Posted on 07/13/2008 9:02:36 AM PDT by bert
Hughs: Rumor mill fueled by Internet stories By Ina Hughs (Contact) Friday, July 11, 2008
Think about the Swift Boat campaign and what it did to John Kerry in 2004 and what rumors of a secret love child did to John McCain's bid for the White House in 2000.
As a kid, we used to play a game called "gossip." We'd sit in a circle, and someone would whisper a sentence into the ear of the person next to her; that person would then whisper what she heard to the person next to her - and so on.
By the time it made its rounds back to the original source, the words were so misconstrued it was all but impossible to recognize even a remnant of what was first whispered.
Gossip is lethal.
Procter and Gamble spent thousands of dollars trying to shush and disprove rumors that its board of directors are devil worshipers, setting up a whole department to deal with that silliness.
Urban legends, we call them. Whether it's a human finger found in a salad at such-and-such fast-food chain or roaches living in a woman's French twist, people tend not only to believe what they read but to pass it on, sometimes adding a little oomph to it to make it a juicier story.
The Internet is making it easy to set these little fires and fan them into a blaze of untruths, and this election has become so intense that groups wanting to undermine the other guy have sunk to a new level.
Unregulated attack groups like the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, called 527s after the section of the Internal Revenue code that allows them to raise unlimited cash, fool people into believing outlandish things that go unchallenged across the Internet.
At least five people have sent me the now-infamous letter slugged THIS DEFINITELY WARRANTS LOOKING INTO that slanders Barack Obama, saying, among other things, that he is concealing an Islamic background. In hardly a matter of weeks after the missive first began flying across the Internet, the number of people who mistakenly believe Obama is a Muslim rose from 8 percent to 13 percent.
In a recent article in The Washington Post dealing with the new brand of high-tech smear tactics, political theorist Danielle Allen at Princeton University spoke about her determination to go to the source of the vitriolic THIS DEFINITELY WARRANTS LOOKING INTO e-mail messages. She was able to track it back to a posting on the Web site FreeRepublic.com, and a man named Andy Martin, a former political opponent of Obama's who first got the idea while trying to launch a Senate bid against Obama.
Working off facts that made Obama vulnerable - his unusual name; having grown up in Indonesia; a foreign-born father - Andy Martin went after Obama by declaring he was a secret Muslim and insinuated a secret agenda to infiltrate the workings of government and take command as a Muslim.
It is almost impossible to quell such blasphemous and damaging rumors. The FEC found the Swift Boat attack was way out of line and chastised them for it, but the damage was done. And there are still those who take what they said as gospel.
Obama's supposed alliance with Muslim terrorists is all over the Internet. It is hard to just ignore, which is the traditional antidote for gossip, and in this case, at least the title of the e-mail is true.
But if one does, in fact, "look into it" - as Allen did - and finds it all wrong, it still doesn't deflate the rumor because those who oppose Obama, for whatever reason, will either swallow it hook, line and sinker or figure that where there's smoke, there's fire, so it must contain some kernel of truth.
Ina Hughs is a retired News Sentinel staff writer. She may be reached at inamackie@yahoo.com.
It represents the terminal bias of w once was presstitute
ping
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(Hughs: Rumor mill fueled by Internet stories By Ina Hughs (Contact) Friday, July 11, 2008
Think about the Swift Boat campaign and what it did to John Kerry in 2004 and what rumors of)
The Swift Boat campaign was not about rumors. It was real live American vets counter the lies of the Kerry Campaign.
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I heard that Bill Clinton was having an affair with Monica and that Jesse Jackson had a love child on the Internet.
Here are some more "supposed" alliances for this leftist moron to choke on...
"God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11"
--Rev Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for twenty years
Wright: "In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the Western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns."
"America’s chickens... are coming home... to ROOST!"
The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine
Monday , May 5, 2008
FoxNews/Hannity's America
[special Friday night edition--original airdate May 2, 2008]
(some key excerpts)
["Diaz-Balart is the son of Rafael Diaz-Balart y Guitierrez (a former Cuban politician). He has three bothers, Rafael Diaz-Balart (a banker), Mario Diaz-Balart (a US Congressman) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (also a US Congressman). His aunt, Mirta Diaz-Balart, was Fidel Castro's first wife."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Diaz-Balart]
JOSE DIAZ-BALART, TELEMUNDO NETWORK: "Liberation theology in Nicaragua in the mid-1980's was a pro-Sandinista, pro-Marxist, anti-U.S., anti-Catholic Church movement. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts. His church apparently supported, in the mid-'80s in Nicaragua, groups that supported the Sandinista dictatorships and that were opposed to the Contras whose reason for being was calling for elections. That's all I know. I was there.
I saw the churches in Nicaragua that he spoke of, and the churches were churches that talked about the need for violent revolution and I remember clearly one of the major churches in Managua where the Jesus Christ on the altar was not Jesus Christ, he was a Sandinista soldier, and the priests talked about the corruption of the West, talked about the need for revolution everywhere, and talked about 'the evil empire' which was the United States of America."
REV. BOB SCHENCK, NATIONAL CLERGY COUNCIL: "it's based in Marxism. At the core of his [Wright's] theology is really an anti-Christian understanding of God, and as part of a long history of individuals who actually advocate using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology. That's very, very dangerous."
SCHENCK: "I was actually the only person escorted to Dr. Wright. He asked to see me, and I simply welcomed him to Washington, and then I said Dr. Wright, I want to bring you a warning: your embrace of Marxist liberation theology. It is contrary to the Gospel, and you need, sir, to abandon it. And at that he dropped the handshake and made it clear that he was not in the mood to dialogue on that point."
Source: The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008
In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...
Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02
From "45 Communist Goals":
#27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion.
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
Catholics for Marx
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004
In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.
The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD
WRIGHT: In the late 1960's when James Cone's powerful books burst on to the scene, the term "black liberation theology" began to be used. The prophetic tradition of the black church has its roots in Isaiah the 61st chapter where God says the prophet is to preach the gospel to the poor and to set at liberty those who are held captive.
Source: The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
From the New York Times, April 28, 2008
Reverend Wright at the National Press Club
"In the late 1960s, when Dr. James Cone's powerful books burst onto the scene, the term 'black liberation theology' began to be used. I do not in any way disagree with Dr. Cone, nor do I in any way diminish the inimitable and incomparable contributions that he has made and that he continues to make to the field of theology. Jim, incidentally, is a personal friend of mine."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/us/politics/28text-wright.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=sloginL
From Jeff Head's website...
One notable quote from [James] Cone describing his Black Liberation Theology is as follows:
"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love." - "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, by William R Jones, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).
http://www.jeffhead.com/blacklibtheology.htm
HANNITY: But Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not backing down and has not for years and in his strong stance on the teaching of black liberation theology is nothing new. He had the same things to say last spring when he appeared on "Hannity & Colmes:"
WRIGHT: If you're not going to talk about theology in context, if you're not going to talk about liberation theology that came out of the '60s, systematized black liberation theology that started with Jim Cone in 1968 and the writings of Cone and the writings of Dwight Hopkins and the writings of womynist theologians and Asian theologians and Hispanic theologians, then you can't talk about the black value system.
HANNITY: But I'm a — reverend
WRIGHT: Do you know liberation theology, sir?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
YouTube: Glenn Beck on Obama and Black Liberation Theology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cA0GEV1ibY&eurl=http://maggiesnotebook.blogspot.com/2008/04/im-speechless.html
Can’t have people asking questions, questioning the media and seeking the truth.
Here are some more "supposed" alliances for this leftist moron to choke on...
"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World — where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' — both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."
Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==
From WorldNetDaily:
Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website. Obama served on the board with [Bill] Ayers, who was a Weathermen leader and has written about his involvement with the group's bombings of the New York City Police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.
Article: Obama worked with terrorist
Senator helped fund organization that rejects 'racist' Israel's existence:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57231
From Sept 11, 2001, New York Times article/interview with Obama associate and friend, William/Bill Ayers.
Article title: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
"Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as:
'Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at,' is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
New York Times, September 11, 2001: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
The Center for Public Intellectuals & The University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC)
April 19th-20th, 2002, Conference
[Participants include: William/Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Sen Barack Obama]
http://www.uic.edu/classes/las/las400/conferencealt.htm
"In July 1969, [Bernardine] Dohrn, Eleanor Raskin, Dianne Donghi, Peter Clapp, David Millstone and Diana Oughton, all representing 'Weatherman', as Dohrn's faction was now called, traveled to Cuba and met with representatives of the North Vietnamese and Cuban governments."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn
From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
"FBI files from 1976, recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm the connections between Weatherman, Havana, and Moscow. Weatherman leaders like Mark Rudd traveled illegally to Havana in 1968 to engage in terrorist training. There, camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine were educating Westerners both in Marxist philosophy and urban warfare."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808
July 27, 1970: The United States Army base at The Presidio in San Francisco is bombed on the 11th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. [NYTimes, 7/27/70] :
Chronology of Weather Underground attacks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)#Chronology_of_events
Weather Underground Organization linked to North Vietnamese and Cuban governments, KGB
[420 pages in all on pdf]
Source: FBI, via Freedom of Information Act
In 1976, the FBI's Chicago Field Office prepared a summary which described the activities of the Weather Underground Organization, also known as Weathermen. This organization described itself as a revolutionary organization of communist men and women. The FBI's analysis of its motivations, beliefs, and international travels are outlined in this summary.
[some excerpts from the 1976 report linking the organization to foreign governments...]
From the moment in October, 1967, when Radio Hanoi announced the formation of the South Vietnamese Peoples Committee for Solidarity with American People (by the National Liberation Front (NLF), the political arm of the Viet Cong) with the objective of establishing relations with "progressive organizations and individuals in the United States," a political front was enjoined in behalf of the national interests of the Democratic Republic of North Vietnam (DRV) (and the NLF), the purpose of which was to intensify the anti-war sentiment in the United States. From the initial meeting between the Vietnamese and leading anti-war activists held in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in November, 1967, to the July, 1969, meeting with leading Weatherpeople held in Havana, Cuba, the influence of Vietnamese representatives on the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) leadership became sharply pronounced. At the same time, the example of the Cuban revolution became the guide for the emerging American student revolutionary. With an increasing number of trips to Havana where the youthful revolutionary could learn at first hand how to create revolution, the influence of Cuba on the developing WUO [Weather Underground Organization] was enormous.
The WUO obtained their revolutionary methodology from the Cubans and Vietnamese and, importantly, put into practice what they had learned from them. The Weathermen, of course, did not just happen to come about during the June, 1969, SDS National Convention. They fully admit their radical heritage began during experiences gained in SDS and as shown herein their international contacts with representatives of the DRV and NLF which began in 1967 increased their anti-imperialist consciousness so that by 1969 they had solidified their revolutionary commitment to include the maximum optimum of armed struggle. So, when Huynh Van Ba, representative of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam (PRG), instructed the WUO to "look for the person who fights hardest against the cops...Don't look for the one who says the best thing. Look for the one who fights," the campus base was forgotten and the WUO began to recruit the greasers and assorted oddments who had displayed their hatred of authority in direct combat with police.
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/weather.htm
From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
March 6, 1970: "three members of the Weather Underground accidentally killed themselves in a Manhattan townhouse while attempting to build a powerful bomb they had intended to plant at a social dance in Fort Dix, New Jersey -- an event that was to be attended by U.S. Army soldiers. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plot been successfully executed."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808
"The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer's dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
The bomb was packed with nails to inflict maximum casualties upon detonation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)#Chronology_of_events
Bill Ayers TODAY (April 6, 2008), from his own red communist star-headed website, begging to debate communism vs capitalism with Sean Hannity and STILL calling for revolution!
"Imperialism. I’m against it, and if Sean Hannity and others were honest, this is the ground they would fight me on. Capitalism played its role historically and is exhausted as a force for progress: built on exploitation, theft, conquest, war, and racism, capitalism and imperialism must be defeated and a world revolution—a revolution against war and racism and materialism, a revolution based on human solidarity and love, cooperation and the common good —must win.
We begin by releasing our most hopeful dreams and our most radical imaginations: a better world is both possible and necessary.
Source: http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/04/page/2/
'Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country,' he [Ayers] said."
August 2001, Chicago Magazine (article: No Regrets)
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2001/No-Regrets/
Leni
Thousands? Really? Must have driven them to the brink of bankruptcy.
Obama and his advisers are on the communist left!
Blasphemous rumors? Someone really does think Obama is the Messiah.
So according to the author, spreading a rumor about Obama is "blasphemous"? Give me a break. That one sentence tells me all I need to know about the author's bias.
Exactly how did the Switt Boat Veterans organization get “chastized by the FEC?” Were they fined? Were they indicted for something? Were they penalized somehow? If the writer means “chastized by one of the liberals on the FEC by making doody comments about them to the news,” this ain’t jack where I come from. This whole article is bull$hit.
viral campaigns of many kinds ride the internet. Some are advertising, some are political, some are accidental infections.
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