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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; influence</title>
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		<title>Turkey&#8217;s Diminished Influence in the Middle East</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/turkeys-diminished-influence-in-the-middle-east/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=turkeys-diminished-influence-in-the-middle-east</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 05:05:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Erdogan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[influence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244797</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Erdogan’s authoritarianism has damaged Turkey’s appeal and influence. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/erdogan.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244914" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/erdogan.jpg" alt="erdogan" width="260" height="195" /></a>Not long ago, at the height of the Arab Spring, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (now President of Turkey) enjoyed the adulation of the masses throughout the Arab world, and a close friendship with U.S. President Barack Obama. A revival of a neo-Ottoman Empire was not far from the mind of Erdogan and his Foreign Minister (now Prime Minister) Ahmet Davutoglu. It was Davutoglu who proclaimed neo-Ottomanism as a policy, and a new order in the Middle East.</p>
<p>As the year 2014 comes to a close, Turkish influence in the Middle East has seen a sharp decline. It was outvoted in its quest for a seat at the United Nations Security Council despite its intensive lobbying of the UN’s 193 member nations. Turkey lost out to Spain. Counter lobbying by Egypt and Saudi Arabia helped defeat Turkey’s efforts. Turkey’s reluctance to take action against the Islamic State (IS) has put it under international pressure. Its refusal to help the besieged Syrian Kurds in the city of Kobani (on the Turkish border) resulted in violent Kurdish demonstrations in Turkey offsetting the gains made by the AKP party with the large Kurdish minority. In addition, Turkish passivity in the face of Kurdish suffering engendered contempt for Turkey.</p>
<p>In March, 2013, Davutoglu claimed that for the first time, Turkey has been back to the lost lands that once made the Ottoman Empire. He suggested that it’s time for Turkey to take the lead to set an order for these lands and re-connect them once again. He charged that “Last century was only a parenthesis for us. We will close the parenthesis. We will do so without going to war, or calling anyone an enemy, without being disrespectful to any border, we will again tie Sarajevo to Damascus, Benghazi to Erzurum, to Batumi. This is the core of our power, These may look like all different countries to you, but Yemen and Skopje were part of the <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/turkey-davutologu-ottoman-new-order-mideast.html">same country</a> 110 years ago, or Erzurum and Benghazi. When we say this, they call it ‘new Ottomanism.’ The ones who united the whole Europe don’t become new Romans, but the ones who unite the Middle East geography are called new Ottomanists. It’s an honor to be reminded with the names of ottoman, Seljuks, Artuklu or Eyyubi, but we have never or will ever have an eye on anyone’s land based on an historic background.”</p>
<p>Since Davutoglu’s bombastic words, the AKP leadership overestimated the potential of political Islam best exemplified by the surge of the Muslim Brotherhood parties during the Arab Spring in the region, and control of governments particularly in Egypt and Tunisia. The tens of millions of Egyptians who demonstrated against the Morsi (Muslim Brotherhood) government resulted in the military takeover, and the subsequent election of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as President of Egypt on June 8, 2014. The Turkish government’s unqualified support for Mohammad Morsi’s government has caused a deep breach in Turkish-Egyptian relations. Turkey’s relations with Egypt reached a breaking point and Ankara does not even have its ambassador in Cairo. A similar freeze in diplomatic relations exists between Turkey and Israel, where there is no Turkish ambassador in Israel.</p>
<p>On a visit to Antalya in Southern Turkey last July, Erdogan accused Israel of “dishonesty.” He went on to say “Israel apologized to Turkey for what it did to the Mavi Marmara ship four years ago, and we were close to restoring normal relations with it if our conditions were fulfilled. But it was not <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/europe/12749-turkeys-erdogan-normal-relations-with-israel-unlikely-if-its-aggression-on-palestine-continues">honest</a>.” In fact, Erdogan initiated the Navi Marmara provocation that sought to break Israel’s Gaza blockade, using violence against Israeli naval commandos enforcing the blockade. It resulted in nine Turks getting killed. Israel did, nevertheless, agree to compensate the families.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s conditions for restoring normal relations with Israel included compensation to the families of the victims, an apology to Turkey, and lifting the Gaza blockade. Encouraged by U.S. President Obama, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized to Turkey. Erdogan, however, was not satisfied despite Obama’s urging to restore the relationship. Gaza remains a pretext for Erdogan to maintain his deep seated hostility towards the Jewish state. Turkish opposition presidential candidate Ekmelettin Ihsanoglu criticized the stance, claiming that Turkey should stay neutral vis-à-vis Palestine.</p>
<p>Umit Pamir, Turkey’s former ambassador to the UN, pondered Turkey’s deteriorating relations with its neighbors. He posited that “We came from a policy of having <a href="https://johnib.wordpress.com/tag/prime-minister-ahmet-davutoglu/">zero problems</a> with our neighbors (Davutoglu’s heralded policy), and now we’re having problems with almost everyone.”</p>
<p>In the years before the Arab Spring, Turkey, Syria, and Iran cooperated in suppressing the Kurds, and eliminating any Kurdish call for self-determination. In 1998, Hafez Assad, Syria’s dictator, cut off his relations with Abdullah Ocalan’s PKK, following Turkey’s threat to invade Syria. What followed was a warming of relations. Then, in March, 2011, the Syrian civil war began. Bashar Assad (Hafez’s son) wasted no time, and began butchering his mainly Sunni opposition. Erdogan became the loudest voice calling for regime change in Syria. Taking sides against the Alawite (Offshoot of Shiite Islam) Syrian dictator brought about a chilled relation with Assad’s protector, Shiite Iran.</p>
<p>Turkey’s relations with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad have become downright hostile. A strong economic relationship between Ankara and Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has infuriated Baghdad, particularly Turkish investments in the KRG, and Turkey’s purchase of oil shipped from Kurdistan.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s support for the MB has brought Ankara to conflict not only with Egypt but with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The MB vision of a Caliphate threatens the Saudis position as the guardians of the Islamic holy places.</p>
<p>Just before the Arab Spring arrived, Turkey appeared to be a model of Islamic democracy. However, Erdogan’s authoritarianism has dimmed Turkey’s image as an open and tolerant society. The crackdown on demonstrators in Istanbul’s Gezi Park in 2013, and Erdogan’s move to censor the Internet created a backlash, particularly among urban and educated youth. His open quarrel with Turkey’s most influential Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who helped him remove the army from politics, widened the opposition against him.</p>
<p>Erdogan decided to phase out schools run by Gulenists that prepare students for university exams. In response, Gulen called Erdogan a “pharaoh”. Erdogan retaliated by removing Gulen loyalists from the security services and the judiciary, accusing Gulen of creating a “parallel state.” The Gulenists, in turn, possess evidence of AKP linked corruption. Erdogan’s shielding of his AKP associates from investigation of corruption has soured Turkey’s image abroad and angered Turkish audiences.</p>
<p>Soner Cagaptay, (Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy) writing in <em>The Atlantic</em> (December 11, 2012) suggested that “Turkey’s two halves are like oil and water; though they may not blend, neither will disappear. Turkey’s Islamization is a fact, but so is secular and Westernized Turkey. The historical roots and current manifestation of this synthesis indicate it is a model that will be <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/12/why-turkey-cant-be-a-model-for-the-future-of-the-arab-spring/266116/">difficult to replicate</a> elsewhere in the region, as Islamist governments rise to power after the Arab Spring.”</p>
<p>Cagaptay was wrong about “Islamist governments rise to power after the “Arab Spring.” Egypt and Tunisia disprove his theory. What is rising in the Middle East is sub-governmental agents such as ISIS (or IS). Turkey however, is no longer a model for the region, and not just for the reasons given by Cagaptay. Erdogan’s authoritarianism and heavy hand in domestic and foreign relations has diminished Turkey’s appeal and influence.</p>
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		<title>Valerie Jarrett&#8217;s Influence on Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/valerie-jarretts-influence-on-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=valerie-jarretts-influence-on-obama</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/valerie-jarretts-influence-on-obama/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Mar 2014 04:55:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[influence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jarrett]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221855</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dr. Paul Kengor exposes the Radical-in-Chief’s single most important adviser -- and her sinister agenda.   ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/vjarrett.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221866" alt="vjarrett" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/vjarrett-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Paul Kengor, a professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Communist-Paul-Kengor/dp/B00C01DYBY/ref=pd_sim_b_1">The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dupes-Americas-Adversaries-Manipulated-Progressives/dp/1935191756/">Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.</a> His latest book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Reagan-Conservative-Paul-Kengor/dp/082530699X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1389391842&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=11+principles+of+a+reagan+conservative">11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative</a>.<em> </em></p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Dr. Paul Kengor, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>I would like to talk to you today about Valerie Jarrett, her background, her relationship with Barack Obama, and her influence in the Obama White House.</p>
<p>Let’s begin first with who Valerie Jarrett is &#8212; and her relationship with Barack Obama.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> Thanks Jamie.</p>
<p>Valerie Jarrett is President Obama’s single most important and influential adviser. No one else in the White or the entire administration is as close to Obama. She has been described as everything from his “right-hand woman” to like a sister and even a mother to Obama. To cite some mainstream/leftist sources: The New York Times says she’s Obama’s “closest friend in the White House,” his “envoy,” his “emissary,” and his “all-purpose ambassador.” The Times calls her the “ultimate Obama insider.” Dana Milbank says her connection to Obama is “deep and personal” and that she’s “the real center of Obama’s inner circle.”</p>
<p>Obama himself calls her one of his “oldest friends” and says “I trust her completely.”</p>
<p>As for Jarrett, she says that she and Obama have a “shared view of where the United States fits in the world.” She says they “have kind of a mind meld.” She’s says that “chances are, what he wants to do is what I’d want to do.”</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Ok, so that begs the next question: What is it exactly that they want to do?</p>
<p><b>Kengor: </b>That’s a very good question. I think the best I can say, which is admittedly at times vague from a policy standpoint, is that both favor some form of leftist “fundamental transformation.”</p>
<p>In domestic policy, we can expect them to desire and pursue the kinds of policies that Obama was able to implement in 2009-10 when he had a leftist Pelosi-Reid Congress. The current Republican majority in Congress gets a lot of heat from conservatives, but at least it has slowed the radical push to the left that occurred under Obama, Pelosi, and Reid during those first two years of the Obama presidency. Those first two years were an Obama-Jarrett policy fest. That what an Obama-Jarrett agenda looks like.</p>
<p>In terms of foreign policy, here again it’s difficult to track down precise ideological statements and actions from Jarrett, though she has said unequivocally that her worldview fully reflects Barack Obama’s. It may even be worse than Obama’s, if the reports of her intervention on Osama Bin Laden are correct.</p>
<p>My sense is that both Obama and Valerie Jarrett prefer a weaker America on the world stage. The pandering to Putin in the first term was probably a reflection of Obama-Jarrett thinking, and thus so is the humiliation at the hands of Putin in the second term.</p>
<p>I’m also suspicious of Valerie Jarrett’s possibly having provided negative input into Obama’s statements on Iran, including his terrible Carter-like reaction to the initial uprising in the Iranian “street” in June 2009. Did Obama’s behavior in that period, which was initially so weak that even Democrats were aghast, reflect Valerie Jarrett’s input? I can’t say, but I wouldn’t be surprised.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> How much influence does she actually have on policy?</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> Her influence is highly significant. She has her hands in every major decision, if not every small one. She’s constantly monitoring things, inserting her input and protecting her Barack. I could give a bunch of examples, but here are two.</p>
<p>Valerie Jarrett pushed for the HHS mandate requiring all religious believers and groups, including institutional churches such as the Roman Catholic Church, to fund abortion drugs and contraception. According to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/us/politics/valerie-jarrett-is-the-other-power-in-the-west-wing.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0">New York Times</a> and <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72612.html">Politico</a>, she did so even as the likes of Joe Biden and Obama Chief of Staff Bill Daley urged the White House to carefully consider the backlash from the Catholic Church. Biden and Daley lost out to Valerie Jarrett and Kathleen Sebelius. No surprise. Obama usually sides with Jarrett.</p>
<p>Especially interesting to readers here, it was reported some time ago that Jarrett repeatedly urged Obama not to take out Osama Bin Laden, prompting Obama to cancel the mission as many as three times. That has been reported by a number of sources, most notably in a book by Richard Miniter. About a year before Miniter’s book, <a href="http://spectator.org/archives/2011/07/05/letting-obama-be-obama">I had written a lengthy feature article for <i>American Spectator</i></a> on Valerie Jarrett. One piece of information that was out there, but I couldn’t confirm, was this Obama-Osama report.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Jarrett is clearly a leftist, but you have stated that some of the mainstream media sources have tried to suggest otherwise.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> Yes. When I first researched her, trying to pin down her politics was very difficult. The liberal media’s job is to first and foremost protect Barack Obama. They are reporters second and partisan Democrats first. And so, reporters portrayed Valerie Jarrett in soaring, gushing, hagiographic tones, exalting her as Solomon-like in her almost-unearthly wisdom. Her reasoning skills and mind were the world’s finest ever assembled in a woman (other than, perhaps, in the person of Hillary Clinton). When she and Obama sit together in the Oval Office, it’s like having all the accumulated knowledge in human history right there at once. Naturally, too, of course, the same media portrayed her as a centrist, a moderate. Here’s one of my favorite examples, from a February 2011 Chicago Tribune profile: “She is a consensus builder who reinforces Obama’s tendency toward centrism.”</p>
<p>Yes, of course!</p>
<p>I had to really dig to find examples of her early policy influence. Since then, I’ve found more. She’s precisely what we’d expect of someone who is an Obama kindred soul: a leftist.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Speaking of being a leftist, what are her roots?</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> She was born in Shiraz, Iran in November 1956, the time of the Suez crisis. She was born Valerie Bowman to American parents—Dr. James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman. Her father was a pathologist and geneticist at a children’s hospital in Shiraz as part of a U.S. aid program to assist developing countries. The family eventually returned to America, specifically Chicago, in 1963. Her mother was a child psychologist who helped establish the Erikson Institute, which (Hillary Clinton-like) specialized in “child advocacy.” The Erikson Institute got funding from the Woods Charitable Fund. If that sounds familiar to readers here, it’s because Barack Obama and Bill Ayers eventually served together as board members at Woods.</p>
<p>Now her Chicago roots are more disturbing &#8212; and indicative of her ideology. They also connect her to Obama and his ideological roots.</p>
<p>Valerie’s maternal grandparents were Robert Rochon Taylor and Dorothy Taylor. Robert was the first African-American head of the Chicago Housing Authority. Dorothy, a native of Berkeley, was active in early Planned Parenthood. That’s ironic, given Margaret Sanger’s “Negro Project,” her 1926 speech to a KKK rally in Silverlake, New Jersey, and her championing of racial-eugenics. Then again, Sanger’s penchant for “race improvement” has never halted liberals’ veneration of her.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> There is a fascinating connection that you’ve detailed between Jarrett’s grandfather and Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s mentor, who you’ve written a book about.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> That’s correct.</p>
<p>The book is titled, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Communist-Paul-Kengor/dp/B00C01DYBY/ref=pd_sim_b_1"><i>The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor</i></a>. Frank Marshall Davis was an African-American born in Kansas in 1905 who eventually moved to Chicago and joined Communist Party USA. Notably, he joined the party after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, a time when many American communists, particularly Jewish-American communists, left the party. They left because Stalin’s signing of the pact facilitated and enabled Hitler’s invasion of Poland and start of World War II. Frank Marshall Davis, however, was undeterred. He joined after the pact.</p>
<p>Worse, Davis, in Chicago, worked for one of the most egregious communist fronts in the history of this country: the American Peace Mobilization. Congress called the American Peace Mobilization “one of the most notorious and blatantly communist fronts ever organized in this country” and “one of the most seditious organizations which ever operated in the United States.” The group’s objective was to stop the United States from entering the war against Hitler—again, because Hitler and Stalin were allies. American communists were allows loyal Soviet patriots. They literally swore allegiance to the USSR and its line.</p>
<p>In my book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dupes-Americas-Adversaries-Manipulated-Progressives/dp/1935191756/"><i>Dupes</i></a>, I publish the original Soviet Comintern document acknowledging that the American Peace Mobilization was founded on the Comintern’s initiative in Chicago in September 1940. There, the Comintern and Communist Party USA attempted to organize a coalition of leftists and “progressives” who would keep America out of the war and out of any support for Britain or anyone opposing Hitler and Stalin—who, again, were allies.</p>
<p>Okay, how does this involve Valerie Jarrett? Jarrett’s grandfather, Robert Taylor, was involved with the American Peace Mobilization, as was Frank Marshall Davis.</p>
<p>Taylor also served with Davis on another communist front, the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, whose members masqueraded as civil-rights crusading “progressives.” The two served on the board together.</p>
<p>And there’s more. Valerie Jarrett has additional family roots in these things. Both Taylor (Jarrett’s grandfather) and Frank Marshall Davis—who would one day meet and become a mentor to a young Barack Obama in Hawaii in the 1970s—would have often encountered another politically active Chicagoan, Vernon Jarrett. In fact, Vernon Jarrett and Frank Marshall Davis worked together on the very small publicity team (a handful of people) of the communist-controlled Packinghouse Workers Union.</p>
<p>Who was Vernon Jarrett? He would one day become Valerie Jarrett’s father-in-law.</p>
<p>So, to sum up, Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, worked with the literal relatives of Valerie Jarrett—her grandfather and future father-in-law—in Chicago’s Communist Party circles in the 1940s.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Amazing. And it was in Chicago, of course, that Valerie Jarrett and Obama eventually met?</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> They first met in Chicago in the early 1990s. During her stint as deputy chief of staff to Mayor Daley (the second Mayor Daley), Jarrett met a young lawyer named Michelle Robinson, who worked for the firm Sidley Austin. They hit it off. Michelle told Jarrett she should meet another young lawyer named Barack Obama, her fiancé. They agreed, and the rest is history.</p>
<p>By the way, David Remnick, a top Obama biographer, reported that Valerie said of that meeting: “Barack felt extraordinarily familiar.” How so? She said that she and Barack “shared a view of where the United States fit in the world.” As David Remnick translates, this was a more “objective” view of an America that was not “the center of all wisdom and experience.” This was not an exceptional America. Of course it wasn’t.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> One final question on the Chicago roots. This gets even crazier. Tell us how David Axelrod’s roots tie into this.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> David Axelrod is the political consultant who made Barack Obama president. He coined the very terms “hope and change.” He is a native New Yorker who ended up attending college and then working in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s and on. Like Obama, and like Valerie Jarrett, he found his political calling in Chicago.</p>
<p>In Chicago, Axelrod was mentored by the Canter family, namely David Canter. The Canter family has not only deep communist roots in Chicago but also in Stalin’s Soviet Union. David and his family had lived in Moscow just before coming to Chicago. His father, Harry Canter, had literally worked for Stalin’s government as an official translator of Lenin’s writings. He was a hardcore American Bolshevik. Before going to Moscow, Harry had been secretary of the Boston Communist Party and ran for governor of Massachusetts on the Communist Party ticket.</p>
<p>When this duty to Stalin was finished, the Canter family moved on to Chicago, which was (second only to New York) a hotbed for communism. The American Communist Party was founded in Chicago in September 1919, six months after the Comintern was founded in Moscow.</p>
<p>The Canters got involved in all sorts of Chicago-based communist activities and fronts: big May Day parades, the Packinghouse Workers Union, the communist Abraham Lincoln School, and in the pages of the <i>Chicago Star</i>, the communist newspaper founded and edited by Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. In fact, Harry Canter was one of the small group of board members that bought the <i>Chicago Star</i> from Davis in September 1948 as Davis bolted to Hawaii to do communist work there (and eventually meet Obama). Canter’s group of purchasers was called the Progressive Publishing Company.</p>
<p>Eventually, Harry’s son David Canter, who himself was involved in all kinds of wild far-left activities, met and mentored David Axelrod.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> So, all of these folks knew each other in Chicago?</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> Obama and David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett all have common political ancestors who knew and worked with each other in communist activities and fronts in Chicago in the 1940s. The ancestors are, respectively, Frank Marshall Davis, the Canters, and Vernon Jarrett and Robert Taylor. We are today being governed by ghosts from Chicago’s Communist Party haunts of the 1940s. It’s scary.</p>
<p>By the way, then and still today, they call themselves “<i>progressives</i>.”</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> This information is remarkable. Tell our readers where you have documented all of this.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> I’m meticulous in tying all these things together. In my books, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Communist-Paul-Kengor/dp/B00C01DYBY/ref=pd_sim_b_1"><i>The Communist</i></a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dupes-Americas-Adversaries-Manipulated-Progressives/dp/1935191756/"><i>Dupes</i></a>, especially the former, I provide copies of original materials and documentation. Nothing that I said is exaggerated. Besides, who could make this up?</p>
<p>The American public voted for “change.” This is a change alright.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Ok so crystallize us what the “change” is exactly that Obama and Jarrett have ushered in and are ushering in. And summarize for us: Who is Valerie Jarrett and what is the meaning and significance of her close friendship with, and enormous influence, on the president?</p>
<p><b>Kengor: </b>I think the “change” is this thrusting of America to the left, this “fundamental transformation.”</p>
<p>Here’s a crucial added insight into Valerie Jarrett’s thinking: There’s a video clip of her on You Tube, from early in the first Obama term, where she’s gushing about Van Jones. She lights up, aglow, as she mentions him—and as the lefties in the crowd howl in approval. She speaks of being “so delighted” with Jones’ “creative ideas” and talks of how her and Obama’s White House hopes to “capture” those ideas. She has a giant smile. That 30 seconds or so of uncensored, unfiltered Valerie Jarrett speaks volumes. At long last, there’s the real Valerie Jarrett, without the doting protection of the mainstream media that coddles her and Barack Obama.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Ud_yNFnfrSI" height="400" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>So, in short, the meaning and significance of Valerie Jarrett’s close friendship and enormous influence on the president is an America that increasingly moves left domestically and, I suspect, becomes weaker in the world internationally.</p>
<p><b>FP:</b> Professor Kengor, thanks for your time.</p>
<p><b>Kengor:</b> Anytime, Jamie. I thank you, FrontPage, and David Horowitz for your time and courage.</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>Study Says Movies Make You Liberal</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/study-says-movies-make-you-liberal/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=study-says-movies-make-you-liberal</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/study-says-movies-make-you-liberal/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jan 2014 05:22:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Films]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hollywood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[influence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[liberal]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214397</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Left picks up the propaganda battle where the Nazis and Lenin left off. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ag.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-214399" alt="ag" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ag.jpg" width="214" height="317" /></a>Conservatives have long known and complained that movies and television shows are shot through with overt progressive messages, although the Hollywood left downplays that concern as paranoid. But they may not be aware that even seemingly apolitical entertainment can contain subtle left-leaning messages, and those messages are effective at nudging audiences – even conservatives – to the left.</p>
<p>The science is settled. According to <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/sentimental-films-can-influence-political-attitudes-and-make-you-more-liberal-scientists-say-9028375.html">research</a> published in the December edition of <i>Social Science Quarterly</i>, viewers who are “not prepared” to be critical about what they see onscreen are more likely to experience a temporary politically “leftward shift” when watching Hollywood movies with an “underlying liberal message.”</p>
<p>A team of political scientists at the University of Notre Dame set out to investigate the power of political messages in popular films. Dr. Todd Adkins, the lead author of the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ssqu.12070/abstract">study</a> “<i>Moving</i> Pictures? Experimental Evidence of Cinematic Influence on Political Attitudes,” <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ssqu.12070/abstract">wrote</a> that: “Media effects research has generally ignored the possibility that popular films can affect political attitudes,” an omission he described as “puzzling” for two reasons:</p>
<blockquote><p>First, research on public opinion finds the potential for persuasion is highest when respondents are unaware that political messages are being communicated. Second, multiple studies have found that entertainment media can alter public opinion. Together, this suggests that popular films containing political messages should possess the potential to influence attitudes.</p></blockquote>
<p>That concept is a no-brainer. The left has understood the power of film to sway audiences at least as far back as the Nazis. Lenin once said that “for us, the cinema is the most important of the arts” – important, of course, in terms of propagating their agenda. Over the decades, the less culturally savvy conservatives increasingly ceded that arena to them; the result is that the left owns the culture, and whoever owns the culture dominates the political arena as well.</p>
<p>Considering what a divisive political issue healthcare currently is in the United States, the authors of the study wondered if subjects watching films with pro-healthcare reform messages would become more liberal on the issue. To test the theory the authors <a href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/PressRelease/pressReleaseId-109934.html">surveyed</a> 252 students at Notre Dame – 54% of whom regard themselves as conservative – on their political views, randomly assigned them one of three films, then questioned them again.</p>
<p>The movies had either a strong and explicit political message (<i>The Rainmaker</i>, in which healthcare is a central part of the storyline), a subtle political message (<i>As Good as it Gets</i> starring Jack Nicholson, in which healthcare is less prominent, but still plays a role in the story), or no political message (Tom Hanks’ <i>That Thing You Do!</i>, which has nothing to do with healthcare). <i>The Rainmaker</i>, for what it’s worth, stars Matt Damon, arguably Hollywood’s most politically outspoken big star, considering his support for radical historian Howard Zinn, his many public statements about income inequality, and his appearance in overtly political films like the “Bush lied, people died” action thriller <i>The Green Zone</i> and class warfare sci-fi flick <i>Elysium</i> (both box office bombs).</p>
<p>The tests revealed that viewers of both <i>As Good as it Gets</i> and <i>The Rainmaker</i> did indeed become experience a “leftward shift in attitude” on the healthcare topic, <i>regardless of their stances beforehand</i>, and this change persisted for two weeks after viewing the films. That doesn’t sound like a long time, but Adkins and his group found that such movies “possess the ability to change political attitudes, especially on issues that are unframed by the media,” and that “such influence persists over time and is not moderated by partisanship, ideology, or political knowledge.” He concluded by recommending that more study on the political influence of popular movies “is clearly warranted.”</p>
<p>Why was even the movie with a subtle message so effective? Because the audience subjects weren’t on their guard: “Viewers come expecting to be entertained and are not prepared to encounter and evaluate political messages as they would during campaign advertisements or network news,” said Adkins. “In an age where the biases of network news and talk radio programs are accepted facts, the movie theater may prove to be one of the last sources of cross-cutting exposure to political messages.”</p>
<p>This is not an argument for conservatives to avoid theaters for fear that they might unwittingly be steered left; too many on the right have already washed their hands of Hollywood as it is, and disengagement is not how you win a culture war. Instead, this should be an argument for conservatives to make themselves more aware of how Hollywood uses pop culture as a Trojan horse to manipulate and indoctrinate. Awareness enables resistance. Be aware of what a movie’s political position is, even in a seemingly apolitical film, and how it is being presented.</p>
<p>This study is also an argument for realizing that such political messaging can cut both ways. Powerful storytelling can compel audiences to embrace the values of the right as well as the left. Nobody likes to be preached to, not even the left. People are seduced and changed by great stories. That must be our mission: compelling storytelling, not political lectures.</p>
<p>The cultural battle is the critical one. Unless and until the right starts thinking in terms of waging a vigorous cultural campaign, we will continue to lose presidential elections. Winning that critical conflict requires that we get into the fray, understand and embrace pop culture, and commit to reclaiming it.</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>Iran’s Secret &#8216;Interfaith&#8217; Outreach in America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/irans-secret-interfaith-outreach-in-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=irans-secret-interfaith-outreach-in-america</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/irans-secret-interfaith-outreach-in-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Jul 2013 04:14:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alavi Foundation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Funding]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[influence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islamic  Republic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Money]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=195905</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The disturbing extent of the Mullahs' money and influence in the U.S.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/alavi.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-195907" alt="alavi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/alavi.jpg" width="240" height="160" /></a>The <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org"><i>Clarion Project</i></a> recently exposed how an Iranian regime front based in New York donated to <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/iranian-regime-front-funded-30-universities-us-canada">over 30 colleges</a> and <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/iranian-govt-front-group-funded-over-60-islamic-sites-us">over 60 Islamic centers and organizations</a> in North America. Like Sunni Islamists, the Shiite Iranian regime also finds interfaith engagement to be a worthwhile investment.</p>
<p>The data was found by combing the website and published financial reports of the Alavi Foundation, an alleged Iranian regime front. The Foundation’s offices were searched after evidence <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2009/1114/p02s10-usgn.html">surfaced</a> that it was sending money to a bank that is sanctioned by the U.S. because of its role in Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. government investigator <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/report-columbia-and-rutgers-funded-by-iran-controlled-group-1.3599">said</a> “the government of Iran really controlled everything about the foundation.”</p>
<p>One of the Alavi Foundation’s primary functions is to influence public opinion. U.S. officials <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-11-12/news/36841886_1_alavi-foundation-tenants-or-occupants-iranian-bank">said</a> that it “promotes Tehran’s views on world affairs” and a prominent Iranian in California bluntly <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2009/1114/p02s10-usgn.html/(page)/2">accuses</a> it of being part of the regime’s “propaganda machine.” This should put the foundation’s donations in new light, especially when the money went to major power players like the William J. Clinton Foundation, which received $30,000 in 2005.</p>
<p>The Alavi Foundation is not a small operation. Its <a href="http://www.alavifoundation.org/financials.html#start">2010 financial report</a> states that the market value of all its assets was almost $125 million. To this day, the Alavi Foundation is accepting applications for grants from its <a href="http://www.alavifoundation.org/programs/interfaith.html#start">&#8220;interfaith dialogue and religious pluralism&#8221;</a> initiative. The page states that the organization has funded interfaith conferences at the Temple of Understanding in New York, Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia and Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.</p>
<p>The Alavi Foundation’s financial reports and website disclose that it donated heavily to the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., making contributions of $45,000 in 2007; $60,000 in 2006; and $75,000 in 2005 and 2004.</p>
<p>The Roman Catholic Sacred Heart University in Connecticut received $5,000 in 2008; $39,000 in 2007; $60,000 in 2006; $10,000 in 2005 and $3,000 in 2004.</p>
<p>Hartford Seminary, a theological college, was awarded $35,000 in September 2012; $47,000 in August 2011 and $17,500 in 2008. The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, also has a <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/mb-front-succeeds-partnering-us-universities">close relationship</a> with Hartford Seminary and donated over $1 million to endow a chair in Islamic Chaplaincy.</p>
<p>Eastern Mennonite University received $20,000 from the Alavi Foundation in 2010. The IIIT has also partnered with this Christian school. In August 2011, the director of the University’s Center for Interfaith Engagement <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/mb-front-succeeds-partnering-us-universities">attended</a> an IIIT fundraiser.</p>
<p>The Iranian regime front also donated $5,000 to the Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia in 2009. Last month, we exposed how <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/a-radical-imams-infiltration-of-philadelphia/">two colleagues of radical imam Siraj Wahhaj</a> have had official positions in the Center. Wahhaj has restrained his rhetoric a bit since 9/11 out of necessity. In 2011, he advised Muslims not to discuss Sharia Law because <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/popular-muslim-iman-working-towards-sharia-america">&#8220;we aren&#8217;t there yet.&#8221;</a></p>
<p>The Interfaith Freedom Foundation in California and the Temple of Understanding in New York were each given $3,000 in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The Islamic Education Center of Maryland, <a href="http://www.alavifoundation.org/programs/islamicorganizations.html#start">owned</a> by Alavi, held an <a href="http://www.alavifoundation.org/news/nws009.html">interfaith event</a> with Christians and Jews in April.</p>
<p>One Muslim organization that received a large amount of Alavi financing is the Universal Muslim Association of America. The Foundation’s website discloses donations of $100,000 in 2005; $3,000 in 2006; $6,000 in 2007; $5,000 in 2008; $4,000 in 2009; $10,000 in 2010 and $10,000 in 2012.</p>
<p>The Universal Muslim Association of America is a <a href="http://shouldertoshouldercampaign.org/members/">member</a> of the Shoulder-to-Shoulder Campaign, an interfaith coalition allied with the Islamic Society of North America. U.S. Muslim Brotherhood documents <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/Muslim_Brotherhood_Explanatory_Memorandum">identify</a> ISNA as one of its fronts.</p>
<p>To be fair, it is not proven that each recipient knew of the Alavi Foundation’s background and that each one helped advance Iran’s viewpoint. For example, the Red Cross, the American Museum of Natural History and many charities have received large gifts.</p>
<p>However, the regime does not have money to spare and in each case, the Foundation decided that the contribution’s benefit justified its cost. The Foundation was originally established under the Shah in the 1970s, so this article only touches the surface of this influence operation.</p>
<p>A more direct interfaith partner of the Iranian regime is the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that <a href="https://afsc.org/category/topic/we-divest">supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction campaign against Israel.</a> It was part of a Christian coalition that <a href="https://afsc.org/friends/church-leaders-congress-condition-military-aid-israel-human-rights-compliance">wrote a letter to Congress</a> criticizing U.S. military aid to Israel. Fifteen Christian groups endorsed the letter, including American Baptist Churches USA, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Methodist Church Council of Bishops.</p>
<p>In 2006, American Friends Service Committee leader Mary Ellen McNish and about 45 other religious activists <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=2195">met with Iranian President Ahmadinejad in New York.</a> Then in February 2007, she and a dozen other American religious leaders <a href="http://www.ncccusa.org/news/070214iran.html">spent eight days</a> in Iran and again met with Ahmadinejad. <a href="http://ncronline.org/news/pacifist-churches-under-fire-ahmadinejad-dinner">Meetings with Ahmadinejad</a> were again held in New York in 2007 and 2008. The latter event was <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&amp;x_outlet=118&amp;x_article=1545">co-sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee</a> and also involved the World Council of Churches and Religions for Peace.</p>
<p>The American Friends Service Committee also <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2011/dgreenfield/with-american-friends-like-this-who-needs-enemies/">filed an Amicus brief</a> on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity shut down for financing Hamas. The organization also <a href="https://afsc.org/story/chicago-muslim-man-gets-his-life-back-government">joined</a> the lawsuit of Muhammad Salah as a co-plantiff. Salah was designated a “specially designated terrorist” by the Treasury Department for his Hamas ties <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-11-07/news/chi-bridgeview-man-taken-off-terrorist-list-20121107_1_bridgeview-man-terrorist-list-support-hamas-extremists">until November 2012.</a></p>
<p>Every dollar and every moment spent by the Iranian regime courting foreigners deserves scrutiny. Any resource used in interfaith engagement is a resource that could have been used to advance the regime’s agenda another way. The Iranian regime wouldn’t be making these investments if it was dissatisfied with the results.</p>
<p><em>This article was sponsored by the <a href="http://www.theird.org">Institute on Religion and Democracy.</a></em></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>Running Back to the U.S.A.</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/matt-gurney/running-back-to-the-u-s-a/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=running-back-to-the-u-s-a</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:26:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gurney]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[acts of war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alliance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american military forces]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Beijing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[campaign pledge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[combat role]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[influence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Japan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Japanese]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[japanese prime minister]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Moscow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Koreans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Northeast Asia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Okinawa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Okinawa Island]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Political Scandal]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[president]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Tokyo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[unfair discrimination]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62275</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[America's Asian allies decide to keep the US around, after all.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/hatoyama.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62452" title="hatoyama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/hatoyama.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="329" /></a></p>
<p>Last week, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned after barely eight months in office. Despite his desire to reduce Washington’s influence over Japanese politics, Hatoyama was forced to back off a major campaign pledge —beginning the process of removing all American military forces from Japan’s Okinawa Island. Already weakened by domestic political scandal, Hatoyama resigned rather than lead his Democratic Party into parliamentary elections next month. He felt that he had lost the confidence of his people after announcing that American forces would indeed be staying on Okinawa (though moving to a more remote location).</p>
<p>So ends the tenure of a man who came to power riding a wave of popularity, promising to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/world/asia/16japan.html?ref=asia" target="_blank">lead Japan to a new era</a> of reduced spending and a foreign policy distinct from the United States. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/world/asia/16japan.html?ref=asia" target="_blank">He ended Japan’s</a> supportive, non-combat role in the war in Afghanistan. His stated goal was to <a href="http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100119f1.html" target="_blank">rebalance Japan’s alliance</a> with the United States, maintaining close ties, perhaps, but under terms less favorable to America.</p>
<p>But now, he has quit, and his replacement has already <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hlQO-kyvIEyrc0I90V5l0LFN7JTwD9G5L9EO0" target="_blank">sought to reassure</a> America that the alliance will remain as-is. The reason for this sudden shift, yanking Japan firmly back into America’s orbit, was explained by a joint statement issued by Tokyo and Washington: “Recent developments in the security environment of Northeast Asia reaffirmed the significance of the Alliance.” Addressing reporters later, Hatoyama went further, saying, “I am painfully aware of the feeling of the people of Okinawa that the present problem of the bases represents unfair discrimination against them. At the same time, the presence of US bases is essential for Japan&#8217;s security.”</p>
<p>In other words, the <a href="http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Korean+envoy+warns+could+erupt+quickly/3109871/story.html" target="_blank">North Koreans</a> have rattled the Japanese. A year ago, Japan might have had reason feel comfortable inching away from an America, with the US military stretched and a new, dovish president seeking to avoid confrontations. But now with the North Koreans <a href="http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/05/19/matt-gurney-north-korea-caught-holding-the-smoking-torpedo.aspx" target="_blank">committing acts of war</a> over and above their usual provocations, the Japanese have decided they’d rather keep their powerful friend around, after all. America’s military faces an uncertain future during these times of fiscal duress and while the Democrats control both the White House and Congress, but the fact remains that it is still the world’s best fighting force. Hatoyama, despite his earlier hopes of building a new Japan free of American protection and influence, has been forcefully reminded of just how dangerous a place the world can be.</p>
<p>The American presence on Okinawa Island, while essential for Japanese security in these turbulent times, is understandably an inconvenience for the local population. Okinawa is small but densely populated: 1.3 million Japanese live on it, along with 25,000 Marines, plus their support staff and families. The forces housed on Okinawa represent fully half of the US forces stationed in Japan. In 1995, three Marines kidnapped and raped a 12-year-old girl. They were tried and sentenced to long prison terms, but the relationship between the US forces and the local Japanese population never recovered. When you factor in the petty crime, noise, pollution and crowding inherent to any large military force, it is easy to understand that the local civilians might resent the base. But the Marines’ presence on Okinawa, setting aside such extremely rare incidents as the above-mentioned rape, is merely that — an inconvenience. America’s support for Japan, in light of an aggressive North Korean regime capable of <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123819923986362105.html" target="_blank">easily striking Japan</a>, is a political and pragmatic necessity.</p>
<p>The Japanese are not the only allies of the United States in the region to suddenly rediscover how beneficial a strong relationship with America can be. South Korea, the victim of North Korea’s unprovoked attack, has enjoyed a long history of close defense relations with the United States, dating back to the Korean War itself, which saw American-led allied forces protect South Korea from North Korea communist forces, backed by Beijing and Moscow. For several years, however, the United States and South Korea have been working towards a <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LC13Dg01.html" target="_blank">transfer of control of all forces</a> — including American — to South Korea. America has almost 30,000 troops in the South, but the South has a 600,000-man army. Under the new arrangement, the American troops would have taken all a supporting role.</p>
<p>Since North Korea’s attack, however, South Korea’s defense community has become determined to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703406604575278350884508216.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_world" target="_blank">delay the transfer of command</a>. They do not want America to move into a supporting role — if war comes, they want to make very certain that US forces lead the charge against the numerically strong but technologically backwards North Korean military. The South Korean president is being pressured to invoke a clause in his country’s alliance with the United States that would delay the planned 2012 handover of command to South Korea. Meanwhile, the utility of the alliance is being clearly demonstrated: despite the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/27/south-korea-military-drills" target="_blank">predictable outrage</a> from the North, the United States <a href="http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/usa/US-Defense-Secretary-Announces-Plans-for-Joint-US-South-Korean-Military-Exercises-95680549.html" target="_blank">plans to join</a> South Korea in naval exercises in the weeks and months ahead, demonstrating the close relationship and military prowess of the allies to the troubled North. There has also been discussion of sending an American carrier battle group, and its awesome firepower, to the region to impress upon the North Koreans the wisdom of choosing a more peaceful course of action.</p>
<p>No decision to deploy the carrier has yet been made public, but the message is clear. For Japan and South Korea, the world can be a dangerous place. And in such a world, you can ask for no better friend than the United States of America.</p>
<p><em>Matt Gurney  is an editor at the National Post, a Canadian national newspaper, and writes and speaks on military and geopolitical issues. He can be reached  at <a href="mailto:matt@mattgurney.ca" target="_blank">matt@mattgurney.ca</a>. </em></p>
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		<title>Promoting a Free North Korea</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ryan-mauro/promoting-a-free-korea/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=promoting-a-free-korea</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ryan-mauro/promoting-a-free-korea/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:00:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61847</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The tyranny will provoke crises until it falls 

]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/dprk-dmsp-dark.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-61848" title="dprk-dmsp-dark" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/dprk-dmsp-dark-300x222.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="222" /></a></p>
<p>The crisis with North Korea is escalating and will continue to escalate for as long as the regime is in power. Kim Jong-Il made a calculated decision that he needed a dramatic confrontation in order to appear strong, set the stage for his youngest son to take over, and to create a pretext with which to stop Western influence from reaching the country’s increasingly knowledgeable population. Until the regime collapses under the weight of its failures, it will need to periodically up the ante with a series of increasingly frightening provocations.</p>
<p>There was a much bigger purpose behind the North’s sinking of the<em> Cheonan</em> and that was to stir up the biggest clash since the Korean War. Shortly after the attack, the South Korean army was accused by the North of crossing into the Demilitarized Zone and opening fire. Five properties at the jointly-operated Mt. Kumgang resort were <a href="http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2919620">seized</a>, and two North Korean agents were <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/world/asia/22korea.html">arrested</a> in South Korea as they plotted to assassinate the highest-level defector living there. This was a <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/26/a-crisis-in-the-making/">campaign</a> to make certain that a crisis was sparked.</p>
<p>Since South Korea has formally accused the Kim Jong-Il regime of sinking their ship, the U.S. and South Korea have planned joint military exercises, the South Koreans have pledged to bring the case to the United Nations and they have cut off almost all trade with North Korea. The South’s sea lanes are also being closed to North Korean ships and they are <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-korea_26int.ART.State.Edition1.499e5c9.html">re-labeling</a> the North as their “principal enemy.”</p>
<p>The North Korean government believes it has to retaliate and appear strong in the face of this retaliation. They have reacted by cutting off economic and political ties, and promising to close the Kaesong factory complex where South Korean businesses were allowed to invest, and South Koreans are now beginning to be <a href="http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2921030">kicked out</a> from the site. The military is on alert, and the telephone line between the two countries used to avert naval clashes has been cut off. The “puppet authorities” of the South will not be <a href="http://www.worldthreats.com/?p=2532">allowed</a> to travel to the North, and none of the South’s air or naval vessels can enter their territory.</p>
<p>Four of North Korea’s submarines have <a href="http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2010/05/26/0301000000AEN20100526001200315.HTML">left</a> their base and their location is unknown. It is possible they have been deployed for an attack. <a href="http://www.colonelgordon.com/">Colonel Gordon Cucullu,</a> author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Separated-Birth-North-Korea-Became/dp/1592285910/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1275101465&amp;sr=8-3"><em>Separated at Birth: How North Korea Became the Evil Twin</em></a>, told FrontPage that it is also possible that the submarines are hidden in caves along the coast as a security measure. This movement may be because of the North Korean military’s “war footing,” but it is hard to know for sure given how erratic their behavior has been.</p>
<p>Another startling development is that the South has arrested a spy who transmitted classified information about their subway system to the Kim Jong-Il regime. This is a strong indication that North Korea is still preparing for potential sabotage operations. The North has the world’s largest number of special forces, which they have been <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/08/AR2009100804018.html">training</a> to carry out guerilla-type attacks. It is also known that the North has commandos willing to go on suicide missions. Should the North Korean government view the upcoming military exercises as something they must respond aggressively to in order to maintain credibility, the use of such saboteurs cannot be ruled out.</p>
<p>The biggest reason North Korea has started and continued the crisis is to maintain a hold on its population. It provides an excuse for dramatic security measures and a reason to crack down on things like joint ventures with the South that expose the people to Western influence. This has become an <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-kim-jong-il-fearful-of-an-uprising/">increasing problem</a> for Kim Jong-Il, as over half of the population now <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/23/AR2010032304035.html">accesses</a> foreign news, polls of refugees show increasing anger towards the government for their economic catastrophe, and public expressions of dissent when the government issued a new currency and banned old bank notes and foreign currency.</p>
<p>Suzanne Scholte, the leader of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, told FrontPage that now is the time to aggressively “reach out to the North Korean people through all means possible” and to focus on the human rights situation under Kim Jong-Il, which she described as a “holocaust.” She provided FrontPage with the text of a speech she gave in April, outlining the weaknesses of the regime.</p>
<p>Two of the most important methods the regime uses to stay in power have collapsed. The system to distribute food and goods has collapsed, and so private markets have arisen that are decreasing the population’s reliance upon the government for survival.</p>
<p>The second major method was isolating the population from outside influence, which is also failing.</p>
<p>“One could argue that capitalism is alive and well and thriving in North Korea as the people cope the best they can by trading and selling the markets,” she said in her speech.</p>
<p>“In fact, the film <em>Titanic</em> became so widely watched in North Korea that the regime felt compelled to inform the people that the movie was a depiction of the failure of capitalism,” she said.</p>
<p>The fear of the Kim Jong-Il regime became evident when it said it will destroy any loudspeakers set up by the South to broadcast into the North. That is a line that he cannot allow to be crossed. The North Koreans have <a href="http://www.worldthreats.com/?p=2532">vowed</a> to begin “merciless counteractions” against the South’s “psychological warfare against the North.” The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has <a href="http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&amp;num=6411">made</a> new 300-strong police units in each province to stamp out opposition and to try to prevent the flow of information into the country.</p>
<p>The West faces a dilemma. The North Korean government feels it needs a crisis in order to survive, and therefore, ignoring them will only result in greater provocations. At the same time, Kim Jong-Il must react to the retaliation by appearing stronger than his enemies by heating things up further. The result is an inevitable series of increasing crises with unforeseen consequences. The solution is to hasten the day when the regime falls, but the weaker the regime becomes, the more likely it is to lash out as it has this year. The unfortunate conclusion is that further clashes are unavoidable.</p>
<p>There are multiple ways that the West can weaken the regime’s grip. Colonel Cucullu said that the North expects to “be rewarded by Western nations once again.” This behavior cannot be encouraged through appeasement. He also raised the point that Japan is also fearful and will not rely on the U.S. for its safety. The possibility of chaos on the Korean Peninsula and the potential for Japan to rapidly rearm can be used to pressure China into reigning in its partner.</p>
<p>Joshua Stanton makes a wise <a href="http://newledger.com/2010/05/overthrowing-kim-a-capitalist-manifesto-part-3/">suggestion</a> that cell phones be smuggled into North Korea’s markets and towers erected in the South so they have reception. Scholte said that there are 17,000 North Koreans who left their country for the South that can be <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/01/north-korea-defector-countrys-regime-still-strong/">used</a> to send information into their original homeland. Refugees can be mobilized for similar efforts.</p>
<p>The U.S. should place North Korea back on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, and push for sanctions in the United Nations. International measures to freeze the assets of North Korean officials and institutions involved in criminal activity and human rights abuses should also be taken.</p>
<p>There will be those who oppose such measures out of a fear of provoking North Korea. The sad truth is that the current government will set out to instigate major confrontations as a matter of survival. The West has two options: Ignore the misery of the North Korean people and hope that this pattern will not spiral down into armed conflict, or actively welcome the day that Korea can be united and free.</p>
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		<title>Symposium: The World&#8217;s Most Wanted: A “Moderate Islam”</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/symposium-the-worlds-most-wanted-a-%e2%80%9cmoderate-islam-%e2%80%9d/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=symposium-the-worlds-most-wanted-a-%25e2%2580%259cmoderate-islam-%25e2%2580%259d</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 04:40:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61171</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Four top experts on Islamic theology battle it out on whether a democratic and liberal Islam exists -- or can exist.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/muslim1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61239" title="muslim" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/muslim1.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="221" /></a></p>
<p>In this special edition of Frontpage Symposium, we have invited four distinguished guests to discuss the question: Is there a moderate Islam? Our guests today are:</p>
<p><strong>Timothy Furnish</strong>, a former U.S. Army Arabic interrogator, he is a consultant and author with a Ph.D. in Islamic History. He is currently working on a book on modern Muslim plans to resurrect the caliphate. His website, dedicated to Islamic eschatology, is <a href="http://www.mahdiwatch.org/" target="_blank">www.mahdiwatch.org</a></p>
<p><strong>Tawfik Hamid</strong>, an Islamic thinker and reformer who is the author of <em>Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam. </em>A one-time Islamic extremist from Egypt, he was a member of <em>Jemaah Islamiya,</em> a terrorist Islamic organization, with Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who later became the second in command of al-Qaeda. He is currently a senior fellow and chairman of the study of Islamic radicalism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.<em> </em></p>
<p><strong>M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D.</strong> is the President and Founder of the <a href="http://www.aifdemocracy.org/" target="_blank">American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD).</a> A devout Muslim, he served 11 years as a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy. He is a nationally recognized expert in the contest of ideas against political Islam, American Islamist organizations, and the Muslim Brotherhood. He regularly briefs members of the House and Senate congressional anti-terror caucuses and has served as a guest lecturer on Islam to deploying officers at the Joint Forces Staff College.  Dr. Jasser was presented with the 2007 Director’s Community Leadership Award by the Phoenix office of the FBI and was recognized as a “Defender of the Home Front” by the Center for Security Policy. He recently narrated the documentary <em><a href="http://www.thethirdjihad.com/" target="_blank">The Third Jihad</a></em>, produced by PublicScope Films. His chapter, <em>Americanism vs. Islamism</em> is featured in the recently released book, <a href="http://www.aifdemocracy.org/news.php?id=5587" target="_blank">The Other Muslims</a> (Palgrave-Macmillan) edited by Zeyno Baran.</p>
<p>and</p>
<p><strong>Robert Spencer</strong>, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers <em>The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)</em> and <em>The Truth About Muhammad</em>. His latest book, <em>The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran</em>, is available now from Regnery Publishing, and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of the forthcoming book <em>The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America</em> (Simon and Schuster).</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Timothy Furnish, Tawfik Hamid, Dr.  M. Zuhdi Jasser and Robert Spencer, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.</p>
<p>Dr. Furnish, let me begin with you. Robert Spencer recently entered <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/03/16/does-moderate-islam-exist-a-reply-to-john-guardiano/">a debate at NewsReal Blog</a> where he argued that there is no moderate Islam. What is your perspective on his argument?</p>
<p><strong>Furnish:</strong> I find myself in the curious (and somewhat uncomfortable) position of disagreeing with my friend Robert Spencer, for whom I have the utmost respect and with whom I almost always totally agree. However, on this issue of whether moderate Islam exists, I think Robert may be missing something.</p>
<p>He is exactly right that Sunni Islam&#8211;whence comes directly Salafism, Wahhabism and jihadism&#8211;promotes violence against non-Muslims in order to make Islam paramount over the entire planet.  I have no quarrel with that stance. But I would argue that this is largely because within this majority branch of Islam the only acceptable exegetical paradigm regarding the Qur&#8217;an is a literalist one: and of course when passages such as &#8220;behead the unbeliever&#8221; [Suras 47:3 and 8:12] are read literally the good Muslim had better reach for his sword&#8211;or be rightly accused of infidelity to Allah&#8217;s Word.</p>
<p>However, perhaps because Robert is so well-versed in the theology of Islam, as opposed to the historical record of how that religious theory has been acted out on the stage of history, he seems to overlook the key fact on the ground that certain minorities within Islam have developed a non-literalist, even allegorical, approach to reading the Qur&#8217;an. Foremost among these moderates are the Isma`ilis, the Sevener Shi`is, whose global head is the philanthropical Aga Khan.  Isma&#8217;ilis may number only in the tens of millions (out of the total Muslim community of some 1.3 billion, second only to Christianity&#8217;s 2+ billion), but they do exist and they define, for example, jihad not as killing or conquering unbelievers, but as economic development and charity work.</p>
<p>In general, all branches of Shi`ism (which makes up perhaps 15% of the world&#8217;s Muslims), including the Twelvers of Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, allow the practice of ijtihad, &#8220;independent theological-legal judgment&#8221;&#8211;which is decidedly not the case for Sunnism. And while this has allowed for the ayatollahs to come up with negative novelties such as vilayet-i faqih (Khomeini&#8217;s &#8220;rule of the jurisconsult&#8221;), it also leaves the door open to non-literal exegesis of the anachronistic passages of the Qur&#8217;an.</p>
<p>Even within Sunnism, many of the Sufi (Islamic mystic) orders are more akin to the Shi`i than the woodenly literalist Sunnis in their exegesis. (Yet I would not go as far as Stephen Schwartz, who in his book <em>The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony</em> thinks Sufis are basically &#8220;Quakers with beards&#8221; and sees them as the antidote to jihadists.  This rosy view overlooks the historical facts of the many jihads led by Sufi shaykhs and fought by Sufi adherents over the centuries.)</p>
<p>Today, many Sufis are non-literalists and focus on the batini, &#8220;inner&#8221; or &#8220;esoteric&#8221; meaning of the Qur&#8217;anic verses rather than on the zahiri, &#8220;outward&#8221; or &#8220;exoteric&#8221;&#8211;i.e., literal&#8211;meaning as Bin Ladin and his ilk do.  Another sect of Islam that is rather moderate in its approach to the Qur&#8217;an is the Barelwi (or Barelvi) one in India and the U.K.</p>
<p>In fact, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/03/muslim-leaders-edict-decries-terrorism/">the recent 600-page &#8220;anti-terrorism&#8221; fatwa</a> that received much media adoration was written by Muhammad Tahir al-Qadri, a Barelwi.  As I observe in the &#8220;Washington Times&#8221; article, al-Qadri&#8217;s adherence to what is essentially a sect of Islam makes it very problematic that his fatwa will have any major effect on the jihadists in the short term&#8211;but, over time, if enough sectarian Muslims keep condemning the purely literalist approach to Islam&#8217;s holy book, perhaps Islam might enter into its own much needed Enlightenment, or at least Reformation.  But it&#8217;s clear from these examples that moderate Islam, not just moderate Muslims, truly does exist&#8211;even if often in a minority, often persecuted, status.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Spencer:</strong> In all this my friend Timothy Furnish, whose work I admire, is entirely correct. That is why I am always careful to say that there is no &#8220;mainstream&#8221; sect of Islam, or one that is generally recognized as orthodox by Muslim sects in general, that does not teach the necessity to make war against and subjugate unbelievers. But I am not sure that the existence of Muslims who are generally considered heretics and persecuted for their heresy, which often consists precisely of their rejection or reconstitution of the jihad doctrine, constitutes the existence of a &#8220;moderate Islam&#8221; upon which Westerners should place any hope. The likelihood that these groups are going to stop being persecuted minorities and eventually attain mainstream status without abjuring exactly the elements of their beliefs that make them appealing to Westerners is slim at best.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Dr. Jasser?<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Jasser: </strong>Jamie. Thank you for including me. Let me start by addressing the premise of your initial question to Dr. Furnish regarding his opinion on Robert Spencer’s assertion that, “there is no moderate Islam.”</p>
<p>In my experience, there is a significant distinction globally between “Islam” as a personal spiritual faith (a personal <em>submission</em> to God, if you will), and the “House of Islam” which more broadly includes the entire human corpus of Islamic scholarship, knowledge (ilm) and jurisprudence (shar’iah) as espoused by leading global Islamic jurists and thought leaders (a <em>‘submission’</em> to the House of Islam if you will). As a devout Muslim I believe in the former in my personal relationship with God, but as an anti-Islamist I reject any “submission” to the latter which is human. Certainly, academe is central to understanding and effectively reforming Islamic thought against salafism. But my identification with the Islamic faith as a Muslim in no way obligates me or any Muslim to drink the Kool-aid of the Islamists even if they do control most Muslim institutions globally.</p>
<p>For those trying to pigeon-hole my Islamic philosophy, I am a devout Muslim raised in my youth in a conservative, orthodox, Sunni Muslim family in a small town in Wisconsin. I am neither an ideological mutation nor was I born in a vacuum. My parents escaped the despotic fascist regime of Syria in the mid-1960’s seeking the liberty and freedom of America. My grandparents were also conservative Muslims who raised their children to have a strong moral character and ethical upbringing free of corruption and grounded in Islam but not political Islam. Those values as a force for good, under God, were transmitted down our familial generations. While the specifics of our faith arose out of the Sunni tradition, the overarching ideas included some diverse Islamic  influences ranging from Sufi to orthodox to Quranist to name a few. Significant diversity existed within our family as it did among many other intellectuals from Syria. But there was also agreement on core moral principles and liberty. These modernists, moderates, and liberals have been lost in the intellectual wasteland of the battle between the likes of the secular thugs of the Assads of the world and the radical Islamists of the Ikhwan.</p>
<p>To pigeon-hole many Muslims into one theological construct is misleading given the lack of any Islamic mandate for a “Church” which communicates or excommunicates Sunni members. Many of the sects Tim describes have this type of regimented circumscribed Islam with fealty to their leaders that gives the sect’s thought leaders better control on the central message. However, most Sunnis I know (non-Islamists) do not have such a fealty to any specific imam or school and are profoundly decentralized.</p>
<p>Now certainly the Wahhabis and Salafists of the world practice takfir (defining who is and who is not Muslim) in an effort to control “membership” and ideology in the faith community. However, we, as anti-Islamists reject takfir and will not give up the domain of Islam to Islamists.</p>
<p>The reasons for the pre-Enlightenment fossilization of thought in Muslim majority countries are many. They include a need for deep generational reform of theology (Islamist foundations of Islam), education (illiteracy and lack of western influence),  economics (the lack of free markets), politics (the absence of democratic principles of real liberty with control by monarchs, theocrats, and autocrats), and culture (an endemic suffocating tribalism).</p>
<p>Many devout Muslims, like most youth, establish our moral compass of life under God within our superego long before we had the knowledge or the skill to investigate scriptural Qur’anic or Hadith exegesis. Thus, the moral lens through which we interpret our scripture is long established before we could ever fall prey to the fascist radical Islamic interpretations. But many are not immune to the supremacism of Islamism. There is a dire need for moderates to reinterpret the Qur’an and Hadith and dismiss ideas or sira not commensurate with modernity. (See <a href="http://www.fsmarchives.org/article.php?id=1269096" target="_blank">Part I</a>, <a href="http://www.fsmarchives.org/article.php?id=1324805" target="_blank">Part II</a>, <a href="http://www.fsmarchives.org/article.php?id=1330087" target="_blank">Part III</a> and <a href="http://www.fsmarchives.org/article.php?id=1336543" target="_blank">Part IV</a>)</p>
<p>I use the same non-political, anti-Islamist construct of Islam I learned from my parents to teach my own children about our faith while preserving conservative values not in conflict with American law or loyalty. That ultimately was why we formed our <a href="http://www.aifdemocracy.org/" target="_blank">American Islamic Forum for Democracy</a> in 2003 dedicated to defeating the root cause of terrorism- political Islam.</p>
<p>Tim and Robert and others may view this as heresy or marginal thought in Islam. I would disagree, but also admit that it is not predominant among the thought leaders of Sunni Islam. So the crux of the question is who and what defines Islam – all Muslims or only the subset of Muslims who are clerics? I do believe that it is a majority if not a significant plurality of Muslims that reject political Islam. We do obviously have a lot of work to prove this assertion. Our ideas are harder to find than those of the Islamists—so yes, ‘Houston, we do have a problem.&#8217;</p>
<p>But, our anti-Islamist reform can only happen against political Islam from a bottom up (lay to cleric) approach rather than the top down (cleric to lay) approach which Tim and Robert appear to be seeking. History shows that other reformation movements in Europe occurred that way when combined with a political liberty movement. Again, attempting to pigeon-hole the Muhammad Al-Qadri’s of the world as a &#8216;sect&#8217; does not help their movements and rather makes their fate sealed as marginal within the ‘House of Islam’.</p>
<p>The majority of the ulemaa (scholars) of the “House of Islam” are controlled by Islamists who use an authoritative shar’iah which is incompatible with the ideas of liberty and the separation of mosque and state. This is especially true for the hubs of central influence in Sunni thought in Saudi   Arabia and at Al-Azhar in Egypt. Anti-Islamist Muslims do know and understand our faith. But we are in dire need of developing new platforms to get <a href="http://www.aifdemocracy.org/news.php?id=5587" target="_blank">our voices</a> heard.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://blog.al.com/birmingham-news-commentary/2009/04/pious_muslims_are_needed_to_de_1.html" target="_blank">intellectual civil war</a> within the House of Islam will be the only way to figure out which Islam and whose Islam will ultimately prevail. To dismiss all of “Islam” as immoderate leaves without a platform your greatest allies for freedom&#8211; devotional anti-Islamist Muslims who worship God. We are the only ones I believe, with a tangible viable solution that will achieve the defeat of supremacist, radical Islamism. We are the only ones with a viable treatment to the ideological disease.</p>
<p><strong>Hamid: </strong>Thanks Jamie for organizing this symposium.</p>
<p>If we defined Islam in terms of what is being taught and promoted in mainstream Islamic books such the Tafseers and Fiqh, then Robert Spencer is absolutely correct is saying that moderate Islam does not exist. The problem is that this form of Islamic teaching is not counterbalanced by a theologically based peaceful interpretation of the religion. Until today, all main schools of jurisprudence in Islam accept violence in some way or another.</p>
<p>Dr. Jasser is correct is stating that many of these interpretations and jurisprudence books or Sharia are manmade. However, the reality is that this manmade version of the understanding of Islam is currently the most dominant one in the Muslim world. I agree with Dr. Jasser that there is a need for a reformation but I disagree with him that the reformation needs to occur from the bottom-up. Based on my experience within Islam, waiting for this “bottom-up” approach is likely to fail, as any small group of Muslims that starts the think differently will be considered by the majority and by leading authorities in the Muslim world as non-Muslims.</p>
<p>This is simply because denying some traditional ways of teachings is considered denying “Maaloom Mina AldeenBildarora’ (a fundamental belief in the faith) which make a Muslim an apostate (non-Muslim) for denying it. The change in my view needs to occur “Up-Bottom,” not the other way around. This can occur by exerting more pressure and criticism for the violent teachings that exist in mainstream theological Islam. Dr. Jasser’s view to have Islam without these authorities is very revolutionary and difficult or impractical to achieve.</p>
<p>I agree with Dr. Furnish that there are some elements of reform that already exist in the Muslim world; however, these elements of reform do not have a complete theological interpretation or jurisprudence that can stand against the current and dominant Salafi teaching within Islam.</p>
<p>My main point is that, what people generally mean as Islam (Tafseer, Hadith, Sira, Jurisprudence, Sharia) is certainly not peaceful. However, peaceful understanding of the religion is possible. Moderate Muslims such as Jasser and others do exist because they do not practice the traditional dominant theology and alternatively they have developed their own personal interpretations for the religion. <em>Until these personal interpretations become the mainstream type of teaching within Islam, I have to agree with Robert Spencer that moderate Islam does not exist.</em><strong> </strong>I will only change his phrase to be “moderate Islam does not <em>currently</em> exist.”</p>
<p><strong>Furnish: </strong>Robert Spencer makes a good point that many Muslim sectarians are considered “heretics” but he paints with an overbroad brush.  Not all Islamic sects are persecuted minorities: the Ibadis run Oman and constitute 70% of its population; the Alawis, while a minority, still run Syria; the Isma’ili minorities are certainly not persecuted in India, Tanzania or Britiain (although they are in Saudi Arabia—but who isn’t, besides Wahhabis?); and Sufis, while often at loggerheads with Wahhabis and Salafis, are popular and powerful in places like Senegal, Sudan and Indonesia.   And while the Islamic sects <em>in toto</em> are certainly a minority, somewhere around  7-8%  of the world’s Muslim population, that still amounts to perhaps 100 million people—twice that many if the Twelver Shi`is are included.  Luther certainly started with far fewer Christians, and yet he sparked a Reformation.</p>
<p>While I admire Dr. Jasser’s personal revival of Mu`tazilism (a rationalist Islamic ideology that was snuffed out in the 10<sup>th</sup> century AD), I fear his views are idiosyncratic within Sunni Islam—and my own research indicates that the closet analogs to what he preaches are found in those very sects whose degree of regimentation and cult-like devotion he somewhat overstates.  But even in those cases where a sect is at least partially predicated on charismatic leadership (the Isma’ilis; the Turkish Gülen movement; etc.), I would say that as long as the leader is telling his followers that jihad does NOT mean holy war—then that’s infinitely preferable to the “current and dominant Salafi teaching,” as Dr. Hamid so aptly puts it.</p>
<p>I agree with Dr. Hamid, regretfully, that Dr. Jasser’s hope for a grass-roots Islamic reformation from within Sunnism is very unlikely—another reason I favor putting our hope for such in sects. Dr. Jasser seems to forget that the Enlightenment could only take place after the Protestant Reformation had broken the monopoly of the Catholic hierarchy in Europe—and that the reformation of Christendom was in fact led by clerics (Luther, Calvin, Tyndale), NOT by layman. What Islam really needs right now are such reform-minded clerics, and these are found for the most part today among Islam’s sects, not its Sunni majority.</p>
<p><strong>Spencer: </strong>There is a certain dancing-on-the-precipice feel to this entire symposium. Dr. Jasser rejects the contention that his views amount to “heresy or marginal thought in Islam,” but acknowledges that they are “not predominant among the thought leaders of Sunni Islam.” You can say that again – I would doubt that he would be able to name even one among the “thought leaders of Sunni Islam” who would accept that there is, as Dr. Jasser puts it, any “significant distinction globally between ‘Islam’ as a personal spiritual faith (a personal <em>submission</em> to God, if you will), and the ‘House of Islam’ which more broadly includes the entire human corpus of Islamic scholarship, knowledge (ilm) and jurisprudence (shar’iah) as espoused by leading global Islamic jurists and thought leaders (a <em>‘submission’</em> to the House of Islam if you will).” Indeed, he would be hard-pressed to find even one among those “thought leaders of Sunni Islam” who would not classify this as a heresy.</p>
<p>Dr. Hamid, in contrast to Dr. Jasser himself, notes correctly that interpretations of Islam such as Dr. Jasser’s are personal, idiosyncratic, and non-traditional – a fact that is all too often glossed over by his enthusiastic and well-heeled non-Muslim backers, who would prefer to pretend that he represents the dominant mainstream. Dr. Hamid is also quite correct that “<em>Until these personal interpretations become the mainstream type of teaching within Islam, I have to agree with Robert Spencer that moderate Islam does not exist.</em>” He remains optimistic, however, maintaining that “peaceful understanding of the religion is possible” and changing my phrase “moderate Islam does not exist” to “moderate Islam does not <em>currently</em> exist.”</p>
<p>I don’t claim to know the future, and history is full of events that would have been dismissed as impossible by people of previous centuries. I have never ruled out the possibility that some form of Islam could one day arise that teaches that Muslims must live together with non-Muslims as equals on an indefinite basis in a state that does not establish a religion. I have simply tried to be realistic about the prospects of such an entity.</p>
<p>As Dr. Hamid notes, denying certain Islamic teachings makes one an apostate in the eyes of nearly every mainstream Islamic authority around the world today, and apostasy can bring a sentence of death. It was only after the prospect of such a death sentence was removed in Reformation Europe that Luther, Calvin, Tyndale and the rest were able to gain large followings and influence. But the theological foundations for such a death sentence are much stronger in Islam than they ever were in Christianity. Will, then, it one day become possible for genuine and sincere Islamic reformers to try to win over Muslims to their point of view without fear of violent reprisal? Perhaps it is already happening in the West – witness Dr. Jasser’s health and prosperity, although I daresay his influence is far larger among non-Muslims seeking reassurance than it is among his coreligionists. In any case, the murder of Rashad Khalifa in Tucson, Arizona in the early 1990s stands as a cautionary notice that the execution of those deemed heretics and apostates can and does happen even here.</p>
<p>Dr. Furnish, meanwhile, makes the leap from the numerical dominance of various Islamic sects in various areas to the idea that they will become the vanguard of a Luther-like Reformation. His demographic data is undeniable; however, the idea that these groups will become the leaders of a movement to create a truly peaceful theological and legal construction of Islam is belied by his willingness to include the Twelver Shias among them. Twelver Shi’ism is, of course, the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran – and yet the mullahs of Tehran are hardly paragons of Islamic moderation. His inclusion of the Turkish Gulen movement is also troubling: Fethullah Gulen may not wish to lead a violent jihad, but does he want to impose Sharia upon Turkey? That is undeniable. And Sharia, with its draconian punishments and institutionalized denial of rights to women and non-Muslims, is hardly “moderate.”</p>
<p>In any case, while I hope that truly reform-minded clerics do gain wide influence, I am afraid that the more influence they gain, and the more genuine reform they advocate, the more likely it will become that they will be labeled heretics and persecuted. I would be glad to be proven wrong in this. But I don’t think I will be.</p>
<p><strong>Jasser: </strong>While I reserve disagreement on a number of the historical analogies and pigeon-holing made here about Muslims and Islam, let me address in the space I have how I believe Muslims can move forward. Let me emphasize- <em>forward.</em> One of the differences often between historians (agents of the past) and innovators (agents of change) is that innovators use the tools and lessons of history to think out of the box and create and promote a new and often unpopular paradigm. Often new paradigms that spend years floundering can all of a sudden propel into dominance. Some of the lessons of history are essential, but innovators <em>refuse</em> to pattern themselves after any previous human mindset. Today’s Islam needs innovators.</p>
<p>Groundbreaking innovation starts with a meme which leads to a <em>tipping point</em> that creates a new platform for those that share revolutionary ideas. My own lifetime has been filled with  experiences with thousands of pietistic Muslims from almost every sect of Islam who reject political Islam. But obviously key elements necessary for a palpable Muslim liberty movement to counter Islamism are missing.</p>
<p>To look toward any one sect and pigeon-hole any single moderate Muslim’s modernism as a product of only that particular sect belies the diversity needed for a successful global movement against political Islam. Each sect will always have its own internecine biases about the other sect. That is not the obstacle. Looking <em>forward</em> we must find some overriding memes necessary to defeat pervasive Islamist collectivism. Sectarianism is always trumped by Islamism. So, looking forward, a meme of liberty can rise above political Islam and sectarianism for Muslims.</p>
<p>My bulwark against political Islam has always been m belief in our inalienable rights, freedom of speech, the Establishment clause, classical liberalism, and especially the separation of mosque and state. Once devotional Muslim youth believe in this, many will take these foundational ideas and mature into theologians who transform Islam away from political Islam.</p>
<p>Hamid misunderstands me. I agree, Islam will always certainly need to be grounded in its own sound theological scholarship, but that is a late stage not the first phase in modernization and reform.</p>
<p>Religious teachings of today are molded by the environment. It took Christendom 1789 years until a government led by Christians had a document which was protected by an Establishment Clause and the separation of Church and State. And even that brilliantly codified Constitution and Bill of Rights took centuries, a Civil War, and a civil rights movement to effectuate its core principles in a way that truly respected the human rights of all its citizens as the founding fathers intended.</p>
<p>At this time, modernization of Islamic theology can become viral. But sadly so can the scourge of pan-Islamism. A top-down change would surely fail, as it has, because there is little popular respect for innovation, individualism, or liberty among most of the products of oppressive Muslim run institutions around the world.</p>
<p>In fact, Tim’s reference to the ruling Alawite minority in Syria as somehow exemplifying the hope for the rights of Muslim minorities is very concerning. It disregards the toxic environment which has put political Islam into overdrive. The Assad regimes have been some of the most despotic barbaric regimes of the last century. The only example Hafez and his son Bashar Assad provide is how to systematically and generationally destroy a nation and its people. No modern anything can come from that environment let alone an enlightened Islam. Thugs like Assad, Saddam, Qaddafi, Mubarak and others use religion as a tool for oppression. They fuel political Islam when it suits them while murdering Islamists when they threaten them. The moderates are lost in the middle between the secular fascists and theocratic fascists. This battle has created an untenable foundation of corruption, tribalism, ignorance, and fear.</p>
<p>Look at the Green revolution of Iran or the Cedars Revolution of Lebanon- all millions strong.  It is easier to find a desire for reformist anti-Islamist movements in many Muslim majority nations like Egypt, Lebanon, and Iran where the population knows what happens when the Islamists get control. Yet their environment is missing the empowering sustenance of western liberty.</p>
<p>The solution forward must come from America’s safer laboratory. Many American Muslims understand how a nation can be free and pious without theological coercion from government. The seeds of change forward can be found in some scholars who are looking to the west for innovation within Islam. Just look at some of the recent work on secularism by Abdullahi Al-Na’im, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Against-Islamic-Extremism-Writings-al-%60Ashmawy/dp/0813025435" target="_blank">Muhammad al-Ashmawy</a>, Alija Izetbegovic, or also many of the Sufi imams mentioned already like Al-Qadri’s recent work. This is not a blanket endorsement of any one of them. But much of their writings do point <em>forward</em> not backward.</p>
<p>In this wired viral planet, no longer is an ideology like political Islam hermetically sealed in its own history and aquarium. While Robert, Tim, and Hamid look into the aquarium of “an Islam” for the Muslims they study, they ignore a broad swath of westernized Muslims who read their Qur’an, pray, fast, give charity, and supplicate devotionally to God in a purpose-driven patriotic life dedicated to liberty and Americanism who hold another Islam.</p>
<p>The obstacles to the predominance of modern Islam over political Islam are many&#8211; frequent death threats, blind corruptive tribalism, societal and financial power of Islamists, and Muslim illiteracy. This is not to mention the facilitation by western media and government of Islamists due to political correctness.</p>
<p>Change cannot be imposed upon a rotten foundation. Lasting modernization will be generational and must be built on the ground first with Muslim institutions based in a liberal education, free markets, and universal human rights.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Hamid: </strong>I agree with Dr. Furnish that Luther started with far fewer Christians, and yet he sparked a Reformation. The dynamics, however, of reformation are different between Islam and Christianity. The concept of killing apostates is not an integral part of the Gospel of Jesus. On the contrary, Redda Law that allow killing apostates is a fundamental part of the Hadith of prophet Mohamed. For reformation to happen in Islam, Muslims need first to abandon some of the Sahih (accurate) hadith. The dilemma is that while Muslims can stop Redda Law as it is not part of the Quran, denying a Sahih hadith makes a person an apostate according to the traditional teachings in Islam. The Muslims need to stop this catch 22 situation to allow for reformation to occur.</p>
<p>Separating the Mosque from the state in Islam as Dr. Jasser suggests is certainly considered a form of heresy according to the standard Islamic theology as refusing to implement some Islamic laws and replacing them with secular laws is considered “Kufr” (act that makes a person an Infidel) according to traditional understanding of this Quranic verse (Al-Ma&#8217;idah [5:44]). Reinterpretation of this verse is needed first to allow for Jasser’s view to work. This is certainly possible since the verse was talking about the Jews who refused to apply the Torah.</p>
<p>I agree with Robert Spencer that the current situation in the Muslim world and the historical and theological depth of the problem in Islamic teaching should not make any person very “optimistic”. However, the use of the Internet and the speed of communications that we witness today gives me some hope that a change in the Muslim world can happen.</p>
<p>I can see the view of Dr. Jasser that the theological stage should not be the first phase in modernization and reform, but I have a completely different view about this issue. Any trial for modernity in Islam will always face resistance because of the current theology. For example, you cannot teach equality of women while the teaching in Islam teaches that women are half of a man as a witness or that men can beat their women. Removing the obstacle first is fundamental for making the change or in other words changing the theology is pivotal to facilitate the process of modernity itself.</p>
<p>I also disagree with Jasser’s view that “A top-down change would surely fail”. Generally speaking, Muslims feel much more comfortable to accept a change in religious theology when it is approved by the leading Islamic authorities such as Al-Azhar University. Accordingly, “A top-down change” is, in my view, imperative for a reformation in Islam to occur. Some elements of reformation can still happen at the grass root level but their impact and effect will be minimal compared to the top-down change.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Ok, last round and final thoughts gentlemen.<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Furnish: </strong>Again, I agree with Mr. Spencer regarding the inherent violent strain of mainstream, historical Sunni Islam (which, I must stress, stems from a literal reading of the violent passages of the Qur’an) regarding not just apostates but non-Muslims in general;  however, to equate “mainstream” with existence <em>per se</em> is ahistorical.   And of course sometimes, even today, Islam’s apostates and heretics are executed—the plight of Ahmadis in Pakistan and Indonesia is a case in point. But such persecution has not even come close to wiping out that group, and they stand as a living rebuke to those who would employ Qur’anic teachings to do so.</p>
<p>Mr. Spencer finds ironic (if not contradictory) my adducing of the Twelver Shi`is as reform-minded, based on the neo-fundamentalism fervor regnant in Tehran since 1979.  However, <em>vilayet-i faqih</em>, the “rule of the [Shi`i] jurisprudent” devised by Khomeini, is by no means universally accepted even within Twelver Shi`ism; in fact, the modern world’s two most prominent Shi`i ayatollahs—Iran’s recently-deceased Montazeri, and Iraq’s al-Sistani—both are on record as opposing the Khomeinist system and regime.  The salient point is that Shi`ism, unlike Sunnism, allows for <em>ijtihad</em>—and thus contains at least the seeds of new approaches to the Qur’an and Hadith.  And Robert and I simply disagree about Gülen and his movement—I think his neo-Sufism is truly moderate, not a <em>shari`ah</em> Trojan Horse.</p>
<p>I will reiterate my respect and support for Dr. Jasser in his efforts to drag the Islamic world kicking and screaming into the 21<sup>st</sup>—or at least the 16<sup>th</sup>—century.  But I simply disagree that “sectarianism is always trumped by Islamism.”  That may largely be true for parts of the Arab world, but it’s certainly not the case in Africa, where sects and Sufi orders are often more respected and more legitimate than the Wahhabis, Salafis and jihadists. As to my adducing of the Alawis of Syria: I was not referring to the undeniably brutal, repressive al-Assad family regime that runs the country, but to the theological beliefs of the neo-Shi`i sect that truly is Alawism, the syncretistic (and borderline Christian) teachings of which are far afield from strict, <em>shari`ah-</em>based Sunnism. Just as the Khomeinist regime does not represent the totality of Twelver Shi`i thought, neither does the Alawi clique in Damascus speak for all Alawis.</p>
<p>I totally agree with my friend Zuhdi that “change cannot be imposed upon a rotten foundation.” Yet many Muslims, Sunni and sectarian, blanch at rebuilding Islam upon a Western, especially American, foundation—which is why I propose that working with, and drawing ideas from, the Shi`is (Zaydis and Isma’ilis, as well as Twelvers), the Sufis, the Barelwis, et al., might very well provide a sounder, Islamic foundation, after which the rest of the revamped Islamic domicile could be built with more Western materials.</p>
<p>Dr. Hamid is entirely correct (as was Robert) that the New Testament does not promote killing apostates, and that this made a Christian Reformation markedly easier than would be the case in Islam, wherein Hadiths considered Muhammadan sanction such killing.  And in fact, I don’t think Dr. Hamid goes far enough—not just the traditions of Islam, but the Qur’an itself, justifies and indeed mandates killing of “unbelievers, as most famously in Sura al-Tawbah [IX]:5: “when the sacred months have passed, kill the unbelievers/idolaters wherever you find them…capture, besiege, ambush them….”  But, at the risk of redundancy, the problem here is reading the text literally, as mandated in Sunnism—and as NOT adhered to by, for a prominent example, the Isma’ilis.</p>
<p>Finally, I agree with Dr. Hamid, <em>contra</em> Dr. Jassser, that a top-down reforming of Islamic teachings could possibly work better than a grass-roots one.  Yet I disagree, based on a close reading of Islamic history, that this imposed (new) paradigm should be a Westernized, desacralized, frankly idiosyncratic “Sunnism Lite”—which would not only taste bad to most Muslims outside America, it would certainly be less filling than reformist ideas with legitimate Islamic ingredients, as is certainly the case with the Isma’ilis, Barelwis, Ibadis and Haqqani Sufis.</p>
<p><strong>Spencer: </strong>I find the disagreements among the panel interesting. Dr. Jasser thinks “a top-down change would surely fail,” while Dr. Hamid believes that a “top-down change” is “imperative for a reformation in Islam.”</p>
<p>Dr. Jasser finds “concerning” Dr. Furnish’s “reference to the ruling Alawite minority in Syria as somehow exemplifying the hope for the rights of Muslim minorities.” Dr. Furnish defends his including the Twelver Shia as among the “reform-minded” in Islam, pointing to their acceptance of the concept of ijtihad, as opposed to the Sunnis who generally reject it. But the Twelver Shia, like the other sects mentioned in the course of this discussion, have been around for over a thousand years and yet with all that time to practice ijtihad they have not managed to come up with a version of Islam that is not supremacist and does not teach that unbelievers must be subjugated as inferiors under the rule of Islamic law.</p>
<p>This is not to say that nothing can happen except what has happened before. Islamic reform certainly could happen, and Dr. Hamid’s point about modern communications media making it more likely than ever before is well taken. But the disagreements among the most optimistic of the present panelists shows that Islamic reform circa 2010 remains largely an abstraction, a postulate, an intellectual construct. No one has ever actually seen it, and so everyone imagines it in a different way. Islam has been around for 1,400 years, and yet there is still no mainstream sect or school of jurisprudence that teaches the separation of mosque and state, the equality of rights of women with men, the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, or the equality of rights of unbelievers with believers.</p>
<p>Will such an Islam ultimately appear? I would never say that something could not happen; history is full of too many surprises for that. But so much of American foreign and domestic policy is based on the assumption that such an Islam not only will appear, but already exists, and is the Islam of the broad majority of Muslims. The consequences of investing so much in this erroneous assumption grow more apparent with every Nidal Hasan and Faisal Shahzad.</p>
<p>Dr. Jasser points optimistically to “a broad swath of westernized Muslims who read their Qur’an, pray, fast, give charity, and supplicate devotionally to God in a purpose-driven patriotic life dedicated to liberty and Americanism.” Great – but insofar as such Muslims actually reject the material in the Qur’an and Sunnah that forms the basis for political, supremacist, and violent Islam, they will find themselves under threat. It was again Dr. Jasser himself who summed this up: “The obstacles to the predominance of modern Islam over political Islam are many&#8211; frequent death threats, blind corruptive tribalism, societal and financial power of Islamists, and Muslim illiteracy.”</p>
<p>I wish that weren’t the case. I hope that some genuine Islamic reform ultimately succeeds. But let’s not kid ourselves as to its prospects, or about how much non-Muslims can or should actually depend upon it.</p>
<p><strong>Jasser: </strong>In the end, Robert Spencer here seems to agree with me regarding the major obstacles I listed to genuine reform. Yet, he concludes a bit dismissively, “let’s not kid ourselves as to its prospects, or about how much non-Muslims can or should actually depend on it.” I can somewhat understand the sense of frustration- since that is my daily battle against the forces of political Islam. However, without a coordinated strategy to overcoming those obstacles to genuine Islamic reform, then what are we left to do as a nation? How do we, <em>moving</em> <em>forward,</em> sustain security against the growing militant Islamist threat? Is that not the purpose of this discourse? These discussions matter little in the absence of a strategy.</p>
<p>I do certainly part with Robert on many of his ideas (not covered in this symposium) with regards to accounts of the morality of the Prophet Muhammad and many conclusions about the faith, the Qur’an, and spiritual path of Islam I and my family have chosen to embrace.  However, ultimately, my deeper more relevant quarrel, is with my own coreligionists—and some of their ubiquitous Muslim sources that provide supremacist Islamist narratives.</p>
<p>I do believe as most Americans do, that all of us agree on the <em>goal</em> which is the intellectual neutralization of the supremacist agenda of Islamists and their political Islam. Simple kinetic neutralization alone against militants will never be enough. My strategy, our strategy, at the <a href="http://www.aifdemocracy.org/" target="_blank">American Islamic Forum for Democracy</a> (AIFD) is transparent and built upon a need forward for a liberty movement by devotional Muslims within Islam against Islamism. We must have a positive outlook for the victory of liberty rather than a pessimistic one basically based in a narrative of an impending global clash between Muslims and non-Muslims.</p>
<p>Even pessimists need to have a strategy. Disagreements on history matter a lot less than a discussion on strategy and where we think our nation and counter-radicalization work should head. In fact there are strong indications that the pessimistic narrative is fodder for radical Islamists and helps Islamists attract impressionable youth who want to believe that America is at war with Islam and Muslims. Rather, I believe the ideologies we promote at AIFD to be the type that ultimately can drive Muslim youth away from Islamism toward a modern Islam rooted in American nationalism and Constitutionalism toward a victory for freedom.</p>
<p>We will also need to breakdown walls of deep denial in the west rooted in political correctness if Muslims are going to get the long overdue major nudges toward modernity and reform. But, then what? Does Tim Furnish want us to believe that some of the more modernized minority sects or those more amenable to modernization will win out in the war of ideas? How would that happen and from which sect or sects? Does Dr. Hamid want us to be confident that there will be a post-modern imam or scholar who will arise to marginalize political Islam? How will that transpire in the current environment?</p>
<p>I do hope readers leave here, however, understanding that not only does the solution need to come from devout Muslims within the “House of Islam”, but we all desperately need to develop a coherent, cooridinated, and constructive domestic and international strategy to defeat political Islam- no different than we did in the Cold War against the global spread of communism. Therefore, it stands to reason that all intellectuals in the west should do whatever they can to facilitate the authentic and moderate Muslim allies of the United States who are working tirelessly to break down those obstacles.</p>
<p>That makes a lot more sense than sitting back and watching, like a car accident, the marginalization or demise of genuine, credible, and devotional Muslim reformists. Dr. Hamid and I agree on some but do disagree as to whether the reform will begin from the top or the grass roots. I have no faith at all in those “leading” inherently corrupt institutions like Al-Azhar University in Cairo or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ever completely purging themselves of their deep rooted intellectual and economic foundations in political Islam and salafism. The only solution I see lies in building new honest Muslim institutions founded in genuine classically liberal academics, free markets, and morally sound Islamic teachings. This reform will only be authentic if it remains separated from government and integration into national legal systems (<em>shar’iah).</em> Thus, the primary protection for Muslims against Islamist supremacism is a belief and enforcement of the same ideas that created the Establishment Clause of our Constitution. This new paradigm or meme &#8211;the separation of mosque and state&#8211; will need generational change just as the Muslim Brotherhood has spread its ideas in the last century. It is time for the ideas of liberty to take the offense! And we can do this neither alone, nor with those who firmly believe that there can be no modern Islam.</p>
<p>I and my family and many other Muslims have lived and believe in an Islam and modernization of the message of the Prophet Muhammad that is not in conflict with our oath to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that the only winning strategy is to develop those ideas of liberty within an Islamic consciousness through the separation of mosque and state – our <em>Muslim Liberty Project</em>. This project is the Muslim counter-narrative, the offensive for the ideas of liberty and against the ideas of the Brotherhood Project. While I may be proven wrong, and I have absorbed significant critique of my own lifetime of understanding of Islamic history, I do not believe I have heard here any other convincing alternative winning strategies in the long term against political Islam. After the critique of my vision or anyone’s vision, how do we move forward? That’s what we are doing every day. How are you providing alternative visions that can neutralize the ideas that threaten our security?</p>
<p><strong>Hamid: </strong>It is good that Furnish mentioned the Ahmadeia example as the situation of Ahmadeia in the Muslim world illustrates the fact that one of the major problems that the Muslim world faces is that it cannot tolerate any new or different interpretations of its religious texts. This represents a major obstacle for reformation. Teaching the Muslim world the concept of tolerance to other views is vital to assist the reformation of Islam.</p>
<p>The verse that Furnish used to indicate that the Quran supports killing Apostates is not traditionally used to justify killing apostates. In most approved Tafseers and Interpretations the rule of killing apostates is based on the Hadith rather than the Quran. Recently, some Salafists tried to use this verse to justify killing apostates mainly to prove that the Quranic groups &#8211; who disagree with killing the apostates &#8211; are wrong. Traditionally, Redda Law is based only on the Sunna.</p>
<p>I may only partially agree with Furnish that in some areas in Africa, Sufi orders are often more respected and more legitimate than the Wahhabis, Salafis and jihadists. However, we have to admit that Salafies are gaining ground, e.g. in Somalia and Sharia-controlled parts of Nigeria. This is partially due to the lack of strong theological foundations for many of the Sufi practices and the tremendous support of Salafism by the wealthy Wahhabists.</p>
<p>I support the view of Mr. Spencer rather than Furnish that the Twelver Shi`is are not truly reform-minded &#8211; as their belief system still accepts the violent edicts of Sharia. However, I can say that this particular group has more potential to reform than Sunnis as they still allow Ijtihad.</p>
<p>I also agree with Mr. Spencer that the current situation of Islam is not very promising. Removing the obstacles to reformation such as lack of the separation of mosque and state, inequality of rights of women with men, religiously based suppression on the freedom of speech, lack of the equality of rights of unbelievers with believers may mean for some the end of Islam.  Despite this I still see hope that Non Literal teaching of Islam can make a real reformation within Islam.</p>
<p>The efforts of Dr. Jasser in American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) to promote a liberty movement by devotional Muslims within Islam against Islamism must be saluted. The concept is great and I will add only that giving a strong theological base to the views of this organization will be very helpful. Asking Muslims to separate between Mosque and Church and adopt secularism while traditional Islamic text teaches the opposite is a major obstacle to the progress of these secular views. Giving a theological base for secularism within Islam is needed.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Timothy Furnish, Tawfik Hamid, Dr.  M. Zuhdi Jasser and Robert Spencer, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium.</p>
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		<title>The Road to Big Government</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rick-moran/the-road-to-big-government/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-road-to-big-government</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 04 May 2010 04:01:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rick Moran]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=59383</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why “comprehensive reform” will lead to more government and less freedom.]]></description>
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<p>The Obama administration came to power promising to &#8220;transform&#8221; America and they have attempted to make good on that promise. The White House and Congress have broken with the American past in ways that few administrations have done, unmooring the ship of state from safe harbor and sailing ahead without the slightest idea of where their &#8220;transformation&#8221; is truly taking us.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s more than just establishing a Euro-style social democracy in a nation that consciously rejected the European model of government 221 years ago. That would be bad enough under any circumstances &#8212; even when justified by their belief that no crisis should go to waste, and that the economic downturn offered the opportunity to greatly enhance the power of the federal government.</p>
<p>To that end, the Democratic Party and its leftist allies have chosen the most monumentally imprudent gamble since the New Deal, with little thought to the unforeseen consequences that will flow from their efforts.</p>
<p>The manner in which they are seeking to impose their new-fangled vision of America on the rest of us is by using the moniker of &#8220;comprehensive reform&#8221; on three of the most important sectors of our society &#8212; health, banking, and energy &#8212; to radically alter the structure of government, and forever change the relationship between the ordinary citizen and Washington,  D.C.</p>
<p>Not content with seeking to wrap government&#8217;s tentacles around those three vital economic spheres of influence, the Democrats are also seeking comprehensive reform of immigration and labor law &#8212; both of which have far more to do with enhancing their political position with electoral allies than with addressing problems in those areas.</p>
<p>Whenever a politician says he wants &#8220;comprehensive reform&#8221; of anything, grab your wallet. History has shown us that such efforts always lead to unintended consequences that redound unfavorably to the individual citizen&#8217;s wealth and liberty. Whenever government&#8217;s reach exceeds its grasp &#8212; as in passing a 3,000-page health insurance reform bill &#8212; it is certain that we will be paying more, getting less, and enjoying fewer choices, thus incrementally reducing our freedoms.</p>
<p>Take comprehensive campaign finance reform. Democrats are apoplectic over the recent <em>Citizens United </em>decision that tossed out several odious portions of the McCain-Feingold Act regarding corporate participation in the political process. But that act was meant to alter the 1974 comprehensive campaign finance reform amendments that gave us the Federal Election Commission, limits on contributions, and disclosure requirements. At the time, we were assured that the &#8220;reforms&#8221; would reduce the influence of special interests in the electoral process while curbing the appetites of &#8220;fat cats&#8221; to contribute. How&#8217;s that working out for you guys?</p>
<p>Each and every &#8220;reform&#8221; in campaign finance has led to the ludicrous spectacle of special interest lobbyists finding giant loopholes. The unintended consequences of well-intentioned reform have been a bigger role for special interests, a larger slice of fundraising being done by fat cats, and more corruption of electoral politics. It&#8217;s hard to imagine how anything decided by the Supreme Court in <em>Citizens United</em> could give corporations and unions any more influence with candidates and political parties than they enjoyed previously.</p>
<p>With health insurance reform, we still don&#8217;t know where some of the slippery slopes will lead, or what kind of massive dislocations are in store for us as a result of Congress passing this comprehensive monstrosity. But even before most of this comprehensive reform bill goes into effect, we are seeing the fruits of Congress&#8217; imprudence. Told by almost every opponent of the measure that comprehensive reform would cause insurance premiums to skyrocket, Democrats referred to those making such charges as <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/201002250042">&#8220;liars&#8221;</a> and assured us day after day that premiums would actually come down.</p>
<p>The president&#8217;s own Health and Human Services Department begged to differ. More than a week prior to the final vote, Medicare&#8217;s Office of the Actuary <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100423/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_law_costs;_ylt=Av3ZBzS5NQb8WEBazpB2ENes0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNvaDA5c2s2BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNDIzL3VzX2hlYWx0aF9jYXJlX2xhd19jb3N0cwRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzEEcG9zAzIEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcnkEc2xrA3JlcG9ydGhlYWx0aA--">delivered a report</a> concluding that premiums for individuals and companies would rise significantly under Obamacare. There is <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0410/Actuary_denies_delaying_report.html">some debate </a>over whether the report could have come out prior to the vote (whether it would have changed anybody&#8217;s mind is another question) but the fact remains; the rise in premium costs were not intended by the president or congress and yet, the unanticipated has become reality.</p>
<p>Of course, this is the tip of the iceberg. The same will hold true for comprehensive financial reform now being considered by the senate. Despite differences in the Senate and House bills, there is going to be some kind of <a href="http://www.investmentadvisor.com/news/2010/3/Pages/Banking-Committee-Passes-Financial-Reform-Bill.aspx">&#8220;consumer protection&#8221; agency</a>. The thought of government &#8220;protecting&#8221; consumers or anyone else should give us all pause. In this specific case, the House bill would set up a board to determine whether financial instruments &#8212; stocks, mutual funds, mortgages &#8212; were too complex for the consumer to understand when the broker sold the product. Aside from protecting us from our own stupidity, the board will have the power to come down like a ton of bricks on both the broker and the company employing him with fines and even jail time.</p>
<p>The makeup of the board would be determined <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/03/dodds-bureau-of-consumer-financial-protection/37528/">by the president</a>. Imagine the politics that could be played in this scenario if a large financial institution won&#8217;t contribute to Democrats or otherwise play ball with the party in power. The board&#8217;s discretionary power would be immense and much mischief could be in the offing if the House version of the agency becomes law.</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t matter what putative tasks that government wants to assign for itself, anytime that Congress comprehensively tries to address a supposed injustice, or take on a big problem, it is a given that government will carve out a role greater than it had previous to the reform. It is a sure means of growing the size of the federal behemoth. Unintended consequences notwithstanding, you can take that to your federally run bank and cash it.</p>
<p>Will &#8220;comprehensive immigration reform&#8221; slow the number of illegals coming into this country? That&#8217;s what we will be told it is intended to do. Will making it easier to set up a union shop via the so-called &#8220;card check&#8221; bill &#8212; the most comprehensive &#8220;reform&#8221; of labor law in a generation &#8212; raise wages and increase job opportunities? That&#8217;s the bilge that will be pumped out of Washington when the Democrats try and sell the undemocratic measure. Will cap-and-trade lower the emissions of greenhouse gasses by one molecule? Not on your life; but it sure will give the feds a stranglehold on energy production in America.</p>
<p>Prudence as a civic virtue has disappeared from public life. It&#8217;s just not the style in these days of massive, nation-changing legislation and a president with one eye on the polls and the other on the history books. One of Cicero&#8217;s <a href="http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/civ-cicero-virtue01.htm">Four Cardinal Virtues</a>, prudence, he wrote, &#8220;is the knowledge of what is good, what is bad, and what is neutral.&#8221; <a href="http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html">Russell Kirk </a>believed that prudence was one of the ten most important conservative principles, saying, &#8220;[a]ny public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity.&#8221; It would seem that both classical and contemporary philosophers had a better handle on what the liberals are doing than Republicans in Congress.</p>
<p>In an age where anything is justified in the cause of &#8220;social justice,&#8221; or advancing &#8220;positive rights,&#8221; the Left&#8217;s massive attempts at &#8220;comprehensive&#8221; reform are unsettling society, discarding America&#8217;s first principles, and uncoupling citizens from the traditions that have been lovingly and courageously handed down by our ancestors at great cost in blood and treasure. It is being done without so much as a sniff in the direction of continuity in government, as Democrats seek to shatter convention and substitute an alien philosophy that alters society in ways that most of those who voted for &#8220;change&#8221; in 2008 could never have dreamed. What is really needed in America today is not comprehensive reform but a comprehensive cleaning of our House – and the Senate.</p>
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		<title>The Real Threat: British Nukes?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/the-real-threat-british-nukes/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-real-threat-british-nukes</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:03:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Welcome to the anti-nuke campaign of the Churches of England, Scotland and Wales. ]]></description>
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<p>British  churches, suffering from shrinking attendance, membership and influence, want to  further diminish their nation’s influence by urging its nuclear  disarmament.</p>
<p>The pathway to  international peace is for Great Britain first to place all its nukes under  international control and then to abolish nukes altogether, according to “Now  Is  the Time,” an anti-nuke campaign by the Churches of England, Scotland and  Wales, plus the British Methodists, Quakers, Baptists, and Reformed, along with  parts of the Catholic Bishops’ conferences of England, Wales and Scotland.</p>
<p>“The Church of  Scotland has long held the conviction that nuclear weapons serve no useful  purpose for humanity,” the Moderator of the once formidable Church of Scotland  recently disclaimed.  “We and others in the Christian family have led the way in  challenging the morality of nuclear weapons. Our human calling is to choose life  over death and the alleviation of poverty over nuclear weapons.&#8221;</p>
<p>In verbiage  straight out of the 1980’s era nuclear freeze campaigns, the Scottish church  moderator posits that dollars funding nukes equals dollars taken from starving  children.  In fact, then as now, nuclear weapons are generally less expensive  than their conventional alternatives.   The American nuclear umbrella protected  Western Europe from Soviet aggression partly because the U.S. and NATO were  unwilling to sustain conventional forces equal to the mammoth Red Army’s.</p>
<p>Religious Left  anti-nuclear slogans pretend that all military expenditures further impoverish  the already destitute. But the total military expenditures of all Western  democracies, even at the Cold War’s height, were a fraction of total wealth, and  never came close to equaling the equivalent expenditures of the Soviet Union and  other totalitarian adversaries.  The pose that military defense harms the poor  ignores that a sufficient military posture helps to ensure peace and freedom for  all.  How can the value of such a gift be minimized?</p>
<p>Oddly, the  Religious Left, despite its claimed spiritual interests, tends to focus  exclusively on material benefits.  An unrestricted welfare state is for it  always more important than more ethereal goals such as liberty.  &#8220;The time to  scrap nuclear arsenals is now,” the Scottish church moderator insisted.  “At a  time when voters are asking difficult questions about the best use of tax  revenues for the benefit of the maximum number of citizens we have to consider  the financial implications as well as the moral. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation  Treaty is an opportunity to make that difference and to save lives for  generations to come.”</p>
<p>“Now Is the  Time” from the British churches, along with similar disarmament campaigns from  the international Religious Left, is focused on the Non-Proliferation Treaty  Review Conference next month in New York.   Although purportedly concerned about  non-proliferation, the Religious Left naturally is never very concerned about  rogue regimes like Iran’s or North Korea’s procuring nukes.  Instead, its focus  is always on disarming the United States or Great Britain.  Ostensibly, disarmed  Western democracies will serve as irresistible moral examples to radical  Islamist clerics and North Korean apparatchiks, along with other tyrannies that  believe nukes, justifiably, will expand their sinister global  influence.</p>
<p>Of course, the  Religious Left fails to distinguish morally between Western democracies seeking  to defend their people and deter war and tyrannical rogue regimes focused  exclusively on perpetuating their villainy.  If anything, the Religious Left  believes the democratic West is morally inferior to its adversaries.  But more  profoundly, the Religious Left neglects the traditions of its own professed  faith by pretending that human nature is perfectible and that justice can be  achieved through simple good will.   The Religious Left is not interested that  nuclear armed Western democracies have in fact deterred countless wars while  upholding the freedoms of their own peoples and spreading those freedoms  internationally.  And the Religious Left will never understand that a disarmed  West, particularly a pacifist United States, would only open a cavernous power  vacuum that far more sinister powers would lustily attempt to fill, creating  ever greater dangers to peace and liberty for all.</p>
<p>In short, the Religious Left and its well intentioned fellow travelers focus  on the world as they wish rather than a world as it is.  “We believe that the  use or threat of use of weapons of mass destruction is immoral,” proclaimed  Welsh church prelates last month.  “We owe it to our children and our  grandchildren to seize the opportunity to put in place a new legally binding  verifiable and universal agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons.”</p>
<p>The Welsh churchmen acknowledged the “spread and increasing accessibility of  nuclear technology and the threat that this poses to our security.”  But  naturally, they did not name any rogue states or describe why “our security”  should even be a Christian concern, since the Religious Left prefers to  denigrate “security” as an idol that true people of faith renounce in favor of  trust and harmony.   These churchmen said they were “encouraged” by reductions  in the American and Russian nuclear arsenals.  But how did the U.S. and the old  Soviet Union move away from nuclear confrontation?  Was it by following the  Religious Left’s demand for American unilateral disarmament or was it instead by  American resolution until the Soviet Union collapsed and neither nation had any  major strategic interest in overwhelming the other?  The Religious Left prefers  not to answer this question.</p>
<p><em>“Most Christians believe that economic,  social and political action is the best way to build positive relationships with  countries that are perceived as a threat, in a world where peace, justice and  security go hand in hand,” enthuses the Archbishop of Wales.  But the Cold War  would not have ended so relatively peacefully had the United States relied  strictly on “economic, social and political action.”  The Welsh Archbishop  concludes:  “We cannot continue to threaten other countries by our possession of  nuclear weapons, and at the same time denounce theirs.” </em></p>
<p>Who in the world  today loses sleep because Great Britain has nukes, besides the Welsh Archbishop  and a few other similarly wooly minded British clerics?  Spiritually and  politically mature church prelates theoretically might offer helpful moral  counsel on nuclear weapons. But more often than not, the more outspoken clerics  in Britain and elsewhere merely echo the morally numb Religious Left in treating  all nations as morally indistinguishable from naughty children in a sand  box.</p>
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		<title>Valerie Jarrett: Obama’s New Nuclear Advisor?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/tait-trussell/valerie-jarrett-obama%e2%80%99s-new-nuclear-advisor/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=valerie-jarrett-obama%25e2%2580%2599s-new-nuclear-advisor</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:04:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tait Trussell]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Is the radical recruiter of Van Jones behind the administration’s capitulation on nuclear policy? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/presidentobamavisitscaterpillarfactoryb_bjlzhe1zwl.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57913" title="presidentobamavisitscaterpillarfactoryb_bjlzhe1zwl" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/presidentobamavisitscaterpillarfactoryb_bjlzhe1zwl.jpg" alt="" width="406" height="311" /></a></p>
<p>The last time that President Obama’s senior advisor and assistant <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2418">Valerie Jarrett</a> was in the news, her favored political recruit, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2406">Anthony “Van” Jones</a>, was resigning his post as White House presidential advisor amid revelations of a radical background that included communist sympathies and his support for 9/11 Truther conspiracy. Now Jarrett, widely viewed as Obama’s radical alter ego, has reemerged – this time as a foreign policy guru.</p>
<p>As Obama and Russian President Medvedev signed a new <a href="../AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Low/Content.IE5/7AWR0LT1/nuclear%20arms%20treaty">nuclear arms treaty</a> last week, Jarrett sat observing nearby. That Jarrett has once again found herself in a position of influence is not surprising. Jarrett proudly acknowledges her remarkable closeness to President Obama. “We have kind of a mind meld” is the way she put it in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26jarrett-t.htmlhttp:/www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26jarrett-t.htmlhttp:/www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26jarrett-t.htmlhttp:/www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26jarrett-t.htmlhttp:/www.nytimes."><em>New York Times</em> magazine interview</a> last summer. “When senior staff meetings in the Oval Office break up, Valerie Jarrett often stays behind” with the President, the <em>Times</em> article reported. In short, Jarrett is like a member of the Obama family, but one who has seized command of a variety of policies at the White House.</p>
<p>Although neither elected, nor confirmed, nor even vetted, and without previous Washington experience, Jarrett has been installed as senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental and public engagement. She also was given the recently created Office of Urban Affairs, even though we have a cabinet member who is Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Now it appears she is involved in our nation’s foreign policy.</p>
<p>Why else would she be in Prague for the preparations and signing of the arms treaty? As Obama has said, “She is someone I trust completely. She combines the closeness of a family member with the savvy and objectivity of a professional businesswoman and public-policy expert,” the <em>Times</em> magazine article stated. She is trusted “to speak for me particularly when we are dealing with delicate issues.” Such as nuclear arms matters? If so, that should be cause for concern. Jarrett’s only experience in foreign affairs is the insignificant fact that she was born in Iran, where her father was a doctor working for an American aid program. She lived in London as a child before coming to the United States.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Jarrett may already be exerting her influence on the president in this arena. On March 28, she appeared on ABC’s “The Week,” where she talked up the forthcoming nuclear deal between the United States and Russia. “The fact that the President and Russia are about to sign the START Treaty is a good sign that we’re making cooperation and good progress with countries such as Russia,” Jarrett insisted. Just a few weeks later, Obama has made – perhaps with Jarrett’s influence – a <a href="http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/90025822.html">sharp departure</a> on nuclear policy. Under the new plan, the United  States promises not to use nuclear weapons against nations that do not have them – even if they attack the United States first.</p>
<p>The President’s plan would lessen the part nuclear weapons play in our defense posture. According to the Center for Defense Studies, “our nuclear arsenal today is smaller than at any time since the Eisenhower Administration.” The CDS further notes that</p>
<blockquote><p>“the message being sent to the rest of the world is that the United States finds nuclear deterrence distasteful and wants to get out of the nuclear weapons business&#8230;.The result may be a more volatile and dangerous world.”</p></blockquote>
<p>There is no way to measure the role that Jarrett played in the administration’s nuclear policies, judged by many to represent a radical break with past policies. But it is precisely this that may hint at Jarrett’s newfound influence on foreign policy. After all, Jarrett has in the past been linked with a number of <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2355659/postshttp:/www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2355659/postshttp:/www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2355659/postshttp:/www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2355659/posts">radicals and their causes</a>. Most notoriously, she brought <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36289">Van Jones</a> into the White House as green jobs czar. She also brought aboard <a href="http://www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/07/cass_sunstein_yet_another_wack.php">Cass Sunstein</a> as a regulatory czar, notwithstanding his view that animals should have legal rights to sue humans. And she had the President create an office of Diversity at the Federal Communications Commission, where appointee <a href="http://radio.about.com/b/2009/08/15/who-is-mark-lloyd-and-why-is-conservtive-talk-radio-concerned.htm">Mark Lloyd,</a> a Jarrett friend, is said to be attempting to silence conservative talk radio. It was Jarrett who encouraged Obama to make his race speech in the wake of the highly controversial and damaging Rev. Jeremiah Wright tapes damning America. To refurbish<a href="http://www.firstladies.org/documents/art_flpublic.pdf"> Michelle Obama’s original public image of an angry woman</a>, Jarrett encouraged the future first lady to focus on concern about military families.</p>
<p>A President has the right to select his own trusted advisors. But given Valerie Jarrett’s radical ties, and her conspicuous lack of foreign policy credentials, the fact that she now has the president’s ear on issues as vital as the country’s nuclear posture is a truly worrying development.</p>
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		<title>CPAC Shills for Islamic Terrorists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/frontpagemag-com/cpac-shills-for-islamic-terrorists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=cpac-shills-for-islamic-terrorists</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:06:55 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Troubling developments at the Conservative Political Action Conference.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/norquist.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-51986" title="norquist" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/norquist.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="307" /></a></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog <em>AtlasShrugs.com</em>.. She has won acclaim for her interviews with internationally renowned figures, including John Bolton, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye’or, Natan Sharansky, and many others, and has broken numerous important stories — notably the questionable sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign. Her op-eds have been published in <em>The Washington Times</em>, <em>The American Thinker</em>, <em>Israel National News</em>, <em>Frontpage Magazine</em>, <em>World Net Daily</em>, and <em>New Media Journal</em>, among other publications. She is the co-author (with Robert Spencer) of the soon to be released, <a title="http://www.amazon.com/Post-American-Presidency-Obama-Administrations-America/dp/1439189307/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1260121208&amp;sr=8-2" href="http://www.amazon.com/Post-American-Presidency-Obama-Administrations-America/dp/1439189307/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1260121208&amp;sr=8-2" target="_blank">The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America</a> (forward by Ambassador John Bolton).</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/pamkeller3.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-52002" title="pamkeller" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/pamkeller3.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="308" /></a></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Pamela, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>I would like to talk to you today about some troubling developments that occurred at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).</p>
<p>Let’s begin by you telling us about your own event there.</p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> Good to be here again Jamie, thank you.</p>
<p>Last Friday, Robert Spencer and I hosted a standing-room-only event at CPAC. It was standing room only, despite the fact that we were off to the side and were going against Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Congressman Steve King, Congressman Mike Pence, Grover Norquist and several other panels.</p>
<p>Our conference was designed to speak the truths that others will not speak. First to speak was Wafa Sultan, the ex-Muslim who shot to international fame after she stood up for human rights against Sharia on Al-Jazeera in a debate with an Islamic cleric on a famous viral video, and the author of <em>A God Who Hates</em>. She spoke of Islam’s war against the West. Then Steve Coughlin, the former Pentagon Islamic law specialist who was making his first public appearance after being fired from the Defense Department after pressure from those who didn’t like his truth-of-the-matter stance on jihad. He gave a bit of his controversial presentation to the Pentagon, showing how the Defense Department is ignoring the true nature of the jihad threat, to our great detriment – which is the title of his lengthy thesis on this problem.</p>
<p>Then in the second hour our speakers showed the next phases of the advance of jihad and Sharia. While Coughlin was fired for telling the truth about Islam and jihad, human rights activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff is being prosecuted for “hate speech” in Austria for the same truth telling. After her came Anders Gravers of Stop the Islamisation of Europe, who has been physically assaulted for standing up for freedom in Denmark. Then Simon Deng, a former slave in Sudan and a leading human rights activist against jihad and Islamic supremacism, showed what life is like for the subjugated, enslaved Christians of southern Sudan – the fourth phase of Sharia encroachment. Finally, the war hero and Congressional candidate Lt. Colonel Allen West gave a stirring speech calling us all to the defense of freedom.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> It’s a great sign that CPAC hosted an event like this, right?</p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> Well Jamie, it’s not really what happened. The truth of the matter is that our event was at CPAC, but it was an independent event, <em>not a CPAC event</em>. And the truths that our speakers told were not aired at any other event at CPAC.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Ok, just a second, let me get something straight: we are facing a deadly enemy in this current terror war, and that enemy is Islamic jihad &#8212; based on Islamic theology. CPAC had how many panels about it?</p>
<p><strong>Geller: </strong>One.</p>
<p>And it was an exercise in misinformation.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Are you kidding me?</p>
<p><strong>Geller: </strong>Not at all. The single panel was:<strong> </strong></p>
<blockquote><p><strong>“You’ve Been Lied To: Why Real Conservatives are Against the </strong><strong>War on Terror</strong><strong> Delaware Ballroom</strong><br />
Sponsored by Campaign for Liberty (60 minutes)<br />
Speakers: Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Karen Kwiatkowski and Jacob Hornberger, President of FFF<br />
Open to All CPAC Attendees”</p></blockquote>
<p>The message there was that “real conservatives” don’t support the war on terror because it is a creation of the “Israeli lobby” &#8212; which coalesces with the left-wing’s new anti-Semitism against neoconservatives. Karen Kwiatkowski is a darling of both the leftist Huffington Post and the anti-Semitic paleocon site Antiwar.com.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Tell us some more about Kwiatkowski.</p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> Well, let’s put it this way: in a 2006 article, she described John Bolton as “that blubbering bundle of self-righteousness.” She also wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Many in America oppose the U.S. knee-jerk, unquestioning support for Israel. Many more worry that the Israeli lobby is unusually influential in Washington, while remaining hidden and unaccountable to average Americans. Still others are alarmed that Israel’s constant war mentality has become our new American model, and that Iraq and our own borders have become our own occupied territories, teeming with terror and constituting a never-ending threat to our lives, prosperity and value system.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Kwiatkowski is a retired military officer. Is this really the type of thinking prevalent in the military? Me thinks not. So why on earth was she given a platform at CPAC? Doing  can only undermine those who are now serving. Having different points of view presented is one thing, but by hosting this event, CPAC explicitly endorsed this fringe, anti-American thinking.</p>
<p>That panel was, of course, a reflection of Ron Paul’s perspective. There were no counter-jihadists, no Robert Spencer, no Ibn Warraq on any CPAC panel, but they had room for this well-funded “Campaign for Liberty” presentation. The same group also had a co-sponsor booth. No expense was spared &#8212; they were everywhere. At the event Jacob Hornberger said that there were four reasons why real conservatives should be against the war on terror: because it is too costly, because it makes us less safe (he said Americans were less secure because American troops kill children and mothers and people who are simply defending their country against invaders, and have even, he said, killed a bride at her wedding), because it violates Constitutional principles, and because it is a threat to liberty.</p>
<p>Nothing was said about the Islamic doctrine that shows that jihadists would be waging war against the U.S. even if we did end all actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The panel agreed with Obama, that Muslims are angry with us because of our actions, and will stop being angry with us if we change our foreign policy. This view is naïve and reflects ignorance of Islamic doctrine. And consider this: if Ron Paul were as anti-Islam as he is anti-Israel, he would not have been in CPAC, and his perspective would not have been represented. Instead of coming together on our basic core values and circling the wagons on the fundamentals &#8212; national security, small government, low taxes, and the freedom of speech &#8212; the CPAC leadership had a circus of the fringe.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> This is mind-boggling. This is a conservative conference and one would think conservatives are interested in national security and protecting our liberties and American lives. Why do you think this happened?</p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> I think CPAC’s agenda in 2010, as well as 2009 and before that, reflects the influence of Grover Norquist, the conservative powerhouse and kingmaker. He is a board member of the ACU, and from the looks of CPAC&#8217;s covered topics and omission of discussion of jihad, it looks as if he exerts enormous influence over David Keene, the ACU’s nominal leader. Norquist and his ally Suhail Khan seem to be in charge at CPAC &#8212; no CPAC event goes on that doesn’t reflect their perspective.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Expand a bit on what perspective Norquist represents.</p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> Jamie, Grover Norquist’s troubling ties to Islamic supremacists and jihadists have been known for years. He and his Palestinian wife, Samah Alrayyes, who was director of communications for his Islamic Free Market Institute until they married in 2005, are very active in “Muslim outreach.” Just six weeks after 9/11, <em>The</em> <em>New Republic</em> ran an expose explaining how Norquist arranged for George W. Bush to meet with fifteen Islamic supremacists at the White House on September 26, 2001 &#8212; to show how Muslims rejected terrorism. Wrote <em>TNR</em> author Franklin Foer:</p>
<blockquote><p>Unfortunately, many of the leaders present hadn’t unambiguously rejected it. To the president’s left sat Dr. Yahya Basha, president of the American Muslim Council, an organization whose leaders have repeatedly called Hamas “freedom fighters.” Also in attendance was Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who on the afternoon of September 11 told a Los   Angeles public radio audience that “we should put the State of Israel on the suspect list.” And sitting right next to President Bush was Muzammil Siddiqi, president of the Islamic Society of North America, who last fall told a Washington crowd chanting pro-Hezbollah slogans, “America has to learn if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come.”</p></blockquote>
<p>It was Norquist who ushered these silver-tongued jihadists into the Oval Office after the worst attack ever on American soil. Don’t you think that the likes of Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or, and Wafa Sultan should have been advising the President instead of Hamas, Hizballah and the Muslim Brotherhood? But that wasn’t to be. So at that September 26 meeting Bush declared that “the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good.” It was a critically important, historic moment. What should have been the most important teaching moment of the long war became a propaganda tool for Islam. A singular historic opportunity was squandered, and the harm that has resulted is incalculable.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Why did Bush do that?</p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> Because he trusted Norquist, who vouched for these Muslim leaders. Yet “the record suggests,” wrote Foer, “that Norquist has spent quite a lot of time promoting people openly sympathetic to Islamist terrorists.” And this continued for years. In December 2003, <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=15084">David Horowitz wrote</a> that Norquist:</p>
<blockquote><p>“has formed alliances with prominent Islamic radicals who have ties to the Saudis and to Libya and to Palestine Islamic Jihad, and who are now under indictment by U.S. authorities. Equally troubling is that the arrests of these individuals and their exposure as agents of terrorism have not resulted in noticeable second thoughts on Grover’s part or any meaningful effort to dissociate himself from his unsavory friends.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Horowitz wrote this in an introduction to a detailed <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=15084">expose by Frank Gaffney</a> here in Frontpage showing how Norquist had given Muslims with jihad terror links access to the highest levels of the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Grover Norquist was on the jihad payroll before and after the carnage and death of September 11. Gaffney revealed Norquist’s close ties to Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is now serving twenty-three years in prison for financing jihad activity. In 2000, Alamoudi said at a rally, “I have been labeled by the media in New   York to be a supporter of Hamas. Anybody support Hamas here?&#8230;Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas. I wished they added that I am also a supporter of Hizballah.” Alamoudi was at that time head of the now defunct “moderate” group known as American Muslim Council (AMC), and was active in other Muslim groups in the U.S. that showed sympathy or support for jihadists. And Alamoudi, according to Gaffney, gave $50,000 to the lobbying group Janus-Merritt Strategies, which Norquist cofounded.</p>
<p>His money bought influence. Gaffney wrote back in 2003: “It seems unlikely that even in Alamoudi’s wildest dreams he could have imagined the extent of the access, influence and legitimacy the American Muslim Council and allied Islamist organizations would be able to secure in Republican circles, thanks to the investment they began in 1998 in a relationship with Norquist.”</p>
<p>Alamoudi also helped found Norquist’s Islamic Institute with a $10,000 loan and a gift of another $10,000. The founding director of the Islamic Institute was Khaled Saffuri, a Palestinian Muslim who had previously been active in Islamic groups in Bosnia, where Islamic jihadists from all over the world gathered “to establish,” says Gaffney, “a beachhead on the continent of Europe.” Gaffney adds that Saffuri “has acknowledged personally supporting the families of suicide bombers – even though, in public settings, he strenuously denies having done so.” Saffuri also denounced Bush’s shutdown of the Holy Land Foundation, which was funneling charitable contributions to Hamas.</p>
<p>Norquist has also carried water for Islamic supremacist efforts to weaken anti-terror efforts. Gaffney reveals that:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Norquist was also a prime-mover behind efforts to secure one of the Islamists’ top pre-9/11 agenda items: the abolition of a section of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that permits authorities to use what critics call ‘secret evidence.’…Norquist was an honoree at an event held by Sami Al-Arian’s National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom in July 2001, two months before 9/11. The award was for being a ‘champion of the abolishment movement against secret evidence.’”</p></blockquote>
<p>Al-Arian in 2006 pleaded guilty “conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds to or for the benefit of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” Palestinian Islamic Jihad is even worse than Hamas, celebrates the killing of Israeli civilians and calls repeatedly for the destruction of Israel.</p>
<p>Scott Johnson of the Powerline blog noted shortly after Gaffney’s article appeared that Norquist’s reponse to this exhaustively documented expose was:</p>
<blockquote><p>“personal and evasive. He attacks Gaffney as racist and bigoted; not a trace of evidence in the public record supports these charges. I heard Norquist respond to Gaffney in this manner at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this past January. He did not deign to respond to Gaffney’s remarks in substance.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Norquist also introduced Nihad Awad, cofounder and executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, to President Bush. CAIR is one of the foremost Islamic supremacist hate sponsors in the U.S. Terror expert Steve Emerson wrote that “CAIR, which touts itself as America’s premier Muslim civil rights organization, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Terror trial.” He noted that CAIR cofounders Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad attended “a 1993 Philadelphia meeting where the HAMAS members and supporters discussed a strategy to kill the Oslo Peace Accords, which threatened to marginalize HAMAS. The group also discussed ways to improve HAMAS fundraising in America.”</p>
<p>Emerson also reveals that according to the testimony of an FBI agent, “CAIR was listed as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.” The Palestine Committee is dedicated to jihad for the destruction of Israel. Emerson reveals that a 1992 memo seized from a jihadi’s home explains that “Palestine is the one for which Muslim Brotherhood prepared armies – made up from the children of Islam in the Arab and Islamic nations to liberate its land from the abomination and the defilement of the children of the Jews and they watered its pure soil with their honorable blood which sprouted into a jihad that is continuing until the Day of Resurrection and provided a zeal without relenting making the slogan of its children ‘it is a Jihad for victory or martyrdom.’” Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad were also listed as members of the Palestine Committee.</p>
<p>Robert Spencer added this about CAIR:</p>
<blockquote><p>“CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Honest Ibe Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements. CAIR has warred against free speech in the past.”</p></blockquote>
<p>These are Grover Norquist’s bedfellows. Abusing his power and access, he introduced Islamic supremacists who advocate the overthrow of the government to those who have an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and advocated for their cause. The enemy’s strategy for winning is by subverting our senior leaders. Norquist made that possible.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Is Norquist still doing all of this?</p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> Yes, Jamie. Grover Norquist has continued his activities on behalf of the jihad: in 2008 journalist Paul Sperry revealed Norquist’s sponsorship of Muslim candidates with shadowy ties to terrorists, and wrote that Norquist had a “wicked project to dress Islamists up as patriotic Republicans so they can infiltrate the government.” Norquist sponsored Kamal Nawash’s unsuccessful bid to become Republican party leader in Virginia; Nawash was Abdurahman Alamoudi’s attorney. Norquist also aided previous failed political runs by Nawash – including Nawash’s 2003 Virginia state senate bid, to which Saffuri gave money.</p>
<p>Norquist also aided Faisal Gill’s failed run for the Virginia state legislature in 2007. Gill, like Nawash, was an associate of Alamoudi. During his run he took $3,000 in contributions from the pro-jihad Safa group.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Final words?</p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> It is no surprise that CPAC 2010, like CPAC 2009, had nothing addressing the war we are actually engaged in. This is due to the influence of Norquist, Keene, and Suhail Khan, a CPAC board member. According to Gaffney, Khan “has repeatedly been a featured speaker at MSA, ISNA and CAIR events” – that is, Muslim Students Association, Islamic Society of North America, and Council on American-Islamic Relations, three groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, the international Islamic organization dedicated to establishing the rule of Islamic law and the subjugation of infidels worldwide.</p>
<p>Grover Norquist single-handedly ushered into America’s highest levels of government Islamic supremacist leaders, subversives, the Islamic fifth column. Grover gave them unparalleled access. Why didn’t Gaffney’s revelations, and those that preceded and followed his expose, end Norquist’s influence among conservatives? Why does he still have so much power?</p>
<p>Grover Norquist should be a pariah, not a kingmaker.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Pamela Geller, thank you for joining us.</p>
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		<title>Exalting Khomeini’s Legacy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/lisa-daftari/exalting-khomeini%e2%80%99s-legacy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=exalting-khomeini%25e2%2580%2599s-legacy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/lisa-daftari/exalting-khomeini%e2%80%99s-legacy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:03:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lisa Daftari]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49727</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Iran’s leaders try to reignite the cultish reverence for a bloody despot.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ahmadinejad_khomeini.jpeg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49730" title="ahmadinejad_khomeini" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ahmadinejad_khomeini-300x238.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="238" /></a></p>
<p>Most Iranians can remember the exact moments in their lives when they discovered that the Ayatollah Khomeini had died. For many Iranians, this was a joyous occasion and the cause of days of partying, drinking champagne and fanciful thinking about the fate of their country.  Schools were closed for forty days, and Iranians abroad remained attached to their television sets wondering if they would touch the soil of their homeland once again. Khomeini’s name was synonymous with the Revolution, the precarious social ambiance and the severe impact that Islamic ideology had on the country.  The root of that influence was now gone.</p>
<p>Khomeini, best known to the rest of the world as the founder of modern Islam, the supporter of the Hostage Crisis and the man who issued a fatwa (death decree) on the head of author Salman Rushdie, represented for the Iranian people a central chapter of their modern history that is both complicated and tragic. In the roughly ten years that he reigned, over 100,000 Iranians were executed. The Iran-Iraq war futilely dragged on for almost a decade, and persecuted Iranians across a multicolored Iranian population wondered what the Revolution had achieved.</p>
<p>Looking back at that time makes it difficult to understand how Islamic Republic leaders are now bringing back a cultish reverence for the Khomeini era. Since the post-election protests, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and likewise, reformist Presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi have made serious efforts to revive a faux nostalgia for the late Ayatollah among the opposition.</p>
<p>On the part of the current regime, uniting their modus operandi with that of Khomeini’s gives them a legitimate claim to the Islamic Republic.  Recalling that period reminds Iranians of a time when they were curious to see what the Ayatollah Khomeini could offer them.</p>
<p>For the reformists, who are proposing ‘change,’ they are motivated to do so within the confines of the regime, making respect and support for the Khomeini camp a prerequisite to remain part of and function within the Islamic Republic. As a matter of fact, Mousavi and Karoubi have been quick to use Khomeini’s legacy to strengthen their constituency, alleging that the Ayatollah was a more righteous leader, and that Khamenei’s government has severely deviated from the principles initially set forth.</p>
<p>Besides bearing such resemblances in surnames, Khomeini and Khamenei share similarities beyond the superficial. Both support mass executions, terrorism, and a fundamentalist Islamic ideology. Khomeini was famous for the words, “We do not worship Iran.  We worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.” To spread Islam and its influence was his agenda, not much different from the current regime. So inherent is Khomeini’s role in the Islamic Republic landscape that to eradicate his influence from the movement is to study the establishment of the American government system without George Washington, or better yet, to assess Nazism absent Adolph Hitler.</p>
<p>The cleansing of Khomeini’s image became en vogue under former President Mohammad Khatami, who sought to salvage the late Ayatollah’s bloody reputation and in effect absolve the regime, beginning at its very roots. It is said that Khatami began his campaign to change the then dull and disillusioned mood during his presidency and to purify Iran’s modern history.  It also might have to do with the fact that Khatami and Khomeini were related. Khatami’s brother, Mohammad Reza, is married to Khomeini’s granddaughter, Zahra Eshraghi.</p>
<p>Incidentally, the intricate web of marriages within the handful of regime dynasties does not stop at the Khatami and Khomeini families. Most staggeringly, the fathers of Mousavi and Khamenei are brothers, making them first cousins. The unions demonstrate how far the inner circle of the regime will go to preserve their stronghold.</p>
<p>Under every IRI leader since Khatami, there has been a push to glorify the name and legacy of Khomeini, a move the leaders believe will sustain the Islamic Republic. For the current government it relies on erasing a very recent history, and for the reformists, it means tying themselves to a retrospectively more ‘benevolent’ supreme leader, in order to say that not everything about the Islamic Republic is corrupt; it had its glory days too.</p>
<p>Making such a claim relies entirely on pandering to a population of Iranians under the age of 30, who do not clearly remember Khomeini’s track record. Or maybe they do remember it and choose not to. It is clearly more pleasant to remember a peaceful history rather than one dotted with executions, stonings and lack of human rights. The leaders may take advantage of the people’s yearning for a united Iran, albeit one that chooses to forget its own history and thus remains under the grips of an Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>When Khomeini’s picture was rampantly burned in the streets of Iran in early December during National Students’ Day, many believed that was, at the very least, a clear and overt indication that the unrest was certainly not just over a fraudulent election. More profoundly taken, burning the picture of the founder of the Islamic Republic represented a denunciation of a theocratic regime and a manifestation of a movement pro-secular.</p>
<p>Yet when the government announced that those in violation are deemed “moharreb,” or Enemies (of God), and subsequently blamed Mousavi and Karoubi for instigating the event, the reformist leaders then in turn blamed the government for staging the incident it in order to discredit the opposition as irreverent and sacrilegious. Subsequently, the Green party urged the opposition to carry pictures of Khomeini to demonstrations in reverence and to never burn or disrespect the late Ayatollah again. In the end, Khomeini actually emerged more popular and even more of a central player in the backdrop of the movement.</p>
<p>It is still not clear who was behind the original burning of the pictures, but the more poignant revelation was how radical the Iranian momentum has become. So incendiary was this incident that it triggered a fad across several continents of posting videos of burning Khomeini’s picture. There are dozens of such groups on Facebook and Youtube created for the cause. Groups such as “I burned Khomeini’s picture” on Facebook has almost 2,000 members. There is even a video capturing a “Burning Khomeini’s picture party” that takes place in Europe, that shows a large group of expatriate Iranians burning the Ayatollah’s picture.</p>
<p>These cyber campaigns, seeking to eradicate Khomeini’s legacy, were created in reaction to the regime’s campaign to exalt it. Freedom-seeking Iranians are warning their countrymen of what can happen if Iranians fail to recall history and fall into the trap of the regime once again.</p>
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		<title>How the Veil Conquered Cairo University</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/how-the-veil-conquered-cairo-university/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-the-veil-conquered-cairo-university</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/how-the-veil-conquered-cairo-university/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:10:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48901</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Radical Islam’s takeover of the lives of Egypt’s educated women. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egypt4.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-48903" title="egypt4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egypt4-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Nonie Darwish, the co-founder of <a href="http://www.formermuslimsunited.com/" target="_blank">FormerMuslimsUnited.com</a> and the author of <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Usual-Punishment-Terrifying-Implications/dp/1595551611">Cruel and Usual Punishment</a></em>.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/nonie_darwish300.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-48911" title="nonie_darwish300" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/nonie_darwish300-240x300.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="300" /></a></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Nonie Darwish, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>Today I would like to discuss with you the photos we are exhibiting below of Cairo  University graduates over the course of this era. There are the 1959 and 1978 photos compared to the 1995 and 2004 photos.</p>
<p>These pictures tell quite a story. Radical Islam has taken over even the minds of educated women in the Muslim world.</p>
<p>Since you’re from Egypt, I would like to get your take on this phenomenon. What’s going on here? One would think that people yearn for freedom rather than enslavement, but I guess life experience and human history tells us otherwise – when it comes to certain cultures. Being from Russia, I’m not too surprised with many Russians’ adoration of a thug despot like Putin and even their <a href="http://www.theotherrussia.org/2010/01/28/veterans-outraged-at-stalin-soft-drink/">pining for Joseph Stalin.</a></p>
<p>Let’s first show these pics and then you share your thoughts on them.</p>
<p><strong>1959</strong>:</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egypt1.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-48906" title="egypt1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egypt1-300x231.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="231" /></a></p>
<p><strong>1978</strong>:</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egypt2.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-48907" title="egypt2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egypt2-300x281.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="281" /></a></p>
<p><strong>1995:</strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egypt3.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-48908" title="egypt3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egypt3-300x223.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="223" /></a></strong></p>
<p><strong>2004:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egypt41.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-48909" title="egypt4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egypt41-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Darwish:</strong> These photos represent the gradual but steady Islamic radicalization invading the Middle  East and the rest of the world in the last three decades. I lived in Egypt until the year 1978 and have never wore a head cover, neither did my mother or grandmother. And this is thanks to a feminist movement that started in Cairo in 1919 under the leadership of the famous Egyptian feminist Hoda Shaarawi.</p>
<p>Shaarawi had attended women’s conferences in Europe and Turkey, which was undergoing major reforms by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who wanted to be more like Europe and less like Muslim Arabia. Upon her return from a trip to Rome in 1923, Shaarawi performed a bold act that became the central symbol of her life: with the support of several upper class Egyptian women, she removed her veil in public, at the crowded Cairo train station.  If such an act of defiance had happened today in Iran or even Egypt, she would be executed by the Iranian government and, as to Egypt, she could be killed by an Islamist on the street for defying or insulting Islam.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What were the circumstances at that time that allowed Hoda Shaarawi to engage in this act of freedom of conscience?</p>
<p><strong>Darwish:</strong> The reason she was not killed then but actually protected, and was able to start a reform movement in Egypt, was due to many reasons. First and most important was the existence of the British in the area. They helped protected the peace, minorities and equal rights. Second, the Egyptian king was moderate and wanted to bring modernity to Egypt.  Third, this was the pre-petrodollar era of wealth in Saudi Arabia which was still weak and poor. Fourth, the Muslim Brotherhood was not yet in existence.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> How and why have things changed?</p>
<p><strong>Darwish:</strong> Things started drastically changing after the Egyptian 1952 coup which ousted King Farouk and the British. Even though that coup appeared secular, none of the rebel ‘free officers’ were Christian Egyptians and almost all were members of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the impact of the Muslim Brotherhood was delayed for a decade after the revolution when they attempted to assassinate Nasser who killed and imprisoned many members of its members. After Nasser died, the Muslim Brotherhood was empowered and with it the status of women. That coincided with Saudi petrodollars and the Iranian revolution, both of which brought power of Islamists to the whole area.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Talk about these photos.</p>
<p><strong>Darwish:</strong> The first 1959 photo reflects the influence of the Sharaawi feminist movement which existed until the death of Nasser. However, I must stress that the Egyptian feminist movement which started in 1919 and ended in the late 70’s, and which freed Egyptian women from the hijab, was more cosmetic than true Western-style liberation. Women still had to abide by Sharia law when it came to marriage and family matters and the culture still practiced segregation of the sexes and honor killing.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> So why did many of Egypt’s women, and educated women, become more radicalized and turn to the veil?</p>
<p><strong>Darwish:</strong> As we see in the photos, the change was gradual, from 1959 of no head covers at all, to 2004 where almost all women, even some young girls, are wearing head covers. It must be noted that the Egyptian government, unlike Iran, does not force the head cover on women.  Religious and social pressure on Egyptian women was the cause for the change. Feminists such as Shaarawi are now threatened and accused of apostasy, forcing the Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi to leave the country. And now we see that some of the harshest critics of Muslim women reformists and human rights activists are none other than Muslim women.</p>
<p>The Muslim woman’s attire is the first thing noticeable in any Muslim country and is dictated by Islamic law. Some devout Muslim women chose to carry the torch of Islam by wearing the burqa on their own and exhibit their piety and devotion to their faith. Those were the ones who were rewarded and respected by society. The rest were left in a quagmire, either choose to be viewed as devout Muslims or as outcast rebel apostates. The majority chose the former since perception and image is extremely important in Muslim society where the uncovered head can be regarded as a defiant image of rebelliousness. After some acts of violence on the street against uncovered women, even some Christian girls found it safer to cover their heads so they were not noticed. How can feminism be practiced openly let alone survive under such conditions?</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What does the future hold?</p>
<p><strong>Darwish:</strong> Muslim women in the Middle East have never developed a relationship of solidarity and support for their rights and freedoms. To the contrary, they often have hostile relationships where women often report other women when they violate social and religious taboos. Most have developed a holier than thou attitude towards other women. In such an atmosphere many found that if they want respect and even financial rewards, then they must be as radical, if not more radical then men. Some women do not even talk or communicate with women who are uncovered. This happened to me personally when I visited Egypt in 2001 and was wearing a conservative one piece bathing suit on the beach and a couple of covered up women in a group I was with would not talk to me.</p>
<p>In the beginning of our interview you asked why educated Egyptian women choose going back to the old days of the repression of the Burqa. The reasons are many and complex. Muslim women were left with two choices; to be in a constant struggle against Islamization and merciless rejection by society or if you can’t beat them, then join them. Another reason is nationalism, Arab pride and rejection of Western influence. Arab nationalism and pride came at the same time with the sudden wealth from petro-dollars which empowered radial Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>Muslim countries have an obsession against free democracies that are prosperous and give women equal rights. Muslim leaders are having a hard time convincing their citizens that the Muslim system is better than Western democracies and thus the media and preaching is consumed with hate propaganda against the West, telling the West we reject your culture, the way you dress etc. I actually remember mosque sermons telling us how Western civilization is corrupt, satanic and we should not befriend them or imitate them in any way shape or form.</p>
<p>The return of the Burqa movement has also migrated to the West. When I moved to the US in 1978 I visited some Muslim girlfriends at UCLA and none of them wore the head cover. Many Muslims who moved to the States in the same year with me never wore the head cover back in Egypt. However, I have seen some of these immigrants a decade later with full Islamic attire. Even on US college campuses the movement is the same, Muslim students are proud to wear their Islamic outfit and refuse to assimilate. The trend is everywhere, just like in the Egyptian photos.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> So then what is the future of true women&#8217;s rights under Islam?</p>
<p><strong>Darwish:</strong> Many believe that Islam’s treatment of women is on its way to being reformed and that it is just a matter of time until Muslim women will wise up, figure what must be done, stand together in unity and march for their equality and human rights. That happened to women in the West, so why not to Muslim women in the Middle East?</p>
<p>There is a major difference: in the West, Christianity did not come with thousands of pages of Jesus’s laws regulating every detail in a Christian’s life to control every Christian. Jesus did not call women deficient in intelligence and lacking in religion or that they are toys, slaves in a marriage. Very simply Western feminists were not confronted with the many dead ends that the Muslim feminist is confronting.</p>
<p>Many also believe that the reformation of Sharia and Islam itself will come from its most oppressed group: women. I disagree with that view, partially because the woman is largely the object of extreme regulation in Sharia (Allah’s law).</p>
<p>Expecting Muslim women to be behind the reformation of Islam and Sharia, is like asking slaves to end their own slavery without their masters’ approval or asking prisoners to get out of prison without the guards opening the doors. That is the reason Muslim Feminism has not succeeded in getting the majority of Muslim women on board. A Muslim woman’s inferior status in Muslim society has gone too deep and has become institutionalized. Muslim societies, cultures and institutions are dependent on it. For Muslim women to simply revolt against Islamic gender apartheid will be regarded as anti-man, anti-family, anti-religion, anti-government and worst of all, anti-Allah himself.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Nonie Darwish, thank you for joining us. And again, thank you for being the brave freedom fighter that you are.</p>
<p>And I encourage all our readers to get their hands on Nonie Darwish&#8217;s book <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Usual-Punishment-Terrifying-Implications/dp/1595551611">Cruel and Usual Punishment</a>.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/cruelunusual.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-48914" title="cruel&amp;unusual" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/cruelunusual-193x300.jpg" alt="" width="193" height="300" /></a><br />
</em></p>
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		<title>Full Report: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israel Hatred on the Huffington Post</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/huff-watcher/anti-semitism-and-anti-israel-hatred-on-the-huffington-post-part-1-by-huff-watcher/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=anti-semitism-and-anti-israel-hatred-on-the-huffington-post-part-1-by-huff-watcher</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:16:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Huff-Watcher]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Welcome to the ugly side of the most powerful blog in the world.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-45650" title="huffington_560" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/huffington_560.jpg" alt="huffington_560" width="450" height="300" /></p>
<hr /><strong><em><em><span style="font-weight: normal;">[Editors’ note: The following is an introduction to, and summary of a new investigative report </span></em><em><span style="font-weight: normal;">by </span><a style="color: #2a5db0;" href="http://huff-watch.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Huff-Watch</span></a></em><em><span style="font-weight: normal;">: </span><strong>&#8220;The Stimulus And The (Approved) Response: Anti-Semitism and Israel-Hatred on Huffington Post.&#8221;</strong><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Click </span><a style="color: #2a5db0;" href="http://frontpagemag.com/full-report-anti-semitism-and-anti-israel-hatred-on-the-huffington-post/" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: normal;">here</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> for the full report.]</span></em></em></strong></p>
<hr />
<p style="font-family: arial;">
<p style="font-family: arial;">
<p style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In its four years of existence,<a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.huffingtonpost.com/');" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/" target="_blank">The Huffington Post</a> (aka <span style="text-decoration: underline;">“HuffPost”</span>) has grown from obscurity into the world’s <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/technorati.com/pop/blogs/');" href="http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/" target="_blank">most-visited blogsite</a>, and <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1886214,00.html');" href="http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1886214,00.html" target="_blank">one of America’s most popular news sites</a>. It now has <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004022708');" href="http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004022708" target="_blank">more monthly visitors</a> than the <em>Washington Post</em>, and is supported by some of the largest advertisers in the world. Its representatives have been allowed to <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1878625,00.html?iid=tsmodule');" href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1878625,00.html?iid=tsmodule" target="_blank">ask questions</a> at presidential press conferences, and one was even given <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0609/Obama_calls_on_HuffPost_for_Iran_question.html');" href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0609/Obama_calls_on_HuffPost_for_Iran_question.html" target="_blank">preferential treatment</a>. It now enjoys access to, and influence over, the top levels of the U.S. government. Top members of the U.S. Senate are among HuffPost’s official bloggers, including <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.huffingtonpost.com/john-kerry');" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-kerry" target="_blank">John Kerry</a>, <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-carl-levin/');" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-carl-levin/" target="_blank">Carl Levin</a>, <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-dodd');" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-dodd" target="_blank">Chris Dodd</a>, <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-barbara-boxer');" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-barbara-boxer" target="_blank">Barbara Boxer</a> and others.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A significant reason for HuffPost’s success and “legitimization” are its claims that it is <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22861.html');" href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22861.html" target="_blank">a</a> <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22861.html');" href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22861.html" target="_blank">nonpartisan “newspaper,”</a> dedicated to <em><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&amp;aid=147167');" href="http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&amp;aid=147167">“ferret(ing)</a> <span style="font-style: normal;"><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&amp;aid=147167');" href="http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&amp;aid=147167"><em>out the truth,”</em></a> and <em><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2007/11/14/Huffington-Post-Profile/');" href="http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2007/11/14/Huffington-Post-Profile/" target="_blank">“debunking</a> <span style="font-style: normal;"><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2007/11/14/Huffington-Post-Profile/');" href="http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2007/11/14/Huffington-Post-Profile/" target="_blank"><em>the left-right way of thinking.”</em></a></span></em></span></em></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HuffPost also <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.huffingtonpost.com/comment/policy/');" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/comment/policy/" target="_blank">claims</a> to be non-partisan in its moderation of user comments. <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2010');" href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2010" target="_blank">Arianna Huffington</a>, the site’s founder and Editor-In-Chief, claims HuffPost has <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bill-oreilly-needs-to-en_b_92646.html');" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bill-oreilly-needs-to-en_b_92646.html" target="_blank"><em>“a zero tolerance policy”</em></a> for hate speech, and that it acts vigilantly to keep its comment threads free of offensive content, 24-7.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unfortunately, HuffPost consistently “frames” news stories in such a way that incites anti-Israel perceptions and hatred. Further, in violation of its own policies, it approves and tolerates user comments submitted in response to these stories that contain incendiary, hate-filled libels against Israelis and Jews, as well as links to anti-Semitic hate websites.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given the fact that an estimated 135,000 of Huffington Post’s unique monthly visitors reside in Iran and Pakistan, there is great concern among informed observers that its incitement against Israel influences perceptions far outside the United States.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This report, the result of three years of observation, documents:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Numerous examples of Huffington Post’s incitement of anti-Israel perceptions, and the defamatory user comments that have appeared on the site in response, with special focus on Israel’s recent Operation Cast Lead.
<p></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fact that many of the most egregious violators of Huffington Post’s stated policies, including some of its most prolific anti-Semitic propagandists, remain active users – some, with tens of thousands of comments in their archives.
<p></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fact that contrary to Huffington Post’s public statements, since at least March 2008, it has been pre-moderating all user comments, meaning that all of the hateful and defamatory comments that appear have been approved by its moderators.
<p></span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All of the following anti-Semitic user comments were published <em>after</em> HuffPost <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/4.bp.blogspot.com/_XLVZ0IbIMas/SitxMK82x6I/AAAAAAAAAGs/PJo1Q3VmAAY/s1600-h/03Mar08BRODIGAN_1.jpg');" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XLVZ0IbIMas/SitxMK82x6I/AAAAAAAAAGs/PJo1Q3VmAAY/s1600-h/03Mar08BRODIGAN_1.jpg" target="_blank">announced</a>, in March 2008, that the only comments that would appear on its site are those that a human moderator had reviewed, approved and made the decision to publish. Ms. Huffington <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&amp;aid=147167');" href="http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&amp;aid=147167" target="_blank">confirmed</a> this fact, several months later.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>“Jews are evil. Israel runs the world. Lets kill ‘em all and give the land back to Islam; result-perpetual peace. Seig Heil.”<br />
<em><span style="font-weight: normal;">By “pedrothemigrant,” 5/23/08</span></em></strong></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>“Funny how [Israelis] had NO problem with wiping the [Palestinians] off the face of the earth until they discovered they might actually be able to strike back in a meaningful way. proof that bullies like this are nothing but cowards.”<br />
<em><span style="font-weight: normal;">By “peacekitten,” 1/2/09</span></em></strong></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>“There’s a reason they [Jews] have been the most problematic group for thousands of years.”<br />
<em><span style="font-weight: normal;">By “Amennyc,” 1/4/09</span></em></strong></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>“[W]omen holding limp little bodies of children in their hands, crying, as an Israeli soldier aims an AK.-47 at her head. With each civilian casualty Israel gets closer to the regime in Germany that provided the impetus for the creation of Israel.”<br />
<em><span style="font-weight: normal;">By “SkepticHume,” 1/3/09</span></em></strong></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>“Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, Here I am, stuck in the middle with Jooooz [Jews]“<br />
<em><span style="font-weight: normal;">By “JamesR.,” 11/22/08</span></em></strong></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>“They [Jews] all need to be rounded up and gassed.”<br />
<em><span style="font-weight: normal;">By “markoze,” 12/30/08</span></em></strong></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps more shockingly, all of these comments were posted by users whose accounts are <em>still active</em> (they have not been banned), some of whom HuffPost has allowed to post thousands of additional comments. This stands in stark contrast to the fact that HuffPost routinely bans other users who don’t violate its policies — some after as few as <em>six comments</em> — but dare to challenge or mock the radical leftists that the site attracts.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These comments are representative of thousands of others containing anti-Semitic and Israel-bashing libels, hate and propaganda that have been published on HuffPost in recent years. Columbia University professor Lincoln Mitchell recently <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lincoln-mitchell/the-shooting-anti-semitis_b_214140.html">claimed</a> that on nearly every HuffPost news story concerning international affairs, <em>regardless of the topic,</em> he and his friends usually find that it takes no more than <em>ten comments</em> before its users are finding a way to blame Jews.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most incendiary of these comments are usually submitted in response to “news” stories that HuffPost publishes regarding Israel, which it consistently “frames” in ways that incite inaccurate and unjustifiably negative perceptions of the Jewish state, and particularly its military. HuffPost does this primarily through the use of inflammatory, decontextualized headlines and headline imagery, and biased “news” sources. Examples of this incitement include:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Its daily depiction of Israel’s incursion into Gaza in December 2008, in which it cast Israeli soldiers as thuggish villains, Palestinian civilians as their targets, and Hamas terrorists (often labeled as <em>“security forces”</em>) as victims. One example of this was its headline on 12/29/08 that featured a picture of a dead Muslim toddler, alongside text that claimed, <em>“Israeli assault targets symbols of Hamas power.”</em>
<p></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Its headline story on 3/11/09 featured Charles Freeman’s claims that a Jewish conspiracy led him to withdraw his nomination to a national security post.<em> HuffPost did not post any indication of the broad, bipartisan opposition to his nomination.</em>
<p></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It uncritically uses biased Arabic “news” sources – including the <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32867_Al_Jazeera-_The_Network_That_Praises_Child_Killers');" href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32867_Al_Jazeera-_The_Network_That_Praises_Child_Killers" target="_blank">jihadist-celebrating</a> al Jazeera (also a past HuffPost <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.reuters.com/article/mediaNews/idUSN1738968120090218');" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/mediaNews/idUSN1738968120090218" target="_blank">advertiser</a>) – as single-sources for its headlines. One example was its 5/29/09 article that used a little-known Arabic “news” source’s account of what it described as an “activist” that was killed by the Israeli military. 24 hours earlier, the “activist” was identified by CNN as a suspect in several deadly terror attacks, and that the Israeli military had attempted to arrest him. Instead, he opened fire on them, and was killed.<em> None of this was covered in HuffPost’s depiction of the incident.</em>
<p></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Its prominent positioning on 8/19/09 of a blood libel against Israel — that it murders Palestinians in order to harvest their organs — even though the “reporter” behind the story <em>admitted in the article </em>that he has <em>“no idea… no clue”</em> if the allegations are true or not. <em>Soon thereafter, credible sources determined that these allegations were physically impossible, and further discredited the “reporter.” Yet HuffPost gave these stories little to no “play” (certainly nowhere near the prominence of the original blood libel).</em></span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given the growing <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-70335677156278639');" href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-70335677156278639" target="_blank">resurgence</a> of anti-Semitism worldwide, HuffPost — like every other “legitimized,” advertiser-supported “newspaper” — is obliged to ensure that its “news” stories concerning Israel are fact-based and contextual. Further, HuffPost is obligated to enforce its nonpartisan comment moderation policy. In both of these regards, HuffPost is failing profoundly.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is hoped that<strong> </strong>this detailed report will spur HuffPost to take corrective measures to ensure that it is living up to its self-proclaimed standards, particularly in regards to Israeli and Jewish affairs.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><strong>Click <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/full-report-anti-semitism-and-anti-israel-hatred-on-the-huffington-post/">here</a> to read the full report.</strong></em></span></p>
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		<title>Unrest in Iran: The Vindication of George W. Bush &#8211; by Larry Elder</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/larry-elder/unrest-in-iran-the-vindication-of-george-w-bush-by-larry-elder/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=unrest-in-iran-the-vindication-of-george-w-bush-by-larry-elder</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:18:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Larry Elder]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=44847</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the Iraq War emboldened Iran’s democratic dissidents. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-44855" title="iran" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/iran.jpg" alt="iran" width="450" height="325" /></p>
<p>Did Saddam Hussein&#8217;s fall and the formation of a fledging democracy in Iraq encourage and embolden regime-threatening dissent in Iran?</p>
<p>The anti-Iraq War crowd, many of whom suffer from Give-George-W.-Bush-No Credit-for-Anything Disease, says, &#8220;No, of course not.&#8221; How dare anyone even suggest that the former President was correct, if not about the rightfulness of the war itself, then about his argument that a &#8220;free and peaceful&#8221; Iraq would provide a &#8220;dramatic and inspiring example&#8221; to the Middle East and the Muslim world. Good Lord!</p>
<p>The Iraq War-achieved-zero crowd begrudged Bush nothing even after the democratic Cedar Revolution in Lebanon. Never mind that Walid Jumblatt, a Lebanese Druze Muslim leader, said: &#8220;It&#8217;s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting (in 2005), 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.&#8221;</p>
<p>As to Iran, The New York Times quoted a pundit-blogger who, when protests began this past summer, wrote, &#8220;(N)o Iranian &#8230; has mentioned Iraq as an inspiration for the demonstrations, nor has any leader of their opposition cited their Iraqi neighbors as a model or a source of guidance.&#8221;</p>
<p>None?</p>
<p>Meet Mohsen Kadivar. In May 2004, Time magazine profiled this Iranian intellectual in a flattering article called &#8220;The Critical Cleric — Reclaiming Islam for a New World.&#8221; Newsweek called him a global leader &#8220;to watch in 2005.&#8221; His criticism of the Iranian regime landed him in jail. He now teaches at Duke University, and PBS&#8217;s Charlie Rose interviewed him in July.</p>
<p>What does this cleric says about Iraq&#8217;s possible influence on his native country? In February 2005, he said: &#8220;I think the Iraqis can make what we wanted to create but were unsuccessful: a real Islamic Republic. By that I mean a republic with Islamic values, democracy with Islamic values &#8230; (where) the clergy has no special rights. If they have a good government with Islamic democracy and without any special or divine rights for the clergy, the Iranian government won&#8217;t be able to justify its situation to the Iranian citizens.&#8221;</p>
<p>Meet Mashallah Shamsolvaezin. In 2000, this Iranian journalist received an International Press Freedom Award but could not attend the formal dinner honoring him. Shamsolvaezin was then sitting in a Tehran prison for the crime of &#8220;insulting Islamic values.&#8221; The authorities shut down several publications that he edited. Just days ago, he and several other journalists were arrested in Iran.</p>
<p>What did he say about Iraq&#8217;s possible influence on Iran? &#8220;The Shi&#8217;as in Iraq have accepted the notion of having a secular government, and they are slowly moving toward the democratization of their country — free elections, democratic institutions, a free press.</p>
<p>All of this in and of itself will have an impact on the situation in Iran.&#8221;</p>
<p>Meet Mohsen Sazegara. This Revolutionary Guard co-founder and former Islamic Republic supporter became a critic. He attempted to run for president of Iran, but authorities denied his application. He spent three months in jail for opposing the regime. He now lives in the United States and faces more prison time should he return to his country.</p>
<p>What did he say about Iraq&#8217;s possible influence on Iran? &#8220;I personally hope that Iraq&#8217;s (transition to democracy) will be completed successfully so that it can also help our nation. For sure, neighbors with democratic governments are much better for us than dictators such as Saddam Hussein or backward groups such as the Taliban &#8230; . Our young generation in particular has shown &#8230; that it has a strong desire for democracy, human rights and civil society, and a strong desire to join the international (community). And when democratic changes take place in our neighboring and brother country Iraq, with its many ties to us, it encourages our youth, and emboldens our young people to ask for change in our current constitution.&#8221;</p>
<p>In truth, the anti-Iraq War/Bush-hating left despises the former President far more than do the Iranians.</p>
<p>Almost two years after we entered Iraq, Iranians, according to a 2004 BBC poll, preferred Bush (52 percent) over John Kerry (42 percent) in the U.S. presidential elections. When asked whether the U.S. should get out of the Middle East, only 20 percent of Iranians said yes.</p>
<p>In May 2004, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof traveled to Iran. He wrote: &#8220;Everywhere I&#8217;ve gone in Iran &#8230; people have been exceptionally friendly and fulsome in their praise for the United States, and often for President Bush as well. &#8230; Indeed, many Iranians seem convinced that the U.S. military ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq are going great, and they say this with more conviction than your average White House spokesman.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Iraq War and fledging democracy continue to pay dividends. It helped convince Libya&#8217;s strongman to surrender his WMD. It helped inspire a democratic movement in Lebanon. And it may, just may, help to bring down an Islamofascist government that is the leading exporter of terrorism — before it gets a nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>Just as the &#8220;neo-cons&#8221; had hoped.</p>
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		<title>L. Gordon Crovitz: Intelligence Is a Terrible Thing to Waste &#8211; WSJ.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/l-gordon-crovitz-intelligence-is-a-terrible-thing-to-waste-wsj-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=l-gordon-crovitz-intelligence-is-a-terrible-thing-to-waste-wsj-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:00:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=44784</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ntelligence about terror threats rarely comes on such a silver platter: A Nigerian banker went to the U.S. Embassy in Lagos to warn that his son had fallen under &#8220;the influence of religious extremists based in Yemen&#8221; and was a security risk. This came after months of U.S. intelligence intercepts about al Qaeda plans for [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>ntelligence about terror threats rarely comes on such a silver platter: A Nigerian banker went to the U.S. Embassy in Lagos to warn that his son had fallen under &#8220;the influence of religious extremists based in Yemen&#8221; and was a security risk. This came after months of U.S. intelligence intercepts about al Qaeda plans for an attack using a Nigerian man. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab paid for his ticket with cash and didn&#8217;t check any luggage.</p>
<p>Yet a headline in the Washington Post summed up the current state of our intelligence: &#8220;Uninvestigated Terrorism Warning About Detroit Suspect Called Not Unusual.&#8221;</p>
<p>President Obama promises to investigate what went wrong, but there&#8217;s no big mystery. He should simply review testimony put in the public record in early December, before the Christmas Day incident. Sen. Joe Lieberman&#8217;s Homeland Security Committee heard an explanation of how U.S. intelligence agencies decide when to put suspected terrorists on a watch list or a no-fly list.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704065404574636130361837754.html">L. Gordon Crovitz: Intelligence Is a Terrible Thing to Waste &#8211; WSJ.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>The Communists Behind Obama’s Health Care Goals – by John Perazzo</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/john-perazzo/the-communists-behind-obama%e2%80%99s-health-care-goals-%e2%80%93-by-john-perazzo/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-communists-behind-obama%25e2%2580%2599s-health-care-goals-%25e2%2580%2593-by-john-perazzo</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:15:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Perazzo]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42967</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Meet the radical gurus who inspired the president’s vision of socialized medicine.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42968" title="medicare" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/medicare.gif" alt="medicare" width="540" height="364" /></h2>
<p>The <a href="http://healthcare.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmFiNzUwMzcwZTc3YjVjODEwMjcwZjM4MjFiNWI4OWE=">polls</a> have been clear for quite some time: By a substantial margin, Americans oppose the efforts of <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511">Barack Obama</a> and Congressional Democrats to enact a massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, one that <a href="http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/bg2353.cfm">would greatly expand the federal government’s role</a>.</p>
<p>Significantly, the President’s deeply held positions on healthcare were derived largely from the influence of a politically aggressive group of longtime Marxists whose worldviews were consistent with those Obama had already developed from other radical influences in his life. But before we examine who those particular Marxists were, let us establish, with certainty, what Obama’s long-term objectives for healthcare actually are.</p>
<p>As an Illinois state senator in 2003, Obama unambiguously told an AFL-CIO conference:</p>
<p>“<a href="http://sroblog.com/2009/08/04/shock-uncovered-obama-in-his-own-words-saying-his-health-care-plan-will-eliminate-private-insurance/">I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal healthcare</a> [plan]…. That’s what I’d like to see.”</p>
<p>In a single-payer system, <a href="http://www.healthcare-now.org/hr-676/whats-single-payer/">a government-run organization</a> would manage the healthcare of every man, woman, and child in the United States—collecting all related fees and paying out all related costs.</p>
<p>At an <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6535">SEIU</a> Health Care Forum on March 24, 2007, <a href="http://sroblog.com/2009/08/04/shock-uncovered-obama-in-his-own-words-saying-his-health-care-plan-will-eliminate-private-insurance/">Obama sang the same tune</a>—though this time he conceded that the attainment of his ultimate vision might require a gradual, incremental approach:</p>
<p>“There’s going to be, potentially, some transition process. I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out…”</p>
<p>In the summer of 2008, when <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/08/19/obama-touts-single-payer-system">a campaign audience member asked him to comment</a> on single-payer healthcare, Obama candidly replied:</p>
<p>“If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.”</p>
<p>Earlier this year, however, the President—recognizing the American public’s opposition to such a system, as reflected in every reputable opinion poll—made a calculated political move to withdraw the single-payer option from the bargaining table. In its stead, he argued in favor of a so-called “<a href="http://www.heritage.org/Research/healthcare/bg2311.cfm">public option</a>,” where a government plan would be set up to “compete” with private insurers—and would undoubtedly <a href="http://www.heritage.org/Research/healthcare/bg2311.cfm">drive many of those insurers out of business</a>. In an effort to assuage people’s fear that he was seeking to transform the world’s finest healthcare system into a government-run reflection of his own socialist ideals, Obama said this on June 15:</p>
<p>“What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.… So, when you hear the nay-sayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this—they are not telling the truth.”</p>
<p>But in light of his earlier quotes, this was less than candid. Obama’s pre-opinion poll position on the matter of single-payer healthcare was clear and unwavering. His more recent departure from that position is perfectly consistent with the tactics advocated by his political guru, the late <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2314">Saul Alinsky</a>, who counseled revolutionaries to conceal their real motives; to say and do whatever is necessary to allay the fears and suspicions of the middle class; and to pursue incremental change where overnight transformation is not possible—knowing they can always agitate for additional change at some point in the future.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding his concession to political practicality, it is clear that the ultimate objective of President Obama’s self-identified quest to “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cqN4NIEtOY">fundamentally transform the United States of America</a>,” is to move the nation as far as possible, albeit incrementally, toward a single-payer system. How did Obama come to embrace the single-payer ideal as the best of all possible options?<em> </em>Thanks to some extraordinary research by <a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-file-91-barack-obama-and_26.html">Trevor Loudon</a> and <a href="http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/just-your-everyday-hyde-park-radicals-obama-ayers-dohrn-young/">Brenda J. Elliott</a>, among others, we know the answer.</p>
<p>The primary figure who delivered Obama to the single-payer camp was Quentin Young, an 86-year-old retired physician who was a longtime friend and neighbor of Obama in Chicago. Young <a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-file-91-barack-obama-and_26.html">joined</a> the <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6728">Young Communist League</a> as a teenager in the late 1930s. From the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s, he was closely associated with the Communist Party. In October 1968 he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was probing the extent of his knowledge about the riots that had erupted at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago two months earlier. The Committee accused Young of belonging to the Bethune Club, an organization for communist doctors; the group was named after Norman Bethune, a communist physician who devoted his services to the totalitarian regime of <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2073">Mao Zedong</a>.</p>
<p>Dr. Young was active in the radical movements of the Sixties and Seventies and <a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-file-91-barack-obama-and_26.html">led</a> a small delegation to Communist North Vietnam in 1972. In the late 1970s, Young became <a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-file-91-barack-obama-and_26.html">associated</a> with a Marxist organization known as the New American Movement, which was initially convened by <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=632">Michael Lerner</a>, an America-hating radical who counseled young people to explore the use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs as portals to a greater comprehension of socialist principles.</p>
<p>In 1980 Young founded the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, a single-payer <a href="http://hmprg.org/about/mission/">lobby group</a> whose Board of Directors he chairs to this day. In 1982 Young helped establish the <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6428">Democratic Socialists of America</a>, which, as the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.dsausa.org/dsa.html" target="_new">asserts</a></span> that “many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed.” In 1987 Young co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a single-payer advocacy organization where he currently serves as national coordinator. In PNHP’s view, government-run healthcare “should be financed by <a href="http://www.pnhp.org/about/pnhp-mission-statement">truly progressive taxation</a>.”</p>
<p>In 1995 Young <a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-file-91-barack-obama-and_26.html">attended</a> the now-famous meeting at the Hyde Park home of former <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808">Weather Underground</a> terrorists <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2169">Bill Ayers</a> and <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2190">Bernardine Dohrn</a>, where Barack Obama was first introduced to influential locals as the hand-picked successor to <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2325">Alice Palmer</a>, a pro-Soviet radical who planned to vacate her Illinois State Senate seat in pursuit of a higher elected office. Young quickly became a friend and political ally of Obama, <a href="http://www.progressive.org/mag/nichols0109.html">teaching</a> the latter about the merits of single-payer healthcare. In a 2009 <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/11/dr_quentin_young_obama_confidante_and">interview</a> with <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1692">Amy Goodman</a> of <em><a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6891">Democracy Now!</a></em>, Young reminisced about the germination of his ideological kinship with the young Obama:</p>
<p>“Barack Obama, in those early days [as a state senator]—influenced, I hope, by me and others—categorically said single payer was the best way, and he would inaugurate it if he could get the support, meaning [Democratic] majorities in both houses, which he’s got, and the presidency, which he’s got. And he said that on more than one occasion….”</p>
<p>Another noteworthy influence on Obama’s views vis à vis healthcare has been Dr. Peter Orris, who co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program with Quentin Young. The son of a Communist Party member, Orris in the 1960s was a leader of Harvard University’s campus chapter of <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6723">Students for a Democratic Society</a>, the New Leftist organization that aspired to overthrow America’s democratic institutions and remake the nation’s government in a Marxist image. He later joined the Communist Party (CP) for more than two decades, before ultimately shifting his allegiance to the CP splinter group, Committees of Correspondence, where he remains a prominent figure to this day.</p>
<p>Other leading PNHP activists (and thus, key shapers of President Obama’s healthcare agendas) <a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-file-91-barack-obama-and_26.html">include the following</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li>Joanne Landy, a high-ranking member of the Democratic Socialists of America</li>
<li>Mark Almberg, a prominent member of the Illinois Communist Party since the 1970s</li>
<li>Oliver Fein (PNHP President) and Steffi Woolhandler (PNHP Secretary), both of whom have spoken in favor of a single-payer healthcare system at the annual <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6532">Socialist Scholars Conferences</a> in New York City</li>
</ul>
<p>The Communist influences on President Obama’s healthcare objectives do not end with the foregoing list of PNHP leaders. In 2004, PNHP collaborated with a number of likeminded, far-left organizations to form a wider coalition, Healthcare-NOW!, which likewise promotes single-payer reform (and, notably, enjoys the <a href="http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&amp;friendId=127235723&amp;blogId=406901701">strong support</a> of the Socialist Party USA). Obama’s friend and mentor, Quentin Young, is a central figure in Healthcare-NOW!, serving as the network’s <a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-file-93-obamas-marxist-doctor.html">national coordinator and co-chair</a>. Other prominent members of <a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-file-93-obamas-marxist-doctor.html">Healthcare-NOW!’s Board of Directors</a>—who, like their counterparts at PNHP, exert a major influence on President Obama—<a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-file-91-barack-obama-and_26.html">include</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=626">Medea Benjamin</a>, the pro-<a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=912">Castro</a>, America-hating co-founder of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6151">Global Exchange</a>, <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6149">Code Pink for Peace</a>, and <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6785">Iraq Occupation Watch</a></li>
<li>Michael Lighty, a <a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-file-93-obamas-marxist-doctor.html">longtime member (and former chairman)</a> of the Democratic Socialists of America</li>
<li>Flavio Casoy, a San Francisco-based doctor and a prominent member of the Communist Party USA</li>
<li><a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=779">Rev. Lucius Walker</a>, the pro-Castro executive director of the <a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6262">Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization</a>, and <a href="http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-file-93-obamas-marxist-doctor.html">a longtime supporter of Communist Party USA activities</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Barack Obama did not conceive of socialized medicine on his own. His acceptance of such a system was cultivated and nurtured by the same types of Marxist revolutionaries with whom he has surrounded himself throughout his entire adult life – and who are now shaping the major policy agendas of his administration.</p>
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		<title>The Palin Wonder &#8211; by Jamie Glazov</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/the-palin-wonder-by-jamie-glazov/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-palin-wonder-by-jamie-glazov</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/the-palin-wonder-by-jamie-glazov/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:03:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson sheds light on why Sarah Plain is gaining momentum and why the Left is foaming at the mouth. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42306" title="sarah-palin-campaign" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/sarah-palin-campaign.gif" alt="sarah-palin-campaign" width="450" height="300" /></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at Stanford  University’s Hoover Institution.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Victor Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p><strong>Hanson:</strong> Glad to be here again.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Sarah Palin is, clearly, carving out a national presence right now. It’s not just the appeal of her book, but also her outspokenness on the Copenhagen conference and other issues.  What do you think she might be up to? And what is she tapping into? What are her possibilities?</p>
<p><strong>Hanson:</strong> I think she taps into a current of populist unhappiness in the country with Washington insiders, Big Money, and condescending elites in the media and popular culture. The Wasilla mom of five, married to the snow-mobile champ, is simply the antithesis of all that. She senses the general disgust with an insider class that has nearly bankrupted the country through insane federal spending and equally insane financial speculation. She resonates in this regard mostly through an authentic middle-class upbringing, the real-world living of Alaska, natural intelligence, spunk and drive that sent one from the Wasilla city-council to the governorship of Alaska—and common sense answers like less government, lower taxes, more self-reliance, and national confidence.</p>
<p>Her can-do &#8220;let&#8217;s develop our own energy and spend no more than we earn&#8221; creed has a reassurance in these days. People root for her. The Ivy-Leaguers in government, whether the lawyer Obama or the economist Summers, haven&#8217;t exactly wowed the public with their studied brilliance so far.</p>
<p>Palin feels at ease with Middle America, and in a strange way is the antithesis to Barack Obama. Both are young, and charismatic, and appeal to populist constituencies. But whereas Obama came out of a Honolulu prep school and  elite Ivy League hot-house, and had to acquire, quite artificially, his street credentials at the foot of Rev. Wright and in the Chicago scratch-back world of Valerie Jarrett and Mayor Daley, Palin was a true product of the working class and took on rather than swam into the status quo political structure.</p>
<p>That fact was sadly lost in 2008, but it is starting to ring true as her popularity rises and Obama&#8217;s declines. Remember, though, these are mostly perceptions still, and Palin will have to give long interviews, do debates, lecture, write, and show a public grasp of the issues in the way that earlier charismatic, non-career politicians like Eisenhower and Reagan could—in contrast to flash in the pans like a Wesley Clark. For 2008 and much of 2009 the left and the media successfully caricatured her as a creationist, white-supremacist, Christianist nut, but that demonization is wearing off. Quite simply, the more the public sees her, the more it likes her—and that&#8217;s not true of most politicians like a Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid—or Barack Obama.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Can you expand a bit on what is it that the liberal-Left hates so much about Palin?</p>
<p><strong>Hanson:</strong> Well, well, let us count the ways:</p>
<p>1) Feminists resent her stance on abortion, not just her pro-life views, but the fact she delivered a challenged child in her 40s and her teen-daughter delivered an out of wedlock boy; for many professional women on the up and up, those decisions are not just absurd but scary.</p>
<p>2) The elite Left was furious over her populist appeal, particularly her charm, good looks, accent, and appearance. In sum, their view was &#8220;don&#8217;t hoi polloi know, as we do, that this glitzy thing is a moose-hunting mom with an Idaho BA? To a Maureen Dowd or Sally Qunin, a Christian mom, who hunts, lives in Alaska, and is married to Todd is OK—but not OK if she thinks she can come east and run their US.</p>
<p>3) She&#8217;s an interloper outside the normal cursus honorum. Almost all our female columnists, many of our politicians, and several of our TV personalities either married into, or were born into, influence and can trace some of their careers to the wealth or influence of powerful husbands, fathers, and mentors. Not Palin—she had no family or marital connections, no money, no powerful fixer, she&#8217;s a genuine up-from-the-bootstraps sort of feminist that, oddly, feminists don&#8217;t define as feminist.</p>
<p>4) Conservative, attractive women, with traditional marriages and child-raising, for a variety of reasons, earn media scorn;</p>
<p>4) She scares the Left by her star power; few in America can fill stadia like she can—and that worries the powers that be. Populism is supposed to be a leftist phenomenon, but when a conservative resonates with the folks, that raises concern.</p>
<p>5) Finally, her accent, her demeanor, her poorly prepared interviews with Couric and Gibson all cemented for many intellectuals and cultural grandeess, both left and right, the idea that she was hickish. Many tsk-tsked her in snobbish disdain.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What do you think of Palin?</p>
<p><strong>Hanson:</strong> I both admire and worry about her. She has exuberance and natural intelligence, coupled with energy and toughness and a certain fearlessness, and doesn&#8217;t seem to be a trimmer, but consistently articulates a common-sense position on the issues. On the other hand, she has so many obstacles in a strictly political sense to overcome. She is based thousands of miles away from New York and Washington. She is the mother of 5 and has little money, or powerful friends. The East-Coast Right dislikes her as much as the liberal elite. With young children, the Levi Johnston mess, the resignation from the governorship, the constant traveling to earn an income for her large dependencies, she is burning the candle at both ends. So I admire her pluck, but again worry that her present frenzied pace is unsustainable.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What advice would you give to Palin?</p>
<p><strong>Hanson:</strong> After her book tour ends and she has earned some money, I wish she would hunker down somewhere to write, recharge and contemplate things. A month at Hillsdale College, for example, where, in friendly and supportive surroundings, she could debate, talk to faculty, read and write would be wonderful, or in fact a month almost anywhere she could review issues, have her views tested and debated, and do some in depth reading and discussion would be great.</p>
<p>If she wrote a weekly column or did a bi-weekly radio address, in the fashion of Reagan, that too would allow her to both support her family and at the same time master the intricacies of modern national politics. She has so many gunning for her, that she needs to be proactive. Joe Biden did not know that FDR was not President in 1929 or that TV was still experimental—but given his status, the media shucked &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s just Joe!&#8221; Obama can be clueless about state geography, a 50-state union, or the basics of US history, but that&#8217;s because &#8220;he&#8217;s tired and has so much on his mind.&#8221; Wasilla moms has no such margin of error.</p>
<p>The good news is that she is so energetic, naturally talented, and charismatic, that, with a few weeks prep, she could redo the Couric interview and sparkle. What happened in 2008, was that she went from a supportive populace in Alaska to a hostile prime-time lion&#8217;s den, without proper appreciation that she was the antithesis of most of the values and lifestyles of those who would write and comment on her—and they were waiting for her in a way I think she did not anticipate. That said, I think we can already see that she is becoming media-savvy and picking her venues carefully.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Victor Hanson, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.</p>
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		<title>Muslim Mafia &#8211; by Fern Sidman</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/fern-sidman/muslim-mafia-by-fern-sidman/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-mafia-by-fern-sidman</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:00:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Fern Sidman]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[A new book takes us inside the secret underworld that's conspiring to Islamize America.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-39902" title="mafia" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mafia.jpg" alt="mafia" width="450" height="535" /></p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian based Islamic terrorist organization appears to be alive and well and cloaking itself in legitimacy in our nation&#8217;s capitol under the guise of a front group say intrepid undercover agents P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry in their new book, <strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Muslim-Mafia-Underworld-Conspiring-Islamize/dp/1935071106/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1259719070&amp;sr=1-1">Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That&#8217;s Conspiring to Islamize America</a></strong> (World Net Daily Books 2009). Investigative journalism reaches new levels in doughtiness and concludes with a shocking crescendo in this tome, as Gaubatz, his son Chris and Paul Sperry infiltrate the shady Washington, DC based organization known as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); the nation&#8217;s largest and purportedly mainstream Muslim-American &#8220;civil rights&#8221; advocacy agency. The frightening facts published in this book are supported by more than 12,000 pages of confidential CAIR documents and hundreds of hours of video captured in this unprecedented undercover operation.</p>
<p>Through painstaking and nuanced research of internal memos and documents the authors establish the fact that CAIR is the ideological cousin of the notorious Muslim Brotherhood and their leadership is inextricably tied to the promulgation of an explosively violent &#8220;jihadist&#8221; agenda.  Utilizing double speak and a wide variety of cleverly devised subterfuges, CAIR manages to ostensibly present itself as a law abiding, pro-American organization, however the authors expose their unbridled mendacity in its most egregious form.</p>
<p>Mr. Gaubatz served for twelve years as a former agent with the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations and is a career military counterterrorism specialist as well as a US State Department trained Arabic linguist. Joining him on this six month long covert foray into the nefarious machinations of CAIR and it&#8217;s overt ties to Muslim terrorists of all stripes are his son Chris who worked undercover as a convert to Islam and Paul Sperry, a veteran investigative journalist and author of &#8220;Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington.&#8221;</p>
<p>This book could effortlessly take it&#8217;s rightful place among classic hair raising espionage thrillers if it&#8217;s tragic geo-political realities weren&#8217;t so terrifying. The authors scrupulously document CAIR&#8217;s foreign fundraising sources including exceedingly large donations from the Wahabi dominated Saudi Arabian government that gave birth to the 9/11 hijackers. Not to be outdone, CAIR also assumes the role of benefactor, as the recipients of their financial largesse include such heinous terror organizations as Hamas.</p>
<p>Moreover, the authors offer shocking revelations about CAIR&#8217;s infiltration of key US law enforcement agencies including local police departments, the FBI, the CIA and the State Department as well as their heavy handed influence operations against members of homeland security committess on Capitol Hill and their insertion of Islamic spies in congressional offices.  According to the authors, FBI wiretaps reveal that, &#8220;During a secret Muslim Brotherhood meeting he organized last decade, CAIR founder and former chair Omar Ahmad expressed the need to strengthen &#8220;the influence with Congress.&#8221; He argued for using Muslims as an &#8220;entry point&#8221; to &#8220;pressure Congress and the decision makers in America&#8221; to change US foreign policy in the Middle East and other policies.&#8221;</p>
<p>CAIR&#8217;s far reaching tentacles have even permeated corporate America, say the authors, as they and their sister organization, the Islamic Society of North America blackmail Wall Street firms who do not comply with Islamic financing principles. The authors also spotlight CAIR&#8217;s use of intimidation tactics in silencing their political opponents as evidenced in their efforts to unleash a vitriolic campaign to blacklist such media personalities as Bill O&#8217;Reilly, Dr. Laura Schlesinger, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage while pressuring the National Review to acquiesce to their demands.</p>
<p>While elected officials from both sides of the aisle, including former president George W. Bush, have legitimized the dubious organization with governmental recognition and ceremonial gravitas, CAIR&#8217;s underlying credo remains seditious and rabidly anti-American until this very day. The authors remind us that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush appeared alongside officials from CAIR and other outwardly benign Muslim groups that weren&#8217;t properly vetted at the Islamic Center of Washington in a display of &#8220;unity&#8221;. The unsuspecting former president announced, &#8220;It is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel just the same way as I do. They&#8217;re outraged, they&#8217;re sad. They love America just as much as I do.&#8221;</p>
<p>These words would come back to haunt the president as facts concerning CAIR&#8217;s zealous legal representation of Muslim Americans charged with terrorist activities came to the fore and as history would record, certain members of CAIR&#8217;s own leadership would turn out to be unindicted co-conspirators in helping to finance terrorist organizations.</p>
<p>As the burgeoning and pernicious scourge of global radical Islam continues to proliferate in an unfettered manner, it is clear that within our borders the threat to our cherished democratic values and principles are all too real. The release of this book of paramount importance by authors Gaubatz and Sperry hasn&#8217;t come a moment too soon. To say that the information published in these pages is a real eye opener is an understatement of monumental proportions. It is a must read for anyone, the world over, who still clings to the hope of freedom, peace and liberty that Western civilization represents.</p>
<p><strong>To order <em>Muslim Mafia</em>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Muslim-Mafia-Underworld-Conspiring-Islamize/dp/1935071106/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1259719070&amp;sr=1-1">click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>David Horowitz Honors his Daughter&#8217;s Life &#8211; by Sonny Bunch</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/sonny-bunch/david-horowitz-honors-his-daughters-life-by-sonny-bunch/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=david-horowitz-honors-his-daughters-life-by-sonny-bunch</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:04:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Sonny Bunch]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA["A Cracking of the Heart" is the story of a parent’s grief and discovery. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-39462" title="cracking_horowitz_lg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/cracking_horowitz_lg2.jpg" alt="cracking_horowitz_lg" width="450" height="452" /></p>
<p><strong>[This article is reprinted from the <a href="http://washingtontimes.com/">Washington Times</a>]</strong></p>
<p>&#8220;You can lose people through death &#8211; and you can lose them while they&#8217;re still alive,&#8221; David Horowitz says.</p>
<p>The conservative author and activist is no stranger to losing friends over his political views. As his autobiography &#8220;Radical Son&#8221; details, the one-time leftist theoretician angrily rejected liberalism in the wake of a friend&#8217;s murder by the Black Panthers. His reaction cost him friends, allies and, for a time, even members of his own family.</p>
<p>Now, in &#8220;A Cracking of the Heart,&#8221; Mr. Horowitz examines his sometimes strained relationship with one of his daughters, Sarah. Born in 1964 with Turner syndrome, Sarah stood less than 5 feet tall, had poor hips and a weak heart, the last of which killed her in 2008. The book recalls the struggles and triumphs of her life &#8211; and reveals Mr. Horowitz&#8217;s regrets about how he let his political stridency drive father and daughter apart.</p>
<p>&#8220;This book was therapy for me; it was a remembrance of my daughter and her extraordinary courage,&#8221; Mr. Horowitz says in a recent phone interview. &#8220;It&#8217;s a lesson to all of us who complain about much lesser frustrations and obstacles that we face. We often feel utterly defeated by them. This book should inspire people. Her life should inspire people to face those problems and not let [the problems] get them down.&#8221;</p>
<p>Heartened by the reaction he received to the eulogy he delivered at Sarah&#8217;s funeral, Mr. Horowitz decided to write a book that would bring her extraordinary story to life and give others a glimpse into her world.</p>
<p>&#8220;A Cracking of the Heart&#8221; is also a tale of family struggles, a reminder that blood is more important than whatever political differences may come between us. Mr. Horowitz is a fire-breathing conservative whose confrontational style often comes across as abrasive; his daughter, meanwhile, attended a liberal synagogue and traveled to Iowa to support Barack Obama&#8217;s presidential bid.</p>
<p>&#8220;Consider that these are your children, and remember your parents and the influence that they had on you,&#8221; Mr. Horowitz would advise others who sense family bonds fracturing under the weight of clashing worldviews. &#8220;Even when they are rebelling, even if they seem to be embracing values or views that are alien to you, look inside them for your influence and use that as a point of connection.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mr. Horowitz relates in &#8220;A Cracking of the Heart&#8221; that Sarah was often reluctant to share her writings with him. After her death, Mr. Horowitz dove into those writings &#8211; including poems, an unpublished novel and writings about her personal life &#8211; in order to find out what he could about his daughter.</p>
<p>He learned about more than just his daughter, however. In the course of researching the book, Mr. Horowitz also discovered that there were lessons he could have taken from his daughter&#8217;s views.</p>
<p>&#8220;My daughter was very generous with homeless people even though she had no money,&#8221; he says. &#8220;She would always give change to the homeless, and of course, as a conservative, at first I reacted and said that these people have substance abuse problems, they should be taken care of, they should be institutionalized.&#8221;</p>
<p>Then he came across a journal entry from his daughter in which she wrote about being approached by a once-homeless woman who had since pulled her life together. The woman thanked Sarah for her kindness during a rough patch and said that she had never forgotten the help.</p>
<p>&#8220;I realized then that we may have our policy positions about homelessness, but the reality is that &#8230; it would be worth it, even if there&#8217;s only one person that you help &#8211; even if there&#8217;s just a chance of there being one,&#8221; Mr. Horowitz says. &#8220;So my daughter really taught me a lesson there.&#8221;</p>
<p>He just regrets that she had to die before he was able to learn the lesson &#8211; and hopes her life can be an example to others.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s impossible to read about my daughter without becoming a more compassionate, better person,&#8221; he says. &#8220;And I hope also that since we all have to endure terrible losses &#8211; they&#8217;re part of the process of life, really &#8211; that people will get strength from my book and find comfort in it.&#8221;</p>
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