04/3/13

Help KeyWiki Expose Asian Americans For Equality’s Insidious Network

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

A network of “former” radicals, some allied to Communist China, have built a strong power base in Manhattan’s Chinatown and are using it to influence politics in New York and across the nation.

Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), is a forty year old re-branding of the violent, and fanatically pro-China, pro North Korea Communist Workers Party.

AAFE, is many things.

At one level it functions like an Asian American ACORN, intimidating unfriendly businesses, government agencies and political opponents from its Lower East Side base.

aafeddd

On another level, it is a huge business and cultural enterprise owning a significant property portfolio in New York, and soaking businesses and the taxpayers for millions to support a multitude of programs and spinoff organizations.

On a third and most sinister level, AAFE functions as an influence operation. The organization has infiltrated the New York business community, local government and the Democratic Party to a seldom appreciated extent.

Leading Democratic Party figures regularly appear at AAFE events and are happy to lend the organization credibility, as it happily milks City, State and Federal government of millions of dollars.

Prominent members of the AAFE network include:

John Choe, chief of staff for Councilman John Liu, Margaret Chin, deputy director of AAFE, Assemblywoman Ellen Young, and Christopher Kui, executive director of AAFE

John Choe, chief of staff for Councilman John Liu, Margaret Chin, Deputy Director of AAFE, Assemblywoman Ellen Young and Christopher Kui, Executive Director of AAFE, Aug. 2008

  • John Liu, New York City Comptroller and current mayoral candidate.
  • John Choe, pro-North Korean, former aide to John Liu.
  • Margaret Chin, New York City Councillor.
  • Chris Kui, Executive Director of Asian Americans for Equality since January 1986.
  • Bill Chong, Deputy Commissioner of the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development.
  • Michio Kaku, scientist and political activist.
  • Grace Meng, Freshman Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the 5th District of New York.

Nydia Velasquez, Margaret Chin, Carolyn Maloney, Chinese Communist flags, Lunar New Year Parade in Chinatown, 2011.Communist chinese flags, communist flags

Nydia Velasquez, Margaret Chin, Carolyn Maloney, Chinese Communist flags, Lunar New Year Parade in Chinatown, 2011

Other New York politicians with ties to AAFE include:

On the West Coast, AAFE’s network includes two former pro-China radicals, turned politician:

  • Ed Lee, Mayor of San Francisco.
  • Jean Quan, Mayor of Oakland, (who is close to another member of the former Workers Communist Party’s still existing networks, Los Angeles area Congresswoman, Judy Chu).

Sheldon Silver, Jean Quan, Floyd Huen, Margaret Chin, Christopher Kui, AAFE Award dinner, March, 2011

Sheldon Silver, Jean Quan, Floyd Huen, Margaret Chin, Christopher Kui, AAFE Award dinner, March, 2011

Both have been busy trying to build Communist Chinese business and cultural involvement in their respective cities.

Asian Americans for Equality’s expanding influence and insidious agenda goes virtually unchallenged because of their money and powerful friends.

This network has substantial influence in New York, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and increasingly within the U.S. Congress.

Several members of this network are close to Communist Chinese officials and some visit China on a regular basis. At least one, John Choe, has close ties to North Korea.

Is there a possible security problem here?

Please don’t take my word for any of this information.

Follow the blue links to our KeyWiki website.

KeyWiki is the premier website dedicated to exposing the covert side of U.S. politics at every level.

It has enjoyed more than 30,000,000 views of its 60,000 plus pages.

KeyWiki tracks the incestuous networks of the Left, so you know who your real opposition is.

Please contribute any amount you can spare to KeyWiki to fund our ongoing research.

Every dollar counts!

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TrevorLoudon.com

Editor KeyWiki

04/3/13

Keeping a Close Eye on the Right Wing, Part 4

By: Baron Bodissey
Gates of Vienna

This is the final installment of a four-part series. Previously: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Keeping a Close Eye on the Right Wing
Part 4: Academic vs. Academic

As reported in this space last week and yesterday, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) held a conference in London on March 13 to study the “New Far Right” in Europe, paying special attention on the English Defence League. The conference launched a report entitled “A Neo-Nationalist Network: The English Defence League and Europe’s Counter-Jihad Movement” [pdf], which examines the history of the English Defence and related movements in Europe.

Regular readers are familiar with JLH, who works tirelessly to translate so much material from the German. Before he became a volunteer translator for Gates of Vienna, JLH spent a number of years on the faculty of an American university.

As mentioned earlier in this series, much of the ICSR report is couched in dense academic jargon that hinders any easy understanding. However, JLH — given his distinguished academic record — was undaunted by the esoteric scholastic idiom used in the report, and spent a considerable time examining it with a jaundiced eye.

His report is below. As he remarked in the email accompanying his response: “Sending me the ICSR report activated my old academic glands and provoked my Islamic antibodies at the same time. I was unable to help myself; I had to tackle it.”

Academic vs. Academic
by JLH

The ICSR report is a nice example of 21st century political scholarship:

  • Careful research which does not support the main thesis, but lends credibility to the “look”.
  • Citations of numerous scholars who specialize in five-syllable words.
  • The assumption that readers will be in agreement with the authors’ point of view, because any sensible person thinks that way.
  • Nationalism is bad; dissolution of nations and cultures in the name of universality is good. Xenophobia is bad because it is the unreasoning fear of the “other” but what might be called autochthonophobia — hatred and fear of the less refined members of your own society — is fine.

“What do those damned Neanderthals expect? When they are all gone, only the best of all lands will remain. We are the world!”

Below are some selected gems of the authors’ wisdom followed by my irascible comments.

ABOUT ICSR

The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) is a unique partnership in which King’s College London, Georgetown Univesity [sic], the University of Pennsylvania, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (Israel) and the Regional Center for Conflict Prevention Amman (Jordan) are equal stakeholders. [emphasis added]

That is, grants have been granted — possibly from governments.

CATS — Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies

Nice how they use a term developed to describe terrorist violence and apply it to non-violent movements of a country’s citizens.

Executive Summary

…henceforth referred to collectively as the European Counter-Jihad Movement (ECJM)…

OH, GOOD! Initials and a collective title — it must be real!

The ECJM poses three serious problems:

i) Though it does not specifically call for violence, the sensationalist character of the ECJM narrative, which includes a paranoid tendency towards conspiracy-theory, can act as inspiration for violent terrorist attacks like those carried out by Breivik, who emerged from the ECJM’s ideological milieu;
ii) the movement can serve to incubate, protect and add a veneer of plausibility and acceptability to traditional forms of far-right xenophobia and extremism;
iii) its amorphous nature and ability to tap into popular concerns about immigration, religion, terrorism and the economy increases the likelihood of violent confrontation and jeopardises Europe’s social fabric. [emphasis added]

Pardon me — while the ECJM are not calling for violence, what are the antifas, militant Islamists and friends doing?

Are they proclaiming universal peace and brotherhood? Or, by any chance… calling for violence?

Continue reading

04/3/13

Keeping a Close Eye on the Right Wing, Part 3

By: Baron Bodissey
Gates of Vienna

This is the third installment of a four-part series. Previously: Part 1, Part 2.

Keeping a Close Eye on the Right Wing
Part 3: The British Counterjihad Movement

As reported here last week, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) held a conference in London on March 13 to study the “New Far Right” in Europe, with a special focus on the English Defence League.

The featured event of the conference was a report entitled “A Neo-Nationalist Network: The English Defence League and Europe’s Counter-Jihad Movement” [pdf], which focuses on the history of the English Defence and related movements across Europe, tracing what it considers the crucial transatlantic connections with these groups.

Aeneas of the International Civil Liberties Alliance has compiled an analysis of the ICSR report from the perspective of the British Counterjihad.

The British Counterjihad Movement
by Aeneas

The ICSR report, “A Neo-Nationalist Network: The English Defence League and Europe’s Counter-Jihad Movement”, by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens and Hans Brun, was obviously intended to damage the English Defence League, perhaps with an eye to supporting an eventual ban on it. To that end, it missed no opportunity to warn about possible ‘fascist’ characteristics and the potential for the emergence of ‘neo-Nazis’ in the group. Yet it is unable to present any evidence for such ‘tendencies’, merely offering vague warnings about bad things that somehow, someday, just might happen.

In contrast, by quoting from relevant EDL documents and other sources of information, it repeatedly presents evidence that the EDL is classically liberal, law-abiding, non-violent, and open to the inclusion of racial and other minorities. By showing the positive side of the movement, it has done the EDL and the European Counterjihad a great service.

This peculiar inconsistency — an obvious prejudice against the EDL accompanied by hard evidence that portrays the organisation in a good light — is hard to explain. Yet such contradictions appear repeatedly in the report.

The ICSR paper is too large to cover in its entirety. In my brief analysis below, I shall just touch upon some of the more important points.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In its discussion of the EDL’s Mission Statement, the report engages in the most desperate circumlocutions to find ways to criticise the EDL’s warm embrace of ethnic minority communities. In this and other analyses, the authors seem to be suggesting that it is illiberal to oppose the illiberal.

Conversely, it does not address those aspects of Islam that the Counterjihad is concerned about; it just glosses over them. It pretends these crucial issues — involving real violence and real oppression — are due to misunderstanding, yet it never gives the Counterjihad any similar benefit of the doubt. Instead, it does what it can to demonise and delegitimise it.

Nationalism and ‘Cultural Nationalism’

The report places far too much emphasis on nationalism in its analysis of the Counterjihad. Nationalism is important to many supporters, but that is not the main thrust of Counterjihad, which is based firmly on the bedrock of tradition Enlightenment freedoms.

Part 3 puts forward the idea that the EDL is essentially a nationalist movement, and again ignores the central components of Counterjihad ideology that helped to shape the group. In many respects the EDL has a supranational vision. It is an organisation that seeks to unite people of all races and nationalities. It should come as no surprise that the EDL has attracted admiration across Europe, North America, and even as far away as non-Western India. It has been able to do this because it has cross-cultural appeal, something that a purely nationalist group would be incapable of achieving.

Much of the report focuses on what it considers the main preoccupation of the Counterjihad, the issue of ‘preserving European culture’. While this may be one of the goals of many EDL supporters, it is not the essence of its being. Its broader focus is reflected in the initiatives that the EDL has undertaken, including the establishment of the Jewish, Sikh, and LGBT Divisions and the way it actively encourages the participation of ethnic minorities. The EDL has even stated that it is a multicultural organisation.

This tendency is also reflected in its international diplomacy. It has been successful in its dealing with foreign organisations because its main focus has been Enlightenment values rather than nationalism. The vast majority of its work has focused on freedom of expression, equality before the law, women’s rights, the rights of the LGBT community, and animal cruelty, etc. It has been criticised for not being ‘nationalist’ by organisations that are demonstrably nationalist. The press and academia prefer to portray the EDL as ‘nationalist’ because that gives them the greatest opportunity to criticise it.

The report appears to claim that the EDL’s non-emphasis of nationalism is just a smokescreen, so desperate are its authors to depict the EDL as beyond the pale. Academics, politicians, and the media do not judge the EDL by its statements, its official policies, or its actions. They reach their conclusions based on what they have already decided about it, their own ideas about what such an organisation must be like.

If one cannot judge an organisation on the basis of what it says and what it does, then how can one possibly make a rational assessment of it?

The ‘Far Right’

The report includes standard references to the ‘far right’, Breivik, or the BNP — conflating all of them, and connecting all of them with the EDL.

Yet in their own selections of quotes and references, the authors repeatedly demonstrate that the EDL has nothing in common with these groups and individuals. On page 11:

It is worth noting that, even at this early stage in the group’s evolution, there was at least an acknowledgement that the majority of Muslims are not extremists, and an apparent disavowal of racist politics.

That hardly seems the ideology of the ‘far right’!

On page 14:

Under Robinson and Carroll there has been a clear and mostly effective drive to remove the lingering street-fighting and neo-Nazi elements from the group’s street demonstrations.

It goes on to quote a favourable comment from a senior police officer about the EDL’s efforts to cooperate with the police in order to avoid violence at demonstrations, which reflects well on Tommy Robinson and his supporters.

The report fails to note something that would have made the EDL look even better: almost all of the violence at demonstrations was instigated by members of radical leftist organisations, who did so to try to make the EDL look bad.

Yet the fact that the ICSR report is willing to include a positive evaluation from the police about the EDL proves that the authors are doing more than creating the typical smear job. Intentionally or otherwise, they have provided a favourable account of the EDL from British law-enforcement and other sources.

The EDL’s critics have commented on the declining numbers at their demonstrations. However, in the early days the EDL had had problems with Nazis/left wing provocateurs infiltrating demonstrations. The positive achievement of removing neo-Nazis is reflected in the following (inadvertently positive?) passage from the article:

The removal and alienation of the neo-Nazi and many of the street fighters has also resulted in a decline in the numbers of people that EDL rallies can attract.

This is clear evidence that the English Defence League have sacrificed numbers at demonstrations in order to actively rid the organisation of racists. This has helped bring the British Counterjihad closer to its libertarian and humanitarian roots as referred to earlier. The public statements made by EDL leader Tommy Robinson have always reflected these roots:

Through numerous interviews with mainstream media outlets he [Tommy Robinson] has attempted to present a clear, non-violent and ostensibly moderate message concerning the threat of radical Islam.

In the above quote, arbitrary prejudgement of the EDL is reflected in the addition of the words ‘attempted’ and ‘ostensible’ to throw into doubt the sincerity of his words. Academics and members of the media have their own prejudices that result in serious errors. In so doing they completely ignore the fact that the Counterjihad was solidly founded on liberal values. That the EDL has managed to capably steer itself back to that stance, despite the efforts of the provocateurs, should come as no surprise.

The ICSR paper seems to deliberately cast doubt on the fact that the decisions to establish its position was sincerely based on the liberal foundations of Counterjihad ideology. Yet the authors present the evidence for exactly that.

The report places a great emphasis on associations with the British National Party (BNP) — again as a tool to demonise the Counterjihad. The constant references to the BNP represent the time-honoured tactic of guilt by association.

Even so, the paper states on page 7:

…it is clear that a great deal of uncertainty remains regarding the true nature of the English Defence League (EDL) and its European affiliates.

This “uncertainty” about the EDL does not seem to deter the legacy media, who continue their standard demonization of the organisation’s ideals, its people, and its works, without any actual evidence.

Paul Ray, aka “Lionheart”

A key problem with the report is that it places far too much emphasis on Paul Ray. It draws attention to his utterances, such as those stating that the EDL is “against all devout Muslims”, as though they are representative of what the EDL is. In the end, Ray was side-lined by the EDL leadership because he was regarded as too extreme, and as such an embarrassment to the emerging organisation.

Ray’s subsequent assertion that the EDL had been taken over by neo-Nazis was without a doubt caused by their rejection of his approach, rather than what was happening in reality. Of course, the legacy media were desperate to believe his rantings, because his interpretation fit with their own warped views and false assumptions.

The authors make the ridiculous assertion that the British Counterjihad movement had its origins in Paul Ray’s ramblings on his “Lionheart” blog. Back in 2007, many in the Counterjihad community actually regarded his blog as too extreme and too focused on Crusader symbolism.

In reality, the British Counterjihad movement was established around the issue of freedom of speech. A key event in that process took place on Saturday 25 March, 2006. This was the March for Free Expression (MfFE), which was organised around a blog established for that purpose in the aftermath of the Danish Cartoon riots. That blog can be found at www.marchforfreeexpression.blogspot.co.uk.

Blogs such as Up Pompeii, Western Resistance, and Harry’s Place, along with internationally-orientated blogs such as Infidel Bloggers Alliance, played a far more influential role in the early days than the Crusader stance of Lionheart and similar blogs.

The Counterjihad, in contrast to the Lionheart meme, was founded around mainstream issues of concern to broad swathes of the public. It was not founded simply in opposition to Islam; rather it arose specifically to protect liberal Western values that have since been significantly worn down due to pressure from Islamists, the radical Left, and opportunistic politicians.

European Freedom Initiative

The ICSR paper seems to miss the point when it discusses the European Freedom Initiative (EFI). The EFI was founded to protect freedom of expression, a fact the report fails to mention.

The EFI represented a broadening of Counterjihad efforts. It was established specifically to manage a demonstration in Amsterdam that was intended to bring together free speech activists from across Europe. The EDL were an important — though not a central — part of this effort. The EDL were one group amongst many at that event, and participated due to the commitment that they shared a common goal: to defend freedom of expression.

The first event staged by the EFI was actually organised in large part by members of the Dutch Defence League. It was also quite specifically focused, like the MfFE before it, on the issue of freedom of expression. In particular, it concerned the censorship of Geert Wilders when he was denied access to speak in the United Kingdom.

The EFI’s point about the threat to freedom of expression was underlined by the actions of the Mayor of Amsterdam, who moved the demonstration to a remote location at the last minute in order to make it less effective. The same point was made by the actions of the left wing Antifa mob that threatened serious violence in the run-up to the event.

Summary

The ICSR report makes an error in judgment when it assumes that the Counterjihad is based on a belief in an idealised past.

In reality the Counterjihad is based on a vision of a liveable future. In this way it is not looking to the past, but is moving forward. It is not concerned about losing what has been gained in the past, but about building the future on the foundations of the Enlightenment. Its focus on Islam rest on concerns about threats to these foundations.

Next: Academic vs. Academic

04/3/13

Keeping a Close Eye on the Right Wing, Part 2

By: Baron Bodissey
Gates of Vienna

This is the second installment of a four-part series. Previously: Part 1.

Keeping a Close Eye on the Right Wing
Part 2: The Transatlantic Connection

As mentioned in the introduction to this series, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) held a conference in London on March 13 to study the “New Far Right” in Europe, with a special focus on the English Defence League. Paul Weston has described the event as preparation of the virtual battlefield in advance of a takedown of the EDL by Prime Minister David Cameron and the British government.

Based on the conference report, “A Neo-Nationalist Network: The English Defence League and Europe’s Counter-Jihad Movement”, the EDL was indeed the major focus of the ICSR event. But was the conference convened to launch the report? Or was the report commissioned in advance to help justify a predetermined conclusion, namely that the EDL needs to be banned?

In either case, the paper fails to provide meaningful documentation of any dangerous tendencies in the English Defence League and its allies. The authors seem to be of two minds, analyzing the EDL using loaded terms, yet providing a great deal of material that is intended to be positive. The result of their efforts is a schizophrenic document.

As you will see, they pay the necessary lip service to their concerns in the form of vague misgivings about what lies behind the EDL’s actions. Despite the public endorsement by police and the official statements, they seem to feel there may yet be some sort of secret crypto-fascism behind the European Counterjihad and the EDL. Even so, the examples presented in the report are almost all quite positive, and take pains to show how much the movement overlaps mainstream political discourse.

This is important for all of us, because their insights will enable a civil discourse to be engaged on the issues and policies. It may help put aside the ad hominem attacks so beloved by extremist groups such as UAF and Antifa, and their close allies among doctrinaire Islamists such as Anjem Choudary.

If Hope not Hate, under the umbrella of ICSR, has come around to a more sensible view of Tommy Robinson and the English Defence League, then more power to them! Despite the report’s reflexive scowl at the EDL and all it represents, the actual data presented reflect quite positively on Tommy Robinson, Kevin Carroll, and the European Counterjihad.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Now let’s get down to the report itself, which has been posted as a 72-page pdf at the ICSR website. It’s too large for a complete analysis here, even in three parts, so readers are advised to download it and read the entire thing. Be warned, however: much of it is written using the mind-numbing academic jargon so typical of government-funded research papers.

As mentioned above, the report appears schizophrenic in its approach to the topic, as if it is somehow subverting the ostensible intent of the document, or as if there were two very different authors. And the report does indeed have two authors, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens and Hans Brun.

I don’t know anything about Hans Brun, but Mr. Hitchens (the son of the late Christopher Hitchens) seems not be a shill for the Multicultural Left. He has contributed to The Weekly Standard — hardly an organ of the Left — and is considered enough of a right-wing ideologue to merit his own Powerbase entry. In other words, he’s not someone you would expect to be viewed positively by Hope not Hate.

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04/3/13

Keeping a Close Eye on the Right Wing

By: Baron Bodissey
Gates of Vienna

Part 1: Introduction

Towards the end of the 18th century, an English social theorist named Jeremy Bentham designed a new type of institutional structure dubbed the “Panopticon”. The model was intended mainly for use in prisons, but the designer believed the same principle could as easily be applied to schools, hospitals, and other social institutions.

Bentham’s concept was simple: the architecture of the institution would be constructed so that those in charge — wardens, doctors, headmasters, etc. — would be able to observe all inmates under their charge at any time, without those observed knowing whether or not they were being watched. The designer believed that this would train the residents of such institutions to be on their best behavior at all times, and so induce positive social change.

In the early 21st century we are far closer to realizing the Panopticon than Bentham could ever have imagined, using technologies that he could never have dreamed of. With satellites in orbit monitoring our residences and our vehicles, drones tracking our movements via thermal imaging, two-way GPS devices in our cars and hand-held devices, TVs that can look back at us and identify us as individuals, and all our electronic communications digitally recorded and stored in a gigantic database — with all this, we are already under near-constant observation.

Or we might be — who can tell? You’d better behave, just in case!

Many of the surveillance capabilities acquired by our governments over the past dozen or so years were added to their toolboxes to prevent “terrorism”. Needless to say, in order to be fair and inclusive and to avoid “profiling”, our wardens in their digital eyries are required to spend at least as much time and money observing “right-wing extremists” as they do monitoring Muslim mujahideen or radical Greens. Anything less would be evidence of discrimination.

Therefore, if you’re an “Islamophobe”, you may as well get used to being watched. Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano has made it clear that she regards people like you and me as potential terrorists, and the European Union has long considered nationalists and immigration-critics to be de facto enemies of the state. Anders Behring Breivik only served to confirm that position. In the minds of the elites, it has been proved that anybody who opposes Islamization may become dangerously violent at any time, and thus needs to be carefully monitored.

To supplement the state security agencies, numerous quasi- or non-governmental organizations have been set up to keep an eye on “right-wing extremism”, and are often generously funded by the state or its cut-outs. One such group is the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR).

According to its website, ICSR was founded in 2008 with the support of five academic institutions: King’s College London; the University of Pennsylvania; the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (Israel); the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy; and Georgetown University. It is also affiliated with the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies in Islamabad.

Not a reassuring masthead for those of us who are “Islamophobes”. Herzliya, however, is a decent organization, and over the past five years ICSR has at least tried to take a look at Islamic radicalism. So this is a serious organization, and not just another cardboard cutout erected by the hard Left.

Like virtually all its sister “observatory” organizations, in the wake of Breivik’s massacre ICSR gave priority to investigating nationalism and anti-immigration movements in European, so that the next wave of right-wing terrorism could be detected in advance. To that end ICSR seems to have secured funding, commissioned a couple of investigators (and presumably a staff of researchers to help them), and spent the past eighteen months compiling a report. Then, a couple of weeks ago, it convened a conference to showcase the results.

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