Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Blogger.com Makes It Too Easy to Censor Blogs - What to Do?

First, please read these two articles:

What is the current status? As of 4:30 Eastern Time (US) 7/18/07, Gates of Vienna was back up.

So why be concerned about it now? Because other bloggers need to know about this situation, and because it's time for Blogger to do something to prevent its blogs from being shut down either maliciously or by mistake. Gates of Vienna is a respected counterterrorist/antijihadist blog that in no way deserves to be treated as a "spam blog." This situation also shows how easy it would be to misuse Blogger.com to censor another blog.

How did this happen? It is possible that someone unintentionally clicked the "flag" button in the Blogger.com toolbar while attempting to navigate. But then, if a single error like that can cause a blog to be blocked, something is very wrong with Blogger.com! More likely, Gates of Vienna was maliciously flagged as a "spam blog" multiple times by one or more individuals who object to antijihadistist messages being made available to the public. Either way, Blogger.com is allowing de facto censorship, and this is wrong. It allows wrongdoers of every stripe to muzzle anybody who may be trying to warn the public about the crimes they have committed or are preparing to commit. It also will intimidate some bloggers into keeping silent - though not this one!

Does this remind you of anything? It should! The Digg "bury brigade" has aroused intense controversy for exactly the same reason: because it became too easy for a few anonymous users to muzzle opposing points of view or to cover up uncomfortable facts simply by clicking on a little button.

What are we asking Blogger to do? Blogger should add safeguards to prevent the same thing from happening again to this or other blogs in the Blogspot domain. If Blogger.com fails to take action, then other blog owners will have reason to worry about losing access to their blogs. They'll migrate to other blogging systems and and hosting providers that will help them to safeguard their ownership.

You may recall that I've blogged before about the issues that Blogger.com has with spam blogs (see Does Blogger.com think your blog is spam?) but this is a different situation. There is a very big difference between the minor inconvenience of requiring the blog owner to enter Captcha characters before posting to the blog, and the major intimidation Blogger.com causes by blocking the blog entirely.

Now please do this:

  • Link to the stories at Gates of Vienna and Foehammer.net from your own blog.
  • Ask everyone else you know who has a blog to do the same.
  • Publicize the story in every other legitimate way that you can think of: StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Twitter, Pownce, word of mouth, chat rooms, you name it.
  • If you wish, post a comment here indicating where else this article is being publicized.

Contacting humans at Blogger.com: Google makes it especially difficult to contact anyone at Blogger.com directly. But at least for now, you can contact them at support@blogger.com. And here's a website with rolling updates on how to contact Blogger.com: How to Contact Blogger Support. So if you are not happy about the way Blogger.com is misidentifying Gates of Vienna and other blogs as spam, you can still let them know what you think.

Also see:

Keep the pressure on Blogger.com to do something to safeguard their blogging system against being hijacked by the same "bury brigade" that has rendered Digg.com all but useless! And for what to do about THAT, see How to Bury Digg.com.

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Monday, July 16, 2007

The Ft. Hard Knox Project

The goal of the FHK project is to assist politically-conservative bloggers, social-networkers, and citizen journalists to navigate the wild, wild world of Web 2.0 more effectively.

If you're interested in learning more about the Ft. Hard Knox Project, here are the links:

"Wiki...What?" A Wiki is a user-supported and continuously-evolving hypertext encyclopedia. Thus, by definition, a Wiki is always "under construction." The Ft. Hard Knox Wiki has recently been established within the Wikispaces environment, and it already has some useful articles. Its purpose is to offer an easy way to access tech tips and information, to help conservatives use the Web more effectively.

Using the FHK Forum and Chat Room:

The Ft. Hard Knox forum is hosted on Delphi, so you'll need to register for a Delphi user ID if you don't already have one. Registration for the basic functions is free, and that's all you need to leave messages on the forum or to use the chat room. Prompts will appear when you click on the link. It takes just a minute to sign up!

Updated 7/17/07:

Meet with us on Twitter!

  • The Monday night FHK forum chat has been discontinued for now. That's because it's too difficult to get everybody in different time zones all over the world to meet at the same time, especially in the summer when so many people are traveling.
  • Instead, we're encouraging fellow conservatives and antijihadist activists to meet with us on Twitter. You can use Twitter both in "real time" for chatting with people who are online at the same time, and as a forum for communicating with people who will be online at other times.
  • Click here to view all of our articles about Twitter. We'll have many more articles about Twitter in the future!
  • So how do I get started on Twitter? The easiest way is to ask an established user to introduce you to other Twitterers. Whom to ask? Me, of course! Don't be shy. Just go to the Twitter site, register an account, click on my profile at 1389, and add me as a friend. I'll "friend" you back soon afterward. Then send me a message introducing yourself, and I'll begin introducing you to others. I hope to see you there soon!

Updated 7/2/07:

  • We'll be discussing the Ft. Hard Knox Wiki during tonight's Forum Chat, so please stop by if you'd like to know more, or if you think you might be interested in working with us!

Updated 6/26/07:

  • The main page and blog for the Ft. Hard Knox project have moved to a new address, http://forthardknox.com/
  • From the new URL, the Ft. Hard Knox blog can be accessed via a cellphone or PDA browser as well as from a conventional browser.

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TinyURL for this blog post: http://tinyurl.com/yo8og9

Why StumbleUpon 'Owns' Digg

After all of the endless hype surrounding Digg, I was surprised to read this article by Darren Rowse at Problogger: Why StumbleUpon Sends More Traffic than Digg.

Hmmm, I thought, time to try it out! So, after finding out that StumbleUpon doesn't accept an all-numeric user ID, I signed up as 1389AD. I set up the little toolbar and started using it. Then, I ran across an article that came out a few months ago, but is still very much worth reading, so I used the toolbar to submit a review of the article on StumbleUpon: My Thoughts on Our Children's Children's War.

I was surprised at what happened next, and you probably will be too. Read all about it here: How to Bury Digg.com.

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Sunday, July 15, 2007

CONFIRMED: White Slaves and Millions of Heroin Dollars Bought Ahtisaari's Kosovo "Independence" Plan (With Rolling Updates)

The latest major U.N. scandal is a real doozy, and it's coming out at a very inconvenient time for George W. and the U.S. State Department:

BND: White Slaves and Millions of Heroin Dollars for Ahtisaari’s Plan

According to the June 21 article by the Banja Luka daily Fokus, titled “Albanian Mafia Bought Ahtisaari,” German Federal Intelligence Service BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) has recently sent a report to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon revealing that Albanian separatists and terrorists in Serbian Kosovo-Metohija province have literally purchased Ahtisaari’s plan which suggests independence for the Serbian province and its severing from Serbia.
German Secret Service has found that 2 million Euros (2.68 million USD) have been transfered directly to Ahtisaari’s personal bank account, and that amounts of multi-million Euros were given to the UN envoy in cash on at least two occasions, totaling up to 40 million Euros (over 53 million U.S. dollars).

Oh, and by the way, KFOR NATO troops are involved:

On the last day of February, at 11:47 p.m., German Secret Service agents made a note about the arrival of the KFOR (NATO troops stationed in Serbian Kosovo province, Kosovo FORce) jeep which brought two young women over, followed by Boria’s bodyguard. The girls were in Ahtisaari’s quarters until 5:17 a.m., when they were driven away by the same vehicle.

This is particularly awkward now, because GWB has been making a big push to turn over control of Kosovo to Albanian Muslim narcoterrorists, which is not only insane, but also violates the treaty that the U.S. signed at the end of the Kosovo War. (See Updated: Was GWB's wristwatch stolen while he was meeting a crowd in Albania? and How the U.S. and NATO were duped in the Balkans.) The only thing that can be said for GWB in this regard is that his Democrat opponents would have tried to do the same thing even sooner.

Okay, so I'm old. This huge UN Albanian-narcoterrorist bribery scandal reminded me of a long trail of other scandals: Libyagate (starring Billy Carter), Abscam, Iran arms-for-hostages, BCCI, UN oil-for-food, and now, Bill and Hillary cashing in from Qatar, and the Bush family's close ties to the Bin Ladin Group. (Yes, THAT Bin Ladin Group; they've altered the English-language spelling, but yes, they are OBL's relatives!) To put icing on the cake, there's Venezuela, with Chavez' ominously cozy relationship with Ahmadinejad, Iran's nuclear neo-Nazi.

So what made me think of all these other scandals? What common thread has linked every major scandal of the western world in the late 20th and early 21st centuries?

They're are all about foreign money from Muslim sources being used to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and the UN. It's as simple as that.

In the U.S., this money has bought politicians wholesale on both sides of the aisle. The corruption is so pervasive that it's not even about partisan politics; it's about the blindly selfish, and in fact treasonous, pursuit of power and wealth. The funding is not only coming from Muslim petrodollars, but also from Albanian crime syndicate money (from drug-running, arms-smuggling, slave-trading, and wholesale looting), Taliban opium money, diverted foreign aid, you name it.

What to do? Many people won't want to hear the answer, but that isn't my problem. I calls 'em as I sees 'em, and I don't care whether anybody likes it or not.

We can't afford to keep doing business with our enemies. Our enemies include every Islamist and every jihadist-sympathizer on the planet, and every government that openly or covertly promotes jihadism. Yes, that adds up to an awful lot of people. Our foes have already chosen that path. Our failure to acknowledge it will not make them go away. They see it as a war of extermination against us, and we have no choice but to defeat them.

What does "not doing business with the enemy" mean in practice?

This means we have to bite the bullet and achieve complete energy independence as soon as possible, and by every means available.

This means building clean-coal and nuclear power plants, wind farms, synfuel facilities, you name it. We need to stop putting roadblocks in the way of everyone who is trying to help achieve energy independence. For example, when a reputable electric power company wants to build a new clean-coal plant or a nuke plant, making use of resources that the U.S. has in abundance, the authorities should let them proceed as soon as a good plan is in place. And we should go ahead and drill for oil in uninhabitable wilderness regions.

This means we must finally debunk all of this propaganda that blames us - and our desire to maintain a standard of living compatible with civilized life - for "global warming." Is Mars also warming up because we've been driving too many SUVs on the red planet? Claiming that there is a "scientific consensus" on behalf of one's political agenda does not mean that there actually is one! The people who started up this propaganda evidently hate people in general, and modern civilization in particular. More to the point, their political manipulations play into the hands of our foreign enemies. The only way to deal with them is to refute them once and for all, and then never listen to any of them ever again.

This means we stop making alliances with, and stop giving aid to, any Muslim nation, entity, or faction. It means we never again use U.S. military power to fight a war on behalf of Muslims under any circumstances whatsoever - no matter how much they flood the airwaves with fauxtography and stage elaborate hoaxes to play themselves up as the victims of whomever they want the U.S. to punish - and no matter how much they are paying our politicians under the table.

This means that we must stop educating and hiring aliens, including de facto enemy aliens, in preference to our own citizens. That would be an inexcusable outrage during peacetime, and it's criminally insane when we are at war. It's time to stop bringing in any foreign nationals from predominantly Muslim countries or regions, particularly in the fields of engineering and IT. It's time to drastically scale back the student visa program, and to eliminate the thoroughly corrupt H-1b program entirely. We've been shutting out loyal, qualified, experienced, and hard-working Americans from jobs, and turning over large portions of America's technical infrastructure to foreign nationals whose loyalty is clearly elsewhere.

None of these things are impossible, or even all that difficult, to do. It's all a matter of growing up, facing facts, and seeing the world and its inhabitants as they are, not as we wish they would be. If we refuse to face facts, that will not stop the facts from facing us.

Rolling updates on the Ahtisaari bribery allegations:

  • The original post on Byzantine Sacred Art blog that brought this matter to my attention
    (posted in original article 6/25/07):
    BND: White Slaves and Millions of Heroin Dollars for Ahtisaari’s Plan
  • Article in Serbian-language paper "Fokus", Banja Luka, Republika Srpska, Bosnia
    (posted in original article 6/25/07):
    Albanska mafija kupila Ahtisarija
  • Blog S@LE picked up this article (added 6/28/07):
    It's good to be Marrti Ahtisaari
  • Byzantine Sacred Art blog post about Ahtisaari's previous racist remarks against Serbs
    (added 6/28/07):
    Serbian Jerusalem; a Ticket to Butt Clubs
  • Article in Berlin Online providing some background on the Albanian crime syndicate
    (added 6/28/07):
    Von der Mafia beherrscht
  • Crossfire War - UN Envoy Ahtisaari Accused of Taking Bribes
    (added 6/28/07):
    Crossfire War - UN Envoy Ahtisaari Accused of Taking Bribes
    Editor's Note:
    Since publication of the Focus report and this opinon based on that report, new information suggests that the intelligence report the Bosnian Serb news agency Focus claims was filed at the UN apparently was never received by the UN.
    Since the alleged report is the only piece of evidence provided in support of the claims by Focus, the claims in the Focus story - and the opinion below based on that, may be false. Please check back later for an update.

    1389's comment (added 6/28/07):

    I remain convinced that there is an extremely high probability that this story is true. To begin with, the story comports with everything that has been going on in Kosovo since 1999. Moreover, the UN has an interest in attempting to bury an embarrassing story by having some unnamed individual claim that the UN never received such a document.

    To the best of my knowledge, there have been no denials of culpability or involvement on the part of Ahtisaari, the Albanians, or anyone else. Nor has there been any official denial issued by any named individual or department at the UN.

    I must point out that the failure to deny wrongdoing is tantamount to an admission of culpability. As someone who has neither accepted nor offered bribes, if some newspaper had accused me of such a thing, not only would I have denied it loudly and without delay, but I would have immediately contacted an attorney to talk about filing a suit for defamation.

  • Centre for Peace in the Balkans (added 6/28/07):
    Serbia's Dulic calls for inquiry in Ahtisaari bribe allegations
    Neither the UN nor Mr Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, has commented on the allegations.

Newest updates on the Ahtisaari bribery allegations:

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The Battle Against E-Jihadis: Why we need to know what we're up against!

This piece of good news:

Bad Day to Be an eJihadi/Cyber Terrorist

came in from The Jawa Report, not long after I had posted some remarks about an e-jihadist "hacker's kit" that had been making the rounds of the Internet. Evidently, two sites that had been hosting this malware kit are gone.

Keep in mind, though, that the perps will try to come back as soon as they find another venue. All of us - bloggers and other private individuals, Internet service providers, anti-malware companies, other corporations, non-profit organizations, as well as law enforcement, the military, and other governmental bodies - will have to be a lot more vigilant in the future about tracking and combating attacks from this quarter.

You might be astounded to learn just how much a lone blogger can accomplish. The Cyber Jihad is Real shows us how a lone blogger with no prior experience put the kibosh on several significant threats. Knowledge of Arabic or other foreign languages is not necessarily a requirement, though it is helpful. This article links to several other resources, including:

Now go and read:

Sunni Insurgents in Iraq Guilty of Cyber Jihad.

You may already know that Sunni insurgents are posting jihadist videos on the Internet showing U.S. troops being killed. It doesn't take long before al Qaeda's mouthpiece al-Jazeera picks up those videos and uses them to incite further mayhem. Foehammer makes a good case that the Bush Administration's attempts to keep the American public from seeing these images actually plays into the hands of our enemies.

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Friday, July 13, 2007

David All shows us what we should be doing with Web 2.0

Here are some "must read" articles from Republican web strategist David All of the David All Group:

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

COUNTERTERRORIST BLOG SWARM WANTED!

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN MOVED TO http://1389blog.com.

The blog name has been changed to 1389 Blog.

Click here for this article on the new blog!

Please update your links, feed subscriptions, and favorites. Thanks!

This article by Julia Gorin is a must read for everyone:

Ending the Balkan Quagmire at American Thinker

This article is all about how US and EU counterterrorism foreign policy went so horribly wrong. It explains how jihadist terrorism has succeeded in overrunning Europe and in attacking the US. It's particularly important for Americans to read this article, because it cites news stories from reputable sources that have had some exposure in Europe, but haven't made it into the US media.

So why am I asking for a blog swarm?

Exactly because this information isn't getting around in the US, and I want this story to get some exposure!

Why is this story being kept off the radar screen in the US?

Simple: It's a catalogue of errors and misdeeds that makes the US media conglomerates look bad, and the US government (i.e., nearly everyone on both sides of the aisle) look even worse. It reveals an ongoing foreign policy fiasco that makes the Bay of Pigs Invasion look like a victory by comparison. And it isn't just a fiasco for the government, it's a fiasco for the American and European public, because it has greatly increased everyone's vulnerability to jihadist terrorism.

What to do?

  • Link to the original story on your blog.
  • Ask everyone else you know to do the same.
  • Publicize the story in any other legitimate way that you can think of.
  • If you wish, post a comment here indicating where else this article is being publicized.

This story has been submitted to Digg as How US and EU counterterrorism foreign policy went so horribly wrong. We'll see how long it stays there before Digg's censors and bury brigade get to it, as recently happened with Foehammer's Anvil.

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TinyURL for this blog post: http://tinyurl.com/yqzhnl

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Blogs and Websites that have Posted or Linked to:
Ending the Balkan Quagmire at American Thinker:

  1. Gray Falcon
  2. Foehammer.net
  3. Byzantine Sacred Art Blog
  4. Ft. Hard Knox
  5. Erik with a "K"
  6. Intergalactic Source of Truth™
  7. Orthodoxy Today
  8. Eastern European Forum
  9. Jillosophy
  10. SerbBlog
  11. Allah's Willing Executioners
  12. Israpundit
  13. JBlog Central
  14. New Serbian Optimism
  15. Right Wing News
  16. Fiery Spirited Zionist
  17. Liberty Post
  18. Free Republic
  19. Sulekha
  20. US Political Opinions (UK)
  21. Icerocket Blogs
  22. The Black Kettle
  23. American Council for Kosovo
  24. The Lighthouse
  25. Phanari
  26. 2nd Anagennesis - A Blog of Townhall.com
  27. Our Children are the Guarantors
  28. Vigilant Freedom/910 Group Blog
  29. Brucified
  30. EagleSpeak
  31. The Conservative Razor
  32. Atlas Shrugs
  33. Noisy Room
  34. Dumb Ox
  35. Geek Orthodox.org
  36. Ironic Surrealism
  37. Panhandle Poetry and Other Thoughts
  38. View from Minas Morgul
  39. Open thread on The Pirate's Cove
  40. Political Mavens
  41. Giltner Review
  42. Sokotica (full text of article)
  43. pjungwir at del.icio.us
  44. The Outraged Spleen of Zion
  45. Strategic Board
  46. Noblesse Oblige
  47. Field of Blackbirds
  48. Open thread at Little Green Footballs

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Updated: Is the U.S. government finally ready to confront cyberjihadism?

See this entry on My Pet Jawa, a prominent antijihadist blog.

It has certainly taken awhile for the U.S. government to start paying attention to cyberjihadism.

1389 wants to know:

When will they begin to look at the relentless pro-jihadist intimidation and censorship at social news and Web 2.0 sites, such as Digg?

When will they recognize that the site's owners and staff are responsible for allowing this activity to run rampant?

When will they start looking at the backgrounds and connections of these staffers, including contractors?

Allowing our self-proclaimed enemies to take control of, and to censor, our social news sites is giving them waaaaay too much power, and it has to stop!

Update (6/16/07):

Update (7/5/07):

Update (7/10/07):

Next article on this topic:

The Battle Against E-Jihadis: Why we need to know what we're up against!

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Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Wikipedia's "lamest edit wars"...sez who?

Why do some people look askance at Wikis in general, and at Wikipedia, the 800-pound gorilla of the Wiki world, in particular? This project page, entitled Wikipedia: Lamest edit wars, reveals the human frailties that tend to weaken the credibility of what should be a valuable social media tool.

Free and open debate is a vital part of the search for truth, but is that what we're seeing here? When it comes to certain hot-button issues, the search for truth among the Wikipedia community (such as it is) degenerates into a welter of animosity, politicking, ego-tripping, spin-doctoring, and ad hominem arguments. Evidently, the Wikipedians who wrote this project page saw no alternative but to give up on the possibility of making any further progress toward resolving these issues. Instead, they labeled these edit wars "lame," characterized all of the participants as equally unreasonable and contemptible, and held the entire process up to ridicule.

The character flaws that give rise to such ugly disputes are, sadly, part of the human condition. All too often, they are encountered not only among independent researchers, but also among those in academia, government, and the corporate world. But it's a matter of degree. In cyberspace, without traditions or established systems in place for resolving such things in a civil manner, incivility often runs rampant under cover of anonymity, and the interaction readily devolves into a flame war.

The problem is that incivility erodes credibility. Discussion and debate have a vital place in the process of building and supporting a wiki. But honest debate has nothing to do with bullying, manipulation, or spin-doctoring. Nor is there any room for the mistaken concept that truth can be arrived at simply by putting the matter up to a vote! For the wiki to earn the respect of the public, this debate must be conducted with respect for the other participants, for the readership, and, most of all, for the truth.

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Updated: The True Genesis of Amnesty International...it's not what you might think!

The True Genesis of Amnesty International

Read the above article by Claudio Veliz in Quadrant Magazine: Australia's independent review of literature and ideas. Veliz was involved with the organization from its founding. Just for starters, Amnesty International came into being much earlier than its official founding date of 1960. And if you have ever suspected that Amnesty International is anything but politically neutral, despite its stated policy of representing "prisoners of conscience" from both the left and the right, you will learn exactly how and why your suspicions are correct.

According to Veliz:

The Cold War experience would also have confirmed Münzenberg’s conviction that waged urbi et orbi, such campaigns would be ignored inside a communist world undisturbed by a free press and public opinion, but would undermine the moral status of policies advanced by the United States and its allies.

More about this blog: No story in real life ever comes to a tidy end. Stories continue to unfold, and unlike other media, this blog makes a point of following up on them. Each time you revisit this blog, you may find more links and discussion, and sometimes rolling updates, on developing stories.

So here's an update, as of June 19, 2007:

The hidden leftist agenda of AI again comes to light in this recent article, Vatican Calls for Catholics to Stop Supporting Amnesty Int'l. One need not be a Catholic to regard AI's recent activities as a grotesque betrayal of the organization's stated aims:

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the Vatican, called on Catholics to stop supporting the group.
“If in fact Amnesty International persists in this course of action, individuals and Catholic organizations must withdraw their support, because, in deciding to promote abortion rights, AI has betrayed its mission,” the National Catholic Register quoted him as saying.

Stein hoist to LittleGreenFootballs and
Gop3.com: The Triumvirate!

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How the U.S. and NATO were duped in the Balkans

It is no exaggeration to say that the recent U.S./NATO/EU war against the Serbs, and on behalf of the sl-Qaeda-linked Muslim jihadists in the Balkans, was the product of the slickest propaganda and disinformation operation in recorded history.

Only now is the real story beginning to get any traction...and some of us have worked for years to get this to this point. Even so, it is a rare thing for anybody with political, media, or academic connections to come out of the woodwork and admit that the mainstream media, together with official sources, enforced a totally false portrayal of a war and of an entire people. But the tissue of lies is finally starting to unravel, and the truth is coming out, whether anyone likes it or not.

At least one person, evidently without having read any of these articles, has already vilified me, by accusing me of "peddling genocide denial," simply for having raised this issue. I knew that was going to happen, because the mainstream media have usurped the roles of judge, jury, and executioner. The unthinking mob follows like lemmings, never imagining that the same thing could someday happen to them. The instant that the media have accused someone of a heinous offense, whether there is any basis for it or not, it's already too late. From then on, anyone else who dares to say, "Let's take another look at the evidence!" is immediately tarred with the same brush.

Have Americans learned anything from the Michael Nifong bogus-rape case? Or from Nifong's disbarment and suspension for numerous acts of prosecutorial misconduct, such as withholding exculpatory evidence? Or from the fact that Nifong was more than willing to continue ruining the lives of innocent people, rather than man up and admit that he had been mistaken?

Evidently not! So many people still want to believe that the Nifong debacle is an isolated instance. Not only is the Nifong case far from unique; but also it is a mirror in microcosm of the vast scope of deception, the prosecutorial abuse, and the total absence of due process of law, that have accompanied the recent wars against the Serbian people and their ongoing aftermath.

Just read these articles! Read them carefully. If you disagree with what you see, it behooves you to research the facts yourself before you comment. If you are afraid to read these articles, ask yourself why. And if you discover that you have had a mistaken impression of what was going on, grow up and admit it!

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Updated: Was GWB's wristwatch stolen while he was meeting a crowd in Albania?

This video from HotAir is a must see.

More here from the Byzantine Sacred Art Blog.

It's just too ironic for words. This incident just had to happen immediately after Bush promised the Albanians that he would grant "independence" to Kosovo.

Over the fully justified objections of Serbia and Russia, Bush promised something that is not his to give. Kosovo is legally part of Serbia, but it has been under US/Nato/EU occupation since 1999. During that time, the occupiers have allowed organized crime and jihadism to run rampant in Kosovo.

This world doesn't need a fountain of youth; it needs a fountain of common sense. The U.S. proclaims that it is fighting a "global war on terror." At the same time, it is attempting to take land that is sacred to Christian Serbs, with no legal justification whatsoever, and turn it over to Albanian Muslim jihadist rule.

I suppose this is Bush's idea of "democracy," and that's exactly what would happen. After all, "democracy" means "mob rule." People with any common sense would never want to live under democracy - instead, they would insist on the safeguards inherent in a republic.

For myself, I just wish we had the caliber of people, both in Serbia and in the U.S., that Serbia had during medieval times. Nearly all of Serbia's medieval kings were later canonized as saints, and deservedly so.

Update: The spin-doctoring begins...

One problem with all of this spin-doctoring is that Bush's high-speed sleight-of-hand in handing off the watch within a crowd of quick-moving people seems hard to believe. Nor does it show up anywhere on the video.

But even that is beside the point. Purely for the sake of argument, let's assume for a moment that Tony Snow was telling the truth in assuring us that GWB handed his watch to a Secret Service officer for safekeeping.

Why, then would Bush have suddenly decided, at the last moment, that he needed to put his watch in a safe place - unless he already knew that he was among people who would very likely steal it?

Here's yet another disconcerting thought:
What if Russia were to recognize the independence of California?
Don't laugh; it could happen!

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Saturday, June 9, 2007

Poli-Web 2.0 Made Simple

Eight Steps to Effective Online Political Activism:

Blog.

Whether you like to write, or you like to promote the writing of others, your blog is your link to Web 2.0. Services such as Blogger, WordPress and many others offer free hosting, and are user-friendly. You might as well grab a domain name you like while they’re relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain through services such as GoDaddy.com. Don’t think you have enough material for a blog? You can always join others, and blog as a team.

Link.

Link to the bloggers with similar interests, and ask them to link to your blog. The more high-quality links you have to your blog, the higher you will rank on the search engines like Google, and the easier you will be to find. Signing up with a blog search engine like Technorati will also give your blog more exposure to other bloggers who may wish to link to yours.

Socialize.

Social networking sites are having a big impact on the quality of the information that is available on the web. Social networking increases exposure to you blog, and gives you another way to interact online. Social networks include purely social sites like MySpace, as well as social news sites like Digg, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, and others.

Discuss.

Online discussions are happening around the world, 24/7, in internet forums like Delphi Forums, and groups services like those available through Yahoo and Google. Need help finding an online discussion in your area of interest? Try Omgili, a search engine for online discussions.

Wiki.

A wiki is a good way to compile and sort information for easy reference. It can be open to the public, or to members only. Free wiki services are available through Wikispaces, and others.

Recruit.

In addition to the online networking we’ve already discussed, it is important to remember that some of the people you want to attract may not even be online, and may not know how to find you. This is especially true if you wish to work with political activists who may be a bit older than the typical tech-junkie (who is about 22 and grew up on the internet). Your fellow activists may need to be drawn in through e-mail, and word-of-mouth, so don’t discount the value of good ol’ fashioned salesmanship.

Promote.

Once you have a great blog, you’re on everyone’s blogroll, you’re active in social networking and the discussion forums, you have a wiki to organize your information, then what? The internet is centered around what is happening right now. What you’re doing right now matters so much more than what you did a few months ago. Your blog needs to be current, as does the information you are promoting in your online discussions and networking activities. Your readers and online friends need a reason to continue returning to visit you. This can be done through relevant e-mail lists, periodical updates, freebies, or reliably updated content.

Geek-Up.

Political Bloggers are finding new and innovative ways to interact online through technology, like webcasting (HotAir), daily feeds, (AmericanMinute), and 3-D (Ron Paul – Second Life). Remember, it is important not to use technology simply for the sake of having a cool gadget. Using bandwidth for no real purpose, makes the pages download too slowly, discouraging participation. But technology can be used effectively to make your content more fun, interesting, and attractive. Yes, improved technology costs money. Political activists are already investing money in making sure that their political viewpoints are well-represented online. What is it worth to be sure that your views are also represented?

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Tuesday, June 5, 2007

It's time for the U.S. to get out of Russia's face

According to the mainstream media, a new Cold War is starting between the U.S. and Russia. As they see it, Russia in general, and Putin in particular, is always in the wrong.

I say that's hogwash. There's no earthly reason why Russia should be our enemy, except for the fact that the U.S. has been doing everything it can to encroach on their space, against our own interests as well as theirs. Why do we insist on repeating the mistakes of the nineteenth-century British Empire? Instead, there are plenty of good reasons why the U.S. should clean up its act and stand shoulder to shoulder with Russia against the jihadists.

In his column, Who Lost Russia? Pat Buchanan explains how our relations with Russia went wrong, and what we should do now. In my opinion, a sincere apology on our part would be a good place to start.

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Why it's vitally important to keep up the pressure on the Senate

Over at Pirate's Cove, William Teach warns us about what happens when we fail to keep up the pressure on our legislators:

Demotivation Monday: Immigration Backers Optimistic

In a nutshell, our elected senators and representatives, not to mention the President, all think that they can ignore us. Teach gives several reasons, but this is the one you need to see right now:

Third, the flood of angry calls, emails, protests, etc, probably did recede, as the people who were making them, particularly Conservatives, do not think that they have to continue to say the same thing again and again: they expect Senators to listen the first time.

Problem is, they didn't listen, so you gotta crank up the volume.

We'll make it easy for you. Refer back to our earlier post on this topic, Updated: No, it's NOT too late to stop the immigration "reform" bill! Use the links there to reach out and touch the senators from your state.

Need some more motivation?

Terrorists Use Mexico to Enter U.S.

Open borders means no barriers against terrorist infiltration. And despite what the "reformers" say, it's impossible to do an effective background check on an alien in one business day. Once they get in, it's too late.

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Monday, June 4, 2007

Why Conservatives Need to Geek-Up (Part 1)

If you are not a liberal when you’re 25 you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative when you’re 45, you have no brain.
This saying, sometimes credited to Winston Churchill, seems to hold a bit of universal truth, as does the notion that the young people of a generation affect change, while the older folks lend stability. This certainly seems to be the case when it comes to politics online in the 21st century (allowing, of course, for exceptions such as the Young Republicans clubs and the die-hard hippies).

Web 2.0 technology affects our lives online in the form of blogs, online citizen journalism sites (social news), wiki’s, folksonomies, social networking sites, collaborative bookmarking sites, podcasts, aggregators (e.g. RSS), semantic web, collaborative software, and other online scenarios in which users create and share content such as graphics, news, information, technology, creative writing, software, photos, and videos. The original World Wide Web gave us the opportunity to share information by posting what we had to say, and by reading what others had to say. Web 2.0 takes that concept to the next level, by giving users the opportunity to collectively influence what information is available and how the information is distributed.

Today’s twenty-somethings grew up online, and generally seem to be more intuitively tech-savvy and more comfortable with online collaboration than those of us that are older (“older,” in this case meaning anyone over 35!). It is no wonder, then, that there is a noticeable liberal/progressive majority in the politics discussions of any of the social networking sites, which extensively utilize the newest technologies and the art of collaboration.

Largely due to Web 2.0 technology as well as increasingly interactive search engines, there is a growing body of knowledge online that is taking on a life of its own, and it is very influential. Features such as Google PageRank assure that the majority view of any issue is likely to be the first available information on any given topic. Anyone interested in the accuracy of the information that is being disseminated online, needs to have a voice in this increasingly important global discussion.

As conservatives, we need to understand and utilize Web 2.0 technology if we want this body of knowledge to even partially reflect our values, attitudes, respect for history, and vision for the future.

(Go to Part 2 of 3)
(Go to Part 3 of 3)
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Why Conservatives Need to Geek-Up (Part 2)

(Go to Part 1 of 3)

When I was growing up, if I had a question, I was often encouraged by a parent or teacher to go look for the answer in a dictionary, the encyclopedia, or in the library. Students of all ages have it a lot easier, as they often need to go no further than their closest internet connection, so that they can Google, Yahoo, or Dogpile, or Ask Jeeves for the answers to their questions.

It’s so easy, and convenient. Just type in a few keywords, and voila! Often hundreds of pages of information is instantly available on any given topic. But we don’t sort through all of those pages, do we? I personally almost never go past the first, second, or rarely the third page. So who controls what information populates those first pages?

There is an entire career field dedicated to getting websites promoted to this highly coveted location, called search engine optimization (SEO). There are directories, crawlers, and paid listings. Organizations such as SearchEngineWatch.com offer suggestions online for getting websites closer to that front page, and explaining the hierarchy of search engines.

Google PageRank’s webmaster center explains, “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.” High quality sites, as it turns out, are pages that have a lot of traffic, and have lots of other sites linking directly them. See a pattern? The more links you have to your site, the more traffic you will get, hopefully resulting in more links. There is a compounding effect.

Why do conservatives need to understand this? As we discussed in part one, there is a noticeable liberal/progressive majority in the politics discussions of any of the social networking sites, which extensively utilize the newest technologies and the art of collaboration. This is also reflected in the information that is available online through a typical search.

The compounding affect of the search engine algorithms assures that the majority view will continue to be the majority view. Want to test this theory? Try the following searches in any of the search engines, and see if the first page leans right or left: Iraq war, immigration, or gender.

Curious about where your favorite websites rank on Google? Try this free PageRank checker.

(Go to Part 3 of 3)

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Why Conservatives Need to Geek-Up (Part 3)

(Go to Part 1 of 3)
(Go to Part 2 of 3)

(This Third Installment is by Jenn Sierra and TXPoet, with research assistance from 1389.)

This is the third and final installment of this series explaining why Conservatives need to become more active in the Web 2.0 environment. Part One discussed the generational gap, generally between liberals and conservatives online, while Part Two discussed the how this gap is creating an imbalance of information readily available online through a typical search engine query. We will finish this series by highlighting a few of the major figures supporting Web 2.0 financially, showing how their political leaning is further compounding the imbalance in the information war.

Online social networkers are familiar with Digg.com, the current top social bookmarking site, which has enjoyed unprecedented success in social networking, through its use of bookmarking and syndication, with over 15 million visitors per month.

Where does a site like Digg get funding? Who are its investors? Primary Greylock Partners and the Omidyar Network. The Greylock Partner team is an international investor in primarily technology and medicine, with a special interest in Israel. The Omidyar Network “has invested in a variety of areas, including microfinance, participatory media, open innovation, open source and transparency in government.”
In addition to investing financially, the Omidyar Network is on mission: “Ultimately, we hope that people everywhere will constructively engage with each other to pursue what they care about most, resulting in a global society that is continually advancing social progress.”

If the name Omidyar rings a bell, it’s because Pierre Omidyar is the founder of e-Bay, a philanthropist who is #43 on Forbes’ list of billionaires, and a benefactor of a microfinance fund at Tufts University.Omidyar’s COO is Iqbal Paroo, a Shia Imami Nizari Ismaili, whose interests involve complex healthcare and higher education. He has a long history of involvement with the Aga Khan Foundation (1977-2000), and “From 1977-1980, he served the Aga Khan Foundation as both director of commissioning for the initial phase of the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan,” which has “teaching and research programmes in Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Afghanistan and the United Kingdom,” the university is billed as “an agent of change” and “an important force for pluralism.”

Omidyar and Paroo are champions for the left’s most sacred causes, and now their organization is one of the primary investors in the largest, most influential social-networking site on the web.

Where is the conservative counterpart?

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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Capt. Lance Peter Sijan, USAF

Here is the story of the heroic service of Capt. Lance Peter Sijan, as recounted by the United States Air Force. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroism during the Vietnam War, where he died as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. He displayed this strength of character not just at one particular time of great danger, but consistently throughout a long ordeal.

The USAF website noted the Irish heritage of Capt. Sijan's mother, but not the Serbian heritage of his father. Capt. Sijan's Wikipedia biography does mention this.

Capt. Sijan was not the only Serbian-American awarded the Medal of Honor. Reportedly, a greater proportion of Serbian-Americans per capita have been awarded the Medal of Honor than any other ethnic group serving in the U.S. military.

Sadly, credit is not being given where credit is due. Not long ago, the U.S. was at war with Serbia, for reasons that did not prove justifiable in retrospect - which is why the mainstream media has so little to say about the Balkans at present. Even now, the U.S. State Department is still trying to detach Kosovo from Serbia to turn it over to jihadist rule, and to sell out the Bosnian Serbs as well, in defiance of all common sense. Encouraging the public to admire a Serbian-American hero would no doubt raise too many embarrassing questions about past and present foreign policy mistakes, and about those bureaucrats, journalists, and elected officials who are clearly to blame.

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Introducing Ft. Hard Knox for Politically-Conservative Web 2.0 Activists

Fellow blogger Ron Goodwyne introduces this new blog:

The project is called Ft. Hard Knox and you can find it at www.FortHardKnox.com. Of course you’ll find excellent conservative commentary and opinion there but that is not its primary purpose. It is designed to combine blogging, wikkis and message boards in one platform to involve people who are not necessarily web savvy.
Some of the authors on 1389 Mobile Blog will be helping out at Ft. Hard Knox as well.
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