By M. Catharine Evans at American Thinker

EXCERPTS:

It’s been one year and two months since agent Terry died.  Within weeks of his demise, his shocking murder would illuminate a bizarre and murderous government plot to run guns, lots of guns — over 2,000 guns — into the hands of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Within 24 hours of Terry’s death, officials had traced two AK-47s to an ATF Phoenix-based operation dubbed Fast and Furious.

An amoral herd of left-wing journalists acting like “bootlicking propagandists,” as Orwell once called members of his own British press in 1944, might find it difficult in the long run to get away with suppressing a scandal involving mass murder.

Various  big media outlets that ran 120 stories of Herman Cain’s alleged sexual dalliances from November 2 to November 15 didn’t see a need to enlighten the masses about Fast and Furious.  The number of times “F and F” was mentioned in the same time span?  One.

Are informed journalists who remain silent in the face of evil culpable for sins of omission?  Are journalists who intentionally subvert truth and invert facts, allowing corrupt government officials to ride roughshod over the rule of law, complicit in the very crimes they’re covering up?

FULL ARTICLE

Washington Times Editorial

EXCERPTS:

The American Tradition Institute (ATI) is going after 12,000 emails sent or received by Michael E. Mann while he was on the staff of the publicly-funded university. Mr. Mann is famous for coming up with one of the “tricks” used to “hide the decline” in global temperatures.

The institute has about 200 emails that it obtained from a number of sources, including the Climategate leaks. The messages show preachers of imminent climate catastrophe like Mr. Mann weren’t interested in the kind of open discussion that allows scientific progress. Various exchanges included warnings to “PLEASE DELETE” the email after reading.

…. trillions of dollars are at stake with climate-policy decisions being made based on his work. From cap-and-trade to the Kyoto treaty, it’s not enough to make a choice based solely on a trust that this secretive cabal of climate scientists is telling the truth. The taxpayers paid Mr. Mann; they deserve to know exactly what they were getting for their money.

FULL ARTICLE

By Kenneth R. Timmerman – AIM Special Report

Authorities in Britain revoked the license of the Iranian regime’s English-language global television channel known as Press TV because of evidence that it is a propaganda outlet controlled by the Iranian regime. But the Obama Administration permits the channel to operate on American soil without a license and in violation of U.S. sanctions regulations, which ban commercial transactions with Iran. It appears to be another example of Obama coddling the terrorist regime.

British authorities justified the move by citing the specific example of a Press TV 2009 interview with a Newsweek correspondent held in an Iranian jail. British telecom regulator Ofcom found that the interview by Press TV with Maziar Bahari, who was jailed by the Iranian regime over his reporting of the disputed presidential elections in June 2009, was conducted under duress. It held that Press TV was in violation of its British broadcasting license because its content was dictated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the state broadcasting authority, and instructed the satellite carrier BSkyB to remove Press TV from its platform.

In the United States, the situation is even worse because although it operates openly in Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles, and regularly conducts interviews with such figures as Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, it does not have a license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). So far, the Obama Administration has done nothing to shut it down.

What appears to be lacking is a determination from OFAC pointing out the obvious—that the Iranian state propaganda channel is operating illegally in the U.S. Because of this failure to enforce the law, Press TV is able to operate a propaganda facility in downtown Washington, D.C. with a prestigious K Street address and send its operatives to observe and survey U.S. Government offices, under the cover of “freedom of the press.”

“While other countries might not respect the right to a free press, this is something we take very seriously,” an administration official told this reporter. “We like to stay true to our values.”

But why do our values permit accommodating the actions of an illegal television entity devoted to propaganda and support for an outlaw regime that the Obama Administration itself says supports international terrorism?

In the case at issue in Britain, Bahari was picked up by the Iranian authorities at his parents’ home in Tehran on June 21, 2009, and jailed for four months in Iran. After an international campaign won his release and he returned home four months later that October, Bahari said that his captors had forced him to read a prepared script in front of Press TV cameras, just as American POWs were forced to do in Vietnam.

Press TV has scrubbed the interview from its website but it was widely reported at the time. In the script his captors gave him to read, Bahari accused Western reporters of working “as spies,” and “confessed” that he had been covering “illegal demonstrations” as part of a Western effort to promote a “color revolution” in Iran. His family and the media dismissed his “confession” as clearly coerced.

Clinton Excuses Tehran

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed Iran hard to release Bahari, but never made a statement condemning Press TV for airing the coerced interview. “We’ve been condemning the Iranian government writ large on this, not any specific agency,” a State Department spokesman said.

The Obama Administration has continued to allow Press TV to operate unhindered in the United States, despite clear evidence that it is operating as a propaganda arm of the Iranian regime. Indeed, the State Department regularly entertains questions from Press TV reporters, and allows bloggers on its “DipNote” website to plug rabid anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda with links to Press TV articles and interviews.

“If Press TV were to request a license to operate here in the U.S., the activities that led to having their license removed in the UK would certainly be reviewed by us,” a U.S. official said. “But for now, we cannot take a similar action because they have no license.”

So because it operates illegally in violation of the law, the U.S. will take no action. This might be enough for administration lawyers, but it defies common sense.

Other Propaganda Outlets

Press TV is not the only Iranian government media organization operating in the United States. The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) operates Aftab TV, which broadcasts in Persian and operates a prominent website.

On December 28, 2006, for example, Aftab featured an interview with prominent pro-Tehran advocate Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian-American Council, NIAC. In prefacing the interview, Aftab stressed the importance of the “Iranian American lobby on behalf of the Iranian regime” and described it as the regime’s “unofficial diplomacy.”

Last year, IRIB opened yet another 24-hour TV network they billed as “Iran’s CNN,” called Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, IRINN TV. They began broadcasting in the U.S. with an hour-long live program from a new Washington, D.C. studio on April 6, 2011. Their flagship U.S. show is called “Two half-hours (Dow Nim Saat) that airs from 11 a.m. to noon everyday.

While most programs are in Persian, IRINN also broadcasts news in English via satellite to the U.S.

The regime has also lavished money on the print media as a means of maintaining an intimidating presence within the Iranian-American community. The U.S. edition of the Tehran daily, Etelaat, was printed in New York and flown via Federal Express to a dozen distribution points around the country for over two decades, until it was shut down last year after an undercover FBI investigation determined it was being funded illegally out of the Iranian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, a source involved in the investigation told me.

With the exception of Etelaat, the Obama Administration has continued to allow Iranian government media organizations to operate freely in the United States, mostly without licenses, despite nearly two decades of Iran sanctions that prohibit commercial exchanges between the U.S. and Iran.

Doubletalk from Obama

In a series of email and telephone exchanges, officials at the Department of the Treasury refused to acknowledge whether the administration or its predecessors had granted Press TV a license to operate in the United States.

“We are unable to comment publicly on organizations that may or may not have received licenses from OFAC. However, we note that as an official propaganda arm of the Iranian government, Press TV has a history of fabricating news and has faced lawsuits in the UK for airing forced confessions,” a Treasury Department official said.

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls issues trade sanctions guidelines and maintains the list of “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDNs) banned from doing business with U.S. persons.

In the case where an organization subject to U.S. sanctions continues to operate in the United States by moving money under the radar, OFAC has often acted quickly and without warning to shut them down. But not in this case.

Spewing Filth

Press TV spews out unending streams of anti-American propaganda in a full-service program mix that includes talk shows, news reports, and TV magazines, aimed at an American audience via satellite.

Professionally-produced—often times by Americans—these shows trot out a congeries of conspiracy theorists, Holocaust deniers and their apologists, masquerading as “analysts” and “political commentators” to give them a veneer of respectability.

In this case, Press TV appears to be emulating the old Soviet Union, which specialized in propaganda for the regime and against its enemies. The Soviet-led Comintern sent propaganda specialist Willi Muenzenberg to America to recruit propaganda agents.

The Iranian regime has invested heavily in Press TV because it understands the value of propagandists who speak unaccented English and who are not openly tied to the regime to spread its ideological “payload.”

Muenzenberg wrote the playbook that was later used by Press TV and much of the “politically-correct” left in the 1920s and 1930s, when he set up a vast web of cover influence operators stretching from media to academia to America’s newsrooms that continue to make their message felt way beyond the grave.

As former CIA propaganda expert Kent Clizbe explains in his book on Muenzenberg, “the goal of the operations was to make Americans feel that their country was bad.”

“You claim to be an independent-minded idealist,” said Muenzenberg’s widow, Babette Gross. “You don’t really understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break… You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country… You believe in peace… You yearn for international understanding… You think the capitalist system is corrupt.”

The propaganda from Occupy Wall Street appears to be a modern-day example of the Muenzenberg approach.

Press TV takes the anti-American propaganda to a global level. Like the old Soviet propaganda networks, Press TV uses Americans to make the case against their own government and society.

Consider the case of James Fetzer, “a prominent philosopher” who went on Press TV to comment on the violent turn of the Occupy movement in Oakland last November.

He blamed the police. A professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, Fetzer said, “We are seeing the increase in militarization of the police forces throughout the United States and that is a very bad tendency that has been taking place since 9/11. We see the rich getting richer and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. This gap has been widening since the administration of Ronald Reagan,” Fetzer said.

He went on: “What they are doing, the politicians are ignoring the needs of the average American and the working families. We have had increasing foreclosures, and unemployment is seen as the tip of an iceberg resistance to the corruption of politics in America… I believe this movement is not going to go away, and that what we are seeing is the real face of the police state of America has become.”

As it turns out, James H. Fetzer is indeed well-known—as a conspiracy theorist.

In a Wikipedia entry tagged by editors as “an autobiography,” Fetzer is described as “a well-known conspiracy theorist,” who has written extensively on the JFK assassination, 9/11, and the plane crash that killed U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone.

Fetzer claims, for example, that the film footage taken of the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 was “video fakery” caused by “holographic projects,” because the high-speed crash was “in violation of Newton’s laws” of physics.

His own website highlights his book, The 9/11 Conspiracy: The Scamming of America. A YouTube video shows Fetzer arguing that Senator Wellstone was assassinated, not killed by accident in a plane crash.

After a federal judge in District Court in New York issued a finding last December that Iran “shared responsibility with al Qaeda” for the 9/11 attacks, Press TV naturally turned to Fetzer for comment. Calling the ruling “preposterous,” he said he knew who was responsible for the attacks: Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad.

“Multiple investigations by independent journalists have revealed that Israel—the Mossad—played a key role in 9/11,” Fetzer said. “Look up ‘the dancing Israelis.’ Look up ‘urban moving systems.’ Look up ‘CITS ‘and you’ll find ample indication that Israel was profoundly involved in 9/11.”

Another Press TV Propagandist

Another propagandist used by Press TV as an on-air commentator is Mark Dankof, whose support for the Ron Paul presidential campaign we highlighted in an earlier story.

In a May 2011 article aimed at discrediting the Ofcom case against Press TV in Britain, Dankof hauled out the big artillery. Why was the British government attempting to shut down Press TV? It was, of course, all because of the Jews.

“It may not be a coincidence that the British Ofcom case against Press TV Iran pops up against the backdrop of Netanyahu’s state visit to the United States to press his own case for ongoing Talmudic Death and Destruction in the Middle East,” Dankof wrote.

The “logic” of his case went like this: Press TV accuser Maziar Bahari was a contributor to Newsweek, whose late chairman, Sidney Harman, was married to Rep. Jane Harman of California, a Jewish Democrat. “Mrs. Harman, in turn…proves to be the very member of Congress wiretapped by the American National Security Agency (NSA) conveying promises to Israeli agents that the dogs would be called off from tailing and successfully prosecuting the espionage case involving key executives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),” Dankof wrote.

In the article, “Empire continues to sweat over Press TV,” he went on, “This is the transparent connection in this case, as it is in other recent attacks on Press TV in the West involving media outlets and correspondents with provable connections to the American Jewish lobby; Israeli intelligence; and Neo-Conservatives thirsting for a War of Civilizations with Iran specifically, and the Islamic world generally.”

“If anyone wanted to run the traps and understand the connections, they should read the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” Dankof concluded. Press TV was being persecuted because it was “one of the few exceptions to The [Jewish] Lobby’s control of global print and electronically transmitted news and analysis.”

The Protocols was a Russian forgery designed to blame the Jews for the world’s problems. Muslim religious leaders and political leaders have touted its “accuracy” to me in interviews throughout the Middle East for decades.

More material of this sort can be found in the innumerable interviews Press TV conducts with “expert” Paul Sheldon Foote, whose favorite line is that “Crypto-Jews” have initiated a war between Christians and Muslims. Such arguments harken back to the ugliest forms of Western anti-Semitism.

The Rise of Press TV

When Press TV CEO Mohammad Sarafraz announced the creation of the new English-language satellite broadcasting channel in June 2007, he stated at the get-go that the goal was to spread the propaganda payload of the Tehran regime.

“Since September 11, Western bias has divided the media into two camps: those that favor their policies make up one group and the rest of the media are attached to radical Islamic groups like Al-Qaeda. We want to show that there is a different view. Iran, and the Shi’ites in particular, have become a focal point of world propaganda. From the media point of view, we are trying to give a second eye to Western audiences,” Sarafraz said.

While Press TV made some effort in its U.S. programming to invite guests who weren’t always fans of the Iranian regime, all pretense of its propaganda aims disappeared in May 2009, just before the stolen elections that gave Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office.

That was when a group of Ahmadinejad supporters raided the petty cash desk at Press TV’s Tehran headquarters and used the money to support Ahmadinejad’s election campaign, according to Press TV insiders who subsequently left or were forced to leave the network.

Since the June 2009 elections, opposition politicians, such as Mir Hossein and other challengers to Ahmadinejad, have been banned from the airwaves and Press TV has abandoned any pretense of even-handedness.

Skirting the Sanctions

Press TV has used a number of subterfuges to skirt the U.S. sanctions on commercial transactions with Iran.

From the start, Press TV has maintained close ties to the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, the Iranian regime’s only legal financial base in the United States. The UN mission may have paid some staff in cash brought in through the diplomatic bag. Press TV maintained an official presence at the Iranian Mission.

Because it could not incorporate directly in the United States, Press TV worked through production companies operating in the U.S., which in turn hired crew, correspondents, and producers.

Former Atlantic Television News (ATN) correspondent Colin Campbell questioned U.S. officials on Press TV’s behalf. ATN Productions Ltd. has seven reporters currently registered with the Senate Press Gallery: Nicholas Ewing, Affra Khallash, Taleb Khallash, Zina Khallash, Dirik Rice, Mohamed Said Ouafi, and Firas Tuma. The company is registered in Denmark and produces the weekly magazine show “American Dream,” hosted by an American, Nisa Islam.

ATN operates out of production studios located on K Street in downtown Washington, D.C. AIM Center for Investigative Journalism director Cliff Kincaid was invited and appeared on its “American Dream” program a couple of times, before realizing that ATN was operating as a front for the Iranians. When he criticized the Iranian regime on one of the programs, he was not invited back.

Press TV contacted Accuracy in Media on another occasion, looking for a guest for one of its programs to discuss why Republican Representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul was not getting more favorable attention from the U.S. media. Paul has pleased the Iranian regime by defending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. AIM declined the invitation but considered the request as more evidence of how foreign propaganda channels, such as Press TV and Russia Today, have embraced the foreign policy views of the Texas congressman.

The Press TV Media Universe

Press TV also contracts with American Press and TV Services (APTVS), an outfit run by Egyptian nationals Gamal Hassanein and Samir Ezeldin. Like ATN, they hire producers and camera crews to film events and conduct interviews at Press TV’s request.

“Gamal and Sam were running the operation, because Press TV was not allowed to incorporate here,” a former Press TV insider told me.

APTVS took over Press TV’s bureau at the United Nations in 2010. Like ATN, their correspondents and camera crews have all received press passes for the U.S. Capitol complex from the Senate Press Gallery. They hired Colin Campbell away from ATN, and have also registered the following staff with the Senate Press Gallery: Ibrahim Alshamrani, Moaz Attawia, Fahd Banhawy, Umut Colak, Samir Ezeldin, and Mike Kellerman.

The Senate press passes not only give the Press TV contractors access to the House and Senate chambers, but serve as accreditation for a much wider range of events reserved for members of the press corps, including White House, State Department, and Defense Department briefings. Although each of these three issues its own credentials to beat reporters (the “White House press corps,” etc.), the Senate press pass gets most reporters through the door for the occasional event.

Although APTVS and ATN are not part of Press TV, they produce “works for hire” for Press TV. Should OFAC decide to enforce the law, this could be construed to mean that they are engaging in unlicensed commercial transactions with Iran.

In an effort to forestall precisely such an investigation, APTVS for several years received payment from Press TV through a Palestinian production company in Ramallah run by silent partner Maher Shalabi, according to former Press TV insiders. On his Facebook page, Shalabi identifies himself as General Manager of that company, PMCC TV.

“Press TV used to contract Maher, and he then contracted with APTVS in Washington,” a former insider said. “APTVS then booked the guests and studios and conducted the interviews or satellite link-ups.” Shalabi also works for “Palestine TV,” and conducted a high-profile interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for that channel in 2010.

Do the activities of Press TV and these production companies fall within the “information” loop-hole of the Iran sanctions?

“If I am sending an academic journal, or some materials that actually will help the exchange of knowledge, that is allowed,” an Obama administration official told me. “But if I am actually conducting paid journalistic work, right now I still need a specific license to allow that to happen.”

Press TV does not have a license, this official hastened to add. “Therefore, they are operating illegally.”

Yet, the Obama Administration permits the channel to continue to operate in violation of the law. Congress should investigate.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is the New York Times best-selling author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum, 2005), among other works. His books and articles can be found at kentimmerman.com

By Judi McLeod at Canada Free Press

EXCERPTS:

The ‘Anti-Spooky Dude’ posse behind a new website called Sorosfiles.com, a project of America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI) has launched the ‘Bring Back Beck’ campaign: “Tell Fox News to stop selling out to Soros.”

Kincaid,  Loudon and Trent are the mainstays of a public policy group dedicated to exposing the role of hedge fund billionaire George Soros in Obama’s radical Transformation of America.

Red diaper babies have been taking over the Fox News nursery since Beck was shown out of Dodge.

FULL ARTICLE

By Cliff Kincaid 1-20-12

Sally Kohn, a former senior strategist at the Soros-funded Center for Community Change, has been hired as a Fox News Contributor. Soros is the controversial hedge fund billionaire, convicted of insider trading in France, who finances the “progressive” movement in the U.S.

It is significant that Kohn is now a regular paid commentator on Fox News, while Glenn Beck, the one-time archenemy of George Soros, was ousted from the channel last year and now hosts an Internet TV show.

An open lesbian who shuns feminine attire and frequently wears a suit jacket, Kohn is joining Fox News after being a regular on such programs as “The Ed Show” on liberal rival MSNBC. She is now officially part of the “Fox News Family,” as she puts it, and has been making appearances on the channel for several days.

The selection of Kohn raises disturbing questions about the direction of Fox News in a critical election year. Kohn worked at the Center for Community Change, one of the leading Soros-funded groups, for six years, from 2004—2010. During this period, the group received $5.8 million from Soros’s main vehicle, the Open Society Institute (OSI).

The former chair of the board of the Center for Community Change, Cecilia Munoz, was recently named the Director of the Domestic Policy Council in the White House, a position that makes her one of Obama’s top aides. She had been serving as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. A White House press release about her appointment notes that she previously served on the U.S. Programs Board of the OSI and was Senior Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza.

Kohn has a history of her own, having worked for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a group that tries to keep criticism of the homosexual agenda out of the mainstream media. Interestingly, GLAAD has relentlessly attacked Fox News, with one of the latest examples being an occasion during which correspondent Shannon Bream interviewed guests critical of a transgendered person, a man dressed as a woman, who had used a woman’s changing room at a department store. GLAAD viewed this criticism as “dangerous.”

GLAAD attacked CNN for including an ex-gay activist on the air, saying his views were harmful to their interests.

Not only is Kohn’s hiring by Fox News a victory for GLAAD, where she worked for two years, but the Soros-funded and gay-run Media Matters organization is extremely happy with the selection.

“Fox News Hires Gay Rights Activist Sally Kohn As Contributor” declared “Equality Matters,” a division of Media Matters. “Aside from her history of progressive activism, Kohn has also been an outspoken proponent of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] equality,” it said. Still, Media Matters wonders if Kohn is going to be aggressive enough on the air.

Soros had given Media Matters $1 million for a campaign to neutralize the conservative message of Fox News. “Media Matters is one of the few groups that attempts to hold Fox News accountable for the false and misleading information they so often broadcast,” said Soros. “I am supporting Media Matters in an effort to more widely publicize the challenge Fox News poses to civil and informed discourse in our democracy.”

In response, Fox News fired Beck, even while calling it a mutual decision and promising collaboration on “a slate of projects for Fox News Channel and Fox News’ digital properties” that have yet to materialize.

Kohn herself narrated a video making fun of Beck, insisting that he was spouting misinformation about fascism and communism being extreme left-wing ideas and implying that he was the real fascist. She said that liberals like President Obama and herself favor “democratic capitalism,” not any kind of state control of the economy.

The reality, however, is quite different.

“Sally Kohn makes the world safe for radical ideas,” her website says. In fact, Kohn is a far-left radical who attended the 2003 World Social Forum in Brazil, a meeting place for groups which say they are opposed to capitalism and U.S. imperialism. The 2011-2012 “Calendar of Struggles” for the World Social Forum includes:

• Global week of actions in support to the freedom of the Gaza Flotilla II.
• International Conference on the impact of the North American invasion in Iraq.
• International Solidarity Day for the Palestinian and African peoples.

Not only is Kohn now on Fox News, where she can demonstrate the channel’s “fair and balanced” commitment by championing radical Arab and pro-Marxist causes, she is being given open access to the influential FoxNews.com website, where she writes articles praising the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Kohn bio at the end of her Fox News columns says she is the founder and Chief Education Officer of the Movement Vision Lab, “a grassroots think tank,” but clicking on the organization’s website takes you to Kohn’s personal page. It appears that the Movement Vision Lab was a project  of the Center for Community Change that has since been discontinued.

One particular aspect of Kohn’s gay rights career—working at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force—has caught the attention of Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth,  a group that monitors the advance of the homosexual agenda. He said the Task Force is one of the most radical homosexual organizations on the scene today and works openly with the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, a group dedicated to advancing what are called the “BDSM-Leather-Fetish, Swing, and Polyamory Communities.” The latter are references to so-called “kinky” sexual practices widely considered dangerous and/or immoral.

Kohn’s three-year stint at the Task Force included “organizing campaigns and research projects for gay rights, earning the ability to call myself a ‘professional gay’ for the rest of my life,” she says.

Kohn has a three-year old daughter, Willa Hansen-Kohn, with her “partner,” Sarah Hansen, a community organizer with involvement in such groups as the Soros-funded Tides Center.

The relationship is newsworthy because Kohn reportedly met Hansen at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2003. The World Social Forum is a gathering of groups “opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth.”

Kohn also regularly attends the U.S. Social Forum, the American affiliate of the World Social Forum, which has assembled in the past under the banner of “Another U.S. Is Necessary!”

Its National Planning Committee includes such groups as:

• Freedom Road Socialist Organization, an openly communist organization with foreign links now under FBI investigation.
• The League of Revolutionaries for a New America, a group opposing “global capitalism.”
• The Ruckus Society, an anarchist group.
• United for Peace & Justice, a group opposed to American military intervention abroad.

Both Kohn and Rashad Robinson, executive director of a group called Color of Change, have attended the Soros-funded event known as the “Creative Change Retreat,” described as a place where “arts and social justice” come together.

Color of Change was co-founded by Van Jones, the former Obama official who lost his job after Beck, then on Fox News, highlighted his radical communist connections by drawing on material from anti-communist blogger Trevor Loudon and others.

Jones had the last laugh, noting during an appearance at the Campaign for America’s Future conference that Beck had lost his job at Fox.

Soros’s Open Society Institute had provided $300,000 to Color of Change and its parent entity called the Citizen Engagement Laboratory. Executive director Robinson had previously worked as Senior Director of Media Programs for GLAAD, where he apparently learned the techniques of protesting the presence of conservative voices in the media.

It was in response to Beck’s attacks on Soros and Obama that Color of Change organized an advertiser boycott of Beck’s show, while other Soros-funded organizations such as the Jewish Funds for Justice and Media Matters accused Beck of anti-Semitism for criticizing Soros.

Despite the phony nature of the charge against Beck—Soros is an atheist with no love for Israel—Fox News buckled under the pressure. “Beck’s lack of advertisers made him a financial liability for Fox, and it’s clear that this was a driving factor in his departure from Fox,” Robinson said. “This is an incredible and unprecedented victory.”

But Beck was not and is not the only target. Color of Change has also demanded that Eric Bolling, now a regular on “The Five” Fox News program that replaced Beck’s show, be fired for “race-baiting and fear-mongering.”

Bill O’Reilly, host of “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News, has been a target as well. But Kohn’s former employer GLAAD has been his nemesis. O’Reilly is now featuring Kohn as a liberal guest on his show, apparently hoping to stave off the criticism of his program.

            Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

Editor’s note: Here is a great map of Soros connections from Muckety.com.

Just double click on the + in the boxes for more connections.

IBD Editorials

EXCERPTS

Americans see a president who squanders resources on high-speed rail, politically connected solar panel makers and other green enterprises that go bankrupt, and electric cars that catch fire ..

They see a president who has kept one of his promises — to make energy prices “necessarily skyrocket” as his EPA declares war on fossil fuels and domestic energy while mandating that through the use of bio-fuels we put food in our gas tanks as food prices also skyrocket.

They see a military gutted by budget cuts to make up for bloated and runaway domestic spending.

They see allies like Britain and Israel abandoned while a mortal enemy, Iran, is ignored as it proceeds virtually unimpeded to a nuclear weapon.

All in all, it’s an abysmal record of domestic and foreign failure, of an oppressive government that spawned the Tea Party movement and left most Americans fearful the country their children will inherit will be one of debt and despair in an increasingly dangerous world.

FULL ARTICLE

By Ben Wolfgang  -  The Washington Times

EXCERPTS:

On Monday, the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit group that denounces intelligent design and supports an evolution-only curriculum in the classroom, will expand its mission.

…. it will mount an aggressive effort to teach the nation’s schoolchildren that climate change is real and is being driven by human activity.

Ms. Scott maintains that the NCSE won’t advocate for teachers to push liberal policy solutions to climate change, but others fear that students will be targets of political indoctrination.

“If you say it’s man-made, you must be implying some solutions. [Climate change] is taught to promote a particular political point of view, and that’s the problem,” said Kathleen Porter-Magee, senior director of the High Quality Standards Program at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based conservative education think tank.

Ms. Porter-Magee said such efforts essentially amount to “the politicization of curriculum.”

FULL ARTICLE

From Real-Science.com

EXCERPTS:

GISS has invented some new corrections to heat the Arctic. Until a few weeks ago, Reykjavik, Iceland looked like the graph below, with the 1930s and 1940s warmer than the present :

Now it looks like this, with the 1930s and 1940s much cooler than the present.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/

The new technique is called “removing suspicious records” – i.e any record which doesn’t support his theory.

Hansen seems to have adopted a general strategy of warming the present by cooling the 1930s and 1940s.

There is nothing suspicious about records which show a lot of Arctic warming prior to 1940. It is well documented.

[See the rest here with documentation]

FULL ARTICLE

By Selwyn Duke at American Thinker

EXCERPTS:

Repeat a big Democrat talking point often enough, and it becomes the truth.  There is a certain liberal narrative that has recently filtered down to many independents and even some conservatives: the idea that the current crop of Republican candidates is weak, wanting, and worrisome.

This characterization of the Republican field much reminds me of the gratuitous criticism of the U.S. by the hate-America-first crowd.  Okay, you say America is a bad country.  Compared to what?  Some imaginary Utopia that will never exist?

Many repeat the statist talking point about the GOP contenders’ alleged ineptitude simply because of media spin and the branding iron of repetition.

Most Republicans currently running for president are superior to every major-party nominee of the last 40 years except for Reagan, especially when factoring in both substance and style.  All the candidates exude passion, most have some charisma and are at least relatively articulate (except for Perry, although he has been better of late), and most are more ideologically sound than everyone above except, again, for Reagan.  More significantly, today’s contenders are actually talking about what should be central to American governance: adherence to our founding document, the Constitution.  They’ve also been talking about fundamentally changing the tax code and eliminating federal agencies.

FULL ARTICLE

By Cliff Kincaid

Rick Santorum told Ron Paul in Saturday’s debate: “You should know better than to cite George Soros-like organizations.” The comment came in response to attacks on Santorum’s record from the Texas Congressman and libertarian running in the Republican presidential primaries.

Exposed for using Soros-funded research in an attack ad charging that that Santorum had been “one of the most corrupt” members of Congress, Paul had no explanation or response, except to say that “somebody” had done a survey attacking Santorum and he used it in the ad. The Ron Paul ad includes the line, “I’m Ron Paul and I approve this message.”

The exchange adds to Republican fears that Paul is trying to weaken or divide Republicans in order to guarantee Obama’s re-election.

The Soros organization alluded to by Santorum is the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). It is the source of the corruption charge against Santorum in the Ron Paul ad.

In the debate, Paul said that “…somebody did make a survey and I think he came out as one of the top corrupt individuals because he took so much money from the lobbyists.”

That “somebody” was CREW, a Soros-funded group that targets Republicans and conservatives.

Santorum shot back: “Let’s talk about the corruption issue. The person who—the group that called me corrupt was a group called CREW. If you haven’t been sued by CREW, you’re not a conservative. CREW is this left-wing organization that puts out a list every election of the top Republicans who have tough races and calls them all corrupt because they take contributions from PACs. It’s a ridiculous charge. And you should know better than to cite George Soros-like organizations to say that they’re corrupt.”

Former Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell was the subject of a false complaint from CREW, which was dismissed in July of this year. O’Donnell reacted by saying, “We are, of course, very pleased that the U.S. Attorney’s office has finally seen through the bogus CREW complaint and concluded it is without merit, because there was never any evidence to support their allegations. CREW interjected itself into the campaign within hours of my winning the Delaware GOP primary, even though CREW had no actual basis for its complaint. Even more troubling is that CREW, as a 501(c)(3) organization, is prohibited by law from intervening in political campaigns—but they more than intervened in the campaign, doing everything they could possibly do to sabotage my election.”

As a result, O’Donnell’s group, ChristinePAC, has asked the IRS to strip CREW of its tax exempt status for engaging in partisan political activities in violation of federal law. O’Donnell’s PAC has also released a video exposing CREW’S “illegal, partisan agenda” and highlighting Soros’s funding of the group. The video includes excerpts of an interview with CREW executive director Melanie Sloan talking about how the Soros-funded Open Society Institute (OSI) is “a very big donor” and that the OSI is “very happy with what we do.”

Another website devoted to exposing CREW says, “An analysis of CREW’s ‘watchdog’ activities reveals a systematic effort to disproportionately target Republicans and conservative-leaning groups with often-frivolous lawsuits, ethics complaints, and petitions for investigations by law enforcement agencies. An analysis of CREW’s activities demonstrates that it disproportionately targets conservatives by a ratio of more than 8-to-1. At the same time, the corresponding federal oversight agencies responsible for investigating CREW’s complaints indicates that, historically, Democrats have been investigated far more often for ethics violations.”

A Washington Times column by Robert Knight, “Time to disarm partisan CREW,” noted, “Like the American Civil Liberties Union, CREW occasionally goes after Democrats, if only to maintain a facade of nonpartisanship. For instance, CREW targeted disgraced New York Rep. Charles B. Rangel and Louisiana Rep. William ‘Cold Cash’ Jefferson, who hid $90,000 in his freezer. Its current list of ‘most corrupt’ members of Congress includes 10 Democrats in addition to 15 Republicans, up from just three Democrats and 17 Republicans in 2006. But overall, most of CREW’s bullets are fired at conservatives and Republicans.”

CREW went after Santorum years ago but its current Republican target is former House Speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. A review of its current news releases shows two attacking Gingrich and one highlighting Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corporation, parent of Fox News, as “scoundrel of the year.”

Perhaps this has something to do with Fox News running a story on CREW’s frivolous complaints against Republicans.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.