Leftist Tech Companies Rely on Discredited SPLC to Demonetize Conservative Critics of Islam (VIDEO)

You know, it's not a lot of money, but my Amazon affiliates blogging has been keeping me interested and returning to the blog day after day. Frankly, the books and intellectual stimulation have been the fun for me this summer. Political blogging has been so-so, and I'd probably be doing a lot less of it if my side gig with the Amazon books were to go away.

I'd been thinking about how compared to Google (AdSense, etc.), Amazon's been pretty hands off. I appreciate it and I think that approach deserves respect and promotion. But now I come to find out that even Amazon's been in on the "demonetizing" attacks against un-PC views. That bums me out. Not because I'm going to lose my side business. But because I was naive to think that the Bezos people were holding themselves to a higher standard, staying above the fray of hateful leftist politics. Boy, not so much it turns out.

Check this mind-boggling story of complete media lack of self-awareness, at ProPublica. Really, these people, and I'm talking now about the journalists writing the story, think they're doing something noble and just when in fact what they're doing is ignorant and evil.

Here's another reason why I hate politics right now.

See, at the safe link, "Despite Disavowals, Leading Tech Companies Help Extremist Sites Monetize Hate":

Most tech companies have policies against working with hate websites. Yet a ProPublica survey found that PayPal, Stripe, Newsmax and others help keep more than half of the most-visited extremist sites in business.

Because of its “extreme hostility toward Muslims,” the website Jihadwatch.org is considered an active hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. The views of the site’s director, Robert Spencer, on Islam led the British Home Office to ban him from entering the country in 2013.

But its designation as a hate site hasn’t stopped tech companies — including PayPal, Amazon and Newsmax — from maintaining partnerships with Jihad Watch that help to sustain it financially. PayPal facilitates donations to the site. Newsmax — the online news network run by President Donald Trump’s close friend Chris Ruddy — pays Jihad Watch in return for users clicking on its headlines. Until recently, Amazon allowed Jihad Watch to participate in a program that promised a cut of any book sales that the site generated. All three companies have policies that say they don’t do business with hate groups.

Jihad Watch is one of many sites that monetize their extremist views through relationships with technology companies. ProPublica surveyed the most visited websites of groups designated as extremist by either the SPLC or the Anti-Defamation League. We found that more than half of them — 39 out of 69 — made money from ads, donations or other revenue streams facilitated by technology companies. At least 10 tech companies played a role directly or indirectly in supporting these sites.

Traditionally, tech companies have justified such relationships by contending that it’s not their role to censor the Internet or to discourage legitimate political expression. Also, their management wasn’t necessarily aware that they were doing business with hate sites because tech services tend to be automated and based on algorithms tied to demographics.

In the wake of last week’s violent protest by alt-right groups in Charlottesville, more tech companies have disavowed relationships with extremist groups. During just the last week, six of the sites on our list were shut down. Even the web services company Cloudflare, which had long defended its laissez-faire approach to political expression, finally ended its relationship with the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer last week.

“I can’t recall a time where the tech industry was so in step in their response to hate on their platforms,” said Oren Segal, director of the ADL’s Center on Extremism. “Stopping financial support to hate sites seems like a win-win for everyone.”

But ProPublica’s findings indicate that some tech companies with anti-hate policies may have failed to establish the monitoring processes needed to weed out hate sites. PayPal, the payment processor, has a policy against working with sites that use its service for “the promotion of hate, violence, [or] racial intolerance.” Yet it was by far the top tech provider to the hate sites with donation links on 23 sites, or about one-third of those surveyed by ProPublica. In response to ProPublica’s inquiries, PayPal spokesman Justin Higgs said in a statement that the company “strives to conscientiously assess activity and review accounts reported to us.”

After Charlottesville, PayPal stopped accepting payments or donations for several high-profile white nationalist groups that participated in the march. It posted a statement that it would remain “vigilant on hate, violence & intolerance.” It addresses each case individually, and “strives to navigate the balance between freedom of expression” and the “limiting and closing” of hate sites, it said.

After being contacted by ProPublica, Newsmax said it was unaware that the three sites that it had relationships with were considered hateful. “We will review the content of these sites and make any necessary changes after that review,” said Andy Brown, chief operating officer of Newsmax.

Amazon spokeswoman Angie Newman said the company had previously removed Jihad Watch and three other sites identified by ProPublica from its program sharing revenue for book sales, which is called Amazon Associates. When ProPublica pointed out that the sites still carried working links to the program, she said that it was their responsibility to remove the code. “They are no longer paid as an Associate regardless of what links are on their site once we remove them from the Associates Program,” she said...

Still more (FWIW).

(And recall the SPLC has been so widely discredited, even on the left, that's it's beyond logic that these idiots at ProPublica would be so reliant on it.)

And from earlier, "Pamela Geller Banned (Then Restored) by PayPal."

Finally, here's Robert Spencer on Tucker's show the other night:

Robert Spencer, Confessions of an Islamophobe

Out November 28th, at Amazon, Robert Spencer, Confessions of an Islamophobe.

After Westminster Jihad Attack, Britain Vows to Defend 'Tolerance'

Pfft.

There's going to be nothing to defend too much longer.

See Robert Spencer, at FrontPage Magazine, "Jihadi Attack in London, U.K. Vows to Defend 'Tolerance'."

Out Now: Robert Spencer, The Complete Infidel's Guide to Iran [BUMPED]

Robert's a tireless fighter for American freedom.

Here's his new book, just out yesterday, at Amazon, The Complete Infidel's Guide to Iran.

House Democrats Move to Criminalize Criticism of Islam

From Robert Spencer, at FrontPage Magazine:

December 17, 2015 ought henceforth to be a date which will live in infamy, as that was the day that some of the leading Democrats in the House of Representatives came out in favor of the destruction of the First Amendment. Sponsored by among others, Muslim Congressmen Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, as well as Eleanor Holmes Norton, Loretta Sanchez, Charles Rangel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joe Kennedy, Al Green, Judy Chu, Debbie Dingell, Niki Tsongas, John Conyers, José Serrano, Hank Johnson, and many others, House Resolution 569 condemns “violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States.” The Resolution has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

That’s right: “violence, bigotry and hateful rhetoric.” The implications of those five words will fly by most people who read them, and the mainstream media, of course, will do nothing to elucidate them. But what H. Res. 569 does is conflate violence -- attacks on innocent civilians, which have no justification under any circumstances – with “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric,” which are identified on the basis of subjective judgments. The inclusion of condemnations of “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric” in this Resolution, while appearing to be high-minded, take on an ominous character when one recalls the fact that for years, Ellison, Carson, and his allies (including groups such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR) have been smearing any and all honest examination of how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to incite hatred and violence as “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric.” This Resolution is using the specter of violence against Muslims to try to quash legitimate research into the motives and goals of those who have vowed to destroy us, which will have the effect of allowing the jihad to advance unimpeded and unopposed...

More at that top link.

And this repulsive, un-American bill is here, "House Democrats Introduce Legislation Condemning Anti-Muslim Bigotry."

Richard Engel Speaks Too Much Truth to Obama's Failed War on Islamic State

I've seen a number of folks blame George W. Bush for Islamic State, and thus the refugee crisis. But that's one partisan attack that ain't gonna wash.

And NBC's Richard Engel's not buying it either.

On Twitter:

If the US led war on #ISIS was working, people wouldn't be going to such great lengths to escape #Syria & #Iraq http://t.co/Hf5PTFLTge #MTP

— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) September 6, 2015

The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS

Robert Spencer's got a new book out, and the title makes me giggle, The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS.

Daniel Greenfield has a write-up, at FrontPage Magazine, "Robert Spencer Looks Squarely at ISIS:

'The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS' reveals what the West is really up against.

Robert spoke in Mission Viego, in March, "Islamic State: Is It Islamic? And Why It Matters."

I got a signed copy of his earlier book, Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We're In.

Robert's so good, so expert at this, that often times Muslim imams refuse to debate him. He's the authority on Islam and global jihad.

I look forward to picking up a copy of his new book on Islamic State.

Anti-Islam Protest in Phoenix

Bikers organized a "Draw Muhammad" protest, heh.

The local Islamists weren't please. At the Arizona Republic, "Phoenix Muslim leaders decry protest as anti-American."

Also at ABC-15 Phoenix:

'This is the second time in a week that I have answered, point-by-point, a lengthy exercise in character assassination against Pamela Geller and me written by Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine and a longtime apologist for jihad terror...'

From Robert Spencer, at Jihad Watch, "Cathy Young is a terrible poster child for journalism."

Free Speech or Islamofascist Suppression?

At IBD, "After Attack In Texas, Will It Be Free Speech or the Thugs' Veto?":

After a Muhammad cartoon event was attacked in Texas, the intelligentsia pointed the finger at the organizers. Let's get one thing straight: This event was not about guns, civility or Islam. It was about free speech.

Activist Pamela Geller is no stranger to saying things that horrify the politically correct. She protested the World Trade Center mosque and bought bus-sign ads describing what's really written in the Quran. Last weekend, she and writer Robert Spencer's American Freedom Defense Initiative organized a contest for the best Muhammad cartoon drawing with a $10,000 prize in Texas in response to the Islamofascist newsroom massacre of cartoonists in Paris at the French paper Charlie Hebdo earlier this year.

And to no one's surprise in a nation whose leaders consider rising Islamofascist terror groups "junior varsity" and where extremist depravities are viewed as "workplace violence" or dismissed as reactions to bad filmmaking rather than organized terror, a couple of Islamofacists from North Phoenix, Ariz., shot up the Garland, Texas, cartoon conference, wounding a security guard before an off-duty traffic cop took the pair down and saved the country from another massacre.

Since then, it's been Charlie Hebdo all over again, given the media's failure to understand that this is about the threat that radical Islam poses to free speech.

Incredibly, the left wasted no time blasting Geller and Spender, blaming them for the murderous behavior of the gunmen.

CNN's Alisyn Camerota attacked Geller as anti-Islamic, cherry-picking various news clips to make her case, despite Geller asserting that she wasn't.

"Civilized men can disagree," Geller told CNN. "Savages will kill you when they disagree."

Why she should be on the hot seat instead of the would-be attackers and their enablers is beyond us.

But the finger-pointing at Geller kept coming.

"Free speech aside, why would anyone do something as provocative as hosting a 'Muhammad drawing contest'?" tweeted New York Times' Rukmini Callimachi.

Free speech aside? From the newspaper of record?

Callimachi didn't seem to understand that the entire event — as Geller's participants repeatedly said in the pre-shooting film clips of the event posted on her blog — was explicitly about free speech, which is now under attack by Islamofascists and which can be demonstrated only by extreme means, such as cartoons.

And that's the heart of the matter. Agree with Geller or not, there can be no compromise on free speech. The attack on her event underscored the fragility of America's free speech, the basis for all of America's freedoms.

Also from Ms. EBL, "Blaming the Victims of Jihadi Terror: Leftist Media calling Pam Geller, AFDI, and Jihad Watch 'hate groups'."

#FreeSpeech Matters http://t.co/VuNE0Estco #garlandshooting #ISIS #texasattack #PamelaGeller @rsmccain @DanaTheBlaze pic.twitter.com/wBagWBGP37

— JeSuisEBL (@MsEBL) May 4, 2015

Hateful Leftists Try to Change the Subject to 'Islamophobia' After #Garland Jihad Attack

The attacks on Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer erupted immediately last night on Twitter, showing the radical left's true colors. One of these days jihadists will succeed with their own Charlie Hebdo-style attack on U.S. soil, and the left will demonize the victims for their alleged "hateful" ideas. The only hate involved is on the left, however. Depraved leftists hate anyone who challenges their ideological, politically correct shibboleths. If you speak out, you must be destroyed --- by any means necessary, it turns out.

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "After Garland, Don’t Change the Subject to Islamophobia":

Almost immediately after the news of last night’s shooting in Garland, Texas broke many in the chattering class started to blame the intended victims of the attack. The group that had sponsored a contest to draw pictures of the Prophet Muhammad and two of the controversial speakers at the event were quickly depicted as having invited violence by their willingness to offend Muslims. But whether or not you agree with Dutch politician Geert Wilders or American activist Pam Geller, the failed attempt to slaughter them or those who chose to hear their words illustrated one of their main contentions. You can offend any other religion with impunity but dare to speak rudely or even truthfully about Islamist intolerance and you’d better pay for heavy security and/or hope the police are doing their job (as, thank Heaven, they were in Texas). That, and not whether or not Wilders or Geller are right about some things or even anything, remains the only question to discuss when it comes to talk about Islamophobia.

Let’s specify that not all Muslims, especially here in the United States, are violent or intolerant. Most are hard working, decent people and deserve the same respect as any other American.

But there is a reason why humorists fear to skewer Islam or its holy book the same way they do Catholics or Mormons. You can mock Christian symbols, call it art and then expect cultural elites to lionize you and denounce those who are offended as fascists. You can stage an opera rationalizing Palestinian terrorism and the murder of Jews and be lionized as a courageous defender of artistic freedom and call those who denounce your bad taste Philistines. Write a play wittily trashing the Mormon faith and you can become immensely rich. None of those activities are particularly commendable but they are safe. But speak ill of Islam and you take your life into your hands.

Talk about Islamophobia in the United States is misleading since there is little or no evidence that the years that followed 9/11 or even now after the rise of ISIS that Muslims have suffered discrimination or violence. To the contrary, anti-Semitic attacks have always far outnumbered those despicable incidents in which Muslims were targeted. But the attempt to distract us from Muslim intolerance also misses the point.

You may say it is bad that some people are drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad specifically to offend Muslims who believe such drawings are forbidden. But the problem is that unlike other faiths that have learned to express outrage about those who show them disrespect without violence, a great many Muslims throughout the world still take it as a given that they are entitled to kill those who commit what they call blasphemy. The attacks on the Danish newspaper that first thought to publish Muhammad cartoons and then Charlie Hebdo illustrated this distorted principle...

Keep reading.

Police Audio: Shooting at Mohammed Cartoon Art Show in Garland, Texas

At Telegraph UK.

Plus, at Rebel Media, "Garland TX Mohammed Cartoon Contest Shooting: First report," and "Garland Texas Mohammed Cartoon Contest Shooting (Video 2)." Also, "Garland TX Mohammed Cartoon Contest Shooting (Video 3)."

Two Suspects Open Fire, Shot Dead at AFDI 'Draw Muhammad' Event in Garland, Texas

At Pamela Geller, "Multiple shootings, possible bomb at AFDI/Jihad Watch free speech event in Texas":

This is a war. This is war on free speech. What are we going to do? Are we going to surrender to these monsters?

Two men with rifles and backpacks attacked police outside our event. A cop was shot; his injuries are not life-threatening, thank Gd. Please keep him in your prayers.

The bomb squad has been called to the event site to investigate a backpack left at the event site.

Also at Jihad Watch, "Update – Multiple shootings, possible bomb at AFDI-Jihad Watch free speech event in Texas," and "“Allahu Akbar!!!!! 2 of our brothers just opened fire at the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w) art exhibition in texas!”"

Also, "Cowardly Daily Mail blacks out Muhammad cartoons in story on shooting."

More, at the Dallas Morning News, "2 killed by police after opening fire outside Muhammad art event in Garland." (At Memeorandum.)

Now at the Other McCain, "TERROR IN TEXAS: Gunmen Attack @PamelaGeller Event in Garland UPDATED: ISIS Takes Credit? ‘May Allah Accept Us as Mujahideen’."

Islamic State: Is It Islamic? And Why It Matters

Robert Spencer spoke last night in the O.C.: "ACT for America (Mission Viejo Chapter): Robert Spencer, Director of Jihad Watch."

He's always good, but this time around it was just him, without the usual additional panelists he's appeared with at previous events.

He signed copies of his latest book, Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We're In.

A great book!

Check back for more blogging later.