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This update is specifically for the AoS community. AoS linked this post, I’d comment over there, but

it seems iOwnTheWorld is banned.

I read the comments at AoS and many people were saying that AoS is being criticized for not blogging about Jihad. When was that stated? The charge is that there seems to be an accepted way to blog about jihad and an unacceptable way, and Pamela Geller’s way is unacceptable, so much so that there is a “No Atlas Shrugs” policy in place, but oddly only at the upper tier blogs. It’s odd that middle sites down have no problem at all with Atlas Shrugs. They must be idiots, I guess.

Geller’s, and Robert Spencer’s, position is that the top level blogs are slowly buying into the notion that we have to watch what we say because insulting “moderate Islam” would  mean we’re unhinged and we have “gone too far,” a phrase I saw a lot in the AoS comments section.

This isn’t a matter of too little linkage from these sites, it’s a matter of zero linkage. That’s remarkable, considering Atlas Shrugs is one of the top blogs on the right. None of these sites found the historic first amendment win for Geller over Islam newsworthy? It was a tad important, I thought. This moment went largely unnoticed. I wish the case was won by someone else so that the AoS or Weasel Zippers or Hot Air or Twitchy or Michelle Malkin audience could have heard about it and commented about it, but of course it wasn’t anyone else – it was Pamela Geller who won that case, the whore. (I use this word specifically because there is an ex-iOTW commenter who is now an AoS commenter who is saying that iOTW deletes comments. I remember the comments. I didn’t delete them, Mr. Pinko did. I guess he didn’t think that comments that were calling Pamela Geller everything from a whore to a c*nt were appropriate to leave on the site considering Geller is a friend and a colleague that reads our site. But the disgruntled commenter didn’t see it that way. Oh well. He’s found a home at AoS.)

What if I assured everyone that Pamela wasn’t wearing a bikini in court, or that the 3 panel of judges didn’t find her voice annoying, or whatever other childish shit the readers of AoS trotted out? Christ, even if  some other batshit crazy screeching harpy won that case it was won for our side. This “No Atlas” policy couldn’t even be lifted for one story, huh?

I link to every site I mentioned above, and I will continue to link when the stories are important.

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Atlas Shrugs has published a story that I consider a bombshell. I was going to characterize it as inside baseball, but it’s not. This should concern everyone equally.

The post is about the slow, steady march towards the whitewashing of jihad- Creeping Silence, if you will, and as Atlas points out, silence is sanctioning.

Michelle Malkin is named at the top of the article as someone who is not as vociferous as she once was on the topic of counter jihad. She used to link regularly asked Robert Spencer to produce a series called, “Blogging the Quran,”  when she was at the helm of Hot Air, then it was abruptly pulled. Atlas speculates that this decision coincided with Malkin’s rise as a television fixture at Fox News. The inference is clear, do you want a career or do you want to be a shunned “Islamophobe?”

Is this a stretch? Ask Erick Erickson of Red State, whose comment about Judge Souter being a “goat fu**ing child molester” was trotted out by the left in an attempt to block him from movin’ on up to the deluxe CNN contributor slot in the sky.

What’s the message received? If you want to move up in the caste system you better clean up your act, and that, you’ll see, includes any uncomfortable remarks about Islam.

Atlas:

It irked me that the party of constitutional rights and individual rights would adhere to the blasphemy laws under the sharia (do not criticize or offend Islam).

Which is worse: the left’s vocal support of the sharia or the right’s silence? The silence is more insidious. At least you know where you stand with the left. The following email came from a new blogger who was communicating with me on an unrelated issue. He used to blog at a very well known, well-trafficked right wing blog, one of the biggest. When I made a passing remark about the blogger’s negative behavior toward me, the new blogger responded [names redacted]:

Wow. I didn’t know you were aware of XXXX’s attitude towards you. He is nasty. He hides it well but if you displease him he’ll lash out at you.  He got pissed at me when I posted an article that made Rick Perry look bad.  He changed my headline and comment.

I posted a link to one of your blog posts in early 2011. Another blogger on the site pulled the link to you and sent me an email saying stay away from posting links to Atlas. He said XXXX [the owner of the blog] would get mad.

I think it also had to do with the fact that XXXX  changed the blog’s policy towards Islamic issues. I used to post uncensored stuff about Islam. Pictures with insults to Allah, swastikas on muslim terrorists, cartoons I made saying “Heil Allah!”

In December 2010, XXXX decided to tone down XXXX and make it more like a Hot Air style site. He told me to stop insulting Islam because he wanted to attract advertising and make a living from doing XXXX. I complied with his wishes and toned down not only Islam stuff but other subjects as well. I gradually became disenchanted with posting at XXXX My daily output became less and less.

While reading this I immediately had 2 bloggers in mind that would fit this description. The first was Ace of Spades. Ace was a Perryite who famously published a public attack towards Pamela Geller. He’s  also shown that he’s willing to modify his act, and the reader’s behavior.

My second pick was Weasel Zippers. I thought of them because Weasel did not participatie in Everyone Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day, the name Brett Kimberlin and Weasel Zippers do not appear together in a Google search, nor does the term SWATing or Swatting. Using the search feature on his blog doesn’t produce any matches for either entry either.

That sounds like a guy interested in making a career from blogging. No need for his blog to get on a serial litigator’s radar, letting all the other schmucks do that story.

Atlas continues:

By Sept. 2011, I was not posting much at all. Then I made the mistake of posting a couple of items XXXX thought were insulting to muslims. I wrote a headline for an article about a muslima weightlifter who wanted to wear hijab in competition. It said: “Muslima Weightlifter Demands Right To Wear Slave Garb In Competition.” He pulled it within minutes and wrote a new headline saying, “wear head gear.”  Then he censored a comment I made on another Islam related post. The last straw came when I posted another “insult to islam.” It was a humorous post not nasty at all, but he pulled my comment and picture.

That was the end for me. He sent me an email saying thanks for your contribution to XXXX. Have a nice day. That was it after all I did to help build XXXX traffic for over a year. When I joined the traffic was at a certain level for a long time. I introduced humorous pictures, comments and articles and upgraded the graphics quality on my posts and his. Traffic went up at a steady pace. The audience grew tremendously. He talked to me more like a partner than just a contributor.

That’s what upset me most, but it’s OK because I was unhappy there anyway. I couldn’t express myself the way I wanted to so it’s better that I moved on. I’m doing what I want on my own blog.

And here is a second email from the same writer:

I remembered another thing about Islam related censorship at XXX. After I left, I checked my old posts for reference for a wordpress blog I set up at HUB. When I looked at the Islam stuff I found XXXX had gone back and deleted any pictures and commentary I wrote that might be offensive. What he does now is, he covers muslim related issues but without saying anything offensive. His headlines are just descriptions of what a muslim jihadist did, without saying something critical. Instead of using an insulting term, he’ll say “Muslim Terrorists Burn Churches.” His comments under the pictures say “Christians must express outrage at this kind of attack.” He will not say something attacking Islam in any way. He leaves the nasty comments to his fans in the comments section. They say “Islam must be destroyed!” He never gets his hands dirty. Here are some examples of old XXXX posts of mine that XXXX censored/scrubbed from his site:

“8-Year-Old Boy Is Hanged by the Taliban…”

XXXX deleted my one word comment which was: “Barbarians.” It’s offensive to Muslims to call Taliban barbarians.

“Obama Remembers Muslim Victims of 9/11 at White House Ramadan Dinner…”

He deleted my picture of Obama at a White House dinner holding up a glass to toast someone. Obama had an evil look on his face. Offensive to Muslims?The last post I did on XXXX was a story about Muslim day at Great Adventure Park. I put up a picture of a muslim man and burka wearing woman riding on a Ferris wheel. The caption was: “Allahu Akbarf!” It was just a lame joke about people getting sick on amusement park rides, but XXXX saw it and pulled the caption within minutes after I posted it. The next day he got rid of me. There are many others but I guess you can get an idea of what he did to hide his past as an “Islamophobe.” LOL!

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this unnamed ex-blogger worked for Weasel Zippers.

It would have been very easy to confirm my suspicion if it were not for the very fortuitous unfortunate timing of Weasel Zippers new redesign being taken down by “a hacker,” None of their old links work, they merely link you to the front page.

I guess you can call this a new beginning for them, where they will toe the line from this point forward. Isn’t this exciting? We have a new site getting their marching orders from the other corporate sites above them in the caste system, the system that tells you not to link to certain sites if you “wanna make a living in this blogging woild, know what I mean, kid?”

Good luck Zippers, sleep well. Maybe Islam will cut your head off last.

UPDATE:

I’m told that the dead links on Weasel Zippers are due to hacking. But I’ve also received confirmation, independent of Atlas Shrugs, that the site being discussed below is Weasel Zippers.

I’m also receiving messages from other sources that seem eager to share with me that this is not paranoia and is indeed a coordinated effort to stunt Atlas Shrugs. An editor of a brand new highly trafficked site informed a confidant of mine that Atlas Shrugs will not be linked. This made my eye go all twitchy.

Question: What will be gained by making Pamela Geller go away?

UPDATE 2: I’ve just read the comments and I can understand the protective attitude towards Weasel Zippers, and I fully understand I’m not making any friends by posting this. But I don’t blog to make friends. I don’t blog to intentionally make enemies. I blog primarily to test the limits of the first amendment, and that includes not self-censoring about Islam. Many are pointing out that WZ blogs about jihad, true. But the ex-employee points out that WZ has replaced or removed completely his editorializing, like when Slave Garb was replaced with Head Gear.

What’s happening is a slow retreat from “antagonizing.” He’s posting stories straight down the line and letting the comments do the dirty work, which is not the way things were done in the past. This is his right, of course, and it’s not what I have a problem with. Perhaps even a behind close doors coordinated effort to not link to a colleague’s site is their right too, but I do believe it deserves an explanation. Atlas Shrugs is a monumental force which continually tests whether the coming wave of Islam is constitutionally compliant, and  she has shown that it is not. What exactly is the problem with Atlas? Her accent? Her lipstick?

Just asking questions here.

UPDATE 3- Robert Spencer confirms my suspicions. This is distressing.

How the Right abandoned the resistance to jihad