Change Hamas Can Believe In

Comments from Jim Geraghty I saw on National Review Online:

Hamas' Ahmed Yousef: 'We like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win).'

Wow. All in all, if I were an American presidential candidate, I'd prefer to be denounced by Hamas. Not so for Barack Obama.

During an interview on WABC radio Sunday, top Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef said the terrorist group supports Obama’s foreign policy vision.

“We don’t mind–actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community but not with domination and arrogance,” Yousef said in response to a question about the group’s willingness to meet with either of the Democratic presidential candidates.

Audio here.

'Anatomy of Surrender'

The following excerpts are from a lenghty article in City Journal by Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. Bawer’s article is entitled, “An Anatomy of Surrender.” It's well worth reading in ins entirety.

Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war—holy war, jihad—to bring it into the House of Submission. Over the centuries, this jihad has taken a variety of forms. Two centuries ago, for instance, Muslim pirates from North Africa captured ships and enslaved their crews, leading the U.S. to fight the Barbary Wars of 1801–05 and 1815. In recent decades, the jihadists’ weapon of choice has usually been the terrorist’s bomb; the use of planes as missiles on 9/11 was a variant of this method.

What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, Kho­meini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.

The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success. Two events in particular—the 2004 assassination in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh in retaliation for his film about Islam’s oppression of women, and the global wave of riots, murders, and vandalism that followed a Danish newspaper’s 2005 publication of cartoons satirizing Mohammed—have had a massive ripple effect throughout the West. Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideology—which teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressive—people at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies.

Call it a cultural surrender. The House of War is slowly—or not so slowly, in Europe’s case—being absorbed into the House of Submission....


...The elite media regularly underreport fundamentalist Muslim misbehavior or obfuscate its true nature. After the knighting of Rushdie in 2007 unleashed yet another wave of international Islamist mayhem, Tim Rutten wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “If you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to follow all the columns and editorials in the American press denouncing all this homicidal nonsense, it’s because there haven’t been any.” Or consider the riots that gripped immigrant suburbs in France in the autumn of 2005. These uprisings were largely assertions of Muslim authority over Muslim neighborhoods, and thus clearly jihadist in character. Yet weeks passed before many American press outlets mentioned them—and when they did, they de-emphasized the rioters’ Muslim identity (few cited the cries of “Allahu akbar,” for instance). Instead, they described the violence as an outburst of frustration over economic injustice.

When polls and studies of Muslims appear, the media often spin the results absurdly or drop them down the memory hole after a single news cycle. Journalists celebrated the results of a 2007 Pew poll showing that 80 percent of American Muslims aged 18 to 29 said that they opposed suicide bombing—even though the flip side, and the real story, was that a double-digit percentage of young American Muslims admitted that they supported it. u.s. muslims assimilated, opposed to extremism, the Washington Post rejoiced, echoing USA Today’s american muslims reject extremes. A 2006 Daily Telegraph survey showed that 40 percent of British Muslims wanted sharia in Britain—yet British reporters often write as though only a minuscule minority embraced such views....

...After each major terrorist act since 9/11, the press has dutifully published stories about Western Muslims fearing an “anti-Muslim backlash”—thus neatly shifting the focus from Islamists’ real acts of violence to non-Muslims’ imaginary ones. (These backlashes, of course, never materialize.) While books by Islam experts like Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer, who tell difficult truths about jihad and sharia, go unreviewed in newspapers like the New York Times, the elite press legitimizes thinkers like Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, whose sugarcoated representations of Islam should have been discredited for all time by 9/11. The Times described Armstrong’s hagiography of Mohammed as “a good place to start” learning about Islam; in July 2007, the Washington Post headlined a piece by Esposito want to understand islam? start here.
Mainstream outlets have also served up anodyne portraits of fundamentalist Muslim life. Witness Andrea Elliott’s affectionate three-part profile of a Brooklyn imam, which appeared in the New York Times in March 2006. Elliott and the Times sought to portray Reda Shata as a heroic bridge builder between two cultures, leaving readers with the comforting belief that the growth of Islam in America was not only harmless but positive, even beautiful. Though it emerged in passing that Shata didn’t speak English, refused to shake women’s hands, wanted to forbid music, and supported Hamas and suicide bombing, Elliott did her best to downplay such unpleasant details; instead, she focused on sympathetic personal particulars. “Islam came to him softly, in the rhythms of his grandmother’s voice”; “Mr. Shata discovered love 15 years ago. . . . ‘She entered my heart,‘ said the imam.” Elliott’s saccharine piece won a Pulitzer Prize. When Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes pointed out that Shata was obviously an Islamist, a writer for the Columbia Journalism Review dismissed Pipes as “right-wing” and insisted that Shata was “very moderate.”...

...Then there’s the art world. Postmodern artists who have always striven to shock and offend now maintain piously that Islam deserves “respect.” Museums and galleries have quietly taken down paintings that might upset Muslims and have put into storage manuscripts featuring images of Mohammed. London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery removed life-size nude dolls by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from a 2006 exhibit just before its opening; the official excuse was “space constraints,” but the curator admitted that the real reason was fear that the nudity might offend the gallery’s Muslim neighbors. Last November, after the cancellation of a show in The Hague of artworks depicting gay men in Mohammed masks, the artist, Sooreh Hera, charged the museum with giving in to Muslim threats. Tim Marlow of London’s White Cube Gallery notes that such self-censorship by artists and museums is now common, though “very few people have explicitly admitted” it. British artist Grayson Perry, whose work has mercilessly mocked Christianity, is one who has—and his reluctance isn’t about multicultural sensitivity. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art,” he told the Times of London, “is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”...

...This spring, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Times Magazine, actually gave two cheers for sharia. He contrasted it favorably with English common law, and described “the Islamists’ aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law” as “bold and noble.”

With the press, the entertainment industry, and prominent liberal thinkers all refusing to defend basic Western liberties, it’s not surprising that our political leaders have been pusillanimous, too. After a tiny Oslo newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish cartoons in early 2006, jihadists burned Norwegian flags and set fire to Norway’s embassy in Syria. Instead of standing up to the vandals, Norwegian leaders turned on Magazinet’s editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, partially blaming him for the embassy burning and pressing him to apologize. He finally gave way at a government-sponsored press conference, groveling before an assemblage of imams whose leader publicly forgave him and placed him under his protection. On that terrible day, Selbekk later acknowledged, “Norway went a long way toward allowing freedom of speech to become the Islamists’ hostage.” As if that capitulation weren’t disgrace enough, an official Norwegian delegation then traveled to Qatar and implored Qaradawi—a defender of suicide bombers and the murder of Jewish children—to accept Selbekk’s apology. “To meet Yusuf al-Qaradawi under the present circumstances,” Norwegian-Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi protested, was “tantamount to granting extreme Islamists . . . a right of joint consultation regarding how Norway should be governed.”....

...If you don’t find the dhimmification of politicians shocking, consider the degree to which law enforcement officers have yielded to Islamist pressure. Last year, when “Undercover Mosque,” an unusually frank exposé on Britain’s Channel 4, showed “moderate” Muslim preachers calling for the beating of wives and daughters and the murder of gays and apostates, police leaped into action—reporting the station to the government communications authority, Ofcom, for stirring up racial hatred. (Ofcom, to its credit, rejected the complaint.) The police reaction, as James Forsyth noted in the Spectator, “revealed a mindset that views the exposure of a problem as more of a problem than the problem itself.” Only days after the “Undercover Mosque” broadcast—in a colossal mark of indifference to the reality that it exposed—Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair announced plans to share antiterrorist intelligence with Muslim community leaders. These plans, fortunately, were later shelved...

...Even military leaders aren’t immune. In 2005, columnist Diana West noted that America’s Iraq commander, Lieutenant General John R. Vines, was educating his staff in Islam by giving them a reading list that “whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito”; two years later, West noted the unwillingness of a counterinsurgency advisor, Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, to mention jihad. In January 2008, the Pentagon fired Stephen Coughlin, its resident expert on sharia and jihad; reportedly, his acknowledgment that terrorism was motivated by jihad had antagonized an influential Muslim aide. “That Coughlin’s analyses would even be considered ‘controversial,’ ” wrote Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, “is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global terrorism.” (Perhaps owing to public outcry, officials announced in February that Coughlin would not be dismissed after all, but instead moved to another Department of Defense position.)

Enough. We need to recognize that the cultural jihadists hate our freedoms because those freedoms defy sharia, which they’re determined to impose on us. So far, they have been far less successful at rolling back freedom of speech and other liberties in the U.S. than in Europe, thanks in no small part to the First Amendment. Yet America is proving increasingly susceptible to their pressures....

Would God Ever Damn the NAACP?

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

--Comments of Margaret Sanger, foundress of Planned Parenthood, in a 1939 memo entitled “Suggestions for the Negro Project.”

By now you've all heard (and heard, and heard) of pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He's the firebrand preacher whose controversial statements are explained by his being in the "prophetic tradition" of the black church, by his fearless commitment to bring God's Truth to the people even if it's unwelcome, and by his ministry to Speak Truth to Power. In fact, when he made his most contorversial peroration about singing "God Bless America" but "God damn America", he delivered it in the form of a religious injunction: "No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America! That's in the Bible, for killing innocent people."

It's in the Bible, see.

So it's funny that there are times when Rev. Wright, our "shining light," "prophet", our speaker of truth to power, our explainer of the mind of God on national and foreign policy, can display all the delicate distaste for difficult subjects and politesse of the most uptight Ladies Auxiliary Tea when it comes to one certain subject.

Last year he gave an interview to the German magazine, Der Spiegel, during which he was asked about the proper Christian attitude towards abortion:

SPIEGEL: Can you be a good Christian and be pro-choice?

Wright: Both. You can be a good Christian and be pro-life. You can be a good Christian and be pro-choice.

SPIEGEL: You mean it's a purely political question and faith has nothing to say about it?

Wright: First of all, we shouldn’t even be having this discussion. Neither one of us can get pregnant. But what a woman decides about her body and her God is her business. Women who are pro-life can be just a good a Christian as a woman who is pro-choice and vice versa. It gets to be a problem when I decide one position should be the law for everybody. In public life, we have to find a way to live together even though we disagree -- and some things we will never agree on.

Isn't he polite? This is hardly the kind of all-or-nothing warning from Jehovah we've all enjoyed watching Rev. Wright lay out when it comes to something like, oh, American support for Israel. Rev. Wright then followed up his explanation that God can go either way on abortion this way:

...In public life, we have to find a way to live together even though we disagree -- and some things we will never agree on. But we've got to leave this I'm-going-to-kill-you-because-you-don't-believe-what-I-believe attitude behind.

I agree completely! By all means let's not embrace an I'm-going-to-kill-you-because-you-don't-believe-what-I-believe attitude, or, at least we shouldn't embrace it--provided we hold such an attitude. But I don't think I do, or you do, either. Last I looked, that attitude was still more of an Islamic thing.

Yet isn't it interesting how Rev. Wright seems so at peace, so unprophetic, and so downright divinely blasé with embracing this attitude:

“I’m going to kill you because I don’t want to carry you in my womb any more.”

Rev. Wright's views on abortion are indeed relevant to the rest of what he has to say, if for no other reason than they make him out the worst sort of hypocritical Christian minister.

A case in point: when Bill Moyers gave Rev. Wright the chance to explain his “God damn America” sermon, Rev. Wright answered this way:

When you start confusing God and government, your allegiances to government -a particular government and not to God, that you're in serious trouble because governments fail people. And governments change. And governments lie. And those three points of the sermon. And that is the context in which I was illustrating how the governments biblically and the governments since biblical times, up to our time, changed, how they failed, and how they lie. And when we start talking about my government right or wrong, I don't think that goes. That is consistent with what the will of God says or the word of God says that governments don't say right or wrong. That governments that wanna kill innocents are not consistent with the will of God. And that you are made in the image of God, you're not made in the image of any particular government.

Odd. There's Rev. Wright's sensitivity again about the "killing of innocents." Seems to be a real thing with him. Nor should there be any confusion here that when Wright says “governments that wanna kill innocents," he’s not talking about Sudan, Hamas, or Iran: no, he's talking about that unrighteous "U.S. of KKK A."

The context of Rev. Wright's "God damn" sermon was its delivery the Sunday after 9/11. He was preaching on Psalm 137, a Psalm about Israelite exile in Babylon, and which concludes with a shocking verse aimed at Israel's oppressors: "Blessed are they who dash your baby's brains against a rock." Rev. Wright's point was that Israelite anger against their Babylonian captors had grown beyond resentment of the Babylonian military regime, and degenerated into a blind vengeance against even the enemy's innocent babies. Drawing a comparison with, in his view, America's anger after 9/11, Rev. Wright said to his congregation,

“And that my beloved is a dangerous place to be. Yet, that is where the people of faith are in 551 BC and that is where far too many people of faith are in 2001 AD. We have moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents. We want revenge. We want paybacks and we don't care who gets hurt in the process.”

Which might be a compelling spiritual insight, if it accurately stated the American mind, at that time or since. Unfortunately, just like his parishioner, Barack Obama, Rev. Wright’s view of America is skewed beyond recognition; he seems incapable of describing anything resembling either the American mind, nor American history, except in the most caustic and (yes, I'll say it), anti-American terms. For instance, he said this in another sermon:

America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. (“Obama and the Minister”).

(Betcha didn’t know America imprisoned Nelson Mandela, you miseducated rubes).

It's true enough that in the wake of 9/11 we did want revenge, and payback, and some of us wanted serious action on the matter of re-establishing our neglected national security--which isn't a sin, unless you're a liberal.

But the idea that we didn't care, or don't care now, who gets hurt in the process is a slander that Wright, and the Left, have repeated without accountability for 7 years.

The truth is that not even the most hysterically anti-war activist in America has any real idea of the extent of military power the United States could exert if we ever actually took the gloves off. The last time we fought with a complete will to win was in 1945, and even then our restraint in warmaking was a thing of wonder, especially when compared with the combat tactics and genocidal policies of the Axis and even the Soviets--Nagasaki and Hiroshima notwithstanding. (Or is it necessary to be reminded that we were at war with Japan when we dropped those bombs?)

But when it comes to Rev. Wright's view of it that right after 9/11 America had “moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents,” I have no idea who he's talking about. I've never harbored any hatred for unarmed innocents in Afghanistan or Iraq, and I’ve grieved at every report of deaths of innocent civilians as an incident to these two wars--wars that I supported, and still support.

As far as I'm concerned, if we could have destroyed the Taliban (no innocents, them), and Saddam's regime without killing their soldiers, I’d be all for it. If we had to kill their soldiers to accomplish the mission, I'd have no objection. If, in order to neutralize their mischief-making, (and to counter their military strategy of immersing and disguising their soldiers in the civilian population) we had to not only kill their fighters but risk the unintended deaths of innocent civilians, I see no moral wrong in that. In moral theology, intentionality is critical. Unintended deaths are not murder, even in war.

Moreover, if, after 9/11, we really had responded, as Rev. Wright so casually misinforms his listeners that we did, without a care for "who gets hurt in the process," you can be sure our situation in the Middle East would look quite different. For one, we wouldn’t be fighting from cave to cave in Afghanistan, and watching helplessly as al Qaeda laughs at us from us over the border in Pakistan. We wouldn't be doing that because there wouldn’t be any Afghanistan left, and we long since would have shown our contempt for Pakistan's sovereignty in favor of our own stated mission to find terrorists wherever they were hiding.

Nor would there be any quarrels about nation-building or who gets the oil money in Iraq. There wouldn't be anything to build with, as Iraq would be gone, and all Iraqis, guilty or innocent, dead.

Instead, American casualties are higher now because we fight our wars with more care for sparing the unarmed fellow villagers of the guys who are trying to kill us than we do for making the most enemy soldiers dead, regardless of consequences. We're so careful about not hurting any innocent civilians, that even enemy warriors, (and a lot of enemy civilians), can find shelter under that umbrella of caution--shelter they then exploit to kill more of our guys. The number of American dead the Left claims to be in such pain about is in part caused by decisions to place our own fighters in harm's way expressly to keep Iraqi casualties down. The left shows its gratiude for that by calling our soldiers, Nazis, terrorists, and baby-killers--which that last one, coming from them, is really rich.

America really is exceptional. Until we came along history had no examples of any nation fighting wars this way.

All of which leads me back to my real point. Rev. Wright is 100% pro-abortion. (And although it's obvious that Barack Obama's political views can't be ascribed to his pastor, it's still hugely significant that, after 20 years of Wright's preaching, and after crediting Rev. Wright with leading him "to Christ," Obama has the most radical pro-choice record in the Senate, and no moral qualms whatsoever about blocking legislation that would protect the lives of live babies already delivered who survived botched abortions).

Being a pro-choice Christian pastor isn't just a moral inconsistency. It disqualifies Rev. Wright, absolutely and forever, from ever holding any moral high ground on the treatment of “unarmed innocents.” (Nor, for that matter, does Rev. Wright have moral seriousness on the subject of justice to the poor, regardless of his church's record of social service work in inner-city Chicago. The poorest homeless man, single mother, or jobless ex-con has wealth and opportunities beyond imagination compared to a babe-in-the-womb whose mother has made up her mind to snuff it out. You can't get any poorer than that.)

American military doctrine since the last century has consistently employed restraint and aversion to anything approaching total war. Once we've made a decision for war, we are prepared to kill, and we will if we have to, but if we don’t have to, we won’t. That is our history. In just-war theory, this is called the proportional use of force, i.e., the least amount of focre necessary, and it's completely consistent with justice. (Pacifism is not consistent with justice; it can't be, since it must make peace with injustice, and never fight). The United States of America is history’s foremost example of the use of proportional force. Yes, innocent civilians die in every American war. But we work pretty hard to see that they don't. Americans die in the effort to see that they don't. Though the Left's bent reckoning always has them labeling all unintended civilian deaths "murder," or instances of American "terrorism," there is no moral basis for such charges.

It’s the intentionality thing again.

Whereas, in contrast, a decision to abort has no proportionality. Just as you can't be a little bit pregnant, you can't terminate a pregnancy by the least amount necessary. It's always going to go all the way. (Unless something goes wrong, in which case Barack Obama wants the law to tolerate finishing you off).

And in comparison to war, when it comes to intentionality abortion always lands on the wrong side of the ledger --because its object is not only a possibility, but a foregone conclusion. It isn’t motherhood by other means., as war may be diplomacy by other means. Abortion only ends one way: that is, with the enemy, and all his future offspring, annihilated, entirely.

There is no diplomacy, no negotiating with the “people we don’t like,” (like our unwanted unborn babies), no bridge programs. There are no fetuses writing supercilious think pieces analyzing their mother's motives and plaintively asking “Why do they hate us”? Neither Jimmy Carter nor Jesse Jackson has ever been known to embark on a peace mission between mother and child. Ramsey Clark never lends his expertise.

Instead, there’s only one doctor, one mother, and one corpse, or what would have been a corpse, except its usually in pieces, and literally, “unarmed,” having as likely as not experienced having its limbs torn off to effect 'justice" for its mother:

“In a D&E procedure, the physician inserts forceps into the uterus, grasps a part of the fetus, commonly an arm or a leg, and draws that part out of the uterus into the vagina. Using the traction created between the mouth of the cervix and the pull of the forceps, the physician dismembers the fetal part which has been brought into the vagina, and removes it from the woman's body. The rest of the fetus remains in the uterus while dismemberment occurs, and is often still living.”

Now, in fairness to Rev. Wright, he did criticize America from pulpit, and on the LORD's behalf, that “. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . .”

But he was talking about American support for Israel, not unborn babies.

He also condemned America, Elijah-like, because "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye." I don't know that we never batted an eye. But abortion destroyed 500,00 black babies in 2006 alone, and we're not even at war with blacks or babies. (Or are we?)

Last April, Dr. Alveda King, niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the NAACP (though not as keynote speaker), though her speech received small notice. ("MLK Niece Urges NAACP to Adopt Anti-Abortion Resolution"). She asked the civil rights group to adopt a resolution addressing the impact of abortion on the black community. Dr. King told the NAACP that, today, "there is no greater injustice facing black people than abortion.”

There's no indication the NAACP adopted the resolution nor, for that matter, has ever "batted an eye" over the tens of millions of black babies who never lived to enjoy Advancement.

Instead, this year they invited Rev. Wright to tell them what God wants them to do. Rev. Wright, the pro-choice advocate, and morally compromised pretender to champion of "unarmed innocents." He'll be addressing the NAACP in Detroit on Sunday night.

Our friends at Joshua's Trail are participating in a demonstration on Sunday at Cobo Hall, where the NAACP is holding its event, hoping to remind the group of their civil-rights roots. You may want to drop by between 3-6 pm.

'Jihadists! Have You Ever Thought About Working for the FBI?'

From The Investigative Project on Terrorism:

For the Record: Seriously, What is the FBI Doing?

IPT News
April 7, 2008

In February, we exposed the latest FBI (and CIA) outrage, advertising for recruits in a pro-terrorist, anti-American magazine, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) - (see: Looking Under a Rock: FBI and CIA Hit New Low in Recruitment Drive). Both of our top national security agencies had placed online advertisements on the webpage of a magazine that included a hagiography to a terrorist the FBI had worked almost a decade to investigate and prosecute, Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian.

Just over a month later, it is clear that the FBI has learned nothing. The agency is advertising for recruits in the Arab American News, another publication with a long history of support for terrorism, terrorists and terrorist organizations.

The current edition has an editorial titled, "Let our people go!," under an ad banner recruiting for the FBI (which also appears on the home page of the website), about accused Iraqi spy Muthanna al-Hanooti, which states:

Arab American political activist Muthanna al-Hanooti was arrested and jailed this week by federal officials upon arrival at Detroit Metropolitan Airport returning from a trip to the Middle East. The following day he was charged with two counts of conspiracy and three counts of lying to the FBI about working for agents with the Iraqi Intelligence Service under Saddam Hussein. (emphasis added)

The editorial goes on to state:

We see a man who worked tirelessly trying to prevent a catastrophe for his homeland and for his new country. We see a guy who, rather than pick up a gun and kill somebody to reach his political goals, chose to participate in the American political system because he believed in it. He believed justice would be served if only more people knew the real story of what was going on in Iraq.

So there you have it. The FBI is advertising for recruits in a publication which proclaims the innocence of an alleged Iraqi spy accused of lying …. to the FBI, and claims that being a paid intelligence asset of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime is participating "in the American political system."

Understanding the FBI's need for Arabic translators and Arabic speaking agents and analysts is one thing. Seeing the agency advertise for recruits in pro-terrorist publications – including one that discounts making false statements to the FBI! - is quite another. As we stated in February when it became known that the FBI and CIA were advertising in WRMEA, Congress needs to immediately investigate these agencies' recruiting techniques.

The ZOA's Letter to Rev. Wendell Anthony

The Zionist Organization of America's request to the NAACP to withdraw the invitation to Jeremiah Wright to address the organziation's Freedom Fund Dinner on Sunday. Go to the original at the Detroit News Online to get all the live internal links.

Reverend Wendell Anthony
President
Detroit Branch
National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP)
8220 Second Avenue
Detroit, MI 48202


Dear Rev. Anthony,

We are writing to you having read reports that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has extended an invitation to Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ to address the 53rd Annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner that the Detroit branch of the NAACP is holding on April 27.

We are appalled to learn of the invitation to Rev. Wright no less than we have been disturbed to hear of the rationale for the invitation that has been offered by your Communications Director, Ms. LaToya Henry. Ms. Henry has been quoted as saying that Rev. Wright “has challenged the nation, challenged our comfort zone and stimulated nation-wide discussion on the issues of how we must move forward together as both a nation and a people. We look forward to his participation.”

Rev. Wright's statements and record include the following:

“The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing, 'God bless America? No, no, no, God damn America that's in the bible for killing innocent people, God damn America for treating its citizens as less than human” (2003 sermon, quoted in Brian Ross & Rehab El-Buri, 'Obama's pastor: God damn America, U.S. to blame for 9/11,' abcnews.go.com, March 13, 2008; viewable at 'Barack Obama Pastor Jeremiah Wright NEW TAPES!!!!,' Youtube, March 15, 2008).

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant that the stuff we have done is now brought back into our front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost” (2003 sermon, quoted in Brian Ross & Rehab El-Buri, 'Obama's pastor: God damn America, U.S. to blame for 9/11,' abcnews.go.com, March 13, 2008).

“America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.” (Howard University address, quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama and the Minister,' Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008).


“Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run” (Howard University address, quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama Minister's Hatred of America,'Newsmax.com, March 14, 2008).

“We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . .” (Quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama and the Minister,' Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008).

“We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . .” (Quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama and the Minister,' Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008).

“The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for almost 40 years now. It took a divestment campaign to wake the business community up concerning the South Africa issue. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community up and to wake Americans up concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism” (Quoted in Jim Davis, 'Obama's Church: Cauldron of Division,' Newsmax.com, August 9, 2007).

Wright's church website: “Our racist competitive society” ; disavows the pursuit of “middleclassness,” defined as a trap designed by America to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off” or “placing them in concentration camps.”

On black supremacist anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, upon whom Wright's Trinity Church conferred in 2007 a Lifetime Achievement Award, Wright said in the church's magazine, Trumpet: “His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye-opening … He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest” (Quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama and the Minister,' Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008).

Rev. Wright's church also posted a manifesto from the Islamist terror organization, Hamas, which calls in its Charter for the destruction of Israel (Article 15) and the murder of Jews (Article 7). Obscenely, the Hamas manifesto, which defended terrorism as a form of legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group's official charter to America's Declaration of Independence.

[Paraphrasing the alleged beliefs of white Americans] “We believe God sanctioned the rape and robbery of an entire continent, we believe God ordained African slavery, we believe God makes Europeans superior to Africans and superior to everyone else” ('Barack Obama Pastor Jeremiah Wright NEW TAPES!!!!,' Youtube, March 15, 2008).

“When [Obama's] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, “a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell” (Quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama Attended Hate America Sermon,' Newsmax.com, March 16, 2008). [Visiting Libya in 1984 was illegal under U.S. law]

This record of words and deeds does not challenge the nation - it defames it, not least the many who have fought racism and the hundreds of thousands who gave their lives in a civil war that ended slavery. It does not challenge comfort zones - unless decency and truth are comfort zones that should be relinquished. It does not stimulate discussion - it precludes it.

Would the NAACP see nothing wrong if another organization invited a white supremacist pastor who railed regularly against blacks and accused them of bringing down civilization? How would the NAACP react if another organization honored with a major award white supremacist and hater of African-Americans David Duke? We do not believe that the NAACP would regard such an invitation as either proper or acceptable.

The demonization of America as an inherently racist society by Rev. Wright is nothing less than a repudiation of the NAACP's own commitment to advancing the cause of minorities, in the words of your own website, through a “deeper form of justice that derives from the very spirit upon which this country was founded.”

We are therefore appalled that the NAACP, an organization charged with fighting racism and bigotry, has invited a man like Rev. Wright, who promotes hatred of America, hatred of white people and hatred of Israel based on falsehoods to address its major fund-raising event. Surely, the NAACP should be publicly condemning Rev. Wright and shunning him, not honoring him with a platform to disseminate further his ugly views.

We earnestly urge you to rescind this invitation to Rev. Wright. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,

Morton A. Klein
National President
Zionist Organization of America

Dearborn Heights Imam Says Wright Is on 'Mission of Jesus'

Our friends at the Zionist Organization of America wrote a polite but firm letter to Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, asking him to rescind the decision to honor Rev. Jeremiah Wright with a national forum at their convention in Detroit this Sunday.

Wright is an outspoken anti-Semite who, among other things, lent his own Pastor’s Column in the church newsletter to a Hamas spokesman. The ZOA letter to Rev. Anthony lays out in detail the offending remarks of Rev. Wright. It is well worth reading for its own sake, and I'll post it separately.

Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, head of the Islamic House of Worship in Dearborn Heights, responded to the ZOA's request in the Detroit News by defending Wright, whom he calls “a shining light, bringing dignity and integrity to our nation. His voice represents the mission of Jesus and the call for freedom and justice.”

Elahi, with the sort of logical leap and moral relativism we’re many of us getting so tired of trying to answer, tries to accuse the ZOA of hypocrisy because, while requested the NAACP not to invite an anti-Semite to give a sermon at their Fight For Freedom Fund Dinner, the ZOA itself “didn't apologize for the huge betrayal of our national security when Ben-Ami Kadish allegedly passed classified U.S. nuclear weaponry documents to Israel.”

Ben-Ami Kadesh, for those of you who haven't heard of him, was reported charged by US authorities with espionage only two days ago. I would imagine that no one at the ZOA even knew who Kadish was at the time they wrote their letter to Anthony, let alone assumed moral responsibility for everything Kadish ever did or didn’t do.

Clearly Ali Elahi doesn’t know, nor care, whether what he says about the ZOA or Kadish is true, false, or ludicrous. His only interest in defending Wright now is to exploit Wright's useful-idiot value as someone who can be counted by Israel's enemies on to lend his voice—the voice that “represents the mission of Jesus”—for parroting Hamas propaganda and other Jew-hating misinformation.

How the CIA Created AIDS in Their Lab

Yesterday on WCHB’s morning talk show, Mildred Gaddis’s Inside Detroit, I happened to hear a reference to a story about “a Clinton pastor” who was just sentenced to 3 years in prison for child sexual abuse.

Ms. Gaddis, and some of her callers were wanting to know why the media was ignoring this story. After all, if the Clinton's own pastor just got sentenced for abusing a 7-year-old, that would take some serious wind out of Hillary’s sails after all the criticism she’s heaped on poor Obama for his refusal to denounce Rev. Wright.

As one blogger repeating the story wrote:

The blogs are talking about it, but the mainstream news is not. Still, this is interesting. Blogs such as AdvanceAmericablog, commondreams. org, the National Journal's Hotline, and wakeupfromyourslumber. com are talking about the scandal that has enveloped the former Pastor of the Clintons, but it appears only the Utica, NY newspaper is covering the story. The rest of the mainstream media is silent. Perhaps the story isn't divisive enough for the mainstream media to take notice. Of course, it is as unfair to blame Hillary Clinton for her former pastor's abuses just as it is unfair to blame Barack Obama for Rev. Wright. Still, that means the mainstream media is far more enamored of condemning Obama for his Rev. Wright's tirades about 9/11 and race than it is concerned with the plight of a seven year old girl abused by Hillary Clinton's former pastor.

Then I heard Ms. Gaddis mentioning it again this morning, and again with the emphasis on why no one in the media was talking about it.

Ms. Gaddis is very smart and runs a good talk show.

Which is why I was surprised she was still talking about it today. Because, based on what I heard yesterday on WCHB, I was able to find out before 8:30 am Thursday that the story is false, as it’s being told, and predicated on a pretty silly mistake.

It turns out the convicted pastor, Rev. William Procanick, 54, is a former pastor of Resurrection Assembly of God Church in Clinton, N.Y. So he is a "Clinton pastor" in one sense only, that he used to be a pastor in a town called Clinton. Moreover, it's fairly well known that Hillary is a Methodist. Nor does the original report even mention the former First Lady and her husband.

That’s it. No connection with the Clintons at all.

But the story of the Clinton pastor that Hillary must now denounce still has wheels, for now.

It was being told on a website called AlterNet, and it's appeared as a topic for discussion at Democratic Underground (no relation to the true Underground).

Sample comment on the posting: “Hillary sat in the pews for 20 years and watched this creep sexual [sic] abuse children?”

When I tried to get the details for myself after hearing it on WCHB, I soon found out why the media wasn’t covering it. The mix-up was briefly explained by Madison Times reporter George Curry. ("Wright’s words used for political gain").

It was a small-time story about a nasty crime--grave enough for the victims, but hardly a national story except when linked --erroneously--with the notion that it involves the former President and Hillary.

The interesting thing to me is the carelessness with which this story was picked up by people who should have known better, such as Ms. Gaddis, and the next thing you now it is a national "scandal."

Ms. Gaddis--who really is quite sharp, was still repeating it as a fact even after 24 hours, when it could have been easily vetted and debunked with minimal Googling and, in her case, she might have been corrected by a message from one of her thousands of listeners advising her of her error.

Also, on the discussion boards, I saw no posters either challenging the truth of the story, or even curious about the when, where, how, and why of a “Clinton pastor” emerging in a town the Clintons never lived in, and that no one had ever heard of before, nor why the story doesn’t even mention the Clintons.

This isn’t sloppy journalism, or at least not as far as I can tell. I don’t know if it was a journalist at all who first saw the phrase, “Clinton pastor sentenced,” and gleefully started calling his Obama-supporting friends about a story to good to be true.

But for some people in the country right now, the sentencing of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s pastor for a sex crime with a child is almost as solid an historical fact as the occurrence of their own birth.

That's how easy that can be. And this particular urban legend, in my estimation, was probably the result of an accidental misreading of the original report.

Now, imagine the opportunities for mischief from someone really trying to spread disinformation.

McCain Attacks Bush in Shameless Pander to Black Voters

Every time I start to think I can stand this guy, he does something like this:

McCain Criticizes Katrina Response as ‘Disgraceful’

There's nothing honorable about disloyalty, even in a war hero.

Not a word, you will notice, about the utter failure of state and local Democratic leaders.

The UN Wondering If Free Speech Has Had Its Day

I suppose one advantage to being a small, insignificant blog is that we may escape the notice of the enforcement powers of the United Nations Durban II conference. Because according to Durban II’s definitions, since we are regular champions of freedom of expression, and regularly commit the crime of “Islamophobia.”

From National Review Online:
Redefining Anti-Semitism

At Durban II, only anti-Muslim racism counts.

By Anne Bayefsky

Geneva — Tuesday was Day 2 of the United Nations hatefest known as the “first substantive session of the Durban Review Preparatory Committee,” now taking place in Geneva. Delegates rolled up their sleeves, and the Jewish and Western-bashing exercise entered a new phase.

The Egyptian representative gave a good summary of most everything wrong with Durban II. He claimed the conference and its preparatory process should focus on criminalizing “racial profiling,” “racism in the media,” “the challenges posed by Islamophobia since the events on 9/11,” and “instrumentalization of democratic processes for racist applications.” In short, racism is an evil Western plot to victimize Muslims, who can only be protected by the undermining of democracy, freedom, and law enforcement.

The Ambassador of Sri Lanka was more philosophical. In his words, “the relationship between racial discrimination and freedom of expression is a complex and dialectical one; more freedom of expression is not an antidote to racial discrimination.”

The Algerian Ambassador took the U.N. Durban II platform to claim “anti-semitism . . . targets . . . Arabs who are also Semites, and by extension, the whole Muslim community.” Defining anti-Semitism this way has become a key component of the Durban II strategy, since once the concept has been Islamicized, Muslim states are happy to shout about taking it very seriously, confident that Western UN-ophiles still won’t catch on to their game.

While the European Union attendees stayed in their seats, the assault on democracy carried on. Algeria said “freedom of expression spread[s] hatred and violence and lead[s] to the burning of mosques in ‘advanced’ countries.” Syria ranted about “the crimes that are perpetrated in the name of democracy” and the “killers” that “are countries that advocate democracy . . . and give [a] free hand to perpetrate massacres.”

U.N. “expert” Doudou Diene from Senegal — whose name has been bandied about as a possible successor to the current U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who retires in June — worried about “groups that have instrumentalized the freedom of expression” and the so-called “ideological freedom of expression.” According to Diene, “we should no longer use freedom of expression as the ideological tool [it is] . . . today.” The “Danish caricatures” cannot be tolerated in the name of freedom of expression “anymore.”

Though the United States is boycotting the forum, American taxpayers will be surprised to learn that — if the U.N. gets its way — they are still paying for it. The U.N. Secretariat revealed a new end-run around the U.S. promise not to fund Durban II. The secretariat announced that they had cut their original $7 million price tag for the preparatory side of Durban II in half. The other half will be “absorbed in existing resources” — a euphemism for using funds already in U.N. coffers, 22 percent of which are from American taxes. Washington is now faced with ensuring that this brazen attempt to avoid official American policy does not succeed.

And the EU is faced with the impossible task of keeping a straight face while speechifying that Durban II is good for human rights.

— Anne Bayefsky is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. She also serves as the director of the Touro Institute for Human Rights and the Holocaust and as the editor of EYEontheUN.org.

'Won't Get Took Again'?

Anybody else hear a big cracking sound? That might be the backbone of the Democratic Party snapping. (Yeah, it doesn't make much of sound at that.)

Black voters in Detroit are angry at what, already, they consider the hijacking by Bill and Hillary’s team of Obama’s nomination for president.

Callers to WCHB this morning, (Detroit’s biggest black talk radio channel), were threatening to leave the Democratic Party, and either skip the election this year or vote “independent,” (presumably because folks aren’t independent enough to vote Republican yet).

Mildred Gaddis seemed to be stumping for a boycott of the presidential election so that Hillary loses. One of her callers described how she has always voted the Dem ticket, but now for the first time is going to vote “independent,” namely, make up her own mind based on a candidate’s qualifications—as if that is a novelty for American voters! (Unfortunately, it's too much of a novelty for black Democratic voters).

If blacks defect, I don’t see how the Democrats could win in November, nor recover as a national party.

The irony of it would be almost too much to take.

For nearly 40 years now Democratic leaders have counted on a loyal cadre of paid-for clergymen, corrupt local politicians, and other union and “civic” organizers/hustlers to feed a steady diet of sound-bites, rumors, half-truths and falsehoods into the black community to keep the knowledge base diluted and the electorate disinformed. The whole strategy was to persaude black voters that all that stood between them and the malevolent forces dying to push them back down into Jim Crow and second-class status was the Party of God and civil rights--the Democrats. It was bullshit then, and it's so far past bullshit now that it's not even funny.

But this is funny: Now, that same sound-bite machine is smoking and throwing off sparks, imploding with the news getting around in the black community that “they’re” trying to steal the nomination from Obama so they can give it to “Billary.”

And this time, “they” doesn’t mean Republicans, conservatives, or (as they are called by the precious black clergy) “the Bushies”: instead I’m hearing names being thrown around like Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, Jennifer Granholm, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The fact that Obama’s nomination, while it still seems a live possibility, is not yet his officially enough to be hijacked, is beside the point. Facts have always been the least of it in this kind of politics. We’re talking here about catechism by sound bite, about a voting block of millions with a knowledge of history and political science based almost entirely on rumors and interpreters like Wright, Farrakhan, and Sharpton. Thanks in part to the endless, deliberate racial baiting of black Americans by the Left, the black community—as a political block, anyway—has been conditioned to respond to all “injustices” by embracing conspiracy theories and echoing fables that forever after cannot be disproved.

Facts were equally beside the point in the OJ trial, in Florida in 2000, or after Katrina. In November 2000 the lie was spread in Florida, (Democratic operatives abandoned this lie within scant hours once they realized how much attention was going to get paid) that police barricades and guard dogs had been used in Broward County to prevent black supporters of Al Gore from reaching the polls. Farrakhan stole this lie and re-used it in slightly modified form after Hurricane Katrina, claiming that black residents fleeing high water in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans were prevented from crossing an overpass into a dry “white” neighborhoods by police barricades and machine-gun nests, leaving them to drown or starve to death.

The real lesson in the Jeremiah Wright story isn’t that one Chicago preacher is either racist or anti-American, (though he’s both), or that Obama proved his cynicism by attaching himself to Wright just to have a channel into Chicago’s black community. The real lesson is that there’s a voting constituency eager to defend Wright by defining themselves as sharing a common black “experience” that transforms fables about AIDS being invented in a laboratory to kill blacks, or about the US Coast Guard blowing up the New Orleans levees, or that there is a mother ship hovering above Planet Earth to rescue blacks, into historical truth. (Some may object that I am painting with too broad a brush by ascribing this level of incredulity to the entire black voting block. But for weeks I’ve heard countless black commentators explaining that Wright’s remarks are not only understandable—but substantially true--if you are a black person).

What gives these stories their power isn't their fantastic quality so much as their reuse of the theme of black victimhood at the hands of tricky whites, stories that always trace out the same pattern of racial malice and deception as laid down, in one of its Ur-versions, by Malcolm X, and then re-told about the White Man in every generation since:

“Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had!

“Ya been took!

“Ya been hoodwinked!

“Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok!

“This is what He does….”

“He” being the White Man.

Except in this case, “He” isn't Dick Cheney or Don Imus, or Trent Lott.

"He" is Carl Levin, or Howard Dean. Or Billary.

In fairness to the ancient tale of bamboozlement, I guess the Democrats really have bamboozled the blacks. That's what Democrats do best. They even know how to hoodwink themselves. And the blacks really did get took. Run amock. No doubt about it. How else to explain the blind devotion of the victims of Jim Crow and the KKK to the party of Jim Crow and the KKK??

That is some first class example of bamboozle.

But Democrats, by managing now to make themselves the villain in this most recent Jena-Selma-Katrina-Lynching serial drama, (the one where Obama gets screwed out of his God-given entitlement to be President), have practically invited 20-some million potential black voters to abandon the party all together.

Which is exactly how the Democrats getting blown ass-over-teakettle by their own dropped racial grenade reaches its highest altitude of irony.

They've spent forty years spoon-feeding black voters on the politics of envy, anger, victimhood, and racial resentment. They worked things so bad for their black constituency that political goals in that community--more than forty years afte the Voting Rights Act--still haven't even evolved beyond using political office to spite imagined enemies or enrich corrupt leaders. As Detroit is the living, bleeding embodiment, black support is never the reward for a record of any measurable political or social gain. The reward is just getting it from them, and keeping it for us.

But the lack of clear political goals and social benefits has been a real benefit for the Democratic operatives working to keep blacks loyal, on board, or at least only manageably disaffected.

The lack of measurable goals spares Democrats accounting for why their policies fail to improve the lives of blacks. If the objects were better schools, for instance, or more jobs, or restored cities, Democrats would have to own up to being total failures. It bears little reminding that the places where the most Democrats lord it over the densest black populations are the places where the short end of the stick is shortest--places like, say, Detroit or New Orleans. If you sell people vacuous buzz phrases like “racial justice” in place of rational political metrics like better schools, or business investment that bring jobs, Democratic candidates need only ask every election time (like they’re asking now): “Are you more angry, frustrated, and suspicious now than you were four years ago? You are? Then vote for me, because we hate those people too!”

In Detroit, there’s a high school graduation rate somewhere down around 25% (we can’t be sure because no one here ever learned to do percentages). But there'll be no political consequence for this failure. That's because control of the cash-rich district is a “prize” all on its own, even if only a few district cronies get to enjoy it. A public school system's got little, or--in Detroit's case--nothing, to do with enriching and educating the city’s young people or making the city a more attractive place to live. The purpose of a school district is its value as a political fief, and a jobs and retirement program for teacher unions, income supplement for crooked preachers who get rich selling service contracts to the district, and general money trough for hangers-on of the city’s decades-old Democrat machine.

Now, because the national Democratic leadership are beginning to discuss, just maybe, throwing over the faltering and unready Obama in favor of a Hillary candidate in November, black voters who've grown very fond of Obama are getting that old hoodwinky feeling again.

The Democrats are facing the unintended consequence of Obama’s unexpected success: that black Americans would support Obama for their own independent reasons of pride and hope, reasons unrelated to reflexive obedience to long conditioning to just keep pulling that lever, regardless, for the ticket with the donkey picture at the top.

I think Howard Dean and Carl Levin were so jazzed at the idea of one of their most leftist Leftists in the Oval Office, enjoying unfettered tax raising power and Middle East partnering in Democratic 2009, they couldn't be bothered asking themselves if Conyers’s and Waters’s and Jackson-Lee’s compliant constituents would march in on Election Day and vote for whomever they were told to--just as they were trained to do—even if it meant turning their back on one of their own.

Meanwhile, without waiting to be ordered to do so by the national party, black Democrats adopted Obama, the smooth-talking handsome upstart, and started seeing him as “our” candidate. And in the politics of race, and envy, and mistrust, you just can't have an "us" without an enemy “them.”

And if there’s one thing Democrats have told black voters over and over and over, it’s: "Can't trust 'them.' They're tricky! Don't get took!"

Which worked fine, as long as the Dems got to define who "them" was.

But now the party that perfected the campaign appeal of
"vote for us, and we'll keep you from getting took by them,"
now is "them."

Even if Dean and the rest try to enforce party discipline (hah!), or explain the advantages of winning the White House with Hillary over losing it with Barack, it will sound (it already sounds, from what I heard today on Detroit talk radio) like nothing more than more wicked trickery laid down by one more doctor with an advanced degree in bamboozleology--trying to hoodwink us, again.

This can only get better for everyone.

Emailing Us

Due to the incompetence of our IT department, (me), our blog is often far from cutting edge, technically speaking, (while remaining steadily cutting edge in content).

For example, when I started the blog, for security reasons I arranged email to go through a blind third-party, but soon found out that incoming emails were also having their addresses blocked out, so I wasn't able to answer them.

Our official email is now through the EMAIL US link right at the top of our blog. But now and then someone emails me through the old link that I included in the Why Dearborn Underground? document. I finally caught that error, and I think it's fixed now.

Long story short, if you wish to write to us more directly than through the Comments feature, you can click on EMAIL US, or http://www.contactify.com/dd68d, and I will be able to see your address and reply. As always, public or private comments or messages are most welcome.

I mention it now because I received an email through the old third-party email server from a Toledo reader signing as "dm," and couldn't reply. I hope that person writes again, and I apologize for being so Delta Geek.

Intelligence Allowed Here: 'Expelled' Is Worth Seeing

I went to see Ben Stein's new documentary today, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and I recommend it, for what that's worth to anybody. If nothing else, Stein is striking a blow for freedom of speech and thought, something that is dear to our hearts here at Dearborn Underground.

The same mentality that presumes to declare debates "closed" on things like abortion and global warming first found its domineering voice deploying to an irrestible effect the Darwinian theory. Strictly aside from its scientific value or lack of same, the thought control and persecution accompanying the protection and passing on of this theory is something to behold.

As I have repeated often, DU is not a religious blog, except when we simply can't help it, and none of the many knots into which my knotty innards are tied result from controversies over Intelligent Design. I'm a Catholic so I believe in an omnipotent Creator, as prominently mentioned in Article I of our Creed. Nor do I believe humands descended from apes, accidentally or otherwise.

But aside from that I'm a committed skeptic on the subject of scientism. I can't think of a worse class of persons for society to hand control of life-and-death questions to than scientists, especially doctors, who proved their moral unfitness for such a role in the Third Reich, and repeatedly since then in inventing partial-birth infanticide, insane theories about population reduction, and who believe that euthanasia falls within their competence because they've got medical degrees.

Ben Stein also remind his audience of the link between both Darwinism and Nazism, (the former being a conditiion precedent for the latter), and Darwinism and the Planned Parenthood movement of the arch-racist Margaret Sanger. National Review Online's David Klinghoffer reviews the Nazi angle of Expelled in "Don’t Doubt It. An important historic sidebar."

I also find Expelled's release yesterday uncannily timely to illustrate two issues we've all been following the last couple of weeks.

One is a brief cut in Expelled of the odious harlequin Bill Maher, in an appearance who knows how old now, declaring that when it comes to government restrictions on dangerous things, drugs and guns pose much less of a threat to us than religion does--and therefore needs to be closely regulated (prohibited). Obviously, the footage of Maher in Ben Stein's documentary was inserted without knowing in advance Maher would make his childish remarks last week about the Pope and the Church on HBO.

I believe Maher's a fallen away Catholic, and there's no novelty for me any more witnessing the lengths a lapsed Christian will go to escape (as Flannery O'Connor wrote), the "ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of the mind, pursuing the unwilling."

In this regard Maher is just a bore, and he was probably a flop when he first tried out this material in third grade. But the point is that Maher stood before adoring fans and actually advocated for the demolition of the First Amendment--to applause.

He doesn't scare me--they do.

Second, there are the interviews with the spokespersons for Darwinism in Expelled.

If you thought Obama's remarks about ignorant, desperate crackers clinging to God and guns in bitter befuddlement that Washington D.C. hadn't sent them a return-to-work notice, you really need to see Richard Dawkins and other supercilious scientists explaining all opposition to Darwinism in nonscientifc terms like "idiot, ignorant, stupid, insane," etc., etc.

Last of all, there is the media's tacit collusion, (as damning a piece of evidence as any smoking gun) to refuse to even review, screen, or allow any worth to the film at all. The Detroit News's Tom Long had to invent a "Hall of Shame" to avoid having to deal with it, (excuse: no advance peek), and the Detroit Free Press relied on an Orlando Sentinel hatchet job. ("Deceitful 'Expelled' takes on evolution"). If you don't want to read DFP review, I'll clue you in that the reviewer never took time off from calling Stein names to actually identify a single thing he said that was "deceptive." Instead, we get this:

"Expelled" relies on the viewer's inability or unwillingness to wrestle with a complex corner of science, double-talking its way toward a "must be a miracle" solution to anything that science may not claim to have an answer for. Dismiss that for having no basis in fact, and you're infringing on "academic freedom."

Two which I have two comments as "the viewer":

a) me 2 dumm to rassle with $ciancE, and

b) Nowhere in the film does Stein come anywhere near stating existence "must be a miracle."

My suggestions:

Stick it to the man.

Question consensus.

See this movie.

Today Gaza, Tomorrow Rome!

Somehow after watching Pope Benedict XVI through this week, Hamas's particular threat doesn't have me too concerned. But for those of you who believe there is a spiritual warfare going on, this does have signficance.

Muslim cleric proclaims Rome will soon be conquered by Islam

CNA STAFF, Apr 14, 2008 / 09:17 pm (CNA).- A high profile Muslim cleric and Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament gave a sermon last Friday [April 11] in which he declared that soon Rome, “the capital of the Catholics” will be soon overtaken by Islam.

Yunis al-Astal, the cleric in question, told his listeners that “Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our Prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam…”

The diatribe was aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV and predicted that Rome would become "an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe."

"Allah has chosen you for Himself and for His religion," al-Astal declared, "so that you will serve as the engine pulling this nation to the phase of succession, security and consolidation of power, and even to conquests through da'wa and military conquests of the capitals of the entire world."

According to FOX News, Al-Astal preached last June that it was the duty of Palestinian women to martyr themselves by becoming homicide bombers.

"When jihad becomes an individual duty, it applies to women too, because women do not differ from men when it comes to individual duties," he said in a June 23, 2007 interview. Al-Astal also called Jews "the brothers of apes and pigs" who should "taste the bitterness of death” in the interview.

The parliamentarian returned to this slur on Friday, saying that Rome “has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam.”

"I believe that our children, or our grandchildren, will inherit our jihad and our sacrifices, and, Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them,” Al-Astal said.

"Today, we instill these good tidings in their souls – and by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our Prophets, his companions, and the great leaders, we prepare them for the mission of saving humanity from the hellfire at whose brink they stand."

To view video of Yunis Al-Astal go to: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1739.htm

Carter Lies, Gazans Die

In the same Associated Press article where His Holiness, (I mean the other one), Jimmy Carter, explains his moral rectitude in honoring murderers of schoolchildren and ignoring the reasonable and lawful prohibitions of US citizens treating with terrorist organizations with an audacious claim that he is "immune from such restrictions," ("Carter slams Israeli actions in Gaza Strip"), the AP reports that

As Carter was meeting with Hamas officials, Israeli troops fended off Palestinian gunmen who assaulted a crossing on the Gaza Strip border Thursday, thwarting the third attempt by militants to infiltrate into Israel in a week.

One Palestinian was reported killed in the clash, which followed a day of fighting between Israeli forces and Gaza militants.

When the AP says "Palestinian gunmen," they mean "Hamas gunmen," that is, the people Carter went over their to cuddle with. Hamas is in complete control of Gaza, directs all its military operations against Israel launched from Gaza, and killed or otherwise removed from the equation any rival Fatah gunmen during their bloody coup last year.

Today, by way of divine confirmation of Carter's mission, Hamas staged a suicide bombing at a border crossing where food and humanitarian supplies come through from Israel, in order "to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that would lead to international pressure on Israel." The strategy will come at the direct expense of Gazans, of course. ("Palestinian Suicide Bombers Attack Gaza Crossing").

Carter has blamed all recent problems on the "apartheid" policies of Israel.

He is such a toad. Hamas hasn't blown up Egypt's humanitarian border crossing with Gaza, because Egypt shut their border with Gaza rather than let these creeps into their country, and they don't send humanitarian aid into Gaza! But will Jimmy accuse Egypt of gencoide and call them an apartheid state?

Hamas has also very publicly announced their refusal of Carter's pretty-pleases to stop firing rockets into Israel or to release Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, held hostage--or worse--since June 2006.

I shudder to think how, having tired of making a fool of Carter--for whom I can't imagine they have a sliver of respect--Hamas's thugs may feel inclined to turn to humiliating Carter's poor wife Rosalynn just to see if there is anything they can do to make that damned peanut farmer evince some semblance of manly self-respect.

Carter States the Obvious

As reported Friday in the AP ("Carter slams Israeli actions in Gaza Strip "):


CAIRO, Egypt -- Former President Carter told a university audience here Thursday that the treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military was "a crime" while adding that there are "officials in Israel quite willing to meet with Hamas" and that might happen "in the near future."

Carter spoke to students and faculty at the American University in Cairo after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and a separate three-hour meeting with Hamas officials. The Bush administration and Israel have set rules not to talk to the militant Palestinian group that controls the Gaza Strip, but Carter said, "I consider myself immune" from such restrictions.

Didn't we already know that about JC?

Another Preacher Heard From

"God bless America!"
Pope Benedict XVI to the United States Wednesday on the south lawn of the White House.


Could this be an example of what St. Paul said about overcoming evil with good?

Hearing Pope Benedict's heartfelt blessing on America made me realize just how easily a man of God can repair and undo the endlessly looped curses we've all had called down us by a false prophet.

Springsteen: Barack Knows All About the Darkness at the Edge of Town

From the LA Times:

Springsteen endorses Obama for president

You may remember that 70s-era TV ad where Robert Young, whose big show at the time was “Marcus Welby, MD”, had to explain to the audience that “I’m not a real doctor, I just play one on TV.” He was selling Sanka as being medically more beneficial than real coffee.

For some reason everyone alive from that era remembers that line.

Maybe it was the implicit insult we all felt that Madison Avenue thought we needed to be told that the guy from “Father Knows Best” wasn’t a real doctor; or maybe we all felt the same glum confidence that a lot of folks were going to start buying Sanka based on a hazy referral they’d been given by some guy with an M.D. after his name.

Bruce Springsteen’s endorsement of Barack Obama is the same kind of cynical thing. If you can't get a real doctor to hawk the health benefits of Sanka, get an actor who plays one; if you need a blue-collar spokesman to try to explain Obama’s idiotic remarks about small-town, working-class people, get someone who himself impersonates a small-town working class guy every night in front of tens of thousands of adoring fans?

"I'm not a real doctor," said Robert Young.

Just so, now Bruce is saying, “I’m not a real small-town, working-class American, but I play one on stage. I wear t-shirts, a leather, biker boots and jeans during all my shows, and I sing a lot about people worried about money and the police. I sing about fixing up cars, punching clocks, mean streets, giant Exxon signs--all that shit. Which is what qualifies me to reassure you--on behalf of all heartland America--that Barack Obama is not the priggish, out-of-touch Harvard snob that everyone can see that he is. Now who're you gonna believe? A guy like, me whose always got his hair styled to make me look like a greaser, or someone like Eva Longoria Parker, who plays a rich suburban housewife with a style she’s trying to maintain, and supports Hillary? What does Eva know about Katrina, or coming back from Vietnam to no job?”

Of course Bruce is entitled, as any other red-blooded American, to endorse and support the candidate of his choice. I just find it a bit hard to take having Senator Obama's blue-collar credentials vouched for by a guy who made his first million probably longer ago than Bill Gates did.

Allah Created Dhimmitude, But God Created Brigitte Bardot

We see where Brigitte Bardot is on trial for the fifth time for insulting Islam, which she fears is ruining her nation, France. Islam in France, she says, is "destroying our country and imposing its acts".

Brigitte Bardot on trial for Muslim slur

Tue Apr 15, 2008 5:45pm BST

PARIS (Reuters) - French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.

Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros (12,071 pounds) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts".

Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.

She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000.

Prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court she was seeking a tougher sentence than usual, adding: "I am a little tired of prosecuting Mrs Bardot."

Bardot did not attend the trial because she said she was physically unable to. The verdict is expected in several weeks.

French anti-racist groups complained last year about comments Bardot made about the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in a letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy that was later published by her foundation.

Muslims traditionally mark Eid al-Adha by slaughtering a sheep or another animal to commemorate the prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son on God's orders.
France is home to 5 million Muslims, Europe's largest Muslim community, making up 8 percent of France's population.

"I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts," the star of 'And God created woman' and 'Contempt' said.
Bardot has previously said France is being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims and published a book attacking gays, immigrants and the unemployed, in which she also lamented the "Islamisation of France".

So not only has Ms. Bardot a dim view of France being invaded by Islamists, she also doesn't like gays. C'est terrible!

I'm just a bit too young for Brigitte. I was only just being born when And God Created Woman was being filmed.



But even if not for the sake of images like the above, between Ms. Bardot and the Muslim immigrants who have created the no-go zones, I have to sympathize with Ms. Bardot. She must feel strongly about it, to take the same medicine five times.

The Gospel of Jimmah

According to Scroll Digest, an obscure biblical archeology monthly my doctor keeps in his waiting room, there’s lots of excitement about the discovery of still one more first-century gospel to compete with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Experts have dubbed it the Gospel of Jimmah.

Jimmah is the name of the narrative’s alternative Christ-figure. Unlike most Gospels, the document was also written by the character named Jimmah.

According to the Gospel of Jimmah, the true Messiah, rather than being a Nazarene carpenter, is a Georgia peanut farmer who, Moses-like, was elevated by an utter fluke to royal prominence as president of a major western democracy. But after four years in the seat of power Jimmah had to flee into the wilderness in disgrace, after many of the ungrateful countrymen he presumed to be ruler of spied him slaying what little was left of their national honor, and trying to hide it with sand.

Jimmah remained in the wilderness thirty years, all but forgotten, helping to build Habitat for Humanity houses, and occasionally making a self-directed sojourn into enemy nations to undermine the foreign policies of his successors.

Then, he heard God’s voice speaking to him from two burning towers. Jimmah resumed his mission to free the whole world by bringing his message of peace--the central theme of which was that Jimmah had been right all along. His ministry consisted primarily of roaming from town to town explaining how, when he was in office, his views were the most enlightened, and his actions the wisest. Multitudes and whole villages fled at the sight of him.

Similar to the other Gospels, this one has a temptation story. In it, when Satan comes to Jimmah to tempt him in the wilderness, he offers to give him all the glory he was robbed of during his one term in office in exchange for every last shred of his integrity. Jimmah immediately accepts.

The Gospel of Jimmah also has a wedding story, except in Jimmah when the host runs out of wine, Jimmah denounces the man for his alleged human rights failings, refuses him any assistance, and grins idiotically as the entire wedding party is taken captive and enslaved by a tribe of wicked Persians.

Experts say the Gospel of Jimmah has stylistic similarities to the other Gospels, but lacks practically every trait of the historical Christian documents.

Jimmah’s Messianic figure, for example, lacked humility, wise sayings, and a following. Nor could Jimmah work signs, wonders, or miracles. In fact, where the traditional Gospels often describe healings of the blind and the raising of the dead, the Jimmah narrative describes nothing so inspiring.

Instead, Jimmah describes how the crowds often were murmuring amongst themselves that the Farmer from Plains not only lacked miraculous powers, but did such a lousy job helping the poor and sick through ordinary means that he left them much worse off than before he came along. And yet, to the utter astonishment of Jimmah’s contemporaries, he continued to return to the Temple day after day expecting everyone to be entranced by his wild revisionism and insipid views on improving the human condition!

As one leader of the time was quoted in the Gospel of Jimmah: “Who could have imagined such a man!”

Biblical archeologist Professor Raymond Tittle says he’s puzzled at finding so little of religious value in the Gospel of Jimmah. He finds, at best, only a single supernatural doctrine in the whole ancient text, namely, an implicit teaching that, in one historical figure--Jimmah--there subsisted miraculously both a mortal human nature, and an impermeable smugness of a scale and scope theologians calculate could not be contained in an entity any smaller than the largest and most irritating Deity.

“It is unimaginable,” said Dr. Tittle, “that any sect embracing such a gospel could have survived for very long. I can’t think of any group of persons who would find Jimmah’s character something to be emulated, let alone admired.”

Unlike the historical Gospels, explained Tittle, the Gospel of Jimmah could never be the basis for any community of love, courage, mutual respect, and service to humanity, because “it emphasizes only self-loathing, dishonor, and self-delusion on an epic scale. It’s almost as if it were written by their enemies. Maybe that’s why we discovered it hidden where we did.”

Professor Tittle explained that the Gospel of Jimmah was unearthed accidentally, in Gaza, jammed into the bottom of what was the first century equivalent of a public toilet.

Jimmy Carter lays a wreath in honor of terrorist Yassir Arafat.