Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Republicans versus Freedom

"Sometimes Republicans don't even try to hide their hypocrisy: On the eve of the 2010 midterm election House Republicans released their "Pledge to America" promising a "new governing agenda for America" that "stands on the principles of smaller, more accountable government." On the very same day, they also voted in overwhelming numbers along with Democrats to pass four pieces of legislation that violate the very pledge that the Republicans maintained they would adhere to if the voters gave them a majority in the House: The Family Health Care Accessibility Act, The Emergency Medic Transition Act, The National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Reauthorization Act, and The Training and Research for Autism Improvements Nationwide Act."

Republicans versus Freedom
By Laurence M. Vance, July 25, 2012

House Republicans have voted once again to repeal Obamacare -- for the thirty-third time.

By a vote of 244-185, all the House Republicans, along with five Democrats, voted in favor of repealing the whole of Obamacare. The simple 8-page bill (
H.R.6079), called the "Repeal of Obamacare Act," finds with respect to the impact of Public Law 111–148 (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [PPACA]) and related provisions of Public Law 111–152 (the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010) that
  1. In spite of Barack Obama's promises, under Obamacare, tens of millions of Americans are at risk of losing their health-care coverage.

  2. Obamacare will make coverage more expensive for millions of Americans;

  3. Obamacare cuts more than half a trillion dollars in Medicare and uses the funds to create a new entitlement program;
  4. Obamacare creates a 15-member, unelected Independent Payment Advisory Board that is empowered to make binding decisions regarding what treatments Medicare will cover and how much Medicare will pay;

  5. Obamacare and the more than 13,000 pages of related regulations issued before July 11, 2012, are causing great uncertainty, slowing economic growth, and limiting hiring opportunities for the unemployed;

  6. Obamacare imposes 21 new or higher taxes on American families and businesses, including 12 taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year;
  7. In spite of Obama's promises, Obamacare expands the role of the federal government in funding and facilitating abortion and plans that cover abortion; and

  8. Obamacare creates a new nationwide requirement for health plans to cover "essential health benefits" and "preventive services," but does not allow stakeholders to opt out of covering items or services to which they have a religious or moral objection.

The Repeal of Obamacare Act then does just that:
SEC. 3. REPEAL OF OBAMACARE

(a) PPACA. ­ Effective as of the enactment of Public Law 111–148, such Act (other than subsection (d) of section 1899A of the Social Security Act, as added and amended by sections 3403 and 10320 of such Public Law) is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act (other than such subsection (d)) are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted.

(b) HEALTH CARE-RELATED PROVISIONS IN THE HEALTH CARE AND EDUCATION RECONCILIATION ACT OF 2010. ­ Effective as of the enactment of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Public Law 111–152), title I and subtitle B of title II of such Act are repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such title or subtitle, respectively, are restored or revived as if such title and subtitle had not been enacted.

(The amendments to the Social Security Act concern the establishment and empowerment of an Independent Medicare Advisory Board to reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending.)

All of the five Democrats who went against their party and supported the Republican repeal effort voted against Obamacare when it was originally passed with no Republican votes on March 21, 2010. Reps. Dan Boren (Okla.) and Mike Ross (Ark.), both known as conservative Democrats, are not seeking reelection. The other three ­ Reps. Larry Kissell (N.C.), Jim Matheson (Utah), and Mike McIntyre (N.C) ­ face tough reelection battles.

This Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare was the first since the Supreme Court's ruling on the constitutionality of the Obamacare "individual mandate." There are certain to be other attempts as well.

The reason the House of Representatives keeps voting to repeal Obamacare is that the bill they pass never goes anywhere in the Senate. Republicans control the House 242-193, but Democrats control the Senate 51-47 (with two Independents who vote as Democrats).

So the House Republican vote to repeal Obamacare is just symbolic. Like much of what Republicans do, it is just political theater, since there is absolutely no chance that the Democratic-controlled Senate will ever agree to the legislation and even less of a chance that Obama will sign into law a bill repealing the legislation that bears his name.

The show put on by House Republicans makes it looks as though they are defenders of individual liberty and limited government. But at the same time they are voting to repeal Obamacare, Republicans in the House are also voting to pass insidious legislation that wars against individual liberty and limited government.

The New American magazine's "
Freedom Index" for the 112th Congress has just been released. The higher the number on this index, the stronger a congressman's "adherence to constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements." Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) scores a perfect 100 virtually every time the index is published (about twice a year). He didn't do so this time, but only because he didn't make the minimum number of required votes, since he was out campaigning for president. Although three Republicans in the Senate earned a score of 100, no one from either party did in the House.

The ten issues that members of the 112th Congress in the House are being rated on this time are: blocking EPA regulations, the omnibus appropriations bill, the debt limit, a line-item veto, the Keystone Pipeline project, repealing the death panels in Obamacare, government data collection, the Export-Import Bank, national ocean policy, and the indefinite-detention provision in the National Defense Authorization Act.

The Republican votes on two of those issues caught my eye.

The Export-Import Bank Reauthorization Act of 2012 (
H.R.2072) reauthorized the Export-Import Bank for two years and increased its lending cap from $100 billion to $140 billion. The Export-Import Bank is a government corporation that issues loans and loan guarantees to international buyers to help them purchase U.S. products. It also provides insurance policies to U.S. companies and banks to mitigate risks of noncollection from foreign buyers and borrowers. In other words, the Export-Import Bank provides corporate welfare backed by U.S. taxpayers. And as the New American comments, "The federal government has no constitutional authority risking taxpayers' money to provide loans and terms that the private sector considers too risky to provide." There were 147 Republicans in the House who joined all 183 Democrats in reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. Only 93 Republicans voted against doing so.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (
H.R.4310) does just that ­ it authorizes appropriations to the Department of Defense (DOD) for the next fiscal year. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) offered an amendment (H.AMDT.1127) to strike language from the bill, in the words of the New American, "so sweeping that American citizens accused of being terrorists can be detained by the U.S. military and held indefinitely without habeas corpus and without even being tried and found guilty in a court of law." Said Representative Smith, "This is an extraordinary amount of power to give to the president, to give the government the power to take away an individual's rights and lock them up with nothing more than one quick court hearing, without the due process rights protection in our Constitution. It's not needed. This is our opportunity to repeal it." Now, although there is far more wrong with the National Defense Authorization Act than just the indefinite-detention provision, as I pointed out the last time this bill was passed, Smith's amendment is a noble attempt to protect Americans' civil liberties. Yet 219 Republicans voted against the amendment with only 19 Republicans voting for it.

So while Republicans put on a show and vote to repeal Obamacare, they are at the same time waging war on the Constitution, the taxpayer, and freedom.

Sometimes Republicans don't even try to hide their hypocrisy: On the eve of the 2010 midterm election House Republicans released their "
Pledge to America" promising a "new governing agenda for America" that "stands on the principles of smaller, more accountable government." On the very same day, they also voted in overwhelming numbers along with Democrats to pass four pieces of legislation that violate the very pledge that the Republicans maintained they would adhere to if the voters gave them a majority in the House: The Family Health Care Accessibility Act, The Emergency Medic Transition Act, The National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Reauthorization Act, and The Training and Research for Autism Improvements Nationwide Act.

If Republicans were really interested in medical freedom, they would vote to repeal not just Obamacare, but an earlier version of health-care reform: the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003.

The reason that that legislation will never be repealed is that it was introduced by the Republican House Speaker, supported by the Republican leadership in the House and Senate, passed with overwhelming Republican support, and signed into law by a Republican president.

So when the Republicans in the House vote to repeal Obamacare for the thirty-fourth time, remember that it is all just political theater. No one who believes in the government's forcing people to pay for the health care of others should be taken seriously when he questions the gove

http://www.fff.org/comment/com1207v.asp

Re: Islam part of American History?

I can't think of anything significant, that a Muslim has
contributed to in American European, or in general, Western Culture,
in the
last thousand years.
---
a jew would say the same thing about christians and muzzies.
though we have caught them selling our technology and weapons to the
Chinese

Farouk El-Baz (born January 2, 1938) is an Egyptian American scientist
who worked with NASA to assist in the planning of scientific
exploration of the Moon, including the selection of landing sites for
the Apollo missions and the training of astronauts in lunar
observations and photography.
After the Apollo Program ended in 1972, El-Baz joined the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington DC to establish and direct the Center for
Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum.
Currently, El-Baz is Research Professor and Director of the Center for
Remote Sensing at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. He is
Adjunct Professor of Geology at the Faculty of Science, Ain Shams
University, Cairo, Egypt. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees
of the Geological Society of America Foundation, Boulder, Colorado, a
member of the Board of Directors of CRDF Global, and a member of the
U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Washington, DC.

On Jul 25, 11:44 am, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Plain Ol';
>
> Again, I am rushed today,  and I will respond in kind soon.   I have always
> contended that the Islamic world, back in the 11th and 12th Centuries, were
> far more advanced culturally than Western Europe was.   While we were still
> cutting one's entrails out for speakking against the King,  Islam was
> advancing in mathematics,  astronomy, and a host of sciences.
>
> Something happened;  namely,  Islam did not reform, and so it was, with the
> demise of the Ottoman Empire,  so with it went any significant contribution
> to our world.    I can't think of anything significant, that a Muslim has
> contributed to in American European, or in general, Western Culture, in the
> last thousand years.  I could be mistaken on this,  and again, when I get a
> moment, I will dig in and see what I fan find.
>
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 4:24 PM, plainolamerican
> <plainolameri...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >  You've been brainwashed by the "Wacko Left,
> > Socialist-Elitist Moonbats", some of which get some revisionist
> > history
> > into Wiki, and convince folks like you that it's fact.
> > ---
> > I don't accept any of this as fact ... so you would be wrong about the
> > brainwashing.
>
> > you, otoh, like Travis, are brainwashed into thinking that muzzies
> > have made no contributions to society, are spawn of satan, and should
> > be killed.
>
> > On Jul 24, 5:27 pm, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > My point exactly.  You've been brainwashed by the "Wacko Left,
> > > Socialist-Elitist Moonbats", some of which get some revisionist history
> > > into Wiki, and convince folks like you that it's fact.   I will respond
> > to
> > > this in detail tomorrow,  it's past midnight in the Fatherland.....
>
> > > On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:15 AM, plainolamerican <
> > plainolameri...@gmail.com
>
> > > > wrote:
> > > > So.....Pretty much,  Travis's article hits the nail on the head.
> > > > ---
> > > > not exactly
>
> > > > Historical evidence suggests that there were Muslims within the
> > > > original, native, Ameri-Indian community and that the first group of
> > > > immigrant Muslims reached the Americas in 1312 (180 years before
> > > > Columbus). From Mali and other parts of West Africa, Muslim explorers
> > > > arrived via the Gulf of Mexico for exploration of the American
> > > > interior, using the Mississippi River as their access route. Abubakri
> > > > was one of the first to set sail to America from Africa (according to
> > > > "˜Muslims in America' by Amir Nashid Ali Muhammad).
>
> > > > In 1492 when Columbus arrived here, he was strongly influenced by the
> > > > writings of 13th century Arab geographer Al-Idrissi, who served as an
> > > > advisor to King Roger of Sicily. Columbus arrived with Al-Idrissi's
> > > > book and Muslim captains, crews, and translators. He had two Muslim
> > > > captains: Martin Alonso Pinzon and his brother Vicente Yanex Pinzon.
> > > > The Pinzon family was related to Abuzayan Muhammad III, the Moroccan
> > > > Sultan of Marinid dynasty (1196-1465) (ibid).
>
> > > > Columbus himself admitted in his papers that while his ship was
> > > > sailing near Gibara on the northeast coast of Cuba, he saw a mosque on
> > > > top of a beautiful mountain. Ruins of mosques and minarets with
> > > > inscriptions of Qur'anic verses have been discovered in Cuba, Mexico,
> > > > Texas, and Nevada. A historian, Dr. Berry Fell, in his books
> > > > "˜America, BC' ("˜BC' representing "˜before Columbus') and "˜Saga
> > > > America! ,' provided evidence of early presence of Muslims in America.
>
> > > > The Muslim country of Morocco was the first to recognize and
> > > > acknowledge America's independence in 1777. Morocco was the first
> > > > nation to sign a peace treaty in 1786 with America, followed by
> > > > Algeria in 1795, Tripoli in 1796, Tunis in 1797, and Muscat (Oman) in
> > > > 1833. All the earliest signatories were Muslim countries. During 1788
> > > > to 1789, President George Washington exchanged letters with the Sultan
> > > > Mohammad III about peace and! asked the Sultan to plead with
> > > > authorities in Tunis and Tripoli to obtain the right of free
> > > > navigation for American ships in the Mediterranean. In this way,
> > > > American ships entered the sea with the support of Muslims.
>
> > > > There are hundreds of examples of contributions of Muslim immigrants
> > > > to building the nation in all spheres of American life; here are just
> > > > a few:
>
> > > > The United States Cavalry hired a Muslim by the name of Hajj Ali to
> > > > experiment with breeding and raising camels in the deserts of Arizona.
> > > > Hajj Ali came from Syria in the mid 1850's, and in 1868 he went to
> > > > work prospecting and scouting for the government. He was given the
> > > > quaint, American nickname 'Hi Jolly' as he became a local folk hero in
> > > > Quartzsite, AZ, where he died in 1902. His tombstone is a stone
> > > > pyramid with a camel on top of it (according to "˜Muslims in America'
> > > > by Amir Nashid Ali Muhammad).
>
> > > > An African immigrant Muslim, Muhammad Ali Ben Said (1833-18820),
> > > > joined the 55th Regiment of Massachusetts Colored Volunteers. Serving
> > > > in Company 1, Muhammad rose from corporal to sergeant by July 16, 1863
> > > > (ibid).
>
> > > > In 1875, the wave of Muslim immigrants started coming; the first small
> > > > group came from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Punjab (Pakistan and
> > > > India). Some of the Syrian-Lebanese Arabs settled on lower Washington
> > > > Street and in Brooklyn across the East River around Atlantic Avenue
> > > > and South Brooklyn (ibid).
>
> > > > The agricultural lands of America were cultivated and raised by
> > > > African slaves; the original religion of most of them was Islam.
> > > > African American Muslims were among the major working force in
> > > > building America.
>
> > > > Abdul Hakeem Muhammad, a computer scientist with the IRS, won the
> > > > "Department of the Army Commander's Award for Civilian Service" for
> > > > his work in the field of computers open system standards and technical
> > > > architectural environment. This is one of the highest, most rare, and
> > > > unusual Congressional awards won by an IRS employee.
>
> > > > Dr. Fazlur Rahman, Khan, a Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant, and
> > > > outstanding architect, designed Chicago's John Hancock Center in 1970,
> > > > the One Shell Plaza in Houston in 1971, and the Sears Tower in Chicago
> > > > in 1973.
>
> > > > El-Hajj Malik el-Shabbaz (Malcolm X) was a leader of international
> > > > fame, and his legacy continues to influence Americans today. There
> > > > have been dozens of famous Muslims in Jazz music, arts, and other
> > > > entertainment fields, and American Muslim contributions are visible in
> > > > every walk of life from the most sensitive and military areas to more
> > > > common jobs.
>
> > > > Presently, there are more than 5,000 Muslims in uniform on active duty
> > > > in the military. A Pakistani American in uniform, Azhar Mahmood,
> > > > recently died in the War in Iraq and is now buried in Long Island, New
> > > > York.
>
> > > > American Muslim women are also adding their names to the list of
> > > > distinguished inventors, scientists, engineers, etc. Among them is
> > > > Lubna Ahmad, a young biomedical engineering student who recently
> > > > invented a noninvasive sensor for obesity and diabetes management.
>
> > > > In the First World War, Muslim states were allied with America, even
> > > > against the Muslim State of Turkey. In the Second World War, Muslims
> > > > were again allied with the US, with all their political, economic, and
> > > > military resources. In the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Muslim
> > > > states were allies of America. Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey were the
> > > > front line states against the Soviet Unio! n; they were vulnerable and
> > > > exposed to the danger of nuclear assault of the enemy. Till now, US
> > > > military bases were all over the Muslim world, allied with America.
>
> > > > Since 1945, all the natural resources of the Muslim World have been at
> > > > the disposal of American companies. Presently, only one Muslim
> > > > country, Saudi Arabia, has an investment in America that is more than
> > > > one trillion dollars.
>
> > > > At the society level, Muslims have the lowest divorce rate, lowest
> > > > abuse rate, lowest domestic violence, lowest criminal percentage, and
> > > > Islam gives a model for an ideal family. Muslims, making up the second
> > > > largest religious minority of the country, contribute moral values to
> > > > the society and thus reduces the crime rates. Masajid (mosques) play a
> > > > great role in minimizing crime, drug usage, and other social evils.
> > > > Muslims living in America have helped create a bridge between America
> > > > and the most resourceful Muslim worlds.
>
> > > > In a nutshell, Muslims in America were always an asset and never a
> > > > liability.
>
> > > >http://thebigotbasher.com/2010/08/15/what-have-the-muslims-ever-done-.
> > ..
>
> > > > On Jul 24, 3:33 pm, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > So.....Pretty much,  Travis's article hits the nail on the head.
> > There
> > > > > has been no significant contribution(s)  to society by anyone who is
> > of
> > > > > Islamic heritage or claims to be a Muslim.
>
> > > > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States
> > > > > On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 9:32 PM, plainolamerican
> > > > > <plainolameri...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > > > > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States
>
> > > > > > On Jul 24, 2:21 pm, Travis <baconl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > --
> > > > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
> > > > For options & help seehttp://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
>
> > > > * Visit our other community athttp://www.PoliticalForum.com/
> > > > * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our
>
> ...
>
> read more »

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Re: Have you seen the BBC Olympic web page?

Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel,  and should not be reflected as such.  Israel is a United Nations created State, and the capital is Tel-Aviv.  Jerusalem is an international city,  at least in theory.  We should never acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel!
 


 
On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 3:21 PM, Travis <baconlard@gmail.com> wrote:


New post on Fellowship of the Minds

Have you seen the BBC Olympic web page?

by DCG

They have a list of all the countries participating in the London Olympics along with their athletes and key facts about the country.

Seems the BBC is taking the same stance as the United Nations and will not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  In a speech in June 2008, then-presidential-candidate Barack Obama said "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

Take a look at some of the countries participating in the Olympics.

Iraq: Capital - Baghdad.

Languages: Arabic, Kurdish.

Iraq at the Olympics: 1948 First Olympic appearance.

Pakistan: Capital - Islamabad.

Languages: English, Punjabi, Urdu.

Pakistan at the Olympics: 1948 First Olympic appearance.

Palestine is recognised as a competing country by the IOC but is not recognised as a modern state. Intended seat of government: East Jerusalem. Ramallah serves as administrative capital.

Palestine at the Olympics: 1996 First Olympic appearance.

Israel Seat of Government: Jerusalem, though most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv.

Barry Davies remembers the tragic terrorist attack on the Munich 1972 Olympic Games in the third of a 10-part series.

At least the BBC is being consistent with the standards set by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the organization that allowed Muslim countries to block the "One-Minute of Silence" campaign to honor the 11 murdered Israeli athletes from the 1972 Munich Games.  "Games organisers Locog and the IOC may fear provoking a walkout from some Arab countries and are keen to avoid the games being politicised."

I'm sure all this pandering to the Muslim countries will guarantee that not one terrorist attack will occur at the London Games.

DCG

DCG | July 25, 2012 at 4:00 am | Tags: BBC, Palestine | Categories: 2012 Olympics, Islam, Israel | URL: http://wp.me/pKuKY-fUc

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Re: Islam part of American History?

Hey Plain Ol';
 
Again, I am rushed today,  and I will respond in kind soon.   I have always contended that the Islamic world, back in the 11th and 12th Centuries, were far more advanced culturally than Western Europe was.   While we were still cutting one's entrails out for speakking against the King,  Islam was advancing in mathematics,  astronomy, and a host of sciences.  
 
Something happened;  namely,  Islam did not reform, and so it was, with the demise of the Ottoman Empire,  so with it went any significant contribution to our world.    I can't think of anything significant, that a Muslim has contributed to in American European, or in general, Western Culture, in the last thousand years.  I could be mistaken on this,  and again, when I get a moment, I will dig in and see what I fan find.
 
 
 


 
On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 4:24 PM, plainolamerican <plainolamerican@gmail.com> wrote:
 You've been brainwashed by the "Wacko Left,
Socialist-Elitist Moonbats", some of which get some revisionist
history
into Wiki, and convince folks like you that it's fact.
---
I don't accept any of this as fact ... so you would be wrong about the
brainwashing.

you, otoh, like Travis, are brainwashed into thinking that muzzies
have made no contributions to society, are spawn of satan, and should
be killed.

On Jul 24, 5:27 pm, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My point exactly.  You've been brainwashed by the "Wacko Left,
> Socialist-Elitist Moonbats", some of which get some revisionist history
> into Wiki, and convince folks like you that it's fact.   I will respond to
> this in detail tomorrow,  it's past midnight in the Fatherland.....
>
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:15 AM, plainolamerican <plainolameri...@gmail.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > wrote:
> > So.....Pretty much,  Travis's article hits the nail on the head.
> > ---
> > not exactly
>
> > Historical evidence suggests that there were Muslims within the
> > original, native, Ameri-Indian community and that the first group of
> > immigrant Muslims reached the Americas in 1312 (180 years before
> > Columbus). From Mali and other parts of West Africa, Muslim explorers
> > arrived via the Gulf of Mexico for exploration of the American
> > interior, using the Mississippi River as their access route. Abubakri
> > was one of the first to set sail to America from Africa (according to
> > "˜Muslims in America' by Amir Nashid Ali Muhammad).
>
> > In 1492 when Columbus arrived here, he was strongly influenced by the
> > writings of 13th century Arab geographer Al-Idrissi, who served as an
> > advisor to King Roger of Sicily. Columbus arrived with Al-Idrissi's
> > book and Muslim captains, crews, and translators. He had two Muslim
> > captains: Martin Alonso Pinzon and his brother Vicente Yanex Pinzon.
> > The Pinzon family was related to Abuzayan Muhammad III, the Moroccan
> > Sultan of Marinid dynasty (1196-1465) (ibid).
>
> > Columbus himself admitted in his papers that while his ship was
> > sailing near Gibara on the northeast coast of Cuba, he saw a mosque on
> > top of a beautiful mountain. Ruins of mosques and minarets with
> > inscriptions of Qur'anic verses have been discovered in Cuba, Mexico,
> > Texas, and Nevada. A historian, Dr. Berry Fell, in his books
> > "˜America, BC' ("˜BC' representing "˜before Columbus') and "˜Saga
> > America! ,' provided evidence of early presence of Muslims in America.
>
> > The Muslim country of Morocco was the first to recognize and
> > acknowledge America's independence in 1777. Morocco was the first
> > nation to sign a peace treaty in 1786 with America, followed by
> > Algeria in 1795, Tripoli in 1796, Tunis in 1797, and Muscat (Oman) in
> > 1833. All the earliest signatories were Muslim countries. During 1788
> > to 1789, President George Washington exchanged letters with the Sultan
> > Mohammad III about peace and! asked the Sultan to plead with
> > authorities in Tunis and Tripoli to obtain the right of free
> > navigation for American ships in the Mediterranean. In this way,
> > American ships entered the sea with the support of Muslims.
>
> > There are hundreds of examples of contributions of Muslim immigrants
> > to building the nation in all spheres of American life; here are just
> > a few:
>
> > The United States Cavalry hired a Muslim by the name of Hajj Ali to
> > experiment with breeding and raising camels in the deserts of Arizona.
> > Hajj Ali came from Syria in the mid 1850's, and in 1868 he went to
> > work prospecting and scouting for the government. He was given the
> > quaint, American nickname 'Hi Jolly' as he became a local folk hero in
> > Quartzsite, AZ, where he died in 1902. His tombstone is a stone
> > pyramid with a camel on top of it (according to "˜Muslims in America'
> > by Amir Nashid Ali Muhammad).
>
> > An African immigrant Muslim, Muhammad Ali Ben Said (1833-18820),
> > joined the 55th Regiment of Massachusetts Colored Volunteers. Serving
> > in Company 1, Muhammad rose from corporal to sergeant by July 16, 1863
> > (ibid).
>
> > In 1875, the wave of Muslim immigrants started coming; the first small
> > group came from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Punjab (Pakistan and
> > India). Some of the Syrian-Lebanese Arabs settled on lower Washington
> > Street and in Brooklyn across the East River around Atlantic Avenue
> > and South Brooklyn (ibid).
>
> > The agricultural lands of America were cultivated and raised by
> > African slaves; the original religion of most of them was Islam.
> > African American Muslims were among the major working force in
> > building America.
>
> > Abdul Hakeem Muhammad, a computer scientist with the IRS, won the
> > "Department of the Army Commander's Award for Civilian Service" for
> > his work in the field of computers open system standards and technical
> > architectural environment. This is one of the highest, most rare, and
> > unusual Congressional awards won by an IRS employee.
>
> > Dr. Fazlur Rahman, Khan, a Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant, and
> > outstanding architect, designed Chicago's John Hancock Center in 1970,
> > the One Shell Plaza in Houston in 1971, and the Sears Tower in Chicago
> > in 1973.
>
> > El-Hajj Malik el-Shabbaz (Malcolm X) was a leader of international
> > fame, and his legacy continues to influence Americans today. There
> > have been dozens of famous Muslims in Jazz music, arts, and other
> > entertainment fields, and American Muslim contributions are visible in
> > every walk of life from the most sensitive and military areas to more
> > common jobs.
>
> > Presently, there are more than 5,000 Muslims in uniform on active duty
> > in the military. A Pakistani American in uniform, Azhar Mahmood,
> > recently died in the War in Iraq and is now buried in Long Island, New
> > York.
>
> > American Muslim women are also adding their names to the list of
> > distinguished inventors, scientists, engineers, etc. Among them is
> > Lubna Ahmad, a young biomedical engineering student who recently
> > invented a noninvasive sensor for obesity and diabetes management.
>
> > In the First World War, Muslim states were allied with America, even
> > against the Muslim State of Turkey. In the Second World War, Muslims
> > were again allied with the US, with all their political, economic, and
> > military resources. In the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Muslim
> > states were allies of America. Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey were the
> > front line states against the Soviet Unio! n; they were vulnerable and
> > exposed to the danger of nuclear assault of the enemy. Till now, US
> > military bases were all over the Muslim world, allied with America.
>
> > Since 1945, all the natural resources of the Muslim World have been at
> > the disposal of American companies. Presently, only one Muslim
> > country, Saudi Arabia, has an investment in America that is more than
> > one trillion dollars.
>
> > At the society level, Muslims have the lowest divorce rate, lowest
> > abuse rate, lowest domestic violence, lowest criminal percentage, and
> > Islam gives a model for an ideal family. Muslims, making up the second
> > largest religious minority of the country, contribute moral values to
> > the society and thus reduces the crime rates. Masajid (mosques) play a
> > great role in minimizing crime, drug usage, and other social evils.
> > Muslims living in America have helped create a bridge between America
> > and the most resourceful Muslim worlds.
>
> > In a nutshell, Muslims in America were always an asset and never a
> > liability.
>
> >http://thebigotbasher.com/2010/08/15/what-have-the-muslims-ever-done-...
>
> > On Jul 24, 3:33 pm, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > So.....Pretty much,  Travis's article hits the nail on the head.   There
> > > has been no significant contribution(s)  to society by anyone who is of
> > > Islamic heritage or claims to be a Muslim.
>
> > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States
> > > On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 9:32 PM, plainolamerican
> > > <plainolameri...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States
>
> > > > On Jul 24, 2:21 pm, Travis <baconl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > --
> > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
> > For options & help seehttp://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
>
> > * Visit our other community athttp://www.PoliticalForum.com/
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> > * Read the latest breaking news, and more.

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**JP** Letter to Editor - Elections

Dear Join Pakistan

 

LETTER TO EDITOR

July 25th, 2012

 

Elections Elections Elections

Hamid Mir summed up his Capital Talk show by saying that they (the panellists) had analysed the problems of Pakistan and the panacea for all of them was elections, elections, and elections.

I beg to disagree.  Who would all do they think shall be given the party tickets for the next and the next thereafter ad infinitum  elections to contest and win?  The same chips of the same block -  Baap nahi tau Beta, Beti nahi tau Bahu, Bhanja nahi tau bhateeja, Chacha nahi tau Mama,  - - - - again ad infinitum. What choice would the poor electorate have except to choose one among from the same luteras?

There will be no change whatsoever and the same professional and hereditary corrupt plunderers will rule over this hapless nation unless some Khomeini or Mao rids them of the gnawing sharks and leeches!

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)
30 Westridge 1
Rawalpindi 46000
Pakistan
Tel: (051) 5158033
E.mail: jafri@rifiela.com

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The Great American Islamophobic Crusade

By Max Blumenthal

Monday, December 20, 2010


...Besides providing the initial energy for the Islamophobic crusade,
elements from within the pro-Israel lobby bankrolled the network's
apparatus, enabling it to influence the national debate...

Inside the Bizarre Cabal of Secretive Donors, Demagogic Bloggers,
Pseudo-Scholars, European Neo-Fascists, Violent Israeli Settlers, and
Presidential Hopefuls Behind the Crusade

Nine years after 9/11, hysteria about Muslims in American life has
gripped the country. With it has gone an outburst of arson attacks on
mosques, campaigns to stop their construction, and the branding of the
Muslim-American community, overwhelmingly moderate, as a hotbed of
potential terrorist recruits. The frenzy has raged from rural
Tennessee to New York City, while in Oklahoma, voters even
overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure banning the implementation of
Sharia law in American courts (not that such a prospect existed). This
campaign of Islamophobia wounded President Obama politically, as one
out of five Americans have bought into a sustained chorus of false
rumors about his secret Muslim faith. And it may have tainted views of
Muslims in general; an August 2010 Pew Research Center poll revealed
that, among Americans, the favorability rating of Muslims had dropped
by 11 points since 2005.

Erupting so many years after the September 11th trauma, this spasm of
anti-Muslim bigotry might seem oddly timed and unexpectedly
spontaneous. But think again: it's the fruit of an organized, long-
term campaign
by a tight confederation of right-wing activists and operatives who
first focused on Islamophobia soon after the September 11th attacks,
but only attained critical mass during the Obama era. It was then
that embittered conservative forces, voted out of power in 2008,
sought with remarkable success to leverage cultural resentment into
political and partisan gain.

This network is obsessively fixated on the supposed spread of Muslim
influence in America. Its apparatus spans continents, extending from
Tea Party activists here to the European far right. It brings together
in common cause right-wing ultra-Zionists, Christian evangelicals, and
racist British soccer hooligans. It reflects an aggressively pro-
Israel sensibility, with its key figures venerating the Jewish state
as a Middle Eastern Fort Apache on the front lines of the Global War
on Terror and urging the U.S. and various European powers to emulate
its heavy-handed methods.

Little of recent American Islamophobia (with a strong emphasis on the
"phobia") is sheer happenstance. Years before Tea Party shock troops
massed for angry protests outside the proposed site of an Islamic
community center in lower Manhattan, representatives of the Israel
lobby and the Jewish-American establishment launched a campaign
against pro-Palestinian campus activism that would prove a seedbed for
everything to come. That campaign quickly -- and perhaps predictably
-- morphed into a series of crusades against mosques and Islamic
schools which, in turn, attracted an assortment of shady but
exceptionally energetic militants into the network's ranks.

Besides providing the initial energy for the Islamophobic crusade,
conservative elements from within the pro-Israel lobby bankrolled the
network's apparatus, enabling it to influence the national debate. One
philanthropist in particular has provided the beneficence to propel
the campaign ahead. He is a little-known Los Angeles-area software
security entrepreneur named Aubrey Chernick, who operates out of a
security consulting firm blandly named the National Center for Crisis
and Continuity Coordination. A former trustee of the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, which has served as a think tank for
the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a frontline
lobbying group for Israel, Chernick is said to be worth $750 million.

Chernick's fortune is puny compared to that of the [Jewish]
billionaire Koch Brothers, extraction industry titans who fund Tea
Party-related groups like Americans for Prosperity, and it is dwarfed
by the financial empire of Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media
baron who is one of the largest private donors to the Democratic party
and recently matched $9 million raised for the Friends of the Israeli
Defense Forces in a single night. However, by injecting his money into
a small but influential constellation of groups and individuals with a
narrow agenda, Chernick has had a considerable impact.

Through the Fairbrook Foundation, a private entity he and his wife
Joyce control, Chernick has provided funding to groups ranging from
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and CAMERA, a right-wing, pro-Israel,
media-watchdog outfit, to violent Israeli settlers living on
Palestinian lands and figures like the pseudo-academic author Robert
Spencer, who is largely responsible for popularizing conspiracy
theories about the coming conquest of the West by Muslim fanatics
seeking to establish a worldwide caliphate.

Together, these groups spread hysteria about Muslims into Middle
American communities where immigrants from the Middle East have
recently settled, and they watched with glee as likely Republican
presidential frontrunners from Mike Huckabee to Sarah Palin promoted
their cause and parroted their tropes. Perhaps the only thing more
surprising than the increasingly widespread appeal of Islamophobia is
that, just a few years ago, the phenomenon was confined to a few
college campuses and an inner city neighborhood, and that it seemed
like a fleeting fad that would soon pass from the American political
landscape.

Birth of a Network

The Islamophobic crusade was launched in earnest at the peak of George
W. Bush's prestige when the neoconservatives and their allies were
riding high. In 2003, three years after the collapse of President Bill
Clinton's attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue and in the
immediate wake of the invasion of Iraq, a network of Jewish groups,
ranging from ADL and the American Jewish Committee to AIPAC, gathered
to address what they saw as a sudden rise in pro-Palestinian activism
on college campuses nationwide.

That meeting gave birth to the David Project, a campus advocacy group
led by Charles Jacobs, who had co-founded CAMERA, one of the many
outfits bankrolled by Chernick. With the help of public relations
professionals, Jacobs conceived a plan to "take back the campus by
influencing public opinion through lectures, the Internet, and
coalitions," as a memo produced at the time by the consulting firm
McKinsey and Company stated.

In 2004, after conferring with Martin Kramer, a fellow at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the pro-Israel think tank
where Chernick had served as a trustee, Jacobs produced a documentary
film that he called Columbia Unbecoming. It was filled with claims
from Jewish students at Columbia University claiming they had endured
intimidation and insults from Arab professors. The film portrayed
that New York City school's Department of Middle East and Asian
Languages and Cultures as a hothouse of anti-Semitism.

In their complaints, the students focused on one figure in particular:
Joseph Massad, a Palestinian professor of Middle East studies. He was
known for his passionate advocacy of the formation of a binational
state between Israel and Palestine, as well as for his strident
criticism of what he termed "the racist character of Israel." The film
identified him as "one of the most dangerous intellectuals on campus,"
while he was featured as a crucial villain in The Professors: The 101
Most Dangerous Academics in America, a book by the (Chernick-funded)
neoconservative activist David Horowitz. As Massad was seeking tenure
at the time, he was especially vulnerable to this sort of wholesale
assault.

When the controversy over Massad's views intensified, Congressman
Anthony Weiner, a liberal New York Democrat who once described himself
as a representative of "the ZOA [Zionist Organization of America] wing
of the Democratic Party," demanded that Columbia President Lee
Bollinger, a renowned First Amendment scholar, fire the professor.
Bollinger responded by issuing uncharacteristically defensive
statements about the "limited" nature of academic freedom.

In the end, however, none of the charges stuck. Indeed, the
testimonies in the David Project film were eventually either
discredited or never corroborated. In 2009, Massad earned tenure after
winning Columbia's prestigious Lionel Trilling Award for excellence in
scholarship.

Having demonstrated its ability to intimidate faculty members and even
powerful university administrators, however, Kramer claimed a moral
victory in the name of his project, boasting to the press that "this
is a turning point." While the David Project subsequently fostered
chapters on campuses nationwide, its director set out on a different
path -- initially, into the streets of Boston in 2004 to oppose the
construction of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.

For nearly 15 years, the Islamic Society of Boston had sought to build
the center in the heart of Roxbury, the city's largest black
neighborhood, to serve its sizable Muslim population. With
endorsements from Mayor Thomas Menino and leading Massachusetts
lawmakers, the mosque's construction seemed like a fait accompli --
until, that is, the Rupert Murdoch-owned Boston Herald and his local
Fox News affiliate snapped into action. Boston Globe columnist Jeff
Jacoby also chimed in with a series of reports claiming the center's
plans were evidence of a Saudi Arabian plot to bolster the influence
of radical Islam in the United States, and possibly even to train
underground terror cells.

It was at this point that the David Project entered the fray,
convening elements of the local pro-Israel community in the Boston
area to seek strategies to torpedo the project. According to emails
obtained by the Islamic Society's lawyers in a lawsuit against the
David Project, the organizers settled on a campaign of years of
nuisance lawsuits, along with accusations that the center had received
foreign funding from "the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia or… the
Moslem Brotherhood."

In response, a grassroots coalition of liberal Jews initiated inter-
faith efforts aimed at ending a controversy that had essentially been
manufactured out of thin air and was corroding relations between the
Jewish and Muslim communities in the city. Jacobs would not, however,
relent. "We are more concerned now than we have ever been about a
Saudi influence of local mosques," he announced at a suburban Boston
synagogue in 2007.

After paying out millions of dollars in legal bills and enduring
countless smears, the Islamic Society of Boston completed the
construction of its community center in 2008. Meanwhile, not
surprisingly, nothing came of the David Project's dark warnings. As
Boston-area National Public Radio reporter Philip Martin reflected in
September 2010, "The horror stories that preceded [the center's]
development seem shrill and histrionic in retrospect."

The Network Expands

This second failed campaign was, in the end, more about movement
building than success, no less national security. The local crusade
established an effective blueprint for generating hysteria against the
establishment of Islamic centers and mosques across the country, while
galvanizing a cast of characters who would form an anti-Muslim network
which would gain attention and success in the years to come.

In 2007, these figures coalesced into a proto-movement that launched a
new crusade, this time targeting the Khalil Gibran International
Academy, a secular Arabic-English elementary school in Brooklyn, New
York. Calling their ad hoc pressure group, Stop the Madrassah --
madrassah being simply the Arab word for "school" -- the coalition's
activists included an array of previously unknown zealots who made no
attempt to disguise their extreme views when it came to Islam as a
religion, as well as Muslims in America. Their stated goal was to
challenge the school's establishment on the basis of its violation of
the church-state separation in the U.S. Constitution. The true aim of
the coalition, however, was transparent: to pressure the city's
leadership to adopt an antagonistic posture towards the local Muslim
community.

The activists zeroed in on the school's principal, Debbie Almontaser,
a veteran educator of Yemeni descent, and baselessly branded her "a
jihadist" as well as a 9/11 denier. They also accused her of -- as
Pamela Geller, a far-right blogger just then gaining prominence put
it, "whitewash[ing] the genocide against the Jews." Daniel Pipes, a
neoconservative academic previously active in the campaigns against
Joseph Massad and the Boston Islamic center (and whose pro-Likud think
tank, Middle East Forum, has received $150,000 from Chernick) claimed
the school should not go ahead because "Arabic-language instruction is
inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage." As the
campaign reached a fever pitch, Almontaser reported that members of
the coalition were actually stalking her wherever she went.

Given what Columbia Journalism School professor and former New York
Times reporter Samuel Freedman called "her clear, public record of
interfaith activism and outreach," including work with the New York
Police Department and the Anti-Defamation League after the September
11th attacks, the assault on Almontaser seemed little short of bizarre
-- until her assailants discovered a photograph of a T-shirt produced
by AWAAM, a local Arab feminist organization, that read "Intifada
NYC." As it turned out, AWAAM sometimes shared office space with a
Yemeni-American association on which Almontaser served as a board
member. Though the connection seemed like a stretch, it promoted the
line of attack the Stop the Madrassah coalition had been seeking.

Having found a way to wedge the emotional issue of the Israel-
Palestine conflict into a previously New York-centered campaign, the
school's opponents next gained a platform at the Murdoch-owned New
York Post, where reporters Chuck Bennett and Jana Winter claimed her T-
shirt was "apparently a call for a Gaza-style uprising in the Big
Apple." While Almontaser attempted to explain to the Post's reporters
that she rejected terrorism, the Anti-Defamation League chimed in on
cue. ADL spokesman Oren Segal told the Post: "The T-shirt is a
reflection of a movement that increasingly lauds violence against
Israelis instead of rejecting it. That is disturbing."

Before any Qassam rockets could be launched from Almontaser's school,
her former ally New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg caved to the growing
pressure and threatened to shut down the school, prompting her to
resign. A Jewish principal who spoke no Arabic replaced Almontaser,
who later filed a lawsuit against the city for breaching her free
speech rights. In 2010, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
ruled that New York's Department of Education had "succumbed to the
very bias that the creation of the school was intended to dispel" by
firing Almontaser and urged it pay her $300,000 in damages. The
commission also concluded that the Post had quoted her misleadingly.

Though it failed to stop the establishment of the Khalil Gibran
Academy, the burgeoning anti-Muslim movement succeeded in forcing city
leaders to bend to its will, and having learned just how to do that,
then moved on in search of more high-profile targets. As the New York
Times reported at the time, "The fight against the school... was only
an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle."

"It's a battle that has really just begun," Pipes told the Times.

From Scam to Publicity Coup

Pipes couldn't have been more on the mark. In late 2009, the
Islamophobes sprang into action again when the Cordoba Initiative, a
non-profit Muslim group headed by Feisal Abdul Rauf, an exceedingly
moderate Sufi Muslim imam who regularly traveled abroad representing
the United States at the behest of the State Department, announced
that it was going to build a community center in downtown New York
City. With the help of investors, Rauf's Cordoba Initiative purchased
space two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan. The space was to
contain a prayer area as part of a large community center that would
be open to everyone in the neighborhood.

None of these facts mattered to Pamela Geller. Thanks to constant
prodding at her blog, Atlas Shrugged, Geller made Cordoba's
construction plans a national issue, provoking fervent calls from
conservatives to protect the "hallowed ground" of 9/11 from creeping
Sharia. (That the "mosque" would have been out of sight of Ground Zero
and that the neighborhood was, in fact, filled with everything from
strip clubs to fast-food joints didn't matter.) Geller's activism
against Cordoba House earned the 52-year-old full-time blogger the
attention she apparently craved, including a long profile in the New
York Times and frequent cable news spots, especially, of course, on
Fox News.

Mainstream reporters tended to focus on Geller's bizarre stunts. She
posted a video of herself splashing around in a string bikini on a
Fort Lauderdale beach, for instance, while ranting about "left-tards"
and "Nazi Hezbollah." Her call for boycotting Campbell's Soup because
the company offered halal -- approved under Islamic law (as kosher
food is under Jewish law) -- versions of its products got her much
attention, as did her promotion of a screed claiming that President
Barack Obama was the illegitimate lovechild of Malcolm X.

Geller had never earned a living as a journalist. She supported
herself with millions of dollars in a divorce settlement and life
insurance money from her ex-husband. He died in 2008, a year after
being indicted for an alleged $1.3 million scam he was accused of
running out of a car dealership he co-owned with Geller. Independently
wealthy and with time on her hands, Geller proved able indeed when it
came to exploiting her strange media stardom to incite the already
organized political network of Islamophobes to intensify their
crusade.

She also benefited from close alliances with leading Islamophobes from
Europe. Among Geller's allies was Andrew Gravers, a Danish activist
who formed the group Stop the Islamicization of Europe, and gave it
the unusually blunt motto: "Racism is the lowest form of human
stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense." Gravers'
group inspired Geller's own U.S.-based outfit, Stop the Islamicization
of America, which she formed with her friend Robert Spencer, a pseudo-
scholar whose bestselling books, including The Truth About Muhammad,
Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion, prompted former
advisor to President Richard Nixon and Muslim activist Robert Crane to
call him, "the principal leader… in the new academic field of Muslim
bashing." (According to the website Politico, almost $1 million in
donations from Chernick has been steered to Spencer's Jihad Watch
group through David Horowitz's Freedom Center.)

Perfect sources for Republican political figures in search of the next
hot-button cause, their rhetoric found its way into the talking points
of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin as they propelled the crusade against
Cordoba House into the national spotlight. Gingrich soon compared the
community center to a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Memorial Museum,
while Palin called it "a stab in the heart" of "the Heartland."
Meanwhile, Tea Party candidates like Republican Ilario Pantano, an
Iraq war veteran who killed two unarmed Iraqi civilians, shooting them
60 times -- he even stopped to reload -- made their opposition to
Cordoba House the centerpiece of midterm congressional campaigns
conducted hundreds of miles from Ground Zero.

Geller's campaign against "the mosque at Ground Zero" gained an
unexpected assist and a veneer of legitimacy from established Jewish
leaders like Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman.
"Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are
irrational," he remarked to the New York Times. Comparing the bereaved
family members of 9-11 victims to Holocaust survivors, Foxman
insisted, "Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would
categorize as irrational or bigoted."

Soon enough, David Harris, director of the (Chernick-funded) American
Jewish Committee, was demanding that Cordoba's leaders be compelled to
reveal their "true attitudes" about Palestinian militant groups before
construction on the center was initiated. Rabbi Marvin Hier of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles, another major Jewish group,
insisted it would be "insensitive" for Cordoba to build near "a
cemetery," though his organization had recently been granted
permission from the municipality of Jerusalem to build a "museum of
tolerance" to be called The Center for Human Dignity directly on top
of the Mamilla Cemetery, a Muslim graveyard that contained thousands
of gravesites dating back 1,200 years.

Inspiration from Israel

It was evident from the involvement of figures like Gravers that the
Islamophobic network in the United States represented a trans-Atlantic
expansion of simmering resentment in Europe. There, the far-right was
storming to victories in parliamentary elections across the continent
in part by appealing to the simmering anti-Muslim sentiments of voters
in rural and working-class communities. The extent of the
collaboration between European and American Islamophobes has only
continued to grow with Geller, Spencer, and even Gingrich standing
beside Europe's most prominent anti-Muslim figure, Dutch
parliamentarian Geert Wilders, at a rally against Cordoba House. In
the meantime, Geller was issuing statements of support for the English
Defense League, a band of unreconstructed neo-Nazis and former members
of the whites-only British National Party who intimidate Muslims in
the streets of cities like Birmingham and London.

In addition, the trans-Atlantic Islamophobic crusade has stretched
into Israel, a country that has come to symbolize the network's fight
against the Muslim menace. As Geller told the New York Times' Alan
Feuer, Israel is "a very good guide because, like I said, in the war
between the civilized man and the savage, you side with the civilized
man."

EDL members regularly wave Israeli flags at their rallies, while
Wilders claims to have formed his views about Muslims during the time
he worked on an Israeli cooperative farm in the 1980s. He has, he
says, visited the country more than 40 times since to meet with
rightist political allies like Aryeh Eldad, a member of the Israeli
Knesset and leader of the far right Hatikvah faction of the National
Union Party. He has called for forcibly "transferring" the
Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied West Bank to Jordan and
Egypt. On December 5th, for example, Wilders traveled to Israel for a
"friendly" meeting with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, then
declared at a press conference that Israel should annex the West Bank
and set up a Palestinian state in Jordan.

In the apocalyptic clash of civilizations the global anti-Muslim
network has sought to incite, tiny armed Jewish settlements like
Yitzar, located on the hills above the occupied Palestinian city of
Nablus, represent front-line fortresses. Inside Yitzar's state-funded
yeshiva, a rabbi named Yitzhak Shapira has instructed students in what
rules must be applied when considering killing non-Jews. Shapira
summarized his opinions in a widely publicized book, Torat HaMelech,
or The King's Torah. Claiming that non-Jews are "uncompassionate by
nature," Shapira cited rabbinical texts to declare that gentiles could
be killed in order to "curb their evil inclinations." "There is
justification," the rabbi proclaimed, "for killing babies if it is
clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they
may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults."

In 2006, the rabbi was briefly held by Israeli police for urging his
supporters to murder all Palestinians over the age of 13. Two years
later, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he signed a
rabbinical letter in support of Israeli Jews who had brutally
assaulted two Arab youths on the country's Holocaust Remembrance Day.
That same year, Shapira was arrested as a suspect in helping
orchestrate a rocket attack against a Palestinian village near Nablus.

Though he was not charged, his name came up again in connection with
another act of terror when, in January 2010, the Israeli police raided
his settlement seeking vandals who had set fire to a nearby mosque.
One of Shapira's followers, an American immigrant, Jack Teitel, has
confessed to murdering two innocent Palestinians and attempting to the
kill the liberal Israeli historian Ze'ev Sternhell with a mail bomb.

What does all this have to do with Islamophobic campaigns in the
United States? A great deal, actually. Through New York-based tax-
exempt non-profits like the Central Fund of Israel and Ateret Cohenim,
for instance, the omnipresent Aubrey Chernick has sent tens of
thousands of dollars to support the Yitzar settlement, as well as to
the messianic settlers dedicated to "Judaizing" East Jerusalem. The
settlement movement's leading online news magazine, Arutz Sheva, has
featured Geller as a columnist. A friend of Geller's, Beth Gilinsky,
a right-wing activist with a group called the Coalition to Honor
Ground Zero and the founder of the Jewish Action Alliance (apparently
run out of a Manhattan real estate office), organized a large rally in
New York City in April 2010 to protest the Obama administration's call
for a settlement freeze.

Among Chernick's major funding recipients is a supposedly "apolitical"
group called Aish Hatorah that claims to educate Jews about their
heritage. Based in New York and active in the fever swamps of northern
West Bank settlements near Yitzar, Aish Hatorah shares an address and
staff with a shadowy foreign non-profit called the Clarion Fund.
During the 2008 U.S. election campaign, the Clarion Fund distributed
28 million DVDs of a propaganda film called Obsession as newspaper
inserts to residents of swing states around the country.

The film featured a who's who of anti-Muslim activists, including
Walid Shoebat, a self-proclaimed "former PLO terrorist." Among
Shoebat's more striking statements: "A secular dogma like Nazism is
less dangerous than is Islamofascism today." At a Christian gathering
in 2007, this "former Islamic terrorist" told the crowd that Islam was
a "satanic cult" and that he had been born again as an evangelical
Christian. In 2008, however, the Jerusalem Post, a right-leaning
newspaper, exposed him as a fraud, whose claims to terrorism were
fictional.

Islamophobic groups registered only a minimal impact during the 2008
election campaign. Two years later, however, after the Republicans
regained control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections,
the network appears to have reached critical mass. Of course, the
deciding factor in the election was the economy, and in two years,
Americans will likely vote their pocketbooks again. But that the
construction of a single Islamic community center or the imaginary
threat of Sharia law were issues at all reflected the influence of a
small band of locally oriented activists, and suggested that when a
certain presidential candidate who has already been demonized as a
crypto-Muslim runs for reelection, the country's most vocal
Islamophobes could once again find a national platform amid the
frenzied atmosphere of the campaign.

By now, the Islamophobic crusade has gone beyond the right-wing pro-
Israel activists, cyber-bigots, and ambitious hucksters who conceived
it. It now belongs to leading Republican presidential candidates, top-
rated cable news hosts, and crowds of Tea Party activists. As the
fervor spreads, the crusaders are basking in the glory of what they
accomplished. "I didn't choose this moment," Geller mused to the New
York Times, "this moment chose me."

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared
in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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Introducing sharia into America under the guise of religious freedom




New post on Creeping Sharia

Introducing sharia into America under the guise of religious freedom

by creeping

via politicalislam.com Political Sharia Islam is introducing Sharia into America under the guise of religious freedom. We are told that Sharia is religious law and, therefore, we should not worry about it. This is, at best, a half-truth. To understand the Sharia, you MUST understand that it is completely based on the Koran and the [...]

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