• New York subway stations to display anti-jihad ad

    By NBC News

    An ad initially rejected in New York City for its "demeaning'' language about Islam is expected to appear at 10 subway stations next week.


    Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Aaron Donovan told The New York Times that "our hands are tied.'' 

    A Manhattan federal court judge ruled in July that the MTA violated the First Amendment rights of the ad's sponsor, The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), and must let the ad appear, NBCNewYork.com reported.

    The ad states: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.'' It adds, "Support Israel. Defeat Jihad,'' in between two Stars of David.  

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    The group also bought ad space in Washington D.C., where the transit authority there told the Times that it had "deferred" the ad’s placement "out of a concern for public safety, given current world events."

    The group's ad appeared on public buses in San Francisco in August. The transit agency there, known as Muni, said it would donate the $3,400 ad revenue to the city's Human Rights Commission and place an ad next to AFDI's message to say "Muni doesn't support this message," local media reported at the time.

    Golden Gate Bridge transit district, which provides bus and ferry service between San Francisco and suburbs to the north, rejected the ads at a Sept. 7 board meeting by adopting a policy banning religious and political ads.

    Pamela Geller, executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, said in an email to the Times that that transit officials in Washington were "kowtowing to the threat of jihad terrorism."

    Recent events in the Middle East have not given her pause "for a second" about posting the ads in New York, she told the Times. "I will never cower before violent intimidation and stop telling the truth because doing so is dangerous," Geller said. "Freedom must be vigorously defended."

    "If someone commits violence, it is his responsibility and no one else’s," she added.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center branded Geller "the anti-Muslim movement's most visible and flamboyant figurehead" and AFDI as a hate group.

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    The Anti-Defamation League said in March that Geller "fuels and fosters anti-Muslim bigotry in society."

    Muneer Awad, the executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Times the ads were an attempt to "define Muslims" through hate speech.

    "It’s perfectly legal to be a bigot and to be a racist," he said. "We want to make sure there’s a counter-voice."

    Donovan said the MTA might consider revising its ad policy at its board meeting next week.

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  • 'Rats' redux? Santorum campaign ad appears to link Obama with Ahmadinejad

    By M. Alex Johnson, msnbc.com

    Rick Santorum's presidential campaign appears to have released a new video that subliminally links President Barack Obama with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

    M. Alex Johnson

    M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for msnbc.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

    The video, titled "Obamaville," is a 65-second-long production that presents bleak images of an America in dire economic and social straits, interspersed with scenes of international unrest. Prominent among those is a segment showing images of protests and violence in Iran, featuring pictures of Ahmadinejad. It doesn't include the mandatory "I'm Rick Santorum and I approved this message" tagline that would be necessary if it were intended to air on television.

    The video was posted Friday on the Santorum campaign's YouTube page, where it was marked as "unlisted," meaning you can't access it without a special link. But you should still be able to see it on a Twitter account identified as belonging to Michael Biundo, Santorum's campaign manager.

    Biundo didn't respond to a request for comment Friday night.

    The ad also was published by National Review Online, which touted it as an exclusive "first look at Rick Santorum's latest ad."

    At the 40-second mark, an image of Ahmadinejad is shown on a small TV screen. For less than a half-second, the picture flashes to a similarly framed picture of Obama before returning to the Iranian dictator.

    At full speed, it looks like a tiny video glitch or small lightning strike, but if you slow down the video, the image of Obama is clear in individual frames:

    Reached by NBC News on Friday night, Hogan Gidley, a Santorum spokesman, said it is "absurd" to think the ad is likening Obama to Ahmadinejad.

    "If Ahmadinejad gets a nuclear weapon, then we're obviously going to deal with the fallout and coverage of that," Gidley said. "All we're going to be seeing is images of him and the president. We were trying to illustrate that."

    And Politico reported that John Brabender, the media consultant who made the video, also denied there was an attempt to conflate Obama and Ahmadinejad. Brabender told Politico that the video is part of an eight-part web series that will run on the Santorum website in two weeks focusing on specific Obama policies.

    The ad in some ways is reminiscent of one produced by the Republican National Committee for George W. Bush in 2000, in which the word "RATS" briefly appeared on the screen in a reference to Al Gore's health care proposals before resolving into the word "BUREAUCRATS" at the 25-second mark.

    Here are the frames in question:

    YouTube.com

    That ad was pulled after Democrats complained that it was a subliminal insult about Gore, a charge that the RNC and the Bush campaign denied.

    NBC News' Andrew Rafferty contributed to this report.

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