Crisis + Solution = “Common Sense” Gun Laws? Podcast of December 5, 2015 Show

Above is a picture of the two suspects. I had seen another picture of the woman in which she looked westernized as in this one. Since then, however, all pictures show her looking scarier and scarier and more and more foreign. But the most disturbing picture I have seen so far–and be forewarned, it’s VERY … Read more

Crisis + Solution = "Common Sense" Gun Laws? Podcast of December 5, 2015 Show

Above is a picture of the two suspects. I had seen another picture of the woman in which she looked westernized as in this one. Since then, however, all pictures show her looking scarier and scarier and more and more foreign. But the most disturbing picture I have seen so far–and be forewarned, it’s VERY … Read more

Defending the First Amendment or Undermining It? Podcast of May 9, 2015 Show

I’m worried that the atmosphere created by the attack of a Mohammed-drawing contest in Garland, Texas, will add to the complacency with which we are accepting a renewal of the unconstitutional USA Patriot Act this month–14 years after 9/11.  The contest was organized by Pam Geller who claims she is taking a stand for the First Amendment. My fear is that she has undermined it instead. Of course I defend her right to free speech, but I question whether her stated purpose will really be served. Listen to the show to get all sides of the story.

Pamela-Geller

Don’t these guys look more like Blackwater than “SWAT”? Are they Garland SWAT? If so, why was a Garland Traffic Cop and an unarmed Garland School District Security Guard the ones to face and take down the two jihadis wearing body armor and firing assault weapons mere hours after the FBI warned them to be on the lookout for one of these guys? (But see Texas police deny specific threat warning from FBI at cartoon contest shooting.)

Favorite quote of the show:
“All your words are like flowers that make a beautiful sausage.”

Favorite tweet of the show:

Hour 1

Hour 2

Hour 3


Here are links to some of the references made on the show this week….

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The Strip: ISIS militants skimming hundreds of millions of dollars of US funds: "A Dilemma for US & Bagdhad"

The only two installments of my “weekly column” The Strip appeared almost a year ago! I guess I’ll call it an annual column and consider myself ahead of the game! In any case, The Strip is about getting to the meat of the matter and stripping out the propaganda from a particularly egregious mainstream media story. Yesterday, such an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal, begging me to give it The Strip. Here it is…

The Propaganda

The article titled, Militants in Iraq Siphon State Pay: Islamic State skims funds headed for government employees in occupied areas, creating a dilemma for U.S. and Baghdad, reports that the US is giving hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Iraq government and one of the things the Iraq government is spending its money on is cash payments to government employees operating in captive ISIS territory. One or two thousand ISIS militants holding the city of Mosul in Iraq are forcing government workers there to remit 30% of their pay to the Islamic State. The White House is not comfortable directing the Iraq government to stop this flow of funds because “people can’t starve.”

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The Strip: ISIS militants skimming hundreds of millions of dollars of US funds: “A Dilemma for US & Bagdhad”

The only two installments of my “weekly column” The Strip appeared almost a year ago! I guess I’ll call it an annual column and consider myself ahead of the game! In any case, The Strip is about getting to the meat of the matter and stripping out the propaganda from a particularly egregious mainstream media story. Yesterday, such an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal, begging me to give it The Strip. Here it is…

The Propaganda

The article titled, Militants in Iraq Siphon State Pay: Islamic State skims funds headed for government employees in occupied areas, creating a dilemma for U.S. and Baghdad, reports that the US is giving hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Iraq government and one of the things the Iraq government is spending its money on is cash payments to government employees operating in captive ISIS territory. One or two thousand ISIS militants holding the city of Mosul in Iraq are forcing government workers there to remit 30% of their pay to the Islamic State. The White House is not comfortable directing the Iraq government to stop this flow of funds because “people can’t starve.”

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FoxNews Reports ISIS Video of Beheading Copts Faked

beheadpic1

In the article below, Fox reports that the ISIS video of beheading Egyptian Copts in Libya was filmed in a studio using green screens and fake blood. Therefore, there is no evidence that this crime even occurred in Libya (or really occurred at all), yet Egypt bombed Libya killing seven civilians less than 24 hours after the video was released. Are these the kind of irresponsible hotheads we want as allies? Coup-installed Egyptian leader Sisi has asked the US to help him “fight terrorists” within Egypt as well, but can his judgment be trusted? The thousands of Egyptians he has killed since the coup have been protestors of the coup–is that terrorism? I’m sure it terrifies him, but that’s not really the point. I have been suspicious of his true motives for the bombing since it happened. I think the real story is that we and our allies including Egypt cannot tolerate the emerging government in Libya that operates out of the capital, Tripoli, and controls the oil rich areas of the country. I suspect that all attacks on “Libya’s ISIS” will actually attack the Tripoli government’s infrastructure and ability to engage in the oil trade.

As for the video, FoxNews reports, “The footage was faked.” Specifically, the video was made in part in a studio against a green screen, and that the parts that were shot outside were shot at a bay not the ocean, so there’s no way it was shot where Egypt bombed; the sea turning red is a post production trick; there were only six men total – 3 victims & 3 jihadis (all of whom appear to be over 7 feet tall) – and that sequence was looped 7 times, so even if all the victims were killed, that means only 3 died, yet Egypt killed 7 innocent civilians in its raid on a location that turns out to be unrelated to where this video was made; and the blood was likely made of cornstarch and wasn’t actually pumping out of the victims–so there’s no hard or soft evidence that anyone even died. Given all this, why is the mainstream media still reporting that 21 Christians were killed? No explanation can change the fact that this video was faked and there is no evidence whatsoever that ISIS killed 21 Christians in Libya. Furthermore, the claim that this just proves how sophisticated ISIS is is an old Saul Alinsky trick – when something goes wrong, use it to your advantage. Similarly, soon after people started to notice that many of the jihadis had British or European accents, the news started reporting that many Westerners were joining ISIS. The bottom line is, as always, The Saint Peter Test...if you consent to Congress authorizing the use of force – that is, killing people – you had better be absolutely certain it is in genuine self-defense or you will have blood on your hands as Egypt does now.

(For more on ISIS: What if ISIS isn’t what it appears to be?)

Here’s the full story from Fox…

ISIS’ army of 7-footers? Experts say video of Copt beheadings manipulated

By Malia Zimmerman

Published February 21, 2015

| FoxNews.com

Video of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians being marched along a Libyan beach before being beheaded by black-clad members of ISIS is hard for any civilized person to watch, but experts who made it through the sickening, five-minute clip told FoxNews.com Friday they came to the same conclusion: The footage was faked.

No one holds out hope the victims, mostly poor fishermen who had gone to Libya to scratch out a living, are still alive. But several anomalies in the video, which was posted online Feb. 15, indicated to trained eyes that at least some of the production was done on “green screen” with background added later, perhaps to disguise the real location of the atrocity. A day after the clip went viral, Egyptian warplanes struck hard at an eastern port city near Tripoli, where the video appeared to have been shot.

“The Islamic State’s manipulation of their high-production videos has become commonplace,” said Veryan Khan, editorial director of the Florida-based Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium. The murders likely took place in a studio, and the background image shown was likely from another location, the Bay in Sirte, a part of the Mediterranean Sea on the northern coast of Libya, according to Khan. There are several technical mistakes in the video that show it was manipulated, she said.

The most obvious, Khan said, is the speaker, “Jihad Joseph” is much larger than the sea in both the close up and wide shots, and his head is bizarrely out of proportion, meaning he was filmed indoors and the sea added behind him, Khan said. In addition, the jihadists featured in the film look to be more than 7 feet tall, towering as much as two feet above their victims.

The perspective is something several Saudi Arabians noted in their tweets about the video, questioning whether the jihadists were a part of some sort of special forces unit since they were so large.

Hollywood horror film director Mary Lambert, who among her many film credits directed Pet Cemetery, analyzed the film for FoxNews.com and quickly concluded Khan was correct.

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