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blacklist (n.): a list of persons who are disapproved of or are to be punished or boycotted. The definition above, from an old Webster's dictionary, was common parlance in the late 1940s and early 1950s as the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee investigated subversive activity, Soviet espionage and pro-communist propaganda. The committee unearthed spies and traitors — Alger Hiss among them. But when the HUAC turned its attention to Hollywood writers, directors and actors, civil libertarians cried foul. The American Civil Liberties Union and others insist those on the "Hollywood blacklist" were unfairly persecuted for exercising their constitutionally protected...

Britain, the US and Canada have approved a new round of travel restrictions targeting the Iranian regime, including members of the judiciary and prison officials. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, said on Friday that the punitive measures were aimed at individuals associated with Iran's nuclear programme as well as those involved in the violation of human rights in the country. -excerpt- Britain has not released the names of the 50 individuals on the blacklist but it is believed that judges and prison officials who participated in the detention of human rights activists, including those involved in the sentencing of...

LOS ANGELES – Betty Garrett, the vivacious Broadway star who played Frank Sinatra's sweetheart in two MGM musicals before her career was hampered by the Hollywood blacklist, has died in Los Angeles, her son said Sunday. She was 91. Garrett died Saturday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, most likely from an aortic aneurysm, said her son, Garrett Parks. Garrett had been in good health and taught her usual musical comedy class at Theater West, the non-profit organization she helped found, on Wednesday night, but Friday checked into the hospital with heart trouble, and died with her family at her...

One year ago today, after returning from a conference in Brussels, I sat down in Dulles airport, connected to WiFi, researched and wrote this article, called two people, CEI’s Chris Horner to check legality issues, and Marc Morano (who was traveling in car on the PCH in California) to give him a heads up, and pressed the “publish” button just seconds before they closed the door to my flight back to Sacramento. When I landed five hours later, I immediately got back on WiFi and found the the story had exploded, and we lived in a different world. I...

From ktla: Man who was working putting up the Obama stage was fired by union for wearing Bush hat and shrirt.."Because it said Bush I was told to go home and turn my sweatshirt inside out" (Video)

Funny, I don’t remember hearing about this even once in “the news.” The media is too busy hyperventilating about every word ever uttered by Delaware Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell to do any real investigative reporting on the Democrat candidate Chris Coons. I decided to do a little digging myself. Luckily,I had the internet…http://www.wboc.com/Global/story.asp?S=6910752&nav=QEMt (August 2007) WILMINGTON, Del. (AP)- A third lawsuit alleges that New Castle County Executive Chris Coons retaliated against county employees because of their political views. Dennis Parkstone filed the latest lawsuit last month. He claims he was fired after 35 years for a minor violation because he...

I'm still in shock from reading this news on Stereogum about primitivist drummer and doll-voiced Velvet, Moe Tucker being a Tea Party fanatic. Say it ain't so Moe. It's like finding out that Henry Rollins has just been wearing a fake muscle suit all these years and he's really a skinny, mild-mannered pushover. Moe's strayed a long way off from being in a band at center of 1960's and 70's American counter culture. She's best known for her unrelenting, tribal drumming style of the time -- opting to take her bass drum, turn it upright and pound away on it...

"Blacklisted" in Europe by alphabetical order (last modified : 07/07/2010): Aero Benin - Benin - On the blacklist since 16 December 2009Aero Service - Republic of the Congo - BF - RSR - On the blacklist since 16 December 2009Aerojet - Angola - On the blacklist since 16 December 2009Aeroprakt Kz - Kazakhstan - APK - On the blacklist since 16 December 2009Aerowurks Aerial Spraying Services - Philippines - On the blacklist since 30 March 2010Africa Airways - Benin - AFF - On the blacklist since 16 December 2009Africa Connection - Sao Tomé et Principe - On the blacklist since...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for years has been predicting the greenhouse effect can spin out of control. They claim that there exists a scientific consensus that CO2 is pushing the planet into an unrestrained greenhouse effect, that it’s raising global temperatures and it must be stopped. IPCC was created in the 1980s by the United Nations. They have released findings that say that carbon-based emissions released into the atmosphere by humans, mostly in wealthy, Western countries, must be reduced, or a catastrophe will result. They have frequently used this scare tactic. It has been easy to frighten...

Hungarian atmospheric physicist Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, says he has found and proven that the IPCC and their experts are wrong in their theory about how the greenhouse effect works. (snip) Working with a number of sets of temperature and humidity data from all over the world, Miskolczi has found that the greenhouse effect is a balance of energy dependent primarily on the sun. This is something reasonable people have recognized for some time but haven’t been able to prove without the same sort of heavy science and math the IPCC experts have been using. Those who disagree with the IPCC’s...

Authorities in California said today they have opened an investigation into Goldline International, a company that pioneered the practice of weaving its sales pitches into broadcasts by popular conservative political personalities -- including two former presidential candidates and Fox News host Glenn Beck -- to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold every year. There are two main types of complaints we're seeing," said Adam Radinsky of the Santa Monica City Attorney's office, which has launched what it described as a joint investigation with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. "One is that customers say that they...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration said Monday that the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on North Korea was not terrorism, and not enough by itself to put Pyongyang back on a U.S. terror blacklist. The State Department said the March sinking of the South Korean frigate Cheonan by a reported torpedo from a North Korean submarine was a "provocative action" and a violation of the truce that ended the Korean war. But it added that the sinking was the act of one state's military against another and not an act of terrorism. Thus, it is not grounds...

KABUL (Reuters) – The United Nations has agreed to remove Taliban members who renounce ties to al Qaeda from a U.N. blacklist on a "gradual" basis, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office said on Tuesday. Senior diplomats from the 15-nation U.N. Security Council were in the Afghan capital on Tuesday, following a call for a review of the names of Taliban figures on its sanction list at a peace conference in Kabul earlier this month. "The president asked the U.N. delegates to remove Taliban members from their blacklist and the delegates agreed to do so gradually and provided the members had...

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -George Orwell The projector spins tales at 30 frames per second. Single images whirling by so quickly that the eye is fooled into perceiving motion. With each flicker, our memories are replaced with fantasies. Take for example, the 1991 movie, "Guilty By Suspicion", starring Robert De Niro:

Iran's state shipping company has changed the names and ownership of most of its vessels to evade U.S. sanctions, but the Treasury Department has yet to update the blacklist that U.S. companies use to verify they are in compliance, according to a new report. As a result, some firms are at risk of doing business with the company, Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, despite a ban that has been in place since 2008, says the report by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a Washington-based nonprofit watchdog. The findings raise questions about the effectiveness of some of Washington's...

Lilith Fair Drops Pregnancy Centers From Charity List, Keeps Abortion Biz Washington, DC -- Four days after it first received national attention for including crisis pregnancy centers in its list of potential charity recipients, organizers of the typically pro-abortion Lilith Fair dropped them from consideration. Officials also dropped a pro-abortion group but kept another and kept a group of maternity homes. http://LifeNews.com/nat6217.html

Why do we at Big Hollywood and elsewhere in the conservative blogosphere even care about James Cameron and his stupid eco-dreck cartoon? Or about Tom Hanks’ insights into the nature of American-Japanese relations World War II? Or about the conclusions Matt Damon has drawn about the Iraq war that he’s derived as a result of his years of intense work at being a movie star? Well, at one level, we don’t care. James Cameron is another overpaid Hollywood petty tyrant with twin talents for shooting exciting action set pieces and for overtly and covertly serving up sophomoric lefty clichés. Tom...

Language Warning - THR: [James] Cameron calls [Glenn] Beck a "f***ing asshole" and says that global warming deniers have "got their head so deeply up their ass I'm not sure they could hear me." And that's just Cameron getting started.

According to actor and comedian Drew Carey, Hollywood is not the intolerant blackballing liberal utopia many deem it to be. In fact, Hollywood is very accepting of the right-wing crowd - except for that fringe, radical segment known as conservatives. "In Hollywood, you can pretty much get away with being a libertarian," Carey told John Stossel on the Fox Business Network. "But if you're a conservative you're kind of doomed." Carey was a featured guest on "Stossel" March 18, dissecting the economic calamities surrounding his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio (anointed Forbes' new "Most Miserable City"), and to provide the perspective...

The "Climategate" scandal, which broke in November 2009, revealed what many skeptics had privately suspected. Prominent climate scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) had collaborated to keep data out of skeptics' hands, subverted the peer review process, and used questionable methods to construct the temperature record on which the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change (IPCC) based its recommendations. Now a new "Climategate" scandal is emerging, this time based on documents released by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in response to several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suits filed by the Competitive Enterprise...

Anita Dunn may be gone from the White House but her successor feels the same way she did about Fox News. From TVNewser The White House has a new communications director -- Dan Pfeiffer -- but the message is the same when it comes to Fox News Channel. During a video interview today with The New York Times' The Caucus blog, Pfeiffer was clear about the White House position on Fox News: "I have the same view of Fox that Anita [Dunn] had, which is that Fox is not a traditional news organization. They have a point of view. That...

The Harlem Gospel Choir has backed out of a holiday performance with controversial conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck, the Daily News has learned. The famous choir, which has performed for Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul II, was set to appear in the simulcast film of Beck's novel "The Christmas Sweater - A Return to Redemption," which opens Thursday in theaters nationwide. The choir canceled the appearance Monday, citing financial reasons. James Rucker, executive director of Color for Change - which has helped persuade more than 80 advertisers to ditch Beck's show - said the group did an about-face after...

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Rush Limbaugh is expected to be dropped from a group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams, according to three NFL sources. Dave Checketts, chairman of the NHL's St. Louis Blues and the point man in the Limbaugh group attempting to buy the Rams, realizes he must remove the controversial conservative radio host from his potential role as a minority member in the group in order to get approval from other NFL owners, the sources said. Three-quarters of the league's 32 owners would have to approve any sale to Limbaugh and his group. Earlier this week, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim...

Imagine if one of America's foremost writers had once been privy to a shadowy plot by Hitler's Germany to take control of the motion picture industry through its labor organizations and force writers to clear scripts with Nazi censors, and then he courageously stepped forward to blow the whistle on the whole operation. Wouldn't it be bizarre if, when this man died, instead of being celebrated for such heroism, he was criticized and even attacked by colleagues for revealing the identities of those who were behind the intrigue? This strange scenario isn't far from what unfolded ...

Recordpub.com Marhofer closing in Stow is a "shock' Owner: Dealership having "exceptional' year in vehicle sales By Mike Lesko Stow Sentry Associate Editor STOW — Ron Marhofer could not believe his eyes. “I read it two or three times. I was shocked and surprised,” he said Wednesday, after being informed in a letter by General Motors that Marhofer Chevrolet in Stow would lose its Chevrolet franchise next year. Marhofer said the letter is confidential, but it said GM would not renew his franchise agreement as of October 2010. The company has been in business in Stow since 1933 and is...

WASHINGTON, D.C. Three central Florida members of the state's Congressional delegation have signed their names to a letter sent this week to the U.S. General Accounting Office, demanding an accounting for a supposed "no meetings" list for official federal conventions or other business. There is no evidence that such a list exists, and federal agencies have not said there is one, but U.S. representatives Suzanne Kosmas, Alan Grayson, and John Mica are the Floridians who signed a letter calling for an investigation. The supposed list includes tourist draws of Orlando and Las Vegas, where officials could use tax dollars to...

Consumers should stop using Zicam Cold Remedy nasal gel and related products because they can permanently damage the sense of smell, federal health regulators said Tuesday. The over-the-counter products contain zinc, an ingredient scientists say may damage nerves in the nose needed for smell. The other products affected by the Food and Drug Administration's announcement are adult and kid-size Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Swabs. The FDA says about 130 consumers have reported a loss of smell after using Matrixx Initiatives' Zicam products since 1999. Shares of the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company plunged to a 52-week low after the FDA announcement, losing...

The FDA says consumers should stop using Zicam Cold Remedy nasal gel and related products immediately. All the over-the-counter products contain zinc. Scientists say that ingredient may damage nerves in the nose needed for smell.

We do not share this information to encourage people to engage in criminal acts against certain people or groups. There are other ways to handle them if one feels they need to, although it will depend on how one prefers to approach a situation. Some of the information may be very useful in a trial if any of the groups and/or individuals we are documenting are being sued or charged with a crime. We do recognize however that going to law enforcement is not a favorable approach for some people as law enforcement has had a history of oppression (and...

A recruiter who left Google last year says that the company had maintained a "do not touch" list of companies including Genentech and Yahoo, whose employees were not to be wooed to the Internet search giant. That revelation could be significant in light of this week's disclosure that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Google, Yahoo, Apple, Genentech and other tech companies conspired to keep others from stealing their top talent. Although Google declined to comment on the list or other aspects of the investigation, Palo Alto attorney Gary Reback, who has been involved in a number of high-profile...

Conservative San Francisco-based talk show host Michael Savage has made good on his promise to sue British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for defamation -- though British officials are defending her decision to ban him from the United Kingdom. "As the home secretary has already said, he was excluded for engaging in unacceptable behaviour by making comments that might provoke others to serious criminal acts and foster hatred that might lead to inter-community violence,'' a British official Sunday told the Daily Mail. Savage sued Smith because the "name and shame" list of 16 individuals compiled by the home secretary put him...

Business Insider reports that more than one Chrysler senior creditor has corroborated Thomas Lauria’s allegation that the Obama administration threatened them with public attacks if they didn’t surrender their contractual rights. One of their sources says that the Obama team comprises some of the worst “ends justify the means” people he’s ever encountered (via HA reader Geoff A):

LONDON — For the first time, Britain today published a list of people barred from entering the country for allegedly fostering extremism or hatred, including Muslim extremists, a right-wing American radio host, an Israeli settler and jailed Russian gang members. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to publish the names of 16 of 22 people who have been banned by the government since October so others could better understand what sort of behavior Britain was not prepared to tolerate. She cited unidentified "public interest" reasons for not disclosing the other six names. "I think it's important that people understand...

It is time to unleash hell on the National Republican party establishment. We need to "blacklist" any Republican who speaks out against Governor Palin is an unfair way. We can put their name on a "wall of shame". and actively seek to defeat them in GOP primaries or undermine them in any way possible. It is time to get nasty. These are the kind of tactics that got President Obama the nomination and ultimately the Presidency in 2008. It it time we take notes and play the same game. And we need to play their game in a general election....

It looks like the Obama Administration is getting ready to demonize Conservatives. What are the telltales of "Right Wing Terrorists?" Opposition to abortion. Opposition to illegal immigration. Learning to fight in the military Opposition to an African American President Having your house foreclosed Inability to get credit Being critical of outsourcing jobs Perceiving threats to the US by foreign powers Opposition to bigger social programs Criticism of government infringement of civil rightsPowerline fisks the Obama government report: Watch Out For Those Crazy Right Wingers! And if you think that this was simply a report to be written and filed away...

Appearing in the timeslot of the fourth hour of Tuesday's "Today" show that Ann Coulter was originally booked to appear on, celebrity blogger/author Perez Hilton addressed the Coulter bumping controversy directly, as he challenged the conservative author: "Ann Coulter, if you’re watching, bite me!" "Today" co-hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb then acknowledged that Coulter was, in fact, scheduled to promote her book at that time but may be invited back on Wednesday's show. Gifford expressed disappointment that Coulter and Hilton weren't on together, saying it would have been "good television," which prompted Hilton to respond: "She's not very...

How would you like elections without secret ballots? To most people, this would be absurd. We have secret balloting for obvious reasons. Politics frequently generates hot tempers. People can put up yard signs or wear political buttons if they want. But not everyone feels comfortable making his or her positions public -- many worry that their choice might offend or anger someone else. They fear losing their jobs or facing boycotts of their businesses. And yet the mandatory public disclosure of financial donations to political campaigns in almost every state and at the federal level renders people's fears and vulnerability...

Gay rights activists in San Diego and elsewhere, hoping to sustain a grass-roots protest movement launched after the Nov. 4 passage of Proposition 8, have planned a nationwide boycott tomorrow. The event, called Day Without a Gay, encourages gays, lesbians and their supporters to take off work, refrain from shopping and spend the day volunteering somewhere. “We're hoping to provide a visual representation of who we are,” said Sara Beth Brooks, an El Cajon bookkeeper who recently formed a group called the San Diego Equality Campaign. “We're your neighbors, your family, your friends. We're everybody. We hope this kind of...

Hollywood can still mount a soapbox and recall the dark days when people lost their jobs in show business for daring to take an unpopular political position that was outside the mainstream. Whenever they're criticized, they proclaim, "McCarthyism," accuse their critics of "blacklisting," and condemn the deplorable "intolerance." Hollywood has yet to accept, perhaps even to understand, that it is the entertainment industry that excels at this slanderous behavior. After California voters narrowly approved Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, it was revealed that Scott Eckern, the artistic director...

Then Prop 8 argument, was settled by the voters almost three weeks ago and in that time the argument has shifted from "should there be gay marriage" to "should people/institutions be punished for their political views? Two weeks ago a theater director was forced to resign because he gave money to the pro-Prop 8 forces, then the head of the LA Film Festival has been forced to resign for the same reason. There are regular and sometimes vicious protests in front of the Mormon Church in California. The Argument has shifted. This no longer has to do with the definition...

Anti-Prop. 8 Mob Watch: A new blacklist published By Michelle Malkin • November 29, 2008 10:40 AM Angry gay activists in Austin, Texas, have published their own blacklist to punish supporters of California’s Proposition 8. The anti-Prop. 8 mob in Texas is targeting entire businesses over private individual donations. The insane rage rages on: Gay marriage activists who lost at the ballot box in California are now lashing out at businesses that supported the ban — and their anger reaches way beyond the borders of Golden State. In Austin, a gay community Web site has published an “Austin Anti-Gay Blacklist”...

How does Atlas grow? Google search is one critically important way. People find Atlas when they do a word search in google ie "Obama birth certificate", "Obama odinga", "honor killings", "Obama campaign finance fraud" - stories that I broke or did groundbreaking work on and Atlas is usually in the top five of the search results. That's how folks find my work and generally I keep 15-20% of them as return readers. Regular Atlas readers know the media refuses to cover these stories - building readership is the only way to boost awareness in this increasingly dangerous world. A couple...

Richard Raddon, the director of the Los Angeles Film Festival who has been at the center of controversy ever since it was revealed almost two weeks ago that he had contributed $1,500 to the campaign to ban gay marriage in California, resigned from his post over the weekend. The nonprofit arts organization Film Independent sponsors both the Los Angeles Film Festival, held in May, and the popular Independent Spirit awards. Raddon is a member of the Mormon Church, which actively called on its congregants to work for the passage of Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between...

Under mounting pressure, LA Film Festival director Richard Raddon has ankled his post. Raddon and Film Independent (FIND), the festival's parent org, have faced a barrage of protests over Raddon's contribution to the successful Yes on Prop 8 campaign that banned same-sex marriage in California. After bloggers published his name, culled from public records of donors, Raddon tendered his first resignation on Nov. 13 to Film Independent’s board of directors, which was not accepted. Film Independent then released a statement saying, in part, "Our organization does not police the personal, religious, or political choices of any employee, member, or filmmaker."...

California officials are planning to investigate whether the Mormon church gave an accurate accounting of its role in the campaign that succeeded in getting a same-sex marriage ban approved in the state. The action by the California Fair Political Practices Commission came in response to a complaint filed two weeks ago by a gay rights activist. Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, accuses the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of failing to report the value of the work it did to support Proposition 8. Roman Porter, the agency's executive director, said Monday that the decision to open...

BEFORE Election Day, national media hand wringers forged a wildly popular narrative: The right was, in the words of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, gripped by "insane rage." Outbreaks of incivility (some real, but mostly imagined) were proof positive of the extremist takeover of the Republican Party. The cluck-cluckers and tut-tutters shook with fear. But when the GOP took a beating on Nov. 4, no mass protests ensued; no nationwide boycotts erupted. Conservatives took their lumps and began the peaceful post-defeat process of self-flagellation, self-analysis and self-autopsy. In fact, in the wake of campaign 2008 there's only one angry...

Hundreds of supporters of same-sex marriage gathered at Fresno City Hall on Saturday, vowing not to back down in their fight against Proposition 8 and urging a boycott of businesses that helped fund the initiative. They weren't alone. Coast-to-coast, crowds gathered near public buildings in small communities and major cities including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago to vent their frustrations, celebrate gay relationships and renew calls for change. In Fresno, protesters turned their attention to what comes next. Matthew Payne of Fresno compared the same-sex marriage ban to former laws against biracial marriages and women's right to...

A former New York college instructor may proceed with a claim that he was denied tenure because school administrators disapproved of his conservative politics and support for President George W. Bush, not for deficiencies as an educator, a federal judge has ruled. Michael Filozof has presented sufficient evidence of a possible First Amendment violation ... on his free speech claim, Western District Court Judge David G. Larimer has determined. Filozof contends the tenure track he was on as a political science instructor at the Rochester, N.Y., community college was suddenly derailed in 2003, during a period of hot debate among...

A prominent theatrical director in California, a Mormon, has resigned under pressure because of his support for Prop 8. Excerpt: Marc Shaiman, the Tony Award-winning composer ("Hairspray"), called Mr. Eckern last week and said that he would not let his work be performed in the theater. "I was uncomfortable with money made off my work being used to put discrimination in the Constitution," Mr. Shaiman said. He added, however, that the entire episode left him "deeply troubled" because of the potential for backlash against gays who protested Mr. Eckern's donation. "It will not help our cause because we will be...