06/14/16

Blaming Conservatives for Muslim Terrorism

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

Admitting that “the full facts” were still unknown, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) nevertheless issued a statement on Sunday afternoon on “the senseless act of domestic terrorism in Orlando,” saying that “it is not surprising that the LGBT community was targeted” because “This community has long been vilified by those opposed to LGBT rights and is too often the target of violent hate crimes.” This was a clever but dishonest way of trying to shift the blame to conservatives for terrorism committed by a devoted follower of Islam.

Notice how the SPLC made no mention of the killer’s religious affiliation or motivation, or his acknowledgement of inspiration from ISIS.

Remember that the SPLC is a group which has been consulted by law enforcement authorities at the federal and other levels, including the FBI, and is frequently cited by the media as a legitimate and authoritative “civil rights” organization.

In the days ahead, expect media denunciations of conservatives as somehow responsible for the “homophobia” that drove a faithful follower of Islam to commit mass murder. This is how the SPLC will drive the discussion in the media and cause law enforcement agencies to miss even more terrorist plots. The FBI, which consults the SPLC and failed to uncover Omar Mateen’s terrorist connections, appears to have no understanding of the deadly ideological game that is being played.

President Obama initially blamed the guns, his standard ploy. But the Southern Poverty Law Center was floating a different explanation that is now getting some traction on the left. And that is that conservatives are really to blame for the anti-gay motivation of the Islamic terrorist, because conservatives have opposed the homosexual agenda and have, therefore, made it acceptable to kill gays. Hence, Omar Mateen was really just a patsy of the right-wing. After all, he detested gays kissing one another in public, just like conservatives do.

The Orlando massacre at a gay club put the left-wing legal group in a difficult situation, since it has been focusing on conservatives as the major threat to the homosexual agenda. The group’s demonizing of conservatives, such as depicting the Family Research Council (FRC) as a “hate group,” led to a terrorist attack on the FRC headquarters in Washington, D.C. A homosexual sympathizer walked into the building and opened fire, wounding a security guard before being apprehended and disarmed. He had planned to massacre other employees and testified that an SPLC “hate map” showed him where to go. He was angry at the FRC for opposing the homosexual agenda and was egged on by the propaganda from the SPLC.

Yet, the Department of Justice still cooperates with the SPLC. Despite the SPLC’s indirect involvement in the terrorist attack on the FRC, Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlinspoke at an October 14, 2015, event co-sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security’s Program on Extremism.

Incredibly, Carlin said, “SPLC has a long history of tracking and countering hate, and their efforts will continue to be critical.” He added, “We are grateful to have the Southern Poverty Law Center and the George Washington Program on Extremism on our side, working with us to tackle some of today’s most pressing national security threats.”

No wonder the FBI missed the terrorist clues in the Orlando case.

Rather than being a force against terrorism, the Southern Poverty Law Center sets up groups and individuals for terrorist attacks inside the United States. The FRC is just one example. Pamela Geller emerged on a list of extremists assembled by the SPLC and then was targeted for death by the jihadists. ISIS said “…we will send all our Lions to achieve her slaughter.” This writer has been labeled as an extremist by the SPLC for opposing the agenda of the gay rights movement.

By claiming to fight poverty and target political extremists, the SPLC has assembled a reserve fund, or endowment, of $301.8 million. Honest liberals understand and deplore the despicable tactics of the SPLC.

The reality of the Islamic nature of the massacre presented a dilemma for the SPLC. The group regards Muslims as being in the same category as homosexuals—victims of an oppressive American system and police state. The SPLC decries so-called “Islamophobia” and “Homophobia.” Yet, in Orlando, a Muslim killed homosexuals. The perpetrator was not a conservative Christian. How can this be? What should the left do?

An answer soon presented itself. Junaid S. Ahmad, director of the Center for Global Dialogue, tried a variation of the SPLC theme, declaring that while the “conservative” orthodoxy of Islam “may be homophobic,” Muslim thought, practice and behavior “has become much more intolerant of homosexuality” because of the “imposition and importation of Western homophobia…” He said that “contemporary Muslim homophobic rhetoric” reflects “less of Islamic tradition, and far more of Western Victorian and Protestant Fundamentalist vitriol…”

In other words, Islam is really a religion of peace. But it has been distorted and transformed by Western religious traditions and practices.

The real poison in this case is the involvement of those on the left who see all the extremists as being on the right. How else do you explain the fact that a speaker from the Southern Poverty Law Center was advertised as participating in the recent Left Forum conference in New York? The event’s theme was “Rage, Rebellion, Revolution: Organizing Our Power.” The conference organizers declared, “We know that we can do better than capitalism and its state violence and endless bullshit.”

Evelyn Schlatter, the deputy director of research of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, was at a conference that also featured Lynne Stewart, the pro-terrorist lawyer freed from prison by the Obama administration, and members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), a group raided by the FBI. Stewart once told Monthly Review magazine that Islamic terrorists were “basically forces of national liberation.” This is how many on the left have viewed the Islamic terrorists. After all, they’re fighting the West.

Schlatter spoke on a Left Forum panel entitled, “Right on the Rise: Neo-Fascism and Far-Right Politics in the U.S. and Europe.” In addition to Schlatter, the advertised speakers included Gerd Wiegel, editor of Marxist Renewal Magazine; Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin, another Marxist publication; and Ethan Earle, a champion of Rosa Luxemburg, the Marxist revolutionary and participant in the Russian Revolution.

It looks like the SPLC has a “no enemies on the left” mentality, otherwise known as “partisan tolerance.” It is the idea that anybody opposing the right-wing must be treated as an ally in the struggle to overturn the existing order.

The focus on “the right,” where extremism does exist, is proper at times. But the SPLC has gotten into bed with extremists on the left who themselves have been monitored, investigated, and even imprisoned. It’s time for the Congress to hold hearings into the Department of Justice’s involvement and collaboration with the SPLC.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

06/14/16

Has FBI Director Comey Waited Too Long on Clinton Scandals?

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

The media continue their focus on accusing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of racist rhetoric, and facilitating the circular firing squad that some in the Republican Party and conservative movement are only too happy to take part in. Reporters continue to publish story after story damaging to Republicans, salivating over whatever Republican disunity they can unearth, and calling for Republicans to disavow Trump’s actions.

But in doing so they are hoping to protect Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, and the issue of whether or not its presumptive nominee will face criminal charges. The Obama administration has now admitted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a “criminal” investigation into the activities of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who used a private email server to send and receive classified information and has demonstrated a pattern of corrupt behavior while secretary of state.

“And that’s why the President, when discussing this issue in each stage, has reiterated his commitment to this principle that any criminal investigation should be conducted independent of any sort of political interference,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest, continuing, “and that people should be treated the same way before the law regardless of their political influence, regardless of their political party, regardless of their political stature and regardless of what political figure has endorsed them.” He spoke less than one hour after President Obama endorsed Mrs. Clinton for president last Thursday.

Earnest maintained that the civil servants at the FBI “aren’t going to be swayed by political forces” when conducting the investigation. But, surely, these civil servants will notice the direction of the political winds.

President Obama held a meeting with Department of Justice Attorney General Loretta Lynch shortly after his endorsement of Hillary. If FBI Director James Comey were to refer his investigation to Lynch, the Attorney General would have the power to not pursue the case.

“In order for Clinton to carry Obama’s torch, she has to stay out of prison,” writes Katie Pavlich for Townhall. “In order to do that, she has to avoid prosecution. I’m sure Obama made that very clear to his somewhat new Attorney General.”

We have regularly cited the various scandals still hanging over Mrs. Clinton’s head. They include the mishandling of classified materials, obstruction of justice, the public corruption scandal in which she used the State Department as leverage for benefitting the Clinton Foundation as well as her family, and Benghazi.

Contrary to President Obama’s assertion that he is allowing a non-partisan and full investigation, by endorsing Mrs. Clinton he has placed his hand on the scale of justice and made his wishes more than clear to federal investigators. The question is, will Director Comey and the FBI follow the President’s direction?

Despite the administration’s continued support for Clinton, new stories break daily outlining Mrs. Clinton’s corruption and pay-for-play. ABC News, with the help of Citizens United, found that a Clinton donor was placed on a sensitive intelligence board during Mrs. Clinton’s term as secretary of state—even though he lacked the credentials for the appointment.

The Wall Street Journal also reports that “many” of the 22 classified emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private email server that the government refuses to release, “dealt with whether diplomats concurred or not with the CIA drone strikes…” These highly sensitive and classified emails were “written within the often-narrow time frame in which State Department officials had to decide whether or not to object to drone strikes before the CIA pulled the trigger…” There are more than 2,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton handled that contained classified material on her private, unsecured server, whether marked as such or not.

“Several law-enforcement officials said they don’t expect any criminal charges to be filed as a result of the investigation,” reports the Journal, continuing, “although a final review of the evidence will be made only after an expected FBI interview with Mrs. Clinton this summer.”

Jonathan F. Keiler, a lawyer and former captain in the Army’s Judge-Advocate General Corps, writes that Comey has already delayed for too long. In an outstanding column for American Thinker, he wonders what Comey is up to: “What FBI director James Comey intends is perhaps the greatest conundrum in Washington these days. Is he playing Hamlet to Hillary’s Claudius, introspective, doubtful, and unwilling to strike the killing blow? Is he just being a careful apolitical policeman? Or is he a political hack who will do what’s best for Jim Comey? Perhaps it’s a bit of all three. Whatever the truth, it is in Hillary’s best interest to discourage Comey as much as possible. Her early claim to be the Democrat nominee serves that purpose.”

Keiler argues that Hillary’s convenient surge past the magic delegate number the night before the California primary, through a sudden burst of superdelegate declarations, served both her political and legal purposes. “If Comey is an honest policeman,” he writes, “the best time for him to have acted was before Hillary claimed the nomination. Then he would only have been referring charges against another—albeit notorious—private citizen. After the nomination, Hillary becomes not only the standard bearer of one of America’s two great political parties, but a ‘historic’ figure as the first woman to do so. As such, it behooved both Hillary and her backers in the media to reach that point ASAP.”

“As a political and media matter,” he adds, “an FBI referral at this point will be against not only the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, but also a historic figure, an affront to the American political system and women everywhere.”

The evidence against Mrs. Clinton is clear. If Director Comey finds no evidence of criminal activity by Mrs. Clinton, he will lose his reputation as a straight shooter. Either way, at this point, it will be viewed as a political act. If the Attorney General and President Obama stymie an investigation through political interference, Director Comey could, and should, go public. There might even be a revolt within the FBI. Whether or not that happens, Hillary Clinton’s fate is now quite clearly in Director Comey’s hands.