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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; funeral</title>
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		<title>Backlash Against de Blasio</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/backlash-against-de-blasio/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=backlash-against-de-blasio</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Dec 2014 05:58:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill de Blasio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[funeral]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248106</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Cop-basher surprised by police anger.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/mayor23n-1-web.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248107" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/mayor23n-1-web-450x299.jpg" alt="mayor23n-1-web" width="379" height="252" /></a>Cop-bashing </span><span class="zw-portion">New York mayor Bill de Blasio seems genuinely surprised at the ferocious backlash against him in light of the </span><span class="zw-portion">execution-style weekend killing of two local cops.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">After spending the past year in office attacking police, the</span><span class="zw-portion"> mayor is now scrambling to put the pin back into the grenade he threw into the local body politic. His crusade against the police goes back at least to his election campaign last year when he caustically criticized then-mayor Michael Bloomberg&#8217;s stop-and-frisk policy.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">De Blasio is appealing for calm and for a temporary suspension of the ugly anti-police protests his incendiary rhetoric has spawned.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Strangely, this far-left radical who, like his ally in the White House never puts politics aside for the benefit of the community, is now asking New Yorkers to do precisely that.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">So far the New York Police Department isn&#8217;t in a mood to forgive de Blasio who has teamed up with racial arsonist Al Sharpton to lay waste to what&#8217;s left of civil society in the Big Apple. Before the two murders Sharpton had been leading marches where the demonstrators chanted, </span><span class="zw-portion">&#8220;What do we want? Dead cops.&#8221; Taking cues from the Westboro Baptist Church, Sharpton followers showed up at one cop memorial service chanting and heckling the mourners.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">NYPD union leaders have asked de Blasio to skip police funerals and a</span><span class="zw-portion"> large gathering of cops turned their backs on the mayor as he showed up Saturday at the Brooklyn hospital where the lifeless bodies of officers Rafael Ramos, 40, and </span><span class="zw-portion">Wenjian Liu, 32, had been taken</span><span class="zw-portion"> after they were shot dead by an adherent of the Religion of Peace.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">The shooter,</span><span class="zw-portion"> Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley</span><span class="zw-portion">, </span><a style="color: blue;" title="" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/the-nypd-cop-killing-the-chickens-come-home-to-roost/" target="_blank" data-href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/the-nypd-cop-killing-the-chickens-come-home-to-roost/" data-type="1"><span class="zw-portion link">was a Muslim</span></a><span class="zw-portion"> apparently upset at what he believed were the racist killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. and Eric Garner in Staten Island. He indicated he was planning to kill &#8220;pigs,&#8221; and as Robert Spencer notes,</span><span class="zw-portion"> </span><span class="zw-portion">&#8220;</span><span class="zw-portion">Brinsley</span><span class="zw-portion">’</span><span class="zw-portion">s Facebook page featured a photo of the Qur</span><span class="zw-portion">’</span><span class="zw-portion">an open to the eighth chapter, where Allah exhorts the believers to </span><span class="zw-portion">&#8216;</span><span class="zw-portion">strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah</span><span class="zw-portion">&#8216;</span><span class="zw-portion"> (8:60).</span><span class="zw-portion">&#8220;</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Since de Blasio was sworn in last New Year&#8217;s Day, New Yorkers have, in fits and starts, begun to realize that they elected a dangerously erratic Sandinista-loving radical as mayor. Although de Blasio&#8217;s reaction to the cop murders strikes many in the punditry as incompetent, they are being charitable. De Blasio&#8217;s behavior reflects his pathological,  hateful, profoundly anti-American ideology. He can&#8217;t conceal his contempt for those whose job it is to promote law and order.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">This is what happens when a small-c communist becomes mayor of the nation&#8217;s greatest metropolis. </span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who helped turn New York from a crime-infested urban jungle into the relatively crime-free city his successors inherited, </span><a style="color: blue;" title="" href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/12/22/giuliani-propaganda-from-politicians-to-separate-communities-from-police-is-shameful-n1934682?utm_source=thdailypm&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=nl_pm&amp;newsletterad=thpm1" target="_blank" data-href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/12/22/giuliani-propaganda-from-politicians-to-separate-communities-from-police-is-shameful-n1934682?utm_source=thdailypm&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=nl_pm&amp;newsletterad=thpm1" data-type="1"><span class="zw-portion link">said it was</span></a><span class="zw-portion"> &#8220;shameful&#8221; for politicians to drive a wedge between police and the communities they serve.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">&#8220;Police misconduct is a minor part of the problem. Community, serious violent crime is a much bigger part of the problem,&#8221; Giuliani said. </span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">&#8220;The people who are saving black lives in the city are [you] the New York City Police Department. I&#8217;m not doing it. President Obama&#8217;s not doing it. Mayor De Blasio&#8217;s not doing it. He&#8217;s not out at night walking down housing developments and trying to save children from being killed. Police officers are doing the most, right now, in these very very poor communities and sometime</span><span class="zw-portion">s</span><span class="zw-portion"> they&#8217;re white communities, but where there are black communities and police officers are doing the most to save the children that are at greatest risk. The politicians with this propaganda separating the community from the police, are doing something that&#8217;s shameful and they have to stop doing that. The vast majority of police want to help and the politicians&#8217; rhetoric should reflect the truth, not propaganda.&#8221;</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;">But de Blasio isn&#8217;t anything like Giuliani or even like Bloomberg, his immediate predecessor, a micromanaging Big Gulp-grabber who now seems like an exemplar of common sense compared to the current mayor.</p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">De Blasio is in many ways President Obama&#8217;s &#8220;mini me,&#8221; except unlike Obama, he has loud critics in the media who for the most part has not been giving him a free ride.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">But de Blasio hasn&#8217;t generated all of this racial hostility and antipathy toward cops on his own. He&#8217;s had a lot of help from </span><span class="zw-portion">President </span><span class="zw-portion">Obama who has been trying to kickstart a wave of </span><span class="zw-portion">civil unrest since even before he took office. The president&#8217;s</span><span class="zw-portion"> policy of trying to foment violent civil unrest is finally paying dividends.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Attacking the police, as Obama has been doing for years, isn&#8217;t exactly a courageous act. The police are easy targets for leftist agitators. Riling up minorities over real and imagined abuses is child&#8217;s play. Even Al Sharpton can do it.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">On the 2008 campaign</span><span class="zw-portion"> </span><span class="zw-portion">trail</span><span class="zw-portion">, the president belittle</span><span class="zw-portion">d</span><span class="zw-portion"> small town </span><span class="zw-portion">Americans, implying they were racist, a time-honored leftist smear of conservatives. &#8220;</span><span class="zw-portion">And it&#8217;s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren&#8217;t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.</span><span class="zw-portion">&#8220;</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Not too long after his inauguration in 2009</span><span class="zw-portion"> the new president </span><span class="zw-portion">mocked Cambridge, Mas</span><span class="zw-portion">s.</span><span class="zw-portion"> police by saying they </span><span class="zw-portion">“</span><span class="zw-portion">acted stupidly</span><span class="zw-portion">” </span><span class="zw-portion">by arresting Obama</span><span class="zw-portion">’</span><span class="zw-portion">s close personal friend,</span><span class="zw-portion"> black liberal academic </span><span class="zw-portion">Henry Louis Gates Jr. This led to the seemingly pointless public relations event known as the so-called beer summit between James Crowley (the arresting officer), Gates, and Obama. There was never any evidence that Gates&#8217;s arrest had anything to do with his skin color. Arrester and arrestee agreed to disagree yet Obama succeeded in scoring points with his radical base. </span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Campaigning in 2010, Obama demonized non-Latinos.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">&#8220;If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, &#8216;We&#8217;re gonna punish our enemies, and we&#8217;re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us&#8217; &#8212; if they don&#8217;t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election &#8212; then I think it&#8217;s going to be harder. And that&#8217;s why I think it&#8217;s so important that people focus on voting on November 2nd.&#8221;</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">The </span><span class="zw-portion">same year he </span><span class="zw-portion">invoked </span><span class="zw-portion">Rosa Parks and segregation in order to </span><span class="zw-portion">ridicule </span><span class="zw-portion">Republicans. </span><span class="zw-portion">“</span><span class="zw-portion">We don</span><span class="zw-portion">’</span><span class="zw-portion">t mind the Republicans joining us,</span><span class="zw-portion">” </span><span class="zw-portion">Obama told the faithful. </span><span class="zw-portion">“</span><span class="zw-portion">They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.</span><span class="zw-portion">”</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">In </span><span class="zw-portion">2012 </span><span class="zw-portion">Obama suggested if he failed to win reelection minorities would suffer. </span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">“</span><span class="zw-portion">The notion that we</span><span class="zw-portion">’</span><span class="zw-portion">re all in this together, that we look out for one another</span><span class="zw-portion">–</span><span class="zw-portion">that</span><span class="zw-portion">’</span><span class="zw-portion">s at stake in this election,</span><span class="zw-portion">” </span><span class="zw-portion">he </span><span class="zw-portion">said</span><span class="zw-portion">. </span><span class="zw-portion">“</span><span class="zw-portion">Don</span><span class="zw-portion">’</span><span class="zw-portion">t take my word for it. Watch some of these [Republican] debates that have been going on up in New Hampshire.</span><span class="zw-portion">”</span><span class="zw-portion"> Later that year he added </span><span class="zw-portion">Republicans</span><span class="zw-portion"> &#8220;</span><span class="zw-portion">want to take us back to the policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century.</span><span class="zw-portion">”</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">In 2012 he needlessly inserted race into the Trayvon Martin saga by saying, &#8220;</span><span class="zw-portion">if I had a son, he&#8217;d</span><span class="zw-portion"> </span><span class="zw-portion">look like Trayvon</span><span class="zw-portion">.</span><span class="zw-portion">&#8220;</span><span class="zw-portion"> </span><span class="zw-portion">Although the shooter who was eventually acquitted, so-called white Hispanic George Zimmerman, wasn&#8217;t a police officer, he was an authority figure of sorts as a neighborhood watch volunteer.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Working with Sharpton, the Obama administration sicced the left-wing community organizers of the Justice Department&#8217;s Community Relations Service (CRS) on the unsuspecting people of Sanford, Fla. after the death of Martin. Evidence established that Martin attacked Zimmerman, who avoided legal liability because he acted in self-defense.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Even after the </span><span class="zw-portion">acquittal Obama insisted on meddling. He said </span><span class="zw-portion">that </span><span class="zw-portion">“</span><span class="zw-portion">Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,</span><span class="zw-portion">” </span><span class="zw-portion">and </span><span class="zw-portion">gave yet another </span><span class="zw-portion">lecture on race</span><span class="zw-portion">.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Obama vigorously milked the August death of Michael Brown at the hands of white Ferguson, Mo. police officer Darren Wilson. </span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Brown, an 18-year-old black male, was killed after he beat Wilson and tried to grab his handgun. Brown</span><span class="zw-portion">’</span><span class="zw-portion">s defenders characterize him as a gentle giant even though a few minutes earlier he was captured on video committing a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store, roughing up a much smaller clerk in the process. At autopsy Brown</span><span class="zw-portion">’</span><span class="zw-portion">s height was 6</span><span class="zw-portion">′ </span><span class="zw-portion">5</span><span class="zw-portion">″ </span><span class="zw-portion">and his weight was 289 lbs. </span><span class="zw-portion">The </span><span class="zw-portion">autopsy results were consistent with witness accounts that Brown reached for Wilson</span><span class="zw-portion">’</span><span class="zw-portion">s gun during their fateful altercation.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">Obama</span><span class="zw-portion"> dishonored his country by giving a speech at the United Nations citing Brown&#8217;s killing as something Americans should be ashamed of. After the grand jury refused to indict Wilson, Obama ramped up his rhetoric, claiming that racism is deeply rooted in American society.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">A major difference between de Blasio and Obama is that the mayor doesn&#8217;t have the president&#8217;s silver tongue. Serious calls for de Blasio&#8217;s ouster are now coming from civic leaders throughout New York.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion">But don&#8217;t hold your breath waiting for de Blasio to resign. Radical leftists rarely give up power without a fight.</span></p>
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		<title>Michael Brown Funeral: Cop-Lynching Pep Rally</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/michael-brown-funeral-prelude-to-a-cop-lynching-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=michael-brown-funeral-prelude-to-a-cop-lynching-1</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2014 04:58:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al sharpton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[funeral]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Ferguson mob sets its sights on Officer Wilson’s head.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/f_sharpton_funeral_140825.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239571" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/f_sharpton_funeral_140825-443x350.jpg" alt="f_sharpton_funeral_140825" width="303" height="239" /></a>An Al Sharpton-led memorial service yesterday for Michael Brown, the black 18-year-old thug who gave a white Ferguson, Mo. police officer a severe head injury while trying to seize his handgun, became the grotesque political rally some observers feared it would be.</p>
<p><span style="color: #222222;">The distinctly anti-police tone of the service was proof that the lie </span>that Brown tried to surrender to white police officer Darren Wilson, rather than trying to beat the life out of him, won&#8217;t die. The racial-grievance industry, egged on by President Obama, won&#8217;t let it go.</p>
<p>The Left’s narrative that the nearly 300-lbs. Brown, who had just robbed a convenience store on Aug. 9 mere minutes before encountering decorated policeman Wilson, is under withering evidentiary assault every day. As federal officials scour the riot-torn St. Louis suburb in a desperate search for material to justify federal civil rights charges, Sharpton is pressing on with his campaign to foment race-based hatred.</p>
<p>The funeral sets the stage for the mob-led lynching of Officer Wilson, an outcome eagerly sought by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Missouri&#8217;s governor, Jay Nixon (D). Nixon has been covering his left flank in recent days, terrified because activists noticed that he seemed to support law and order and oppose mobocracy, rioting, and looting in the early hours of the crisis that followed Brown&#8217;s death. But after criticism from the Left, Nixon, like the Democratic members of the local congressional delegation, wants Wilson indicted, evidence or not.</p>
<p>Brown was remembered at a star-studded Baptist church funeral choreographed by racial grievance profiteer Sharpton. From Hollywood, movie director Spike Lee and actor Wesley Snipes attended the service, along with purported civil rights leader Martin Luther King III, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a left-wing extremist who believes urban riots constitute legitimate political activism. Lee is on record praying that Ferguson would explode in racial violence. Also in attendance were three officials from the Obama White House &#8212; a greater number of representatives than Obama sent to the recent funeral for a murdered brigadier general, the highest-ranking U.S. officer to be killed in a war in decades.</p>
<p>But despite growing evidence suggesting Brown wasn&#8217;t such a good kid, Sharpton  pontificated that the decedent was a gentle giant who only wanted the best for his fellow human beings.</p>
<p>&#8220;Michael Brown does not want to be remembered for a riot. He wants to be remembered as the one that made American[s] deal with how we gonna police in the United States,&#8221; Sharpton <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/al-sharpton-eulogy-michael-brown-funeral.html">thundered</a> before a crowd estimated at 4,500, in a eulogy that was more like a spirited pep talk before the Left&#8217;s planned lynching of Officer Wilson.</p>
<p>Given that the decedent&#8217;s rap music recordings focused on the joys of illicit drug use, criminal violence including rape, and &#8220;hos&#8221; it is hard to imagine Brown gave much thought to law enforcement best practices.</p>
<p>Sharpton <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/al-sharpton-eulogy-michael-brown-funeral.html">howled</a> that Brown&#8217;s body laid out in the street for a whole 90 minutes before a police detective arrived to begin an investigation into the shooting, as if it had been an intentional insult to Brown on the part of racist police:</p>
<blockquote><p>And when I saw Michael lying there, I thought about how many of us were just considered nothing. How we were just so marginalized and ignored. Whatever the circumstance an investigation leads to, to have that boy lying there, like nobody cared about him. Like he didn&#8217;t have any loved ones, like his life value didn&#8217;t matter &#8230; I told his grandfather, I don&#8217;t care what happened, but whatever we can do I&#8217;ll be there to do it.</p></blockquote>
<p>And if the corpse had been scooped up from the ground right away Sharpton and his ilk would now be screaming that the evidence hadn&#8217;t been properly preserved by bungling Keystone Kops who didn&#8217;t care if a dead black man got justice.</p>
<p>Sharpton also showed his paranoid side, ranting that people were coming after African-Americans because of their &#8220;blackness&#8221;:</p>
<blockquote><p>So that they are justifying trying to come at us because some of us act like the definition of blackness is how low you can go. Blackness has never been about being a gangster or thug. Blackness was no matter how low we was pushed down, we rose up anyhow. Blackness was never surrendering our pursuit of excellence. It was when it was against the law to go to some schools, we built black colleges and learned anyhow.</p></blockquote>
<p>At one point in the address, Sharpton shouted:</p>
<blockquote><p>America, it&#8217;s time to deal with policing! We are not the haters, we&#8217;re the healers!</p>
<p>What does it require of us? We can&#8217;t have a fit; we&#8217;ve got to have a movement. A fit you get mad and run out for a couple of nights. A movement means we&#8217;ve got to be here for the long haul, and turn our chants into change, our demonstration into legislation, we have got to stay on this so we can stop this.</p></blockquote>
<p>After Brown died violence erupted in Ferguson, Sharpton said, pretending not to approve of said violence. With no obvious oratorical segue, Sharpton screamed:</p>
<blockquote><p>This is not about you! This is about justice! This is about fairness! And America is going to have to come to terms when there&#8217;s something wrong that we have money to give military equipment to police forces, but we don&#8217;t have money for training, and money for public education, and money to train our children!</p></blockquote>
<p>Which is what it is all about for Sharpton: the money.</p>
<p>Shakedowns are the name of the game for Sharpton and his group, National Action Network, whose motto is the cry of the rioter, &#8220;No justice, no peace.&#8221;</p>
<p>Every time a black person dies tragically, especially when it happens in a newsworthy way, Sharpton sees dollar signs &#8212; and his business partner, Barack Obama, sees votes.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Obama-Castro Handshake: A Confirmation</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/humberto-fontova/the-obama-castro-handshake-a-confirmation/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-obama-castro-handshake-a-confirmation</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Dec 2013 05:03:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[funeral]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[handshake]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nelson Mandela]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213101</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama plays nice with the jailer of the longest-suffering black political prisoners in history.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/131210-obama-castro-hmed-650a_photoblog600.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213102" alt="131210-obama-castro-hmed-650a_photoblog600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/131210-obama-castro-hmed-650a_photoblog600-450x338.jpg" width="315" height="237" /></a>At the funeral extravaganza commemorating a black “political prisoner” President Obama went out of his way to smilingly shake hands with the jailer and torturer of the most and longest suffering black political prisoners <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmDg4gNgPHQ">in modern history.</a></p>
<p>That’s for starters.</p>
<p>The dictator the U.S. president was greeting, and almost bowing before, is also holding a U.S. citizen named Alan Gross in his KGB-designed prison cells as a hostage. President Obama’s smile, handshake and curtsy to Castro came almost exactly on the 4<sup>th</sup> anniversary of Alan Gross’ jailing by Castro’s KGB-trained police.</p>
<p>Sec. of State Kerry insists that the handshake was part of normal diplomatic protocol and signals no major change in U.S. policy towards Cuba. He’s probably right. In fact, President Obama was being <i>anything</i> but hypocritical by shaking Raul Castro’s hand. He was merely <i>confirming</i> the U.S.-Cuba relationship nowadays.</p>
<p>Oh, I know, I know:  all you read about in the media, in your textbooks blah…blah…is about a “cruel” and “vindictive” and “archaic” embargo, even a “blockade,” by the mean Yankee bullies against the innocent and plucky Castroites who want nothing more than our friendship &#8212; and who amply deserve it. So perhaps some <a href="http://www.hfontova.com/">meticulously-documented</a> clarifications are in order:</p>
<p>In executive order after executive order, President Obama abolished President Bush’s travel and remittance restrictions to Castro’s terror-sponsoring fiefdom and opened the pipeline to a point where the cash-flow from the U.S. to Cuba today is estimated at $4 billion a year. While a proud Soviet satrapy Cuba received $3-5 billion annually from the Soviets. In brief, almost every year since Obama took office more cash has been flowing from the U.S. to Cuba than used to flow there from the Soviets at the height of their Cuba-sponsorship.</p>
<p>In brief, there was an excellent reason for the smile on Raul Castro’s face as he shook hands with president Obama.</p>
<p>Oh, I know, I know you keep reading about how its “high time” we “normalize” our relations with Cuba. So here’s a few more items meticulously “overlooked” by the media:</p>
<p>In 1957 (when Cuba was a “U.S. economic colony” we&#8217;re constantly told by the media, though U.S. investments in Cuba accounted for only 14 per cent the island’s GNP) the U.S. exported $347.5 million worth of goods to Cuba.</p>
<p>In 2012 (when Cuba was being “strangled by a U.S. economic blockade” we&#8217;re constantly told by the media) the U.S. exported $457.3 million to Cuba. In fact for every one of the past 8 years the &#8220;Cuba-embargoing&#8221; U.S. has exported more goods to Cuba than it did in 1957.</p>
<p>In 1957 (when Cuba was a &#8220;playground for U.S. tourists&#8221; we&#8217;re constantly told by the media) 263,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S. We all saw this in Godfather II, liberals’ top educational source on pre-Castro Cuba, right?  Does that last quip come across as hyperbolic?</p>
<p>Well, here’s Jon Stewart (often touted as the top news source for young Americans) from July 23<sup>rd</sup> 2008: “All I know about pre-Castro Cuba I learned from The Godfather II.”</p>
<p>And here’s Chris Matthews from Oct. 23<sup>rd</sup> 2011: “I mean, everybody who saw Godfather II knows what it was like when Castro took over.” Now back to class:</p>
<p>In 2012 (when Cuba was being diabolically &#8220;blockaded&#8221; by the U.S., according to the media) an estimated 500,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S.  So under Obama <i>twice as many people</i> are visiting Cuba and dropping many more millions into Castro-regime coffers as in the 1950s.</p>
<p>In 1958 with Cuba under a &#8220;U.S.-backed dictator,&#8221; with the U.S. &#8220;controlling Cuba&#8217;s economy,” (according to the media, though in fact, U.S. companies employed 7 percent of Cuba’s workforce) the staff of the U.S. embassy in Cuba numbered 87, including Cuban employees.</p>
<p>Today with supposedly no diplomatic relations with Cuba (according to the media) the staff of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana numbers 351, including Cuban employees.</p>
<p>According to figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. has transacted almost $4 <i>billion</i> in trade with Cuba over the past decade. Up until three years ago, the U.S. served as Stalinist Cuba’s biggest food supplier and fifth biggest import partner. We’ve fallen a few notches recently but we’re still in the top half.</p>
<p>In brief, there was an excellent reason for the smile on Raul Castro’s face as he shook hands with president Obama.</p>
<p>For over a decade the so-called U.S. embargo has merely stipulated that Castro’s Stalinist regime pay cash up front through a third-party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no Ex-Im (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales. Enacted by the Bush team in 2001, this cash-up-front policy has been monumentally beneficial to U.S. taxpayers, making them among the few in the world not screwed and tattooed by the Castro regime, which per capita-wise qualifies as the world’s biggest debtor nation, with a foreign debt estimated at $50 billion, a credit rating nudging Somalia’s and an uninterrupted record of defaults. Standard &amp; Poors refuses even to rate Cuba, regarding the economic figures released by its Stalinist apparatchiks as utterly bogus. Just this week the Russians wrote off almost $30 billion Castro still owed them.</p>
<p>Regarding the disconnect seen above between historic truth and Castroite propaganda, what we have here, amigos, is not a “failure to communicate.” Instead it’s <i>perfect</i> communication&#8211; between Castro’s propaganda ministry and the U.S. media to whom they issue Havana press bureaus.  These latter amply live up to their side of the bargain, “reporting” exactly what Castro wants them to report.</p>
<p>Hence <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova">the howlers</a> most liberals believe about Castro’s “revolution.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, From Kennedy to Carter to Clinton the proof piled up, and it said: playing nice with the Castro brothers only emboldens them to more terrorism abroad and repression at home.  But now President Obama is playing nicest of all. And Cubans are suffering a twenty year record of repression. And why not? The Stalinist regime is fat, happy and cocky.</p>
<p>“If I were a U.S. citizen I&#8217;d vote for Obama for president!&#8221; squealed Raul Castro’s daughter Mariela during her visit to San Francisco last year.</p>
<p>Any questions why?</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Handshake Heard &#8216;Round the World</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obamas-handshake-with-raul-castro/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-handshake-with-raul-castro</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Dec 2013 05:58:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fidel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[funeral]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[handshake]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mandela]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=212964</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama lends legitimacy to yet another tyranny. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/or.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212965" alt="or" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/or-450x253.jpg" width="315" height="177" /></a>President Obama&#8217;s distressing rejection of American exceptionalism was on display for the whole world to see yesterday when he shamed his country by lowering himself to shake the blood-stained hand of Cuba&#8217;s Communist dictator.</p>
<p>In a brief but cordial encounter in a funeral receiving line at the southern tip of the African continent, Obama shook the hand of Cuba&#8217;s octogenarian tyrant, President Raul Castro, granting a kind of legitimacy to the <i>caudillo</i> who leads America&#8217;s Cold War enemy 90 miles from the Florida coast. In so doing Obama demonstrated his weakness and emboldened America&#8217;s enemies.</p>
<p>The occasion was a memorial service in South Africa for that country&#8217;s former president, Nelson Mandela, a Communist terrorist who, like Obama&#8217;s close personal friend Bill Ayers, used explosives to express himself politically.</p>
<p>Mandela, who died last week at age 95 long after serving a quarter-century in prison and helping to slay apartheid, has a few things in common with Obama.</p>
<p>Mandela, who routinely denounced the United States and Israel, set in motion the transformation of his once-prosperous nation into the community organizer&#8217;s paradise that is modern South Africa, complete with mob rule, mob justice, racial tension, and epidemic levels of violence. Mandela&#8217;s Marxist colleagues are continuing his work, community organizing that nation into Third World kleptocracy status.</p>
<p>Obama conspicuously ordered American flags flown at half-staff throughout the U.S. in honor of Mandela, an unusual tribute for the United States to afford a non-American, and in this case, a former foreign head of state. It is all part of Obama&#8217;s racial presidency in which he plays off racial and ethnic groups against each other, no matter what lasting harm it does to society. The flag-lowering is better treatment than he gave the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a far more consequential world leader whom he snubbed by skipping her funeral.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve known for a long time that Obama is most at ease when he&#8217;s hanging out with thugs, terrorists, murderous anti-American despots, and anti-Semites. He carefully avoids harsh language when describing Iran&#8217;s barely concealed nuclear weapons program that his administration is allowing to go forward. A relativist and multiculturalist, Obama respects the former Persia&#8217;s so-called right to self-determination and nuclear arms even though the theocratic regime persecutes religious dissenters, puts gays to death, and almost daily promises to vaporize U.S. ally Israel.</p>
<p>Communist Cuba doesn&#8217;t have an evil system in Obama&#8217;s view. The Communists who have been terrorizing and enslaving the Cuban people are merely misunderstood. Americans, especially with their embrace of imperialism and colonialism, supposedly have no moral standing to criticize what the Castro brothers have built.</p>
<p>Ascertaining whether Obama actually bowed before Castro in reaching for his hand is a subjective exercise. The president often leans forward when greeting people. In order to be at eye-level and look in the face of Castro, who is much shorter than Obama, the president had to move the upper portion of his body simultaneously forward and downward.</p>
<p>Perhaps this has something to do with why MSNBC&#8217;s slogan is &#8220;lean forward.&#8221; After all, the cable news network full-throatedly supports Obama&#8217;s policies which are aimed at humbling America and punishing it for its greatness.</p>
<p>As president, Obama <a href="http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2012/06/20/obama-bowed-eight-times-president/">has long had</a> a disturbing habit of bowing before foreign heads of state, as Keith Koffler observes. He has bowed before Communist Chinese President Hu Jintao, Saudi King Abdullah, Queen Elizabeth II, Japanese Emperor Akihito, and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.</p>
<p>&#8220;American presidents, who have been put in charge of a democratic nation that specifically broke from royalty, particularly should not bow to kings and queens,&#8221; Koffler writes. &#8220;Especially ones running repressive societies like Saudi Arabia. But on the very same day he bowed to Abdullah, he also bowed to Queen Elizabeth, chief of the monarchy that was our former Lord and Master.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama may as well have warmly slapped Castro on the back and given him an &#8220;attaboy!&#8221; for all the hard work he&#8217;s done over the years to achieve redistributionist nirvana on his decrepit island nation that has become a popular sex tourism destination in the de-developed world. We can only wonder how many death warrants for anti-Communist dissidents and freedom fighters Castro has signed with that hand or how many times he has used the fingers that touched Obama&#8217;s to pull the trigger of a rifle and execute an enemy of Cuba&#8217;s long-lived gangster regime.</p>
<p>Shaking Castro&#8217;s hand implies that the Cuban president is Obama&#8217;s equal, a legitimate world leader worthy of respect. This is consistent with our president&#8217;s worldview.</p>
<p>Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) appropriately <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/12/10/mccain-compares-obama-castro-handshake-to-chamberlain-hitler/">upbraided</a> President Obama for the hit-and-run grip-and-grin, comparing the gesture to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain&#8217;s infamous handshake with Adolf Hitler in the run-up to World War Two. That handshake symbolically gave Nazi Germany a green light to take over the Sudetenland and helped to clear the way for the Third Reich&#8217;s violent expansion across Europe.</p>
<p>&#8220;It gives Raul some propaganda to continue to prop up his dictatorial, brutal regime, that&#8217;s all,&#8221; McCain said.</p>
<p>Obama shouldn&#8217;t have done it, McCain asserted. &#8220;Why should you shake hands with somebody who&#8217;s keeping Americans in prison? I mean, what&#8217;s the point?&#8221;</p>
<p>McCain appeared to be referring to Jewish American Alan Gross who has been rotting in a Cuban jail since 2009. Gross is a political prisoner who was snagged for outreach to Cuba&#8217;s Jewish community.</p>
<p>Say what you will about his flakiness, but Americans can always count on President Obama to embarrass them on overseas trips. He routinely makes a mockery of the high office to which the American people have twice elected him.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Attack on Families of Fallen Soldiers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamas-attack-on-families-of-fallen-soldiers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-attack-on-families-of-fallen-soldiers</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Oct 2013 04:50:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[expenses]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=207012</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Patriotic generosity disrupts the president's disturbing abuse of our troops. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/article-2451252-18A3403D00000578-988_634x395.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-207013" alt="article-2451252-18A3403D00000578-988_634x395" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/article-2451252-18A3403D00000578-988_634x395-450x324.jpg" width="315" height="227" /></a>The Obama administration&#8217;s despicable attempts to make the government shutdown as painful as possible for Americans has finally hit bottom. Until a charitable foundation <a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/10/09/hagel-accepts-private-offer-to-pay-families-of-kia-says-hes-offended-outraged-at-congress/">stepped</a> in to fill the gap, the Department of Defense (DoD) was more than willing to deny death benefits to the families of fallen soldiers. The Pentagon claimed that a law <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/pentagon-foundation-pay-death-benefits-20521172">passed</a> just prior to the government shutdown allowing the military to be paid did not cover the benefits. In truth, an Obama administration, whose hallmark is selective law enforcement, has relied on the flimsiest of technicalities to inflict unnecessary pain on families already shattered by the deaths of their sons and daughters.</p>
<p>Just before the government shutdown began, Congress <a href="http://www.stripes.com/news/obama-signs-law-to-pay-servicemembers-during-shutdown-1.244356">passed</a> the “Pay Our Military” act, allowing servicemen to continue receiving paychecks on time during the shutdown. It was passed unanimously in the House, approved without dissent in the Senate, and signed by the president. The bill ostensibly provided “such sums as are necessary to provide pay and allowances to members of the Armed Forces” on active duty, as well as “essential” civilian personnel and contractors.</p>
<p>So what happened? A 2011 Pentagon report sent to Congress titled <a href="http://thehill.com/images/stories/news/2013/10_october/10/dodpay.pdf">&#8220;Pays and Allowances Summary&#8221;</a> lists a $100,000 &#8220;Death gratuity&#8221; originally put there in 1908. On the other hand, the <a href="http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2014/fy2014_m1.pdf">2014 Pentagon Personnel Budget</a> lists the death gratuity under the heading “other military personnel costs,” not “pay and allowances.” Defense Department attorneys and budget officials contend that the &#8220;Pay Our Military Act&#8221; only authorized pay and allowances, not other military personnel costs. “Given the wording of the ‘Pay Our Military Act,’ DOD is only allowed to spend money on ‘pay and allowances,’ and the death gratuity does not fall under that section of the budget,” said Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “If that’s not what Congress intended, they should not have used the phrase ‘pay and allowances’ in the bill.”</p>
<p>On the basis of that technicality, death benefits were denied to the families of dead soldiers.</p>
<p>Yet there are a number of other factors in play here. Several members of Congress from both parties were <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/lawmakers-say-military-pay-bill-should-have-covered-kia-payments-frozen-by-hagel/">shocked</a> by the DoD&#8217;s interpretation of the law. So much so, a bipartisan group of seven Senators, including Roy Blunt (R-MO), Chris Coons (D-DE), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), John Boozman (R-AK), Tom Carper (D-DE) and Jerry Moran (R-KA) sent a <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57606695/government-shutdown-hitting-veterans-military-families-hard/">letter</a> to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel calling for the death benefits to be restored. &#8220;Any delay in providing families with this essential benefit is absolutely unacceptable,&#8221; it said.</p>
<p>Moreover, the idea that the DoD would favor the 2014 Pentagon Personnel Budget interpretation of death benefit eligibility over the 2011 Pays and Allowances Summary apparently rests on another technical reality, namely that the federal government&#8217;s <i>fiscal</i> year begins on Oct. 1, 2013 and runs to Sept. 30, 2014. That the government shutdown has effectively suspended the beginning of FY2014, at least with respect to some of its obligations, would seem to provide the DoD with some wiggle room&#8211;wiggle room made even more palatable when one factors in the reaction of Congress, which thought it had left the death benefits intact. Instead, the DoD chose to embrace an uncompromisingly rigid interpretation of the law.</p>
<p>Perhaps the DoD had some &#8220;help.&#8221; House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) believes the Department of Justice and Eric Holder were involved as well. “The Pentagon isn’t totally autonomous. They have to deal with the Justice Department. I think the Justice Department attorneys were interpreting it differently. I think [they are] probably the ones that muddied this up,” McKeon <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1310/09/cnr.08.html">told </a>CNN.</p>
<p>There is little doubt that this administration is more than willing to &#8220;muddy&#8221; up the law to advance its agenda. One need only to remember that the president completely <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-05-23/opinion/ct-edit-war-20110523_1_libya-war-war-powers-act-moammar-gadhafi">ignored</a> the War Powers Act of 1973 to prosecute the war in Libya, unilaterally <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-14/opinions/41408610_1_affordable-care-act-president-obama-employer-mandate">defied</a> the healthcare law as written to delay the employer mandate for a year, and has done everything he can to <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/23/new-obama-policy-warns-agents-not-detain-illegal-i/?page=all">circumvent</a> immigration law.</p>
<p>Furthermore, a host of administration officials have been involved in stonewalling investigations of the the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal, Benghazi, the IRS&#8217;s targeting of conservative Americans, and the DOJ&#8217;s wiretapping of journalists. Thus, the idea that this president and his administration have suddenly discovered a newfound respect for the precise letter of the law &#8212; as a means of inflicting further pain on the families of fallen heroes, no less &#8212; is utterly contemptible.</p>
<p>That contempt is revealed by the sequence of events in this sordid drama. After public outrage reached a crescendo, the House of Representatives <a href="http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/oct/09/house-vote-death-benefits-military/">agreed</a> to restore the death benefit in a 425-0 vote on Wednesday. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2451641/Chuck-Hagel-ceremony-soldiers-death-benefits-shutdown.html#ixzz2hLL65tiA">announced</a> that the president was &#8220;disturbed&#8221; when he found out about the suspension of benefits. &#8220;The commander in chief, when he found out that this was not addressed, he directed that a solution be found, and we expect one today,&#8221; Carney said.</p>
<p>That solution involved a non-government entity. Later in the day, Hagel announced he had reached an <a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/10/09/hagel-accepts-private-offer-to-pay-families-of-kia-says-hes-offended-outraged-at-congress/">agreement</a> with the Fisher House Foundation. Fisher House, an organization that provides flights and accommodations to families who want to see their relatives in VA hospitals or other military medical facilities, offered to restore the benefits.</p>
<p>While accepting the generous donation (one that Fisher House initially made with no expectation of being reimbursed) Hagel couldn&#8217;t resist injecting politics into the event, attempting to insulate himself from criticism in the process. “I am offended, outraged, and embarrassed that the government shutdown had prevented the Department of Defense from fulfilling this most sacred responsibility in a timely manner,” he said. “In the days before the shutdown, we warned Congress and the American people that DoD would not have the legal authority to make these payments during a lapse in appropriations. In the days after the shutdown, Departmental lawyers and budget officials pursued every tool and option at our disposal in an effort to provide these benefits. Even under the Pay Our Military Act, we found that we lacked the necessary authority to make payments to the families directly.”</p>
<p>On Thursday, despite Majority Leader Harry Reid&#8217;s contention that the issue was now moot, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/pentagon-foundation-pay-death-benefits-20521172">pushed</a> for passage of a similar resolution in the Senate. Cornyn wanted to make sure that the DoD and Fisher House would get bogged down figuring out their work-around. The Senate approved the measure by a voice vote.</p>
<p>Thus, all that remained for the issue to be put to rest was President Obama&#8217;s signature. Initially, Carney refused to say whether or not the present would sign the legislation. Later on, he revealed that Obama has no intention of signing the bill. &#8220;We don&#8217;t need legislation,&#8221; Carney <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/jay-carney-says-we-dont-need-legislation-to-pay-military-death-benefits/article/2537106">contended.</a> &#8220;The president directed that this be resolved and it has been. What is preposterous is this notion that we should, piecemeal, fix all the consequences caused by shutdown.&#8221;</p>
<p>What is even more preposterous is a president more than willing to use dead soldiers and their families as political pawns. Remarkably, no one in the media has apparently bothered to ask an essential question: what is the extent of Obama&#8217;s powers as Commander-in-Chief? Why couldn&#8217;t the same president who rewrote the healthcare bill via executive order use that same power to order the DoD to pay death benefits? Why didn&#8217;t he even make the <i>attempt </i>to do so?</p>
<p>The answer is obvious: the progressive agenda must be served, no matter what the cost. Toward that end, WWII veterans in their 70s and 80s must be prevented from accessing an open-air memorial erected in their honor, even as illegal immigration activists are <a href="http://therightscoop.com/kelly-file-immigration-rally-allowed-on-the-national-mall-while-vets-cant-get-into-wwii-memorial/">welcomed</a> at the same National Mall. American patriots fighting for their survival in Benghazi can be abandoned, and their deaths are blamed on a video, so that the fiction of the Arab Spring can be maintained. The American public can be frightened enough to believe the only fiscal choices the nation has are giving the administration a unlimited amount of borrowed money to spend, or enduring default and ruination. Our healthcare system must be transformed into a government fiefdom run by bureaucrats and monitored by the IRS. The Republican Party must not be the voice of spirited opposition, but the epitome of everything the American people should hold in contempt.</p>
<p>And because that agenda is so “noble,” it can be imposed by any means necessary.</p>
<p>Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale let the ideological cat out of the bag when Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) criticized him yesterday at a House Armed Services hearing regarding the denial of benefits. When Coffman insisted that the Hale&#8217;s objective was to &#8220;inflict as much harm as you possibly could in your own department,&#8221; while the DoD &#8220;took it upon itself to disregard the will of American people and violate the law,” Hale became indignant. “I resent your remarks,” Hale told Coffman. “I acted on the advice of attorneys and our best reading of a loosely worded law, and we did our best. It was not a political judgment.”</p>
<p>The best reading of a loosely worded law would have provided grieving mothers and fathers a measure of comfort when they were tasked with burying their sons and daughters. If this administration ever had anything resembling a moral compass, it no longer exists. Whether he knows it or not, Barack Obama owes the entire nation an apology for an atrocious debacle. One that could have been very easily avoided. That it wasn&#8217;t speaks volumes.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> Finally, after enduring <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/10/senate-approves-bill-to-pay-military-death-benefits/" target="_blank">withering criticism</a> from Sen. Cornyn, who noted that his failure to sign the bill represented a &#8220;dereliction of duty by our commander in chief,&#8221; Obama signed the bill late Thursday.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Margaret Thatcher’s Passing and the Hateful Spirit of the Left</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-hendrickson/margaret-thatchers-passing-and-the-hateful-spirit-of-the-left/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=margaret-thatchers-passing-and-the-hateful-spirit-of-the-left</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Apr 2013 04:35:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Hendrickson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[death]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Margaret Thatcher]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The morbid legacy of Marx and Lenin. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Margaret+Thatcher.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-186065" alt="Margaret+Thatcher" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Margaret+Thatcher-450x318.jpg" width="270" height="191" /></a>Since former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher passed away last week, small pockets of leftists have been figuratively spitting on her memory. You’ve probably seen the stories of their juvenile antics, such as drinking champagne in Trafalgar Square while holding up disrespectful signs and singing “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead.”</p>
<p>What are we to make of such behavior?</p>
<p>It is obvious to any mature person that such boorish shenanigans cast an unfavorable light, not on Lady Thatcher, but on those individuals who lower themselves to such self-demeaning rudeness. There are dignified ways to express one’s disagreement with Thatcher’s policies as a grateful nation prepares to honor her memory with a ceremonial funeral. An outstanding example of this more civilized approach was that of Argentina’s foreign minister, Hector Timerman. Having not been invited to the funeral due to the decades-long strained relations between his country and the UK, Timerman stated that he did not want to be there anyhow, but that the family should be allowed to mourn in peace. That was classy.</p>
<p>The left, by contrast, prefers to mark this great leader’s passing with derision and disrespect. Part of this is due to simple ignorance combined with a failure of decency.  I am thinking here of twenty-something Britons, who have no personal recollections of Thatcher’s time in office, rendering themselves ridiculous by vilifying her. These young people seem sadly ignorant of the historical reality that Thatcher’s visionary leadership and steely resolve revitalized what had become a moribund economy in the UK.</p>
<p>These kids have acted on hearsay. They have had a parent or teacher tell them that the Iron Lady was mean and that she stepped on people. That calumny is the standard refrain of older Britons, such as trade unionists and Oxford dons, who never forgave Thatcher for cutting off or reducing the flow of government subsidies to them. What the young people denigrating Thatcher don’t understand is that Thatcher did not set out to lay a burden on those formerly privileged constituencies, but rather to lift off the burden that those special interest groups had laid on the beleaguered British taxpayer. To use contemporary terminology, the dons and unionists were cronies of politicians who had channeled large flows of tax monies to them for decades. Today, the left rightly denounces the corruption of political cronyism and the lining of pockets of special interest groups. To be consistent, they should salute Thatcher for having taken on the special interests, reducing cronyism, providing relief to taxpayers, and reinvigorating the UK’s economy.</p>
<p>Besides immaturity, ignorance, spite, and revenge, there is another motive for the unseemly anti-Thatcher eruptions—the reason why the left’s ugly behavior should not be surprising: The left loves to hate. This is their essence, the deformed heart of their ideology.</p>
<p>The leftist penchant for personal vilification dates back at least as far as to Karl Marx. According to Bertolt Brecht, Marx boasted that he was “the greatest hater of the so-called positive.” He also was an avid practitioner of the ad hominem attack—the preferred weapon of those who can’t win arguments through reason and logic.</p>
<p>Marx crushed his rivals for intellectual leadership of the socialist movement by ridiculing their theories as “utopian” while insisting that his own version of socialism was “scientific.” What a farce! Remember, Marx had written in “The German Ideology” (1845), “&#8230;in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming a hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” He also insisted in “The Communist Manifesto” that the way to make the state disappear was to give all power to the state. Marx was nothing more than a mystic whose “scientific socialism” was fraudulent (an author named Fred Gottheil once catalogued Marx’ historical predictions and found that, out of 325, only six had proven correct); hence, the only way Marx could prevail was to resort to the scorched-earth tactic of verbally abusing and annihilating his opponents—a tactic retained by his intellectual heirs.</p>
<p>Lenin made the centrality of hatred in leftist movements chillingly explicit. In 1923, he told the Soviet commissars of education, “We must teach our children to hate.  Hatred is the basis of communism.”  In his tract “Left-Wing Communism,” Lenin baldly asserted that hatred was “the basis of every socialist and Communist movement.”</p>
<p>The hateful spirit of Marx and Lenin has suffused all leftist ideologies, movements, and regimes, whether Soviet communism, Hitler’s national socialism, or today’s illiberal progressivism and pagan environmentalism.  Only hatred could explain the willingness to kill, enslave, and rob vast numbers of innocent human beings.  Hatred corrodes one’s conscience.  Under its toxic influence, a person will regard man’s God-given right to be secure in his life, liberty, and property as nuisances to be overcome, not commandments to be obeyed.  The flip side of hatred is an inflated self-love, self-importance and self-righteousness so extreme that respect for other human beings diminishes and, in extreme cases (Stalin, Mao, Castro, Kim, <i>et al</i>.), disappears.</p>
<p>Hatemongering is alive and well on the left today. American leftists, aping the deviousness of Marx himself, protest “hate crimes,” then proceed to foment hatred for right-thinking Americans. Thus, they churn out bilge like “The I Hate Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh…Reader,” “The I Hate Dick Cheney…Reader,” and “The I Hate George W. Bush Reader.” In fact, now that the Ku Klux Klan has (thankfully!) petered out, the anti-communist-hating American left appears to have taken over as our country’s most virulent hate group.</p>
<p>British leftists have been demonstrating their hate and wretchedness by trying to detract from the solemnity and dignity of the funeral of one of the 20<sup>th</sup> century’s great leaders. I think, though, that their boorishness has backfired. By displaying their morbid glee on the occasion of Mrs. Thatcher’s passing, they unwittingly have paid her a great tribute. For leftists to have made such a big deal about the death of an elderly lady who has been out of the public realm for more than two decades, shows how great and effective she was as a champion of individual liberty, true justice, and smaller government. In this perverse way, the left’s ungracious display of pettiness is the greatest salute they could give to Margaret Thatcher. I think the Iron Lady would be pleased that she earned this backhanded compliment.</p>
<p>Now, while the leftists stew in their own pathetic, self-imposed unhappiness, the rest of us can celebrate a life well-lived and remember with gratitude a principled leader who did so much for so many. Bravo, Mrs. Thatcher. Well done!</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Islamic Hate for a Dead Pope</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/islamic-hate-for-a-dead-pope/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamic-hate-for-a-dead-pope</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 16 May 2012 04:44:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[coptic christians]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Pope Shenouda III]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[How Muslim teachings suppress and pervert the most natural human impulses.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/li-pope-shenouda-02338894.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-132146" title="li-pope-shenouda-02338894" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/li-pope-shenouda-02338894.gif" alt="" width="375" height="255" /></a>Inasmuch as the recent death of Coptic Pope Shenouda III exposed the humanity of some Muslims, it also exposed the inhumanity of Islamic teachings.</p>
<p>Consider some examples of Muslim sympathy following his death: Egypt’s <a href="http://www.christian-dogma.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2184474">Al Akhbar</a> newspaper called the Pope’s burial “the funeral of the century,” reporting that a million Egyptians—likely more Muslims than Christians—came out to mourn him; “His death is a tragedy and a great loss for Egypt and its people, Muslims and Christians,” declared Egypt’s Grand Mufti; a recent episode of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1yZ_4v6wCk">Al Dalil</a>, famous for criticizing Islam, gave several more examples of Egyptian Muslims mourning and sympathizing with their Christian counterparts—including one Muslim who had tried to give his kidney to the ailing Pope.</p>
<p>In short, human nature took over.  Some of Egypt’s Muslims saw in Pope Shenouda a beloved national figure—much to the chagrin of Islam’s clerics, like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZaPgqiN_to&amp;feature=player_embedded">Khaled Abdullah</a>, who, in amazement, said, “I can’t believe it—what I saw today [the Pope’s funeral], I can’t believe it.  If a Companion [of Muhammad, among Islam’s most revered people] died we wouldn’t do this for him,” adding that Muslim participation and mourning in the funeral was “hurtful to the feelings of 80 million Muslims.”</p>
<p>Accordingly, Islam’s clerics rushed in, pointing out Sharia law’s teachings concerning the death of an infidel, or non-Muslim, like Pope Shenouda.  Fatwas appeared, many saying it is forbidden to offer condolences to the Copts, others saying it is permissible—but through carefully crafted words, and in the hopes of attracting Copts to Islam (reminding one of Sheikh <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10835/sharia-sinister-smiles">Muhammad Hassan</a>’s assertion that smiling to non-Muslims is permissible, but only as a way to attract them to Islam).  Salafi leader, <a href="http://www.christian-dogma.com/vb/showthread.php?t=200003">Yassir al-Burhami</a>, permitted minor condolences—mostly by way of <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11267/tawriya-lying">tawriya</a>, using words that console, but that have a generic or pro-Islam meaning—while insisting it is forbidden to pray for deceased infidels (since all non-Muslims are destined and deserving of hell, Koran 9: 113).</p>
<p>The most vicious condemnations came from Sheikh <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FydMyRVR5pw&amp;feature=player_embedded#!">Wagdi Ghoneim</a>, formerly a Californian mosque prayer-leader, who, a day after Pope Shenouda’s death, referred to him as an “accursed criminal” and praised Allah for his death: “Yesterday [March 17], thanks be to Allah, the head of infidelity and polytheism, this so-called Shenouda, died—may Allah be avenged on him.  He perished, and all were relieved of him—people, worshippers, trees, and animals; Egypt is relieved of him, for he initiated sectarian strife.”</p>
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		<title>Muslim Lies and Videotape</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/nonie-darwish/muslim-lies-and-videotape/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-lies-and-videotape</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Jun 2010 04:12:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Nonie Darwish]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The PR war to demonize Israel strikes again. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/peace.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62230" title="peace" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/peace.jpg" alt="" width="462" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>There is an Egyptian saying to describe a masochist who constantly chooses pain, suffering, crying, yelling and screaming at every occasion possible. It says, “They need a funeral to gratify their hunger to slap their faces.” That saying perfectly fits Arab reaction around the world to the Gaza flotilla incident. If you doubt this, just attend a funeral in the Arab world and you will see what I mean.</p>
<p>More and more facts are coming out about the aforementioned incident and it does not look good for those who rushed to judgment and fell for the hype.  As we now know, for instance, video footage has proven that  the Gaza flotilla jihadists initiated the violence against Israeli soldiers:</p>
<p><object style="height: 344px; width: 425px;" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="100" height="100" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gYjkLUcbJWo" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed style="height: 344px; width: 425px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100" height="100" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gYjkLUcbJWo" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
<p>However, those who conspired to manufacture such a crisis know that they have won the PR war since whatever facts come out later will not be covered with the same intensity and passion of the first days following the incident. What matters to Islamist crisis seekers is that the news for several days all over the world blames Israel as a bloodthirsty rogue nation that inflicted an unjustified massacre on peaceful, unarmed humanitarians.</p>
<p>Muslim street demonstrations like those following the incident are staged for Western audiences; we immigrants of Middle Eastern origin understand this hype and are no longer moved by it. On the other hand, Western culture is extremely moved by this big Islamist show &#8212; the cries, the tears, the pleading, the yelling, the covert threats and above all, the mass mania. Over nothing, hoards of people in the Middle East can be easily incited to go into a fit of rage and run into the streets seeking vengeance against a Christian or a Jew who supposedly dishonored Islam.</p>
<p>After news of massacres to non-Muslims by Muslims, we often say “there they go again” and just go on with our lives. Christian Copts in Egypt suffer at the hands of Muslim mobs extracting vengeance in the streets after hearing a fiery sermon in their mosque by their local Imam, telling a fabricated story of Christian crimes against Islam or that a Christian man violated a Muslim woman. These stories, supported by “witnesses,” ignite violent behavior often leading to horrific tragedies. Just recently, the homes of Christians in a coastal town in Egypt were all burnt to the ground after a Friday prayer rumor. The strategy and tactics of the flotilla incident are the same. The stage is set to start the same game over and over again; the Islamists provoke Israel and keep testing its patience. To them it is just a game where a few men will die and go to heaven, but to Israel it is life or death.</p>
<p>What is remarkable is that supposedly well-educated and informed Westerners in positions of power are buying this jihadist propaganda. Helen Thomas of the White House Press Corps cried out that the flotilla incident was a deliberate massacre.  Without investigation or reasoning, Western leftists go along with this game, much like the constantly outraged Arab street. As Rahm Emanuel said, they never want to allow a crisis go to waste. Leftist in the media are all too eager to support sick, hateful and baseless Muslim demonstrations crafted to boost their PR and promote anti-Semitism around the world. Their collaboration with Islamists in this incident has done a great disservice to the public who depend on mainstream media for their understanding of the Arab Israeli conflict.</p>
<p>When will the West learn Arab psychology? Whenever West Bank and Gaza Strip news become secondary or overshadowed by more pressing issues such as the economy, oil leaks and perhaps more urgent, human suffering around the world, Islamists immediately get in gear to create a crisis. In their mind, nothing should be more urgent than destroying Israel, not even human happiness, family, children or peace itself. Like the Egyptian saying, they need a funeral to be happy.</p>
<p>The world never learns from history. Arab and Muslim Jew-haters have perfected the art of hype, drama and dragging everyone down to their level. They are hell bent on convincing the world to hate and blame Israel. They have to resort to game playing to justify 7<sup>th</sup> century Muslim obligation to kill Jews wherever they are found; that is the commandment from Mohammed himself. Every commandment by the prophet is an obligation and the Muslim mind must deal with the travesty; they must justify terror against Jews not only to the West, but also to Muslims themselves. The jihad against Israel, the Jews, Christians, the West, the Great Satan (USA), Little Satan (Israel) etc. all must be justified. Saying it is a commandment from Allah will not pass the UN general Assembly. Jihadist violence must be legitimized and institutionalized as a legitimate cause. Incidents must be created to justify the jihad. Mohammed had to accuse the Jews of violating a treaty to justify killing 800 Jewish men. Incidents such as the flotilla are just part of the strategy of justify jihad, violence, burning, killing and terror.  It is a commandment; it must be done and if a little provocation and lying is needed, then so be it.</p>
<p>Just watch Arab TV and you will learn that Israel went to help in the Haiti for the purpose of harvesting organs from the Haitian earthquake victims. Israel is so evil, that it must be annihilated. The Muslim public and the World must accept aggression against Israel as self-defense. Israel is suffering from constant and relentless intimidation and invitation to unnecessary confrontation. You would think the world would know that by now.</p>
<p>Muslims know exactly what they should do to stop the blockade against Gaza. First, they should be sincere with themselves, not just trying to convince the world, that they want peace with Israel and adopt a live and let live view. After that, major players in the region such as Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria etc. must pressure Hamas to end the barrage of missiles against Israel and that their financial support should be linked to Palestinian willingness to accomplish peace with Israel. Israel is fighting for its survival; everyone knows that and there is no need to kid ourselves any more.</p>
<p>With more and more facts coming out, it has become clear that this was a set up; a PR stunt to let Muslim countries surrounding Israel keep fooling the world over and over again.</p>
<p><em>Nonie Darwish is the author of “Now They Call Me Infidel” and “Cruel and Usual Punishment”</em></p>
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		<title>Throngs of Mourners Attend Funeral of Iran’s Dissident Ayatollah &#8211; NYTimes.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/throngs-of-mourners-attend-funeral-of-iran%e2%80%99s-dissident-ayatollah-nytimes-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=throngs-of-mourners-attend-funeral-of-iran%25e2%2580%2599s-dissident-ayatollah-nytimes-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:19:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42732</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The funeral of a founding father of Iran’s Islamic revolution now embraced as the spiritual leader of the reform movement became a vast opposition protest on Monday, as mourners flooded the holy city of Qum and faced off with Iranian security forces and the volunteer Basij militia. via Throngs of Mourners Attend Funeral of Iran’s [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The funeral of a founding father of Iran’s Islamic revolution now embraced as the spiritual leader of the reform movement became a vast opposition protest on Monday, as mourners flooded the holy city of Qum and faced off with Iranian security forces and the volunteer Basij militia.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/world/middleeast/22cleric.html?_r=2">Throngs of Mourners Attend Funeral of Iran’s Dissident Ayatollah &#8211; NYTimes.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>Protests mark funeral of dissident Iranian cleric &#8211; AP</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/protests-mark-funeral-of-dissident-iranian-cleric-ap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=protests-mark-funeral-of-dissident-iranian-cleric-ap</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:58:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ali Montazeri]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Huge crowds of Iranians turned out for the funeral of leading dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in the holy Shi&#8217;ite city of Qom on Monday and some chanted anti-government slogans, websites reported.Montazeri, who died late on Saturday aged 87, was viewed as the spiritual patron of a pro-reform opposition movement that blossomed after [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Huge crowds of Iranians turned out for the funeral of leading dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in the holy Shi&#8217;ite city of Qom on Monday and some chanted anti-government slogans, websites reported.Montazeri, who died late on Saturday aged 87, was viewed as the spiritual patron of a pro-reform opposition movement that blossomed after a disputed presidential election in June and has proved resilient despite repeated efforts to suppress it.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091221/ts_nm/us_iran;_ylt=At8tdaNGqJVSokXXsH9a9uWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTM4dGNkOGZvBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMDkxMjIxL3VzX2lyYW4EY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMxMQRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDcHJvdGVzdHNtYXJr">Protests mark funeral of dissident Iranian cleric &#8211; Yahoo! News</a>.</p>
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