Shame... shame on me! (with Google)

Arlene Peck

Shame... shame on me!

By Arlene Peck

Despite the fact that I was born a Leo and the symbol of the lion, I have always considered myself a pussycat. And, I never thought that my words of wisdom would need any reason to re-access my thinking in how I phrase them. After all, my publishers never seemed to mind that I had a tendency to be a tad politically incorrect. I just told them that I had a compulsion to tell it like it is… and they loved me for it! Maybe a little too much.

Because, folks, it seems that I have been blackballed for being a bad girl. I guess I have not been nice enough to those wonderful folks that brought us the Taliban and the weekly be-heading show. How do I know this? Well, I believe that it all began a while back when I wrote a column called: " CAIR and the ACLU Strange Bedfellows." It seems somebody, (I say somebody because I’m not allowed to know the names of my accusers) at Google who probably works in a " tech help" center in one of those wonderful Islamic countries that we now outsource to, has decided that my column: "How Has Islam Enriched Your Life?" was in the category of “Hate Speech.” As a result, they notified one of my publishers, Frank Salvato, the managing editor of The New Media Journal, that he had been dropped from Google. And, sadly, they listed me as the reason. I say “they” although their names could be Mohamed and Achmed but I will never know who wants to censor his paper. So, even though it’s a huge violation of our First Amendment's guarantee to a free press, do they care? Hell no!

Google, even though it might be as big as a small country, does not have to play by the rules because they are considered a ‘private company.’ They don’t worry about mundane things like how awful a test case this might become.

Folks, this is no different from making a fuss over cartoons. Except now they seem to have become a little more sophisticated. They are entering another arena by intimidating journalists into writing anything but very left of center so it will be considered tame enough for the censors at Google. And, to my way of thinking… somewhere in the background is good old CAIR.

I had been wondering what was happening at Google even before I was notified that I had been so bad that I was taken off the good list. For the two previous weeks, I had noticed that although about 50,000 sites referenced me when my name was clicked on Google, (Yahoo still has 48,000) about 1,500 were being dropped off every day. So, I called the good people in India and asked them was it possible that a ‘hacker’ was removing my name. Nobody seemed to know. Ah, but then only a day or so later, I was told that they considered me a ‘hate - speech’ writer.

Thankfully, there is a large contingent of my readership who are not intimidated by the threat of censorship. However, folks, this is truly scary. Because this, I believe, is a test case by the Islamic powers that be. They are now going after columnists and journalists who write columns that they consider unfavorable to their Islamofascist cause

Whenever a speaker was or is invited to the campus who just might be Jewish or speaking on anything with an Israeli orientation, and this includes Israeli Prime Ministers Netanyahu and Barak; Islamic scholar Daniel Pipes and Lebanese Terrorism expert and speaker Brigitte Gabriel. The campus office would be flooded with emails, letters and protests barring them from speaking the truth. Their methods worked. Today, the invitations from the universities aren't happening because it's not worth the hassle of putting out so much security to protect these speakers from the well planned Muslim protest that follow these speakers wherever they go.

Now , however, it's no longer cartoons they are targeting. I believe that I am a test case. So now, when these 'plants' at some search engines see that there are those out there who are not writing to their liking, they spam the email of companies such as Google. These targeted companies then cave in, complaining about 'hate speech" and newspapers, such as The News Media Journal are withdrawn.

These people don't worry about First Amendment rights . They have learned how to use our "free and democratic system" to their advantage. More importantly, they know that if they do, American companies will fold. Folks, I do not intend to 'give in'. Concessions denote weakness and that is just not my 'style.' It shouldn't be yours either. Tell people.. and fight this with me!

Google dumps news sites that criticize radical Islam

Search giant axes another news page, calls terrorism discussion 'hate content'

Posted: May 23, 2006

Search engine giant Google has cut off its news relationship with a number of online news publications that include frank discussions of radical Islam – the New Media Journal becoming the latest termination, as its owner just discovered. Frank Salvato, who began the agreement with Google News last September, said he received a reply from the company's help desk Friday indicating there had been complaints of "hate speech" on his site, as first reported by media watchdog Newsbusters.org. The e-mail, which cited three articles that dealt with radical Islam and its relationship to terrorism, read:

Hi Frank,

Thanks for writing. We received numerous reports about hate content on your site, and after reviewing these reports, decided to remove your site from Google News. We do not allow articles and sources expressly promoting hate speech viewpoints in Google News (although referencing hate speech for commentary and analysis is acceptable).

For example, a number of the complaints we looked at on your site were found to be hate content:

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/peck/05102006.htm
http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/stock/05082006.htm
http://www.newmediajournal.us/guest/imani/04222006.htm

We hope this helps you understand our position.

Regards, The Google Team

Newsbusters says it has observed a pattern of intolerance toward conservative sites that deal with radical Islam and terrorism. Rusty Shackleford, owner of The Jawa Report, received a similar e-mail message March 29 informing him: "Upon recent review, we've found that your site contains hate speech, and we will no longer be including it in Google News." Two weeks later, Jim Sesi's MichNews.com was cut off, with Google providing three examples of "hate speech" by conservative writer J. Grant Swank, Jr. Newsbusters commented: "At first blush, one can easily ignore such business decisions by the most powerful company on the Internet as being routine. However, on closer examination, such behavior could give one relatively small technological corporation (when measured by the size of its workforce) a degree of political might that frankly dwarfs its current financial prowess."

The media watchdog noted columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin wrote in February 2005 her difficulties in becoming part of Google News. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs had a similar complaint. When Google News launched its beta site in April 2002, it said its mission was to construct an unbiased news engine free of human intervention using new methods of aggregating news from sources worldwide. According to the April Nielsen/NetRatings report, 49 percent of all searches conducted in the U.S. in March 2006 were carried out on Google. Along with the dropping of conservative news providers, Google has received other complaints of liberal bias.

Last June, a conservative book publisher said Google rejected his ad for a book critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton while continuing to accept anti-Bush themes. Eric Jackson, CEO of World Ahead, said his ads for "Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine" were rejected, without further explanation, due to "unacceptable content." As WND reported, 98 percent of all political donations by Google employees went to support Democrats, and as a matter of fact, Al Gore is now a senior adviser to Google. Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave the maximum legal limit of donations to Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry and to primary candidate Howard Dean. Schmidt also contributed the maximum amount to Sen. Clinton, whose role in helping her husband intimidate his female accusers is addressed in the new book.

In May 2005, Google rejected an attempt by the conservative activist group RightMarch.com to run ads critical of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., while continuing to run attack ads against besieged House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. Also, Google agreed to allow the communist Chinese government to have the search engine block "objectionable" search terms such as "democracy." In addition, the company came under fire for an editorial decision to rank news articles in search results by "quality," giving preferential placement to large and predominately liberal media outlets such as CNN and the BBC over conservative news sources, even if they are more recent or pertinent.

Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist, television talk show hostess, and most important, she tells the truth. She is the queen of political incorrectness in a world awash in lies and double-talk that often passes for journalism today. Arlene, I salute you!

Arlene's Homepage

Updated 8/1/05