Entries from August 2007 ↓

Wildland Fires in Greece Blamed on Terrorism – Could it Happen in the US?

MODIS website: NASA photo of fires in Greece as seen from space

If you saw the earlier article in this blog, Greek Wildfires Blamed on Arson – Evidence of Terrorism, you might be wondering whether the same thing could be happening in the U.S.

After all, we have had a serious problem with fires in the U.S. earlier in 2007 (see Florida Drought, Wildfire, and Storm Preparedness News Roundup and Storm and fire updates).

According to this article, the answer is yes.

In 2003 an FBI memo alerted law enforcement agencies that an al-Qaeda terrorist being held in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States.

It was reported that the detainee, who was not identified, said the plan involved three or four people setting wildfires using timed devices in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming that would detonate in forests and grasslands after the operatives had left the country.

“The detainee believed that significant damage to the U.S. economy would result and once it was realized that the fires were terrorist acts, U.S. citizens would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies,” the memo said.

(Quoted from National Terror Alert Response Center: Pyro-Terror: Are Greek Wildfires An Act of Terrorism?)

From a firefighter’s perspective, with some spectacular photos, see:

Greek Wildfires: Terrorism or Lack of Firefighting Resources?

This site makes the valid point that, as with Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., the disaster revealed poor emergency preparedness. Inadequate firefighting equipment was a major factor in the delay in bringing outbreaks of fire under control.

Update 9/2/07:

Update 9/17/07:

Update 10/24/07:


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Blog censorship update: August 31, 2007

For rolling updates on this topic:
Stop Blog Censorship!

Foehammer says,

It appears that SurfControl has now reclassified the Anvil from ‘Games’ to ‘Blogs & Forums.’ This is probably a better classification, but I guarantee that’s going to keep the Anvil in many spam bins at workplaces. Well, at least it should be free for lunch.

Check it here.

Anyone else know of more censor software companies along the same lines as SurfControl and SonicWALL?

More work to do:


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Greek Wildfires Blamed on Arson – Evidence of Terrorism

Arson by cell phone?

We don’t have all the evidence in yet, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Just because a few of the local outbreaks of fire appear to have been caused by simple carelessness does not mean that all of them were.

Greek broadcasting station SKAi reported that arson devices triggered by cell phones were found. Where have we heard of that before?

Photos from Space

Here are some photos from space, showing how widespread these fires are:

Updates:


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Coming up next in the blog censorship rogue’s gallery: SurfControl

For rolling updates on this topic:
Stop Blog Censorship!

We have won one battle!

An Anvil Victory against Censorship: a Victory for All confirms that SonicWALL and Panera Bread will no longer be censoring Foehammer’s Anvil. 1389 would like to thank all of you who participated in this effort.

But the war is far from over.

Smiley yelling "MORE!"

“The war is far from over? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sleeping Smiley It means that this is not the time for us to rest.

Here’s an excerpt from the comments that follow the above article:

# 2 ISLAMSFORLOSERS (US) Aug 28th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

Good news! However, for what it’s worth SurfControl blocks access to this site and now to Jihad Watch as well. Makes one wonder who owns these gatekepers of the Internet. It wouldn’t be surprising if the dirty oil money of Riyadh is behind a lot of this.

# 3 Sounder (Canada) Aug 28th, 2007 at 9:57 pm

Here we go again! Go to the Surf Control site and select “Test A Site” on the menu. Proceed from there.

Surf Control defines Intolerence & hate as follows:

  • Advocating or inciting degradation or attack of specified populations or institutions based on associations such as religion, race, nationality, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation
  • Promoting a political or social agenda that is supremacist in nature and/or exclusionary of others based on their race, religion, nationality, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation
  • Holocaust revisionist/denial sites and other revisionist sites that encourage hate
  • Coercion or recruitment for membership in a gang* or cult**
  • Militancy, extremist
  • Flagrantly insensitive or offensive material, including lack of recognition or respect for opposing opinions and beliefs

NOTE: We do not include news, historical, or press incidents that may include the above criteria (except in graphic examples).

*A gang is defined as: a group whose primary activities are the commission of felonious criminal acts, which has a common name or identifying sign or symbol, and whose members individually or collectively engage in criminal activity in the name of the group.

**A cult is defined as: a group whose followers have been deceptively and manipulatively recruited and retained through undue influence such that followers’ personalities and behavior are altered. Leadership is all-powerful, ideology is totalistic, and the will of the individual is subordinate to the group. Sets itself outside of society.

Again, all Foehammer readers please go to the site and suggest a new category. Do the same for Jihad Watch.

They apparently do not have email address collection or a auto-responder set up to respond to you.

# 4 Sounder (Canada) Aug 28th, 2007 at 9:58 pm

ISLAMSFORLOSERS Thanks for pointing this problem out!

Here’s what to do now:

  1. Visit the Surf Control site.
  2. Select “Test a Site” from the menu at the top.
  3. Suggest a more accurate classification for Foehammer.net and for Jihadwatch.com.
  4. Test some other sites, and if you find any more that are wrongly classified, please select more accurate classifications for them also.
  5. Bookmark this link for rolling updates:
    Stop Blog Censorship!

Smiley with "thank you" sign


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CAIR bullies CBS into dumping a Christian talk show host?! Let them know what you think!

CBS has no room for Christians or for American Southerners.

For those who are not aware of this, it’s part of the Christian faith that believers are required – yes, REQUIRED – to tell the truth about our beliefs, and to bring the Good News to everyone we can reach. Taqiyya has NO place in Christianity. Florida televangelist Bill Keller was simply doing what a good Christian should do on a Christian talk show. But CAIR, a Muslim pressure group affiliated with Hamas, bullied CBS into dropping Keller’s show.

Here are two accounts of the disgraceful way CBS Corporation treated Florida televangelist Bill Keller:

But that’s not all. The CBS website has been providing a forum for over-the-top hate comments. CBS has allowed random crazies to spew filth and venom on the CBS website, particularly against American Southerners. After they got enough complaints, they eventually deleted the comments and, in effect, pretended the comments had never existed.

A high-traffic mainstream media site such as CBS has no business ever allowing unmoderated comments to appear in the first place. They should publish a comment policy with enough moderators to enforce it. They refuse to take any responsibility for what happens on their site, and they have no respect for Southerners or for anybody with traditional values. With that corporate mindset, it’s no wonder that the networks and the mainstream media have been steadily losing their audience!

Now let CBS know what you think of this!

Address of CBS Headquarters:
51 West 52 Street, New York, New York 10019-6188


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Also on FHK and on JennSierra.

You’ll be surprised to hear why Panera Bread and SonicWALL blacklisted Foehammer’s Anvil!

For rolling updates on this topic:
Stop Blog Censorship!

As I explained earlier this week, SonicWALL is a company that provides content-filtering or “censorware” for the WiFi system at Panera Bread. They’ve been blocking access to the antijihadist site Foehammer’s Anvil, with no explanation given, so I blogged the contact information for both companies, and emailed them to complain about this inexcusable censorship.

I got a response back from Panera Bread telling me to use this form to ask SonicWALL to reevaluate any sites that were wrongly blocked. So I went over there and entered the URL for the Anvil…

Here’s what I saw!

Yep, that’s right – SonicWALL has been censoring the Anvil as pornography. Of course, if anybody at SonicWALL had actually bothered to check the Anvil for raunchy videos or ribald humor, they would’ve been awfully disappointed.

Smiley with "liar" sign Smiley blabbing on an old telephone Evidently, if some anonymous liar tells SonicWALL that a blog is pornographic, that’s all it takes to get it blocked from a whole lot of places. No inspection, no notification, no appeals process. Several months later, when the blogger is losing traffic and figures that somebody may be interfering with access to the blog, then maybe the truth will come to light. But by that time, the blog owner will already have lost readership and money.

If you’re a blogger, the same thing could happen to your blog. Even if you are not a blogger yourself, and even if you never heard of Foehammer’s Anvil before, the same thing could happen to other blogs that are full of valuable information that you have every right to read.

So go ahead and use this form to tell Sonic Wall to reclassify Foehammer’s Anvil. Obviously, the more people contact them, the better!

But even if they do, the matter doesn’t end there. Clearly, SonicWALL is not the only “censorware” company that has been blocking antijihadist sites.

“What else can I do?”

Get 1389 Blog delivered!



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Tell Panera Bread and SonicWALL to Stop Censoring Foehammer’s Anvil!

For rolling updates on this topic:
Stop Blog Censorship!

What do you mean, I can’t read Foehammer’s Anvil at Panera Bread?

Furious Smiley To our amazement and disgust, some of us have recently discovered that access to legitimate news and political sites – especially antijihadist sites, including Foehammer’s Anvil and Jihad Watch – is being blocked at many WiFi sites, workplaces, schools, government buildings, and other locations. This blacklisting is done automatically by content-control software, also known as “censorware.”

In Jenn Sierra’s article, Are Anti-Jihadist Sites Blocked where you Work, Study, or use Wi-Fi?, she mentioned that she was forbidden to access Foehammer’s Anvil from the supposedly “unlimited” WiFi at Panera Bread.

How do they set up this “censorware”?

Generally, an outside company is in charge of setting up the “censorware”. Depending on how it is set up, the censorware will block everything that falls into certain broad categories – not just blatant pornography, but anything having to do with sexuality, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, weapons, and violence. All too often, it also excludes anything “politically incorrect” that someone might conceivably classify as “bigotry” or “hate speech.” In other words, it locks out a huge range of sites offering news and views that are vital to effective participation in American society.

Unless someone knows how, and is willing, to loosen those restrictions, adult voters and taxpayers will find themselves treated like small children who cannot be trusted to make up their own minds. Forget about enjoying a broader range of political news and opinion than what the mainstream media conglomerates deign to provide. If you’re traveling, or if you are located where you have no other way to get to the Internet, you’re out of luck.

Political speech – especially “unpopular” political speech, or speech that makes some people uneasy – is exactly the type of speech that our Founders most wanted to protect. It’s also the type of speech that is most often shut down by the current wave of “political correctness”.

The coffeehouse has a venerable tradition as a place for reading and sharing newspapers, for socializing, and for exchanging news and ideas. Attempts to suppress this freedom of expression took the form of closing the coffeehouses or of prohibiting coffee itself, which proved largely futile. Nowadays, we rely on the Internet café to meet the same needs in a slightly different way. Too bad that the technology itself, which potentially lets us share information, exercise our freedoms, and express our creativity, is being misused to narrow the range of ideas that we are allowed to debate.

Where is this censorship going to end? There’s already a scarcity of printed news that addresses the issues of jihadism or the dangers to our freedom and our way of life posed by the growing Islamization of the U.S. And neither television news, nor our elective officials, even acknowledge that there might be a problem.

Food for thought: If we did have a newspaper that covered those topics, do you suppose someone would complain if we were to take it into a Panera Bread store to read while we’re eating? What would our response be if someone did raise a fuss? Just askin’…

If you’ve visited this blog before, or if you’ve already met 1389 elsewhere on the Web, you’ll know that I’ve never been afraid to “stir the pot” whenever it needs to be stirred. Nobody has attempted to shut down 1389 Blog, probably because it hasn’t built up a big enough audience yet. Even so, this issue affects all of us, bloggers and readers alike. Keep in mind that the blogs you like to read won’t be able to survive if it becomes too easy to stop their readers from seeing the blogs!

So here’s what to do:

Contact Panera Bread at: Panera Bread Logo

Ronald M. Shaich, Chairman and CEO
Panera Bread
6710 Clayton Road
Richmond Heights, MO 63117
Tel: (314) 633-7100
Fax: (314) 633-7200

Email contact form

Investor Relations:
800-301-5566, ext. 6500
investor@panerabread.com

Contact SonicWALL, Inc. at:

Matt Medeiros, President and CEO
SonicWALL, Inc.
1143 Borregas Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1306
USA

P +1 888.557.6642
P +1 408.745.9600
F +1 408.745.9300

Email contact form

“What else can I do?”

More Information:

Subscribe to 1389 Blog!



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The Conservative Leadership Conference – Don’t Miss This One!

Jenn Sierra, of FHK, received this by e-mail today from Eric Odom.

rightoberfest_31.jpg

Fellow Bloggers,

Did you know there is a movement taking place to take on YearlyKOS?

Indeed, CLC07 is busy planning a large scale conference that has the ability to not only counter the far left gathering of liberal bloggers, but to actually beat them at their own game.

If I told you that we have the capacity to host more than 2,000 right leaning individuals, a line up of special guests that would turn any liberal face red, and the technological ability to equip an army of bloggers to go out and counter the left wing message, would you be interested in joining in on the fun?

Thought so.

Good news! WE’VE GOT IT ALL AND MORE!

This coming October, the 11th through the 13th to be exact, Citizen Outreach and Americans for Tax Reform will be hosting a national gathering of political activists and new media junkies.

I’m the guy in charge of the blogging side of this event, and I’ve put together what I think is a superb line up of speakers and trainers for a full day of blogging goodness. I’m bringing in Evan Coyne Maloney for video blogging, Pamela (aka “atlas”) Oshrey, Erick Erickson of Redstate, to name just a few.

I’ve also been able to talk Lorelle VanFossen, THE WordPress guru who wrote the award winning book “blogging tips”, into coming and teaching a few classes.

On top of that, we’re bringing in a delicious list of conservative speakers and activists. Speakers like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Congressman John Shadegg, Congressman Dean Heller, former house majority leader Dick Armey, former congressman Bob Barr, former congressman J.D. Hayworth, and many, MANY MORE! (see list below)

Have no doubt, we have everything we need to help YOU further your blogging and activism skills. We just need to make sure that you, along with everyone you know, will be present to take advantage of this world class event.

This is it. This is where we prove we can do what they do, and we can do it better. But, we’ve GOT to get the word out!

Further down this newsletter you’ll see an extremely special offer that we’ve crafted for those who can register early. This offer is valid until the end of August, so please let everyone know about it as soon as possible.

I realize that not everyone can make an event such as this. However, you can STILL be a huge help in this by blogging about it, talking about it, and making sure that the entire “conservasphere” is aware of what we’re up to.

I’m personally inviting you to join us, and asking for your help in promoting RIGHTOBERFEST.

Always Blogging,
-Eric Odom
Director :: CLC07

Confirmed Speakers for CLC

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford

Congressman John Shadegg :: Honorary Chair

Rep. Dean Heller of Nevada

Grover G. Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Freedom Works

Former Congressman Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party

Former Congressman J.D. Hayworth of Citizens United

Former Ambassador Jerry Carmen

Mickey Barnett, Postal Board of Governors

Frank Fahrenkopf of American Gaming Association

Rich Galen of Mullings.com

Adrian “Good Morning, Vietnam!” Cronauer

Author/conservative fundraising guru Richard Viguerie

JoAnn Davidson, Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee

Bill Redpath, National Chairman, Libertarian Party

Shannon Reeves of the RNC’s African-American Leadership Council

Kerri Houston, U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission

Libertarian presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root

Rick Berman of the Center for Union Facts

Israel Teitelbaum of Parents for Free Choice in Education

Author and syndicated columnist Doug Bandow

Author Leslie Sanchez

Mark Montini

John Berthoud, President of the National Taxpayers Union

Steve Moore of Wall Street Journal

John Fund of Wall Street Journal

Steven Greenhut of Orange County Register

Erick Erickson of RedState.org

Documentary filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney

“Blogging Tips” author Lorelle van Fossen

Blogger Pamela “Atlas” Oshrey

“Blue Collar Muse” blogger Ken Marrero

“Adam’s Web” blogger Adam Graham

Jason Wright of PoliticalDerby.com

Chris Simcox of the Minuteman Project

Richard Nadler of America’s Majority

Jennifer Gratz of the American Civil Rights Institute

Amanda Hydro of the Reason Foundation

Scott Cleland of NetCompetition.org

Talk-show host Brian Wilson

Talk-show host Sharon Hughes

Chris Barron of Maximize Liberty

Lorelle VanFossen

Warner Todd Huston

Special Offer: Act Now to Get FREE Upgrade!
Spend Three Days with 38 41 (and Counting) of the Nation’s
Most Powerful and Influential Conservative Leaders & Bloggers!

If You Never Go to Another Conservative Conference the Rest of Your Life -

DON’T MISS THIS ONE!

read more here

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