Sharif Don't Like It: Facebook Kindly Informs Me that I've Been Censored in Pakistan

Tweet

I'm actually surprised this hasn't happened more often. Out of all the posts about Islam that I've made on Facebook (usually they are links to a Mahound's Paradise blog post, though not in this case) Facebook chose this one to censor, more than three years after the fact.

I had completely forgotten about it, of course.

The irony is that the post itself was written to draw attention to one of those ubiquitous temporary Facebook bans of prominent islamophobes. In that case the ban was against Bosch Fawstin, who had just won the Draw Muhammed Contest (itself the target of a partly preemptively foiled terror attack in Garland, Texas).  

Bosch Fawstin's page is still up. Miraculously he has survived on Facebook for the last three years. Please consider purchasing one of his drawings.

UPDATE: It appears that Fawstin was permanently banned by Twitter.

In and of itself, banning a three-year-old picture is of course silly. I doubt anyone, foe or friend, combs my Facebook posts that far back, though it's possible, of course, that this is part of some larger crackdown. I have no idea.

But the general issue of Facebook bowing to censorship requests from oppressive governments (to say nothing of Facebook's own censorship, quasi-censorship and news manipulation efforts) is very serious.

Would Facebook, had it existed at the time, have censored what the Nazis might have called "Jewish propaganda" in Nazi Germany? Of course they would have. They admit that they would have:

If, after careful legal review, we determine that the content is illegal under local law, then we make it unavailable in the relevant country or territory.

Facebook justifies this policy partly on the basis that having a partly censored Facebook in, say, country XYZ is better than having no Facebook in country XYZ.

Well, it's better for Facebook, of course.

But it's worse than that, Facebook isn't just in it for the money. Those in control at Facebook and at most of the other social media megacompanies see a positive good in suppressing "Islamophobia" - or "hate speech" as it is more generally called. They've said as much many times. Obviously for them, if posting a picture of a glowering Muhammed (complete with bloody sword) isn't hate speech, nothing is.

Western Civilization is destroying itself.

P*ssy Hat Priest Fr. Wiliam Lugger Posts Tribute to Margaret Sanger on his Facebook Page

Tweet

Fr. William Lugger

You remember William Lugger. He was the social justice warrior priest who donned a pink pro-Women's March "p*ussy hat" during a homily a few weeks ago.

While it was shocking in its way, the stunt was perfectly in keeping with Lugger's public political persona, which is fully on view on his public Facebook page, among other places.

Each day offers a constant stream of anti-Trump memes, pro-Muslim posts, pro-feminist slogans and the occasional bit of "humor" like a doctored photo of Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke engaging in a leather-suited bondage session.

That was on the day Mary Tyler Moore died.

"Fr. Bill" probably thinks comportment is a sexual fetish.

Today, he posted a meme you may have already seen on the wall of one of your liberal Facebook friends. It features photographs of ten feminist icons surrounding the statement, "She persisted." One of them (top middle) is Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.

Now I know someone might say, that's not a tribute to Sanger per se. She after all is just one of the ten - there's also Harriet Tubman, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart and that legendary American heroine, Elizabeth Warren.

But consider, suppose I put up on my Facebook wall a meme featuring ten great men or ten great leaders or ten great right-wingers or whatever and one of them was Adolph Hitler?

Or suppose Fr. Peter West did that.

Who is Fr. West? He's the New Jersey priest currently under fire for being a conservative Facebook poster. The Newark archdiocese is "concerned" about his activity and will soon be "addressing" it.

As any Catholic social media user can easily verify from experience, for every one Peter West there are ten William Luggers. Some have suggested that Fr. West "goes too far." I looked at his page and found nothing offensive. Oh, wait, there's a post condemning violent anti-Trump protests. "Violence has no place in civil society," he writes. The fiend.

Moving back to Fr. Lugger's page, there's a post praising a skit of Kellyanne Conway as a sort of broadway slut. Beneath it, a helpful "friend" added a picture of the first winning female presidential campaign manager in history crawling out of a sewer. How Christian. 

Obviously, I'm not equating the two priests. Fr. West's posts are mostly forceful defenses of Catholic teaching; the remainder are perfectly consistent with it. Fr. Lugger's posts are mostly liberal cliches having about as much to do with Christianity as my dining room table. A few are innocuous, many are obnoxious and some are directly opposed to the teachings of Christ, such as Lugger's endorsement of the pro-abortion Women's March or his favorable mention of that mousy little eugenicist Sanger.

Guess who might get onto trouble with the hierarchy and who almost certainly won't.

As I observed a few weeks ago, Lugger seems to be well-liked by most of his parishioners - many of whom are Facebook friends. They appear to share his liberal values and approve of his method of expressing them. And, yes, that Mary Tyler Moore bondage picture got a number of "likes" and LOLs. I suspect that to them, their very own Fr. Bill is what a Catholic priest should be. That's the worst of it, of course, and Fr. Lugger will no doubt answer for it some day.

The contemporary American Church is decadent and rotten.

Amichai Ariel on His Daughter's Murderer: "...an evil person, one of 1.5 billion Muslims who just want to drown the world in rivers of blood. That's what they live for."

Tweet

Earlier, the State Department announced that Hallel Yaffa Ariel, the murdered 13-year-old Jewish settler, was in fact an American citizen. In a presentation lasting less than a minute, a spokesman condemned the murder as an "outrageous terrorist attack." He didn't mention anything else about the perpetrator. For all we knew he could have been a homophobic Floridian.

Of course, he was a Muslim "Palestinian" from the Arab village next-door.

These sorts of incidents, which in one form or another happen every few days, are embarrassing to the Obama Administration. The inciter and presider in-chief over them is Mahmoud Abbas--the head of the Palestinian Authority--who also happens to be one of Obama's best Muslim thug friends.

As we reported a few hours ago, Abbas was given a standing ovation at the EU after he accused Jews of poisoning the water supply. His organization has praised his murderer and will pay a bounty to his family.

I'm writing on this for the third time today because it tragically expresses and clarifies many things.

• The horror of Islamic terrorism not merely in terms of numbers - 10 killed, 28 killed, 50 killed, etc. - but for one young woman and her family.
• The added horror that the terrorist entered her home and stabbed her in her bedroom. By now, we are almost enured to the fact that there's a 1 in 100,000 chance (or whatever) that we'll be blown up by some Mohammedan in the subway or at airport or even inside a dance club. But who imagined that a Muslim suicide killer would mount a home invasion and murder a sleeping teenager in her bed.
• The fact that the murderer was quickly pursued, confronted and shot by a mixture of armed-civilians, armed-quasi-civilians and armed-guards. In the United States a SWAT team would have surrounded the village while hostages held to death.
• The frequency of these sorts of attacks. Only hours later, another "Palestinian" stabbed two Israelis in the coastal tone of Netanya. He was then shot to death by a civilian. 
• The perfidy of Obama and his cast of collaborators who cheerfully hobnob with the Big Boss of the Palestinians.
• The contrast between how the Israeli government reports terrorism and how the Obama Administration dissembles and covers up. Among other things, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) almost immediately "tweeted" a picture of the the victim's bloody bedroom. Obama would have never released this (where are the photos of the aftermath inside of Pulse?) and would still be wondering aloud what the "motivations" of the killer were.  
• The perfidy of the EU bureaucrats who applauded Abbas (while booing and hissing at Nigel Farage just a few days later).
• The barbarity and hatred of West Bank Muslims, who inhabit a culture where the cold-blooded murder of innocents is encouraged and celebrated.
• The perfidy of the mainstream media, who downplay this sort of incident and often lie about the facts. Earlier today the New York Times was caught changing the translation of an interview with the murderer's mother. The mother called her son a "hero" and a "martyr." America's newspaper of record scrubbed those words from their translation of the interview.
• The utter lie that Islam is a "religion of peace."

"All she wanted was to be a dancer."

Amichai Ariel, the father of the murdered teenager, gave a heart wrenching interview a few hours after his daughter was killed. His wife sobs next to him. As Facebook hosted eulogies to her killer, her father made statements that in most normal circumstances would have gotten him banned from Facebook. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Facebook bans the video of the interview or suspends those who share it. After all, he just slandered 1.5 billion Muslims, didn't he? How dare he?

Last night she came back from a dance performance. She was an amazing girl. She worked very hard for years to become a dancer. She put so much effort into everything she did. God gave her a great mind, lots of wisdom. She was so bright. This morning at 9:30 we were supposed to work together filling bottles with wine. Hallel loved living here, loved the place. She wasn't afraid of anyone. She never imagined - nor did anyone else - that an evil person, one of 1.5 billion Muslims who just want to drown the world in rivers of blood. That's what they live for. It's terrible, just think about it: a little girl who did nothing.

Animals: Fatah Glorifies Murderer of Teenage Girl on Its Facebook Page

Tweet

For anyone who follows these things, this isn't really a surprise. It's the norm.

Fatah is the largest political faction and is headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

A week ago, Abbas received a standing ovation when speaking in front of the European Parliament.

Today, the Facebook page of his party eulogized the depraved Muslim punk who did this to an innocent 13-year-old Israeli girl.

As in all similar cases, the family of the "martyr" will now receive a reward stipend from the Palestinian Authority.

In turn, the murderer's mother had this to say:

My son is a hero. He made me proud. My son died as a Martyr defending Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.

Her son broke into a Jewish family's house and stabbed Hallel Yaffa Ariel to death in her bedroom.

This is how Muslims defend Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

I didn't say it. The mother did.

Animals is too kind.     

The World According to Facebook

Tweet

XOXO!!!

Last Sunday, Mark Zuckerberg posted this to his Facebook page. It was almost certainly a veiled attempt to respond to criticisms that Facebook had slightly bungled its "Safety Check" feature--sending the "Are you safe?" message to millions of Facebook users who had no connection to the city of Lahore, and then withdrawing it without explanation.

This morning we activated Safety Check in Pakistan after a bomb targeted children and their families in a park in Lahore. Over the last two months, we have activated Safety Check several times for acts of terror -- including in Turkey and Belgium -- so people in the area can let their friends and loved ones know they're safe. 

Each of these attacks was different, but all had a common thread: they were carried out with a goal to spread fear and distrust, and turn members of a community against each other. 

I believe the only sustainable way to fight back against those who seek to divide us is to create a world where understanding and empathy can spread faster than hate, and where every single person in every country feels connected and cared for and loved. That's the world we can and must build together.

Let me first say that I think Safety Check is a great idea, and if they sent it out to too many people this time or confused a few of them (including me), I couldn't really care less. It is to be expected that there will be occasional minor glitches like this and there will presumably always be room for improvement on how to make it work better. That's fine.

I'm more disturbed by the second two paragraphs, If "disturbed" is the right word. "Bemused" is probably more appropriate.

I think it is reasonable to say that the last two paragraphs constitute a sort of worldview. I want to flesh it out. And I'm going to be fair about it:

The world is made up of communities (so begins my interpretation of Zuckerberg's worldview) and of course all the communities together make up one big community. In each community there are members of different races, nationalities, religions, genders, sexual orientations and various other categories.  

Within them, there are good people and bad people. Good people recognize other people's differences but also recognize that those differences are not morally significant. Or to clarify, they are morally significant to those who have them or embody them, as they should be, but we should not make moral judgments about those people based on those differences. Bad people fixate on the differences and want to brand some of them as "bad." Indeed, it's worse than that, as one of the goals of bad people is to convert good people to their side by somehow getting them to go along with that branding-of certain-differences-as-bad thing.

Another way of putting this is that there is love and there is hate. Love consists largely in treating the above differences as unimportant. Hate consists of the opposite. Among the haters are racists, sexists, religious supremacists or bigots, nationalists, homophobes and so on. 

But all is not lost. Bad people aren't precisely to blame for being bad, since they generally get their badness from observing other bad people, or perhaps being earlier victims of bad people. Or again to put it another way, they were taught--directly or indirectly--how to hate. 

But if people can learn how to hate, they can also learn how to love. The answer is therefore to spread love. Only when most people feel loved, will the cycle of hate--and yes, it is a cycle--be broken. 

This is a worthwhile and attainable goal, and Facebook will of course play its part in helping to achieve it.

Before anyone accuses me of presenting Zuckerberg's views inaccurately or in a biased manner, let me again say that the object is to be fair. Indeed, I think I've been more than fair. For example, in his Facebook post, Zuckerberg claimed that war and conflict will only end when "every single person in every country feels connected and cared for and loved." Thinking that it would be possible to satisfy that goal is of course absurd and insane. Thus I changed it to "most people." I think that makes the view more reasonable.

So what are we to say of Zuckerberg's view?

Whatever else we might say, this much is true:

It is the worldview of a child.

This child has control over much of the world's communications and is one of its world's richest human beings. It is not an exaggeration to say that he is also one of the world's most powerful human beings.

This is not the worldview of your hippy dippy third-grade teacher. It is the worldview of an eight-year old of average intelligence who is trying to make sense of things after having been taught for a year by your hippy dippy third-grade teacher.

We've largely entrusted the free flow of information to that.

Don't ask what that says about us.

Now, anyone with any human feeling must acknowledge that there is at least an atom of truth in Zuckerman's worldview, as there usually is in any childish theory. Among other things, Christians should acknowledge that it at least superficially contains elements of Christ's own example as well as certain features of His commands to us. Of course we should love, or at least try to love one another, and all things being equal, the more love there is the better. We should spread it around, as they say, as much as possible.

But in practical terms, that alone is not going to stop ISIS or stop Europe from spiraling into bloody anarchy, bloody authoritarianism, civil war or (probably in that order) all three.

For the record, I don't think Zuckerberg is an evil man. But in his childishness, he has become a collaborator with evil men.

And that's not an April Fools joke.

The Loser Claims that the Angel Moroni Told Him to Vote for Ted Cruz Until a More Acceptable White Guy in a Suit Can be Found

Tweet

No Reaganite I know would ever speak at the Hinckley Institute

Okay, I lied about part of what I claimed in the post title. The Loser can sue me if he wants.

But here's what The Loser actually just wrote on his Facebook page:

Vulgarity. Oh, that's just so awful. It makes me want to drink a glass of milk and launch a mob attack against a rival cult organization.

In the interests of complete Facebook disclosure, I will reproduce the first sixteen comments on The Loser's Facebook post (but I could have gone on). Somehow, I think things may have backfired. I didn't know there were that many thumbs in the world. 

Janet Baker Give it a rest, Mr Romney! You miserably lost your own race 4 years ago: a race that was easy to win. You have no credibility whatsoever regarding this election.

Like · Reply · 2 · 2 hrs

Chris Burris There is a choice...and it is ours to make...not yours Mitt. Any moron could've defeated Obama from ever having a second term and you even managed to fail at that. But now we are all supposed to get on your bandwagon? No thanks.

Like · Reply · 6,767 · 4 hrs · Edited

665 Replies · 20 mins

Jeffrey Brantley Thanks Mitt for endorsing Cruz. That should put Trump over the top.Americans know you are a "has been "and you should stay out of it.I have been proud to be a Republican all my life.I did vote for you but you have disappointed me to the point that I wouldn't vote for anyone you endorse.Let us, the voters decide.TRUMP 2016

Like · Reply · 4,088 · 4 hrs

277 Replies · 20 mins

Frank Canning Sr. Mitt, you sound like a liberal news reporter. I have not heard a negative comment from Trump on racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity and, most recently, threats and violence. If the Party does not unite behind Trump, you hand the election to Hillary, a third Democrat win. The Party is giving more effort to fighting Trump that to Hillary, unite or lose.

Like · Reply · 1,722 · 4 hrs

View previous replies

Ed Lion Cruz was my choice until he blamed Trump for the behavior of the "activists" in Chicago. I'm proud to have voted for you in 2012, but if the republican party subverts the will of the people, I will never again vote for one.

Like · Reply · 2,901 · 4 hrs · Edited

252 Replies · 19 mins

Camile Jackson Romney you are a sad human being. You are lost the election to Obama, the republicans took the house/senate and have done nothing. Trump is the only answer. You need to get on the Trump train or go away.

Like · Reply · 2,211 · 4 hrs

76 Replies · 19 mins

Craig Michael Mitt you're Anti-American and shameful. WE THE PEOPLE elected Trump for the run! The establishment DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR US! Don't let this be your legacy.

Like · Reply · 1,345 · 4 hrs · Edited

96 Replies · 28 mins

David Eastman Republicans in the house and senate have done NOTHING in the past 8 years. All talk, no action. Time for a change. No more losers.

Like · Reply · 1,079 · 4 hrs

36 Replies · 1 hr

Arthur Johnson So a loser voting for a loser. Makes sense! I can't believe I used to like you, campaigned for you and voted for you. Sad but good you showed who really are Mitt Romney. Cruz is a slime ball but that is okay, unless the Republicans cheat and have a brokered convention, you will lose again. But if they do, know that you were apart of destroying the party.

Like · Reply · 909 · 4 hrs · Edited

45 Replies · 1 hr

Stacy Mikkelsen Mitt, stay out of it. You and your speech tried to divide the Republican Party. Oops, backfired!!! Your turn has left the building. OBAMA kicked your butt, now go play in your sandbox. Leave Trump alone. He is the voice of the American People who are tired of the Republican Party the way it sits today. It in itself needs reform. I voted for you, if that vote needed to be cast today, not so much.

Like · Reply · 928 · 4 hrs · Edited

43 Replies · 25 mins

Jorge Jose Bunz Mitt you lost, please just retire and leave the gop alone. Trump is drawing more in the primary than you with more opponents. The more anti trump you are the more the majority of republicans will turn against you.

Like · Reply · 720 · 4 hrs

20 Replies · 1 hr

John Marcotte Sorry Mr. Romney, I have voted for you but I disagree with your statement. Mr. Trump expresses the frustration of the American people, though I disagree with his outburst. We are disenfranchised by the Republicans and Democrats. Politics as usual, leaving out the American people, needs to change.

Like · Reply · 474 · 4 hrs

14 Replies · 2 hrs

Cynthia DiGregorio Goff Mr. Romney, I supported you and would have again, but not now, I believe it is the peoples vote as to who they want, not a forcing a open convention, people can say what they want about Trump, yes he speaks his mind, but he is running to literally make...See More

Like · Reply · 376 · 4 hrs

4 Replies · 1 hr

Michael Gary You and the GOP go to a contested convention and override the vote of the people, regardless of who's in the lead, I'm leaving the Republican Party for good!

Like · Reply · 325 · 4 hrs

35 Replies · 27 mins

John Taylor I have news for Nitt Witt Mitt......we are repulsed by the republican party......we are tired of being lied to.....we don't want Cruz.....or Kasich.....their records mean nothing......we certainly don't need a loser like you telling us who to vote for.......you can vote for who you wish.....but I would encourage voters to stand up to the corrupt republican party and vote for Trump......

Like · Reply · 273 · 4 hrs

31 Replies · 19 mins

Easton Johnathon Brady Coming from one of the biggest Mitt Romney supporters back in 2012 I am 100% disappointed in you. I volunteered and did everything that I could to get you elect. Now you are wanting to go against what the people want. He is winning and people want Donald Trump. You're apart of the establishment and the problem with the Republican party. #Trump2016

Like · Reply · 224 · 4 hrs

15 Replies · 2 hrs