The Other November 4

November 5, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Election 2008, International Affairs, Islam, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

Was also The National Day of Global Arrogance, celebrated on the anniversary of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

What Is To Be Done - To Us?

October 16, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008, History, Islam, Islam and the West, National Security, Religion, Russia, Terrorism, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

The final debate between John McCain and Barack Obama was primarily about the economy. That was appropriate and understandable. The big winner was Toledo’s new favorite son, Joe the Plumber – who will now be able to charge a lot more for his pipe-wrench artistry. And he will never again have a problem getting a table at Tony Packos.

It would be wise, however, for all Americans to remember something very important that is being overshadowed by the current cultural obsession. We are all concerned about our money. But the stakes right now are higher than mere dollars and cents.

In other words: It’s not just the economy, stupid.

As the long and hard fought presidential election campaign moves into the final frenetic stretch, there is an important court trial underway across the Atlantic - in Scotland. Two men have been charged with plotting terrorist bombings in Glasgow and London last year.

Two Muslim men - Mohammed Asha is from Jordan and Bilal Abdullaf is from Iraq.

Both are medical doctors.

While Americans worry about the possibility of another Great Depression, it is worth asking if we are in danger of being preoccupied with a Great Distraction at a crucial moment in our history.

Of course, our economic woes are quite real – ominous, in fact. And they cannot and should not be ignored. Not watching the store is what got us into this fix in the first place. But one has the sense that this nation is an increasingly soft target for something worse. And if it ever were to turn out that while we focused like a laser beam on the economy, our enemies decided to exploit our myopia, we could be in a bigger mess than we have ever imagined.

I am not trying to be “gloom and doom” here – just saying that it has probably crossed the mind of an adversary or two that this would be a fitting time to unleash something bad.

Bad, as in “where, oh where are you Jack Bauer?”

It is important for all of us to realize – even if it involves interrupting our current morbid fascination with the Dow and all things monetary – that the greatest strategic threat against our nation is not something that has been, or could be, done by people named Freddie or Fannie. Not even close. Our greatest enemy is, and will be long after the current financial mess is cleaned up, Islamism and its agenda to subdue all who persist in the audacity of being non-Muslim infidels.

In the sixth century B.C., Sun Tzu, in Art of War, said:

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battle. If you know only yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or lose. If you know neither yourself, nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

He also said: “All warfare is based on deception.”

There is an elephant in the big room under America’s spacious skies. It has to do with the potential for us to eventually see some of the same things happen here that are happening more and more frequently in Europe. I am referring to things like two presumably intelligent, and certainly well educated, doctors in a plot to bomb and kill.

Daniel Pipes is a widely read expert on the threat of radical Islam. He is a director of the Middle East Forum and calculates that, “10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam.” Let’s do the math (a fine young man on my staff, who has a graduate degree in theoretical mathematics would remind me here that this is arithmetic, not math – but you get my drift).

Estimates of the global Muslim population range between 1.3 and 1.6 billion – roughly one in five human beings. This means, if Pipes is right (and it is possible his estimates may be on the conservative side) – that there may be between 130 and 240 million people in the world who, in the name of Islam, hate America. These are the people who had a party on that sad September day seven years ago.

By the way, the total combined population of an earlier axis of evil enemies - Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in September of 1939 - was approximately 194 million. That’s total – as in every man, woman, and child.

How about the statistics right here in the U.S.? Well again, the estimates are all over the place, but it is generally accepted that between three and five million of our neighbors are Muslim. An article in Newsweek last year used the figure eight million. Applying the Pipes formula to here at home, we come up with the potential for anywhere between 300,000 and 1,200,000 people in this country who may be less-than-enamored of the rest of us. Or worse, some may be longing for the day when the fruited plain becomes a Muslim caliphate.

Here is where it gets complicated. We are a nation of people fierce about liberty. We believe in things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to assemble, to vote, and hold these things to be precious. We have no desire to become a police state, with neighbor turning on, or turning in, neighbor. We do not want to become hysterical and paranoid.

But there are bad people out there. They have guns and bombs and ugly ideas. And they have no problem “blending in” – even spending a long time cultivating a reassuring cover.

Bear in mind that the guys on trial across the pond right now are doctors.

There is a precedent for this, and it is one Americans should study. A few years ago, Margaret Thatcher, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979-1990, described an often-overlooked previous pattern for what we are now witnessing.

Writing in 2002, she said:

Perhaps the best parallel is with early communism. Islamic extremism today, like bolshevism in the past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical, well-armed devotees. And, like communism, it requires an all-embracing long-term strategy to defeat it.

The Iron Lady nailed it. Though the terms Islamo-fascist and Islamo-nazi are used these days with regularity, perhaps Islamo-bolshevik should become part of our vocabulary. Though Islam and communism as ideologies bear little resemblance to each other, beyond a mutual affinity for subduing and controlling others, they do have much in common methodologically.

It is a mistake to think of terror as the only weapon in the Islamist arsenal. It is a very public one, indeed – and horrifying. But behind the ugliness of terrorism lies a persistent and pernicious pattern of deceit and manipulation. The term taqiyya refers to the practice of deliberate deceit in the service of Islamist goals. The ends justify the means, in other words - lying, fraud, stealing, cheating, all things that most religions commonly consider sins, are perfectly appropriate in the pursuit of jihad.

John J. Dziak, Ph.D., a professor at The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., has written extensively on Russian Intelligence. Last year, his article, Islamism and Stratagem, appeared in The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies. He drew parallels between the methods used by current day Islamists, and those used ninety-plus years ago by Lenin and company:

The Bolshevik regime was a conspiracy come to power. The Soviet Union in practice was a seventy-one-year old counterintelligence operation raised to the level of a state system.

Organic to such a counterintelligence system is the widespread practice of provocations, diversion, deception, disinformation, ‘maskirovka’ (military focused deception), penetration, and other active measures of a highly aggressive nature.

He also noted that, “from its earliest history Islam has practiced what westerners label stratagem, deception, dissimulation, concealment, etc., in its dealings with not only the Infidel but with other Muslims, as well.” He identified Islamism as, “the twenty-first century heir to the counterintelligence state traditions of the totalitarian systems of the last century.”

During a recent radio interview, Brigitte Gabriel, author of the new book, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, told me, “history reveals very clearly that the apathetic give way to the passionate, and the complacent are subdued by the committed.”

I have written before about the love Islamists have for a spurious document called, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This anti-Semitic tract, though long-ago exposed as a forgery created by the Tsar’s secret police to foster anti-Jewish sentiment in early 20th century Russia, has long been a favorite of demagogues from Adolf Hitler to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The ironic thing is that, though the idea of a vast Jewish conspiracy to control the world has been so clearly proven as false, a group called the Muslim Brotherhood actually did write a plot of their own.

And this document is no forgery.

Brigitte Gabriel devotes an entire chapter to this in her book and it is chilling to read. Discovered in Switzerland just a few weeks after September 11, 2001, “The Project,” as it has come to be known, outlines a century long plan “to dominate the West and establish an Islamic government on earth.”

It is a 14-page “How To” manual about infiltrating a society en route to eventually subjugating it. Among its instructions are such motivational nuggets as:

• Avoiding open alliances with known terrorist organizations and individuals to maintain the appearance of “moderation.”
• Infiltrating and taking over existing Muslim organizations to realign them toward the Muslim Brotherhood’s collective goals.
• Using deception to mask the intended goals of Islamist actions, so long as it doesn’t conflict with Sharia law.
• Involving ideologically committed Muslims in democratically elected institutions on all levels in the West, including government, NGOs, private organizations, and labor unions.
• Instrumentally using existing Western institutions until they can be converted and put into the service of Islam.
• Collecting sufficient funds to indefinitely perpetuate and support jihad around the world.

And so on.

Lenin could not have said it any better in What Is To Be Done.

“Al Jazeera Owes an Apology”

August 16, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Islam, Israel and Palestinians, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

Judea Pearl, father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, argues that Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the adulation surrounding Israel’s release of convicted murderer Samir Kuntar is a travesty to the prospect of Arab democracy:

Imagine millions of school children and educators receiving a lesson in moral philosophy from their new master: “To be honest,” says Kuntar, “our operation had both civilian and military targets . . . There are no civilian targets, it’s ‘civilian’ in quotation marks. The Zionists themselves define the Israeli as a soldier who is on leave for 11 months every year.”

Imagine millions of democracy-hungry Arabs watching their most trusted TV station presenting a lesson in practical democracy, while the orchestra in the background is waiting for the next tune. Kuntar says, “[The assassination of Sadat] was a most wonderful operation . . . It was a wonderful historical moment, which I hope will recur in similar cases.”

In a letter to Israel’s Press Office, the station admitted on Aug. 6 that “elements of the program violated Al Jazeera’s Code of Ethics,” according to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. I believe Al Jazeera owes a more definitive public apology, not only to Israel, but primarily to its viewers, for attempting to turn their children into the likes of Kuntar; to the journalism community, for robbing the profession of its nobleness; and, most urgently, to us, citizens of this planet, for attempting to relegitimize barbarity in the public square.

 

And Yet They Turn to Israel

August 3, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Islam, Israel and Palestinians, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

Fleeing from the brutal Hamas regime in Gaza, 180 Fateh supporters were able to cross the border into Israel where Israeli soldiers provided medical support for the wounded Arab men:

More than 180 Fatah supporters who fled into Israel from the Gaza Strip were in Israeli custody Sunday, after a dramatic escape from a Hamas crackdown that left nine people dead in fierce fighting.

Wary Israeli troops allowed the Gazans to cross the heavily guarded border on Saturday, stripping them first to make sure none was wearing explosives. Mortar shells hit near the crossing as the Palestinians fled their homes for the territory of their longtime enemy. The Israeli soldiers prepared stretchers and ambulances rushed the badly wounded to nearby hospitals.

Interestlingly enough, Fateh still hasn`t officially amended its charter to remove its call for Israel`s destruction, as they are still projecting animus in one of their latest organization letters:

The Israeli occupation authorities continue their repression policy and its tyranny against our citizens and against our champion prisoners in the defeat detention camps and the humiliation cells, an using of all psychological pressures forms and the physical torturing, and the deprivation from the visit and from the telephone communications with the sons and the family who lives waiting moment the embrace of these staying heroes behind the injustice walls in the prisons of the unfair occupation, the one that exercises by their right the ugliest racial sadism exercise, in a flagrant challenge to all of the traditions, the laws and the United Nations charters, and the Fourth Geneva Convention and in a challenge to the human conscience and the international will, the one that confirms the human freedom and its right in its self-determination and building the life that wants, by what suits its habits, its traditions and its ideas away from any external intervention, from any authority forms.

This report is not all surprising. Arab citizens in Israel enjoy more rights and prosperity than they would in the “territories” or surrounding countries. These particular evacuees understand that. Why, otherwise, didn`t they flee to Egypt?

It’s Not Easy Being Green

July 22, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008, International Affairs, Islam | Leave a Comment 

The Obama World Tour’s ban on green clothing has raised some questions — and even a few hackles.

AMMAN, Jordan—An Obama campaign ban on green clothing during the candidate’s visits to Israel and Jordan has created wide puzzlement among observers of the Middle East.

In a memo to reporters, described as “a few guidelines we sent staff before departure to the Middle East,” Obama advance staffer Peter Newell laid out rules on attire for Jordan and Israel.

First among them: “Do not wear green.”

An Obama aide explained to reporters that green is the color associated with the militant Palestinian group Hamas. But while the color does appear on Hamas banners, there is no particular symbolism to wearing green clothes, experts said.

Moreover, green is more generally seen as a symbol of Islam.

“A ban on wearing green seems bizarre,” said Richard Bulliet, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Columbia University, who said the color is associated with the family of the Prophet Mohammed.

“I would hazard the guess that the campaign’s concern is more with distorted—and religiously inaccurate—reporting by Obama’s detractors than with any actual signal that might be conveyed,” he said, referring to false rumors that Obama is a Muslim. “You don’t want to have some blogger come along and say ‘Obama is showing his true color.’”

“I think they’re just being overcautious to a ridiculous degree,” Bulliet said.

Mohamad Bazzi, a professor of journalism at New York University and former Middle East bureau chief for Newsday, called the instruction “very strange.”

“I guess green is the ‘Hamas color’ — but it’s also the color of Islam!” Bazzi said in an email from Beirut. “That’s one way for the Obama campaign to alienate 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide.

Those who believe that vox populi is vox dei may be interested in seeing how Senator Obama’s non-green zone is playing by checking out the responses on Yahoo’s “Open Question” feature. The judiciously neutral phrasing of the question —”How crazy is Obama’s ban on green clothing?”— assures an untainted sample.

No Victory for Hezbollah

July 17, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Islam, Israel and Palestinians, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

Despite exhausted attempts at claiming diplomatic victory and public pageantry, Hezbollah’s war with Israel still cost them seven billion dollars, and thousands of dead and wounded Lebanese civilians.

The Lebanese newspaper, Al Anwar, called Kuntar’s meticulously produced release ceremony a shameful display, and despite Nasrallah’s rare public appearance, he appears to be running scared:

Nasrallah surprised the crowd by joining Kuntar on stage, an unusual live appearance from a man who, since the end of the Second Lebanon War, has interacted with the outside world almost exclusively through video.

Nasrallah appeared to be visibly afraid, looking over his shoulder at least twice during a brief appearance of less than two minutes, despite being surrounded by five bodyguards. He exited the stage quickly after congratulating Kuntar on his release.

The Big Anti-Semitic Lie that Won’t Go Away

July 11, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under History, Islam, Israel and Palestinians, Russia, Terrorism, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

While fires were still smoldering at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and in a Pennsylvanian pasture, malicious people conjured up an evil myth. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many in the Arab world believed that the vicious attack on America was not the work of Islamists, but rather was an Israeli-driven Mossad operation. This legend soon developed muscular legs and is now widely regarded by millions of Muslims as the truth.

And why not? For decades school children in Muslim nations (not to mention their parents at home) have been baptized in anti-Semitic narratives. The opinions in their world about Jews in general, and Israel in particular, are concrete – thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.

And the most persistent and pernicious ideas that have been accepted by millions as factual truth flowed from the poisonous pen of a guy named Mathieu Golovinski.

The spurious publication called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an Islamist must-read. The work tells a story that fits the pattern of long-standing prejudices. The words reinforce the visceral hatred Islamists have toward Jews.

Islamist anti-Semitism is not a new thing. It didn’t begin with the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, or the Six-Day War in 1967. It was around long before there was a Hitler – in fact, it grew up alongside Islam from the beginning. It’s an enmity that can be traced back to Muhammad and what he said, wrote, and did. And to those looking for ammunition to use against people they have been historically conditioned to hate, the often denounced and repeatedly refuted forgery is just what the evil doctor ordered.

In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, it is true that non-Muslims and non-Nazis have at times bought into the notions set forth by the Protocols - some even in the name of Christianity. This is sad. But it is also statistically rare these days. Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan types apparently still peddle the book, but these people are the proverbial skunks at our national picnic. And eighty years ago, there were a few prominent Americans (automobile magnate Henry Ford notable among them) who endorsed the writings. But that was a passing, though very regrettable, thing.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion purports to be written evidence of a vast and secret Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. It’s presented as a factual and detailed description of a late-nineteenth century meeting to plot international Hebrew hegemony through manipulation and treachery. These ideas are at the root of the mother of all conspiracy theories for those who live in the bizarre world of alternative historical reality.

In fact, the publication is a forgery – probably the most sinister and infamous fake in literary history.

The year is 1898, and Nicholas II rules a Russia that’s beginning to experience the revolutionary stirrings of modernism. The Tsar is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and tends to be easily led by strong people around him. He tries to take incremental steps toward leading the nation away from its feudal past, but some in his court are alarmed. Thus, evil men began to seek a way to short-circuit these liberalizing influences.

If only they could convince the Tsar that the voices of change he’s listening to are motivated by something other than the best interests of Russia – but how? It was in this environment that the greatest of all anti-Semitic lies was born. A threatening conspiracy would be manufactured - one that would bring Nicholas to his senses – and the Jews to their knees.

Mathieu Golovinski was living in Parisian exile at the time. Though he was Russian, having been born in the Simbirsk region in 1865, he was forced to flee after repeated clashes with Russian authorities, usually having to do with his tendency to fabricate documents and evidence in legal matters. He was a master of spin, innuendo, and dirty tricks. He was also very skilled in the arts of forgery and plagiarism.

And he worked for the Okhrana – the Tsar’s secret police.

He was approached by agents’ provocateur from the Tsar’s inner circle about creating a convincing anti-Jewish legend. They needed a narrative, one that would be seen as proof of a sinister plot behind the winds of change beginning to blow in Russia. Golovinski was commissioned to fabricate the evidence.

He came across an old book, written in 1864 by an anti-monarchist activist named Maurice Joly. It was entitled, Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquie and was written as a thinly disguised attack on Napoleon III’s rule in France. The book was suppressed by the French government and the writer was imprisoned. He committed suicide in 1878.

A plan was hatched to borrow from this obscure book, changing some of its cosmetics and phrasing. It would be recast, using Joly’s fictional dialogue for a model, as the actual deliberations of a secret cabal of Jews bent on taking over the world. When the fake was finished, it was spirited back to St. Petersburg, and all that would be needed was a way to get it before the ruler of the realm.

Enter the other religious zealot in and around the court of the Tsar.

When most think of religious influences around Nicholas II, attention is usually given to Grigori Rasputin, the mad monk who haunted that scene beginning about 1905. But often overlooked, and certainly more ominous as far as long-term impact on the world is concerned, is the influence of his cultic contemporary, Sergei Alexandrovich Nilus. He was a writer on religious matters and a self-styled spiritual mystic.

And he is also the man who first published Golovinski’s sinister forgery.

Initially placing the Protocols as a chapter in one of his books, Dr. Nilus saw to it that the potentate was fully briefed and convinced about the purported Jewish threat. And like Rasputin, he also had the ear of ruler’s wife – so the Tsar, never a man to have his own firm opinions, fell prey to the lie. And in the days following his nation’s defeat at the hands of the Japanese at a loss of several hundred thousand men, not to mention overwhelming financial expense, circumstances were ripe for the rotten fruit of a compelling scapegoat story.

On January 9, 1905, the Tsar’s troops opened fire on protesters who peacefully marched near the palace in St. Petersburg. This would become known as Bloody Sunday. The Tsar and his inner circle saw in the Protocols the real reason for the unrest – it was a big Jewish plot to overthrow the monarchy.

So it began – the gargantuan conspiratorial lie that has reared its hideous head time and time again over the past one hundred years. Jewish plotters were blamed for The Great War (1914-1918). Then in its aftermath, when Germany was struggling to recover from defeat, the big lie was discovered by the greatest demagogue of the day, Adolf Hitler. By the time the future German dictator was sent to prison in 1923, he was well versed in the Protocols and drew significantly from the forgery as he wrote his own hate-filled and delusional tome, Mein Kampf.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion became, to men already filled with anti-Semitic ideas, proof positive of a sinister Jewish agenda. To those who believed the lie, the writings were sufficient evidence for the indictment, condemnation, and eventual execution of these conspiratorial people. The Protocols in many ways fueled the Holocaust.

Yet all along, reasonable people – scholars, journalists, and statesmen – have gone to great lengths to expose the fraudulent nature of the Protocols. Beginning with a lengthy analysis in the Times of London in 1921, to a celebrated trial in Switzerland in 1935, to a report by the United States Senate in 1964, good people have said again and again: “the book’s a fake.” Good people still do.

It’s the bad people who are the problem.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the biggest publishing hoax of the past one hundred years, is not going away. This is largely because Islamists are using it, with great effectiveness, to fan contemporary flames of hatred. In fact, it’s arguable that there are more copies of this lie-laden text extant, than ever before. The forgery is used by politicians and clerics in the Muslim world to justify their distorted and destructive world-view.

Gamal Abdel Nassar, the late president of Egypt, recommended the book to his countrymen. His Saudi contemporary, King Faisal, had the forgery put in hotels in his nation, like Gideon Bibles (he once gave a copy to Henry Kissinger). The Ayatollah Khomeini, who took over in Iran in 1979, made the Protocols a national bestseller. An entire generation of Islamic thinkers and scholars now aggressively promotes the forgery as literal fact.

Hamas owes Article 32 of its charter to these long-ago-discredited writings when it says things like: “Zionist scheming has no end…Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of Zion.” And it’s, of course, a perennial favorite with Holocaust deniers such as that wacky Iranian, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Islamist anti-Semitism is at the root of the so-called War on Terror. The bad guys use the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as their proof-text. It would make sense that if we really want to eradicate the symptom we must deal frankly with the cause. Islamism isn’t an aberration. It’s an ideology based on prejudices rooted in the distant past and old lies that won’t seem to go away.

Shortly before his death in early 2005, the legendary pioneer of twentieth-century graphic art, Will Eisner, a man who spent much of his life debunking the infamous forgery, called the Protocols a “terrifying vampire-like fraud.”

Indeed. - DRS

Family Sues to Block Kantar

July 7, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Islam, Israel and Palestinians, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

In light of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s slapdash decision to release a convicted terrorist responsible for the brutal murder of a father and his young daughter in 1979, the Shahar family is now petitioning the Israeli Supreme Court to block the swap for the bodies of IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

Dog Days in Tayside

July 7, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Islam, Islam and the West, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

Tayside is a town near Dundee in Scotland. The local constabulary’s slogan is “Here for you” and, as part of an advertising campaign, they selected a small black German shepherd puppy about to be trained, by his handler Mike, for the department’s K-9 squad. The idea was to give him his own website, with lots of photos and even a blog written in the “first” person.

Here’s how the pooch described the way he was named:

Well… I guess you’ve heard the news by now… my new name is Rebel! Not so much ‘Rebel Without A Cause’… but Rebel with big paws!

Greg MacBain at St Ninians Primary school put forward the name suggestion and Mike picked it out from hundreds of entries. Apparently he thinks it suits my personality… I don’t know what he means… woof!

Anyway, Mike still can’t get used to calling me Rebel. He’s been calling me ‘puppy’ for so long! I’m getting bigger and bolder by the day and, now that I have had all of my injections, I can start getting out and about in the community more.

I went to St Ninians School last Friday to meet up with Greg and all the lovely boys and girls… boy did I get a lot of attention.

The pupils managed to raise over £50 for the PDSA by charging 20 pence for every name suggestion. The vet from the PDSA came with me to the school to collect the cheque. I know that the money will be used to help some other animals who are not as fortunate as me.

In the afternoon I went to visit my agent Sarah at Force Headquarters and I got a little too excited and left a calling card for her at her desk… oops.

The campaign was successful beyond imagination. Rebel soon became a major local celebrity. The Tayside PD puppy training website received the numbers of hits that The New Nixon only dares to dream about during nights of very fevered sleep, and the TV crews weren’t far behind.

What a great idea. What could go wrong? What indeed.

Postcards featuring a photograph of Rebel sitting inside an overturned police hat next to a telephone —advertising a new number for non-emergency calls— were distributed throughout the community. That’s when the trouble began.

In today’s New York Post, John O’Sullivan describes Rebel’s brief career cut short as a cautionary tale about out of hand multiculturism, and draws some not entirely comforting conclusions.

 

Hitler’s Favorite Jihadist

July 4, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Book Review, History, Islam, Islam and the West, Israel and Palestinians, Terrorism, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

As members of the Allied Expeditionary Force entered the landing crafts that would transport them to their rendezvous with history in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, they received individual copies of the Order of the Day drafted by their Supreme Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower. He had given the go ahead for the massive invasion, code named Overlord, in spite of weather that was less than inviting. He wanted the men to understand what they were fighting for – and against.

He told them:

“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.”

In those days leaders weren’t as concerned about the politically correct parsing of phrases and words as some seem to be today. It was clear to them that they were not fighting mere “flesh and blood” but abhorrent ideological wickedness (“Nazi tyranny”). And they passed that clarity onto those who were engaged in the perilous fight.

So, why is it so hard for some today to call things as they are?

We are not fighting a war on terror. We are fighting against a pernicious way of thinking. Terrorism is a methodology – a way to fight a battle. The technique itself is not the enemy. Our foes are people and regimes who, in the name of foul opinion, perpetrate destruction. Just like back in the 1940s.

Can you imagine what it would have sounded like if Ike, FDR, or Churchill had been bound by the sensitivities of our day? We would have been “battling the blitzkriegers,” or maybe “bringing to justice those who dared to attack too early on a Sunday morning,” - hardly clarion calls.

Wars make more sense, and they tend to be conducted with greater vigilance and effectiveness, when we understand things in terms of good vs. evil. But these days it’s hard to even bring up the idea that militant Islam is to blame, much less to frame the current conflict as a war against it. History, however, leaves clues that remind us that there is really not much new under the sun.

David G. Dalin and John F. Rothman have written a new book, one that should be read by all Americans seeking to understand current geopolitical reality, called: Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam. They make a compelling and well-documented case that we are actually fighting the quasi-spiritual offspring of Nazism and Fascism.

Haj Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974) is by no means a household name today, but his story is a key historical plot-point helping to create the mess we now find ourselves in. From his appearance on the stage of turbulent Middle Eastern politics in 1921, until his death fifty-three years later, he was a consistent and vociferous voice preaching a blend of anti-Semitic, anti-Western, and pan-Islamic rhetoric to anyone who would lend an ear. And there were plenty of listeners. There still are. He was the grand mufti (maximum leader) of Muslims in Palestine – the big kahuna.

Mr. al-Husseini’s political journey was driven by a radical interpretation and application of Islam. He was an effective and charismatic leader of a vast movement - forerunner of the various manifestations of Islamic fanaticism extant. This virulent form of his religion took hold during the period between the two world wars and grew to become the plague it is on all houses of freedom.

And it turns out that al-Husseini was a big fan of a man by the name of Adolf Hitler. The number one Nazi liked him, too.

In November of 1941, a little more than a week before the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a meeting in Berlin, one that is often relegated to a footnote in the history of that great global conflict. Haj Amin al-Husseini made his way from the mansion he’d been provided by the Nazis toward the Reich Chancellery, where he was to meet Hitler in the dictator’s private office. Dalin and Rothman describe this ominous meeting in great detail.

The mufti sought to ingratiate himself with Hitler and the strategy was reciprocal. They pledged allegiance to each other. And why not? They had common goals and enemies. The German leader bestowed honorary Aryan citizenship on his guest (Hitler interpreted al-Husseini’s blond hair and blue eyes as evidence that the Islamic leader must have possessed some “pure” blood) and it was clear that his visitor was keenly interested in being set up as the Nazi leader in Palestine and its surrounding region.

Al-Husseini eventually recruited 100,000 European Muslims to partner with the Waffen-SS, and the authors of Icon of Evil hint at the idea that the cleric-politician was influential in the decision to implement the notorious Final Solution. He was good buddies with Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichman.

Nazis and radical Islamists – together. Nothing good could come of that, and in fact, a lot of today’s bad stuff was incubated in that Berlin laboratory.

One of the most captivating portions of Icon of Evil is devoted to the question: What if Hitler had been victorious and the war had turned out differently? Drawing on similar previous musings by writers such as William L. Shirer, John Keegan, and David Fromkin, the duo shares a chilling narrative about how radically different life would be today had Hitler won. This is important not just because of the horrifying idea of a Hitler-dominant Europe – but also due to what the Middle East would look like in such a case. Al Husseini wanted to extend the Holocaust beyond the borders of European living space to the Middle East. His goal was something near and dear to the heart of the depraved men running the Third Reich – a Palestine that would be virtually Judenrein (a reprehensible Nazi term literally meaning: “clean of Jews”).

Then there’s the story of how this wicked preacher was able to avoid the Nuremberg trial dragnet, in spite of clearly being guilty of egregious war-crimes. He would not be brought to justice, but rather would live out his days back in the Middle East. His post-war work included becoming something of a mentor to men who would become famous in his cause. What do Gamel Abdel Nassar, Anwar Al Sadat, Yassir Arafat, and Saddam Hussein have in common? They were all connected with, and deeply influenced by, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Hamas and Hezbollah are very much part of his legacy, as well. He worked closely with the theoretician of radical Islam, Sayyid Qutb, as well as Saddam’s infamous uncle, General Khairallah Talfah. The guy was connected. And the usual suspects he ran with paved the way for everything from the attacks on September 11, 2001, to the maniacal rantings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In fact, some of Haj Amin al-Husseini’s spirit is in the intellectual and emotional DNA of every current radical Islamist.

Now, here’s what really bugs me – why could we fight a war nearly seventy years ago, all the while referring to our enemies as Nazi thugs, and yet today be so concerned about sensibilities that we’re reduced to, at best, rhetorical beating-around-the-bush?

The war we are in is not against a weapon, no matter how dreadful that weapon is. We are fighting a virulent ideology. To be brutally honest about it - to call our enemies today terrorists, or even Islamo-Fascists, is not strong enough.

They are Islamo-Nazis and they’re really bad people - like the German-Nazis were.

Is Teheran Finally Running Scared?

July 1, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Islam, Islam and the West, National Security, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

Ali Akbar Velayati, Ayatollah Khamenei’s top foreign policy adviser, warned against President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad’s “provocative” language against the West, indicating a split in Teheran’s leadership. Some in the regime, at least, have evidently concluded that the U.S. and Israel mean business. Velayati seemingly favors the suspension of uranium enrichment to avoid a possibly fateful confrontation:

“Americans wanted Iran not to accept Solana,” Velayati told the hard-line daily newspaper Jomhuri Islami. “Therefore our interests imply that we should embrace Solana.” Velayati’s remarks were among the strongest indicators of a split within Iran’s opaque leadership circle over how best to handle the standoff with the West and Israel over the country’s nuclear program. A media report Tuesday by a news organization close to the pragmatic chair of Iran’s Expediency Council, Ahmadinejad rival Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, suggested that Iran might be willing to suspend or curtail uranium enrichment for a six-week period during which negotiations would take place.

Senator Obama, Meet Reverend Gortner

June 30, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Election 2008, Entertainment, Faith, Islam, Religion, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

One of the curious things about this ever-curiouser election is that half the time it seems like any of its interesting or unusual features ties in, somehow, with someone or something closely associated with the days of cold duck, bell bottoms and shag carpets - in other words, the Nixon Era.

A case in point came up in an article that appeared in last Saturday’s Washington Post. It concerned the efforts of Danielle Allen, a highly-respected political scientist and fellow of the Institute For Advanced Studies (the place in Princeton which sponsored Einstein’s post-1933 research) to determine just how the claim that Sen. Barack Obama was a Muslim began circulating on the Internet. The Post reported that she managed to track the rumor’s primary point of circulation to posts that appeared toward the end of 2006 in, unsuprisingly, Freerepublic.com. One of the “Freepers” most active in discussing the charge against Obama - disproven time and again, but still believed, according to recent polls, by at least 10% of the electorate - was a regular at the site known as “Eva.” Professor Allen discovered that “Eva” was Donna Shaw, a 60-year-old teacher in rural Washington state. Ms. Shaw told the Post’s reporter that “Obama’s ability to captivate audiences made her deeply uneasy because his ‘tone and cadence’ reminded her of the child revivalist con-man preacher Marjoe Gortner.”

Marjoe?!

For anyone who was a teenager or older in the 1970s, the name instantly evokes a curly-haired, lanky figure shouting from a pulpit, or shambling through a dozen or more cheezy movies (both on the big screen and TV), or, later, gliding through the intrigues of Falcon Crest. But for anyone under 35 (unless they’ve come across his six dozen clips at Youtube or the three or so pages devoted to him in Christopher Hitchens’ bestseller God Is Not Great), the reaction almost certainly is, “Who?”

So here’s a quick biography, partly drawing on Wikipedia’s entry (which can be found, along with representative Youtube footage of Obama and Marjoe, at the Right Rev. James W. Bailey’s self-proclaimed “pro-American art blog”):

Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner - the second name is a combination of Mary and Joseph - was born in January 1944 in Long Beach, California, the son of an itinerant evangelist. At the age of three, the toddler’s father noticed his uncanny self-possession and remarkable verbal skills. The elder Gortner promptly began schooling Marjoe in the Bible and fundamentalist theology. By 1948, such was the youngster’s progress that he went on the tent circuit, billed as the world’s youngest ordained minister (though by what institution or church remained a mystery).

Before long, Marjoe began officiating at weddings in southern California. One of these ceremonies was captured by a newsreel crew and a Life photographer, and thus the adorable, curly-topped four-year-old became a coast-to-coast celebrity. For the next decade, he toured America with considerable success, drawing crowds that sometimes numbered in the tens of thousands.

But with puberty, interest in Marjoe waned. Around his fourteenth (or, as sometimes stated, sixteenth) birthday, his father vanished with his accumulated earnings. A disillusioned Marjoe then parted with his mother and drifted to Santa Cruz, California, where he was taken in by an “older woman” who saw to it that he finished high school, then studied at San Jose State College. There, he fell in with rock musicians and the nascent hippie community, spending many an afternoon in Haight-Ashbury.

By the end of the 1960s, nearing his mid-twenties and in need of money, Marjoe took up the ministry again, this time featuring his musical talents heavily and working the tent circuit he once wowed as a curly-haired moppet - but now with moves borrowed from Mick Jagger and Hendrix. For a few years he did fairly well - but there was a difference. For most of his time as a boy preacher, Marjoe had done it for the love of God. Now, he was doing it for the love of Mammon.

In 1971, after meeting two filmmakers (the late Howard Smith, who was also the Village Voice’s “Scenes” columnist, and Sarah Kernochan, from a socially prominent New York family), Marjoe decided to undertake one last revival tour, with a camera crew in tow. Smith, Kernochan and their cohorts filmed Marjoe unleashing the Holy Spirit before the multitudes, preaching the gospel, healing the sick, counseling the troubled - and, backstage, cold-bloodedly (yet somehow disarmingly) explaining just how he spun the crowds and staged his miracles - a real-life Elmer Gantry for the Jesus-freak generation. The resulting film, juxtaposed with archival footage of the boy preacher, became the documentary Marjoe, which was released to rave reviews in late July 1972, and won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature the following year. (The film is now available at Amazon, as a download and on DVD, and can also be seen in nine segments - “Marjoe 1,” etc - on Youtube.)

And thus it was that, even as Nixon and McGovern vied for the attention of the voters, Marjoe Gortner provided a colorful sideshow in the world of pop culture. Once the film was released, of course, his days on the Pentecostal circuit were over. His first move was to try to redefine himself as a rock star; an album, Bad But Not Evil (borrowed from his self-description in the film), was released by Chelsea Records (also the musical home of Lulu and Wayne Newton at the time), and a single, “Lo And Behold,” rose to #109 on the Billboard chart. But it went no higher.

Following an authorized biography by Steven Gaines (later to write the life of Halston), and an article for Oui magazine in which he analyzed the appeal of the teenage Guru Maharaj Ji (who was filling stadiums during the Watergate era), Marjoe ventured into acting. He made his debut in a supporting role in the 1973 TV movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders (starring Telly Savalas in his debut as Kojak), and then got seventh billing in the all-star disaster movie Earthquake, playing a mad grocery clerk who gets to romance Victoria Principal. More movies, mainly for TV, followed. Especially notable was Pray For The Wildcats, in which the onetime Hashbury habitue played a hippie menaced by sadistic bikers Andy Griffith and Robert Reed. (Sheriff Taylor and Mike Brady on Harleys? Rest assured that wasn’t too out of the ordinary in the world of 1970s TV movies.) And then there was The Food Of The Gods, in which Marjoe (along with Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker and Ida Lupino) was menaced by giant worms, rats, and wasps in a loose adaptation of the H.G. Wells story. (The latter film is especially well represented on Youtube, and it’s also worth noting that Michael Medved, in his pre-radio days, ranked it Worst Rodent Movie Of All Time in his book The Golden Turkey Awards.)

But by 1980 the movie roles were drying up and Marjoe, after getting excellent notices as a maniacal thug in When You Comin’ Back Red Ryder? (and awful ones in Starcrash), moved to the world of series TV. He appeared twice on Fantasy Island then went on to guest shots on Hotel, The A-Team, and Matt Houston. He spent the 1986-87 season playing Vince Karlotti on Falcon Crest.

The end of the Reagan era also saw the conclusion of Marjoe’s acting career (except for an appearance in the 1995 Western Wild Bill as, naturally, a preacher). Around 1989 he moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, and launched yet another career as a fundraiser for charitable events. His primary work for the last two decades has been to preside over Marjoe Gortner Entertainment, which, most recently, has produced star-studded TV spectaculars out of the Banff Springs Hotel in Canada to benefit Robert Kennedy Jr’s Waterkeepers Alliance. According to an employee who recently posted at the Ex-Christians message board, he no longer gives interviews or answers questions about his past.

And that’s the sixty-year career of Marjoe in a nutshell. Here’s a Youtube clip (one of the segments of Marjoe) in which the semblance to Obama seems particularly visible.

Speechless in Kuala Lumpur

June 18, 2008 by Joshua Trevino | Filed Under International Affairs, Islam, Islam and the West, Israel and Palestinians | Leave a Comment 

It was supposed to be Malaysia’s moment in the sun, at the intersection of the Muslim and Western worlds, and helping define a constructive relationship between the two. But the non-Malaysian participants at the Third International Conference on the Muslim World and the West in Kuala Lumpur this week didn’t seem to get the message, as they used their pulpit to attack the principle of free speech.

The irony in this turn of events is palpable, especially given the contradiction between the dramatic expansion of Malaysian press and social freedoms, and the course urged by the Muslim dignitaries present. Since Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi took office after the decades-long autocracy of Mahathir Mohamed, restrictions on Malaysian media have been dramatically curtailed, to the point that, though still imperfect by Western standards, it is perhaps the most free media and social environment in the Muslim world.

A direct beneficiary of Malaysia’s media liberalization is the political opposition — a fact that Badawi acknowledges, and accepts as necessary for his country’s good.

This, though, is not a risk too many non-Malaysian Muslim power holders are willing to take. It is perhaps too much to expect that the major Muslim dignitaries present at this week’s Conference — a Saudi prince, a Turkish bureaucrat, and a former Pakistani prime minister — will have reflexes toward individual liberty. None of them hail from known bastions of Jeffersonian democracy. Yet all of them hail from known bastions of tradition, chief among them the duties of guests to hosts. Their denunciation of free speech in Malaysia now is an act of a bad guest.

The Conference opened on Monday morning with an on-the-record panel of four Muslim and three Western dignitaries. The constructive dialogue envisioned by the Malaysian hosts was swiftly subsumed by plaintive invocations of Muslim victimization.

Introductory remarks by the Malaysian Foreign Minister were followed by the Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanouglu of Turkey, who delivered a rambling speech on the injustices of the West’s portrayal of Muslims. The litany ranged from the drearily familiar invocation of Muhammed cartoons, to Geert Wilders’s Fitna film, to an otherwise obscure video game by an American college student, in which the object is apparently to kill Islam’s founding prophet.

Secretary-General Ihsanouglu’s solution was as simple as it was troubling — and was made the more troubling by its popularity with the assembled delegates. There is, he declared, “a campaign of incitement under the guise of freedom of expression.” Therefore, freedom of expression must go. This sentiment was warmly received. Erstwhile Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz garnered applause when he stated, “Producing cartoons on religious leaders, where sensitivities are hurt, should be discouraged — and should be opposed and not be protected under the guise of freedom.”

Prince Turki al Faisal, a longtime fixture in the Saudi power structure, put it in more blunt terms: “I can never accept, in my personal view, that freedom of speech is morally right when it supersedes and offends my faith and my belief.”

Thus did three of the four Muslim speakers demand an end to Western freedom of speech as the prerequisite to reconciliation with the West. The fourth preferred to denounce Israel, and the three Western panelists — a Frenchman, a Spaniard, and an Australian — raised no objection. Indeed, it was possible to read into the latters’ remarks an oblique endorsement of the notion: “Political problems have to be solved in political ways,” intoned Spain’s Jose Maria Ferre de la Pena, who serves as a “Special Ambassador” from Madrid to the Islamic world.

To attack freedom of speech as a root cause of the conflict between the Western and Muslim worlds is to make two grave errors. First is the implicit contention that Muslims are psychologically and culturally inert, and purely reactive to Western stimuli. This is plainly false: Muslims have the same capacity for moral choice, and the same independent existence, as all persons — even if their conference-going, globe-trotting leaders pretend otherwise. Second is the baleful reality that if Muslims attempt to suppress free speech, then defenders of free speech will be forced to stand up for every stupid, cruel, and vicious rhetorical attack upon Muslims. By reacting to an abuse of liberty with an attack on liberty, Muslims against free speech elevate those abuses to exercises in principle.

In that light, the eminences at the Third International Conference on the Muslim World and the West would do well, while they’re in Kuala Lumpur, to stop attacking a basic freedom — and start learning from their hosts.

This piece appeared in the print version of the Washington Examiner on 16 June 2008.