Obama Campaign Tactics: Voter Suppression Depends on Media Help

PUMA Revelations:
Obama Campaign Secrets



The Obama Plan to Suppress McCain Voters

* Astro-turfing
* Poll-itics
* True Confessions

Mainstream Media: "We'll Help Wherever We Can!"

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An interesting post which confirms talk on the PUMA sites. The view from both an anonymous former Hillary staffer/Obama campaign worker and other info posted on PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) sites jive.

The main points?

• Don't believe the polls.
• Obama's campaign main goal has been to keep conservatives divided.
• Former Hillary voters are not meekly lining up behind Obama.
• Democrats are actively working for John McCain in many areas.
• The "Sarah Palin is bad" meme is wrong.
• People do care about Obama's radical associations.

Who is this anonymous Obama workers?

"First, a little personal background… I am a female grad student in my 20’s, and a registered Democrat. During the primaries, I was a campaign worker for the Clinton candidacy. I believed in her and still do, staying all the way to the bitter end. And believe me, it was bitter."

From
What you were never intended to know in this election:

I’m going to let you in on a few secrets here, and this is not because I enjoy the gossip or the attention directed my way. I’m doing this because I doubt much of you know the true weaknesses of Obama. Another reason for my doing this is that I am lost faith in this campaign, and feel that this choice has been forced on many people in this country. Put simply, you are being manipulated. That was and is our job – to manipulate you (the electorate) and the media (we already had them months ago). Our goal is to create chaos with the other side, not hope. I’ve come to the realization (as the campaign already has) that if this comes to the issues, Barack Obama doesn’t have a chance. His only chance is to foster disorganization, chaos, despair, and a sense of inevitability among the Republicans. It has worked up until now.

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What's the Plan?



More from the Anonymous Obama worker:

Put simply, you are being manipulated. That was and is our job – to manipulate you (the electorate) and the media (we already had them months ago). Our goal is to create chaos with the other side, not hope. I’ve come to the realization (as the campaign already has) that if this comes to the issues, Barack Obama doesn’t have a chance. His only chance is to foster disorganization, chaos, despair, and a sense of inevitability among the Republicans. It has worked up until now. Joe the Plumber has put the focus on the issues again, and this scares us more than anything.

Conservative websites have seen an influx of Obama supporters spamming the comments section of story which are less than complimentary of BHO. There's been numerous reports of the Obama "astroturfing" (giving the impression that this orchestrated comment spamming is from the grass roots).

This seems to confirm it.

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The following might sound familiar to anyone following the inane Mainstream Media coverage of Election 2008. It also confirms what DBKP, in September, called "MSM voter suppression". [Obama, Mainstream Media: MSM Actively Engaged in Voter Suppression]

From Three things the Obamedia will do to depress Republican turnout and help Obama :

This is really intended for Republicans who did not follow the primaries on the Democrats’ side this year (because, well, we guess you took a nice long Atlantis cruise to Mars, in which case, color us jealous).

The same pattern that unfolded during our primaries is happening again, because the media has just one tattered old used playbook (written by David Axelrod, of course), and they have not deviated from it yet. What the media and Obama campaign did, in concert, to Hillary Clinton before every major primary is what they are doing to McCain/Palin now. Here are the top three media/Obama head tricks to watch out for in the last days before the election.

The three things?

• (1) Calls for McCain to just give up and quit, because the race is over.
  This one is a favorite of the trolls who lurk on pro-McCain sites. We get them here, despite all the spraying and fumigating we do, but notice how we ignore these trolls. We’ve identified two paid Obama staffers who have been assigned to HillBuzz. We picked them up around the same time people from Ace and LGF started picking up some of our stuff — so our guess is they were assigned to us by whoever was monitoring those sites. They’re different trolls than the ones assigned to us during the primaries (we only had one back then, so evidently we’ve gotten more on the radar now). One of them starts posting “her” concern troll remarks here at 8am. The other one starts “his” remarks around 5pm or so. It appears there are two shifts for the trolls — and from what we can see, they share the same computer and IP address. And it’s an address right here in Chicago.
• (2) Wild claims of Obama winning states that shock and surprise you.
  
  If you do just ONE THING today, we ask you a personal favor: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go to as many Republican blogs as you can and WARN THEM that the Obamedia will tell you all weekend that Obama is winning Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Florida, Iowa, Virginia, West Virginia, and other states we do not believe Obama will win (except for Iowa, which we still think goes to Obama, but our best sources claim McCain now leads in internals by 1 point). They are already starting to say truly crazy things like “Obama will win Louisiana and Arkansas!”, and that’s just nuts.
• (3) Repeated insistance that blacks and young people will decide this election, and they are all going to vote in record numbers for Obama.
  We, thus, believe Obama will not have much more support from blacks than Kerry did, since Democrats win almost all black voters anyway. This year will be no different.

The young?

The young may be restless, but many will not vote. Of those who do, some will vote McCain-Palin.


The anonymous Obama campaign worker's final thoughts?

"I changed my somewhat positive opinion of this campaign during the unfair and sexist campaign against Sarah Palin. I will never agree with her on the issues and will probably never vote for her, but I am embarrassed of what has happened. I can’t ignore our own hand in all of this. What I do know is that I will not be voting for Obama this time around."

DBKP said it in September: the Mainstream Media has been engaged in a massive effort of voter suppression. Their wildly-skewed pro-Obama coverage is not only evident, it's empirical.

It should be embarrassing to any so-called "journalist" in the Big Media employ.

2008: The year that the Mainstream press suppressed the John Edwards Scandal for 10 months. The year that the MSM abandoned reporting--in favor of actively campaigning for their favored candidate.

That campaign has now reached such proportions as to be labeled 'voter suppression'.


by Mondo Frazier
images: dbkp file

Mainstream Media Practicing Voter Suppression

Mainstream Media's Favorite Voter Suppression Methods
* Lie, Damn Lies and MSM Polls
* Projecting the Media Favorite as the Winner
* Exit Polls and Fraud
* Pro-Obama, Anti-McCain-Palin Bias
* Hit Pieces Masquerading as "News"




The Mainstream Media is conducting a none-too-sophisticated campaign of conservative voter suppression. It's Big Media's largest partisan campaign effort--ever.

Voter suppression is a form of electoral fraud and refers to the use of governmental power, political campaign strategy, and private resources aimed at suppressing (i.e. reducing) the total vote of opposition candidacies instead of attempting to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters. This method is particularly effective if a significant amount of voters are intimidated individually because the voter might not consider his or her single vote important.

Is the blatant pro-Obama, anti-McCain-Palin Mainstream Media bias an attempt at voter suppression?

Some conservatives and independents--after listening to CNN, the AP and other MSM reports--may not vote in November. Perhaps, deciding that it will do no good--as they've been told repeatedly that the election has already been decided in Barack Obama's favor.

Previously, the MSM usually reserved voter suppression efforts to Election Day: calling Florida for Al Gore, broadcasting that the polls in Florida were closed in 2000 and the Kerry exit poll hoax in 2004. Before election day, the MSM contented themselves with publishing wildly-skewed polls, which strangely, always favored the Democrats by wide margins. [See below.]

POLLS SEEMS to SKEW WRONG--ONE WAY MSM polls from 1976-2004 [with the exceptions of 1984 and 1996] always work out wrong. And they prove to be consistently wrong in the same way: they predict victory for the candidate with the "D" after his name. 1976 Late July - Gallup Poll Jimmy Carter 62% Gerald Ford 30% Election Results Carter 50.1% Ford 48.0% ----- 1980 November Gallup Pre-election Poll Carter 44% Reagan 41% Election Results Reagan 50.7% Carter 41.0% ---- 1988 CBS-New York Times Poll Michael Dukakis 49% George Bush 39% Election Results Bush 53.4% Dukakis 45.6% ----- 1992 June 1992 Time/CNN Poll Ross Perot 37% George Bush 24% Bill Clinton 24% Election Results Clinton 43.0% Bush 37.4% Perot 18.9% ----- 2000 Sept 2000 Newsweek Al Gore 49% George W. Bush 39% Election Results Bush 47.9% Gore 48.4% by Mondo image: daytona beach real estate Sources: * General Election Polls: A History of Inaccuracy * Wikipedia

One of the most egregious example of MSM voter suppression tactics is the exit polls. This fraud reached its most distorted heights in 2004, when voters in the afternoon learned, via the major networks, that John Kerry was not only winning--he was winning in a landslide.

John Wambough wrote in January 2005 about the exit poll scam.

Shortly after 1pm on Election Day the National Networks' raw exit-poll data was posted on the Internet showing Kerry winning the National Election in a landslide. From the standpoint of the American voter, this data was projecting / forecasting / indicating the winner of the National Election and it was doing so before a single poll had closed in any state. Stringent Network standards for projecting or calling a state over the national airways mean little when the Internet is used as an alternative avenue for subverting the electoral process.

...

National Network disinformation tactics (telling the public the polls were closed when they weren't and telling the public that Al Gore had won the election when he didn't) proved highly effective in curtailing Florida voting in Election 2000. Many citizens of the Florida Panhandle know voters who chose not to vote once the networks (CBS in particular) announced that all Florida polls were closed and that Al Gore had won Florida and therefore the National Election. According to the Clerk for Elections, Okaloosa County, Florida: "In past elections, there was usually a rush of people coming from work, trying to get to vote before the polls closed" Soon after 6 p.m. in the Central Time Zone, voting volume dropped almost to zero in 361 polling places in the Panhandle.
--Election 2004: exit-poll disinformation hoax backfires?

When the obituary of the Mainstream Media is written, 2008 will go down as a year when all pretenses of objectivity were dropped. Not content to rely on the usual tactics of anti-conservative (Republican) stories, skewed polls and election day shenanigans, MSM editors are leaving nothing to chance, in what might be, their last hurrah.

The onslaught of pro-Obama, anti-McCain-Palin propaganda pieces, parading as "news" stories, far surpasses anything the MSM has attempted in years past.

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS:

"Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

Is it any wonder that three times more Americans believe in UFOs than trust the Mainstream Media?

Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom, asks Can 50 million Americans file suit for fraud?: "Because that would be the kind of big news not even the mainstream press could make disappear."

The Anchoress lays out an eerily-Apocalypic scenario “The fix is in, and it’s working…”

I suppose this is why print media and the press in general don’t care about their tumbling revenues; when The Pelosi gets the regulated internet and restricted Congress that she wants, and Obama gets his thugs and his Justice Department monitoring, intimidating and shutting down alternative media (and the dissenting voices we’ve been told are “patriotic” when a Republican is in the White House) the incestuous mainstream press will go back to being the only game in town. Pravda West.

Anchoress reader Eric Schubert: "The Edwards debacle was proof enough of where the heart of the MSM lies, and lack of curiousity of the press about Edwards probably cost Hillary the nomination. And that shameful episode offers a warning to the MSM. What if Obama does have a skeleton in his closet (such as a shady deal or outright bribe) that is revealed after he wins the election? While the chance of this scenario is remote, imagine the backlash against the MSM if it could be shown that a reasonable investigation by the MSM would have easily revealed this secret to the public prior to the election?"

[
John Edwards and Sarah Palin did indeed get very different MSM coverage.]

John Hinderaker at Powerline agrees that the fix is in, it is working--and you knew it all along.

Sadly, it's true: it is indeed working. We live in a political system that has not yet been adequately described, but one might call it a "mediated democracy." Mediated by a self-appointed, generally ignorant but highly opinionated "elite" that is not elite by any conventional measure--income, intelligence, education, social position--but that successfully dictates the terms of political discourse even though it no longer controls (exclusively, anyway) the means of production of the news.

The MSM is "In the Tank and not even Trying", according to Confederate Yankee.

If you recall, several weeks ago Charlie Gibson used a doctored quote when interviewing Sarah Palin.

Gene Johnson of the Associated Press was the person (I hesitate to use the term journalist at this point) who purposefully truncated the quote to make it mean something entirely different, and so I contacted his superior, and noted he had clearly violated APs code of ethics by doctoring the quote.

After a period of silence, I asked the AP "In what way is altering a subject's quote to change the entire context of the quote, and present an entirely false interpretation of what the subject clearly said, not at odds with the Associated Press' ethics policy?"

The AP's response?

"[T]he remark could be interpreted in different ways".

Of course, when it comes to the Blogosphere, the AP's position is that they have no ethics.

Details about Barack Obama, the questionable tactics traced back to his campaign and his many questionable associates get the "John Edwards treatment" in the Mainstream press. [See also "Barack Obama: The Strong-Arm Tactics of Team Obama", "Sarah Palin, Hillary Attacks: Fear and Loathing in the MSM" and "Sarah Palin: Far Left French Foppery, Vampires, and Elitist Palin Attacks".]

As shown with the John Edwards affair/scandal/coverup, the AP's ethics are highly-situational. The Edwards story demonstrated not only the MSM's blantant failure to report, but also a damning indictment to even investigate allegations concerning a Democrat presidential candidate.

Allegations which were true.

CNN, CBS, NBC, Time, Newsweek, the New York Times grudgingly ran articles of the Edwards' affair only after John Edwards himself gave them the go-ahead on August 8. They have since descended into their comforting media blackout, with only ABC News pursuing the Edwards' money trail.

Is the MSM voter suppression effort coordinated?

Only in the sense that like-minded people are inclined to act the same way at different times and places. Just because cars get stolen on the same day in Florida, Wisconsin and Maine doesn't mean the thieves in those different locales are operating as a criminal conspiracy.

It only indicates that people who steal cars are active in all three states at the same time.

Is the massive MSM bias another attempt at voter suppression?

Does the Pope wear a beanie?

Will any MSM outlet question the tilted coverage in favor of Barack Obama?

Will Big Media be successful? What new tactics will the MSM unveil on Election Day 2008?

As always, the election day results will be the judge.

But Big Media has moved from reporting the news into injecting themselves into the political process, into becoming the news itself.

In Election 2008, they have dropped all pretenses of a disinterested, objective press.

The Mainstream Media, like the Chicago machine, are not content with watching events on Election Day unfold.

They want to be the kingmakers.


NOTES:

* It's interesting that the "voter suppression" article at Wikipedia cites "caging lists" as a form of voter suppression.

Caging lists have been used by political parties to eliminate potential voters from the other party's voting roll. A political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable the party uses that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent.

Huh?

That sounds like a good way to prevent voter fraud--unless the Wiki writer is a project director for ACORN.


* MSM PALIN ATTACKS

Patterico not only fact-checks the LA Times on Sarah Palin--something that might exhaust the resources of a small army working around the clock--he also provides comic relief by working in a reference and video to convicted conman, Larry Sinclair.


by Mondo Frazier
image: stealing democracy

Smoke Nazis or 1930s Nazi: Little Difference in Tactics

Present-day anti-smoking forces are following the same blueprint that Adolph Hitler used in his hopes for a smoke-free Nazi Germany. Smoke Nazis' quest for control and regulatory power closely mirror the original National Socialists of 1930s Germany.

We list the Nazi anti-smoking accomplishments alongside of those of the Smoke Nazis.

It reveals where the Health Nazis are headed.




* The Nazis banned tobacco advertising and financed huge public relations campaigns to propagandize people into giving up smoking.

In April 1970, Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act banning the advertising of cigarettes on television and radio starting on January 2, 1971. The Virginia Slims brand was in the last commercial shown, with "a 60-second revue from flapper to Female Lib", shown at 11:59 p.m. on January 1 during a break on The Tonight Show.

* The first modern, nationwide tobacco ban was imposed by the Nazi Party in every German university, post office, military hospital and Nazi Party office, under the auspices of Karl Astel's Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, created in 1941 under direct orders from Adolf Hitler himself. Major anti-tobacco campaigns were widely broadcast by the Nazis until the demise of the regime in 1945.

In 1975, the U.S. state of Minnesota enacted the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act, making it the first state to ban smoking in most public spaces. To begin with, restaurants were required to have No Smoking sections, and bars were exempt from the Act. As of 1 October 2007, Minnesota signed into law a ban on smoking completely from all restaurants and bars throughout the state. This is the Freedom to Breathe Act of 2007. In 1990, the city of San Luis Obispo, California, U.S.A. became the first city in the world to ban indoor smoking at all public places, including bars and restaurants.

There are now 35 states with some form of smoking ban on the books.

* A ban on smoking in private vehicles was called for.

Gain for anti-smoking movement: No puffs allowed in private vehicles
BERKELEY, CAL--Some hospitals have banned smoking inside a person's own vehicle if it's on hospital property, a step viewed as logical by the anti-smoking movement but repugnant to its critics.

* The term "passive smoking" (Passivrauchen) was coined by the Nazi Anti-Tobacco League. Its author, Fritz Lickint, offered no supporting evidence to claim that smokers poisoned everyone around them, while also stating that drinking coffee caused cancer.

Fact: In 1995 The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a review of the EPA report [on second-hand smoke.] The CRS was highly critical of both the EPA's methods and conclusions.

Fact: According to the CRS "The studies relied primarily on questionnaires to the case and control members, or their surrogates, to determine EST [Environmental Tobacco Smoke] exposure and other information pertinent to the studies.

"


* The Nazi anti-smoking crusade was unleashed with the help of manufactured junk science on behalf of the medical and health establishment, one such example being that smoking caused "spontaneous abortions" in pregnant women.

Cherry-picked Science on Secondhand Smoke
In a recent paper entitled “Sorting Out Junk Science,” published by the American Council on Science and Health, a toxicologist notes that she most often sees junk science when a regulatory agency “puts political objectives ahead of scientific integrity.” It occurs, for example, when an agency adopts a political position and then “selectively seeks data that support and further that position, even to the point of actively excluding any results which are inconsistent with that position.”
Results that are inconsistent with the desired position (banning smoking) are simply excluded.

* Hitler attempted to price out smoking for Germans, levying huge taxes on cigarettes.

"On June 3, the state cigarette tax increased by $1.25, to $2.75. With the $1.50 city tax, the total retail price for a pack is now the highest in the country—around $9."
--NY Magazine: The Unsmokables

"More states that haven't (raised taxes) should do so. This will stop tax-skirting smuggling of cigarettes from low-tax to high-tax states and discourage youth smoking," Todd said.
--American Cancer Society: How to Fight Teen Smoking

Despite the Nazi propaganda crusade against smoking, tobacco sales increased in Germany, leading some history professors to hypothesize that smoking was an act of cultural resistance against fascism, until the late 1930's after smoking was banned in most public buildings and tobacco sales rapidly declined.

This war against smoking is being waged by the same types who were responsible for Prohibition. Smoke Nazis come in different flavors.

For some, it's a misguided attempt to remake society into a "better place"--and, of course, they get to define "better". The urge to feel morally superior to evil smokers is practically overwhelming for this breed of Smoke Nazi.

For others, it's all about control: nothing can quite duplicate the feeling of telling others what to do for this brand of Smoke Nazi. They are most like the Nazis of the 1930s: it was also about control for them as well.




If you smoke, then it's open season on your personal freedom of choice. Smoke Nazis had good teachers: the original Nazis had no use for choice; they wanted smoking gone at any price. However,smokers can take heart: they won't be the last to be singled out by the Health Nazis.

Sadly, many non-smokers stand on the sidelines, while their neighbors, friends and family are systematically demonized. They wrongly think that they have no side in this fight. They don't smoke, but smoking doesn't bother them, so they don't care who wins.

These non-smoking bystanders are dead wrong: it will affect them, sooner or later.

If smoking were outlawed (as happened to marijuana in the 1930s) completely, the Smoke Nazis won't stop their crusades to remake the world in their image. The overweight, the too-heavily perfumed, the junk-food eaters, the wearers of leather shoes and coats: these are next on the list of behaviors that some people find offensive. It's in the nature of the people calling the shots.

Once a Smoke Nazi tastes blood, they become insatiable.

by Mondoreb
Sources/images:
* Tobacco advertising
* Today's Anti-Smoking Purge Is Borrowed From The Nazis, Smoking is healthier than fascism
* infowars
* tommcmahon
*free-vegetarian.thumbnail.jpg"> myconfinedspace
* Smoking ban
* davehitt/facts
* Junk Science
* How to Fight Teen Smoking
* Higher cigarette taxes have smokers gasping

Cyber-Bully Quiz: Are You a Cyber-Bully?

Cyber-harassment, cyber-stalking, cyber-group bully, cyber-Gossip: all of these categories fall under the tactics of a cyber-bully.

Here is a quiz, take it and see it you’re a cyber-bully or if you've ever pulled some other cyber-bullying tactics during your time on-line.

Have you ever done this?

1.Signed on with someone else’s nic and password to get information.

While this does not seem like cyber-bullying if this information was to be used for ill-will, then, yes, it is cyber-bullying.

2. Sent an email or online greeting card from someone else’s account.

Again, some may claim that this is not cyber-bullying, if the email or online greeting is used to stalk or harass someone, then it falls under cyber-bullying.

3. Forwarded a private IM or email without permission.

This could be construed as a “grey” area. After all, it’s merely passing on a private email or IM and some would argue as fairly innocuous.

It boils down to intent.

Was the private conversation/email sent to someone or others with the intent to spread gossip or do harm? While most likely the victim may never know their communication has been forwarded to others, this is still harmful to that person. This is not direct cyber-bullying, more like back-stabbing cyber-bullying tactics.

4. Hacked into someone’s PC

Not only is this cyber-bullying but also cyber-stalking and illegal. A 33-yr-old man in Florida was just sentenced to prison for 110 years after being convicted of hacking into MySpace teenaged girl’s PC’s. He threatened to harm to them or their families if they didn’t send him lewd photos. MySpace: Teenaged Girl’s Profiles Hacked by Predator

5. Sent a virus or Trojan Horse?

This is malicious behavior with intent to do harm.

6. Posted rude, nasty or vicious comments about someone online

Back to intent. Some blogs or forums can get heated and contentious but if someone’s intent is to solely post rude, nasty or vicious comments about another poster then this is cyber-bullying and cyber-gossiping. The Jewish terms referring to gossip are Lashon Hara and Hotzaa Diba:

"Lashon" is translated as "language" or "tongue". The word is generally translated as "evil speech". It is true that the concept of lashon hara is regarding true and correct statements. Lies and false and exaggerated information fall into a worse category called Hotzaat Diba, or derogatory/slanderous or defamatory speech which is, in fact, worse than lashon hara in many ways.
[Reference.com]

7. Teased or frightened someone during IM chats

Teasing that goes over the line, that is meant to chip away someone’s self-esteem. The victim cries foul, the perpetrator claims “teasing.” Boo! (Not that kind of fright) Frightening someone can mean making threats to do harm.

8. Joined in a clique on a blog or chatroom that enjoyed driving other posters offsite

Not often talked about are the “community” blogs or chatrooms where “like-minded” posters form cliques. Part of their activities are to single out other posters for the sole purpose of driving the target off the site. This is often done in the guise of “for the good of the blog or chatroom.”

9. Accused someone of a crime online without proof

The person who is unfairly accused of committing a crime online usually has nowhere to turn. The accusers are for the most part, anonymous, the “accusation” gets spread without proof. An attorney has been fighting the website, “Don’tDateHimGirl.com” over anonymous posters who posted nasty stories about him. Attorney Sues Website That Claimed He Was a Cheater

10. Followed someone across the Web

Kept track of other online posters, following them from blog to blog, chatroom to chatroom, blog to blog. This is a form of soft-core Cyber-stalking. Not the same as showing up at their door but enough to creep anyone out.

Did you answer "yes" to any of these?

Only you know the answer to that question. If you did, maybe it was a one-time occurrence. Only you know the answer to that one, too.

If you were guilty of any of these actions, you should think about changing your behavior.

Unless you want to be a cyber-bully.

By LBG
[image: www.danimaton.com]

RESOURCES:
Want to learn more on cyber-bullies, their tactics and some things you can do to protect yourself? Start with these two sites.
Cyber Bullies
Exposing On-line Predators and Cyberpaths



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Anti-Nazis Use Nazi Methods to "Wreck" Oxford Debate

To the Left, a sense of irony has always been over-rated.

Socialists and others, proclaiming themselves anti-fascists, proceeded to use fascist tactics to shut down an Oxford Union debating club forum recently.

An eyewitness reports:

I was one of over a 1,000 protesters from all walks of life that gathered outside the Oxford Union debating club on Monday of this week to try and stop it from hosting a “forum” featuring two leading Nazis.

Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party(BNP) and Holocaust denier David Irving were to be two of the speakers at the debate. Neither is an appealing figure, but they weren't the only speakers who had their plans disrupted that night.

Their scheduled opponents never got to argue their cases either, thanks to the quick wits--and arms and legs--of the brave watchmen of British liberties.

The atmosphere at the protest was electric as people thronged around the Union building, arguing with those trying to attend the meeting.

The air was full of real political debate – in sharp contrast to the superficial rituals that the Union prides itself on.

The real debate of deciding if a real debate gets to take place. The witness has a real future if the Soviet Union is ever reconstituted.

Or Nazi Germany.

Getting to decide another's actions, or what is heard or said: it's enough to stir the blood of Socialist and Nazi alike.

People kept up a noisy presence by chanting and singing, when suddenly a gate swung open. Around 60 of us pushed our way into the Union compound past a pair of security guards that tried to rugby tackle us.

Eventually around 35 of us made it into the debating chamber – fending off attempts to physically block us by the Oxford Union’s champions of “free speech”.

We argued with the people inside, telling them that what went on in their chambers had real effects in the outside world.

At this point they decided to walk out of the debating chamber and hold their meetings with Nazis in two separate rooms elsewhere.

The atmosphere was getting ugly, so we negotiated to be let out.

One might remark that the atmosphere was plenty ugly well before that. But then that would spoil the mood.

The witness then recounts how he exited the building, "rejoining the protest outside to cheers."

Irony was not among the well-wishers, having long since departed.

It's disturbing whenever free and open debate is strangled. There's little doubt that had Griffin had 1000 of his cohorts and true-believers present, while the witness had tried to address a crowd, that the same results would have occurred.

Shout them down, shut them up: they're Nazis, they're Socialists, they're Jews.

The end justifies the means. What would Stalin do? Or Hitler or Mao or Che? What is Chavez doing at this very moment?

Tactics are tactics and totalitarian methods are totalitarian methods, no matter what the label.

The witness can slap some lipstick on his Nazi-like actions and pretend that they're now pretty and noble; just as he slapped some quotation marks around free speech and pretended that it wasn't.

The Brown Shirts excelled at disrupting the speech of anyone they disagreed with: breaking up meetings of opponents, shouting them down, hounding them in public until they silenced them. Physical violence shortly followed and grew.

As did the list of those whose speech they found disagreeable.

Once a group gets to decide who speaks and who is silenced, they develop a taste for it. Today's allies become tomorrow's enemies. And there's always a need for an enemy: a target's just the thing to produce an "electric atmosphere" among the faithful.

At least it can't happen in America. Can it?

Liberal zealots spend their days crafting Internet screeds against the coming Bush police state. The rants are so many, one would think they'd have time for little else.

But there's always time to be found to rush down to the College Union to fling a pie at the occasional conservative speaker who wanders on campus.

It's not really police state tactics if the target is Ann Coulter. After all, she's such a bitch.

A squelching of free speech is a squelching of free speech.

Hello Nick!
There's a reason that Nazis and White Supremacists and Socialists like our witness mainly flourish in the shadows with their cronies: when they come out into the light, most people can see how insanely ridiculous they are.

The issue of political elites not listening to their constituents is always a wild card in Europe, but I'll take the regular guy's good sense every time, Jerry Springer notwithstanding.

Give David Irving three hours of prime time every week and in less than six months, both he and his loony views will be as unpopular as any of the politicians who now hog the BBC's airwaves. As if they aren't already.

There'd be a line of historians from Oxford to Moscow forming up for a chance to debunk the nut.

If the Socialists are really interested in stamping out the BNP, they'd take up a collection so Nick Griffin could get his prime-time slot too. The British see through him. Let Nick have his chance to humiliate himself.

But then, that would be letting ordinary folk make up their own minds about what to hear.

Source: Socialist Worker, "1000 Anti-Fascists Wreck Oxford's Sham Debate"

by Mondoreb



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Spiter Finding Voters Not So Easy to Bully

After trying to roll NY voters on drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, a new title may be in order.

New York's voters are finding out what many financial figures discovered long before now: when Eliot Spitzer wants something, he's not going to let niceties stand in his way.

And Eliot Spitzer is finding out that New York voters think much about his latest attempt to strong-arm those with differing opinions.

Voters my dump Eliot Spitzer because of his license love for illegals immigrants. From the AP:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to provide illegal immigrants with driver's licenses has sunk his favorability rating to an all-time low of 41 percent, and has left only 25 percent of voters planning to re-elect him, according to a poll the Siena Research Institute released Tuesday.

Forty-six percent had an unfavorable opinion of Spitzer, and 49 percent said they would "prefer someone else" as the next governor. Last month, 54 percent of voters had a favorable opinion of the governor.

"Eliot Spitzer's standing with voters has fallen faster and further than any politician in recent New York history," Siena spokesman Steven Greenberg said in a written statement. "Everything may not have changed on day one but from the voters' perspective, everything about Governor Spitzer changed in year one."

Spitzer swept to office last November with nearly 70 percent of the vote, carried largely by his reputation as a reformer and his campaign pledge to change everything starting on "Day One."

Spitzer certainly lived up to his billing about changing things. New Yorkers are only now finding out what his ideas for changing involved. If you were one of his earlier objects of attention in the financial world, you already knew.

The New York Times now reports that Spitzer is dropping his whole license plan--at least for now.

Eliot Spitzer is used to telling a compliant media his ideas about his targets. And if his targets resisted his ideas, he'd use threats and bullyboy tactics.

Now that same media is telling Spitzer the voters' idea. He's didn't like it when he met resistance on the license issue.

He'll find that voters are a little harder to bully.

by Mondoreb
[image: hprsite]



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.