The Politico Friends of the Florida Professor of Jihad

While American campuses are crawling with pro-terror professors, none is as deeply involved in actual perpetration of terrorism as "Professor" Sami al-Arian. Now it turns out that the Professor of Jihad had been awfully cozy with certain politicians in very high places.

Claiming to be a Palestinian born in Kuwait, al-Arian had been a tenured prof of engineering at the University of South Florida when he came to the attention of the FBI for his role in the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization, responsible for many mass murders and suicide bombings of Israeli civilians. The Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating Al-Arian's connections to Islamofascist terror groups in the early 1990s, including via wiretaps. It gathered information on Al-Arian and two other professors from USF. In some of the intercepted conversations, Al-Arian allegedly praised suicide bombings, kidnappings and drive-by shootings. “I call upon you to try to extend true support to the jihad effort in Palestine so that operations such as these can continue,” he wrote in one fund-raising appeal after a suicide bombing that killed 22 Israelis in 1995.

Al-Arian appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on September 26, shortly after the September 11th attacks. Bill O'Reilly reported charges from fifteen years earlier that alleged Al-Arian had used a university-affiliated Islamic "think tank" that he headed as a front for Palestinian terrorist organizations. On February 20, 2003, the FBI arrested Al-Arian after indicting him and seven others on 50 terrorism-related charges. The University of South Florida finally got around to sacking al-Arian after he was indicted for terrorism, a fine example of doing too little too late. Several politicians who had been involved in the coddling of al-Arian have paid a political price for their stupidity.

Attorney General Ashcroft alleged at a press conference that Al-Arian was the North American head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Al-Arian also co-founded the Islamic Association for Palestine, which funnels funds to terror organizations. Naturally - this all made him the hero du jour of the academic Moonbatocracy for whom academic freedom includes the right to organize and fund genocidal terrorism. The NY Times decided to honor the 9-11 victims of New York by showing its support for the Florida professor of terrorism. Al-Arian's trial is slated to begin in Tampa, Florida, in early June.

Now it seems that al-Arian had some contacts with some friends in some very high offices. Newsweek just reported that al-Arian's lawyer, William Moffit, will introduce evidence that his client attended numerous meetings at the White House and met with high-level figures in both political parties, including Hillary Clinton and White House political director Karl Rove. Moffit states that Al-Arian attended meetings at the White House with both Clinton and Bush every year between 1998 and 2001, attended a briefing at the Justice Department in July 2001, met with Al Gore in November 1998 and Hillary Clinton in October 1999.

Al-Arian did in fact have his photograph taken with President Bush when he was campaigning in Florida in March 2000 and later was among 150 Muslim-American activists invited to the White House to attend an “outreach” briefing that was given by Rove. Perhaps the White House might learn a lesson from all this about the payoff from pretending that Islamist fascists are moderate and pro-West.

Muslim Anti-Terror Group Holds D.C. Rally

The Free Muslims coalition, an anti-terrorism group headed by Kamal Nawash, an American of Palestinian descent, will be holding a rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C. today.

Titled the "March Against Terror," the rally will feature over 80 groups, many of them Middle Eastern, participating in what Nawash describes as a, "rally against terrorism and to support freedom and democracy in the Middle East and the Muslim world." Nawash also describes the rally as the "front line" in an ideological war against radical Islamic teachings.

While Nawash highlights the fact that the rally will be headed by Middle Easterners, he is urging people of all stripes to participate in the event. Nawash hopes that a good turnout will send a message to radical Muslims and supporters of terrorism that mainstream Muslims reject them and will reclaim Islam from them.

In a recent interview in the Washington Times, Nawash drew a line in the sand between radical and moderate Islam, saying,

"Most people talk about a clash of civilizations, between Islam and the West. This is totally wrong. The battle today is between modernist Muslims who live in the 21st century, who believe in secularism, democracy and women's rights, and those who want to live in the 14th century, the traditionalists."

I flew into D.C. this morning to report on the rally and am on-site now. I will try to post updates later today as the event progresses.

British Academic Jihad Collapsing?

The British anti-Jewish lobby of pseudo-academics inside the Association of University Teachers may be about to suffer a major setback. There are reports on Israel radio and elsewhere in the media that the AUT is about to reverse itself and cancel the boycott of two Israeli universities that the AUT's Hamas wing had managed to push through a few weeks back. We look forward to seeing these jihadniks goosestepping away with their tails between their legs.

In recent days the faculties of Oxford, Warwick and Sussex universities faculty rejected the boycott of Haifa and Bar Ilan universities, which had been called for by Britain's Association of University Teachers. The New York Academy of Sciences denounced the AUT and said that its resolution, "by selecting individuals and universities for boycott, is a very clear reminder of 'McCarthy-like' tactics of accusation... We call upon the AUT to take immediate steps to rescind their regressive vote and join forward-looking academics the world over in voting for cooperation and not boycott."

Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi, a world class researcher at the Middle East Center at St. Anthony's College at Oxford University, has written to AUT general-secretary requesting to be included in the boycott's proposed blacklist. "Oaths of political loyalty do not belong to academia. They belong to illiberal minds and repressive regimes," wrote Ottolenghi. One of the Israeli universities involved is threatening to file suit against the British AUT. British intellectuals are increasingly willing to denounce the boycott campaign as anti-Semitic. The notoriously anti-Israel School of Oriental and African Studies in London, which has been a major player in th eBash-the-Jews movement in Britain, may soon be facing legal penalties for its anti-Semitism.

Three Cheers for Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) delivered a speech on the floor of the U.S. Congressthis week. She is one of two sponsors , together with Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), of the Lebanon and Syria Liberation Act (LASLA).

This is the first time that the US Congress actually heard individual violators inside Syria named, people involved in abuses of human rights there. Even more significant and highly unusual is the fact that the tightly controlled Syrian press is reporting the bill. It was carried by Al-Seyassah, al-Khaleej as well as Elaph on their front pages. Other dailies of the Arab world refused to carry the story.

The Syrian Human Rights Committee has documented many individual killings, tortures, and illegal and unjust imprisonment of ordinary citizens by several hundred Syrian intelligence and military personnel that will be used to bring them to justice. They have carried out massacres of Syrian civilians in Hama and Tadmur as well as the simple torturing of people in prisons.

In her speech, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen said, among other things:

"Syria is an oppressor state in every sense. It brutally stifles its political dissidents and minority groups. It denies its ordinary citizens freedom of religion, conscience, and belief. It seeks to silence its people by preventing them from exercising their right to free speech. It discriminates against women, condoning violence and sexual assault against them. The police continue to detain people arbitrarily, placing them in prisons and torturing them using methods that seem to herald a return to the Middle Ages—stretching prisoners on racks, or fracturing their spines on wheels. Since 1963, Syria has ruled under emergency law, using the hollow excuse of Israel being a threat to suppress freedom, diversity of opinion, and equality between religions and between sexes. About 600 Lebanese detainees have been languishing in Syrian jails since 1989."

Meanwhile, An-Nahar, a Lebanese newspaper, reports this morning, in an article written by their senior correspondent in Washington Hicham Milhem, that the Syrian Embassy in the US has hired New Bridge Strategies, a consulting and lobbying firm in Texas. They were hired to influence the White House and the President. Joe Albaugh, a close friend of the President, is to handle this task on behalf of New Bridge Strategies and on behalf of the Assad family. The paper reports that Albaugh was approached by Jamal Daniel, a Syrian born American businessmen involved in Crest Investment and on the board of New Bridge Strategies.

We figure Syria Solidarity Days and "Take a Baathist to Lunch Week" should be common on US campuses shortly.

France Bribed by Hussein?

Speaking of the "War for Oil," Fox News is reporting the existence of memos suggesting that Saddam Hussein bribed France into vetoing the use of military force against Iraq. Fox News' Eric Shawn reports that:

"The House Energy and Commerce Committee will reveal that the Iraqi intelligence service tried to target French politicians, including the possibility of supporting a French presidential candidate so they would support Saddam and end sanctions.

"Memos show the Iraqis were promised by the spokesman for Chirac's campaign that France would veto any American decision regarding an attack on Iraq."

In other words, the memos suggest that France sold its U.N. Security Council vote to Hussein.

Gorgeous George Galloway and The Real "War for Oil"

Could it be the protesters were right about the “war for oil” in Iraq—just wrong about which side was fighting for the oil? If Iraqi Oil Ministry documents uncovered during the 2003 liberation of Baghdad are correct, the upcoming congressional hearing of Oil for Food payoff charges against British MP “Gorgeous” George Galloway and former French Interior Minister Charles Pascua are only the beginning.

According to these documents liberated from the Iraqi Oil Ministry in 2003 and posted on the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) website, Saddam’s Oil-for-Food payoffs enriched journalists, political parties and sitting government and UN officials across the globe. These formed a bought-and-paid-for fifth column of pro-Saddam agents at the heart of the anti-Iraqi liberation movement (sometimes incorrectly referred to as the anti-war movement).

According to MEMRI’s documents, Galloway as beneficiary is cited six times, twice in the name of Finnish and French companies and the rest Jordanian under the name of Fawwaz Zureiqat. According to MEMRI’s documents, “All these requests were approved by the minister of oil, with his signature." When asked by ABC News about being on the list, Galloway replied: "Not one brass farthing. I've never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one." (Note the non-denial: Gorgeous George is technically correct, he owned the RIGHT to purchase Iraqi oil—not the oil itself. He collected his payoff by selling those rights at a price equal to the difference between the market price and the Iraqi guaranteed sale price. This might explain how an MP from an impoverished constituency can afford a "Gorgeous" oceanfront villa in Portugal.)

According to MEMRI, Pasqua, (12 million barrels) denied any involvement and suggested another, unnamed former French interior minister may have been the beneficiary. According to The New York Post Mr. Pasqua, "a close friend and former colleague of Chirac…fought to allow visits by top Iraqi officials to France in 1993."

Also included on the MEMRI list are US residents already under indictment:

--“Shaker Al-Khaffaji (7 million barrels) (who) advanced $400,000 to Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. For $400,000 Ritter produced a documentary purporting to tell the true story of the weapons inspections, which consisted mostly of Ritter talking to the camcorder. (See Ritter’s mug shot on unrelated Albany, NY child sex charges below)

--Samir Vincent (10.5 million barrels): In 2000, Vincent, an Iraqi-born American who lived in the U.S. since 1958, organized a delegation of Iraqi religious leaders to the U.S., which met with former president Jimmy Carter. (Vincent now faces federal charges.)

Also included are many foreign leaders:

--Jean-Bernard Merimee, (3 million and another 8 million barrels) was the French Ambassador to the United Nations and France's representative in the Security Council.
--Father Benjamin (4.5 million barrels) is a French Catholic priest who arranged a meeting between the Pope and Tariq Aziz, Iraq's former deputy prime minister.

Among the 51 Russian recipients are:
--The Russian State, the single largest recipient, 1.366 billion barrels.
-- 86.9 million barrels for the office of the president
--Chief of the President’s Bureau, 5 million
--The Russian Orthodox Church, 5 billion

Sons and daughters of foreign government and UN officials appear several times on the list. They include:
--Romain son of former Russian ambassador to Baghdad, 19.7 million
--“Daughter of President Sukarno (of Indonesia) 2 million
--Emil Emil Lahoud (4.5 million barrels) a Lebanese MP and the son of Lebanese President Emil Lahoud.
--Khaled Abd Al-Nasser, the son of the late Egyptian president Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, (16.5 million barrels

--Not named on the MEMRI list is Kojo Annan, son of UN General Secretary Kofi Annan who, The London Sunday Times says "admitted he was involved in negotiations to sell millions of barrels of Iraqi oil under the auspices of Saddam Hussein." Annan’s alleged co-conspirators also do not appear on MEMRI’s list, raising the possibility that there are far more players than currently known.

And finally, one denial appearing on MEMRI’s website which has since been blown out of the water:

--Mr. [Benon] Sevan (11.5 million barrels) who is the Executive Director of the Oil for Food program.

The real "war for oil" is the propaganda war waged against our troops in the pages on the mainstream media and in the halls of the UN by people like Galloway, Pascua and their "comrades".

Meanwhile John Bolton is derided by Senate Democrats as being too rude to work with these “refined” diplomats.

MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis Series, number 164 detailing 264 individuals found in the Oil Ministry documents can be seen at http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA16404

Link to Scott Ritter’s mug shot and a pathetic warblogging.com effort to play it off. (If head chopping terrorists are “freedom fighters” could child molesters be far behind?) http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000457.php

Censorship at University of Hawai`i - Hilo

The entire May 4 press run of the UH Hilo student newspaper Ke Kalahea has been yanked off the newsstands because of a front page article accurately describing the efforts of the UHH's very own homegrown moonbats to block the nomination of an Iraq veteran as student member of the UH Board of Regents.

Their only defense is to block publication of the truth.

Here is a link to the entire article:
http://50thstar.blogspot.com/

New WTC: Trump Says Build It Right, Build It High

Thank God for Donald Trump. Only minutes ago, Trump uttered aloud on Sean Hannity's radio show what many New Yorkers have long been grumbling in private. He said that the design currently approved for the new World Trade Center complex looks like a "junkyard" and was designed by an "egghead" who knows nothing about building.

The currently approved "Freedom Tower" design by Daniel Libeskind and David Childs features a cluster of squat, assymmetrical structures, none of which rises as high as the fallen Twin Towers (except for a "symbolic" steel tower which would be a mere skeleton and not a real building).

Trump wants to build a very different sort of complex, featuring a rebuilt World Trade Center which will not only be stronger than the old one, but slightly taller — say, by a single storey — just to make a point; they can knock it down, but we will always rebuild it bigger and better.

Trump's proposal is timely. Earlier this month, the NYPD demanded design changes in the "Freedom Tower" for security reasons. Instead of fine-tuning this architectural atrocity, perhaps now would be a good time to trash it altogether.

Trump needs the approval of Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to proceed with his plan.

Hit and Run

There are over 4,000 murder warrants out, just in the border states, for people who've committed murder and fled to Mexico. You wonder how many more people have to die...

This is an interesting note from an organization called Team America.

NEW STAR WARS FLICKAnti-Bush Innuendos Abound

This just in from Craig Winneker at TechCentral Station:

"I just saw a press screening of the new Star Wars movie, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It's superb… However… disturbingly — and rather awkwardly — evident [is] a recurring anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war message. Forget about the merits of the argument in question. This stuff has no place in a Star Wars flick.
 
"The dialogue in ROTS is rife with distinctly unsubtle references to the current political situation. `This war represents a failure to listen,' Padme laments at one point, before declaring after a vote to give executive power to Chancellor Palpatine: `So this is how liberty dies — to thunderous applause.' The wicked Chancellor, played brilliantly by Ian McDiarmid, talks on and on about `security,' giving it an evilly sibilant S, and about `peace.' As he lures Anakin over to the dark side, telling him what to say in Jedi Council meetings, you wonder if he's supposed to be Karl Rove. He does, after all, appear to be the smartest man in the movie.
 
"The ultimate reference comes in the climactic duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi on the planet of Mustafar, which seems to have long ago failed in its struggle against global warming. `If you're not with me, you're my enemy,' Anakin shouts to Obi-Wan, who responds: `Only a Sith lord deals in absolutes.' Yes, and so, it would seem, do neo-cons." (via FreeRepublic)

Now let me get me this straight. Obi-Wan Kenobi — the Jedi knight who harangued us through every episode of Star Wars since 1977 to shun the Dark Side — has suddenly become a moral relativist? Why then does he resort to sword play in his tiff with Anakin? Why doesn't he… listen? Try to see things from Anakin's perspective?

Damn it, I'll probably go see this movie anyway. I can't resist a new Star Wars installment (see "The New York Times Embraces the Dark Side," May 31, 2002).

But, for the record, I would like George Lucas and all the good folks at Lucasfilm Ltd. to know that they have placed a serious burr under my saddle.

Hawai`i Democrats take word of UH's Little Ward Churchills over Iraq War Veteran

By Andrew Walden

Hawai`i State Senate Democrats used what UH Hilo student leaders are calling fraudulently obtained testimony as an excuse to vote down Iraq veteran Dylan Nonaka’s nomination as student representative to the University of Hawai`i Board of Regents (BOR) in an April 29 Senate session. In earlier hearings in front of the Senate Committee on Higher Education, the committee’s lone Republican, Gordon Trimble, who voted to support Nonaka, pointed out that the majority of 200 “written testimonies” against Nonaka were mimeographed statements faxed from a single phone number in an UH Hilo academic office. Nonaka pointed out to the committee that some opposing “testimony” was obtained by telling students in cafeteria lines, “if you oppose tuition increases, sign this.” The signers, some of whom were supporters of Nonaka, were never told they were signing “testimony” opposing his nomination. UH Hilo student government leaders say they have as many as ten students who have sent statements to the Senate withdrawing “testimony” they had been tricked into signing.

The UH Hilo Global Hope Club, whose members obtained the questionable testimony against Nonaka, has a questionable record of its own. They have argued that Israelis attacked the World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon on 9-11. They have claimed the CIA did it. On April 14 the hosted a UH Hilo campus showing of 911 in Plane Sight -- which they said provides “irrefutable evidence” that the US Air Force attacked the WTC and Pentagon on 9-11. Which ever story they are telling, much of this material comes not from leftists, but from right wing extremists and anti-Semites.

According to several of her students, Global Hope Club Faculty Advisor, Hawai`i Community College Sociology Professor, Noelie Rodriguez, has been requiring them to attend anti-tuition increase rallies at various locations around Hilo—for a grade. Global Hope’s two UH Hilo student senators, Justin Avery and Randy Rambo, have plastered the UH Hilo campus with leaflets calling for the ouster of UHH Student Association faculty advisor Dr. Alton Okinaka. Just as they claimed that Nonaka supports tuition increases and is therefore unacceptable, they also argue Okinaka’s position as Chair of Hawai`i Governor Lingle’s (R) East Hawai`i Advisory Council somehow connects him to the BOR’s proposed tuition increases. This, they claim, makes Okinaka “unacceptable” as faculty advisor.

In contrast, Global Hope does not consider its own association with the claim that the US Air Force attacked the United States on 9-11-01 to place them outside the bounds of political “acceptability”.

Link to more coverage on Nonaka: http://www.hawaiireporter.com/ (search Nonaka)
Global Hope’s website: http://globalhope.blogspot.com/
Link to Global Hope’s favorite 911 movie: http://www.911inplanesite.com/
Link to anti-Semitic article previously posted on Global Hope’s website: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/govknow

REMEMBERING RUSSIAGATENever Have So Few Stolen So Much From So Many

Now that President Bush has returned from his tour of the former Soviet states, those Americans who still remember how our last president used to deal with Russian affairs are breathing a sigh of relief that grownups have once more taken charge of our foreign policy.

When the Clintons took office, they inherited the awesome, historic task of rebuilding and redefining America's relationship with the fallen Soviet empire. Instead of rising to the challenge, they presided over the systematic rape of the former Soviet economy. The financial catastrophe they helped foster came to be known as Russiagate.

Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, we might say of the Russiagate scandal that never before have so few stolen so much from so many in so short a time.


Soros and the Oligarchs

Under the close supervision of Clinton-appointed U.S. advisors — among whom leftwing billionaire George Soros wielded tremendous influence — a handful of Russian oligarchs hijacked the Russian privatization program, acquiring the crown jewels of the Soviet economy in rigged "auctions," at firesale prices.

Between 1992 and 1996, fully 57 percent of Russia's state-owned firms were sold for a mere $3-$5 billion, according to political scientist Peter Reddaway, a leading expert on the post-Soviet system and co-author of The Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy.

Some of that property ended up in Mr. Soros' personal investment portfolio, as he later admitted in Congressional testimony. Much more ended up in the hands of corrupt Russian oligarchs, many with roots in organized crime.


Russiagate: "One of the greatest social robberies in human history"

By 1999, the Clintons' media allies could no longer conceal the fact that tens of billions of dollars in illicit funds were being laundered out of Russia with the assistance of pliant Western banks such as the Bank of New York.

Following a preliminary investigation, House Banking Committee chairman Jim Leach (R-Iowa) declared on September 1, 1999 that he was "very confident" that at least $100 billion had been laundered out of Russia, an unknown portion of which may have been diverted from the International Monetary Fund and from other foreign aid lenders — which is to say, from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers.

Congressman Leach declared the scandal to be "one of the greatest social robberies in human history." Nevertheless, it was swept under the carpet.


Washington Post: "The Russian debacle may haunt us for generations."

Washington Post reporter David Ignatius gave the scandal its name. In an August 25, 1999 article titled, "Who Robbed Russia?", Ignatius wrote:

"That issue — what the heck, let's call it `Russiagate' — has come into sharper focus this month, thanks to some powerful reporting that has highlighted the lawlessness of modern Russia and the acquiescence of the Clinton administration in the process of decline and decay there. …

[B]y allowing the oligarchs — in the name of the free market — to grab Russia's resources and siphon anything of value into their own offshore bank accounts, the United States poisoned Russia's transition from communism. In the minds of ordinary Russians… capitalism became equated with theft. …

What makes the Russian case so sad is that the Clinton administration may have squandered one of the most precious assets imaginable — which is the idealism and goodwill of the Russian people as they emerged from 70 years of Communist rule. The Russia debacle may haunt us for generations."

Let us hope that George W. Bush can begin the long process of repair, and restore to U.S.-Russian relations the spirit of trust, respect and high aspiration which ought to have driven them for the last thirteen years.

WHITE HOUSE AND CAPITOL EVACUATEDF-16s Fire Warning Shots at Unidentified Aircraft

Rush Limbaugh has just announced that Secret Service agents brandishing weapons have evacuated the White House with shouted orders to "run!" The Capitol too has been evacuated. F-16s have fired warning shots at an unidentified single-engine plane flying over Washington, DC. For further breaking news, see this thread at FreeRepublic.com.

UPDATE 12:21 PM: Secret Service declares all clear. A single-engine plane is under escort by two F-16s.

UPDATE 03:58 PM: News reports are beginning to flesh out the details of today's alert.

The Associated Press notes that "two Black Hawk helicopters were dispatched at 11:55 am, from Reagan National Airport," in order to intercept the two-seat, single-engine Cessna 150 aircraft which entered restricted airspace over Washington at 11:28 am.

A timeline of the incident released by White House press secretary Scott McClellan states that fighter jets were scrambled at noon, that the Cessna was flying straight toward the White House, "the pilot was not responding to efforts to communicate with the plane," and that the threat level was raised to red when the plane was three miles from the White House.

According to AP, "The plane was also approached by two F-16 fighter aircraft, scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base. They fired four warning flares. The military aircraft escorted the plane to the Frederick Municipal Airport in Frederick, Md." (via googlenews)

Two men, a student pilot and instructor, are under arrest.

Arkansas Nazis in Boston

This past Thursday was Holocaust Remembrance Day and in Boston a group of Arkansas-based neo-nazis showed up to bait Jews and endorse Hitler. About 20 members of White Revolution, an Arkansas-based supremacist group, held signs that read "Free Ham Sandwiches" and "Six Million Lies" during the incident in Boston.

It is not yet clear whether the Arkansas nazis will be offered jobs at DePaul University or Baylor University.

Besides, we are pretty sure the Arkansas gang has nothing against Jews as such; it is only Zionism they dislike.

British MP Bashes U.S. on Arab TV

Video has recently surfaced of British Member of Parliament George Galloway, arguably the Crown Prince of World Moonbatism, trashing the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq on Arab TV. Galloway recently told Abu Dhabi TV:

"The people who invaded and destroyed Iraq and have murdered more than a million Iraqi people by sanctions and war will burn in Hell in the hell-fires, and their name in history will be branded as killers and war criminals for all time. Fallujah is a Guernica, Falluaja is a Stalingrad, and Iraq is in flames as a result of the actions of these criminals. Not the resistance, not anybody else but these criminals who invaded and fell like wolves upon the people of Iraq. And by the way, those Arab regimes which helped them to do it will burn in the same hell-fires." (hat tip LGF)

Galloway is a highly controversial figure in Britain. An active supporter of Saddam Hussein's regime and an outspoken critic of the effort that deposed him, Galloway has been accused on numerous occasions of profiting from the now-fallen regime and has also been linked to the Oil-for-Food scandal.

He is a strong supporter of Palestinian causes and a harsh critic of Israel. He also laments the fall of the Soviet Union, having once told a Guardian reporter that, "I am on the anti-imperialist left." The Stalinist left? "I wouldn't define it that way because of the pejoratives loaded around it; that would be making a rod for your own back. If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe."

In Parliament, Galloway represents east London's heavily Muslim Bethnal Green & Bow area.

Galloway's anti-war stance and persistent pandering to Muslims has apparently backfired, since radical Muslims recently threatened him, accused him of being a "false prophet," said that they were "setting up the gallows for him" and warning voters that anyone who voted for him in the future faced a "sentence of death."

Korans in the Toilet — Probe Underway

The Pentagon is investigating allegations that prison guards at Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention camp sometimes left copies of the Koran in restrooms to annoy and insult prisoners. Newsweek recently reported as much and now the Pakistani Foreign Ministry is demanding an apology from the U.S. over the alleged incidents.

Acting State Department spokesman Tom Casey comments:

"[T]he allegations out there are certainly serious and it would be important to have them be looked into. Obviously, the destruction of any kind of holy book, whether it's a Bible or a Koran or any other document like that, is something that's reprehensible and not in keeping with US policies and practices."

Of course I agree with the great importance of promptly addressing these highly disturbing allegations, since it would be a profound injustice if those intent on killing as many Americans as possible were ever either insulted or annoyed by the Americans who guard them.

Know Thy Enemy: Koji Ariyoshi

PBS Hawai`i’s propaganda piece on the life of Hawai`i communist Koji Ariyoshi should be required viewing for lovers of freedom who understand the value of knowing their enemy. Somehow the program manages to tell the story of Hawai'i's most prominent Communist without once letting on that Ariyoshi was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, USA.

Shown on May 5, “Biography Hawaii: Koji Ariyoshi” traces the life of the man best known as the publisher of the Honolulu Record 1948-58. The son of Kona coffee growers becomes a UH Manoa student working his way through college as a stevedore (the only time he ever worked for wages) who was then granted a scholarship to the University of Georgia where he learned the usefulness of showing “concern” for the plight of white sharecroppers (and blacks?) under the Democrats’ Jim Crow laws.


Gramscian Culture Warrior

Since Ariyoshi is largely responsible for the establishment of the so-called Ethnic Studies departments at UH Manoa in the 1970s (slogan: Our History Our Way), the PBS Biography traces the unbroken ideological chain from China to the International Longshoreman’s and Warehouseman’s Union (ILWU) to the Gramscian communists controlling not only UH Manoa ethnic studies but most other liberal arts departments as well. It should leave no doubt about the true nature of the little Ward Churchills who have taken over the campus and tried to replicate the one-party political system of their dictatorial idols.

In one scene, the narrator, portraying Ariyoshi, intones: “The purpose of ethnic studies is not to justify contemporary grievances, but to learn from the past and gain confidence in building a better future.”

Try telling that to the hacks running UH Manoa's ethnic studies departments today. Ariyoshi’s is the classic Stalinist line which demands that any “national” struggle be secondary to the “international struggle of the proletariat” (i.e. the need of the Stalinist/Maoist bureaucracy to maintain dictatorial “order” over the many disparate nationalities in the USSR or in China.)


Hawaiian "Sovereignty"

Tellingly, the roving lens scans headlines from the Honolulu Record including one, “The Only Revolution in Hawaii” about the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. The voice-over says Ariyoshi even wrote about Hawaiian sovereignty. But if Ariyoshi was being true to Stalinist dogma, the article would have argued that the overthrow was a progressive act supplanting feudalism with capitalism. It is worth asking whether the producers consciously lied about Ariyoshi’s writings in order to make them line up with the cultural nationalist ideology of today’s ethnic studies hacks. Thanks to them, Hawai`i is the only state in the US with an independence movement. It is based entirely on the argument that the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Queen was carried out by the United States rather than the individual rebels who formed the Hawaiian Republic until it was annexed in 1898.

While at the University of Georgia, Ariyoshi lives with the parents of Tobacco Road author Erskine Caldwell who informs Ariyoshi that Tobacco Road is about those who have been marginalized by the physical sciences outstripping the social sciences. Even in the 1930s, Luddism and the social "sciences" are the foundation of anti-capitalism.


Friend of Mao

As an internee in Democrat Franklin Roosevelt’s Manzanar camp after Pearl Harbor, Ariyoshi dutifully carried out the Communist Party line of supporting the war effort (established after Hitler attacked the USSR), enlisting in the US Army and being sent to China as a linguist and intelligence officer where he worked hand-in-glove with Mao Zedong, meeting Mao on many occasions.

Returning from China after the war, Ariyoshi continued to work for Mao under the rules of engagement which applied in late 1940s America. He joined the “Committee for a Democratic Far-East Policy” in New York which opposed US efforts to keep Korea free and called for US support of communist China. He then returned to Honolulu and founded the Honolulu Record, Hawai`i’s own version of the Daily Worker, by selling shares to every ILWU local in the islands.


Confronting McCarthyism

The activities of Ariyoshi and other communists eventually ran afoul of the McCarthy-era backlash. Efforts were made to charge them with advocating the overthrow of the US government by force and violence. In the famous Smith Act case of the “Hawai`i Seven,” Ariyoshi and his six comrades were first found guilty but the conviction was later overturned. In all, Ariyoshi spent less than a month in jail.

Fortunately, public opinion turned sharply against Ariyoshi and other communists. He was eventually forced to close the ILWU-owned Honolulu Record due to lack of support by union leaders who recognized that the “heavy left wing slant” of the Record was endangering their grip on union office and funds.

The “brutal fascist forces” of the “vicious American imperialists” closed in on him. Ariyoshi was forced to become (gasp) a florist. For the first time in years, he was not being paid to be a political activist.


A Misspent Life

Meanwhile in China, tens of millions were starving under Mao’s “Great Leap Forward’ as the Communists who advocated “land to the tiller” instead decided to give all land to the state. There is no evidence of Ariyoshi showing the least concern for them.

In North Korea, Kim Il Jung began the ruination of the country under the guise of socialist progress. North Koreans now starve to death while the South Korea Ariyoshi fought so hard to destroy is a prosperous, advanced nation with the world’s 13th largest economy.

In 1976, as Ariyoshi lay dying of cancer, the Democrat-controlled Hawaii State legislature passed a resolution in his honor. He would be pleased that Chinese and North Korean communists have maintained so many poor downtrodden people for bureaucrats to be “concerned” with. His friends in the Democrat party are pleased they have been able to maintain so many poor and downtrodden people in Hawai`i to be "concerned" with as well.

Canada Importing Jihadniks

Canada is already crawling with Islamists. But they keep importing more.

"[A] number of other Islamic extremists have recently returned to Canada from abroad...," says Canada's Integrated National Security Assessment Centre (INSAC). "Those dedicated extremists possessing terrorist training and Canadian documentation may return to Canada in order to carry out an attack. They may also use their documentation to gain access to Western diplomatic missions, or other interests, for the purpose of terrorist attack." (via National Post).

The fear of terrorist attacks in Canada arises from the presence in that country of certain known Islamofascists who have undergone terrorist training in the Middle East and elsewhere. Fateh Kamel, a former leader of a Canadian extremist cell in Montreal, returned to Canada in January after serving a prison term in France for terrorist-related crimes. Other Canadians are thought to have ties to al-Qaeda, including members of the Khadr family, who lived in one of bin Laden's compounds in Afghanistan.

Now do you realize what all this means? It means that all those whiny leftists who left the US for Canada after the re-election of President Bush are now in imminent danger from Islamofascist terrorists in their land of refuge. Lefties hiding in Canada could be blown to smithereens by terrorists while sipping their lattés and eating their tofu and alfalfa soup!

We suggest that they rush home where the police and the Marines can protect them.

Artist Botero Portrays Abu Ghraib

Prominent Columbian artist Fernando Botero recently unveiled a series of paintings depicting the abuse of terrorist detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. "I, like everyone else, was shocked by the barbarity, especially because the United States is supposed to be this model of compassion," said Botero while explaining why he chose to paint the prison scenes. Botero is known for usually painting still lifes and peaceful scenes featuring highly stylized heavy-set people.

The Abu Ghraib paintings, which grossly exaggerate the treatment of terrorist detainees by U.S. military personnel, are being hailed as masterpieces and compared to Picasso's Guernica by leftist moonbats world-wide.

“`Abu Ghraib,' the numbered 1-50 paintings, will always be about Bush, and not the proverbial `few bad apples' serving as scapegoats," crows Ben Tanasborn in the anti-U.S. Middle East Online.

"We're fortunate to have men like Botero to shine a light on the real machinery of Bush's terror-apparatus. Already, 100,000 Iraqis have died in a gratuitous act of aggression, entire cities have been flattened and 17,000 Iraqis languish in overcrowded gulags waiting for an improbable turn-of-events," writes Mike Whitney in die-hard Stalinist Alexander Cockburn's neocom publication, CounterPunch, reminding the right-minded that they're fortunate to have men like David Horowitz to shine a light on the real machinery of the radical-left's anti-U.S. agenda.

Weighing in on Botero's Abu Ghraib series, leftist "Art for Change" blogger Mark Vallen says, "What Botero has achieved is nothing short of a contemporary equivalent to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, the masterwork painted in outrage over the aerial bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War," in a shining example of typical leftist false equivalence.

Opining that Surrealism is equal to neurosurgery makes about as much sense as comparing Picasso's Guernica, a painting that captures and concisely emotes the horror of the deliberate slaughter of approximately 1,650 Spanish civilians by Franco and the Nazi Luftwaffe, to Botero's Abu Ghraib paintings, which are misleading and highly sensationalized depictions of the nature of the humiliation that a small group of terrorist prisoners experienced at the hands of a miscreant few.

In the future, Mr. Botero and other famous artists might consider the challenge of tackling the subjects of the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Hussein's mass graves, the brutal torture and murder of prisoners by Che Guevara, Castro's prisons, the North Korean Gulag, the Soviet gulag, the results of a Palestinian suicide bombing, radical Islamists' treatment of women, the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the treatment of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Paul Johnson, Ken Bigley and other unfortunates at the hands of Islamic "freedom fighters," the Cambodian genocide and the murder of 3,000 innocents on September 11, 2001, to name a few, since it is indeed a formidable challenge to create art that exaggerates the horror of that which is in reality already maximally horrific.

We're waiting...

ARIANNA'S MEGA-BLOGIt's Launch Day for The Huffington Post

The long-awaited day has arrived. Arianna Huffington unveiled her mega-blog today — the radically chic's answer to The Drudge Report (see "Drudge Team May Break Up" and "The`Progressive' Drudge").

Contrary to earlier reports, Huffington's Web site bears the name The Huffington Post rather than The Huffington Report. Beyond that, we at Moonbat Central cannot bring ourselves to comment. We are, in fact, speechless.

By contrast, the LA Weekly's Nikki Finke has a great deal to say about The Huffington Post — none of it very nice, we regret to say. Finke's piece is called, "Arianna's Blog Blows: Will This Failure Finally Finish Her?"

UPDATE 05.10.05: A clarification seems in order. We believe in giving credit where it's due.

Nikki Finke's dire predictions notwithstanding, it would seem that Mrs. Huffington's mega-blog probably has a good chance of succeeding — though, as with most left-leaning Web sites (Salon, Slate, et. al.), it will no doubt require frequent and massive cash infusions from well-heeled radicals of the Soros 70 type.

I took the time this morning to browse The Huffington Post more carefully, and was impressed with its design, editing and general site management.

In fact, when I pronounced myself "speechless" last night, I was reacting precisely to the jarring spectacle of seeing so much mendacious, anti-social and empty-headed content presented so artfully and effectively. Plainly there is talent at work behind The Huffington Post. Alas that such talent would be squandered on a project so fundamentally ill-intentioned.

Who are the Soros 70?

In an earlier post, we noted the coalescence of a new node in the Soros network — an assemblage of 70 radical millionaires and billionaires calling themselves the Phoenix Group.

The group met to discuss strategy under tight security in Scottsdale, Arizona the weekend of April 16-17, at a meeting organized by Democrat strategist and fundraiser Rob Stein, according to a report in The Hill.

Who are they? R. Thomas Collins of QuillNews notes:

"[N]obody will talk about this. The names of those attending [are] unavailable. Stein's spokesman refused to give details about the meeting, or discuss  specific plans. Like the Danny DeVito character said in LA Confidential, "it was all very hush hush..."  Though Stein's spokesman said `transparency' will be a priority.  Hmmm. 

"For starters, I think we can assume that the five largest 527 bankrollers in the `progressive' camp from the last go around will be involved.  In addition to Soros, who gets all the attention, are Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance, California investors Herbert and Marion Sandler, who are co-CEO's of Golden West Financial Corp, and a B-list Hollywood mogul Steve Bing. These five spent $78 million on Democratic related campaigns in the last cycle, more than twice the amount spent by the top five Republican givers."

Mr. Collins refers, of course, to the "Gang of Five" identified by Byron York in his book The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, and named by Clarice Feldman of the American Thinker.

This is all very well, but it is still speculation. What we need is hard facts.

Moonbat Central hereby issues an appeal to citizen journalists throughout the land to help us in this urgent investigation. Please send us any and all information at your disposal that might shed light on the identity of the Soros Seventy.

Our freedom depends on it.

PEWGATEFoundation Expert Hails Bloggers for Exposing McCain-Feingold Scandal

Pewgate — the scandal which received its name right here at Moonbat Central — is the focus of an important article in the May 12 issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy (hat tip, Winfield Myers).

Headlined "In a World of Bloggers, Foundations Can Expect More Scrutiny," the article states that bloggers now perform a function that mainstream media long neglected — monitoring the rivers of cash that major foundations channel each year into radical leftwing causes. The explosion of Pewgate stories across the blogosphere marks an historic turning of the tide, says author William A. Schambra, director of the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. Schambra writes:

"The news media's treatment of foundation involvement in public policy may have changed forever on March 17. That was the day the New York Post published `Buying 'Reform': Media Missed Millionaires' Scam,' an account by one of its columnists, Ryan Sager, of the massive spending by several mainstream foundations to secure passage of the 2002 overhaul of campaign-finance laws and to keep the issue alive.

"Mr. Sager told his readers he had discovered `an immense scam perpetrated on the American people by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a 'mass movement.'"

A group of radical foundations including the Pew Charitable Trusts and George Soros' Open Society Institute collaborated in a ten-year, $140-million conspiracy to deceive the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court into supporting the so-called Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act.


Bloggers to the Breach!

BCRA empowers federal judges and Federal Election Comissioners to regulate political speech, deciding who is allowed to say what, on which issues, about which candidates and through which media.

This awesome regulatory power was originally limited to paid political advertising on radio and television. However, subsequent court decisions extended the power of McCain-Feingold, granting the federal government authority to censor the Internet, including the political speech of individual bloggers (see "Pewgate: Battle of the Blogosphere," FrontPage, March 25, 2005). Schambra writes:

"Mr. Sager's exposé ricocheted immediately throughout the burgeoning network of conservative Weblogs, or `blogs.' It climbed quickly through right-leaning newspapers, with articles and editorials in the New York Sun, the Washington Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and into the prominent conservative journals National Review and the Weekly Standard. By late March, an audience of millions could catch snippets of the Treglia tape on Fox News. The story even achieved conservative `gatehood' status, often referred to as `Pewgate.' … [T]his episode marks the coming of age of an entirely new communications network, which will bring its own special angle to reporting on philanthropy and public policy."

In an April 14 post, we documented the spread of the word "Pewgate" from its origin here at Moonbat Central to the furthest reaches of the conservative blogosphere (see "Pewgate: It Seems We Have Invented a Word"). We are proud to have lent a hand — along with so many of our fellow bloggers — in spreading the word about Ryan Sager's remarkable scoop.

Enough said. Now it's time to get back to work. Political censorship is here. It's the law of the land. And it grows stronger by the day.

Pewgate showed us that McCain-Feingold was pushed through Congress by fraud. It showed us that the Supreme Court justices who upheld McCain-Feingold relied heavily on phony research ginned up by Pewgate-funded institutions such as the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Thank you, Mr. Sager, for breaking this story. And thanks to every blogger who helped disseminate it. Now it is time to act on what we know, and begin the long, hard process of regaining our lost freedom.

Hollywood Blunder: Anti-Crusader Epic Bombs at Box Office

"The lucrative summer movie season suffered its worst start in years Sunday, as the costly Crusades epic `Kingdom of Heaven' crawled into the No. 1 slot at the North American weekend box office with meager ticket sales of just $20 million," reports Reuters.

British director Ridley Scott — still brimming with confidence from his earlier success with the sword-and-sandal extravaganza Gladiator — spent $150 million producing Kingdom of Heaven.

But when word leaked out that the film portrayed Christian crusaders as bad guys, Muslims as good guys — and religion itself as the fount of all evil — the movie-going public shrugged its collective shoulders, fired up its DVD players and popped in its well-worn but ever-reliable copies of Braveheart and The Return of the King.

As a life-long aficionado of screen epics, be they Biblical, historical or fantastical, I was one of those disappointed souls who would have crawled on my hands and knees over miles of broken glass to see Kingdom of Heaven had I read even a single review that offered some hope that the film presented an accurate and even-handed look at the Crusades. But never again will I waste my hard-earned money on the neurotic productions of self-loathing Western intellectuals of Sir Ridley Scott's ilk. Reuters reports:

"Industry hopes that `Kingdom' would pull the business out of a lengthy slump were dashed: the box office has now endured 11 `down' weekends when compared with the year-ago periods. According to tracking firm Exhibitor Relations, this ties the longest losing streak, which ran from July to October in 2000."(via FreeRepublic)

Hollywood, when will you learn?

NNDB.com: Leftists Launch Stealth Propaganda Site Disguised as a "Who's Who" Database

"Has this reclusive Qwest billionaire embarked upon a secret plan to propagandize us with Christian films?" asks the front page of NNDB.com, a new Web site now in beta release.

Eager to find out, I clicked the proffered link which led to a profile of Philip Anschutz, the multibillionaire founder of Qwest Communications. The second paragraph of the two-graph bio informed me that:

"…Anschutz has pulled back from Qwest… and… is now dabbling in moralistic filmmaking. He made Holes which quickly grossed $67M, and Because of Winn-Dixie, which grossed over $30M. An upcoming A Sound of Thunder is to be released in 2005. Additionally he purchased the rights to C. S. Lewis' highly-allegoric Narnia works, and has great hopes for the first film from that series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which will be made with Disney's help. None of these films receive `R' ratings, and some of them have strong religious undertones. Anschutz thinks this is exactly what the `red states' want right now.

I gather that NNDB's editors view with deep suspicion any film rated lower than "R."


"Intelligence Aggregator"

On its front page, NNDB.com describes itself as an "intelligence aggregator" whose purpose is to "document the connections between people, many of which are not always obvious. A person's otherwise inexplicable behavior is often understood by examining the crowd that person has been hanging out with."

Hmmm… sounds a lot like our own DiscovertheNetworks.com. It even has a blog called NNDB Decalogue.

There's an important difference, however, between us and them. We at DTN make no bones about our opposition to the organized left. The editors of NNDB.com — in the time-honored tradition of leftwing agitators — try their best to keep us guessing as to their political allegiance. But they need to try harder. As the aforementioned profile of Mr. Philip Anshutz makes clear, you won't fry too many synapses trying to figure out from which side of the political divide these folks hail.

And yes, they do have an entry for our very own David Horowitz. To read it, go here.

By the way, NNDB.com is registered to Soylent Communications of Mountain View, California, which also publishes something called rotten.com.