March 23, 2009

by Bill Levinson

The Radio Islam Web site promotes the most vicious imaginable anti-Semitism, including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and a page labeled “The Blood Orgy of the Jewish Devils.” Perhaps we should call out CAIR and other purportedly “mainstream” Islamic organizations and ask them to disown this site as un-Islamic. The site also engages in Holocaust denial.

Here is the ownership information for the freak show in question.
American Islam Society, 2272 Colorado Blvd. Suite# 1308
Los Angeles, CA 90041

We checked to see whether it is 501(c)(3) tax exempt–in which case practices like Holocaust denial might be cause for revocation of its tax exempt status (”purpose not educational”) but apparently not. In any event, we need to ask CAIR and similar organizations to denounce this hate group.
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Allies no longer against this
By Melanie Phillips, The Spectator

The awesome scale of Obama’s ineptitude over his ruinous ‘fiscal stimulus’ package and in particular the bail-out and bonus debacle over AIG has provoked a weeping and a wailing and a rending of garments among the faithful, yea even unto the New York Times, as they witness The One not walking on water but risking pulling out the plug on America Inc. altogether.

What has been all but overlooked in the pandemonium is the catastrophic damage he is doing abroad to the prospects for the defence of the free world. His recklessly misjudged televised appeal to Iran – in which he didn’t even distinguish between the regime and the oppressed people of Iran, whom he effectively threw under the bus by pointedly recognising ‘the Islamic Republic’, ie the regime – brought a swift response from that regime of contemptuous disdain:

In an unusually swift reaction to Mr Obama’s overture, Aliakbar Javanfekr, an aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Iran welcomed ‘the interest of the American government to settle differences’. But he said that the US government ‘should realise its previous mistakes and make an effort to amend them’. In an almost simultaneous announcement, from Iran’s energy minister, Parviz Fattah, said that the country would ‘finish and operate’ its controversial Russian-built Bushehr nuclear plant by the end of the year.

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Neither is Heritage Canada or the Centre for Faith and the Media alone. Canada’s Manning Centre, another respected institution, scurried along to join the post-9/11 penchant for interfaith outreach. Led by conservative political icon Preston Manning, but without apparent familiarity with difficult Islamist issues, the Manning Centre established an interfaith unit that stumbled. At last report, the Manning Centre had given a special place in its consultations to associates of the Islamic Society of North America, and the resulting embarrassment cannot be far behind.

Given current trends in the Canadian government and NGO sector, there will be a great deal of embarrassment to go around.

by Farzana Hassan, IPTNews, March 23, 2009

Things are heating up in the sweepstakes for the most incompetent department of Canadian government to face Islamic radicalism. For a while, bets were on Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, which, for 11 years, had the president of the extremist-sympathizing Canadian Arab Federation – big on Hamas and Hizballah – on its board. His job there was to decide who was too dangerous to let into the country.

But now “Heritage Canada,” a Canadian government department whose bid for the title is made with the help of the Calgary-based independent Centre for Faith and the Media (CFM) has jumped in the fray.

Heritage Canada pushes a multiculturalism agenda, and the CFM seems to be a one-employee outfit with a volunteer Board of Directors of sympathetic religious people – with one exception. Positioning itself as a link and information clearinghouse between journalists and religious communities, CFM has been decisive in moving Heritage Canada into committing blunders.

The current fiasco started when Heritage Canada funded the Centre to start something called “The Muslim Project.” This initiative involves a series of cross-Canada “roundtables” prominently displaying CFM’s sole paid employee, Executive Director Richelle Wiseman, as moderator. The end-product? A “study” of media portrayals of Muslims and Islam in Canada, due out within the next year or so.

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By Ted Belman

J-STREET released a poll today of the American Jewish Community, the results of which seem tailor-made to support Obama’s policies. Little wonder since J-Street is on the in and AIPAC is on the out. Everything that J-Street has espoused is confirmed especially the wisdom of forcing a deal on Israel.

A new J Street poll, released today, shows strong continued support among American Jews for assertive American diplomacy in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as in the Middle East generally. The results, which you can read in full below, demonstrate an understanding that difficult compromises will have to be made by both sides in order to bring true peace and security to Israel, the Palestinians, and the entire region.

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Bobby Rush, a former member of an organization known for killing police officers, doesn’t want honest people to own guns
by Bill Levinson
We have written here frequently about the importance of the Second Amendment in the defense of the United States against militant “Muslims” and other terrorists. Although militant “Muslims” feel free to perpetrate rampant violence and gang rape in Europe, these practices are far less frequent here because of the widespread private ownership of firearms.

Representative Bobby Rush (D-IL), a former Black Panther and a convicted felon whose illegal possession of firearms lost him his own right to own firearms, has proposed a bill to require licensing of all handguns and semiautomatic firearms (H.R. 45). Although he managed to receive an honorable discharge from the Armed Forces, his service record includes an incident of Absent Without Leave (AWOL). Bobby Rush is therefore just another common criminal and jailbird who resents the fact that law-abiding people can own the means with which to protect themselves from terroristic violence. (Read more…)

By Hussein Dakroub, Associated Press, March 23, 2009

BEIRUT – An explosion in southern Lebanon on Monday killed a senior Fatah official and three of his bodyguards as they were leaving a Palestinian refugee camp, Lebanese and Palestinian security officials said.

The blast, apparently from a roadside bomb, struck a two-car convoy carrying Fatah’s Kamal Madhat as they left the Mieh Mieh camp near the southern port city of Sidon, killing him and the bodyguards, the officials said. A fourth bodyguard was wounded.

Madhat’s car was completely gutted in the explosion that left a 16 feet (5-meter) wide crater, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The blast was heard across Sidon. Witnesses said pieces of torn flesh were scattered near the bombing site, as ambulances and civil defense rushed to evacuate the victims.

The Mieh Mieh camp and the nearby Ein el-Hilweh camp are mainly controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ mainstream Fatah group. Madhat was a military, political and security aide to a Palestinian representative in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, who is close to Abbas.

No one claimed responsibility for the bombing and Lebanese authorities released no official statements. (Continue Reading this Article)

Center for Security Policy | Mar 23, 2009
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

President Obama’s stewardship of the national security portfolio to date amounts to a wrecking operation, a set of policies he must understand will not only weaken the United States but embolden our foes. After all, the Communist agitator Saul Alinsky, a formative influence in Mr. Obama’s early years as a “community organizer,” made Rule Number One in his 1971 book Rules for Radicals: “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”

According to this logic, the various steps Barack Obama is taking with respect to the armed forces, the foreign battlefields in which they are engaged, our allies as well as our adversaries will not only diminish our power. They will encourage our enemies to perceive us as less powerful – with ominous implications. Consider some illustrative examples:
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Sympathy For The Devil; Why AIG Had No Choice But To Pay

By Edward Jay Epstein, Wall Street Confidential

If you want to understand why AIG awarded derivative traders in its Financial Products Group $165 million in bonuses, don’t be distracted by the on-going morality play staged by politicians about the misuse of Federal funds, the blame-shifting game played by AIG executives, or even the disingenuous hand-wringing about the sanctity of contracts. The real decider here is money, specifically, $1.6 trillion worth of volatile derivative contracts. This portfolio, managed by 400 or so derivative traders that work for a London-based subsidiary, mainly consists of credit default swaps that has the potential of inflicting hundreds of billions of dollars of losses on AIG– and, its de facto partner, the US tax payer.
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by Hana Levi Julian, Arutz Sheva-INN, March 23, 2009

(IsraelNN.com) The Iranian-linked Hizbullah terrorist group may be connected to the operatives who planted explosives weighing approximately 100 kg (220 lb) underneath a Haifa mall on Saturday night. A massive tragedy was narrowly avoided when a passerby noticed a small explosion in the underground parking lot and immediately notified security personnel.

According to a report published Monday in the Hebrew-language Haaretz newspaper, a source in the Palestinian Authority said Hizbullah has been actively recruiting members of PA terror groups for operations against Israel.

The Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations have all been contacted by the Lebanon-based terror group and were urged to carry out attacks within Israel, according to the source.

This is not the first news of “outside” terrorist groups recruiting operatives from within Israel to carry out attacks on citizens in the state.

Shortly after the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Hizbullah secretary-general Sheikh Naim Qassem told the Christian Science Monitor that small groups “can infiltrate in and out very quickly… It is not complex. These are not large groups of people. Just two or three who plan for a while…” (Continue Reading this Article)

Given the mindless opening to Iran being pursued Obama in his video address to Iran’s mullarcracy and people on the Persian New Year, Nowuz, and the immediate categorical rejection by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei, you would think that would have been be a jarring wake up call in Washington. Apparently not. The Obama Administration is intent on finding out for itself what PM designee Netanyahu and former US UN Ambassador John Bolton have known for years. That Iran’s nuclear quest has reshaped the geo-political map in the Middle East and must be addressed before the nightmare of an Islamic nuclear conflagration occurs.

Jerry Gordon, The Iconoclast, March 23, 2009

Amir Taheri in this WSJ op-ed “Iran Has Started a Mideast Arms Race,” underlines the threat of a nuclear pandora’s box in the Middle East created by the lack of resolve of the West in stifling the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamanei’s quest for an Iranian nuclear arsenal. Now with the house release in Pakistan of criminal nuclear mastermind Dr. A.Q. Kahn, the father of the Islamic nuclear bomb, the Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Gulf emirates are bent on developing their own nuclear capabilities. Even Iraq, whose nuclear capability was taken out by an Israeli raid on the Osirak reactor in June, 1981 is vitally concerned. Note this comment in the Taheri piece by an Iraqi parliamentarian Saleh al-Mutlaq:

“A single tactical nuclear attack on Basra and Baghdad could wipe out a third of our population,” a senior Iraqi official told me, on condition of anonymity. Since almost 90% of Iraqis live within 90 miles of the Iranian border, the “fear is felt in every town and village.

That does not bode well for Israel and the US, and should give rise to reconsideration of a military option against the Iranian nuclear complex by the emerging coalition government under PM-designate Netanyahu.

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Paul Eidelberg

There can be no doubt that Barack Hussein Obama is playing the Moslem card to the detriment of Israel. His appeasement of Iran, the epicenter of global terrorism, is especially troubling, to Americans as well as Israelis. Obama’s Middle East advisers have consorted not only with Hamas, an Iranian proxy, but also with Syria, a terrorist state. The Obama government is helping the Palestinian (terrorist) Authority to establish a military training base in Jericho. All this substantiates a March 19 report in Israel Today. I quote:

A former top US intelligence official warns that the Obama Administration is about to break America’s long ties of friendship with Israel, and maybe even take steps toward the dissolution of the Jewish state. Speaking on condition of anonymity to Douglas Hagmann of the Northeast Intelligence Network, the source said: “The Obama Administration … is preparing to provide more support to Arab countries [with] financial and military aid, undercutting Israel’s defense efforts while pushing Israel to succumb to the pressure of unreasonable demands designed to end with their political annihilation as a nation.”

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By Ted Belman

Moshe Elad analysis the “peace process in a two parts; Time to face the truth and Time for new approach.

In the former he argues

1. everyone is enjoying the process too much,
2. Abbas represents no one and
3. The Palestinians are not prepared to compromise on the “right of return”.

In the latter

Recently, we have been hearing a demand to “bring Hamas into the political framework.” Unsurprisingly, we were told that Hamas is about to comply with Fatah’s request to join a Palestinian national unity government.

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By Ted Belman

Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior official in the State and Defense departments, in the WSJ, argues It’s Time to ‘Go to Strength’ on Foreign Policy

The United States is at a strategic crossroads. Should we continue to focus our power on crises where we’re weakest, or go to established strengths? One path — the current one — is to place our biggest bets on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq where the outcomes will be uncertain and, in any event, costly. The other path — shaped by Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower — is to emphasize building situations of strength with old allies like Germany and Japan and potential new partners like India, China and Russia, where we can expect some cooperation and positive results.

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