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.

03/14/16

American Spring – Bread and Circuses

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

It was a hot time in the old town the other night in Chicago. Donald Trump was scheduled to speak at a rally there with thousands in attendance. That rally had to be cancelled because thousands of violent protesters showed up. Many had tickets to the event. The protest seems to have been organized by MoveOn.org, Bill Ayers and Code Pink. CPUSA, Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights and ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) also had a hand in it. George Soros has invested approximately $15 million to stage protests like this one to ensure a Clinton victory in November. Troops on the ground included La Raza, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panthers. It was a who’s who of anarchists, extremists, radicals and freaks. Trump never even arrived at the event. He told the attendees to disperse and go in peace. Unfortunately, it did not go down that way. The decision to cancel the event was Trump’s and was not a recommendation from the police. I say he made the right call on this one.

Bernie Sanders of course blamed Trump, which is just ridiculous. Donald Trump has a right to free speech. The protesters also have a right to protest, but peacefully. They weren’t doing that, so the police should have dispersed them. This is what Sanders had to say:

“As is the case virtually every day, Donald Trump is showing the American people that he is a pathological liar,” Sanders wrote. “Obviously, while I appreciate that we had supporters at Trump’s rally in Chicago, our campaign did not organize the protests. What caused the protests at Trump’s rally is a candidate that has promoted hatred and division against Latinos, Muslims, women, and people with disabilities, and his birther attacks against the legitimacy of President Obama. What caused the violence at Trump’s rally is a campaign whose words and actions have encouraged it on the part of his supporters.”

Continue reading →

06/3/15

Right-Wing Wrongdoing? – DOJ Funds Study On “Right-Wing Extremists”

Hat Tip: BB

Obama’s DOJ Is Studying Right-Wing Social Media Groups and Individuals for Violent Extremism

02/13/15

Media’s Lack of Curiosity About Killer of Muslims in North Carolina

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Was the brutal murder of three Muslims in North Carolina this week a case of “random violence,” or were the three targeted because of their Muslim faith? And why, of all the murders committed across the country this week, did these three grab so much national media attention? The FBI has now joined the investigation.

Perhaps the lessons learned from Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January of 2011 could inform the answers to these questions, and serve as a reminder of the dangers of biased reporting on murder cases. But, unfortunately, the mainstream media continue to perpetuate a confusing double standard when it comes to reporting on the deaths of innocents.

Why, for example, did the deaths of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina gain traction at The Washington Post, Reuters, and many other media outlets which speculated that it was a possible hate crime, while this black teen murdering a white classmate and taking a selfie with the corpse didn’t receive anywhere near the same treatment? And what about the murders occurring in Chicago every day? Don’t those deserve headlines, and candlelight vigils too?

“However, I do think it’s fair to say that attributing political motives to individual killings is much more of a phenomenon on the left than on the right,” argues Mark Hemingway for The Weekly Standard in a column regarding the recent execution-style shootings of Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.

The alleged shooter, Craig Stephen Hicks, liked the “Huffington Post, Rachel Maddow, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Freedom from Religion Foundation, Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy,’ Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gay Marriage groups and similar progressive pages” on Facebook, notes Hemingway. Maddow didn’t mention any of that on her show when talking about the incident.

Hicks displayed a habit of posting snarky pictures with slogans like, “Democrats aren’t perfect but at least they haven’t been shoving poor Jesus up my c—ch and Ronald Reagan down my throat.” Another picture he promoted reads, “So Rick Santorum thinks that when people get educated they stop believing in God? Best advertisement for Atheism I’ve ever heard.”

And Hicks commented on Ground Zero: “Seems an overwhelming majority of Christians in this country feel that the Muslims are using the Ground Zero Mosque plans to’mark their conquest’ [sic] Bunch of hypocrites, everywhere I’ve been in this country there are churches marking the Christian conquest of this country from the Native Americans. Funny thing is the Christians did that while defying our Constitution, and got away with it!!”

“It was logical for some people to hear about the shootings and wonder if recent news involving the Islamic State—including the deaths of a Jordanian pilot and an American hostage—could lead to some sort of reprisal against Muslims, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” reported the Post regarding the three deaths on February 11.

In 2011 the SPLC’s Richard Cohen blamed the shooting of Rep. Giffords on Sarah Palin’s political rhetoric, citing the work of staffer Potok. The Discovery Channel plans to air a documentary, “Hate in America,” this month with the SPLC as a partner helping “examine the current realities of intolerance in America.”

The SPLC runs a hate crimes racket, and the media—desperate to promote headlines that fit their pre-existing left-wing narratives about race, inequality and religion—are quick to swallow their propaganda.

“I think it’s perfectly natural to guess that this is anti-Islamic,” Potok told the Post in the interview regarding the triple murder. “Not just because the three victims are Muslim, but because there has been so much terrible news in recent days about extremist Muslims.” Potok also appeared on MSNBC on the morning of February 13 with the news anchor Tamron Hall, and there was no mention of Hicks’ political leanings, which appear to be consistent with their own.

It is ironic that Hicks, himself, may have, at least in part, allowed the SPLC to fuel his own brand of hate—if it was hate, and not a longtime dispute over parking—that caused Hicks to allegedly kill three innocent people.

“We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was…But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers,” wrote Paul Krugman of The New York Times after the Loughner shooting.

“Keith Olbermann had a special edition of his ‘Countdown’ show on MSNBC the night of the shooting, in which he had a series of guests on who all speculated that Loughner was influenced by ‘right-wing extremists’ and that the Right was far more guilty of violent and hateful speech than the Left, creating a climate conducive for this sort of action,” I reported back in 2011.

Have the media learned from their past attempts to politicize violent shootings, or does the marked omission of similar rhetoric regarding the Hicks case simply indicate that the mainstream media hope that the progressive ideology of this alleged killer will not actually be used against them?

If Hicks was a champion of liberal causes such as gay rights and abortion, and one’s ideological background has any bearing on the decision to brutally murder someone, then why isn’t the media likewise exploring in depth Hicks’ motivations—his likes, dislikes, ideology, inspiration, etc.—as they did when they erroneously blamed the right for Loughner’s shooting of Giffords? Instead, the Post published a story on the “particular tensions between Islam and atheism” which allowed atheist groups to denounce and separate themselves from the killer. If Hicks had any deeper motivation rooted in progressivism, you wouldn’t find it there.

On February 11 The Washington Post authors quoted from the SPLC, then linked to Hicks’ Facebook page, and failed to inform their readers of Hicks’ admiration for this group.

And the motivation of the attack remains in dispute, despite the hate crime allegations. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime,” said the victims’ father Mohammed Abu-Salha. His evidence: “This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt.”

More recent news reporting by the Associated Press indicates that when Hicks “talked with them with his gun in his belt,” as the father described, it was likely during a dispute over a visitor’s parking space. According to the AP, a resident of that condo “said Hicks complained about once a month that the two men were parking in a visitor’s space as well as their assigned spot.”

It continued: “He would come over to the door, knock on the door and then have a gun on his hip saying ‘you guys need to not park here,’ said Ahmad, a graduate student in chemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill. ‘He did it again after they got married.’”

The victims in the most recent case appear to be the type of Muslims whom many in America would embrace as fellow patriots, rather than as radical fundamentalists who prompt what some term “Islamophobia.” The murdered couple was active in charity efforts. “Barakat had recently posted about providing free dental supplies and food to dozens of homeless people in Durham, something he had done twice in recent months, buying toothpaste, brushes, floss and mouthwash that he put into individual bags for each homeless person,” reported the Post. And his wife had traveled to the Turkish border last year, not to join the Islamic State but to “deliver dental supplies to a Turkish town…”

But then again, Barakat and his wife met while helping to run North Carolina State’s Muslim Student Association (MSA) chapter. Perhaps they weren’t aware of the origins of that organization. The MSA is a Muslim Brotherhood front group, and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is the group that spawned al Qaeda and Hamas. President Obama has embraced the MB at home and abroad, and this is a subject that the media should thoroughly explore, while there is still a chance to diminish their influence. Unfortunately, very few in our media are willing to investigate the MB—or even acknowledge their influence—instead they treat them like some benign, charitable group such as the Kiwanis International.

While it would be convenient for the media, and its allies on the left, to proffer evidence of a violent Muslim backlash when speaking about the culture of hate in a world full of news reports about Islamic State militants beheading their captives, or the Charlie Hebdo murders, not every murder’s newsworthiness should be coldly calculated based on the race, faith, or the known ideology of its participants—or perpetrators. There is an average of about 40 murders a day in this country, most of which we never hear about until the media find one that fits a narrative for them. Or at least they think it does. And then it takes on a life of its own.

02/4/15

And the Islamists Remained…

By: Frank Salvato

Conjuring images of the dying who had clawed at the dank walls of the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Jordanian Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh grabbed at his head, screaming out in agony as he fell to his knees, his body burning, his brain slowly cooking. His Daesh (Islamic State) captors had abruptly abandoned disingenuous negotiations with the Jordanian government for his release, their hostage having actually been killed many days before. Instead, they decided to record al-Kaseasbeh’s purposeful immolation. Having drenched him in accelerant, the savages lit the liquid fuse that set the young lieutenant ablaze. As he writhed, they filmed, indignant to his agony; his humanity. Barbarity for the purpose of terrorist propaganda had been achieved.

Just a month earlier, tens of thousands had taken to the streets in major Middle Eastern cities in support of Islamofascist assassins who slaughtered the staff at Charlie Hebdo. Turkey’s president, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, publicly intimated that the attacks in Paris were justified due to the magazine staff’s transgressions against Muslim sensibilities. And he went further than that, stating, obtusely, that Muslims have “never taken part in terrorist massacres.” Erdogan made these alarming statements as Boko Haram waded through the blood of the 2,000 people they slaughtered in the Nigerian town of Baga, in the name of Islam. So, violent, intolerant Islam is on the march.

Islamists have always been an aggressive faction. Starting with Muhammad and continuing on through the Byzantine-Arab Wars (634-750), the conquests of Persia and Mesopotamia (633–651), Transoxiana (662–751), Sindh (664–712), Hispania (711–718) and Septimania (719–720), the attempts to conquer the Caucasus (711–750), the conquest of Nubia (700–1606) and Anatolia (1060-1360), the incursions into southern Italy, including the conquest of Rome (831–902) and the Byzantine-Ottoman Wars (1299-1453), Muslims have sought to establish control of any and all lands they set foot on, whether by violence or attrition. However, one chapter of Islamic conquest – or bid for conquest – is seldom mentioned in the history books, and perhaps for good reason: World War II.

It is common knowledge – although today that cannot be assumed, given the Progressive Movement’s penchant for “nuancing history” – that during World War II Germany, Japan and Italy allied to form the Axis Powers in their war efforts. There were other affiliate and co-belligerent states (Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Thailand, Finland and Iraq), as well as “client states” (Albania, Burma, China, Croatia, India, Mengjiang, Manchukuo, Philippines, Slovakia and Vietnam), officially considered to be independent countries allied with Germany.

Furthermore, there were key geopolitical players who supported and collaborated with Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and the Axis Powers as a whole throughout the conflict. One such geopolitical player was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Sunni Muslim cleric in charge of Jerusalem’s Islamic holy places, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The designation of “Grand Mufti” identifies the bearer as the:

“…highest official of religious law in a Sunni or Ibadi Muslim country. The Grand Mufti issues legal opinions and edicts, fatwas, on interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence…The collected opinions of the Grand Mufti serve as a valuable source of information on the practical application of Islamic law as opposed to its abstract formulation.”

During World War II the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was Haj Amin al-Husseini, who:

“…collaborated with both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy by making propagandistic radio broadcasts and by helping the Nazis recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS. On meeting Adolf Hitler he requested backing for Arab independence and support in opposing the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home. At war’s end, he came under French protection, and then sought refuge in Cairo to avoid prosecution.”

When al-Husseini first met with Hitler and Ribbentrop in 1941, he assured Hitler that:

“The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies…namely the English, the Jews, and the Communists.”

Al-Husseini’s efforts in recruiting Muslim fighters for the Nazi cause resulted in the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS, the Handschar Brigade. The Handschar earned a reputation for being particularly brutal in exterminating partisans in north-eastern Bosnia. In fact, many local Muslims who stood witness to Handschar viciousness were driven to align with the Communist partisans.

The Grand Mufti was also integral in the organization of Arab students and North African immigrants to Germany into the Arabische Freiheitkorps, an Arab Legion in the German Army, that hunted down Allied parachutists in the Balkans and fought on the Russian front.

It would be right to conclude then that al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, home to one of Islam’s holiest shrines, was a willing collaborator with the Nazis and Adolf Hitler; someone who willingly facilitated the Nazi SS and their “Final Solution”; the genocide of the Jews. Yet, in the end, al-Husseini, perhaps the principle Muslim leader throughout that period, walked away from the conflict paying no price for his murderous deeds.

From Hitler’s Foreign Executioners; Europe’s Dirty Secret by Christopher Hale, pages 373-374:

“By the Winter of 1944, Berlin was no longer a safe haven for men like the Grand Mufti. He had never been a brave man and was often found cowering under tables as the great armadas of Allied bombers pounded the capital of the Reich. His allies in the foreign office, like Erwin Ettel, did what they could to protect their esteemed Muslim guest and tried to coax him to escape Germany to whatever safe haven he chose by U-Boat. The Mufti was simply too timid to contemplate such a journey and held on in Berlin to the very end. At the end of May 1945, the Grand Mufti and his entourage at last picked up and fled. He knew that once the British reached Berlin they would waste little time tracking him down. After many tribulations, they managed to reach Constance in the French zone of occupation. Recalling how well he had been treated after his flight from Palestine, when he escaped to French Beirut from British Palestine, the Grand Mufti surrendered to the French authorities. He was soon relaxing in an opulent villa near Paris…

“The Mufti had little time to enjoy French hospitality. His protectors discovered that an ‘Irgun’ assassination squad had arrived in France. On 28 May 1945, el-Husseini bolted to Italy, then secretly boarded a British ship, the SS Devonshire, bound for the Egyptian port of Alexandria.

“The return of the Grand Mufti electrified the Arab world. At a rally at Heliopolis in Cairo exultant crowds swamped his convoy – and King Farouk offered him appropriately sumptuous accommodations in his ‘Inshas Palace.’ The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, breathlessly declared: ‘The hearts of the Arabs palpitated with joy at hearing that the Grand Mufti had succeeded in reaching at Arab country…The lion is free at last and will roam the Arabian jungle to clear it of wolves. The great leader is back.’”

Today, as we witness the barbarous immolation of a warrior who dared to confront a culture of death, the Islamists remain. In the aftermath of the assassination of those who engage in free speech, as Daesh executes conquest after conquest leaving myriad atrocities in their wake, the Islamists remain. And as leaders of Islamic countries (read: Turkey) advance excuses for the barbarity of Islamist executioners; ideological operatives who slaughter ruthlessly in the name of Islam, the Islamists remain. Little has changed in the violent Islamist world from the days of the Handschar. Indeed, in a time when the president of the United States refuses to consider his country at war with Islamist extremists and the massive movement they represent – and as he maintains a refusal to even speak the phrase “Islamic terrorism,” one can argue that violent Islamists are in a better position today than they were under Hitler.

At the end of World War II, the Allied Powers insisted on attaining unconditional surrender from each of the Axis Powers. Germany, Italy and Japan signed and agreed to unconditional surrender, their satellite nations in tow. Suspiciously absent from the list of Axis power aggressors agreeing to unconditional surrender is Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; the Muslim facilitator of the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS, the Handschar. Why was this allowed to happen? Who was responsible for allowing this to happen?

I can’t help but feel that had the Allied Powers exacted an unconditional surrender from the Grand Mufti of all forces under his influence; had the Grand Mufti been brought to his knees in capitulation, perhaps – just perhaps – we would not be facing the “emboldened swords” of Daesh on the streets of the Western World and in Islamofascist occupied territories throughout the Middle East. I cannot help but feel that somehow, for some reason, the job of winning World War II was left unfinished…and the rise of violent Islamist terrorism is the price we are paying.

The world – much like in the nascent days of World War II – must once again strive to put aside the geopolitics of the day to come together in a definitive effort to confront the inglorious barbarity of Islamofascism. The peoples of the world must attack Islamofascism militarily, economically, historically and ideologically. Just as we must physically vanquish jihadists who would behead the innocent and set ablaze those who fight against them, so too must we starve them of operating capital globally, even as we correct the fictionalized history of “the religion of peace,” and especially as we deny them the ability to replenish their ranks; especially as we win – unconditionally – the war of ideas for all generations to come.

Today, the smoldering ashes of Jordanian Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, a warrior who came to the aid of those being slaughtered by Daesh, lay denigrated underneath a pile of rubble, an excruciatingly painful death his reward for humanity’s service. And the Islamists remained. I can’t help but feel that the free world has unfinished business…until no Islamist remains.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization, and a division of The Archangel Organization, LLC, His writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com: Because Our Republic Is Worth It. Mr. Salvato sits on the board of directors for Founders Alliance USA, a solutions-oriented non-profit organization. He also serves as the managing editor for NewMediaJournal.us. Mr. Salvato is the author of six books including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel and is a regular guest on talk radio across the country. Mr. Salvato is available for public speaking engagements. He can be contacted at [email protected].

02/3/15

The Other Cause of Terrorism

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

I never fail to be astonished by the amount of corruption there is in the world. It is a very human trait whether it was royalty asserting that they ruled by God’s choice until their subjects rose up against them or modern day despots encountering the same fate.

Sarah Chayes has authored “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security” ($26.95, W.W. Norton) and it is quite timely when you consider that corruption ignited the “Arab Spring”, first in Tunisia when a peddler grew so tired of the police asking for bribes that he set himself afire in protest. Its dictator’s wife openly displayed the nation’s stolen wealth for which they were driven from power. In Egypt there was a similar response when the public tired of the looting of the state treasury by Mubarak’s son. Revolts from Libya to Syria have been generated by the same cause.

Corruption in the Middle East has a long history, but it is worldwide and, depending on the nation, is either tolerated as part of the way the culture does business or resisted by governments who understand that it undermines their legitimacy. Throw a dart at the map of the world and you are likely to hit a nation where corruption is influencing current events. As Chayes notes, “Time and again U.S. officials are blindsided by major developments in countries where they work. Too often they are insensible to the perspectives and aspirations of population.”

A classic example is Afghanistan where both the Soviet Union and the U.S. ran into such ingrained corruption that it undermined their objectives, the former to turn it into a satellite and the latter to turn it into a modern, democratic government. Chayes cites Afghanistan as a classic example of why the Taliban emerged as a jihadist movement. Corruption in the form of bribes, kick-backs, cronyism, is so deeply engrained in Afghanistan that it generated a movement to replace it with sharia law by Islamists.

“If the very Afghan officials by whose sides they planned to combat extremists were generating those extremists themselves—by having men shake down travelers and taking a cut, or leaving bills unpaid, or by providing judiciously selected ‘intelligence’ to engineer a night-raid against a rival trafficking network—it was too big a paradox to take in. NATO officers,” said Chayes, “did not want to know.”

“The corruption networks” in Afghanistan, writes Chayes, “were just too vertically integrated: any move against any official, no matter how lowly, would reverberate all the way up the chain to Karzai.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, Afghanistan had been a constitutional monarchy with a national assembly and local elders affording a check on executive power. “Citizens expected a decent education from their government, health care, even employment in state-owned industries.” That changed when Hamid Karzai took over. At that point government became a criminal enterprise.

The 9/11 attack prompted the U.S. to invade to drive out al Qaeda, but it also led to its staying on to fight the perceived enemies of Afghanistan. They—otherwise known as the Taliban—were being generated in part by the desire to drive out the corrupt Karzai administration.

What we tend to forget about the “Arab Spring” was that “millions of Arabs chose a constructive way to force change. They chose political revolution—a peaceful, civic, inclusive, and responsible form of revolt—directed square at their own leaderships, not at Western countries, not even those seen as regime allies.”

This is not to suggest that Islamism hasn’t degraded from its opposition to widespread corruption into organizations seeking to take control over the nations where it has spread. It has and this is most evidence in the incredibly corrupt nation of Nigeria where since 2009 Boko Haram has developed terrorism to new heights of barbarity—if that is possible.

An oil-rich nation, the billions that it generates have gone missing thanks to the administration of Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan. The police in Nigeria are hated as much as Boko Haram and, as we have seen, have not demonstrated any ability to eliminate the terrorist organization.

Why would any police officer or member of the armed forces want to die for a corrupt, kleptocratic administration? This was true back in the days when the U.S. was fighting in Vietnam, true when the Iraqi armed forces fled from those of the Islamic State, and it explains why even the active participation of U.S. forces does not result in victory against the terrorist organizations.

Why then should we be surprised that many throughout the Middle East have turned to Islam to address the problems they encounter from the corruption of their governments? “Lured by militant advocates of a religious ordering of human affairs, they will seek to roll back four hundred years of political history.”

In the West, we regard those regions of the world where corruption is rampant as backward. We can be forgiven for forgetting that our ancestors in England, the Netherlands, and parts of France laid the groundwork for modern democracy by their efforts to curb the corruption of the monarchies that enjoyed the good life at the expense of their subjects.

By the time the Founders came together to create the U.S. Constitution, they had been well-schooled and experienced in what it would require to keep corruption at bay with a government whose powers were limited and divided among executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

We are their beneficiaries, but that does not mean we have defeated corruption. The vast entitlement programs are just one example of the way millions are secured illegally by deception and disbursement. Other forms of corruption are addressed in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that forbids the use of bribery by corporations doing business in foreign nations.

The U.S. is not alone, however. Just as occurred in 2008, the too close relationship of the banking community and government led to financial crises in Ireland and Iceland. The public’s rejection of corruption in Ukraine led to its current civil unrest.

The role of corruption in the nations experiencing Islamic terrorism cannot be underestimated. Its role in the conduct of the world’s affairs is huge and a constant threat whose many forms must be understood, addressed, and eliminated to the greatest degree possible.

01/26/15

No, Hollywood. Islam Does Not have a PR Problem.

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Ever since the savage attacks in France, our pencil-waving, cartoon-pixelating media and Islamic theologian body politic have gone on an Islamic charm offensive.

In the face of 24,935 jihadist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, we are told over and over again that Islam, one of the world’s great religions, is peaceful and merely being distorted by misunderstanding violent extremists with no particular ideology.

Whether or not you believe this, in spite of Islam’s supremacist goals and history, Koran-endorsed strategic lying and deception by way of taqiyya, the totalitarian theopolitical doctrine of Shariah that compels the systematic persecution of women, gays and non-Muslims, the sermons of influential imams let alone the definition of Islam itself, “submission,” is besides the point and distracts us from the real issue at hand.

The real issue is that there are millions of Muslim jihadists, aiders, abettors and sympathizers in the world – including all throughout the West – working through means, overt and covert, violent and peaceful, to unite the world under the rule of Allah.

Not Islamophobia.

Not America’s support for Israel (pre-Obama at least).

Not drone strikes.

Not Abu Ghraib.

Not Guantanamo Bay.

Not a YouTube video.

Not a cartoon.

The fact that the largest casualties of jihadist savagery are Muslims, renders moot almost all of these points.

And the fact that only a small percentage of Muslims may be jihadists should give comfort to absolutely no one. If even 0.1 percent of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world are jihadists, aiders, abettors or sympathizers, then 1.6 million people seek to destroy Western civilization.

As borne out by the latest Pew poll on Muslim views on suicide bombings from July 2014, 0.1 percent would in fact be a shockingly low figure:

One other data point that the folks in Hollywood or Washington, D.C. would prefer not be printed: As of 2013, after New York City, Dearborn, Michigan — with a population of under 100,000, and the largest percentage of Arab-Americans in the country — had the highest number of individuals classified as “known or suspected terrorists” by our government. So it was with great consternation that I read an article in Variety that reflects so well why we are losing a war that only Islamic supremacists are fighting.

Behold:

Given the volume of terrorists who have committed hideous acts of violence in the name of Allah over the years, there will be those who will be convinced there is something intrinsically problematic about Islam if it is linked to so much hatred and bloodshed.

But that’s a leap in logic steeped in ignorance. And that ignorance is rooted partly in an unfamiliarity with Muslims.

Could Hollywood help remedy that? In the wake of a tragedy borne from a dastardly desire to silence freedom of speech, there’s a crying need for an artistic expression of a very different kind than Charlie Hebdo’s brand of satire.

What is needed now is more depictions of average Muslims in popular culture. Not the kind ripped from the headlines that paints them as violent zealots but the kind that shows them to be the normal friends, neighbors, business associates, etc., that millions of them are all over this nation.

Got that?

According to Hollywood, the proper response to jihadist slaughter is to show Americans that not all Muslims are jihadists.

Islam just has a PR problem.

It is reminiscent of an Obama administration that blames demonstrably disastrous policies on the ignorance of those simple Americans, fooled by poor “optics,” or, when it’s taking responsibility, the administration’s failure to explain its policies well enough.

The author continues:

Would there even be a question of whether the evil radicals who took the lives of innocents were any kind of reflection on Muslims in general if more people, particularly non-Muslims in the U.S., had any sense of what average Muslims are actually like?

Lacking any normative alternative, it’s almost understandable that people lapse into lazy, dangerous stereotypes. Too many associate Islam with the actions of a radical fringe because of the absence of cultural signposts that modern Muslims exist, breathe, love and eat just like the rest of us.

Those bitter clingers are just not sophisticated enough to understand that Islam is peace.

Leave aside for a second the fact that folks in tolerant, progressive, diverse and clearly hypocritical Hollywood show profound ignorance of Islam as practiced throughout wide swaths of the world, where the very groups Hollywood purports to care about most are discriminated against and routinely slaughtered.

Leave aside for a second the fact that the America outside of the New York-Los Angeles-Washington, D.C. axis actually contains a far higher number of folks who have interacted with average Muslims in the flesh, while serving in our armed forces.

While Islamic supremacists are at war with us as part of a global jihad, why is Hollywood’s first obligation to make sure that all Muslims don’t get a bad name – to fight a PR battle that only exists because Muslims are killing people?

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Shouldn’t Hollywood’s job actually be to expose us to the truth that there are those in the world who pose an existential threat to our way of life, including the free expression on which Hollywood relies and cherishes?

What is wrong with America is not that as progressives would have us believe, ignorant bigots in flyover country are Islamophobes engaging in a hypothetical Teahadist crusade.

What is wrong with America is that people have been burying their heads in the sand for years, ignoring, whitewashing, and showing extreme cowardice – dhimmitude — in the face of Islamic supremacists carrying out a slow motion, mass ethnic cleansing against non-Muslims for decades.

While the comparison becomes tired, it must be asked of Hollywood: During World War II, would our response to Nazi aggression have been to script movies portraying Germans as moderate, peaceful people?

Regardless of what helps America’s elites sleep at night, in the real world, evil exists. And evil does not care for Western projection, whether it comes to the mullahs in Iran or the comrades of the Kremlin.

Culture really does matter, and Hollywood, which has already done a great deal of damage to the fabric of America in its promotion of moral relativism, victomology and other values antithetical to our Judeo-Christian heritage, will only make things that much worse by undertaking the efforts described in this Variety article.

What Hollywood should be doing is educating Americans on the actual nature of her enemies, not idealizing, coddling or humanizing them.

Where Hollywood should be placing its emphasis and empathy is on the victims of said enemies, not the victimizers, and the heroes like Chris Kyle who protect us from them.

The problem is not that the American people are ignorant of Islam, but that our media and government continue to distract us from the real threat, and are themselves Islamophobic – unable or unwilling to critically examine Islamic doctrine, facts and history.

It has and will continue to get Americans killed the longer we ignore it.

01/10/15

Paris—The Latest Example of Islamic Jihadist Terrorism

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

While much of the media are doing contortions trying to explain why the latest terrorist attacks are either home grown, lone wolf, or committed by alienated youth, this misses the point. And yes, we realize that most victims of Islamic jihadists are other Muslims. Just look at the massacre in Pakistan last month of 141 individuals, including children and teachers. Or the one this week by Boko Haram in Nigeria that may have led to the death of at least 2,000.

The Islamic terrorists who attacked the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris this week, brutally murdering 12 people, were killed by authorities today. The situation is still fluid, but reports indicate that at least 15 hostages are now free, and one more terrorist may be on the loose following two hostage situations that ensued during the hunt for the terrorists. One might think that Paris—and France—might be able to breathe a sigh of relief. In reality, however, the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the two ensuing hostage situations were merely a continuation of the latest line of Islam-inspired terror attacks worldwide, be it on the Canadian Parliament; in Sydney, Australia; in Pakistan; on two policemen in New York City; or in Moore, Oklahoma.

The problem is not who these attackers are, or whether they are a card-carrying member of al Qaeda, Boko Haram, or the Islamic State—but that they are conducting such atrocious acts. Just in the U.S. and Canada alone in the last couple of months we’ve had a number of attacks occurring in the name of Allah. To the victims, and most of the rest of us, the rest doesn’t matter.

The Washington Post is reporting that Boko Haram may have executed thousands. “A video recently emerged, Genocide Watch reported, that shows gunmen shooting civilians as they lay face down in a dormitory,” reports Terrence McCoy. “A local leader explains they are ‘infidels,’ even though he admits they’re Muslim: ‘We have made sure the floor of this hall is turned red with blood, and this is how it is going to be in all future attacks and arrests of infidels. From now on, killing, slaughtering, destruction and bombings will be our religious duty anywhere we invade.’”

McCoy notes that Boko Haram’s attacks seem more “wanton” than those perpetrated by other terror groups.

These attacks are coming at such an accelerated pace today that any sort of long term solutions, such as being more responsible and not insulting Islam or the prophet Muhammad, seem futile. Do we really think anyone at the school in Pakistan or in Baga, Nigeria had slandered the prophet?

“The Religion of Peace” website has documented the Islam-motivated terrorist attacks of 2014.

The Washington Post reported on January 7th that the “Paris attack lacked hallmarks of Islamist assaults in the West,” highlighting the possibility that this was an unofficial attack “without any direct ties to groups such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.”

The next day, The New York Times reported that one of two attackers “suspected of killing 12 people at a satirical newspaper in Paris traveled to Yemen in 2011 and received terrorist training from Al Qaeda’s affiliate there before returning to France.”

However the media decide to parse the latest Paris attacks, these Islamic jihadis clearly have been drinking from the same toxic stream of violent ideology.

As happened with the Moore, Oklahoma beheading by Alton Nolen, the media and liberal pundits were quick to separate the Charlie Hebdo killers from Islamic ideology—going to great lengths to find a parallel with any other case they could fathom.

One guest on MSNBC’s “Now with Alex Wagner” compared Jerry Falwell’s lawsuit against Hustler Magazine to the violent murder of 12 innocent people at Charlie Hebdo, without any rebuttal coming from Wagner. Jonah Goldberg of National Review condemned this as “The Dumbest 57 Seconds Ever on TV.”

I would also point to MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry’s characterization of Nolen’s beheading of a co-worker in Oklahoma as supposedly having as little to do with his alleged “workplace violence” as what he ate for breakfast. The FBI, apparently, swallowed the idea that Nolen’s attack was workplace violence, as well.

And recently, after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Howard Dean went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to condemn the attacks, but asserted, “I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists. They’re about as Muslim as I am. I mean, they have no respect for anybody else’s life. That’s not what the Koran says. Europe has an enormous radical problem. I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it’s a cult.”

“When I watch Americans use words like cowardly, barbaric, murder, outrageous, shocking, etc., to describe a violent extremist organization’s actions, we are playing right into the enemy’s hands,” said Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, U.S. commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East, in December regarding ISIS, according to The New York Times. “They want us to become emotional. They revel in being called murderers when the words are coming from an apostate.”

The Daily Caller cited an example of The New York Times removing a section from a previously posted article that told how one of the terrorists at the Charlie Hebdo offices spared the life of a woman who was there during the attack:

“Instead, she told French news media, the man said, ‘I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman, we don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself,’ she recalled.”

Later on the Times altered the article, removing “but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself.” This is the type of political correctness that is commonplace in the media. It is not a matter of cowardice, fearful of being attacked like Charle Hebdo was, but rather an ideological, editorial decision to attempt to minimize the link to Islam.

As I asked in my recent column on the underreported and misreported stories of 2014, “What does it take to spark media outrage?… What is it going to take to end this ongoing slaughter by jihadists, acting in the name of Islam?”

In 2011, when Charlie Hebdo was firebombed for “an edition poking fun at Islam,” according to the UK Telegraph, Time Magazine’s Bruce Crumley blamed the publication for the violence perpetrated against it, writing,

“Not only are such Islamophobic antics [as publishing cartoons] futile and childish… but they also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction?”

By such a measure the media should censor itself from publishing or disseminating the inflammatory Charlie Hebdo materials in any outlet at all. And if The Washington Post is any indication, that’s exactly what happened: it used a photograph that cleverly hides the Charlie Hebdo cover from view while featuring a copy of the publication amidst other magazines.

Ironically, a call to combat terrorism came, not from the media, but from Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al Sisi even before the attack in Paris. He made a speech that hopefully will prove to be a turning point, but don’t count on it. In his New Year’s Day address, he urged the Imams to lead a “religious revolution” against extremism. But he has a huge battle on his own turf, as he gained power after millions of Egyptians called for the removal of Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who had been elected president of Egypt after the removal of Hosni Mubarak. This is but a small step forward.

As President Al Sisi said, “I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”

Why must such bold words come from Egypt’s president, and not our own, and other Western leaders, or from the mainstream media? Steve Emerson, of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, argued that “Indeed, the responses from our own president, French President Hollande and British Prime Minster David Cameron all spouted the same empty pabulum in asserting that the Paris attack had nothing to do with Islam or any religion for that matter. But the hollow comments coming from our own leaders are steeped in the stench of appeasement and cowardice.”

01/3/15

One Republican With White Supremacists? Try 15 Democrats Mixing With Anti-American Communists

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

The “mainstream media” is excited over revelations that House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) addressed a white supremacist group in 2002.

And so they should be. The voting public has every right to know the associations of those they elect and pay to serve.

None of us want covert racists or extremists anywhere near public policy. We can all agree on that right?

So, to help the media to do the job they’re obviously so committed to, I’ve compiled a list of very troubling associations for their fearless journalists to investigate and expose.

Did you know that many leading Democrat politicians have close ties to the Communist Party USA? You know… the Party that supports China, Cuba, Venezuela and even Iran.

The evidence below only scratches the surface (for more complete information you can find my books here), but it should be enough to get the ball rolling.

Here’s senior Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro with Joelle Fishman, head of the Connecticut Communist Party, in the Party HQ, 37 Howe Street New Haven, August of 2010.

Rosa DeLauro, Joelle Fishman

Here’s Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton with leading Minnesota/Dakotas Communist Party leader Mark Froemke, January 14, 2010.

Mark Froemke, Governor Dayton

Here’s comrade Froemke with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar at a July 1, 2009, Al Franken rally.

Lavonne Froemke left, Amy Klobuchar second to right, Mark Froemke right

Klobuchar second to right, Froemke right

Here’s Mark Froemke chatting with Senator Franken on January 11, 2012.

Al Franken, Mark Froemke

Here’s a screen shot of the minutes of a December 1999, secret Communist Party USA meeting that was held at the May Day Bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Note Mark Froemke’s name. Also note below that Mark Ritchie, a “non party friend,” was a guest speaker.

This is the same Mark Ritchie who later became Minnesota Secretary of State. The one who kept finding votes until Al Franken had JUST ENOUGH TO GET ELECTED in 2008.

And here’s Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, writing for the Communist Party’s Peoples World in August of 2014.

Over in Illinois, it’s pretty much the same.

Here’s a 2009 shot of Senator Dick Durbin with leading Chicago Communist Party member Bea Lumpkin.

Bea Lumpkin, Dick Durbin

Here’s Bea Lumpkin with Rep. Jan Shakowsky in 2012 at a Chicago Dinner in Comrade Lumpkin’s honor.

Bea Lumpkin, Jan Schakowsky

Here’s two Chicago Reps, Bobby Rush and Danny Davis, addressing the Chicago Communist party’s annual banquet in September of 1997. Davis was also at the 1989, 1990, 1998, 2000 and 2011 banquets.

Now for Red State Arizona.

Here’s an article written by Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva for the Communist Party paper back in 1993.

Here’s Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Sinema endorsing a Communist Party May Day Appeal back in 2002. She did it again in 2003.

People’s World, May 4, 2002

Down in even redder Texas, we have a similar situation.

Here’s Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson writing for the People’s World in December of 2001.

Here’s Democratic party Golden Boy Joaquin Castro with San Antonio Communist Party supporter Patti Radle in March of 2013.

Patti Radle, Joaquin Castro

And here’s Fort Worth based Rep. Mark Veasey with his self described “friend,” Texas Communist Party leader Gene Lantz, February 20, 2013.

Lantz, left, Veasey second left

Here’s Comrade Lantz again. This time with Houston based Rep. Al Green.

Lantz second from left, Green, second from right

And that’s not even looking at Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, Washington State or the Communist Party strongholds of New York and California!!!!

Could there be an issue here?

Communist Party activists don’t hang around senior Democrats to talk about the NFL. They associate with them to discuss matters of mutual concern, to coordinate messaging and campaigns, and to pass on instructions.

Since the Marxists took over the AFL-CIO in 1994-96, the left has been able to effectively write Democratic Party policy. That is why the Democrats have gone so far left in the last 15 years – they are following the Communist agenda.

Will the mainstream media now start falling over themselves in the rush to investigate the VERY EXTENSIVE Communist Party influence in the Democratic Party?

If you want to know more, you can pre-order the 2015-2017 edition of my book: “The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the US Congress.”

It contains more than seven hundred pages on the Communist infiltration of the US government. Not just old history – right here, right now! Learn about the Communist origins of Obamacare, “Amnesty” and the gutting of the US military. Read the profiles of more than 75 untrustworthy US Congress members – all documented.

The book is due for release on April 11th. Click on the button below to re-order your own personally autographed copy, or copies.

“Trevor Loudon does the job that few in the media ever attempt” – Glenn Beck

New Zealander Trevor Loudon has addressed more than 400 events, in the United States of America.

He is an internationally known blogger and researcher, noted among other things for exposing the communist background of Obama “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones, which led to his eventual resignation from his White House position. Loudon was also the first to publicize Barack Obama’s ties to Hawaiian Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis.

Loudon’s research has been cited by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, in many articles, blog posts and in books by well known authors Paul Kengor, Aaron Klein and Jerome Corsi. He has given hundreds of radio interviews and addressed audiences in more than 40 states in several tours of the United States.

Update: Slate Discovers Scalise Did Not Attend White Supremacist Event