Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Read Carefully the 45 Goals of Communism
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use "united force" to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
-- Congressional Record, Appendix, pp. A34-A35, January 10, 1963
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use "united force" to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
-- Congressional Record, Appendix, pp. A34-A35, January 10, 1963
Israel's Navy Captures Weapons Ship
Tuesday, March 15, 2011Ad Feedback
JERUSALEM, Israel - Israeli Navy commandos seized a German freighter en route to the Egyptian port of el-Arish on Tuesday. The ship was carrying Iranian-made weapons for Hamas, the Palestinian faction ruling the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the operation.
"We had a solid basis that onboard the ship was weaponry destined for use against Israel," the prime minister said in a statement released by his office. "Considerable weaponry - which was destined for terrorist forces in the heart of Gaza - was found onboard the vessel."
"The operation was carried out at sea in accordance with all international rules. The weaponry originated in Iran, which is trying to arm the Gaza Strip," he continued.
Elite naval commandos intercepted the Victoria about 200 miles off Israel's Mediterranean coast. According to media reports, the commandos encountered no resistance from the crew, who said they were unaware of the weapons cache on board.
The crew planned to unload the cargo at Alexandria's el-Arish port, where the weapons would have been transported by land to the smuggling tunnels near the Rafah border crossing.
The freighter, which set sail from Syria and docked in Turkey, left for Egypt Monday evening under a Liberian flag. A French shipping company was also involved.
The Navy is escorting the ship to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where it is expected to dock Tuesday evening.
IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz informed Defense Minister Ehud Barak of the weapons seizure early Tuesday morning. The IDF and Foreign Ministry informed the German government, Liberia, and France of the seizure.
"The operation was approved, as necessary, in accordance with government directives in light of Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz's recommendations," a statement from the IDF Spokesman's Office said.
"The IDF and Ministry of Foreign Affairs alerted the German authorities about the interception of the Victoria, due to the German ownership of the ship," the statement read.
The ship is jointly owned by the government of Liberia and a German company.
The Itamar Massacre: Why Is Such Savagery Surprising?
Mar 17th 2011 at 12:57 pm 
The “holy” Koranic imagery of Jews shared by Arab and non-Arab Muslims, children and adults, alike.
Friday night 3/11/11 in Itamar, Samaria, parents, Udi, 36, and Ruth Fogel, 35, as well as three of their six children, Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and the 3-month old infant Hadas, were all brutally stabbed to death. The infant Hadas was in fact decapitated. Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, terrorist wing of the Fatah faction headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, claimed responsibility for the savage attack, characterizing it as a “heroic operation.”Saturday evening (3/12/11) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Itamar massacre. Netanyahu’s eloquent remarks included a demand
… that the Palestinian Authority stop the incitement that is conducted on a daily basis in their schools, mosques and the media under their control. The time has come to stop this double-talk in which the Palestinian Authority outwardly talks peace, and allows – and sometimes leads – incitement at home.
But Netanyahu failed to break a universally imposed, self-destructive taboo. He refused to identify the ubiquitous, if unnamed raw material for Palestinian Muslim “incitement”— the jihad and Jew-hating motifs from Islam’s mainstream, orthodox canon.
For the past 90 years, Palestinian Arab Muslim religious and political leaders, beginning with the founders of this jihadist movement, Hajj Amin el-Husseini and Izzad-Din al-Qassam, have imbued their rhetoric, unabashedly with the extensive jihadism and Jew-hatred—including apocalyptic, annihilationist themes—featured in Islam’s foundational texts: the Koran, hadith (words and deeds of Islam’s prophet Muhammad), and sira (the earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad).
Sheikh Tayseer al-Tamimi, who currently heads the Palestinian Authority’s Sharia (Islamic Law) Courts, in 1994, then chairman of the PA’s Islamic Law Council, stated,
The Jews are destined to be persecuted, humiliated, and tortured forever, and it is a Muslim duty to see to it that they reap their due. No petty arguments must be allowed to divide us. Where Hitler failed, we must succeed.
Hamas cleric Wael Al-Zarad during a television program which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 28, 2008 intoned the following about the Jews of Israel: “By Allah, if each and every Arab spat on them, they would drown in Arab spit.” Wael Al-Zarad’s seemingly hallucinatory statement also included this allegation,
From the dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they proclaim that Ezra the Scribe is the son of God.
The reference to Ezra is actually a false, intentionally defamatory Koranic accusation (Koran 9:30) against Jews, citing a claim which Jews, in fact, have never made.
But the crux of Al-Zarad’s remarks explained that the Muslims’ blood vengeance against the Jews, “will only subside with their [the Jews] annihilation, Allah willing, because they tried to kill our Prophet several times.”
These allegations are part of a central antisemitic motif in the Koran which decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ reiterated at 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah. And Koran 3:112 is featured before the pre-amble to Hamas’ foundational Covenant—it is literally part of the very first statement of the document. [Here is the Arberry translation of 3:112: “Abasement shall be pitched on them, wherever they are come upon, except they be in a bond of God, and a bond of the people; they will be laden with the burden of God's anger, and poverty shall be pitched on them; that, because they disbelieved in God's signs, and slew the Prophets without right; that, for that they acted rebelliously and were transgressors.”]
This central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been “…cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary’s son” (5:78). The Muslim prophet Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322). And the related verse, 5:64, accuses the Jews—as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did in a January 2007 speech, citing Koran 5:64—of being “spreaders of war and corruption,” a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The centrality of the Jews’ permanent “abasement and humiliation,” and being “laden with God’s anger” in the corpus of Muslim exegetic literature on Koran 2:61/3:112, is clear. By nature deceitful and treacherous, the Jews rejected Allah’s signs and prophets, including Isa, the Muslim Jesus. Classical Koranic commentators when discussing Koran 5:82, which includes the statement (“Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews..”), concur on the unique animus of the Jews towards the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of Koran 2:61/3:112. The canonical hadith update this curse with perfect archetypal logic: following the Muslims’ initial conquest of the Jewish farming oasis of Khaybar, one of the vanquished Jewesses—acting in a prototype “Jewish conspiracy”—reportedly served Muhammad poisoned mutton (or goat), which resulted, ultimately, in his protracted, agonizing death.
Indeed the Koran’s overall discussion of the Jews is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment, conviction, and punishment process. The Jews’ ultimate sin and punishment are made clear: they are the devil’s minions (4:60) cursed by Allah, their faces will be obliterated (4:47), and if they do not accept the true faith of Islam-the Jews who understand their faith become Muslims (3:113)-they will be made into apes (2:65/ 7:166), or apes and swine (5:60), and burn in the Hellfires (4:55, 5:29, 98:6, and 58:14-19).
Thus within two centuries of Islam’s advent, prominent Muslim scholars and theologians in Baghdad (then seat of the Abbasid Caliphate) reported the abiding animus of the Muslim masses toward the Jews engendered by these Antisemitic motifs—a hostility which exceeded the Muslims’ enmity toward the infidel Christians.
Salah al-Khalidi (fl. late 20th century) makes plain how the Koranic motifs of Jew-hatred are interpreted by Hamas in a manner that is entirely consistent with classical exegeses. Extracts (translated from the original Arabic by Dr. Michael Schub in my The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism) are provided below from Khalidi’s major work Haqa’iq Koraniyya al Qadiyya al-Filastinniya ["Koranic Facts Regarding the Palestinian Issue"] which was first published in 1991 by the Hamas Publishing House Manshūrāt Filastin al-Muslima, and translated into Urdu, Hindi, Turkish, Russian, and English (formerly available online at www.assabeel.com) due to its international popularity.
Humiliation is attached to the Jews for their entire lifetime: they were humiliated in Egypt, and when they arrived in [sic] Palestine, and when they were exiled from Palestine, and when they dispersed into the valleys of the earth. What concerns us here-in our discussion of the Jewish character-is to indicate that this humiliation is to be considered as an inveterate Jewish character trait, and a destructive Jewish perversion. Humiliation is one of their historical attributes, a fixed fact of their existence, and a qaa`ida, basis of their life… (Koran 2:61) The Jews are humiliated because they disbelieved in God, killed His prophets, disobeyed His emissaries, transgressed His prohibitions-all of this is humiliation. They are humiliated-and this is why they search out lustful indulgences, and have become their slaves. All of this is humiliation.
It is impossible that the Jews could not be cursed. How could they not be accursed when they are attributed with such degenerate inveterate character traits, twenty of which we have demonstrated above. (Note: Khalidi earlier states, ‘We have extracted from Koran twenty Jewish traits. The Jews are: liars, perverters (of the Text), envious, tricky, fickle, mercurial, sardonic, treacherous, in error, causing others to be in error, merchants, fools, humiliated, dastards, misers, avid for (this) life, disloyal to their firm contracts, rush into sinful aggression, concealers of true evidence, corrupters in the earth, and obstructors in God’s path.’ For specific Koranic citations confirming his litany see here). They are worthy of eternal curse because of the villainous traits they display and the corrupt evils they have perpetrated.
The Jews are in a condition of mal`ana, i.e. everyone pours out curses on them; God has cursed them, the angels have cursed them, their prophets have cursed them, the good people among them have cursed them, and everyone has cursed them. They are deserving of this eternal and continual damnation until the day of resurrection when they will encounter God’s wrath, fury, and punishment. They were accordingly exiled from God’s mercy, and kept afar from His goodness.
Many Koranic verses were revealed emphasizing…the judgment upon them of cursed damnation, and exile from His mercy, e.g. Koran 5:13: “For breaking their covenant, We curse them, and have made their hearts hard.” And Koran 5:60…And Koran 5:64…And Koran 5:78…
The recent annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews, as expressed by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, are also rooted in Islamic eschatology [end of times theology], and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Covenant. As characterized in the hadith (the words, deeds, and even unspoken gestures of Muhammad as ostensibly recorded by his earliest pious Muslim companions), Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl — the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ — or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered- everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (in article 7). This hadith is cited in the Covenant as a sacralized, obligatory call for a Muslim genocide of the Jews:
…the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)
Jihad is the other pillar of Hamas’ foundational Jew-annihilationist ideology featured in the 1988 Covenant. Once again, this is already suggested in the opening statement before the preamble which includes the following quote by Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: “Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it, as it abolished that which was before it.” Hamas, it should be noted, claims to be a wing of the International Muslim Brotherhood. Article 2 of the Hamas Charter, for example, states: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organisation which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times.”
But the body of the Hamas Covenant includes unequivocal statements of Hamas’ irredentist commitment to the annihilation of Israel via jihad. Jihad martyrdom is lauded in article 8 “the Hamas slogan,” (in fact borrowed from the 1928 Charter of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood), which states, “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its Constitution; Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” Article 13 makes plain that Hamas’ jihadism is completely incompatible with any meaningful Middle East peace settlement:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that…There is no solution to the Palestinian question except by Jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and International Conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors.
And article 15 (subtitled, “Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is a Personal Duty”) elucidates classical jihadist theory, as well as its practical modern application to the destruction of Israel by jihad:
The day the enemies conquer some part of the Muslim land, jihad becomes a personal duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, it is necessary to raise the banner of jihad. This requires the propagation of Islamic consciousness among the masses, locally [in Palestine], in the Arab world and in the Islamic world. It is necessary to instill the spirit of jihad in the nation, engage the enemies and join the ranks of the jihad fighters. The indoctrination campaign must involve ulama, educators, teachers and information and media experts, as well as all intellectuals, especially the young people and the sheikhs of Islamic movements…
It is necessary to establish in the minds of all the Muslim generations that the Palestinian issue is a religious issue, and that it must be dealt with as such, for [Palestine] contains Islamic holy places, [namely] the Al-Aqsa mosque, which is inseparably connected, for as long as heaven and earth shall endure, to the holy mosque of Mecca through the Prophet’s nocturnal journey [from the mosque of Mecca to the Al-Aqsa mosque] and through his ascension to heaven thence. “Being stationed on the frontier for the sake of Allah for one day is better than this [entire] world and everything in it; and the place taken up in paradise by the [horseman's] whip of any one of you [jihad fighters] is better than this [entire] world and everything in it. Every evening [operation] and morning [operation] performed by Muslims for the sake of Allah is better than this [entire] world and everything in it.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja). “By the name of Him who holds Muhammad’s soul in His hand, I wish to launch an attack for the sake of Allah and be killed and attack again and be killed and attack again and be killed.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim)
The rise of Jewish nationalism—Zionism—posed a predictable, if completely unacceptable challenge to the Islamic order—jihad-imposed chronic dhimmitude for Jews—of apocalyptic magnitude. As historian Bat Ye’or has explained,
…because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery [pace Koran 17:4-5/ 7:168; and 2:61/3:112], the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad.
This is exactly the Islamic context in which the widespread, “resurgent” use of Jew annihilationist apocalyptic motifs, would be an anticipated, even commonplace occurrence. And for more than six decades, promoters of modern jihad genocide have consistently invoked Islam’s Jew-exterminating eschatology. Hajj Amin el-Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, and Muslim jihadist, who became, additionally, a full-fledged Nazi collaborator and ideologue in his endeavors to abort a Jewish homeland, and destroy world Jewry, composed a 1943 recruitment pamphlet (see Jennie Lebel’s 2007 biography of the Mufti , pp. 311-319) for Balkan Muslims entitled, “Islam and the Jews.” This incendiary document hinged upon antisemitic motifs from the Koran (for example, 5:82), and the hadith (including Muhammad’s alleged poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess), and concluded with the apocalyptic canonical hadith describing the Jews’ annihilation.
Forty-five years later the same hadith was incorporated into the 1988 Hamas Covenant, making clear the jihad terrorist organization had its own aspirations for Jew annihilation.
Unfortunately, the orthodox Islamic archetypes of Jew hatred promulgated by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, are also being disseminated by the most respected, mainstream Islamic institutions. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, who served as Grand Imam of Al Azhar University from 1996 till his death in March 2010, wrote these words in his 700 page treatise rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred, [Jews in the Koran and the Traditions], originally published in 1968/69, and then re-issued in 1986:
[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word….[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.
These were the expressed, “carefully researched” views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a Pope-the head of the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam, which represents some 90% of the world’s Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi never mollified such hatemongering beliefs after becoming the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on “dialogue” (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as “enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs” (April 2002), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002) make clear. Tantawi’s statements on dialogue, which were issued shortly after he met with the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Israel Meir Lau, in Cairo, on December 15, 1997, provided him another opportunity to re-affirm his ongoing commitment to the views expressed about Jews in his Ph.D. thesis.
…anyone who avoids meeting with the enemies in order to counter their dubious claims and stick fingers into their eyes, is a coward. My stance stems from Allah’s book [the Koran], more than one-third of which deals with the Jews…[I] wrote a dissertation dealing with them [the Jews], all their false claims and their punishment by Allah. I still believe in everything written in that dissertation. [i.e., Jews in the Koran and the Traditions, cited above]
Nearly 15-years later, the same Rabbi Lau, with some 20,000 other mourners in attendance, provided a moving eulogy at the Jerusalem funeral for the victims of the jihadist carnage at Itamar.
Let us hope that Rabbi Lau, and perhaps more importantly politicians of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s stature, will both acknowledge and denounce the living legacy of mainstream Islam’s theological anti-Jewish animus. The annihilationist Jew-hatred such odious doctrine engenders was graphically illustrated at Itamar. Fomented by contemporary Islam’s clerical and political leadership, this “sacralized” hatred must not be ignored any longer.
Forced Marriages in Our Own Backyard
Posted By Phyllis Chesler On March 17, 2011 @ 6:00 pm
On February 22, 2011, Jessie Bender, a 13-year-old southern California girl, ran away from home. No, Jessie was not into “sex, drugs, or rock n’ roll.” On the contrary. Jessie was terrified that her American-born mother, Melissa, a convert to Islam, and her mother’s Pakistani boyfriend and acting stepfather Mohammed “Mo” Khan, had decided to send her to Pakistan to be married against her will. Had Jessie gone, her mother and “Mo” would have received $3000.00.
Initially, her mother told police that Jessie had been abducted by a Facebook predator. Melissa, in full hijab, made a tearful plea for the television cameras. ”If you are holding my daughter, please let her go…Please, I beg you to let my daughter go. She’s just 13 years old.”
This tearful, public, pseudo-honesty reminds me of the Afghan-Canadian Safia family who wept in public, mourning their three dead honor murdered daughters: 13 year-old Geeti, 17 year-old Sahari, and 19-year-old Zainab, and Safia’s first wife, 50-year-old Rona Amir Mohammed. In a bid for sympathy, and to throw the police off their trail, the three murderers shed copious tears, grieving, loudly.
Jessie Bender’s mother went on television and lied about her daughter. Yes, it is true, Jessie had communicated with an adult male on Facebook, but that is not where she ran. Jessie’s uncle had hidden her at an Apple Valley motel. Within a week, it became clear that Jessie’s mother, Melissa, and her pseudo-stepfather “Mo, ” had both been lying. Melissa herself had visited Pakistan and may be seen in a photo smiling broadly, wearing very serious hijab and standing next to a turbaned tribal elder who is holding a gun. Possibly, she is also standing next to “Mo.”
Patricia “Tissy” Said in Dallas, assisted her Egyptian-born husband Yasir who honor murdered their two daughters, Sarah and Amina, for refusing such arranged marriages.
Like Texas’s “Tissy” Said, California’s Melissa Bender also seems a bit…dim-witted, easy prey for a smart or charming Muslim man who wants (or needs) to bring his Pakistani brother over to America. “Mo’s” brother is, apparently, in some kind of trouble and has to get out of Dodge City pronto.
Yasir Said hatched a similar plan: He wanted to marry his American-born, American-citizen daughters off to hand-picked Egyptian men who would then be able to become American citizens. Whether Said was doing this for money, “honor,” or jihad is unknown. Tunisian-born Samia Labidi, who lives in France, describes such marriages between under-age Western girls and older Muslim foreign men as part of a larger jihadic plan. This may not be true in the California Bender case, but it may be true in other cases.
And, by the way, “Tissy” Said herself married Yasir in Texas when she was only 14 years old. She did so with her father’s permission. I have no doubt that both she and her father believed that Yasir was the Sheikh of Araby and would provide for “Tissy” royally. Instead, he did what many Muslim Arab men do: He sent his wife out to work and lived off her pitiful earnings.
Melissa has six children from six different fathers. She has also lost custody of two children to their maternal grandmother. I do not justify her stupidity and cruelty but it is clear that she may not be in good mental or intellectual health. Nevertheless, her children are at her mercy.
Jessie was found hiding about 30 miles from her home. Since then, Jessie and her siblings have been in child protective custody.
An estranged family member confirms that Jessie indeed “was going to be married off to [the stepfather’s] brother over in Pakistan because he was in some trouble and they wanted to bring him over to the states. They were going to get paid $3000 for this.”
It is common for Pakistani fathers to sell their young daughters into marriage in order to make a quick buck. Bride prices range from Rs. 80,000 to Rs. 200,000 (1,400-3,500 USD), and younger girls receive higher prices. For example, one ten-year-old Pakistani girl was sold into marriage by her father in order to settle an outstanding debt. According to Amnesty International, a medical examination showed that she had been subjected to rape and torture. I am sure there are thousands of such cases throughout the Islamic world.
According to one blogger, “Had [“Mo”] Mohammad Khan taken [Jessie] to Pakistan and married her off, it would have been almost impossible for the child to escape again. Particularly from a rural area. She would have been repeatedly raped by her ‘husband’, beaten by her in-laws and turned into a slave. And Khan would have likely profited from the exchange. Khan didn’t just marry or live with a middle aged American woman; he married a woman with at least one girl at home. And in Pakistan that translates into a salable commodity.”
This is not the first time that young American girls have been spirited away as unwilling brides to a Muslim-majority country. In 2004, 26-year-old Philadelphia resident Omar Rashaad Bey, an American citizen, entered into an “Islamic marriage” with a 14-year-old girl and then moved with her to Cairo. While in Egypt he had an affair with her sister. He then “married” another 15-year-old Philadelphia girl via the Internet and brought her to Cairo too. American officials started an investigation after the first “wife” brought their one-year-old son to the Embassy to register him for an American passport. Bey eventually returned to America, where he was arrested and indicted on three counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. In March, 2011, he was sentenced to eight years in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender.
Europe is plagued by many more such cases of forced child marriage. According to the BBC, the police in South Wales have dealt with 49 cases of forced marriage in the past year (2010) alone.
“Strategies for helping victims included supplying them with a secret mobile phone if they feared they were being lured to their family’s country of origin as a prelude to a forced marriage….The [special police] force had also set up a ‘buddy’ system where forced marriage ‘survivors’ were a role model to those who were now going through the trauma.”
Even Saudi Arabia, which is rife with child marriage and has no law against it, has begun taking baby steps to stop the practice. According to the Saudi newspaper Al Watan, 40 cases of child marriage were prevented in the eastern part of the country when authorities spoke out against it. In 2009, the Saudi Minister of Justice issued a statement saying that it would soon implement a ban on the practice, although it has failed to do so. The Facebook group, Saudi Women Revolution, which I have written about before, has a petition on its website demanding that the Justice Ministry follow through on its initial promise.
While the American State Department occasionally rattles its rusty saber on behalf of Muslim women’s rights, if our government has, so far, refused to get involved in Libya, (even after the Arab League has asked for such involvement), and refused to get involved in Darfur—then I doubt our country will go to the mat for women in Muslim countries.
According to Newsweek, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton favors women’s rights everywhere. She is quoted as saying:
“I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century….We see women and girls across the world who are oppressed and violated and demeaned and degraded and denied so much of what they are entitled to as our fellow human beings.”
When challenged by Egyptians who argued that her many references to women’s rights in Egypt constitute meddling in Egyptian internal affairs, she responded: “If a country doesn’t recognize minority rights and human rights, including women’s rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible.”
However, on her watch, the American State Department is backing away from its verbal commitments to women in Afghanistan.
In 2010, when the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sought bids for a land reform program in Afghanistan, it initially insisted that the winning contractor meet specific goals to promote women’s rights: “The number of deeds granting women title had to increase by 50 percent; there would have to be regular media coverage on women’s land rights; and teaching materials for secondary schools and universities would have to include material on women’s rights.”
Later, however, USAID backtracked and eliminated the requirements. According to J. Alexander Thier, the director of USAID’s Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs, “If you’re targeting an issue, you need to target it in a way you can achieve those objectives….The women’s issue is one where we need hardheaded realism…if we become unrealistic and overfocused . . . we get ourselves in trouble.” Another “senior official” said: “Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities.”
Brava to California’s Jessie Bender for saving herself and at least two of her siblings. She lives in America and believes that she has certain rights. So young—so brave. But what will become of her? She has a mother—the only mother she will ever have—who was ready to sell her down the river for $3000.00. Who can, who will, ever take her mother’s place? The cruelty of this American-Muslim mother to her American (probably non-Muslim) daughter is breathtaking. I have written about this phenomenon in Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman.
Child marriage is opposed by the Convention Against All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It is a toothless document. The United Nations does not enforce individual rights over the objections of its member nation states.
Child marriage is an abomination. Think of the girls you know who are 10, 12, 14 years old. Can you imagine how a forced, arranged marriage to a much older stranger, probably one who believes it is his absolute right to rape and beat his wife, would psychologically cripple them for life, stunt all growth, demoralize them forevermore?
Who can ever forget the film Osama? It is set in Afghanistan and concerns an 11- 12 year-old girl who must dress as a boy in order to work to feed her widowed mother and younger siblings. (Under the Taliban, women were not allowed to work; they starved or turned to prostitution which meant degraded and dangerous lives).
However, the dreaded Taliban drag the girl Osama away from her job in a small shop and into a madrasa. She is only found out when she begins to menstruate. The imam who runs the madrasa is old enough to be her grandfather. He is fat, gross, coarse, cruel, and ugly. However, he is very attracted to this 12 year-old boy/girl, marries her, and locks her up together with his other, three much older wives.
We should not want to consign young American girls, Muslim and non-Muslim to such cruel fates.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com/
URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/17/forced-marriages-in-our-own-backyard/
On February 22, 2011, Jessie Bender, a 13-year-old southern California girl, ran away from home. No, Jessie was not into “sex, drugs, or rock n’ roll.” On the contrary. Jessie was terrified that her American-born mother, Melissa, a convert to Islam, and her mother’s Pakistani boyfriend and acting stepfather Mohammed “Mo” Khan, had decided to send her to Pakistan to be married against her will. Had Jessie gone, her mother and “Mo” would have received $3000.00.
Initially, her mother told police that Jessie had been abducted by a Facebook predator. Melissa, in full hijab, made a tearful plea for the television cameras. ”If you are holding my daughter, please let her go…Please, I beg you to let my daughter go. She’s just 13 years old.”
This tearful, public, pseudo-honesty reminds me of the Afghan-Canadian Safia family who wept in public, mourning their three dead honor murdered daughters: 13 year-old Geeti, 17 year-old Sahari, and 19-year-old Zainab, and Safia’s first wife, 50-year-old Rona Amir Mohammed. In a bid for sympathy, and to throw the police off their trail, the three murderers shed copious tears, grieving, loudly.
Jessie Bender’s mother went on television and lied about her daughter. Yes, it is true, Jessie had communicated with an adult male on Facebook, but that is not where she ran. Jessie’s uncle had hidden her at an Apple Valley motel. Within a week, it became clear that Jessie’s mother, Melissa, and her pseudo-stepfather “Mo, ” had both been lying. Melissa herself had visited Pakistan and may be seen in a photo smiling broadly, wearing very serious hijab and standing next to a turbaned tribal elder who is holding a gun. Possibly, she is also standing next to “Mo.”
Patricia “Tissy” Said in Dallas, assisted her Egyptian-born husband Yasir who honor murdered their two daughters, Sarah and Amina, for refusing such arranged marriages.
Like Texas’s “Tissy” Said, California’s Melissa Bender also seems a bit…dim-witted, easy prey for a smart or charming Muslim man who wants (or needs) to bring his Pakistani brother over to America. “Mo’s” brother is, apparently, in some kind of trouble and has to get out of Dodge City pronto.
Yasir Said hatched a similar plan: He wanted to marry his American-born, American-citizen daughters off to hand-picked Egyptian men who would then be able to become American citizens. Whether Said was doing this for money, “honor,” or jihad is unknown. Tunisian-born Samia Labidi, who lives in France, describes such marriages between under-age Western girls and older Muslim foreign men as part of a larger jihadic plan. This may not be true in the California Bender case, but it may be true in other cases.
And, by the way, “Tissy” Said herself married Yasir in Texas when she was only 14 years old. She did so with her father’s permission. I have no doubt that both she and her father believed that Yasir was the Sheikh of Araby and would provide for “Tissy” royally. Instead, he did what many Muslim Arab men do: He sent his wife out to work and lived off her pitiful earnings.
Melissa has six children from six different fathers. She has also lost custody of two children to their maternal grandmother. I do not justify her stupidity and cruelty but it is clear that she may not be in good mental or intellectual health. Nevertheless, her children are at her mercy.
Jessie was found hiding about 30 miles from her home. Since then, Jessie and her siblings have been in child protective custody.
An estranged family member confirms that Jessie indeed “was going to be married off to [the stepfather’s] brother over in Pakistan because he was in some trouble and they wanted to bring him over to the states. They were going to get paid $3000 for this.”
It is common for Pakistani fathers to sell their young daughters into marriage in order to make a quick buck. Bride prices range from Rs. 80,000 to Rs. 200,000 (1,400-3,500 USD), and younger girls receive higher prices. For example, one ten-year-old Pakistani girl was sold into marriage by her father in order to settle an outstanding debt. According to Amnesty International, a medical examination showed that she had been subjected to rape and torture. I am sure there are thousands of such cases throughout the Islamic world.
According to one blogger, “Had [“Mo”] Mohammad Khan taken [Jessie] to Pakistan and married her off, it would have been almost impossible for the child to escape again. Particularly from a rural area. She would have been repeatedly raped by her ‘husband’, beaten by her in-laws and turned into a slave. And Khan would have likely profited from the exchange. Khan didn’t just marry or live with a middle aged American woman; he married a woman with at least one girl at home. And in Pakistan that translates into a salable commodity.”
This is not the first time that young American girls have been spirited away as unwilling brides to a Muslim-majority country. In 2004, 26-year-old Philadelphia resident Omar Rashaad Bey, an American citizen, entered into an “Islamic marriage” with a 14-year-old girl and then moved with her to Cairo. While in Egypt he had an affair with her sister. He then “married” another 15-year-old Philadelphia girl via the Internet and brought her to Cairo too. American officials started an investigation after the first “wife” brought their one-year-old son to the Embassy to register him for an American passport. Bey eventually returned to America, where he was arrested and indicted on three counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. In March, 2011, he was sentenced to eight years in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender.
Europe is plagued by many more such cases of forced child marriage. According to the BBC, the police in South Wales have dealt with 49 cases of forced marriage in the past year (2010) alone.
“Strategies for helping victims included supplying them with a secret mobile phone if they feared they were being lured to their family’s country of origin as a prelude to a forced marriage….The [special police] force had also set up a ‘buddy’ system where forced marriage ‘survivors’ were a role model to those who were now going through the trauma.”
Even Saudi Arabia, which is rife with child marriage and has no law against it, has begun taking baby steps to stop the practice. According to the Saudi newspaper Al Watan, 40 cases of child marriage were prevented in the eastern part of the country when authorities spoke out against it. In 2009, the Saudi Minister of Justice issued a statement saying that it would soon implement a ban on the practice, although it has failed to do so. The Facebook group, Saudi Women Revolution, which I have written about before, has a petition on its website demanding that the Justice Ministry follow through on its initial promise.
While the American State Department occasionally rattles its rusty saber on behalf of Muslim women’s rights, if our government has, so far, refused to get involved in Libya, (even after the Arab League has asked for such involvement), and refused to get involved in Darfur—then I doubt our country will go to the mat for women in Muslim countries.
According to Newsweek, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton favors women’s rights everywhere. She is quoted as saying:
“I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century….We see women and girls across the world who are oppressed and violated and demeaned and degraded and denied so much of what they are entitled to as our fellow human beings.”
When challenged by Egyptians who argued that her many references to women’s rights in Egypt constitute meddling in Egyptian internal affairs, she responded: “If a country doesn’t recognize minority rights and human rights, including women’s rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible.”
However, on her watch, the American State Department is backing away from its verbal commitments to women in Afghanistan.
In 2010, when the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sought bids for a land reform program in Afghanistan, it initially insisted that the winning contractor meet specific goals to promote women’s rights: “The number of deeds granting women title had to increase by 50 percent; there would have to be regular media coverage on women’s land rights; and teaching materials for secondary schools and universities would have to include material on women’s rights.”
Later, however, USAID backtracked and eliminated the requirements. According to J. Alexander Thier, the director of USAID’s Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs, “If you’re targeting an issue, you need to target it in a way you can achieve those objectives….The women’s issue is one where we need hardheaded realism…if we become unrealistic and overfocused . . . we get ourselves in trouble.” Another “senior official” said: “Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities.”
Brava to California’s Jessie Bender for saving herself and at least two of her siblings. She lives in America and believes that she has certain rights. So young—so brave. But what will become of her? She has a mother—the only mother she will ever have—who was ready to sell her down the river for $3000.00. Who can, who will, ever take her mother’s place? The cruelty of this American-Muslim mother to her American (probably non-Muslim) daughter is breathtaking. I have written about this phenomenon in Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman.
Child marriage is opposed by the Convention Against All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It is a toothless document. The United Nations does not enforce individual rights over the objections of its member nation states.
Child marriage is an abomination. Think of the girls you know who are 10, 12, 14 years old. Can you imagine how a forced, arranged marriage to a much older stranger, probably one who believes it is his absolute right to rape and beat his wife, would psychologically cripple them for life, stunt all growth, demoralize them forevermore?
Who can ever forget the film Osama? It is set in Afghanistan and concerns an 11- 12 year-old girl who must dress as a boy in order to work to feed her widowed mother and younger siblings. (Under the Taliban, women were not allowed to work; they starved or turned to prostitution which meant degraded and dangerous lives).
However, the dreaded Taliban drag the girl Osama away from her job in a small shop and into a madrasa. She is only found out when she begins to menstruate. The imam who runs the madrasa is old enough to be her grandfather. He is fat, gross, coarse, cruel, and ugly. However, he is very attracted to this 12 year-old boy/girl, marries her, and locks her up together with his other, three much older wives.
We should not want to consign young American girls, Muslim and non-Muslim to such cruel fates.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com/
URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/17/forced-marriages-in-our-own-backyard/
Heather Higginbottom's Socialist Connection
Friday, March 18, 2011
Heather A. Higginbottom, the Obama administration's nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, faced a tough interrogation yesterday from Ranking committee member and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions during a hearing with the Senate Budget committee.
Perhaps Senator Sessions should ask Heather Higginbottom to explain this photo:
Heather Higginbottom, podium. Left to right William Julius Wilson, Dottie Stevens, Jack Clark, Bob Haynes. D.S.A. logo on wall center right
The photo above shows Heather Higginbottom, while serving as a legislative assistant to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, addressing an October 30, 2001, Boston Democratic Socialists of America organized forum "Welfare, Children and Families: The Impact of Welfare Reform", with William Julius Wilson, Dottie Stevens, Jack Clark and Bob Haynes.
William Julius Wilson and Jack Clark were confirmed D.S.A. Marxists. Bob Haynes is a long time Boston D.S.A. affiliate - at least.
Incidentally William Julian Wilson spoke at another D.S.A. forum, on February 25 1996, in Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago.
Entitled "Employment and Survival in Urban America", the meeting was sponsored by the University of Chicago D.S.A. Youth Section, Chicago D.S.A. and the University Democrats.
The panelists were all known socialist affiliates: Toni Preckwinkle, Alderman of Chicago's 4th Ward, Barack Obama, candidate for the 13th Illinois Senate District, Professor William Julius Wilson, Center for the Study of Urban Inequality at the University of Chicago, Professor Michael Dawson, University of Chicago, and Professor Joseph Schwartz, Temple University and a member of D.S.A.'s National Political Committee.
Speaking at one D.S.A. sponsored event does not necessarily make a person a Marxist, but it should be enough to raise questions about one's suitability for a very high level government position.
Despite its relatively innocuous name, Democratic Socialists of America is a radical Marxist organization that believes, according to Democratic Left, Spring 2007, page 9
Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production.
DSAers work closely with the Communist Party USA and the pro North Korean/Cuban Workers World Party. One former D.S.A. leader, Kurt Stand is still serving seventeen and a half years in jail, for spying for the former German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union.
Should Heather Higginbottom be asked to explain her Democratic Socialists of America connection?
Was addressing this D.S.A. forum a one off youthful indiscretion, or part of a longer term socialist commitment?
American taxpayers deserve to know the answer.
I hope Senator Sessions will oblige them.
posted by Trevor Loudon at 3/18/2011 05:25:00 PM
Heather A. Higginbottom, the Obama administration's nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, faced a tough interrogation yesterday from Ranking committee member and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions during a hearing with the Senate Budget committee.
Perhaps Senator Sessions should ask Heather Higginbottom to explain this photo:
Heather Higginbottom, podium. Left to right William Julius Wilson, Dottie Stevens, Jack Clark, Bob Haynes. D.S.A. logo on wall center right
The photo above shows Heather Higginbottom, while serving as a legislative assistant to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, addressing an October 30, 2001, Boston Democratic Socialists of America organized forum "Welfare, Children and Families: The Impact of Welfare Reform", with William Julius Wilson, Dottie Stevens, Jack Clark and Bob Haynes.
William Julius Wilson and Jack Clark were confirmed D.S.A. Marxists. Bob Haynes is a long time Boston D.S.A. affiliate - at least.
Incidentally William Julian Wilson spoke at another D.S.A. forum, on February 25 1996, in Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago.
Entitled "Employment and Survival in Urban America", the meeting was sponsored by the University of Chicago D.S.A. Youth Section, Chicago D.S.A. and the University Democrats.
The panelists were all known socialist affiliates: Toni Preckwinkle, Alderman of Chicago's 4th Ward, Barack Obama, candidate for the 13th Illinois Senate District, Professor William Julius Wilson, Center for the Study of Urban Inequality at the University of Chicago, Professor Michael Dawson, University of Chicago, and Professor Joseph Schwartz, Temple University and a member of D.S.A.'s National Political Committee.
Speaking at one D.S.A. sponsored event does not necessarily make a person a Marxist, but it should be enough to raise questions about one's suitability for a very high level government position.
Despite its relatively innocuous name, Democratic Socialists of America is a radical Marxist organization that believes, according to Democratic Left, Spring 2007, page 9
Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production.
DSAers work closely with the Communist Party USA and the pro North Korean/Cuban Workers World Party. One former D.S.A. leader, Kurt Stand is still serving seventeen and a half years in jail, for spying for the former German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union.
Should Heather Higginbottom be asked to explain her Democratic Socialists of America connection?
Was addressing this D.S.A. forum a one off youthful indiscretion, or part of a longer term socialist commitment?
American taxpayers deserve to know the answer.
I hope Senator Sessions will oblige them.
posted by Trevor Loudon at 3/18/2011 05:25:00 PM
Obama Nominee Crumbles Trying To Defend WH Budget Deception and admits "admits proposed 2012 budget does not pay down deficit!"
By Amanda Carey - The Daily Caller 7:03 PM 03/17/2011
President Obama’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) tried, but failed to defend the proposed budget for fiscal year 2012 in a Senate Budget Committee hearing Thursday afternoon.
Obama’s nominee, Heather Higginbottom, crumbled under questioning from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, ranking member of the committee, about the accuracy of statements the president and OMB Director Jacob Lew have made that the proposed budget will not add to the national debt.
The more than six-minute long questioning consisted of numerous exchanges that saw Higginbottom trying to dodge direct questions regarding the impact the president’s budget would have on the national debt:
Sessions: Did Mr. Lew or the President of the United States, when they made that statement “we will not be adding to the debt,” did they say, “by the way American people, what we really mean is some arcane idea about not counting interest payments the United States must make as part of our debt?” Did they say that?
Higginbottom: I’m not sure exactly what they did say.
Sessions: Well if they didn’t say that, would that be an accurate statement?
Higginbottom: The interest costs on what we’re borrowing add to the debt…
A few minutes later:
Sessions: You’re saying that what the president really meant but that he didn’t say, is that one year or so, that you calculate, if you don’t count the interest… then we can tell the American people we’re not adding to our debt?
Do you think that’s a legitimate way to discuss with the American people the debt crisis we now face?
Higginbottom: …It puts us on a path to stabilize the debt as a percentage of our economy, which is a very important first step in eventually being able to able to pay it down, which is the large task in front of us.
Sessions goes on to ask Higginbottom if she knows the last three years of the president’s ten-year budget proposal all have rising deficits. Higginbottom – the president’s nominee for the second highest position at the OMB — replied with, “I don’t have the deficit table in front of me.”
Sessions’ questioning ends with him pointing out that the president’s proposed budget for FY2012 does not have one year where the deficit falls below $600 billion.
“That is correct,” Higginbottom confirms.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/17/obamas-omb-nominee-admits-proposed-2012-budget-does-not-pay-down-deficit/#ixzz1GvFQSaJa
President Obama’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) tried, but failed to defend the proposed budget for fiscal year 2012 in a Senate Budget Committee hearing Thursday afternoon.
Obama’s nominee, Heather Higginbottom, crumbled under questioning from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, ranking member of the committee, about the accuracy of statements the president and OMB Director Jacob Lew have made that the proposed budget will not add to the national debt.
The more than six-minute long questioning consisted of numerous exchanges that saw Higginbottom trying to dodge direct questions regarding the impact the president’s budget would have on the national debt:
Sessions: Did Mr. Lew or the President of the United States, when they made that statement “we will not be adding to the debt,” did they say, “by the way American people, what we really mean is some arcane idea about not counting interest payments the United States must make as part of our debt?” Did they say that?
Higginbottom: I’m not sure exactly what they did say.
Sessions: Well if they didn’t say that, would that be an accurate statement?
Higginbottom: The interest costs on what we’re borrowing add to the debt…
A few minutes later:
Sessions: You’re saying that what the president really meant but that he didn’t say, is that one year or so, that you calculate, if you don’t count the interest… then we can tell the American people we’re not adding to our debt?
Do you think that’s a legitimate way to discuss with the American people the debt crisis we now face?
Higginbottom: …It puts us on a path to stabilize the debt as a percentage of our economy, which is a very important first step in eventually being able to able to pay it down, which is the large task in front of us.
Sessions goes on to ask Higginbottom if she knows the last three years of the president’s ten-year budget proposal all have rising deficits. Higginbottom – the president’s nominee for the second highest position at the OMB — replied with, “I don’t have the deficit table in front of me.”
Sessions’ questioning ends with him pointing out that the president’s proposed budget for FY2012 does not have one year where the deficit falls below $600 billion.
“That is correct,” Higginbottom confirms.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/17/obamas-omb-nominee-admits-proposed-2012-budget-does-not-pay-down-deficit/#ixzz1GvFQSaJa
2 ex-Dem leaders charged in fake tea party scheme
March 17, 2011
MIKE MARTINDALE
The Detroit News
Pontiac— Two former high-ranking members of the Oakland County Democratic Party are facing various election corruption charges in a bogus tea party scheme, Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper and County Sheriff Michael Bouchard announced Wednesday.
Former Democratic Party Chairman Michael McGuinness and ex-operations director Jason Bauer, both of Waterford Township, were arraigned Wednesday before Oakland Circuit Judge James Alexander.
They face charges related to Independent Tea Party filings, false affidavits and forged documents that occurred between July 23 and July 26 last year.
Both stood mute to the charges and were released on $25,000 personal bond each, pending an April 13 hearing before Alexander.
The charges include felonies that carry up to 14 years in prison. Neither could be reached for comment.
Cooper and Bouchard announced the charges during a joint press conference conducted to discuss the findings of a one-person grand jury seated by Oakland Circuit Judge Edward Sosnick.
"The election process is sacred … this is not a partisan statement," Cooper said, noting her Democratic affiliation and that of Bouchard, a Republican. Bouchard said 23 questionable election filings across Michigan — eight of them in Oakland County — involved an effort to create the illusion of an Independent Tea Party and its candidates on November's ballot.
The goal was to woo away voters in local elections who might otherwise vote for other candidates, presumably Republicans, authorities allege.
While creating such a party in itself is not illegal, Bouchard noted that the alleged forging of documents and putting people up for political office without their involvement — including at least one "candidate" who told investigators he had no knowledge that he was on the ballot until notified — is criminal.
The scheme included bogus candidates for two County Commission seats and a state Senate race, according to a copy of a grand jury warrant released Wednesday. None of the candidates won.
"The presumed intent was to get people drawn to tea party politics and siphon votes off (from other candidates)," Bouchard said.
Bouchard said the investigation of possible election corruption is continuing and included an unnamed "party leader in Lansing." The sheriff did not elaborate.
County Executive L. Brooks Patterson petitioned for a grand jury inquiry into possible election corruption in August following complaints received by then-County Clerk Ruth Johnson and an investigation initiated by Bouchard's office at the request of Cooper.
Both McGuinness and Bauer are charged with three counts of forged records, uttering and publishing, a 14-year felony; three counts of election law, false swearing, a felony punishable by five years in prison; and one count of election law, false swearing-perjury, also a five-year felony.
Bauer is also charged with three counts of notary public violation, a one-year misdemeanor.
Both resigned their party posts following allegations in August that suspicious filings were notarized by Bauer.
Several months ago, Bauer was suspended from the Oakland Democratic Party after it surfaced that he encouraged interns to write bogus "help me" letters from nonexistent residents in support of a medical program backed by a Democratic commissioner.
mmartindale@detnews.com
MIKE MARTINDALE
The Detroit News
Pontiac— Two former high-ranking members of the Oakland County Democratic Party are facing various election corruption charges in a bogus tea party scheme, Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper and County Sheriff Michael Bouchard announced Wednesday.
Former Democratic Party Chairman Michael McGuinness and ex-operations director Jason Bauer, both of Waterford Township, were arraigned Wednesday before Oakland Circuit Judge James Alexander.
They face charges related to Independent Tea Party filings, false affidavits and forged documents that occurred between July 23 and July 26 last year.
Both stood mute to the charges and were released on $25,000 personal bond each, pending an April 13 hearing before Alexander.
The charges include felonies that carry up to 14 years in prison. Neither could be reached for comment.
Cooper and Bouchard announced the charges during a joint press conference conducted to discuss the findings of a one-person grand jury seated by Oakland Circuit Judge Edward Sosnick.
"The election process is sacred … this is not a partisan statement," Cooper said, noting her Democratic affiliation and that of Bouchard, a Republican. Bouchard said 23 questionable election filings across Michigan — eight of them in Oakland County — involved an effort to create the illusion of an Independent Tea Party and its candidates on November's ballot.
The goal was to woo away voters in local elections who might otherwise vote for other candidates, presumably Republicans, authorities allege.
While creating such a party in itself is not illegal, Bouchard noted that the alleged forging of documents and putting people up for political office without their involvement — including at least one "candidate" who told investigators he had no knowledge that he was on the ballot until notified — is criminal.
The scheme included bogus candidates for two County Commission seats and a state Senate race, according to a copy of a grand jury warrant released Wednesday. None of the candidates won.
"The presumed intent was to get people drawn to tea party politics and siphon votes off (from other candidates)," Bouchard said.
Bouchard said the investigation of possible election corruption is continuing and included an unnamed "party leader in Lansing." The sheriff did not elaborate.
County Executive L. Brooks Patterson petitioned for a grand jury inquiry into possible election corruption in August following complaints received by then-County Clerk Ruth Johnson and an investigation initiated by Bouchard's office at the request of Cooper.
Both McGuinness and Bauer are charged with three counts of forged records, uttering and publishing, a 14-year felony; three counts of election law, false swearing, a felony punishable by five years in prison; and one count of election law, false swearing-perjury, also a five-year felony.
Bauer is also charged with three counts of notary public violation, a one-year misdemeanor.
Both resigned their party posts following allegations in August that suspicious filings were notarized by Bauer.
Several months ago, Bauer was suspended from the Oakland Democratic Party after it surfaced that he encouraged interns to write bogus "help me" letters from nonexistent residents in support of a medical program backed by a Democratic commissioner.
mmartindale@detnews.com
Salon Promotes Dangerous Myth: Islamic Radicalization is Just a Theory
Posted By Lisa Richards On March 17, 2011 @ 12:35 pm
The left has finally debunked the myth of Islamic radicalization.
Salon’s Justin Elliott, an Islam apologist, wants to prove America has nothing to fear from Islam or its radical ideology that brings terror to the world. To make his bone-headed case, Elliott interviewed Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, asking her if Islamic radicalization is real or the invention of hypersensitive, overreacting Americans. According to Patel, a human rights attorney, the notion that American Muslims are indoctrinating young men to commit terror is nothing more than:
a ‘religious conveyor belt’ theory that says there is a defined path toward terrorism: young Muslim men who are socially or politically alienated become progressively more religious; they come to embrace the use of violence; and eventually they commit a terrorist attack or support an attack in some way. What the NYPD has suggested—and I think the FBI has signed onto this as well—is that there are markers of each phase. These are primarily religious behaviors. So if a young man stops smoking or stops drinking, maybe that’s a sign that he’s becoming radicalized and is on the path to terrorism. This is a very reductionist understanding of radicalization, and it’s simply not supported by the social science evidence. Last year the Defense Department did a report on Fort Hood that pointed out that violence is notoriously difficult to predict.
Patel’s whitewashing of facts is ludicrous.
First: the Koran calls for jihad against non-Muslims (infidels). Law enforcement is not oversimplifying real threats, rather examining Islamic fact—the movement intentionally radicalizes followers and terror is the outcome.
Second: The Fort Hood Massacre was not only easy to predict, it had very strong warning signs from Major Nidal Hasan, who threatened senior Army physicians nearly two years before the attacks. Hasan demanded the military let all Muslim soldiers become conscientious objectors to prevent them from fighting fellow Muslims overseas. Hasan told Fort Hood if the military did not agree to this, the military would suffer “adverse events.”
Hasan is on record as lecturing Fort Hood psychologists every Wednesday about Islam, warning the military it would receive suicide bomb threats from American Muslim soldiers deployed to fight fellow Muslims in Islamic countries. The Washington Post reports:
The title of Hasan’s PowerPoint presentation [to military psychologists] was ‘The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.’ It consisted of 50 slides. In one slide, Hasan described the presentation’s objectives as identifying ‘what the Koran inculcates in the minds of Muslims and the potential implications this may have for the U.S. military.’
The Post article says Hasan’s lectures discussed “offensive jihad,”something Osama bin Laden demands. Also on his slides:
‘If Muslim groups can convince Muslims that they are fighting for God against injustices of the ‘infidels’; ie: enemies of Islam, then Muslims can become a potent adversary; ie: suicide bombing, etc.’ [sic],” and ‘We [Muslims] love death more then [sic] you love life!’
No warning signs?This is what American law enforcement is trying to stop and leftists like the so-called human rights attorney Patel and Elliott want ignored—Islamic terror.
Elliott’s sugar-coated interview excuses facts surrounding the Hasan case as well as other American-born Islamic terrorists calling for jihad against America: al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn, who called for all Muslims to take down America“by killing or capturing people in government, industry and the media.,” Hamas-linked CAIR, and the imam all Muslims committing terror against America turn to—Anwar al-Awlaki.
Patel, like Elliott, pretends Islam is peace-loving, while insisting there are no warning signs indicating Islamic terrorism:
We’ve had a multitude of studies on terrorism—from the British MI5, the RAND Corporation—and all of them come to the conclusion that it’s really difficult to figure out who is going to become a terrorist based upon these kinds of markers. The troubling thing is that the markers, of course, are all religious behavior.
Of course the markers are religious. Islam is a radical religious movement that began from, and continues to commit terror. Islam and its Koran command terror must be perpetrated on infidels (non-Muslims) in the name of Allah.
Rather than expose the truth about Islamic terror in America, Elliott joined Patel on her apology jihad. What can one expect from leftist apologists for Islam?
Leftists purposely shove their brains in the sand, ignoring the backpacks as they explode. The Left not only protects Islam, they gladly join and fund Islamic terror in an attempt to destroy America and Christianity, and complete what Hitler could not—the extinguishing of Jews.
Maybe if we detain the FBI at Guantanamo Bay and unleash all those poor terrorists on America and the world, there will finally be peace.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com/
URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/17/salon-promotes-dangerous-myth-islamic-radicalization-is-just-a-theory/
The left has finally debunked the myth of Islamic radicalization.
Salon’s Justin Elliott, an Islam apologist, wants to prove America has nothing to fear from Islam or its radical ideology that brings terror to the world. To make his bone-headed case, Elliott interviewed Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, asking her if Islamic radicalization is real or the invention of hypersensitive, overreacting Americans. According to Patel, a human rights attorney, the notion that American Muslims are indoctrinating young men to commit terror is nothing more than:
a ‘religious conveyor belt’ theory that says there is a defined path toward terrorism: young Muslim men who are socially or politically alienated become progressively more religious; they come to embrace the use of violence; and eventually they commit a terrorist attack or support an attack in some way. What the NYPD has suggested—and I think the FBI has signed onto this as well—is that there are markers of each phase. These are primarily religious behaviors. So if a young man stops smoking or stops drinking, maybe that’s a sign that he’s becoming radicalized and is on the path to terrorism. This is a very reductionist understanding of radicalization, and it’s simply not supported by the social science evidence. Last year the Defense Department did a report on Fort Hood that pointed out that violence is notoriously difficult to predict.
Patel’s whitewashing of facts is ludicrous.
First: the Koran calls for jihad against non-Muslims (infidels). Law enforcement is not oversimplifying real threats, rather examining Islamic fact—the movement intentionally radicalizes followers and terror is the outcome.
Second: The Fort Hood Massacre was not only easy to predict, it had very strong warning signs from Major Nidal Hasan, who threatened senior Army physicians nearly two years before the attacks. Hasan demanded the military let all Muslim soldiers become conscientious objectors to prevent them from fighting fellow Muslims overseas. Hasan told Fort Hood if the military did not agree to this, the military would suffer “adverse events.”
Hasan is on record as lecturing Fort Hood psychologists every Wednesday about Islam, warning the military it would receive suicide bomb threats from American Muslim soldiers deployed to fight fellow Muslims in Islamic countries. The Washington Post reports:
The title of Hasan’s PowerPoint presentation [to military psychologists] was ‘The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.’ It consisted of 50 slides. In one slide, Hasan described the presentation’s objectives as identifying ‘what the Koran inculcates in the minds of Muslims and the potential implications this may have for the U.S. military.’
The Post article says Hasan’s lectures discussed “offensive jihad,”something Osama bin Laden demands. Also on his slides:
‘If Muslim groups can convince Muslims that they are fighting for God against injustices of the ‘infidels’; ie: enemies of Islam, then Muslims can become a potent adversary; ie: suicide bombing, etc.’ [sic],” and ‘We [Muslims] love death more then [sic] you love life!’
No warning signs?This is what American law enforcement is trying to stop and leftists like the so-called human rights attorney Patel and Elliott want ignored—Islamic terror.
Elliott’s sugar-coated interview excuses facts surrounding the Hasan case as well as other American-born Islamic terrorists calling for jihad against America: al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn, who called for all Muslims to take down America“by killing or capturing people in government, industry and the media.,” Hamas-linked CAIR, and the imam all Muslims committing terror against America turn to—Anwar al-Awlaki.
Patel, like Elliott, pretends Islam is peace-loving, while insisting there are no warning signs indicating Islamic terrorism:
We’ve had a multitude of studies on terrorism—from the British MI5, the RAND Corporation—and all of them come to the conclusion that it’s really difficult to figure out who is going to become a terrorist based upon these kinds of markers. The troubling thing is that the markers, of course, are all religious behavior.
Of course the markers are religious. Islam is a radical religious movement that began from, and continues to commit terror. Islam and its Koran command terror must be perpetrated on infidels (non-Muslims) in the name of Allah.
Rather than expose the truth about Islamic terror in America, Elliott joined Patel on her apology jihad. What can one expect from leftist apologists for Islam?
Leftists purposely shove their brains in the sand, ignoring the backpacks as they explode. The Left not only protects Islam, they gladly join and fund Islamic terror in an attempt to destroy America and Christianity, and complete what Hitler could not—the extinguishing of Jews.
Maybe if we detain the FBI at Guantanamo Bay and unleash all those poor terrorists on America and the world, there will finally be peace.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com/
URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/17/salon-promotes-dangerous-myth-islamic-radicalization-is-just-a-theory/
Clinton pushes for jobs, reform in transitioning Tunisia
Mar 17 09:48 AM US/Eastern
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged Thursday to help Tunisia create jobs and undertake reforms to keep the momentum behind the revolution that overthrew its president two months ago.
The chief US diplomat began talks with interim President Foued Mebazaa, who replaced the ousted Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, after saying that an international donors conference would help to focus minds on Tunisia's needs.
New government officials and other Tunisians understand "we need a plan for economic development, for jobs," Clinton told reporters during a tour of Tunisian Red Crescent offices.
"There's going to be a donors conference that will be held in some months. I'm going to be sending a delegation from the United States," said Clinton who arrived Wednesday in Tunis as the most senior US official to visit since Ben Ali's ouster on January 14.
"So we want to know what Tunisia wants. We don't want to come in and say here's what the United States believes... Then we want to work on plans... a plan for health, we want to help do what we can to have a plan for jobs," she said.
"The revolution created so many hopes and now we have to translate those hopes into results and that comes through economic reform and political reform," Clinton told Tunisian reporters.
Unemployment was a major factor in the political unrest that erupted in Tunisia in December.
Tunisia's unemployment rate is officially 14 percent, but the percentage of graduates without work is about double that, prompting a warning from the International Monetary Fund.
In her tour of the Red Crescent training center, officials told her of the aid they provided to the tens of thousands of workers who crossed the border from Libya fleeing the fighting sparked by Tunisian-inspired protests.
She praised their work.
Apart from Mebazza, Clinton will also hold talks with Foreign Minister Mouldi Kefi and interim Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi. And her visit will take in meetings with young people who took part in the mass protests.
But about a hundred Tunisians marched in Tunis under tight security Wednesday to protest Clinton's visit.
Demonstrators chanted: "No to normalisation, Tunisia is free and not for sale" or "Tunisia is an Arab country, neither imperialist nor Zionist."
It was the second demonstration in two days in the capital against her visit, after a similar number protested on Tuesday.
When she announced her plans to visit Egypt and Tunisia last week, she said she would convey the US intention to be "a partner in the important work that lies ahead as they embark on a transition to a genuine democracy."
Amid warnings about Iran's bid for influence in the Middle East, she told US lawmakers at the time that "we have an enormous stake in ensuring that Egypt and Tunisia provide models for the kind of democracy that we want to see."
Clinton said she would also push for 20 million dollars for Tunisia to "respond to some of their needs" after Tunisian officials clamored for US help, but hinted at more aid.
"We need to have a very big commitment to Tunisia, that we can be ready to help them economically as well as with their democratic transformation," said the secretary.
Standard & Poor's on Wednesday trimmed its long-term credit rating of Tunisia by one notch to BBB-, but said it viewed the political outlook as now stable following the overthrow of Ben Ali.
Just over a week after Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, Washington dispatched Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, to Tunis.
Then William Burns, the US under-secretary of state for political affairs, visited Tunis last month.
The popular uprising against Ben Ali, who ruled with an iron fist for 23 years, began after a 26-year-old fruit vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, died after setting fire to himself to protest police abuses.
It sparked similar protests in Egypt, where president Hosni Mubarak was toppled on February 11, as well as in other countries across the region such as Bahrain, Oman, Yemen and Libya.
Tunis is the last stop of a three-capital tour that also took Clinton to Paris, where she discussed events in Libya, before her visit to Egypt.
Copyright AFP 2008
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged Thursday to help Tunisia create jobs and undertake reforms to keep the momentum behind the revolution that overthrew its president two months ago.
The chief US diplomat began talks with interim President Foued Mebazaa, who replaced the ousted Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, after saying that an international donors conference would help to focus minds on Tunisia's needs.
New government officials and other Tunisians understand "we need a plan for economic development, for jobs," Clinton told reporters during a tour of Tunisian Red Crescent offices.
"There's going to be a donors conference that will be held in some months. I'm going to be sending a delegation from the United States," said Clinton who arrived Wednesday in Tunis as the most senior US official to visit since Ben Ali's ouster on January 14.
"So we want to know what Tunisia wants. We don't want to come in and say here's what the United States believes... Then we want to work on plans... a plan for health, we want to help do what we can to have a plan for jobs," she said.
"The revolution created so many hopes and now we have to translate those hopes into results and that comes through economic reform and political reform," Clinton told Tunisian reporters.
Unemployment was a major factor in the political unrest that erupted in Tunisia in December.
Tunisia's unemployment rate is officially 14 percent, but the percentage of graduates without work is about double that, prompting a warning from the International Monetary Fund.
In her tour of the Red Crescent training center, officials told her of the aid they provided to the tens of thousands of workers who crossed the border from Libya fleeing the fighting sparked by Tunisian-inspired protests.
She praised their work.
Apart from Mebazza, Clinton will also hold talks with Foreign Minister Mouldi Kefi and interim Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi. And her visit will take in meetings with young people who took part in the mass protests.
But about a hundred Tunisians marched in Tunis under tight security Wednesday to protest Clinton's visit.
Demonstrators chanted: "No to normalisation, Tunisia is free and not for sale" or "Tunisia is an Arab country, neither imperialist nor Zionist."
It was the second demonstration in two days in the capital against her visit, after a similar number protested on Tuesday.
When she announced her plans to visit Egypt and Tunisia last week, she said she would convey the US intention to be "a partner in the important work that lies ahead as they embark on a transition to a genuine democracy."
Amid warnings about Iran's bid for influence in the Middle East, she told US lawmakers at the time that "we have an enormous stake in ensuring that Egypt and Tunisia provide models for the kind of democracy that we want to see."
Clinton said she would also push for 20 million dollars for Tunisia to "respond to some of their needs" after Tunisian officials clamored for US help, but hinted at more aid.
"We need to have a very big commitment to Tunisia, that we can be ready to help them economically as well as with their democratic transformation," said the secretary.
Standard & Poor's on Wednesday trimmed its long-term credit rating of Tunisia by one notch to BBB-, but said it viewed the political outlook as now stable following the overthrow of Ben Ali.
Just over a week after Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, Washington dispatched Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, to Tunis.
Then William Burns, the US under-secretary of state for political affairs, visited Tunis last month.
The popular uprising against Ben Ali, who ruled with an iron fist for 23 years, began after a 26-year-old fruit vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, died after setting fire to himself to protest police abuses.
It sparked similar protests in Egypt, where president Hosni Mubarak was toppled on February 11, as well as in other countries across the region such as Bahrain, Oman, Yemen and Libya.
Tunis is the last stop of a three-capital tour that also took Clinton to Paris, where she discussed events in Libya, before her visit to Egypt.
Copyright AFP 2008
The Most Needed Victims of the RH Bill: Businessmen and Doctors
March 17, 2011
The RH bill supporters don't have a clue...
Our government planners know very well how to pass every intrusive, rights-violating political measure intended to allegedly serve the public.
Consider the curious case of the Reproductive Health bill, now euphemistically named Responsible Parenthood bill, concocted by some leftists and statists in Congress. Instead of talking of how they would provide public goods and welfare to the poor, these statist politicians prattle on about how their altruistic measure would help the poor, inferior women, and anyone who doesn’t have the mental or physical capability to improve his/her life on earth. In short, they talk about nice-to-hear terms and phrases like equality, social justice, freedom of choice (as if we don’t have freedom of choice in these parts), overpopulation, extreme poverty, social inequality, the tragic rate of unwanted pregnancies, the sorry fate of women, among many others.
These scheming, altruist-collectivist lawmakers won’t definitely run out of soothing words and political platitudes when it comes to fooling the people. This is how they sell fascist, mediocre laws. This is actually what most tyrants and despotic politicians did in the past. To sell socialism in Russia, Vladimir Lenin promised equality and fantastic socialist programs in order to get the support of the Russians. Mao Tse Tung promised the same measures, including quick progress through collective farming and his genocidal program ‘Great Leap Forward’, in order to con millions of unthinking Chinese. Our very own tyrant Ferdinand Marcos promised economic progress through his New Society and to defeat the Reds in order to keep himself in power. Barack Obama promised what he calls “change”, as well as redistribution of wealth and the gospel of “sacrifice”, in order to get the support of majority of American voters. In short, these statist politicians, who are all mass psychologists, know what they’re doing and talking about.
When Rep. Edcel Lagman, proponent of the RH bill, talked about “freedom of choice” and the “verifiable link between overpopulation and poverty”, he was simply out to sell his mediocre, fascistic legislative proposal in order to fool the unthinking Filipinos who are mostly schooled and professionals. Lagman’s political platitudes are a big insult to the entire Filipino nation that somehow embraced rational political ideals and principles. Is “freedom of choice” non-existent or not guaranteed by the current setup? Lagman is simply playing the hero, as he’s trying to make it appear that we badly need his political measure since all of us Filipinos are currently deprived of our “freedom of choice.” This “freedom of choice” is part of our human nature, thus there’s no need for any political measure to make it possible. Indeed, Lagman is either an idiot or dishonest. Perhaps he’s both.
When Lagman talks about the connection between overpopulation and poverty, it seems that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. What’s the context of his overpopulation? Is it local or global? In this blog post, I tackled about the fallacy of Lagman’s overpopulation-poverty connection.
I stated, to wit: “Global and domestic indicators show that the most touted and most abused word in this RH bill debate— “overpopulation”— is indeed a BIG myth. Scientific reports show that there is a foreseeable decline in global population in the next decades due to the fact that most countries are at or below the “replacement level of fertility” of 2.1. What then is the context of their “overpopulation” rhetoric? Is it local, global or both?”
In this blog post, let’s talk about the most needed victims of the RH bill. They are the businessmen or employers and doctors or health-care providers.
Why is it that for every social program, it is the successful, the competent, the rich, the able, the creators who are most likely to be sacrificed or immolated?
When some brilliant lawmakers in Congress proposed to tax texting, their number 1 victim are telecommunication companies. The new UP president proposed to increase corporate income tax and other taxes so to finance his academic vision for the greatest university in the Philippines. In the mind of this Marxist UP president, it’s better to tax corporations and rich individuals because they have more in life. An absurd think tank called Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), in a published highly mediocre, unscientific, anti-economics study, recommended ‘tax financing’ as the only way to achieve the government’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
Why is this the psycho-epistemology of most of our statist politicians? The answer lies in the seldom-talked field of ethics. It is the altruist-collectivist morality that motivates our politicians, social planners and statist intellectuals.
Altruism does not simply mean kindness or benevolence toward others. In fact, altruism makes kindness, altruism and even charity impossible. It means selfless concern for the welfare and interest of others. This type of man-sacrificing ethical system conceptualized by Auguste Compte, states that it is the moral duty or obligation of individuals to serve the good and welfare of others and put their interests above their own.”
The altruist-collectivist ethics that is the dominant morality of our self-sacrificing country and enshrined in the 1987 Constitution. We as a nation accepted that it is the role of the government to be our nanny state- to be the provider of our daily needs- to be the benevolent ‘God’ that protects the poor, the meek, the weak from the strong, the dominant, the productive, the rich. We as a nation believe that the government, in performing its altruist-collectivist goals, must redistribute wealth, provide the needs (e.g., education, health care, transport, etc.) of the poor, the lazy, the weak, bar or limit the entry of productive economic actors not born in our land, deliver and guarantee the leftist mantra of ‘social justice’, ‘equality’ and ‘egalitarianism’, and make the state/government the ultimate source and distributor of wealth, of fiat rights (e.g., rights to education, health care, transport, subsidy, etc.), and all forms of public goods. For this reason, we, in 1987 and the years before, established a welfare-statist, altruist-collectivist, politically correct, semi-socialist, egalitarian Constitution that is the source of all political and economic evils in this semi-free country.
When it comes to the controversial RH bill issue, the top two victims are businessmen and doctors.
In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, in the chapter, “Is Atlas Shrugging?” Ayn Rand, a Russian-born American philosopher, identified a nation’s persecuted minority- the businessmen, who would be the victims of the altruist-collectivist corruption.
“Businessmen—who provide us with the means of livelihood, with jobs, with labor-saving devices, with modern comforts, with an ever-rising standard of living—are the men most immediately and urgently needed by society. They have been the first victims, the hated, smeared, denounced, exploited scapegoats of the mystic-altruist-collectivist axis.
The second group of individuals, after businessmen, who would be the victims of the altruist-collectivist political measures are doctors. Ayn Rand further states:
Doctors come next; it is precisely because their services are so crucially important and so desperately needed that the doctors are now the targets of the altruists’ attack, on a worldwide scale.” [Emphasis added.]
It is very unfortunate that most people, in fact even most doctors, are unaware of the degree of oppression today’s health-care providers or clinicians work under. For instance, the RH bill proposes to control the entire industry and the medical profession. The bill seeks to put doctors in both public and private sector under the direct control of the Department of Health. Section 23 (Implementing Mechanisms) of the bill enumerates the power of the DOH and the local health units over the medical industry. The following phrase under Section 23 (h) tells the extent of the health department’s sweeping and vague power: “perform such other functions necessary to attain the purposes of this Act.” This general provisions means that the DOH may promulgate additional guidelines that could directly or indirectly impact the entire medical profession and industry so to achieve the purposes of the measure.
The ultimate goal of the fascist bill is to socialize both the business industry and the medical profession. Socialized medicine simply means medical services are paid with government funds, and, therefore, medical practices are controlled and regulated by the state.
In his article titled “Doctors And The Police State” published in The Objectivist Newsletter in 1962, Dr. Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand’s literary and intellectual heir, wrote the following eloquent statement:
“In a free society, a man cannot force his terms on others; those who dissent are free to deal elsewhere. A patient who disapproves of a doctor’s methods of treatment can seek out another doctor; a doctor who considers a patient’s demands irrational is not compelled to give in to them. And, in the long run, it is the best and ablest doctors—those who achieve the cures and demonstrate their value—that rise to the top and set the example for the rest of the profession.
“But when the government sets the terms, they are enforced by the police power of the State. The standards of the government become the laws of the country, and no others are legally permitted. Should any doctor object to the decrees of the officials who staff the State Health Board—should he attempt to act on his own best judgment and make an unauthorized use of the drugs, the hospital beds, the operating rooms being paid for by the State—he becomes thereby a criminal, and he is legally subject to retribution: to loss of license, or fine, or jail-sentence. There is no one to whom he can turn: the government is his sole employer. He either submits—or he leaves medicine—or he escapes from the country.
The proposal to pay medical expenses with State funds has only one meaning: it is a proposal to enslave the doctors.” [Emphasis added.]
We have to oppose this bill at all cost before it’s too late!
The RH bill supporters don't have a clue...
Our government planners know very well how to pass every intrusive, rights-violating political measure intended to allegedly serve the public.
Consider the curious case of the Reproductive Health bill, now euphemistically named Responsible Parenthood bill, concocted by some leftists and statists in Congress. Instead of talking of how they would provide public goods and welfare to the poor, these statist politicians prattle on about how their altruistic measure would help the poor, inferior women, and anyone who doesn’t have the mental or physical capability to improve his/her life on earth. In short, they talk about nice-to-hear terms and phrases like equality, social justice, freedom of choice (as if we don’t have freedom of choice in these parts), overpopulation, extreme poverty, social inequality, the tragic rate of unwanted pregnancies, the sorry fate of women, among many others.
These scheming, altruist-collectivist lawmakers won’t definitely run out of soothing words and political platitudes when it comes to fooling the people. This is how they sell fascist, mediocre laws. This is actually what most tyrants and despotic politicians did in the past. To sell socialism in Russia, Vladimir Lenin promised equality and fantastic socialist programs in order to get the support of the Russians. Mao Tse Tung promised the same measures, including quick progress through collective farming and his genocidal program ‘Great Leap Forward’, in order to con millions of unthinking Chinese. Our very own tyrant Ferdinand Marcos promised economic progress through his New Society and to defeat the Reds in order to keep himself in power. Barack Obama promised what he calls “change”, as well as redistribution of wealth and the gospel of “sacrifice”, in order to get the support of majority of American voters. In short, these statist politicians, who are all mass psychologists, know what they’re doing and talking about.
When Rep. Edcel Lagman, proponent of the RH bill, talked about “freedom of choice” and the “verifiable link between overpopulation and poverty”, he was simply out to sell his mediocre, fascistic legislative proposal in order to fool the unthinking Filipinos who are mostly schooled and professionals. Lagman’s political platitudes are a big insult to the entire Filipino nation that somehow embraced rational political ideals and principles. Is “freedom of choice” non-existent or not guaranteed by the current setup? Lagman is simply playing the hero, as he’s trying to make it appear that we badly need his political measure since all of us Filipinos are currently deprived of our “freedom of choice.” This “freedom of choice” is part of our human nature, thus there’s no need for any political measure to make it possible. Indeed, Lagman is either an idiot or dishonest. Perhaps he’s both.
When Lagman talks about the connection between overpopulation and poverty, it seems that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. What’s the context of his overpopulation? Is it local or global? In this blog post, I tackled about the fallacy of Lagman’s overpopulation-poverty connection.
I stated, to wit: “Global and domestic indicators show that the most touted and most abused word in this RH bill debate— “overpopulation”— is indeed a BIG myth. Scientific reports show that there is a foreseeable decline in global population in the next decades due to the fact that most countries are at or below the “replacement level of fertility” of 2.1. What then is the context of their “overpopulation” rhetoric? Is it local, global or both?”
In this blog post, let’s talk about the most needed victims of the RH bill. They are the businessmen or employers and doctors or health-care providers.
Why is it that for every social program, it is the successful, the competent, the rich, the able, the creators who are most likely to be sacrificed or immolated?
When some brilliant lawmakers in Congress proposed to tax texting, their number 1 victim are telecommunication companies. The new UP president proposed to increase corporate income tax and other taxes so to finance his academic vision for the greatest university in the Philippines. In the mind of this Marxist UP president, it’s better to tax corporations and rich individuals because they have more in life. An absurd think tank called Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), in a published highly mediocre, unscientific, anti-economics study, recommended ‘tax financing’ as the only way to achieve the government’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
Why is this the psycho-epistemology of most of our statist politicians? The answer lies in the seldom-talked field of ethics. It is the altruist-collectivist morality that motivates our politicians, social planners and statist intellectuals.
Altruism does not simply mean kindness or benevolence toward others. In fact, altruism makes kindness, altruism and even charity impossible. It means selfless concern for the welfare and interest of others. This type of man-sacrificing ethical system conceptualized by Auguste Compte, states that it is the moral duty or obligation of individuals to serve the good and welfare of others and put their interests above their own.”
The altruist-collectivist ethics that is the dominant morality of our self-sacrificing country and enshrined in the 1987 Constitution. We as a nation accepted that it is the role of the government to be our nanny state- to be the provider of our daily needs- to be the benevolent ‘God’ that protects the poor, the meek, the weak from the strong, the dominant, the productive, the rich. We as a nation believe that the government, in performing its altruist-collectivist goals, must redistribute wealth, provide the needs (e.g., education, health care, transport, etc.) of the poor, the lazy, the weak, bar or limit the entry of productive economic actors not born in our land, deliver and guarantee the leftist mantra of ‘social justice’, ‘equality’ and ‘egalitarianism’, and make the state/government the ultimate source and distributor of wealth, of fiat rights (e.g., rights to education, health care, transport, subsidy, etc.), and all forms of public goods. For this reason, we, in 1987 and the years before, established a welfare-statist, altruist-collectivist, politically correct, semi-socialist, egalitarian Constitution that is the source of all political and economic evils in this semi-free country.
When it comes to the controversial RH bill issue, the top two victims are businessmen and doctors.
In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, in the chapter, “Is Atlas Shrugging?” Ayn Rand, a Russian-born American philosopher, identified a nation’s persecuted minority- the businessmen, who would be the victims of the altruist-collectivist corruption.
“Businessmen—who provide us with the means of livelihood, with jobs, with labor-saving devices, with modern comforts, with an ever-rising standard of living—are the men most immediately and urgently needed by society. They have been the first victims, the hated, smeared, denounced, exploited scapegoats of the mystic-altruist-collectivist axis.
The second group of individuals, after businessmen, who would be the victims of the altruist-collectivist political measures are doctors. Ayn Rand further states:
Doctors come next; it is precisely because their services are so crucially important and so desperately needed that the doctors are now the targets of the altruists’ attack, on a worldwide scale.” [Emphasis added.]
It is very unfortunate that most people, in fact even most doctors, are unaware of the degree of oppression today’s health-care providers or clinicians work under. For instance, the RH bill proposes to control the entire industry and the medical profession. The bill seeks to put doctors in both public and private sector under the direct control of the Department of Health. Section 23 (Implementing Mechanisms) of the bill enumerates the power of the DOH and the local health units over the medical industry. The following phrase under Section 23 (h) tells the extent of the health department’s sweeping and vague power: “perform such other functions necessary to attain the purposes of this Act.” This general provisions means that the DOH may promulgate additional guidelines that could directly or indirectly impact the entire medical profession and industry so to achieve the purposes of the measure.
The ultimate goal of the fascist bill is to socialize both the business industry and the medical profession. Socialized medicine simply means medical services are paid with government funds, and, therefore, medical practices are controlled and regulated by the state.
In his article titled “Doctors And The Police State” published in The Objectivist Newsletter in 1962, Dr. Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand’s literary and intellectual heir, wrote the following eloquent statement:
“In a free society, a man cannot force his terms on others; those who dissent are free to deal elsewhere. A patient who disapproves of a doctor’s methods of treatment can seek out another doctor; a doctor who considers a patient’s demands irrational is not compelled to give in to them. And, in the long run, it is the best and ablest doctors—those who achieve the cures and demonstrate their value—that rise to the top and set the example for the rest of the profession.
“But when the government sets the terms, they are enforced by the police power of the State. The standards of the government become the laws of the country, and no others are legally permitted. Should any doctor object to the decrees of the officials who staff the State Health Board—should he attempt to act on his own best judgment and make an unauthorized use of the drugs, the hospital beds, the operating rooms being paid for by the State—he becomes thereby a criminal, and he is legally subject to retribution: to loss of license, or fine, or jail-sentence. There is no one to whom he can turn: the government is his sole employer. He either submits—or he leaves medicine—or he escapes from the country.
The proposal to pay medical expenses with State funds has only one meaning: it is a proposal to enslave the doctors.” [Emphasis added.]
We have to oppose this bill at all cost before it’s too late!
The Communist Manifesto
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
-- Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1848
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
-- Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1848
The car from Atlas Shrugged motors
Power Line Blog: John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Paul Mirengoff
March 17, 2011
Posted by Scott at 8:04 AM
Patrick Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and the editor of the forthcoming Climate Coup: Global Warming's Invasion of our Government and our Lives, as well as the author of several other books on the global warming scare. His Forbes column on the Chevy Volt is a case study in the nexus between big government corruption and big business rent-seeking.
Michaels briefly recaps the well-known consumer fraud in which GM has touted the Volt as an all-electric mass production vehicle on the supposed basis of which its sales receive a $7,500 taxpayer subsidy, which still renders it overpriced and unmarketable. Michaels notest that "sales are anemic: 326 in December, 321 in January, and 281 in February." There seems to be a trend here.
Michaels adds that GM has announced a production run of 100,000 in the first two years and asks what appears to be a rhetorical question: "Who is going to buy all these cars?"
But wait! Keep hope alive! There is a positive answer to the question. Jeffrey Immelt's GE will buy a boatload of those uneconomic GM cars. Here the case study opens onto the inevitable politcal angle:
Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power.
Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50,000 Volts in the next two years, or half the total produced. Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375,000,000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants. And this guy is the chair of Obama's Economic Advisory Board?
But of course.
Michaels includes this hilarious detail in his case study:
In a telling attempt to preserve battery power, the heater is exceedingly weak. Consumer Reports averaged a paltry 25 miles of electric-only running, in part because it was testing in cold Connecticut. (My [GM] engineer at the Auto Show said cold weather would have little effect.)
It will be interesting to see what the range is on a hot, traffic-jammed summer day, when the air conditioner will really tax the batteries. When the gas engine came on, Consumer Reports got about 30 miles to the gallon of premium fuel; which, in terms of additional cost of high-test gas, drives the effective mileage closer to 27 mpg. A conventional Honda Accord, which seats 5 (instead of the Volt's 4), gets 34 mpg on the highway, and costs less than half of what CR paid, even with the tax break.
The story of the GM Volt deserves a place in the Harvard Business School curriculum. it is a classic tale of the Age of Obama.
March 17, 2011
Posted by Scott at 8:04 AM
Patrick Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and the editor of the forthcoming Climate Coup: Global Warming's Invasion of our Government and our Lives, as well as the author of several other books on the global warming scare. His Forbes column on the Chevy Volt is a case study in the nexus between big government corruption and big business rent-seeking.
Michaels briefly recaps the well-known consumer fraud in which GM has touted the Volt as an all-electric mass production vehicle on the supposed basis of which its sales receive a $7,500 taxpayer subsidy, which still renders it overpriced and unmarketable. Michaels notest that "sales are anemic: 326 in December, 321 in January, and 281 in February." There seems to be a trend here.
Michaels adds that GM has announced a production run of 100,000 in the first two years and asks what appears to be a rhetorical question: "Who is going to buy all these cars?"
But wait! Keep hope alive! There is a positive answer to the question. Jeffrey Immelt's GE will buy a boatload of those uneconomic GM cars. Here the case study opens onto the inevitable politcal angle:
Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power.
Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50,000 Volts in the next two years, or half the total produced. Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375,000,000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants. And this guy is the chair of Obama's Economic Advisory Board?
But of course.
Michaels includes this hilarious detail in his case study:
In a telling attempt to preserve battery power, the heater is exceedingly weak. Consumer Reports averaged a paltry 25 miles of electric-only running, in part because it was testing in cold Connecticut. (My [GM] engineer at the Auto Show said cold weather would have little effect.)
It will be interesting to see what the range is on a hot, traffic-jammed summer day, when the air conditioner will really tax the batteries. When the gas engine came on, Consumer Reports got about 30 miles to the gallon of premium fuel; which, in terms of additional cost of high-test gas, drives the effective mileage closer to 27 mpg. A conventional Honda Accord, which seats 5 (instead of the Volt's 4), gets 34 mpg on the highway, and costs less than half of what CR paid, even with the tax break.
The story of the GM Volt deserves a place in the Harvard Business School curriculum. it is a classic tale of the Age of Obama.
The Left’s Hate Campaign Against An American Hero Intensifies, Love Affair With Traitors Grows
Posted By Matthew Vadum On March 17, 2011 @ 11:07 am
The New York Times has retracted its smear of Brandon Darby yet the character assassination campaign against this American hero is only just beginning.
By way of background, Darby is the former left-wing community organizer who risked his life to prevent leftist terrorists from firebombing the GOP national convention in Minnesota in 2008. The Times falsely reported that he had “encouraged” the conspiracy even though one of the now-imprisoned terrorists admitted he lied about Darby’s complicity (and the trial judge made a specific finding that Darby was blameless — and then added extra time to the terrorist’s sentence for lying).
Over the weekend a particularly vile George Soros-funded propaganda film premiered at the South By Southwest film festival (SXSW) in Darby’s hometown of Austin, Texas. The movie is called “Better This World.” It paints Darby as someone who betrayed radical leftists everywhere for daring to love his country. The film, which could be considered anarchist porn, argues that Darby was a loathsome agent provocateur who somehow brainwashed two nasty, violent young men into doing something they otherwise would not have done. This flies in the face of all credible evidence including but not limited to the findings of the court that sent these two traitors to the hoosegow.
But the damage has already been done. Let’s look at a sampling of critics’ reactions to the leftist fantasy now captured on celluloid.
The aggressively idiotic review by John DeFore of the Hollywood Reporter leads with
A tale of law-enforcement overreach and the collision of politics with national-security concerns, “Better This World” is particularly relevant now, as its story of protesters in prison offers ironic counterpoint to the praise U.S. officials are giving activist youths on the other side of the world.
As if. The two would-be firebombers can hardly be called bona fide protesters. Would anyone consider Bill Ayers to be a mere protester?
Another dimwitted essay comes from Mike Masnick of techdirt and is yet more corroboration of the inability of leftists to process information. This fellow who obviously doesn’t know the real story initially comes across as reasonable.
There’s simply no way to suggest that the two men were “innocent” in their actions. No matter how much someone encourages (if, indeed, that’s what happened here — and it’s disputed) you to do something, you still have to take responsibility for your own actions — especially when it reaches the point of building bombs.
Good so far. But then Masnick does a 180 degree turn and whines about prosecutors pressuring the defendants to confess.
The part of the documentary that I found to be most powerful and disturbing, was how the government agents — both the federal prosecutor and the FBI agents — almost seemed to gleefully abuse their power to pressure the two arrested individuals to confess to things that both insisted were not true.
Oh my God! Police and prosecutors pressured suspects to incriminate themselves! Say it isn’t so!But in all seriousness, that’s the officials’ job. If an accused person hasn’t done anything wrong, he or she shouldn’t confess — no matter what. Masnick doesn’t seem to understand what personal responsibility actually entails.
Eric Kohn of indieWIRE understands the issues but chooses to side with evil. He calls Darby “traitorous” and claims he “radicalized” the two terrorists. With no evidence, Kohn accuses Darby of ”entrapment,” and then bitches that ”Darby gets to play the righteous man while his recruits face as much as 30 years behind bars.” Kohn bloviates:
However, it’s never entirely clear what inspired Darby’s betrayal, which leaves a gaping hole in the narrative. In a letter, he considers his decision to become an informant in light of larger “efforts to better this world,” but his moral ground is shaky at best. A former girlfriend discusses Darby’s excitement over the prospects of being an informant, despite the impact it has on people whose radical intentions stemmed from his own.
With a story that boils down to one man’s curious decision to fuck over his eager disciples, the movie becomes an inquiry into the tension between activism and the legal measures that strike it down. Regardless of McKay and Crowder’s motives, they were swindled out of finding the right outlet to express an authentic sentiment; Darby shut them down before they got the chance to even consider doing the right thing. When the informant finally discusses his act in an infuriating radio recording that plays over the credits, his feeble justifications make it clear that the only world he bettered was his own self-interested existence.
What utter nonsense. It’s hard to tell who hates America more — Kohn or the terrorists. Who cares about the impact on the terrorists? They are deservedly rotting in prison.
God bless Brandon Darby for loving his country more than the sick ideology he wisely left behind.
Follow me on Twitter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com/
URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/17/the-lefts-hate-campaign-against-an-american-hero-intensifies-love-affair-with-traitors-grows/
The New York Times has retracted its smear of Brandon Darby yet the character assassination campaign against this American hero is only just beginning.
By way of background, Darby is the former left-wing community organizer who risked his life to prevent leftist terrorists from firebombing the GOP national convention in Minnesota in 2008. The Times falsely reported that he had “encouraged” the conspiracy even though one of the now-imprisoned terrorists admitted he lied about Darby’s complicity (and the trial judge made a specific finding that Darby was blameless — and then added extra time to the terrorist’s sentence for lying).
Over the weekend a particularly vile George Soros-funded propaganda film premiered at the South By Southwest film festival (SXSW) in Darby’s hometown of Austin, Texas. The movie is called “Better This World.” It paints Darby as someone who betrayed radical leftists everywhere for daring to love his country. The film, which could be considered anarchist porn, argues that Darby was a loathsome agent provocateur who somehow brainwashed two nasty, violent young men into doing something they otherwise would not have done. This flies in the face of all credible evidence including but not limited to the findings of the court that sent these two traitors to the hoosegow.
But the damage has already been done. Let’s look at a sampling of critics’ reactions to the leftist fantasy now captured on celluloid.
The aggressively idiotic review by John DeFore of the Hollywood Reporter leads with
A tale of law-enforcement overreach and the collision of politics with national-security concerns, “Better This World” is particularly relevant now, as its story of protesters in prison offers ironic counterpoint to the praise U.S. officials are giving activist youths on the other side of the world.
As if. The two would-be firebombers can hardly be called bona fide protesters. Would anyone consider Bill Ayers to be a mere protester?
Another dimwitted essay comes from Mike Masnick of techdirt and is yet more corroboration of the inability of leftists to process information. This fellow who obviously doesn’t know the real story initially comes across as reasonable.
There’s simply no way to suggest that the two men were “innocent” in their actions. No matter how much someone encourages (if, indeed, that’s what happened here — and it’s disputed) you to do something, you still have to take responsibility for your own actions — especially when it reaches the point of building bombs.
Good so far. But then Masnick does a 180 degree turn and whines about prosecutors pressuring the defendants to confess.
The part of the documentary that I found to be most powerful and disturbing, was how the government agents — both the federal prosecutor and the FBI agents — almost seemed to gleefully abuse their power to pressure the two arrested individuals to confess to things that both insisted were not true.
Oh my God! Police and prosecutors pressured suspects to incriminate themselves! Say it isn’t so!But in all seriousness, that’s the officials’ job. If an accused person hasn’t done anything wrong, he or she shouldn’t confess — no matter what. Masnick doesn’t seem to understand what personal responsibility actually entails.
Eric Kohn of indieWIRE understands the issues but chooses to side with evil. He calls Darby “traitorous” and claims he “radicalized” the two terrorists. With no evidence, Kohn accuses Darby of ”entrapment,” and then bitches that ”Darby gets to play the righteous man while his recruits face as much as 30 years behind bars.” Kohn bloviates:
However, it’s never entirely clear what inspired Darby’s betrayal, which leaves a gaping hole in the narrative. In a letter, he considers his decision to become an informant in light of larger “efforts to better this world,” but his moral ground is shaky at best. A former girlfriend discusses Darby’s excitement over the prospects of being an informant, despite the impact it has on people whose radical intentions stemmed from his own.
With a story that boils down to one man’s curious decision to fuck over his eager disciples, the movie becomes an inquiry into the tension between activism and the legal measures that strike it down. Regardless of McKay and Crowder’s motives, they were swindled out of finding the right outlet to express an authentic sentiment; Darby shut them down before they got the chance to even consider doing the right thing. When the informant finally discusses his act in an infuriating radio recording that plays over the credits, his feeble justifications make it clear that the only world he bettered was his own self-interested existence.
What utter nonsense. It’s hard to tell who hates America more — Kohn or the terrorists. Who cares about the impact on the terrorists? They are deservedly rotting in prison.
God bless Brandon Darby for loving his country more than the sick ideology he wisely left behind.
Follow me on Twitter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com/
URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/17/the-lefts-hate-campaign-against-an-american-hero-intensifies-love-affair-with-traitors-grows/
Stephen King Demands to Know Why He’s Not Paying More in Taxes
Who better to weigh in on the issue of nightmarish debt spending and the blood-curdling notion that a country can tax its way to prosperity than one of the masters of the horror genre?
In Florida recently, author Stephen King, out of concern for the well-being of the middle and lower classes, expressed a willingness to financially martyr himself when he said, “As a rich person, I pay 28 percent tax… what I want to ask you is, why am I not paying 50?” The crowd applauded in appreciation at King’s willingness to throw more of his income down the money hole never to be seen again without first asking themselves, “If he really wants to help the middle and lower classes, why doesn’t he start by giving his books away for free?”
If King’s not aware, he can pay 50 percent of his income to the government, thanks to the Treasury Department’s volunteer donations program that allows guilt-ridden rich liberals a way to relieve themselves of their soul-rotting cash burden (they rarely take advantage of it though).
There’s some criticism of elitist Tea Party candidates here as well. King prefers to support only blue-collar working class politicians like John Kerry:
(h/t Joyanna Adams)
**Written by Doug Powers
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
From Bloomberg to NPR: Selling out to Shariah for Fun and Profit
March 16, 2011
By Stella Paul
To you and me, the brutal Islamic law of Shariah is a nightmare; to America's elites, it's a cutting-edge growth industry. This is a tale of three appalling twerps who sold out America's freedom, each in his or her own special way. At the apex stands Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the adenoidal Napoleon of New York, whose monumental betrayals are practically a work of art; much lower down, we find the smug little weasels, Ronnie Schiller and Betsy Liley of NPR, who, over a delicious Washington lunch with avowed Muslim Brotherhood operatives, casually agreed to a splash of treason.
Studying their stories is instructive, for we quickly see that while jobs for America's regular folks may be disappearing, for the busybody blowhards who rule our civic and cultural life, the opportunities to vacuum up cash in exchange for selling off our freedom are virtually boundless.
In case you were wondering why Mayor Bloomberg refused to meet with 9/11 families protesting the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, and why he reviled them and other patriotic opponents as "un-American," the mystery is now officially solved: money. Bloomberg, the richest man in New York, has brilliantly maneuvered his position as public guardian of Ground Zero into a priceless asset for his personal fortune.
Here's the sick news, folks, about the mother of all conflicts of interest.
Bloomberg launches Islamic Finance Platform:
Bloomberg Professional® service executives have announced the launch of a Bloomberg Islamic Finance Platform (ISLM), a solution for Shariah-compliant products and services... The Islamic marketplace is growing rapidly and there is high demand for a wide range of resources," Dan Doctoroff, President of Bloomberg L.P, said from Kuala Lumpur. "Bloomberg is delighted to increase its commitment to serve this dynamic market...."
The new Bloomberg ISLM platform has resources for investing in fixed income, equities and money markets that comply with Shariah..."
Well, you get the picture. It all makes sense now, doesn't it? Bloomberg, the famous cold fish, shedding hot tears for "religious freedom" in front of the Statue of Liberty, surrounded by a pride of brain-dead rabbis -- ah, what a lovely photo op it made.
Bloomberg's tears were real, all right. He was weeping at the thought that patriotic Americans might derail his ability to close the deal on his beloved Shariah platform. Recall, if your stomach can bear it, how Imam Rauf, the project's so-called "spiritual leader," let slip that he would use the 15-story, $100 million Ground Zero Victory Mosque to house his lifelong dream -- the Shariah Index Project. There, every morning, after the Muslim call to prayer finished echoing across the 9/11 killing field, Rauf planned to calibrate the state of Shariah compliance around the globe, and diligently labor to spread it.
And how delightfully easier his task of spreading Shariah will be, thanks to Bloomberg's Islamic Finance Platform! After all, the whole point of the $1 trillion market of "Shariah-compliant products and services" is to maximize compliance with Shariah -- and not just on money matters. To understand Shariah Finance's true nature, consider that Iran is its market leader, and was the first country to adopt Shariah Finance as its financial system, back in 1978-1983 when the Ayatollah Khomeini took over. Khomeini eradicated all secular law and replaced it with Shariah law, including the banking system. Khomeini's prize creation, the Shariah police, continue to enforce Shariah in the banks and on the streets, where women are savagely beaten for showing a strand of hair and 14-year-old gays are publicly hanged.
I find it fascinating that Bloomberg's official announcement makes no attempt to disguise Shariah-Compliant Finance as "green" or "ethical", which is the current fashionable pretense of Shariah-pushing financial institutions like Citibank, Goldman Sachs and General Electric. No, Bloomberg's announcement is all about the power of his proprietary tools to speed up the harried investors' search for "fatwa endorsements," and "transparency into more than 250 Shariah scholars," so they can get on with making obscene piles of Shariah-backed money.
In case you're wondering about the tilt of these "Shariah scholars," look no further than Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood honcho dubbed "the theologian of terror" by the ADL, who just showed up in Tahrir Square, calling for "the reconquest of Jerusalem." Qaradawi is the big expert on Shariah Finance, which he cheerfully calls "jihad with money."
Now, you and I remember that 9/11 took place on the day of the mayoral primary, an election Bloomberg eventually won. We remember that he began his term in office by attending countless funerals and memorial services for New York's heroes, and we still get choked up thinking about the sacrifice they made.
But let's give credit where it's due: Bloomberg is a canny calculator. Maybe he'd already figured out back in 2001, while we were still wrapping ourselves in flags and weeping over God Bless America, that the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 would be presided over by some guy named Hussein, who bowed to the Saudi king -- so why not go for the main chance?
As for Ron Schiller and Betsy Liley of NPR, what pipsqueak, nothing-burgers these would-be destroyers of our freedom turn out to be. Invited to lunch with two men posing as operatives of a Muslim Brotherhood front group openly dedicated to spreading Shariah, they happily accepted, in hopes of snaring a $5 million donation. Schiller obligingly ranted about America's bigotry and Islamophobia and those nasty Jews who control the media, while Liley, in crisp professional mode, volunteered to provide anonymity for a Muslim Brotherhood donation. Yes, these are the people who think they're so much better than us.
Schiller's and Liley's hatred for America's ordinary citizens is so immense that they're willing to sell off our Constitution, but I'm sure they find the whole concept of treason to be laughably passé. In fact, it probably never even occurred to these two COWs (Citizens of the World) that they had a country to betray. What's the moral of the story of Bloomberg and the quislings of NPR? American leadership in every sector is in a state of massive collapse, and our future is being written by preening egotists getting rich on our destruction. Can't we do better?
You can write to Stella Paul at Stellapundit@aol.com
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/from_bloomberg_to_npr_selling.html at March 17, 2011 - 12:16:14 AM CDT
By Stella Paul
To you and me, the brutal Islamic law of Shariah is a nightmare; to America's elites, it's a cutting-edge growth industry. This is a tale of three appalling twerps who sold out America's freedom, each in his or her own special way. At the apex stands Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the adenoidal Napoleon of New York, whose monumental betrayals are practically a work of art; much lower down, we find the smug little weasels, Ronnie Schiller and Betsy Liley of NPR, who, over a delicious Washington lunch with avowed Muslim Brotherhood operatives, casually agreed to a splash of treason.
Studying their stories is instructive, for we quickly see that while jobs for America's regular folks may be disappearing, for the busybody blowhards who rule our civic and cultural life, the opportunities to vacuum up cash in exchange for selling off our freedom are virtually boundless.
In case you were wondering why Mayor Bloomberg refused to meet with 9/11 families protesting the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, and why he reviled them and other patriotic opponents as "un-American," the mystery is now officially solved: money. Bloomberg, the richest man in New York, has brilliantly maneuvered his position as public guardian of Ground Zero into a priceless asset for his personal fortune.
Here's the sick news, folks, about the mother of all conflicts of interest.
Bloomberg launches Islamic Finance Platform:
Bloomberg Professional® service executives have announced the launch of a Bloomberg Islamic Finance Platform (ISLM), a solution for Shariah-compliant products and services... The Islamic marketplace is growing rapidly and there is high demand for a wide range of resources," Dan Doctoroff, President of Bloomberg L.P, said from Kuala Lumpur. "Bloomberg is delighted to increase its commitment to serve this dynamic market...."
The new Bloomberg ISLM platform has resources for investing in fixed income, equities and money markets that comply with Shariah..."
Well, you get the picture. It all makes sense now, doesn't it? Bloomberg, the famous cold fish, shedding hot tears for "religious freedom" in front of the Statue of Liberty, surrounded by a pride of brain-dead rabbis -- ah, what a lovely photo op it made.
Bloomberg's tears were real, all right. He was weeping at the thought that patriotic Americans might derail his ability to close the deal on his beloved Shariah platform. Recall, if your stomach can bear it, how Imam Rauf, the project's so-called "spiritual leader," let slip that he would use the 15-story, $100 million Ground Zero Victory Mosque to house his lifelong dream -- the Shariah Index Project. There, every morning, after the Muslim call to prayer finished echoing across the 9/11 killing field, Rauf planned to calibrate the state of Shariah compliance around the globe, and diligently labor to spread it.
And how delightfully easier his task of spreading Shariah will be, thanks to Bloomberg's Islamic Finance Platform! After all, the whole point of the $1 trillion market of "Shariah-compliant products and services" is to maximize compliance with Shariah -- and not just on money matters. To understand Shariah Finance's true nature, consider that Iran is its market leader, and was the first country to adopt Shariah Finance as its financial system, back in 1978-1983 when the Ayatollah Khomeini took over. Khomeini eradicated all secular law and replaced it with Shariah law, including the banking system. Khomeini's prize creation, the Shariah police, continue to enforce Shariah in the banks and on the streets, where women are savagely beaten for showing a strand of hair and 14-year-old gays are publicly hanged.
I find it fascinating that Bloomberg's official announcement makes no attempt to disguise Shariah-Compliant Finance as "green" or "ethical", which is the current fashionable pretense of Shariah-pushing financial institutions like Citibank, Goldman Sachs and General Electric. No, Bloomberg's announcement is all about the power of his proprietary tools to speed up the harried investors' search for "fatwa endorsements," and "transparency into more than 250 Shariah scholars," so they can get on with making obscene piles of Shariah-backed money.
In case you're wondering about the tilt of these "Shariah scholars," look no further than Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood honcho dubbed "the theologian of terror" by the ADL, who just showed up in Tahrir Square, calling for "the reconquest of Jerusalem." Qaradawi is the big expert on Shariah Finance, which he cheerfully calls "jihad with money."
Now, you and I remember that 9/11 took place on the day of the mayoral primary, an election Bloomberg eventually won. We remember that he began his term in office by attending countless funerals and memorial services for New York's heroes, and we still get choked up thinking about the sacrifice they made.
But let's give credit where it's due: Bloomberg is a canny calculator. Maybe he'd already figured out back in 2001, while we were still wrapping ourselves in flags and weeping over God Bless America, that the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 would be presided over by some guy named Hussein, who bowed to the Saudi king -- so why not go for the main chance?
As for Ron Schiller and Betsy Liley of NPR, what pipsqueak, nothing-burgers these would-be destroyers of our freedom turn out to be. Invited to lunch with two men posing as operatives of a Muslim Brotherhood front group openly dedicated to spreading Shariah, they happily accepted, in hopes of snaring a $5 million donation. Schiller obligingly ranted about America's bigotry and Islamophobia and those nasty Jews who control the media, while Liley, in crisp professional mode, volunteered to provide anonymity for a Muslim Brotherhood donation. Yes, these are the people who think they're so much better than us.
Schiller's and Liley's hatred for America's ordinary citizens is so immense that they're willing to sell off our Constitution, but I'm sure they find the whole concept of treason to be laughably passé. In fact, it probably never even occurred to these two COWs (Citizens of the World) that they had a country to betray. What's the moral of the story of Bloomberg and the quislings of NPR? American leadership in every sector is in a state of massive collapse, and our future is being written by preening egotists getting rich on our destruction. Can't we do better?
You can write to Stella Paul at Stellapundit@aol.com
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/from_bloomberg_to_npr_selling.html at March 17, 2011 - 12:16:14 AM CDT
Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas-tied ISNA Trains Muslim Students How to Deceive/Manipulate the Media
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Notice that the Muslim Brotherhood group "is the official clearinghouse for information disseminated [to the media] from our Society and the School and will establish and enforce standard operating procedures for different types of interactions with the American media and the public."
"Participants must .... pass rigorous internal training and testing."Duck!
"it is essential that a system of standards and procedures be established to make sure that Muslims and Islam are presented in the most favorable and truthful light"The Muslim Brotherhood will give "mandatory training of approved talking points and techniques for presentation."
Readying their armies in the propaganda war. Frickin Nazis.
ISNA and the Muslim cleric to the world's leading active Islamic cells both are advancing the importance of media jihad. The only difference between Awlaki and ISNA is that ISNA has very close ties to the White House.
HOW TO TRAIN MUSLIM STUDENTS TO INTERACT WITH THE MEDIA ISNA.NET hat tip Julian
Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed Noor-Ul-Iman School Monmouth Junction, New Jersey.
ABSTRACTHow did the Brotherhood handle Bridges founder Moe Hassan beheading his wife?
Under the current circumstances, it is imperative that we present Islam and the Muslim American community to the American public in the most truthful and accurate way. With that end in view, we at the Noor-Ul-Iman School, in conjunction with the Islamic Society of Central Jersey (ISCJ) have formed a Media and Public Affairs Committee (MPAC). The committee includes several teachers and students from the Noor-Ul-Iman School. Over the last few months, we have had enormous success in interacting with the local media. Our students have had several letters published in the newspapers, our Hijab-wearing basketball team has been featured in the local newspapers and New York television stations, and our County Champion Noor-Ul-Iman School Mock Trial Team is now the toast of the county.
In this seminar, “How to train Muslim students to interact with the media,” the speaker will discuss how they formed a media committee and how to train students to be media savvy. The media committee’s role in influencing the local township zoning board to approve the construction of a two-story school building for Noor-Ul-Iman School, the expansion of the mosque and parking lot, and the construction of an office building will be discussed.
FULL PAPER
At this most critical juncture in the history of Muslim Americans, it is vital that we present the best and the true face of Islam and the Muslims to the American people. To accomplish that goal, we need to tap into the talents that exist within our own community.
Members of our community who can help, must possess the following qualifications: a) they must be able to speak grammatically correct English, preferably with an American accent; b) Americans must be able to fully comprehend their English; c) they must be well versed in current world affairs, especially as it pertains to Muslim American interests; and d) they must be American media-savvy.
While there are a few first generation Muslims who possess the above qualifications, the focus has to be on our American-born children. It is the responsibility of the media- savvy adults to train them. The Islamic Society of Central Jersey (ISCJ) and the Noor- Ul-Iman School, which is housed on its premises, have formed such a Media and Public Affairs committee (MPAC). Several Noor-Ul-Iman teachers and students are members of the media committee.
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The MPAC is authorized to deal with all the media and outreach programs on behalf of ISCJ and the Noor-Ul-Iman school, such as: a) visits from and to television stations; b) visits from and to radio stations; c) visits from and to newspapers and the print media; d) visits by our school personnel to other schools and religious institutions; e) visits to our school by outside schools and religious institutions; and f) collaborative efforts such as Interfaith Meetings. Members of MPAC have to undergo training in each of the above, attend meetings and prepare themselves thoroughly before representing ISCJ and the School at any internal or external forum.
OBJECTIVES OF THE MEDIA COMMITTEE
As the Muslim Americans become more high-profile and the media becomes increasingly more interested in learning about Islam, the Muslim American community, and the community’s response to events worldwide, it is essential that a system of standards and procedures be established to make sure that Muslims and Islam are presented in the most favorable and truthful light to the American public.
Public Affairs Committee is the official clearinghouse for information disseminated from our Society and the School and will establish and enforce standard operating procedures for different types of interactions with the American media and the public. This committee will be founded and operated on established public relations procedures.
MEMBERSHIP
Due to the sensitive nature of work this committee will be expected to perform, the current committee will evaluate new applications for membership very carefully. Applicants must exhibit either prior experience in successful public relations and information management or show an innate potential for learning these tasks. All new applicants must undergo an interview process with the committee and a background check. The committee will also identify and invite members of the community who they believe will strengthen the committee.
COMMITTEE TASK FORCES
Members will be assigned to a task force by the media coordinator based on their personal strengths as assessed from the interview and any supporting writing samples submitted for evaluation. Members can belong to more than one task force.
• Electronic (television) Media Public Relations – Will engage the electronic media in live or prerecorded video encounters such as interviews. This is the highest risk setting with potential for combative, even unfair questioning. Participants must be fluent in English, speak with an American accent, be media savvy and pass rigorous internal training and testing.
• Radio Media Public Relations – Will engage the media through on-air radio or telephone settings. High risk setting with potential for combative, even unfair questioning. Must be fluent in English, speak with an American accent, be media savvy and pass rigorous internal training and testing.
• Print Media Public Relations – Will engage the print media over the phone, through writing of articles (opinion pieces), letters, press releases, and emails. Must be able to converse in and write excellent English, be well-versed in world events and media savvy, and undergo rigorous internal training and testing. Documents released to the print media on behalf of ISCJ must be approved by this task force.
• Outreach Public Relations – Will engage ordinary Americans through visits to, and hosting of school students, religious institutions, public forums and Inter-faith meetings. Must be excellent public speakers with excellent command of the English language and be public relations-savvy.
• Facility Hosts – Will engage the media and the public through guided tours of the facility. Low risk setting. Must speak excellent English, be knowledgeable about, and able to explain the fundamentals of Islam to non-Muslims, and be a person of a pleasant demeanor.
TRAINING OF MEMBERS
All new and current members will begin mandatory training of approved talking points and techniques for presentation. Talking points will be initially established by the committee but will adapt to current events and will be reviewed periodically for embellishment. All members will participate in mock debates to gain familiarity with talking points as rebuttals, techniques for presentation, and current trends in anti-Islamic commentaries and propaganda. Members will be challenged on a level appropriate to their experience and task force.
[..]
MEDIA AND PUBLIC KITS
Multiple ISCJ Kits will be created and stored in a location easily accessible to the administrators. These kits will address different issues the public may find useful when
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they visit the facility. Each kit will include literature that presents the information in an easily digestible format. Component topics will be augmented or removed as necessary.
• Proposed Media Kit on: Islam, Terrorism, Palestine, Iraq, Kashmir, Chechnya and Women in Islam
• Proposed Public Kit on: Islam, Terrorism, Islam in America, and Women in Islam All media kits will include a CD with images and text documents for quick and easy
inclusion into articles. Funding will be required for the Media and Public Kits. STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES (SOPs)
The committee will establish SOPs defining the process that non-committee members will follow in the event of media requests for visits; media surprise visits, public tours, requests for representatives, and general protocols, when no committee is available. A list of all committee members within each task force and their contact information, key Board of Trustee individuals, and key members of the community who have expertise on particular subjects will be made available to the office administrators.
HOW THE MEDIA AND THE PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE SUCCEEDED IN ACHIEVING THE FOLLOWING, WILL BE DISCUSSED (THERE WILL BE SOME SHOW-AND-TELL)
1) On September 11, 2005, the Media Committee took out a full page ad in The Times of New Jersey condemning terrorism.
2) Two days later, in its lead editorial, The Times of New Jersey praised the ad. This was unprecedented.
3) On the first day of Ramadan last year, ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee took out a quarter-page advertisement in the op-ed page of The Times of New Jersey, welcoming the Americans to “worship with us,” and explaining what Ramadan is all about.
4) The Media Committee developed good rapport with the local newspaper, the Home News Tribune. On the day of Eid-ul-Adha, on January 10, 2006, for the first time ever, an American newspaper, Home News Tribune, greeted Americans with a banner headline, “HAPPY EID” on its front page.
5) The ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee worked very hard behind the scene with the Executive Editors and reporters of both Home News Tribune (ISCJ’s only local daily newspaper) and South Brunswick Post (ISCJ’s only local weekly newspaper) and convinced them to endorse ISCJ’s expansion plan.
6) In its lead editorial on Friday, February 26, the Home News Tribune urged the South Brunswick Township Zoning Board to vote “yes” to ISCJ’s application for expansion.
7) On Thursday, March 2, the day of the Zoning Board’s vote on ISCJ’s application, in its lead editorial, the South Brunswick Post endorsed the ISCJ’s expansion plan.
8) ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee made sure that the students of Noor- Ul-Iman School wrote letters of thanks to the Home News Tribune, the South Brunswick Post and the Star Ledger every time the newspapers featured Noor-Ul- Iman School prominently.
9) ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee arranged for the head of the local Boy Scouts of America (Noor-Ul-Iman School has New Jersey’s only Muslim Boy Scout Troop) and the organizers of Elijah’s Promise Soup Kitchen for the homeless in New Brunswick (where Noor-Ul-Iman School students prepare and serve food to the homeless every year) to send letters urging the South Brunswick Mayor and the Zoning Board members to support ISCJ’s expansion project.
10) ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee selected and coached the speakers and Noor-Ul-Iman students who pleaded for the ISCJ expansion project approval at the end of the South Brunswick Township Zoning Board hearing on February 16.
11) The above public relations activities by ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee contributed significantly towards the approval of ISCJ’s and NUI’s expansion project by the South Brunswick Zoning Board on March 2.
12) To show appreciation for the Home News Tribune and the South Brunswick Post, subsequently the Media Committee organized three subscription drives for the two papers after three Ju’ma prayers.
13) Through the efforts of ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee, the Home News Tribune has offered internships to one current and one former Noor-Ul-Iman School student this summer. The Home News Tribune has also offered part-time employment to two current Noor-Ul-Iman students and one former Noor-Ul-Iman student in their “Teen Scene” section.
14) The ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee members wrote and helped Noor- Ul-Iman students write op-ed articles/letters about the Danish cartoon controversy. The letters/op-ed articles were published in The Times of New Jersey, the Star Ledger and the Home News Tribune.
15) The ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee facilitated the coverage of the Noor-Ul-Iman School’s girl’s basket ball team on the front page of the Star Ledger, the sports page of Home News Tribune and on New York’s television station, Channel 11.
16) ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee arranged for a reporter of the South Brunswick Post to interview the members of the Noor-Ul-Iman school’s Middlesex County Mock Trial Champion Team. This resulted in a front-page article in the South Brunswick Post with a photograph of the winning team.
17) The ISCJ Media and Public Affairs Committee handled the visit by Bridges TV to ISCJ.
Related: The Society of Professional Journalists: Why we never get the straight story on Islamic jihad ...
UPDATE: Imam Anwar Awlaki is the cleric to Fort Hood jihadi Hasan, Christmas underwear bomber, Times Square bomber...this from Right Side News
Over the past two years, Yemeni-American jihadist cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki has emerged as a key leader of Al-Qaeda. On February 9, 2011, Michael Leiter, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a Congressional hearing that the threat of Al-Qaeda's central body, which is led by Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, has been surpassed by that of Al-Awlaki. He said: "I actually consider Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), with Al-Awlaki as a leader within that organization, probably the most significant risk."Al-Awlaki's mastery of media skills, among his other talents, helped him emerge as a leader; most notable is his manipulation of Western media outlets, as early as 2001 – among them NPR, PBS and The New York Times, which chose to interview him in their efforts to learn about moderate Islam. He was frequently quoted by these media outlets, and was called a "bridge builder between Islam and the West."[1] The Baltimore Sun even depicted him as hip and media savvy, saying, "Al-Awlaki bridges the two worlds as easily as he shifts from lecturing on the lives of the prophets to tapping phone numbers into his Palm Pilot."[2]On November 18, 2001, while serving as an imam at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, VA, Al-Awlaki was chosen by the Washington Post to answer readers' questions about Ramadan. He discussed his opinion of the Western media, which he called "one-sided," and praised Al-Jazeera TV.© 1998-2011, The Middle East Media Research Institute All Rights Reserved.In the summer 2010 issue of Inspire, the English-language magazine of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al-Awlaki was quoted as saying, "Why does the vast majority of Western media outlets refer to jihadi media as 'propaganda,' when every media outlet in the world has an agenda to propagate for the purpose of altering mindsets in one way or another?"Al-Awlaki's January 2009 "44 Ways to Jihad" lecture also included a section dedicated to "Fighting the Lies of the Western Media," as well as supporting jihad media. It states: "The perceptions of many Muslims are formed by the Western media... The danger of the Western media stems from the fact that it puts on the cloak of truth and objectivity when in reality it is no more than the mouthpiece of the devil. Can't you see that the Western media is constantly trying to underplay the atrocities committed by the West while exaggerating the violations – which are few and far in between – committed by Muslims?...The Western media is so good in its deception that its lies pass on a wide section of the Muslim ummah. The fact is that this media demonizes the mujahideen, spreads lies about them, blows out of proportion their mistakes, tries to sow the seeds of disunity amongst them, attempts to ruin the reputations of their leaders, and ignores or demonizes the scholars of truth when on the other hand, it glorifies and promotes the scholars of falsehood. So my dear brothers and sisters part of your duty is to campaign amongst Muslims to raise their awareness regarding this issue. You should encourage them to be careful and critical of the Western media. A Muslim should not believe Western sources unless they are confirmed by a trustworthy Muslim one. I say a "trustworthy" Muslim source because the verse was warning us from accepting the news of a disobeying Muslim... A media source that could otherwise be very objective and truthful could become a fabricator when it comes to covering news on Muslims..."[3]Al-Awlaki's Message "To the Members of the Media"
In his latest message to the Muslim world, Al-Awlaki defends the journalists of one such "trustworthy" Muslim source, Al-Jazeera, and praises the Western media source WikiLeaks. The message, a six-minute video of his speech "A Message to the Members of the Media," was released February 14, 2011 by the jihadi forum Shumukh Al-Islam.[4] In it, Al-Awlaki also accuses the U.S. and the West of using liberty and freedom of expression as a pretext to take over the world's resources and treasures, and to oppress and deprive people of their rights. He said that whenever anyone tries to expose "the truth about the U.S. and its agents," the West discards the principle of liberty it pretends to defend and proceeds to silence and arrest the offender, as well as prosecute him on false charges.[5]
Caption: "There is no freedom of expression for those who expose the crimes of America and its agents."Two weeks after its release, the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) released a video with English subtitles of this speech. The recording received scant attention, primarily due to events in Egypt and throughout the region. Clues to the date of its actual recording can be found in his references to WikiLeaks as well as to the August 16, 2010 arrest of Yemeni journalist 'Abd Al-Ilah Shai, by Yemeni authorities, for alleged ties to Al-Qaeda.[6]
Caption: 'Abd Al-Ilah Shai; from an Al-Jazeera report which was used in an AQAP video.The biographies of the journalists that Al-Awlaki names and defends in his February 14, 2011 speech are listed below. They have been employed by Al-Jazeera and have been accused of having links to Al-Qaeda. In fact, Al-Jazeera has a long history of presenting exclusive speeches by and interviews with some of the world's most wanted terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders, Taliban leaders, and, most recently, with Al-Awlaki himself.
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