Posted on 08/04/2014 5:13:09 AM PDT by Randall_S
Crossing the Wrong Kind of Activists Friday evening
About an hour after I first notice the Business Insider article, I check my email again from my phone. I see that the once laudatory President of the NYYRC has lost his nerve. He noticed the Business Insider article, and asked me to immediately remove the post from the site. The problem, he says, is the sentence that questions Obama’s relationship with the Emir of Qatar. (Which, I may add, linked not to anything sexual, but purely policy/political.)
I’m not home when I receive this email. The article on BI quoted mine at length. My thoughts at that time: What good will retracting the article do? – it’s already in the public domain, forever. The sky isn’t going to fall. I had been using my phone heavily for several hours, and shortly after receiving the email it dies. When I get home, I notice the piece has gone viral. It’s now featured on websites like Talking Points Memo and a few others. I also see that the article has been pulled from the website.
Saturday morning, July 13.
My phone rings. It is the NYYRC’s prior president, who never calls me. He strongly urges me to “edit” and “revise” the article. I remind him that it’s already been extensively quoted on other websites, and that Americans have first amendment rights. If someone wants to take issue with my opinion, the proper response is a rebuttal argument.
He hints that the piece is distressing to certain corporate donors. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who has waged a war against so-called “Tea Party” candidates, comes to mind. Although the Chamber and the State Department are not often associated with each other, the Chamber depends on State to assist with business development overseas. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered a speech to the Chamber earlier this July.
We have a long discussion regarding foreign policy (he original hails from the Middle East), in which he urges me not to become a “martyr.” (Aren’t martyrs often killed?)
He continues to pressure me, and at some point I begin to find this pressure offensive. (Big tent? In Rove’s GOP? Yeah, right.) I tell him the aftermath of the article is now inevitable, that there’s no plausible reason to publish an edited version; it would be humiliating.
Saturday afternoon
As the day continues, I notice the article is picked up by more outlets. The biggest of these of sites is the Huffington Post. They call my article an “epic rant.” Is that what qualifies today as an epic rant?
It is also picked up by a website called The New Civil Rights Movement. I have no idea what this website is, and it doesn’t appear to be very heavily trafficked. However, someone over there didn’t like what I had to say at all. Reader, feel free to check out the article for yourself, to get a sense of the tactics employed here. I’ll merely point out that the article was filed under my full name, as well as terms like “bigotry,” and “anti-gay hate.” Smear, smear, smear away. It’s so common these days that it’s becoming passé.
Finally, the Facebook page of TCS News was deactivated following these events. TCS News had posted my original article and the response, as well as a poll asking people whether ONLY the American flag should fly at U.S. embassies. I understand that eventually service was restored, but this does raise some serious concerns about freedom of speech and Facebook’s relationship with the government.
Brief Asides
An aside on the modern media. Of all the websites that ran with the story, I was only contacted by one before running a story on me. Mr. Hunter at Business Insider was considerate enough to send me a message on Facebook chat, which I never saw, approximately 90 minutes before posting the first article using my full name. If you’re someone whose eyes aren’t glued to Facebook 24/7, well, too bad. But kudos to Mr. Hunter. At least he made a minimal effort.
An aside on my alleged homophobia. None of the events described so far surprised me in the least. The Republican Party establishment has no spine, as every conservative agrees. The media have no scruples. Reporters and writers routinely smear someone’s good name without a second thought. I get that.
But what definitely surprised me the least was the fact that in each and every case, these “journalists” who used my full name didn’t take 20 minutes to read through my work on the Blog. If they had, they would have noticed that I have written fairly extensively on modern day Russia, and been critical of their anti-gay laws and policies in general.
Last August, I was among the first people in the country to write a profile on the Russian Fascist Aleksandr Dugin, who is one of the primary sources of visceral gay hate in the world today. In the early stages of the Ukrainian conflict, I explained how Dugin was the brain behind Putin and the invasion. Much of that information, again has been since integrated into Dugin’s Wikipedia entry. A few weeks after my Ukrainian article, Foreign Affairs published an article entitled, “Putin’s Brain.” In an effort to prevent fascist policies, among them anti-gay laws, from finding their way to our shores, I detailed the more than coincidental connections between “Libertarian” movement and Russia. See here, and here. Moreover, I’ve had gay friends throughout my life.
Note: The handful of my gay friends who did read the article agreed that only the American flag should fly above our embassies, and that there was nothing hateful in the article. (See here.) Among these men is a prominent, national gay rights advocate.
Part IV: The Republican Party’s Book Burning
“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” -Heinrich Heine
Saturday evening
I knew that my conversation with the former President had not gone swimmingly. But I was downright disturbed by what happened next. I checked the blog that evening, and I noticed that virtually all of my work had been disappeared by the New York Young Republican Club, an organization ultimately chartered by the Republican Party. One of the most comprehensive accounts of the American involvement in the Arab Spring, and all of the sourced evidence that the Obama administration was funding the creation of the Caliphate in the region and supplying them with weapons, was just gone like that. Ditto the information on Russia and Aleksandr Dugin, a resource for anti-fascists worldwide. What took years to research and document was sent down a Republican-made Orwellian memory hole. All sources that linked to the Blog now get “404: Page Not Found” errors.
An established web presence in itself is precious, because people know where to look and can build their work off of existing, credible sources. Anyone who did this using the information on the Blog can now officially start over.
There is something devilish in destroying the printed word. Societies that do this have something to hide, and intend on keeping their citizenry in the dark. This move went far beyond removing the post about the embassy flags; it went far beyond even kicking me out of the low ranking GOP Establishment. The story about the rainbow flags on an embassy in London was one-off; although I strongly believe we should not fly special interest flags from our embassies, I was never and am not especially now interested in keeping tabs on the LGBT movement.
What had been my area of focus for more than a year, documenting the Obama administration’s complicity in building a modern Caliphate, was electronically shredded by the GOP. I emailed the current and former President and requested an explanation in writing as to why all of this information had been purged from their site: no response. Weeks later, I received copies of my work from the Club.
A point to emphasize. This was open source information, sourced from newspapers, magazines, published books, and other credible, mainstream sources. The Blog was a public service for academic researchers, analysts, and journalists, in addition to concerned citizens who wanted a realistic perspective on world events – something the media today fails at doing daily. It was public, searchable, and linkable. It challenged the official narrative in a way that evidently frightened those in power. I’ve had conversations with dozens of people over the past two years with extensive knowledge of these topics, and I can testify here, in writing, that, based on reactions, the information was highly accurate.
What does the GOP gain in hiding this information? Why are they shielding it from the public? If it is unreliable, why is it that on the same night that I received the now infamous photograph, a United Nations specialist on al Qaeda told me I should address his team, because he found the information so compelling and enlightening?
The Shot Callers: Curious Site Visitors
On the day that the article was posted, drawing attention from half a dozen political websites popular within the beltway and media circles, I checked which domains had visited the site. Google Analytics revealed several more than coincidental domains on that Friday, including: Democrat National Headquarters, The Boeing Company, and Lockheed Martin Corporation. Boeing and Lockheed Martin have billions upon billions of dollars in contracts with Qatar, for everything from weapons systems to commercial airliners.
The following Sunday, a day after the Blog had been burned, more curious visitors: U.S. Department of State, Brookings Doha Center (brookings-doha-centre-20091), DOD Network Information Center, and The Boeing Corporation, again. It seems plausible that these visitors had something to do with the decision to remove the information.
Modern Day Pentagon Papers?
Following scandal at the IRS, which was exposed for targeting conservative groups, a hard drive was mysteriously destroyed. This month, the American public learned that a hard drive at the Federal Election Commission faced a similar fate, calling into question the integrity of the 2012 elections. Incriminating files in both cases were conveniently lost by those in power.
Luckily, the Blog information was not in the hands of a federal bureaucracy. I retain copies of articles, which are published on this site. I URGE each and every patriotic journalist to use this information wisely, and to look into these connections for yourself.
Part III teaser: A way out. The country’s political system is being held hostage by corporate donors, pressure groups, and Constitutional ignoramuses. As the Bill of Rights is forgotten, a politically correct totalitarianism is hardening. Part III will discuss some tactics regarding how to use basic democracy, “one man, one vote,” to take back your country before it’s too late.
- See more at: http://misterchambers.com/#sthash.XPsitpXn.dpuf
We are uniquely privileged to be able to enjoy DG from our perch at FR.
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LOL
incorrible old fart. Enjoy.
Yes, incorrible. GOOGLE it.
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