04/29/15

Did Muslim congressmen smear a Dutch counterjihadist lawmaker in a letter seeking to ban him from the U.S.?

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Muslim Reps. Keith Ellison and André Carson sought to bar outspoken counterjihadist Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering America before his appearance on Capitol Hill today, Apr. 29.

Free speech issues aside, interestingly, in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson advocating their position, Reps. Ellison and Carson sought to discredit the Dutch politician by linking him to a Nordic terrorist — a link that based on our reporting from February 2014 appears to have been debunked.

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., testifies before the House Homeland Security Committee on the extent of the radicalization of American Muslims, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., during testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee on the extent of the radicalization of American Muslims, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The relevant portion of the House members’ Apr. 23 letter reads:

Reports indicate that Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist responsible for the murder of 77 people in Oslo, was inspired by Mr. Wilders’ hateful message.

The congressmen cite several articles noting an ideological kinship between Breivik and Wilders, as indicated in part based upon the appearance of Wilders’ name in the manifesto Breivik published before carrying out his attack.

But was Mr. Breivik really incited by Mr. Wilders?

According to a letter that Breivik penned from prison in January 2014, Breivik stated that in effect he had duped the public in his manifesto by citing his political foes — among them counterjihadists including Mr. Wilders — as inspiration, in order to damage them and protect the neo-Nazi movement of which he was a part. Breivik wrote:

When dealing with media psychopaths, a good way to counter their tactics is to use double-psychology, or at least so I thought. The compendium [i.e. Breivik’s manifesto] was, among other things, of a calculated and quite cynical gateway-design (the 2+?+?=6-approach), created to strengthen the ethnocentrist wing in the contra-jihad movement, by pinning the whole thing on the anti-ethnocentrist wing (many of the leaders are pro-multiculti social democrats or liberalists), while at the same time protecting and strengthening the ethnocentrist-factions. The idea was to manipulate the MSM and others so that they would launch a witchhunt and send their media-rape-squads against our opponents. It worked quite well. [Emphasis added and formatting fixed]

Key to Breivik’s strategy was his effort to explicitly disavow his ties to neo-Nazis. He continued:

I could have easily avoided excessive pathologisation by keeping the message short and by clinging to the already established ideological cliff of national socialism (its important to remember that this was at a time when all right wing radicals were labeled as nazis), but if they had been allowed to label me as a nazi, the ideological considerations and discussions would be over, and my court-speeches and propaganda performance would never be broadcasted world wide, during the trial. [Emphasis added]

Wilders for his part strongly denounced Breivik’s attack, though Reps. Carson and Ellison did not acknowledge it in their letter. A July 2011 release from Radio Netherlands Worldwide reads:

Geert Wilders has issued a statement denouncing Anders Behring Breivik, the man behind Friday’s massacre in Norway, as a psychopath and a madman.

The Dutch anti-Islam politician says the fact he and his Freedom Party are mentioned repeatedly in Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto “fills him with revulsion”. [sic]

Since Breivik’s bombing and shooting spree, some commentators have pointed out that some of the ideas expressed by the Norwegian are not so far removed from those promoted by Geert Wilders and his party.

Mr Wilders refutes any suggestion of a link between his own political goals and the Norwegian’s actions “We are democrats through and through. The Freedom Party has never called for violence, nor will it ever do so. We believe in the power of the ballot box and the wisdom of the voter.’”

The statement by the Freedom Party leader goes on to condemn Friday’s attacks as “a slap in the face for the worldwide anti-Islam movement” and to describe Breivik’s manifesto as the work of a madman. “He wants to work with al-Qaeda… He longs to blow up cities, dreams of knights who mutilate themselves and of meeting his hero Karadzic.”

We reached out to spokespeople for both congressmen, asking if in light of Breivik’s 2014 letter, the congressmen still stand by the section of their letter tying Wilders to Breivik, but have not yet received comment.

Reps. Ellison and Carson sought to justify their opposition to Wilders’ appearance on American soil under the International Religious Freedom Act. In their letter, they argue that Wilders’ anti-Islamization rhetoric qualifies as a “severe” violation of religious freedom, due to his “inciting anti-Muslim aggression and violence.”

Wilders, the founder and leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom, is a staunch opponent of European Islamization, arguing against the mass immigration of individuals from Muslim countries and encouraging jihadists currently living in Europe to leave. He is highly critical of the Koran and Islamic ideology more broadly.

For his rhetoric, Wilders has stood trial in Europe, and was most recently interrogated by the Dutch State Police for asking his constituents whether they would prefer more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. You can read his statement on the interrogation here.

The letter from Reps. Ellison and Carson can be found below:

While on Capitol Hill, Wilders spoke in front of the Conservative Opportunity Society. PJMedia transcribed some of his remarks, which you can find below:

“I have nothing against Muslims. Before the death threats started I have visited almost every Islamic country and I met many friendly people. I know there are many moderate Muslims who do not live according to the violent commands of the Quran. Muslims can be moderates. But there is no moderate Islam. Islam has changed Europe beyond recognition,” Wilders said.

“…Our duty is clear. In order to solve the problem, we have to stop mass immigration to the West from Islamic countries. And we have to get rid of the cultural relativism.”

Wilders added that it’s “sheer stupidity” to stop would-be jihadis from running off to join the Islamic State: “This is wrong. Let them leave if they want to leave. But let them never return.”

“In my country and the other EU member states, which signed the so-called Schengen Treaty, we have abolished all border controls between the 26 member states of the Schengen zone. This means that jihadis from one of these states can freely travel to the others and commit their crimes there. And it has already happened. Last year a jihadi from France, who had just returned from Syria, went to Belgium and murdered four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels,” he said.

‘Without borders a nation-cannot guarantee the security of its citizens. Neither can it preserve its national identity and culture. I believe that one of the most vital things which we Europeans must do is to leave Schengen and reinstate national border control.”

04/29/15

DHS Chief On Catch And Release: ‘Large Number’ Of Aliens Were Caught But Never Deported

Sessions: “How many aliens with final orders of removal are currently in the United States and have not been removed?”

Johnson: “I don’t have the number sitting here right now. I’m sure it is a large number by your measure and mine.”

04/29/15

Mark Levin talks with Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke about Baltimore riots

Hat Tip: BB

The dirty little secret no one wants to admit about Baltimore

Source: Baltimore mayor ordered police to stand down
Dear Racist, Looting, Rioting Scumbags in Baltimore…

Sheriff Clarke: Why are we surprised at sub-human behavior in American ghettos? Lib policies created it

‘Where is #JosephKent?’ Baltimore protesters accuse police of ‘kidnapping’ community activist ‘blackbag’ style

12 Unanswered Questions About The Baltimore Riots That They Don’t Want Us To Ask

Where’s Obama? Throwing cops under bus again

‘God bless him’: ‘More than 1000’ Baltimore residents volunteer to help clean up after last night’s riots [photos]

Baltimore mayor apologizes to rioters for using T-word

[FULL INTERVIEW] ‘Mom of the Year’ caught SMACKING her rioter kid explains why she did it!

The One Key Lesson Baltimore Cops Didn’t Learn from the L.A. Riots

04/29/15

Iran Literally Fired a Shot Across an American Ally’s Bow, But Obama Won’t Dump His Disastrous Deal

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

What, if anything, would cause President Barack Obama to step away from the negotiating table with Iran?

This is the question I find myself pondering in light of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy Patrol’s unchecked act of aggression on Tuesday against America’s interests in the Straits of Hormuz – an act that in a sane world would in and of itself put an end to the president’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran.

As of this writing, reports indicate that the Iranian Navy Patrol fired shots at and ultimately seized a commercial cargo ship, the M/V Maersk Tigris, which flies under the Marshall Islands flag. Some believe Iran was even targeting a U.S. vessel.

An Iranian warship takes part in a naval show in 2006. (Photo: AP)

An Iranian warship takes part in a naval show in 2006. (Photo: AP)

In a helpful dispatch, commentator Omri Ceren notes the significant implications of such an action given that the U.S. is: (i) Treaty-bound to secure and defend the Marshall Islands, and (ii) Committed to maintaining the free flow of commerce in the strategically vital waterways of the Middle East — as affirmed just one week ago on April 21 by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf and Pentagon Spokesman Col. Steve Warren.

The U.S. fulfilling its obligations to its protectorate, and acting to ensure vital shipping lanes remain open are not trivial matters.

Further, this act can be seen as a brazen test of the sincerity of U.S. resolve, as it was timed to coincide with the opening of the Senate’s debate on the Corker-Menendez Iran bill.

Yet there is a broader and perhaps more important context in which to consider what Ceren calls an act of “functionally unspinnable Iranian aggression.”

Even if we ignore the history of Iranian aggression against the U.S. and its allies since the deposal of the Shah in 1979, the firing upon and seizing of the Tigris marks the latest in a long series of such provocations that Iran has undertaken in just the last few months. Consider:

This rhetoric and action comports with Iran’s historic hostility toward the U.S. since the fall of the Shah. Lest we forget, this list of atrocities includes, but is certainly not limited to:

Would Iran’s most recent actions in the Strait of Hormuz coupled with the litany of other recent and historical bellicose acts lead one to question whether it is in the United States’ interest to continue negotiating with the mullahs?

Put more directly: In what respect can the U.S. consider Iran to be a reliable, honorable negotiating partner?

Iranian women hold an anti-US sign, bearing a cartoon of US President Barack Obama, outside the former US embassy in Tehran on November 2, 2012, during a rally to mark the 33rd anniversary of seizure of the US embassy which saw Islamist students hold 52 US diplomats hostage for 444 days. This year's rally came just days before US presidential election in which Republican challenger Mitt Romney has made Iran's controversial nuclear programme a top foreign policy issue. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Iranian women hold an anti-US sign, bearing a cartoon of US President Barack Obama, outside the former US embassy in Tehran on November 2, 2012, during a rally to mark the 33rd anniversary of seizure of the US embassy which saw Islamist students hold 52 US diplomats hostage for 444 days. This year’s rally came just days before US presidential election in which Republican challenger Mitt Romney has made Iran’s controversial nuclear programme a top foreign policy issue. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Concerning the content of the nuclear deal being negotiated, it should be noted that the Iranians have stated the agreement accomplishes the very opposite of what the American public been led to believe. With respect to sanctions, Iran says they will be fully lifted upon the execution of the accord. As MEMRI notes, in an April 9 address, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini gave a speech in which he called America a “cheater and a liar” and

publicly set out the negotiating framework for the Iranian negotiating team, the main points of which are: an immediate lifting of all sanctions the moment an agreement is reached; no intrusive oversight of Iran’s nuclear and military facilities; the continuation of Iran’s nuclear research and development program; and no inclusion of any topics not related to the nuclear program, such as missile capability or anything impacting Iran’s support for its proxies in the region.

It is no wonder then that the nuclear deal has been lambasted on a bipartisan basis, including at the highest levels of the national security establishment. Even former Secretary of State James Baker is highly critical of the Iran deal – and his animus toward Israel, perhaps the primary casualty of the deal, may be second only to that of President Obama.

As to whether Khameini’s portrayal of the deal is accurate, former CIA analyst and Iran expert Fred Fleitz asserts that under the terms of the agreement, Iran will (i) be able to continue enriching uranium, (ii) not have to disassemble or destroy any enrichment equipment or facilities, (iii) not be required to “permit snap inspections and unfettered access to all Iranian nuclear facilities, including military bases where Iran is believed to have conducted nuclear-weapons work,” (iv) be able to continue to operate its Arak heavy-water reactor, a plutonium source, in contravention of IAEA resolutions and (v) be subjected to an eased sanctions regime that will be incredibly difficult to re-impose.

If this were not enough, so intent is the Obama Administration on reaching a deal that it has been reported that for signing this agreement, Iran may even receive sweeteners including a $50 billion “signing bonus.”

The contorted logic used by the president in defense of his progressive stance towards Iran is worthy of Neville Chamberlain. During an interview with New York Times soulmate Thomas Friedman, Obama opined:

Even for somebody who believes, as I suspect Prime Minister Netanyahu believes, that there is no difference between Rouhani and the supreme leader and they’re all adamantly anti-West and anti-Israel and perennial liars and cheaters — even if you believed all that, this still would be the right thing to do. It would still be the best option for us to protect ourselves. In fact, you could argue that if they are implacably opposed to us, all the more reason for us to want to have a deal in which we know what they’re doing and that, for a long period of time, we can prevent them from having a nuclear weapon.

Sen. Tom Cotton provides a necessary corrective in a recent interview:

I am skeptical that there are many moderates within the [Iranian] leadership … I think it’s kind of like the search for the vaunted moderates in the Kremlin throughout most of the Cold War, with the exception that we could always count on the Soviet leadership to be concerned about national survival in a way that I don’t think we can count on a nuclear-armed Iranian leadership to be solely concerned about national survival.

As for Lord Chamberlain, Sen. Cotton – he of that irksome letter to Iran — takes a more charitable view, noting:

It’s unfair to Neville Chamberlain to compare him to Barack Obama, because Neville Chamberlain’s general staff was telling him he couldn’t confront Hitler and even fight to a draw—certainly not defeat the German military—until probably 1941 or 1942. He was operating from a position of weakness. With Iran, we negotiated privately in 2012-2013 from a position of strength … not just inherent military strength of the United States compared to Iran, but also from our strategic position.

To those who recognize reality, this deal – coupled with our weak response to the ongoing provocations of the Iranian Government — not only threatens our national security and that of our allies, but reflects an utter dereliction of duty to uphold the Constitution, and protect our people against foreign enemies.

In a word, it is treasonous.

04/29/15

Updated: did Freddie Gray have spinal surgery one week ago? Awaiting story

By: James Simpson
DC Independent Examiner

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake comes out after the destruction is complete

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake comes out after the destruction is complete Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images

Conservative Treehouse is reporting that Freddie Gray, Jr., the man whose death in police custody set off this weekend’s Baltimore riots, may have had spinal surgery just one week earlier. Court records unearthed by the Fourth Estate describe a structured settlement with Allstate Insurance Co. which they allege came from a car accident Gray was involved in.

Another post just up by criminal justice expert John Cardillo however, challenges the idea that cited civil litigation arose from an auto accident. Gray was a defendant, not a plaintiff in this recent case, which Cardillo says stemmed from litigation launched in 2008 by Freddie’s sister over lead poisoning years earlier. Cardillo harshly criticizes Fourth Estate for “highly unethical and irresponsible” reporting, given what he reveals to be the facts of the referenced case.

For its part, Fourth Estate claims to be releasing a story today at 6 pm that will blow the whole issue wide open. It will be interesting to see what they publish. If their story has any basis in fact, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake will have a lot of explaining to do.

Blake has come under heavy fire for condoning the violence, specifically stating in a Saturday press conference that, in the interests of assuring “free speech rights” the city had given “those who wished to destroy, space to do that as well.” Now she says her words were “twisted.”

Meanwhile, Governor Hogan has taken over emergency operations, walking the city late at night and supervising the curfew Rawlings-Blake declared would start Tuesday, the day after all the violence and looting. He covered for Blake’s gross incompetence at a press conference, where CNN’s Don Lemon grilled him — but not Blake — for not declaring a state of emergency and bringing in the National Guard sooner.

Of course that was all up to Blake, and she declined to ask for help until the city was already on fire, presumably having given the rioters all the “free speech” they needed, plus every other thing that wasn’t nailed down to boot. When Blake finally requested a state of emergency, “Within 30 seconds of receiving the call, I activated the National Guard,” Hogan said.

Yesterday, Martin Luther King’s niece, Dr. Alveda King, called for Blake’s resignation. Dr. King stated in a letter to the mayor:

Your invitation to “give space for those who want to destroy” is unbelievable. This interpretation of rights to free speech is dangerous ma’am. In 1963, my father Rev. A.D. King, after the firebombing of our home in Birmingham, Ala. urged hostile protestors to abandon violence and turn to God in prayer instead.

Thank God they listened to him, and the even greater voice of his brother, my Uncle Martin Luther King during those turbulent days. Now, you are inviting violence to your city? Who ma’am, will incur the moral and economic costs of picking up the pieces? The innocent taxpayers?

Thank you Dr. King. When are liberals ever going to be forced to face the consequences of their disastrous policies, ideologies, and decisions? I guarantee you they will have to be forced, because not one will ever admit their destructive actions voluntarily. Instead, Blake is arrogantly denying she ever encouraged the rioters. And gratitude for Larry Hogan? Perish the thought. She has barely spoken to him, content with hiding out among friends to avoid the embarrassing limelight while he cleans up her disastrous mess.

04/29/15

When Partisan Lying by the Press Damages a Nation

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

A Special Report from the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism

The Founders counted on an adversarial press to keep America’s politicians honest and accountable. If our media won’t investigate the backgrounds of our candidates on a bipartisan basis, our entire constitutional system is in jeopardy.

Remember how in 2012 The Washington Post dug into the past of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and reported that during his high school years he helped pin a boy down and cut his hair off.  Their intent was to suggest that Romney had a history of intimidating and harassing people less fortunate than himself. Reporter Chris Cillizza followed up by asking, “Was Mitt Romney a bully? Does it matter?”

On the other hand, Barack Obama’s relationship with a member of the Communist Party who may have been a Soviet espionage agent was not newsworthy when he ran in 2008. Was Obama influenced by a Marxist? Yes. Does it matter? Yes.

But the Post still can’t bring itself to admit the truth.

On February 25th of this year, I thought that things might have changed. That was the day I received an email from Michelle Lee, a reporter on “The Fact Checker” feature of The Washington Post. She said, “I’m looking into a claim made by Rudy Giuliani that President Obama ‘grew up under the influence of Frank Marshall Davis, who was a member of the Communist Party, who he refers to over and over in his book, who was a tremendous critic of the United States.’ I read your AIM article from February 2008. Do you have some time to talk about this?”

I met with Lee on February 26. She reported, “When The Fact Checker arrived, Kincaid had been waiting with four of his peers, stacks of documents and a video camera pointed at an empty seat saved for us.”

Correct. We taped an introduction to our meeting, the meeting itself, and our response. We wanted a complete record of the exchange.

This AIM Special Report is the story of how the Post was seven years late to a Pulitzer Prize-winning story but has still failed to confirm the essential elements of that story. In effect, it is a cover-up on top of a cover-up. What’s more, it has been done under the guise of “fact-checking” a Republican for telling the truth about the Marxist education of a Democratic president.

Lee contacted us because Giuliani’s claim about Obama growing up under the influence of Davis, a member of the Communist Party, was based on information we developed seven years ago. We provided that information to Lee. There’s no question that Davis was a member of the Communist Party and was critical of the United States. Obama grew up under his influence in Hawaii, for as many as eight years of his young life. The claim is absolutely true.

In fact, if the former New York City mayor is going to be criticized for anything, it’s that he too, was late in coming to the story, and that he did not explain in detail the degree of influence that Davis had over Obama.

The Verdict

Almost a month later, on March 23, Ms. Lee reported her findings and accused Giuliani of lying. As we anticipated, the Post didn’t want to admit the truth of Giuliani’s claim because it would raise the issue of why the paper was seven years late to a story involving the background of a major presidential candidate. It’s disappointing, to say the least, that the Post missed the story seven years ago, and that it failed to acknowledge missing the story seven years later under the guise of “fact-checking” Giuliani.

We met Michelle Lee at a hotel and greeted her with a video camera to record everything. She seemed surprised by that. However, she recorded the interview with her own cell phone. Anti-communist analyst and blogger Trevor Loudon, who broke the Frank Marshall Davis story back in 2007, happened to be in town at the time, and joined me in the meeting with Lee.

Trevor and I provided information and documents to Lee during a lengthy meeting.

First, you should know the following about the so-called “Fact-Checker” feature of the Post. As the name implies, this is supposed to be the part of the paper that corrects errors. The paper uses what it calls “The Pinocchio Test.” It says:

“Where possible, we will adopt the following standard in fact-checking the claims of a politician, political candidate, diplomat or interest group.”

  • “One Pinocchio” means “Some shading of the facts. Selective telling of the truth. Some omissions and exaggerations, but no outright falsehoods.”
  • “Two Pinocchios” means “Significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people.”
  • “Three Pinocchios” means “Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.”
  • “Four Pinocchios” means “Whoppers.”

In her verdict, Lee of the Post gave Giuliani “Three Pinocchios,” for “significant” factual errors or obvious contradictions. In effect, she accused Giuliani of lying. Yet, what Giuliani said was absolutely true.

It seems clear that the purpose of this false finding of “fact” by the Post was to send a message that political figures are not supposed to talk publicly about Obama’s Marxist background. If you tell the truth, you can be accused of lying!

Remember that Lee told us in that email that she wanted to determine the truth of the claim made by Giuliani that President Obama grew up under the influence of Communist Frank Marshall Davis.

She admitted in her so-called findings of fact that Obama’s “anecdotes” from his own book Dreams from My Father “show he was intrigued by Davis’s experiences and insight.”

She also writes this in her column:

“Davis made an impression on Obama, as shown in his memoir. Obama mentions Davis several times in ‘Dreams from My Father’ as someone who influenced his understanding of his black identity. But there is no evidence Obama was ‘raised’ by Davis, or that Davis remained a close Communist mentor who advised him throughout his life.”

So she concedes Davis made an “impression” on Obama, whatever that means, and that Obama was “intrigued” by him. But then she plays a trick on her readers. She quotes Obama’s sympathetic biographer David Remnick as saying the relationship was “neither constant nor lasting, certainly of no great ideological importance.” How does Remnick know this? She doesn’t say. His claim is not subjected to any fact-checking. Remnick, you see, is a former employee of the Post.

The Bait-and-Switch

Ignoring the need for fact-checking those claims, Lee asks, “Why do Kincaid and others believe that the relationship with Davis shaped Obama more than, say, his own experiences and others he met throughout his life?”

This is a bait-and-switch. We did not say that Davis shaped him “more” than anyone else. Obama had plenty of Marxist associates to choose from in his life. Obama clearly admits the significance of Davis in his own autobiography. Why did he include “Frank” in his autobiography if he did not have an influence on his life?

Remember that, after falling under the Davis influence, Obama would go on to college, where, by his own admission, he would associate with Marxist professors and attend socialist conferences. That’s in Obama’s own book, and we told Lee about those references. Obama’s relationships also included going to the church of the anti-American preacher, Jeremiah Wright,  for 20 years, and associating with communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.  Indeed, they helped launch his political career.

We went over all of this and much more during our meeting with Lee. As I indicated, Loudon was part of our meeting and he went into detail about several of the controversies in Obama’s background, including his contacts with socialists in Chicago.

Ignoring all of this, Lee’s so-called fact-checking article quoted Davis’s son Mark as saying he doesn’t believe his father indoctrinated Obama in communism. At the same time, she admits that Mark Davis “said he did not know his father had been involved with the Communist Party or that he had met Obama until he read about it years after his father died.” So quoting Mark Davis serves no useful purpose. It simply gives the impression that Lee did some serious fact-checking when she just wasted her time and that of her readers.

At this point, it’s important to understand a basic fact about this cover-up.

Obama never mentioned Davis by his full name in his 1995 book Dreams from My Father. Lee knows who Davis is because Loudon identified the “Frank” from Obama’s book as Frank Marshall Davis back in 2007. He provided that information to me and in early 2008 I confirmed the identity of “Frank” as Davis with another source in Hawaii, an associate of Davis. That person was Kathryn Takara. This resulted in my column titled “Obama’s Communist Mentor.” Lee found it seven years after it was published.

Asked why she thought Obama didn’t identify Davis in his book by his full name, Takara told me, “Maybe he didn’t want people delving into it.” Indeed, that is what the evidence suggests.  The question of why is critical.

Investigating “Frank”

It was later that year, in August of 2008, that we released the 600-page FBI file on Davis. It showed Davis was under FBI surveillance for 19 years for his Communist Party activities. A Washington Post reporter, Dana Milbank, had attended our earlier press conference on the Obama-Davis relationship, but he ridiculed the event as a UFO convention. We told Lee about how her paper had botched the coverage of this story.

In 2012, Professor Paul Kengor wrote a book about Davis titled The Communist, noting that Obama mentioned Davis 22 times as “Frank” (never once divulging his full name) and “dozens more [times] via pronouns and other forms of reference.”

I gave Lee a copy of Kengor’s nearly 400-page book.

Lee quotes some of what Kengor has to say about the Obama-Davis relationship. But she was determined to play down the relationship, and maintained that Obama “saw Davis 10 to 15 times as a teenager.” Even if this figure is true, people can be greatly influenced by people they met in person only a few times. Bill Clinton talked about how JFK influenced and inspired him. Yet, he only met him once.

Obama wrote in Dreams from My Father that he saw “Frank” only a few days before he left Hawaii for college, and that Davis seemed just as radical as ever. Davis called college “an advanced degree in compromise” and warned Obama not to forget his “people” and not to “start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit.”

This is also the time when Obama had told Davis about his own white grandmother being accosted by a black panhandler. In response, Davis told Obama that his grandmother was right to be scared and that “She understands that black people have reason to hate.”

As Paul Kengor points out, Davis was always critical of “the American way.” He notes, “That diatribe against ‘the American way’ is very revealing, is it not? Davis used it constantly. In fact, there are 38 uses of it in my book.”

Strangely, Lee maintains that Davis “was critical of American society, but not America as a country.” This is another example of where Lee goes astray, trying to make a point that is either irrelevant, nonsensical, or both.

Kengor notes that when the audio version of Dreams from My Father was released in 2005, all 22 references to Davis were deleted. He notes this was done as Obama was preparing for a run for the presidency and “no doubt feared being tied to closely to a man who joined the Communist Party under Stalin and had been so radical that the federal government placed him on the Security Index.”

This is a critical point. If the Davis influence was little or none, why cover this up?

From “Frank” to Frank Marshall Davis

Lee ignored all of this. Again, the obvious question is, if Obama’s relationship with Davis was so innocent, why cover up his full name? Why drop the references to “Frank” in the audio version of the book? The answer is that Obama never expected anyone to identify “Frank” as Communist Frank Marshall Davis. He thought his secret would remain safe.

Giuliani had said that Obama grew up under the influence of Davis. That was a simple and straightforward factual observation. All of the evidence shows that to be true. But nobody to our knowledge has even bothered to ask Obama anything about it publicly during the first six years of his presidency.

Instead of asking Obama about it, Lee and the Post now change the argument to the claim that Obama was indoctrinated or “raised” by Davis and “Remained a close communist mentor who advised him throughout his life.” But nobody with knowledge of the Obama-Davis relationship has made that claim.

Since Davis died in 1987, he could not have been an advisor throughout Obama’s whole life. Nobody with knowledge of the relationship would pretend otherwise.

The term “close communist mentor” is subject to interpretation, but Kengor analyzed in detail Davis’s writings for Communist Party newspapers and how his claims have been echoed in Obama’s views on economic matters. Citing Kengor’s book and other research, we also demonstrated in a major article how Davis’s anti-white racism clearly has influenced Obama’s views on race relations as President.

Lee wrote that Davis had “affiliations with more than a dozen leftist groups, including the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, CIO unions and the National Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism” (emphasis added). The latter would seem to suggest that Davis opposed anti-Semitism. In fact, the book, The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946, names Davis as one of several black poets who continued to publish in Communist Party-supported publications after the 1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact. That means Davis was not bothered by the Soviet alliance with the Nazis which started World War II.

Pornographer, Pedophile and Atheist

The facts are that Davis mentored Obama for up to eight years of his young life, before Obama left Hawaii to attend college. Obama refers to “Frank” giving him advice on subjects such as race relations, but not sex. That is another significant omission that the Post decides it must not address.

Kathryn Takara, who confirmed to me that “Frank” was indeed Davis, wrote a book about Davis, titled, Frank Marshall Davis: The Fire and the Phoenix. She confirms that Davis not only wrote a pornographic novel, Sex Rebel: Black, which was “largely autobiographical,” but that he became “anti-Christian,” even writing a poem speaking of Christ irreverently as a “nigger.” An atheist, Davis “exposed the irony and hypocrisy of Christianity,” she said.

The Davis book, Sex Rebel: Black, refers to the main character, Davis, having sex with a 13-year-old girl named Anne. This makes Davis a pedophile.

Takara admits that Davis lived in a “world of sexual pleasures, multiple partners, and erotica.” She writes about the Davis obsession with bizarre sexual practices and pornography in her book. But Lee completely ignores this dimension of the story.

Yet, David Maraniss admits in his book, Barack Obama: The Story, that Obama wrote a poem about Davis called “Pop,” with some strange lines about stains and smells on shorts. “He looks at Pop and sees something that repels him and attracts him, that he wants to run away from yet knows he must embrace,” Maraniss wrote. Obama’s writing a poem about Davis certainly suggests a very close relationship that may in this case border on the sexual. Writer Jack Cashill says the poem has definite “sexual overtones.”

Whatever the ultimate truth about Obama’s own sexual proclivities and inappropriate personal relationship with Davis, it cannot be denied that the President’s “fundamental transformation” of America has also occurred in the sexual realm. Obama has relentlessly pushed the homosexual agenda on the United States, including and especially in the U.S. military.

In this regard, it’s important to note that Obama’s book Dreams from My Father not only hides the real identity of “Frank,” it covers up Obama’s extensive use of illegal drugs. This is where Maraniss truly does his homework and performs a public service. He says that Obama was a major dope smoker, not the occasional user we were led to believe. Maraniss says Obama was a member of the “Choom Gang,” a group of heavy users of the drug.

In another area, Obama’s alleged Christianity, we must ask: Did the atheism and anti-Christian views of Davis influence Obama’s views on Christianity? He ran as a Christian in 2008. He was brought up as a Muslim and attended a church in Chicago that allowed Muslims to worship. As President, Obama doesn’t attend church very much, a fact that occasionally generates some attention, and he has publicly complained about some Christians many years ago who practiced violence. However, violent jihad on display throughout the Middle East and the world today is not labeled as such by the Obama administration. Instead, Muslim terrorists are called “extremists.”

So it looks like his alleged Christianity may be another deliberate deception.

Was Lee Pressured to Lie?

Michelle Lee seemed to be a nice person who was genuinely interested in the facts. There has got to be an explanation for why she turned in such a dishonest performance.

She reports to the actual “Fact Checker,” a veteran Post reporter by the name of Glenn Kessler. If he were to conclude, at this late date in the Obama presidency, that a communist had a significant influence on Obama, it would be big news. The Post would have egg all over its face for ignoring the story for seven years.

Consider this. If Lee had found Giuliani’s claim to be truthful, it would have made the Post look very bad. After all, this paper had missed the significance of the story seven years ago. Second, it would have made Remnick look bad. He is the former Post reporter who wrote The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. Remnick is the source of the claim that the Davis-Obama relationship was “neither constant nor lasting, certainly of no great ideological importance.”

To find that Giuliani told the truth would mean that Remnick was wrong. The Post just couldn’t admit that.

This controversy alone suggests the paper went into this matter determined to make a Republican, former New York City Mayor Giuliani, look bad. We had that suspicion from the start.

The Remnick book was published in 2010, more than two years after Trevor Loudon and I broke the story of Obama’s relationship with Davis. If Remnick had admitted the known facts about the relationship even in 2010, it would have raised the question of why the Post and other media had missed the story back in 2008. That, too, would have been embarrassing.

Realizing that he missed the big story of Barack Obama’s background and mentor, Remnick dismisses the significance of the revelations. He writes in his book that “the right-wing blogosphere” had accused Davis of being a card-carrying communist, a pornographer, and having a pernicious influence on Obama. The term “right-wing blogosphere” is designed by Remnick to minimize the significance of what we discovered back in 2008. He says we were “loud and unrelenting.” But Remnick does not refute what we uncovered. The fact is we did the investigations the Post and other media failed to do.

Lee concedes that Davis had a Communist Party card number. We had provided that piece of evidence to her initially. She later asked for another copy. Yet, she tries to dismiss the significance of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which investigated communist activities in Hawaii. She writes that the committee and the FBI “were quick to label people and organizations with dissenting views as Communist.” She seems to be trying to suggest that perhaps he was not a communist by using the word “quickly.” In fact, when Davis was given the chance to deny his party membership, he took the Fifth Amendment before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security. His lawyer, Harriett Bouslog of the National Lawyers Guild, was also a member of the Communist Party.

Lee never even touches the matter of Davis being a pornographer, and it is important to look at how she gets around it. As I also told her during our meeting, Davis was a pornographer who specialized in photos of nude women. That is why the FBI’s mention of his filming the Hawaii coastline is so significant.

Here’s how Lee deals with that issue: “Davis had an interest in photography. In Hawaii, he took pictures of shorelines, apparently not photographing any particular objects, according to an FBI informant. That implies he might have been taking photos for espionage, to send to Soviet leaders to target Hawaii as a strategic territory, said Kincaid and Trevor Loudon, a libertarian activist who also researches this topic.”

The Evidence of Espionage

Lee goes on to say: “He [Davis] was an activist, but there is no evidence that Davis was a hard-core Communist who spied for Soviet leaders.” But Davis was indeed a hard-core communist. That’s why he had a party card with a party number. The Communist Party was funded and controlled by Moscow.

One of the most disturbing FBI documents refers to the information we gave Lee that Davis “was observed photographing large sections of the [Hawaii] coastline with a camera containing a telescopic lens.” The FBI document states:

Informant stated that DAVIS spent much of his time in this activity. He said this was the third different occasion DAVIS had been observed photographing shorelines and beachfronts. Informant advised that it did not appear he was photographing any particular objects.

There’s no explanation for why Davis took pictures of the coastline, since he usually took pictures of nude women. We do know he was on the FBI’s security index, reserved for national security threats who could be detained during a period of war or national emergency. Members of the Communist Party such as State Department official Alger Hiss did become Soviet espionage agents.

My associate and friend, the late anti-communist researcher Herbert Romerstein, noted in a report which I provided to Michelle Lee:

“…the Hawaii Islands and the naval base at Pearl Harbor were essential for the defense of the United States. The Comintern, with its eye on possible Soviet expansion in Asia, wanted to remove that impediment. Over a period of time, American communists were sent to Hawaii to colonize the island and to promote the growth of the communist movement there.” The Comintern was the name for the Moscow-directed International Communist Movement.

As Romerstein documents in his report, Davis was sent to Hawaii as part of that effort. It makes sense from the communist perspective that he might be tasked with taking photos that had strategic value to the Soviets.

If Davis was in fact a Soviet espionage agent, that fact raises the additional question of whether he recruited others to the communist cause. The Post clearly doesn’t want to go there.

Pretending to be an expert on Marxism, Lee writes that “Obama has shown to be an ineffective Communist, if he were one. He has failed to unravel the capitalist system over the past six years that he has held the most powerful position in the world …”

That’s a strange thing for a journalist with limited experience on the subject to say. Is she saying he could be a Marxist but he is just not a good one? And what makes her think that he wants to “unravel” the capitalist system? This shows how ignorant she is of Marxist methods. The Communist Chinese have not “unraveled” the capitalist system, either.  Like Lenin, they have used the capitalist system to secure and enhance their power. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a former KGB spy, welcomed Western investment in order to build up the military power that he has since used to invade Ukraine.

Finally, Lee says about the Davis influence on Obama, “We may never definitively know one way or another, but it is time to put it to rest.”

This is the story the media wish would go away. But it won’t.

Lee says she “definitively” doesn’t know if it is true or not but she knows enough to call me, Giuliani, and Loudon liars for noting the Davis influence on Obama as he was growing up in Hawaii.

Lee tries desperately to play down the significance of Davis’s membership in the Communist Party. But it is extremely damaging and telling. Showing how hard-core he was, Davis had called the decision by black writer Richard Wright to expose the Communist Party after leaving the party an “act of treason.” Davis said Wright had “aided only the racists who were constantly seeking any means to destroy cooperation between Reds and blacks” and had “damaged our battle.”

Wright contributed to the important 1949 book, The God That Failed, a collection of the testimonies of a number of famous ex-communists. Davis never gave up on the Marxist cause. But neither has Obama.

It would have been easy enough for Obama to have admitted Frank’s true identity in his book, and to have dismissed him as a communist crank. Obama did not do that. He attempted to conceal his true identity while confirming his role as a mentor. He never thought anyone would put the pieces of the puzzle together and determine “Frank” to be Davis. Loudon, an analyst from New Zealand, deserves great credit for this scoop.

Trevor had been tipped off to “Frank’s” true identity when a communist historian named Gerald Horne made a reference to his relationship with Obama in a 2007 speech. He found the speech while monitoring a communist website. In my 2008 column confirming this identification, I had noted that Frank Chapman, a Communist Party supporter, had written a letter to the party newspaper hailing the Illinois senator’s victory in the Iowa caucuses against Hillary Clinton.

He wrote, “Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle.”

Chapman wrote that Karl Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, “who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary ‘mole,’ not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through.”

The suggestion is that Obama is a communist mole. Not only would he be our first Marxist president, but perhaps the agent of a foreign power.

Hillary’s Interest in the Davis Story

We were not the only ones concerned about Obama’s relationship with Davis during the 2008 campaign.

Hillary Clinton’s associate Sidney Blumenthal had circulated my article, “Obama’s Communist Mentor,” in an effort to question and damage Obama’s character and electability. That was in May 2008. Later that year, of course, Obama was elected president and picked Mrs. Clinton as his Secretary of State. That made disclosures about the Davis-Obama relationship from the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party less likely after Obama took office.

Obama’s deal with Hillary may have been straightforward: drop the Davis story, become Secretary of State, and have a shot to run for the presidency after Obama’s term or terms expire.

Whatever the motivation for the cover-up, the Post and other media had a duty back in 2008 to report the facts. The American people might have voted against a candidate under Marxist influence if they had been told the truth about Obama and Davis.

The Post, which brought down President Richard Nixon over a third-rate burglary and cover-up called Watergate, decided instead to go along with the Obama cover-up. And the cover-up continues, seven years later. It’s a sad commentary on the quality of American journalism and media ethics. The treatment of Davis demonstrates a partisan bias that has affected the course of our nation and the world.

We all know that Nixon, a Republican, was a special target for the Post. He had been a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and had seized upon the hidden documents known as the Pumpkin Papers of former communist Whittaker Chambers in order to make the case that former State Department official and United Nations founder Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy.

Washington Post Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein had an axe to grind against those, like Nixon and HUAC, who went after communists. He had written a book, Loyalties, about his parents, Al and Sylvia Bernstein, being members of the Communist Party. For whatever reason, Bernstein’s Watergate collaborator, Bob Woodward, was also not interested in “vetting” Obama during the 2008 campaign. He, too, missed or ignored the story of the Obama-Davis relationship.

In the end, history shows that Nixon was found guilty and forced out of office for what other presidents had done, a fact documented by Victory Lasky in his book, It Didn’t Start With Watergate. Nixon’s downfall brought to power Democrats who cut off aid to South Vietnam, producing a Communist bloodbath and genocide in Southeast Asia.

If destroying a Republican president can damage a nation, saving a Democratic President like Obama can have political repercussions as well. Haven’t we seen the evidence all around us, in domestic and foreign policy areas? It’s unclear if the U.S. will ever be able to recover.

Exposing Obama’s Marxism Still Matters

We have to entertain the possibility that, seven years later, Lee may have been pressured by her colleagues at the Post to whitewash the evidence against Obama and Davis that we had presented to her. If anything, the Post is and has long been a reliable organ of the Democratic Party.

My video on this entire process will serve as the historical record of a cover-up that has historical significance for the United States and the world. The public has a right to the facts that the major media concealed from them back in 2008.

As we have seen with their treatment of Giuliani’s remarks, the Post continues to obscure the facts and mislead its readers and the public at large. That is why we need your continuing help to set the record straight and put pressure on this paper to finally, once and for all, report the truth.

It is clearly an uphill struggle. Obama supporters and Internet “trolls” have sanitized the Wikipedia page on Frank Marshall Davis in order to eliminate any hint that Obama’s Marxist policies are being driven by the relationship he had with a Communist Party operative under surveillance by the FBI.

A better source is the page on Davis maintained by KeyWiki, a site established by Trevor Loudon. It goes into substantial detail about the Communist activities of Davis and examines his relationship to Vernon Jarrett, who was later to become the father-in-law to Valerie Jarrett, now a senior advisor to President Obama.

The Davis-Obama relationship was a Watergate-type story that was ignored at the time by Woodward and Bernstein and their colleagues in the “mainstream media.” Yet, even Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report refused to take paid advertising drawing attention to the Davis-Obama relationship.

Today, the Post continues the cover-up by attacking the messengers who bring the truth forward. We will not be silenced. Giuliani and other Republicans should not back down.

The Van Jones Story

It is still a story of Watergate proportions. It’s true that Davis was only one of many different influences on Obama. But he was there at a critical time in his life—his teenage years. And the history shows the Marxism-influenced Obama, as he continued associating with Marxists throughout his career, even as he assumed the presidency and picked such characters as Van Jones, a “former” communist, to be his Green Jobs Czar.

Jones is only one example of Obama’s Marxist policies in action. But the example is a good one. Jones lost his job when Loudon struck again, disclosing Jones’ communist background, in a story picked up by Glenn Beck, then with Fox News. Jarrett had said “they,” obviously referring to Obama administration people, had noticed Jones’ work in Oakland, California, where Jones had been an anti-police activist.

The Van Jones case is worth noting because it, too, shows the continuing influence of Davis on Obama. Davis, Jones, Obama and apparently Jarrett all share the same anti-American ideology and background.

Jones was forced out of his post, possibly to keep Congress from investigating the White House process that resulted in his appointment in the first place.

Yes, Frank Marshall Davis is dead, but his influence lives.

Postscript: After the Post tried to smear us as liars for noting the evidence of Frank Marshall Davis’s influence over Obama, a video from 1995 suddenly surfaced on the Internet and was discovered, in which Obama explicitly names “Frank” as Frank Marshall Davis and refers to how the communist had schooled him on the subject of white racism. In effect, Obama was admitting his student-teacher relationship with Davis. It was more evidence of what we had been saying all along.

It may have been the case that Obama’s supporters thought the release of the video wouldn’t make any difference at this time. There may be some truth to that. After all, didn’t Obama just crack a joke about a pot-smoking socialist in the White House in his talk before the White House Correspondents dinner? And weren’t those who were laughing in the audience some of the same journalists who have been covering the White House?

The joke’s on us.

04/29/15

Was the Jenner Interview a Big Hoax or Sham?

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

An article on a left-wing website called AlterNet carries the title: “What My Female-Born Transgender Autistic Brother Can Teach You About How We Construct Our Identities.” This may be the next phase in the campaign for transgender rights. Perhaps it will be the next reality show, following Bruce Jenner’s.

I understand that the politically correct response is to consider this article in a serious manner and perhaps contemplate the dire circumstances of the subject of the piece. But my honest reaction is that the story must either be a hoax or something so out-of-touch with reality that it can’t, or shouldn’t, be taken seriously. Even worse, it may be exploitation of a disturbed young person, if the person in the article actually exists.

The notion that a person constructs his or her own sexual identity is something at complete variance with genetic and biological reality. Somebody “constructing” a sexual identity doesn’t actually change one’s DNA. This basic science is something that is being conveniently lost in this national discussion.

I have concluded that the Bruce Jenner ABC interview was either a hoax or a sham. Please recall that Jenner laughed when asked by Diane Sawyer whether it was a publicity stunt. But then we learned that Jenner will star in his own “docuseries” for the E! network “chronicling his life as a transgender woman.” Hollywood Reporter said, “The eight-part project, documenting his life as a transgender woman, will premiere in July.”

The publication said the series will be produced by Bunim/Murray Productions, which is also responsible for “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” Married three times with six biological children, Jenner divorced his wife, the “Kardashian matriarch” Kris Jenner, after nearly 20 years of marriage. Jenner will be one of the executive producers of his own reality show.

The Hollywood Reporter said that individuals who will be consulted on the production of the series include Jennifer Finney Boylan. She is the Anna Quindlen writer in residence and professor of English at Barnard College of Columbia University, a national co-chair and member of the board of directors of GLAAD, and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.

This makes it sound like some kind of pseudo-documentary with a scientific veneer. Plus, The New York Times connection has been thrown in, giving the appearance of some form of approval or sanction by this major liberal paper.

Pardon me if I don’t buy it. It sounds like the series was being contemplated at the same time Jenner was telling ABC that his interview was not a publicity stunt.

Jenner was said to be coming out as a woman but still wants to be referred to as a “he” or “him.” The always politically-correct BuzzFeed informs us that “Since Jenner has not expressed a preference for female pronouns and Jenner’s publicist declined to comment on the question, this story uses male pronouns.” Well, that solves that.

Perhaps, during week four of the new reality show, he will suddenly announce he wants to be addressed as “she.” Or, perhaps, he will decide he wants to remain as a man.

I almost laughed myself silly when he “came out” as a conservative Christian Republican. By that same standard, I am a transgendered communist.

I think Jenner and his Reality TV cohorts are laughing all the way to the bank. Some long hair and changes in facial features do not a woman make.

The results are in. “Bruce Jenner interview scores big ratings,” reports USA Today. “Bruce Jenner’s much-hyped interview with Diane Sawyer brought ABC’S 20/20 its biggest audience in 15 years and the most-watched Friday program (excluding sports) since 2003…”

The insightful Judi McLeod at Canada Free Press notes that Jenner’s “deeply personal” story, as it is being advertised, is going on Reality TV, hardly a deeply personal vehicle for such a deeply personal story. Doesn’t this make one suspicious of what this publicity is all about? Have we suspended our ability to think rationally just because someone is claiming to be a brand new sexual minority?

McLeod gets to the heart of the issue, commenting, “Whether he wears high heels or not, Jenner’s still what his Creator made him—a guy.”

That’s the reality. Or, rather, the actual or “real” reality. But Biblical values, which happen to correspond to science and biological facts of life in this case, are not, of course, relevant, as the media constantly inform us.

If the Jenner show succeeds, I can imagine that the AlterNet writer’s “transgender autistic brother” might be the next sexual minority to be given a reality show so he/she can teach us all about how we can construct our own sexual identities. “More than simply being clear about their gender identity, it is possible that people on the autism spectrum, less inhibited by social constructs, are able to conceptualize gender fluidity in a way that neuro-typical people are not,” she writes. That’s an important revelation, I suppose.

So that’s next: a show featuring people with autism defining and then constructing their own sexual identities, so we can learn from them. It would constitute media exploitation and sensationalism of the worst order.

I’d be laughing harder if this tendency to exploit people were not so sick and twisted. I am always amazed at how the bottom of the barrel gets lower and lower. In this case, we have not yet hit the bottom.