let’s profile anyone named ‘Reid.’”
“Ben Franklin did say, ‘Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither,’” Colbert added wryly. “Then again, Franklin said a lot of things.”
This video is from Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, broadcast Jan. 5, 2010
Fox News’ Brit Hume has obviously spent some time worrying about the ultimate fate of Tiger Woods’ soul.
He apparently felt compelled to share his concerns with a national audience Sunday.
“The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith,” Hume said. “He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger is, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”
Remember, that’s a newsman offering advice to the beleaguered golfer, not a religious pundit. Hume is a senior political analyst, so why is he doing his Bible-thumping on one of the station’s news programs?
Thomas McInerney, a retired US Lieutenant was on Fox News advocating that Muslim men between the ages of 18-28 be strip searched. The Fox host Julia Banderas surprisingly takes him on, which leads the the lieutenant to contradict himself in the worst way.
He goes from saying that “we should use profiling, and I mean we have to be very serious and harsh about the profiling, if you are an 18-28 year old Muslim man then you should be strip searched” to saying “I don’t want to racial profile, I want to profile on that group that we have enough evidence, from 9/11 and other cases, Moussoui, etc. that we know what we’re looking at.” He doesn’t make any sense, but that isn’t anything new for Fox pundits.
Retired Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney wants to get young Muslim men naked in the worst way.
Awkward as that sentence sounds, it is an accurate description of the former US Air Force general’s comments during a recent Fox News broadcast.
“We’ve got to go to more than just the normal process that they’re talking about now,” he opined on Saturday. “We have got to go to very, very strict screening and we’ve got to use profiling. And I mean, be very, very serious about the profiling. If you are an 18-28-year-old Muslim man, then you should be strip searched. If we don’t do that, there’s a very high probability that we’re gonna lose an airliner.”
McInerney said that “in the next 30-100 days,” there is “very high probability a US airliner will come down.”
When the Fox host blandly objected that racial profiling would not go over in the United States, he replied, “I agree, that’s the problem.”
The general’s comment comes one day before that the Transportation Security Administration announced new, “enhanced screening” tactics at U.S. airports, with a renewed focus on foreign travelers.
All passengers flying into the United States from abroad will be subject to random screening or so-called “threat-based” screens, the TSA said Sunday.
It further mandated that “every individual flying into the US from anywhere in the world traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening” that includes a thorough inspection of luggage and pat-down searches.
“If you lose 300 Americans, and then people are gonna say ‘Why didn’t we do this?’” the general insisted.
McInerney, who has been a Fox News military analyst for years, was Director of the Defense Performance Review during the Clinton administration and reported directly to the Secretary of Defense. He is currently chairman of the Iran Policy Committee’s advisory council and co-author ofthe book “Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror”.
In his book, the general advocates a scenario of nearly endless war, urging the conditional invasions of Syria, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. He also argues that deceased Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein hid his weapons of mass destruction in Syria; a primary reason he calls for their destruction.
“The authors’ ambitious schedule of ultimatums and conquests leads them to focus almost exclusively on the U.S. military, for which they recommend the Rumsfeld doctrine of light, mobile forces, supplemented by additional weapons spending,” reads a Publishers Weekly review of “Endgame”. “Homeland security gets scant attention beyond vague proposals for a Terrorist Security Department and Special Terrorist Courts involving substantial infringements on due process.”
“Broad-based ethnic profiling creates in turn panic and the false sense of security that airlines are actually preventing terrorist attacks,” wrote Earl Ofari Hutchinson in a commentary for New Media America. “It also causes law enforcement resources to be squandered chasing the wrong targets. Worse, it’s a witch hunt against a group based solely on their religion and ethnicity. This fuels even greater racial division, fear and hysteria.”
To her credit, Fox News host Julie Banderas pushed back against the former general, insisting that racial and religious profiling at airports is “not going to go over — not in this country, anyway.”
“The sound of the latex glove snapping shut against a hairy wrist — that’s the sound of Freedom itself, ringing out in tile-walled rooms with the abrupt harshness of a fluorescent light and the unforgiving tightness of arm restraints,” mocked the Inside-Out the Beltway blog. “God Bless America.”
This video was broadcast by Fox News on Jan. 2, 2009, as snipped by Mediaite.
From Left to Right: Andrew Bostom, Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller
One of our readers, isherif who if I recall has been commenting on our site for quite some time now really took the initiative and provided us with a cool short montage of some of our best hits. We really love it when readers interact with us and are pro-active in joining us in exposing Islamophobia.
[Zingel: "Tis the season to be hateful, fa la la la, la la la la! sing along kids!"]
It seems the attention mongers at Dove Outreach Ministries, you know that group that came up with “Islam is of the Devil” T-Shirts is at it again, this time they are trying to get their message out by transforming Christmas from a “Merry Holiday” into a “Hate Islam Holiday.”
This video, a compilation of Christmas lights displays from Gainesville, Florida, starts off like any other. You’ll see a nice selection of lights and houses decorated for the holidays. But the last display, from the controversial Dove World Outreach Center, is causing a bit of a stir in the neighborhood. It reads “Islam Is Of The Devil” and is clearly offensive to some residents.
Rod Parsley, a fundamentalist pastor who John McCain praised as a “spiritual guide” during the 2008 presidential campaign, is in big trouble—demonic trouble. Parsley has claimed that Islam is “the greatest religious enemy of our civilization and the world,” and argued that the historic mission of America is to see “this false religion destroyed.” (You can watch a video highlighting those comments here. After weeks of controversy, McCain finally repudiated Parsley in May 2008.) But it’s not Islam that’s causing Parsley problems these days. It’s Satan himself. The Columbus Dispatch reports that Parsley is saying his ministry is under a “demonically inspired financial attack.” Here’s the clip from his television program, “Breakthrough”:
The proximate cause of Parsley’s trouble, it seems, is a $3 million deficit for the fourth quarter and a $3.1 million legal settlement over a 2006 incident in which a two-year-old child in a Parsley-affiliated daycare center was spanked so hard that his “buttocks and legs were covered with welts and abrasions”:
The boy, then 2, said he was spanked with a “knife” by a substitute teacher. His parents, Michael and Lacey Faieta, believe it was a ruler…. The Faietas said Parsley refused to meet personally with them and that the church did not apologize or take accountability for the beating…. Mr. Faieta said he and his wife were “disgusted” and “saddened” by Parsley’s words.
A prominent evangelical pastor in Uganda, Martin Ssempa has proposed and received wide backing for a law which would jail homosexuals and murder “flagrant” homosexuals. He has received support for this from the president of Uganda and a large number of politicians. Ssempa, is connected to a number of American Evangelical organizations and politicians. What would happen if it were an Imam or a Muslim country proposing this legislation, you could be sure Spencer and company would be howling to the wind about it, but on this news story we hear not a peep from them.
KAMPALA - If Uganda?s recently tabled Anti-Homosexuality Bill becomes law, Frank Mugisha and other individuals found campaigning for gay rights will face the choice of going to jail or leaving the country.
Mugisha heads Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a leading sexual rights advocacy group that could soon be classed a criminal organization.
“I have never really considered moving out of Uganda. But if I cannot work within the country, then I will have to leave,” said Mugisha.
The bill has baffled legal experts who read it as the product of an over-zealous Evangelical community that is clueless about both Uganda?s constitution and international law.
But for the bill?s proponents, chief among them Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, who has repeatedly alleged that there exists an organized, western-backed plot to recruit people into homosexuality, the law is necessary to confront a national emergency.
Homosexuality is spreading, Buturo argues, and if people like Mugisha aren?t stopped they will continue to lure impressionable youths into their sinful lifestyle and thereby threaten the perpetuation of the Ugandan people.
“Who is going to occupy Uganda in 20 years if we all become homosexuals? We know that homosexuals don?t reproduce,” Buturo said last year when announcing plans to table the bill.
In one of its most curious provisions, the draft law calls on Uganda to nullify any international treaty or convention that is inconsistent with the spirit of anti-homosexuality.
“You cannot as a country say we will nullify all the treaties we have ratified in the past,” Sylvia Tamale of Kampala?s Makerere University Law School told AFP.
For Tamale, the bill?s composition reveals an absence of qualified legal input and an unhealthy amount of input from people like Martin Ssempa, a prominent Evangelical pastor and internationally known anti-gay crusader who has confirmed having contributed to the bill.
“It would be political suicide for any Ugandan politician to vote against this. Leaders will have to ask themselves, do I listen to my own people, or … to top down orders coming from New York and the UN,” he added.
Ssempa seems to relish the criticism hurled at him by western rights groups, but he is concerned the proposal will create a fissure within the Evangelical Church.
“The western church is going to find itself increasingly at odds with the African church and find itself in a situation where there is a split like in the Anglican Church,” he said.
Ssempa told AFP he was disappointed by a recent statement by American mega-Pastor Rick Warren, who delivered the convocation at US president Barack Obama?s Inauguration.
Warren did not mention the Anti-Homosexuality Bill specifically, but said he and his wife ended their relationship with Ssempa, “when we learned that his views and actions were in serious conflict with our own”.
Mugisha is an unlikely candidate to be at the centre of such politically charged debate.
From SMUG?s humble three-room office in a Kampala suburb he explained he never wanted to become a political advocate.
While in university, he volunteered as an undercover health researcher, finding out which clinics could treat certain conditions and where gay men could access the things necessary for safe sex.
He distributed the information on-line and through a small support group he founded.
When SMUG?s leadership learned about his work, they lobbied him to get involved.
At first reluctant, he eventually gave in, and was appointed chairperson of the group in 2007.
He smiled when recounting his earlier health work.
“These young boys, they didn?t know anything about being protected,” he said, half-laughing.
If the new bill had been in place at the time, Mugisha?s attempts to promote safe sex could have qualified as a crime. “Aiding and abetting homosexuality” attracts seven years in prison.
There is a new prayer going around in Evangelical Christian circles and beyond for President Barack Obama. It is quite controversial as it seems to be calling for his death.
In this video Rachel Maddow discusses (at 57 seconds) the issue with former Evangelical Christian leader, Frank Schaeffer.
Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, rips this closet Islamophobe a new one. I especially like how he made sure to mention George Bush’s intention behind invading Iraq (the Biblical prophecy of Gag and Magog), which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. (But of course those civilians don’t count, since they are brown Moozlems.)
Cenk could have sealed that argument by mentioning the Christian version of Al-Qaeda, none other than the fundamentalist Evangelical Blackwater group, which has killed scores of civilians. And he could also have mentioned the thousands of Christians who believe in the Joel’s Army theology and the general surge of Christian fanaticism in the U.S. military.
One other point: the conservative loon mentioned the idea that 90% of mosques in America are owned and operated by Saudi Arabia. This is a blatant lie commonly peddled by Islamophobes. “But you can google it!” Believe it or not: but not everything on the interwebs is true. *gasp* In fact, the vast majority of mosques in America run on local donations.
Joy "7 million Muslims in the World?" Tiz
Then in that same breath she says that they are funded by the Muslim Brotherhood, when in fact the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood runs contrary to that of the “Wahhabi” (Salafi) strain of Islam followed in Saudi Arabia.
But anyways, I must say that Cenk did a great job (and I give him a 10 out of 10). Here is the debate:
Cenk vs Conservative [Loon] on Muslims in the Military
Many of us here at LoonWatch.com are fans of The Young Turks, so we decided to post some of their videos on the Ft. Hood Shooting along with some commentary:
Crazy Conservative Bloggers on Fort Hood
My comments: There were two Muslim American soldiers who shot their fellow soldiers, compared to tens of thousands of Muslim Americans who serve in the military, and millions of Muslim Americans who live in the country. But surely two of them define them all, right?
Fox “News” Un-American Take on the Fort Hood Shooter
My comments: At about four minutes into the video, the Fox “News” lady host argues that “political correctness” is the problem: the U.S. military knew about his radical postings online and didn’t do anything about it because they wanted to be PC about it. Of course conservatives love to be politically incorrect–or rather, pathetically incorrect–and this is one of their favorite talking points. They use the euphemism of “I’m going to be politically incorrect” instead of just saying “I’m going to be bigoted.” Anyways, the entire theory is bogus because his military command already said that they didn’t know about his radical postings online.
Also, at the very end of the video, Cenk mentions the most important point: so many right wingers unfortunately think that they are “allowing” Muslims to be Americans. We’ve had a few similar comments on LW, where a few posters would say something along the lines of “if Muslims want to be treated as Americans…”, not knowing that Muslims in this country are already Americans! You didn’t “gift” that Americanness to them, and they are just as American as you are. And your entire attitude of thinking that you get to decide who is and who is not a real American is the most un-American of all.
America was a country founded upon immigration, a melting pot by definition. Unless you’re Native American, your ancestors were also immigrants to this country, and what difference does it make that they were from a European country as opposed to an Asian or African one? Why is it that a third generation Arab American is treated as being a foreigner/immigrant, whereas an immigrant who just moved from Italy to the United States some three years ago is considered more American? It’s absurd. Get this through your thick skulls: you will treat every single American as a fellow American regardless of his race, religion, or ethnicity. And if you don’t believe that, then you should be treated as being un-American.
Should Ft. Hood Shooter Been Racially Profiled?
My comments: Cenk, I think you missed the point here. There was absolutely no need for racial or religious profiling here at all. The fact is that if anyone had said the things Major Nidal Hasan had said–be it his radical postings online or his rantings in person–then that’s a red flag no matter what race or religion he is. So that’s not racial or religious profiling if you pull a guy aside for saying those things.
Let me clarify: if there is a guy going through airport security and he says something like “I love Al-Qaeda,” then you can and should pull him aside for saying that. This is regardless of his race or religion. On the other hand, if you simply pull aside those who are of a certain race or religion, then that’s racial profiling. Nobody on earth would have a problem with the former, but the latter is racist and 100% un-American.
The thing that is being missed here, with the Ft. Hood Shooting, is that there was no reason to racially profile this guy! He could have been caught and stopped if people had just paid attention to the numerous red flags. Major Hasan was saying crazy things, and doing crazy things (giving absurd and out of place presentations at work)…It was just a matter of picking up on those numerous cues and then looking into that.
If you start racially or religiously profiling people, then you alienate the same community within which the problem exists. It’s counter-productive. Instead of wasting time trying to screen tens of thousands of Muslim Americans, why not just investigate those people that are saying and doing things that are questionable? And that’s the American thing to do: judge people based on their words and actions, not their race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. It’s about judging people for the content of their character.
Crazy Conservatives on Ft. Hood
My comments: Of course, any sane person knows that it’s a lie that Muslims believe they must “kill all infidels.” Pious Muslim Americans believe that they must obey the U.S. laws, and are thus not a threat.
Anyways, the key point that Cenk raises is at 4:00 when he talks about how truly un-American these guys are, and how they really and truly don’t understand the ethics and purpose of this country.
UPDATE:
Pat Roberson: Islam is Not a Religion
My comments: A bit over the top? I don’t know. But yes, I do agree that these right wingers shouldn’t throw stones when they live in glass houses.
Alright, that’s it for now. Thanks a lot, TYT Nation! Keep up the good work.
Lindsey Graham, senior Republican senator proves that even when the GOP tries to get it right they can manage to mess things up. In condemning the wackos Graham does a good job but he has an epic fail when he lets out a (freudian?) slip that, “[Obama] is not a Moslem, he is a good man.” It reminds us of John McCain’s sorry answer to the crazy lady who asked him during the presidential election if Obama was an “Ayrab, a Mooslim.”
Talk about having an agenda, in this case the shameless attempt to play on people’s fears to make a few bucks. It is only a hop-skip-and-a-jump from the next episode when TownHaller’s like Pamela Geller have their veiws of Obama being a Muslim parroted by Bill Keller.
Michael Savage’s flagship station in California has decided to drop him. Savage, you may recall, is the genocidal radio personality who has amongst other things called for the “nuking of Muslim countries,” the “killing of millions of Muslims,” and more. He is so over the top you wonder if people take him seriously, but judging from the size of his listeners it seems that enough do for him to be considered a dangerous demagogue.
Earlier today, the conservative blog Patriot Axom noted that far-right radio host Michael Savage has been taken “off the air” from his San Francisco-based flagship station, Talk 910 KNEW. Now, a representative from the station has issued a statement explaining why it will no longer air Savage’s show:
I’m going to answer the very first question many of you have.
“Why did you take Michael Savage off the air?”
Here’s your no-spin direct answer; we have decided to go in a different philosophical and ideological direction, featuring more contemporary content and more local information. The Savage Nation does not fit into that vision.
910 KNEW’s decision is the latest blow to Savage’s efforts to spread hate. Last winter, following a campaign by the Council On American-Islamic Relations and Brave New Films, numerous advertisers ended their relationship with Savage, including Geico, Union Bank of California, and ITT Technical Institute. Savage has in the past advocated killing 100 million Muslims, compared President Jimmy Carter to Hitler, and has said that the U.S. Senate is “more histrionic than ever” because of the addition of female senators.
Cenk Uygur of Young Turks has some commentary that hits the nail on the head:
Reeling from this fresh blow from his flagship station dropping him, Savage’s company was also forced the very next day to apologize to Brave New Films as part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by Savage,
Yesterday’s news that Michael Savage was dropped in his hometown market, by KNEW, is followed today by news that he and his company, Original Talk Radio Network (ORTN) have reached a settlement in a lawsuit filed by Brave New Films (BNF).
Last year BNF produced a short film, “Michael Savage Hates Muslims,” which was posted on YouTube, consisting mostly of audio clips of Savage ranting against Muslims on his syndicated radio show. ORTN subsequently demanded that YouTube remove the clip from its site; as a result, YouTube took down all of BNF’s online content, and BNF filed suit for damages and free speech rights.
BNF was represented pro bono by Bingham McCutchen LLP and Stanford Center for Internet and Society’s “Fair Use Project,” which was founded in 2006 to provide legal support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of “fair use” in order to enhance creative freedom.
On Aug. 21, Savage and OTRN settled, which included the following written apology:
OTRN acknowledges that it made a mistake by asking YouTube to remove Brave New Films’ video “Michael Savage Hates Muslims” from the YouTube site. Upon further examination, it is clear that video should not have been included in OTRN’s September 29, 2009 takedown notice. OTRN apologizes for this error.
Savage, of course, has taken numerous anti-Muslim stances over the years, many of which can be heard in the film in question:
It looks like the loons are taking some big hits, but it is going to take a lot more to make people realize that individuals such as Michael Savage are so radioactive that you don’t want to be associated with them.
In an insane rant, Jim Quinn, who we reported on earlier attempted to use the emotive memory of the tragedy of September 11th by asking his audience to remain “angry.” Just remain “angry” and everything will be alright, don’t channel that anger into positive action but just remain angry. He then tells his listeners that we have “to stoop as low as the enemy because that is the only way to defeat them.” Pretty much asking us to disregard our laws and make it open season to profile, torture, deport American Muslims.
In the middle of this coarse and illogical, a-la-Glenn-Beck rant, Quinn also states his black and white vision of the world, and calls for Americans to “fight Islam on the battlefield…Kill Islam before it kills you.” He believes you can take tanks, jets and guns and defeat a set of religious beliefs. This is sort of like when Rick Santorum the former Pennsylvania Senator said “Muslims speak Islamic.” How many times do people like Jim Quinn and Santorum have to be reminded that Islam is not a person, Islam is a fourteen hundred year old religion with followers all over the globe including America.
Rep. Steve King who recently cast the sole vote against a memorial for slavery which unanimously passed the house believed that if Obama got elected AlQaeda would be dancing in the streets. He also believes that Obama’s middle name matters because Muslims will be dancing in the streets.
It’s hard to take these people seriously anymore and part of me just wants to give up on them because it really seems like those people who believe Obama is a “Mooslim” will continue to believe in that fairy tale no matter what you tell them or how compelling the fact is that he isn’t a Muslim. Do these claims ever get old?
We’ve written about this phenomenon before and as this video demonstrates there is no dearth of poor old white haired ladies trembling from the prospect that Obama is Muslim. It’s such an absurd prospect that it reminds one of those who think the world is 6,000 years old or assert that the earth is flat.
The most sinister aspect of the accusation is that it assumes being Muslim is a sin or an automatic “got-ya” card that disqualifies and delegitimizes an individual from public office or the public square. It is the height of prejudice, and the way it is nonchalantly bandied about, such as in the case of Jim Pinkerton underscores our point — no matter what you do or say people will continue to push this Islamophobic lie.
Eric Boehlert, in a great post titled Fox News and Obama as the Muslim Manchurian Candidate points out that Pinkerton, a regular contributor to Fox News is part of the mainstream of Conservatism and is still propagating this looniness,
That’s the premise Pinkerton is pushing on national television; that Obama kept his Muslim roots hidden during the campaign, but that signs of it are starting to show now, and when he’s safely elected he’ll finally feel comfortable practicing Islam out the open.
Behold the ‘mainstream’ conservative movement in America!
It is high time that people got over the idea that Obama is an evil “Mooslim” or that being a Muslim and holding public office is somehow helping our enemies take over our country or in the immortal words of Glenn Beck leading America to stand at some sort of “Boiling point.”
The truth is Obama isn’t a Muslim and it wouldn’t matter if he was one, these conspiracy theories hold less water than sightings of Big Foot and are closer in spirit to the discourse that Jews faced around the early 20th Century. Let the strange saga continue!
We recently wrote about the Freedumb of Speech Summit that was held in Delray Beach, Florida hosted by Republican RepresentativeAdam Hasner (!)and republican hopeful Allen West. The guest of honor giving the main speech was European Fascist Geert Wilders.
Geert Wilders is a controversial European legislator who has amongst other things called for the Quran to be banned in the Netherlands and for the enacting of discriminatory laws in regards to immigration that would target and exclude Muslims from the West. Wilders has also been prosecuted for “hate speech” and “inciting discrimination” by an appeals court in the capital of the Netherlands: Amsterdam.
In a racist screed that Wilders delivered over the weekend at the summit, he declared:
“Islam is not a religion… the Quran is a book that calls for hatred, that calls for violence, for murder, for terrorism, for war, and submission…We should also stop pretending that Islam is a religion…the right to religious freedom should not apply to Islam.
Wilders also called for “stopping Muslim immigration to the West, for stopping the building of mosques, for closing down Islamic schools because they are “fascist” institutions.”
The obvious contradictions and hypocrisy seem to be going right over the heads of Wilders and his supporters such as Robert Spencer, Brigitte Gabrieland Representative Adam Hasner. In a summit dubiously dubbed as Freedom of Speech they want to curtail the rights of others to practice Freedom of Religion - a pillar of all self-respecting modern Democracies.
One must consider the implications of Wilders’ call and the collusion of American hatemongers with his project. How does he want to translate his call for Muslims to be denied religious freedom into practical policy? Will he ask all Muslims to renounce Islam or face deportation, even those born in the West? Would he and his supporters force Muslims to convert from Islam to Christianity or another religion?
Only in the hate world of the far right are insinuations made that, a religion that has been around for over 1400 years - Islam - is in fact not a religion at all. It is also a world where one finds no contradiction in proclaiming freedom of speech on the one hand but then proudly declaring opposition to freedom of religion on the other.
Do these loons seriously consider themselves the “defenders of Western Civilization” against the “barbaric Muslim hordes” when they proudly flaunt the very foundations of that civilization? In light of this contradiction the more accurate description for this group of loony racists and neo-fascists might be ”defenders of delusions.”
Would you believe me if I told you that a 24 hour cable news network channel while discussing the topic of how media is “anti-religion” ended up making a bigoted remark about a religion? Of course you would because there is Fox News.
The Loon Busters at Media Mattersbrought to light this piece of bigotry on the O’Reilly Factor. After discussing how Christianity is maltreated and abused in the media, Bill O’ Reilly remarked that
the media doesn’t target Muslims because they might get their house blown up.
Is that Fair and Balanced enough for you? That’s as direct as it gets folks.
Even if it were true, which it is not, this statement is absurd on many levels. How many American Muslims have killed a media official or “blown their house up” because their faith or their community was lampooned? On the other hand, doesn’t it make sense that since America is a majority Christian country there would be more focus on Christianity as opposed to Judaism or Islam?
The reality is that Islam and Muslims are one of the most targeted and defamed groups in America and this remark by O’Reilly is just further proof of that.
