Orchestration of Anti-Islamic Propaganda

[Moses]

A few months back there was a ramping up of anti-Islamic propaganda, which appeared to have been orchestrated to co-incide with the Israeli assasinations of Hamas leaders.

At first coming from Republican and Christian propaganda sources, CNN appears to be part of this, airing the "findings" of those whose actual agendas are not exposed.

So we really have a Nazi media and many Julius Streichers in positions of power in the Party and a media essentially owned and run by the Party, as with the Nazis, to spread this disinformation and alter our country and its people. The infection of the Christian religion of hatred against another religion is also replicated. How shameful that there are strains of hatred in this religion that can be exploited to turn Jesus teachings on their head. (In a chilling paradox that one might be able to designate as "evil", Christian propagandists and their believers state that the muslim religion is inferior to Christianity because Islam is based on hatred and killing).

I started this thread as a place to post the articles and sources of the orchestrated campaign. There is NO difference between this and what Julius Streicher did. We can only hope that some day these people will be tried and perhaps meet the same fate.

[Moses]

A very unholy trinity: Republicanianity, Christicans, and converting the U.S military to a Christican Crusade:

October 21, 2003:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended Lt. Gen. William
Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of defense for
intelligence and war-fighting support, who was videotaped
making a number of impolite comments about Islam. Boykin was
also videotaped propounding a new theory of American
electoral politics: "Why is this man [George W. Bush] in the
White House?" he asked in a speech. "The majority of
Americans didn't vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell
you this morning that he's in the White House because God
put him there for a time such as this." Condoleezza Rice,
the national security adviser, insisted that the war on
terrorism is not a religious war.

(Harpers)

[Moses]

Oct. 30,2003: Given what has occurred: horrendous war crimes (which David Brooks claims the US has a history of previously) Congressional members who failed to object to this are also responsible:

H. Res. 419, Rep. John Conyers' Resolution Regarding Lt. Gen. William Boykin's Anti-Muslim Remarks

Call for President Bush to censure and reassign Boykin


It has come to light in recent days that Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, currently serving as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, has a history of defaming Islam. He has characterized the current struggle against terrorism as one of Christianity versus Islam. Thus far response from the Bush Administration has been limited, but some voices in Congress are standing up and demanding that Gen. Boykin be held accountable for his outrageous statements.

Representative John Conyers (D-MI) introduced a resolution, H. Res. 419, in the House of Representatives this week "Condemning religiously intolerant remarks and calling on the President to clearly censure and reassign Lieutenant General Boykin for his religiously intolerant remarks." The resolution is currently cosponsored by Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), Rep. Betty McCullom (D-MN), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA), and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA), Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), and Rep. Marty Meehan (D-MA).

For more information, please go to www.aaiusa.org/boykin.htm

[Moses]

Are events being orchestrated, along with the propaganda?

November 22, 2003:

Fundamentalist leaders want Bush to add Palestinians to list of targets for war against terrorism

By Bill Berkowitz, Working For Change

In the coming maelstrom that lies ahead, in the coming judgment that's going to burst in cyclonic fury over this world, and this planet, America's only hope -- listen to me, White House, listen to me, State Department, listen to me, Pentagon, listen to me, Mr. President -- America's only hope is not GNP, it's not scientific achievement, it's not an education at Harvard or Yale, but it's America holding on to that little, tiny state of Israel and saying, "We will stand with you," because God said, "They that bless Israel I will bless, and they that curse Israel, I will curse." -- Rev. Jimmy Lee Swaggart, March, 1985

Fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. are looking to last month's attack on a convoy of U.S. diplomatic and CIA vehicles in the Gaza Strip -- which killed several U.S. citizens -- as a watershed event that will hopefully force the Bush Administration to re-evaluate its involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shortly after the October 15 attack the Jerusalem Prayer Team, a U.S.-based Christian fundamentalist organization, introduced an e-mail "Action Alert" with the following: "The Bush Doctrine is being challenged by Arafat's PLO terrorist organization. If the Bush Doctrine is defeated, then the war on terrorism is lost. If Israel loses her war on terrorism, America will lose her war on terrorism. The future of America hangs in the balance."



The Jerusalem Post posed three questions about a potential U.S. response to the attack: "If Palestinian Islamic militants are now targeting Americans in their war with Israel, how should the White House respond to this dangerous escalation? Did Yasser Arafat know about the attack in advance? Did he approve it, even tacitly? What is the future of the Bush Administration's 'Road Map' since the Palestinian side staunchly refuses to crack down on terror for fear of triggering a civil war?"

Aluf Benn, the diplomatic correspondent for Ha'aretz, an Israeli daily newspaper, wrote: "In the immediate aftermath of the bomb attack... Israel is making the argument it has been trying to make since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the U.S. and since the war in Iraq -- that it and America are facing the same enemy. That the enemy in Baghdad is the same as the enemy in Gaza."

---

In mid-September, in an effort to put a roadblock in the way of Bush's "Road Map," several US fundamentalist Christian organizations sent President Bush a petition urging him to "stop his involvement in the 'land for peace' process," according to Worthy News, a daily Christian-based news service. The petition, organized by Worthy News, Koenig's International News, Bridges for Peace and the International Christian Zionist Center, "presented the Biblical foundation for supporting the nation of Israel and showed the importance of not parceling Israel's covenant land," and serves as a reminder of how opposed to a Palestinian state many fundamentalist Christian groups are.

Religious right ramps up support for Israel

Describing the recent visit to the United States of Binyamin Elon, Israel's Tourism minister and the head of Moledet, "one of the small right-wing parties that help keep Ariel Sharon in power," New York Magazine's Craig Horowitz writes: While the "alliance between the Evangelicals and the Jews is not new, it has suddenly taken on a sense of urgency and an intensity that haven't been seen before."

During his trip, Elon met with a number of fundamentalist Christian leaders including Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition, Mike Evans, founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team and author of "Beyond Iraq: The Next Move," "a book that depicts Islam as evil and finds biblical harbingers of the end of time in the current global crisis," former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, now head of American Values, and Ed McAteer, one of the founders of the Moral Majority.

Elon's trip began paying dividends as thousands of Christians from around the world -- including a hefty contingent from the US -- participated in the annual mid-October Jerusalem March. According to Israel Insider, the gathering of Christians was organized by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), which since 1980 has been "the only Christian [sponsored] celebration to take place during the Feast of Tabernacles," which coincides with the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The daily newsmagazine reported that "officials at Israel's Ministry of Tourism say the festivities are Israel's largest annual tourist event, netting the country some $15 to $18 million a year."

---

Early in 2002, one of the Religious right's favorites, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, the president of the conservative Jewish organization Toward Tradition, got together with Gary Bauer, the failed presidential candidate who is now president of American Values, and formed the American Alliance of Jews and Christians (AAJC). According to a Toward Tradition press release, the Washington, D.C.-based AAJC will be a "unique synthesis of Jewish authenticity and Christian grassroots muscle." [i.e., the "Christians" are being used for their political muscle. It's crystal clear]

In late May of last year, Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), and Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition and current Republican Party chairman of Georgia, launched "Stand for Israel." The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that "Stand for Israel" hopes to become a "Christian version of the pro-Israel lobby on Capitol Hill, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)." According to New York's Craig Horowitz, Rabbi Eckstein "was named the third-most-important Jew in America by The Forward," because "[h]e spent years as a kind of outcast among his peers for his efforts to foster better relations between Jews and Evangelicals; now the Jewish community has begun to see things his way."

Stand for Israel recently set aside the last Sunday in October for its annual Day of Prayer and Solidarity for Israel and the organization aimed for more than 5 million Christians to show support for Israel in churches across the country. [So these aren't churches, at all, but arms of Rabbi Eckstein and the Republican Party]

In July 2002, thanks to a $2 million donation by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, 400 American Jews moved lock, stock and barrel to Israel. According to the Christian news service, AgapePress, "It was the largest single U.S. group" to move to Israel in 25 years. Bishop Huey Harris, whose church, the First Pentecostal Tabernacle in Elkton, Maryland, helped raise money for the exodus, told AgapePress: "What I'm seeing is the Scriptures being fulfilled right before our very eyes." AgapePress reports: "He says what he is looking for next is for the Church to be raptured, and then Jews receiving Christ as their Messiah."

In early February of this year, a group of prominent Christian broadcasters including Dr. Jerry Rose, Dr. David Clark, Dr. Michael Little, President of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Belarmino "Blackie" Gonzalez joined Dr. Mike Evans, of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, at the Opry Land Hotel in Nashville, TN. to help him launch the Evangelical Israel Broadcasting Network (EIBN).

Armageddon on their minds

---

In "Armageddon Anxiety: Evil on the Way" William Cook quotes Grace Halsell, author of 14 books including "Prophecy and Politics: The Secret Alliance Between Israel and the US Christian Right," who says Christian Zionists believe that "Every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us." In 1988, Halsell wrotethat "Christian Zionism is a dangerous and growing segment of Christianity."

"These days, however, the [Religious right] movement's agenda appears to have become our president's vision for the country," Maureen Farrell wrote in a Buzzflash.com Reader Commentary just prior to the invasion of Iraq. "[President] Bush's flirtation with End Times rhetoric makes some suspect that he actually perceives himself as God's instrument," columnist and author Gene Lyons pointed out.

The first chapter of Joel Rosenberg's new novel "The Last Days" "deals with Islamic militants targeting and attacking a U.S. diplomatic and CIA convoy heading into Gaza with a massive and deadly bombing. This morning such an event actually happened inside Gaza," Rosenberg, a well-connected conservative activist, columnist and author wrote on the morning of October 15.

"Is the West Bank and Gaza the next battleground in the global war on terror? Should Yasser Arafat be brought to justice, dead or alive, along with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein?" asks Rosenberg, whose previous best-selling novel, "The Last Jihad," was a fictional account of the war against terrorism that takes America, Israel and Iraq to the brink of a nuclear conflagration. That book was published a few months before the president's invasion of Iraq and has been recently released in paperback.


Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column Conservative Watch documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.


Reprinted from Working For Change:
www.workingforchange.com/
article.cfm?itemid=16028

[Moses]

Dec. 12, 2003 :

The Guardian reports that "Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders... US forces in Iraq's Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the occupied territories, sealing off centres of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops." As if this weren't bad enough, "US special forces teams are already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign jihadists before they cross the border, and a group focused on the 'neutralisation' of guerrilla leaders is being set up, according to sources familiar with the operations." According to a "former US intelligence official" quoted in the article, "This is basically an assassination programme...This is a hunter-killer team...It is bonkers, insane. Here we are - we're already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we've just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting up assassination teams." And guess who is one of the "planners behind the offensive?" Lt. General William Boykin, the high-ranking Defense Department official who caused a minor controversy recently over his religiously charged rhetoric about Christianity and Islam. What a perfect choice!

www.aaiusa.org

[Moses]

Dec 15, 2003 : Letter from my congressional representative:


Thank you for contacting me to express your concern about disparaging remarks about the Islamic religion that have been attributed to American government officials. I appreciate your taking the time to share this concern with me.

I agree with you. There is no place for inappropriate ethnic or religious stereotyping, especially among our elected and appointed leaders. A particular disparaging remark about Islam has been attributed to Attorney General John Ashcroft in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He did not deny saying it but claimed the statement in question did not reflect his overall view of the Islamic religion. In any event, remarks that equate Islam with terrorism are wrong and misguided and have no place in our government.

An even greater concern is that the attitudes behind those kind of statements might be reflected in homeland security policies that discriminate against people based on their ethnicity or religion. For example, I have strong concerns about immigration policies that target Muslims or persons of Middle Eastern descent. These policies are wrong and I will continue to oppose them.

Again, I appreciate knowing your concerns and hope you will never hesitate to let me know whenever I may be of service to you.

Sincerely,

Chris Van Hollen
Member of Congress

[Moses]

Dec 15, 2003: Safire artfully promotes the Iraq-Alqueda link by citing the Telegraph article -- other outlets picked up the Telegraph article, as part of a deliberate propaganda campaign. (But not the Washington Post)

Op-Ed Columnist: From the Spider Hole

December 15, 2003
By WILLIAM SAFIRE





WASHINGTON - On Saturday night, I stuffed myself on lamb
chops and potato pancakes at a holiday party at the home of
Don and Joyce Rumsfeld. Along with other media bigfeet, I
chatted up Rummy and C.I.A. chief George Tenet, both of
whom were in on the secret of the capture of Saddam a few
hours before. Neither man even hinted at a thing. So much
for being a Washington Insider.

After the news broke Sunday morning, I asked a source in
Iraq to speak to members of the Governing Council who had
spent a half-hour with the prisoner after he was pulled out
of his "spider hole."

They described Saddam as "reacting aggressively" to the
presence of the Iraqi leaders who were Shiites. He said to
a leader of the council, Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni, "What are
you doing with these guys?"

One of the Shia leaders came back with "Why did you kill
Ayatollah Sadr?" Saddam sneered: "Sadir" or "rijl"?

This was a contemptuous play on words. "Sadir," which
sounds like a name of the assassinated Muhammad Sadiq
al-Sadr, is Arabic for "chest" and "rijl" means "foot."
Saddam, murderer of hundreds of thousands of Shia who dared
oppose his rule, didn't leave his thigh-slapping sense of
humor in the "spider hole."

Another useful bit of information is the origin of "spider
hole," a phrase used by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to
describe the dugout hiding place in which the fugitive
Saddam was cowering.

This is Army lingo from the Vietnam era. The Vietcong
guerrillas dug "Cu Chi tunnels" often connected to what the
G.I.'s called "spider holes" - space dug deep enough for
the placement of a clay pot large enough to hold a
crouching man, covered by a wooden plank and concealed with
leaves. When an American patrol passed, the Vietcong would
spring out, shooting. But the hole had its dangers; if the
pot broke or cracked, the guerrilla could be attacked by
poisonous spiders or snakes. Hence, "spider hole."

Those are facts; now to speculation. Democrats here are
already saying ruefully "because we `got' Saddam, we'll
`get' four more years of Bush." But that assumes that the
Iraqi captive will now reveal weapons of mass destruction
and his connections to Al Qaeda, thereby confirming the
intelligence that the Bush neocons are charged with having
cooked up to justify going to war.

I think Saddam is still Saddam - a meretricious, malevolent
megalomaniac. He knows he is going to die, either by death
sentence or in jail at the hands of a rape victim's family.
Why did he not use his pistol to shoot it out with his
captors or to kill himself? Because he is looking forward
to the mother of all genocide trials, rivaling Nuremberg's
and topping those of Eichmann and Milosevic. There, in the
global spotlight, he can pose as the great Arab hero saving
Islam from the Bushes and the Jews.

Under interrogation, he's not likely to rat on his
fedayeen, lead us to his hidden billions abroad or tell the
truth about dirty dealings with France and Russia. Instead,
he intends to lie all the way to martyrdom.

Example: Dr. Ayad Allawi, an Iraqi leader long considered
reliable by intelligence agencies, told Britain's Daily
Telegraph last week that a memo has been found from
Saddam's secret police chief to the dictator dated July 1,
2001, reporting that the veteran terrorist Abu Nidal had
been training one Mohamed Atta in Baghdad. Nobody disputes
that a few months after Atta's 9/11 suicide mission, Nidal
was permanently silenced by Saddam's police, the only
"suicide" to be found with four bullets in his head.

The prisoner will surely dispute all connections to Al
Qaeda, along with charges that he ordered the deaths of
what Tony Blair now estimates as 400,000 Shiite and Kurdish
Muslims in Iraq.

We are not finished with this remorseless monster; Saddam
will have his day in an Iraqi court. But so will the ghosts
of poison-gassed Halabja and Iraqi children forced to clear
minefields in Iran. The meticulous presentation of his
offenses against humanity will demonstrate again that all
that would have been necessary for the triumph of evil was
for good people to do nothing. †

www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/opinion/15SAFI.html?ex=1072586777&ei=1&en=f47d8b13dddd9a27

[Moses]

Dec. 21,2003

Out of the Mainstream? Hardly

By Howard Dean

The Post's Dec. 18 editorial discussing my recent foreign policy speech ["Beyond the Mainstream"] badly misrepresents both my position and the central argument in the coming election on how best to strengthen America's security.

To start: The Post repeatedly misstates my views. For example, I support missile defense efforts that make us more secure; I oppose deployment of any system not yet proven to work. I favor active talks with North Korea, backed by the threat of force, rather than a stubborn refusal to engage that has allowed the situation to become more dangerous by the day. And the role I support for the National Guard is hardly "radical"; it was endorsed by the bipartisan Hart-Rudman commission and in fact is enshrined in our Constitution (Section 8, Clause 15).

More important, The Post's editorial comes close to equating the Bush administration's foreign policy -- including its signature doctrine of "preemptive war" -- with the American foreign policy mainstream. In fact, the Bush agenda represents a radical departure from decades of bipartisan consensus on the appropriate use of U.S. power and our leadership in the world community.

From its derisive treatment of allies to its rejection of important global agreements, this administration has favored a go-it-alone approach and a determination to use force as its weapon of first resort. Its approach has alienated friends and bolstered foes. Its agenda isolates the United States, placing responsibility for all the world's problems in our hands, and runs counter to America's traditions as a republic.

By contrast, my national security policy reflects the best of our mainstream tradition. I believe the United States must exercise leadership by working with allies and partners to advance common interests, rather than advancing our power unilaterally.

My program is clear. First, we must strengthen our military and intelligence, ensure that our troops have the best training and equipment and keep our promises about pay and benefits.

Second, we must rebuild our alliances, badly damaged by the current administration. Every president since World War II, until now, has worked effectively with our allies and partners, because each believed this was the best way to safeguard security. Established alliances, which train and plan together over decades, are better at waging combat and building peace than makeshift coalitions of the willing.

Third, we must make our top priorities defeating the terrorists who have attacked America and preventing the most deadly weapons of all -- nuclear, chemical and biological -- from falling into their hands. We must bolster these priorities with improved Special Forces, better intelligence coordination and dramatically enhanced homeland security.

We need a global alliance to defeat terrorism that will draw on the strengths of allies and partners to destroy terrorist networks. And I will build, with our allies, a $60 billion global fund to combat weapons of mass destruction.

Fourth, advancing American interests requires greater engagement with developing nations on investment, trade, aid and public health.

This is a national security policy that honors the best of America's traditions. It is a clear contrast to a policy centered on the misguided doctrine of unilateral preemption.

The reasons I opposed the war in Iraq are clear. In the fall of 2002, Saddam Hussein did not pose an imminent threat to America. The administration had not (and still has not) presented clear evidence that Hussein was on the verge of attacking his neighbors or threatening the United States or the Middle East with weapons of mass destruction or supporting al Qaeda. The administration's failures to mobilize allies and plan effectively for the war's aftermath suggested difficulties ahead.

It is just as important that this president failed to level with the American people about the costs or potential consequences or about the nature of the threat. Our democratic tradition, our mainstream values, demand that government be open and honest with its governed. The consequences of the war are becoming clear, even beyond the loss of life, even beyond the $150 billion price tag -- so far. Our resources -- military, intelligence, diplomatic -- are strained. Our alliances are frayed. Around the world, too many are now under the false impression that the American people are bent on global domination and war against Islam.

A critical presidential campaign is now underway. Americans face a choice between two very different views of our role in the world. My agenda returns security policy to its fundamental course: protecting Americans and advancing our values and interests -- democracy, freedom, opportunity and peace -- through effective partnerships and global leadership, as well as military strength.

The current administration strays wildly from this course and from the time-honored manner of pursuing it. In the end, I believe it will be clear who is in the mainstream and who is swimming against the tide of history.

The writer, a former governor of Vermont, seeks the Democratic nomination for president.

[Moses]

Dec. 21, 2003:
A chillingly familiar Jewish construct:

www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.12.19/news4a.html

By ALLAN NADLER
Leaders of the country's most prominent ultra-Orthodox yeshiva are scrambling to distance themselves from a book by one of their disciples, which argues that gentiles are "completely evil" and Jews constitute a separate, genetically superior species.

Written by Rabbi Saadya Grama - an alumnus of Beth Medrash Govoha, the renowned yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J. - the self-published book attempts to employ classical Jewish sources in defense of a race-based theory of Jewish supremacy. Grama's book, published in Hebrew under the title "Romemut Yisrael Ufarashat Hagalut," includes flowery endorsements from the most revered religious scholars at the renowned Lakewood yeshiva, including the institution's foremost religious leader, or rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler.

Yet, in a statement issued Tuesday in response to queries from the Forward, Kotler rejected Grama's philosophy and said that he had not carefully reviewed the text prior to endorsing it.....In his rare statement to the press, Kotler added: "In looking at the specific points allegedly contained in the sefer, I can certainly tell you that they are not reflective of normative Jewish thought and are certainly not the philosophy of our yeshivah. Our philosophy asserts that every human being is created in the image of the Lord and the primacy of integrity and honesty in all dealings without exception. I strongly repudiate any assertions in the name of Judaism that do not represent and reflect this philosophy."

The statement Tuesday struck a dramatically different chord from Kotler's earlier endorsement of the book, in which he said Grama has written "on the subjects of the Exile, the Election of Israel and her exaltation above and superiority to all of the other nations, all in accordance with the viewpoint of the Torah, based on the solid instruction he has received from his teachers."

Kotler's disavowal of the book on Tuesday came at the end of an intense, day-long scramble during which the Anti-Defamation League and the chancellor of Yeshiva University condemned the book, and several ultra-Orthodox communal spokesmen tried to convince the Forward not to report its existence. During the course of the day, a popular bookstore in the heavily Orthodox Boro Park section of Brooklyn told the Forward that it had just pulled the book off of the tables at the author's request.

The controversy over Grama's book comes as the yeshiva is close to securing $500,000 in federal funds for a Holocaust library (see accompanying story on Page 4).

Coincidentally, in his book, Grama argues that the Holocaust was both a divine punishment against the Jews for assimilation and also proof of the "true nature and face" of the non-Jewish world. The book's title could be translated in several ways, including "The Grandeur of Israel and the Issue of Exile" and "Jewish Superiority and the Question of Exile."

Grama did not return a call seeking clarification on this point and other questions about his polemic.

In his book, Grama writes: "The difference between the people of Israel and the nations of the world is an essential one. The Jew by his source and in his very essence is entirely good. The goy, by his source and in his very essence is completely evil. This is not simply a matter of religious distinction, but rather of two completely different species."

Grama's explanation of the Holocaust, as well as his other theories, drew harsh criticism from Rabbi Norman Lamm, chancellor of Yeshiva University and the rosh hayeshiva of its affiliated seminary. Lamm said that his only knowledge of the book came from passages provided to him by the Forward, but that he rejected what he understood to be Grama's arguments.

"It is a book by someone who has obviously taken leave of his senses and adopted the kind of racism that was used against Jews since the beginning of time," said Lamm, one of Modern Orthodoxy's most prominent leaders. "I almost feel like offering a conjecture that it was written by an antisemite posing as a rabbi."

Lamm added: "The passages that I have read managed to offend everyone - the Torah, the martyrs of the Holocaust, the Jewish ideals of justice and the essential divinity that inheres in every human being regardless of religion, race or ethnic origin."

In an effort to back up his arguments, Grama draws on an array of racist sources ranging from medieval theological tracts to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche to the works of Nazi figures. Among other things, Grama argues:

'The differences between Jews and gentiles are not religious, historical, cultural or political. They are, rather, racial, genetic and scientifically unalterable. The one group is at its very root and by natural constitution "totally evil" while the other is "totally good."

'Jewish successes in the world are completely contingent upon the failure of all other peoples. Only when the gentiles face total catastrophe do the Jews experience good fortune.

' The Jews themselves brought about their own destruction during the Holocaust, since they arrogantly endeavored to overcome their very essence, dictated by divine law, by leaving their ghettoes and trying to assimilate into Christian European society. The confrontational approach of the Zionists, their boycott of German products and anti-Nazi demonstrations in particular, only exacerbated the peril to European Jewry. For this they were massacred by Hitler who, while himself an evil person, was acting as God's agent in punishing the Jews.

Grama also argues that in opposition to Zionism's advocacy of Jewish national self-assertion and self-defense, which he views as an imitation of "gentile ways," the Torah mandates that the Jews, while in exile, should employ such means as appeasement, deception, duplicity and even "bribery" in their dealing with gentiles, so as to avoid their wrath.

Grama's full-blown racialist theories appear to break new ground, building on a handful of hints of national and racial chauvinism occasionally found in the writings of a few earlier rabbinic figures, but combining them into a racialist doctrine with no precedent in rabbinic literature. To be sure, a minority stream exists in the rabbinic tradition - from the 11th- and 12th-century Hebrew romantic poet Yehuda Halevy to the 18th century chasidic sage Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev - which sees the differences between Jew and gentile as innate, rather than merely religious. Perhaps the most extreme version of this view is found in the central text of Chabad chasidism, Tanya, whose author, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, Chabad's founder, maintained that Jewish and gentile souls are fundamentally different, the former "divine" and the latter "animalistic." That viewpoint has gained ground in recent decades, particularly among charedi thinkers.

Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, who is considered one of the leading ideologues of the Israeli Chabad movement, has written and spoken widely on the superiority of Jews and was briefly imprisoned in Israel for racial incitement. Yated Ne'eman, an Orthodox weekly in upstate New York that is affiliated with one of Israel's main charedi dailies, has published essays on the question of whether medical research can be understood to apply to Jews given the innate physiological differences between Jews and gentiles.

Such arguments, however, have historically stood in tension with the prevailing rabbinic view that the righteous gentiles of the world - those who exhibit the basic ethical and moral behavior encapsulated in the "Seven Laws of Noah" - had the same access to personal salvation as fully observant Jews. This view was summed up in the 12th century by Moses Maimonides, arguably the most important Jewish sage of the past millennium, when he wrote in his code of Jewish law: "Anyone who accepts the Seven Laws of Noah and is careful to observe them is one of the righteous among the nations of the world and he has a portion in the world to come."

Critics complained that Grama's racial theories also conflicts with ancient and medieval rabbinic rules mandating equal treatment in all realms for converts to Judaism.

Grama frequently quotes Biblical verses that advocate terribly harsh treatment of the pagan inhabitants of ancient Canaan, implying that the same standards ought to be applied to his non-Jewish neighbors in America. By doing so, he appears to disregard extensive rabbinic deliberations dating back to the early medieval period whose general consensus was that Christianity and Islam are licit, monotheistic faiths. The net result of these medieval rabbinic deliberations was to limit the application of such Biblical laws to ancient pagans, and to mandate that Muslims and Christians could not be classified together with the idol-worshippers of earlier times.

When informed of Grama's arguments, the associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Kenneth Jacobson, described them as "pure racism."

"It shows that we in our community are quite capable of the same kind of hatred that exists in other communities," Jacobson said. "We have an obligation to reject hatred in our community, just as we do when it comes out of other communities."


Allan Nadler is the Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Drew University and Senior Advisor for Academic Affairs at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.


Ami Eden and Steven I. Weiss contributed to this report.

[Moses]

US Christian evangelists want to "save Muslim souls" in Iraq

By David Rennie, London Daily Telegraph

American Christian missionaries have declared a "war for souls" in Iraq, telling supporters that the formal end of the US-led occupation next June will close an historic "window of opportunity".

Organising in secrecy, and emphasising their humanitarian aid work, Christian groups are pouring into the country, which is 97 per cent Muslim, bearing Arabic Bibles, videos and religious tracts designed to "save" Muslims from their "false" religion.

The International Mission Board, the missionary arm of the Southern Baptists, is one of those leading the charge.

John Brady, the IMB's head for the Middle East and North Africa, this month appealed to the 16 million members of his church, the largest Protestant denomination in America.

"Southern Baptists have prayed for years that Iraq would somehow be opened to the gospel," his appeal began. That "open door" for Christians may soon close.



"Southern Baptists must understand that there is a war for souls under way in Iraq," his bulletin added, listing Islamic leaders and "pseudo-Christian" groups also flooding Iraq as his chief rivals.

The missionaries are mainly evangelicals who reject talk of Muslims and Christians worshipping the same God.

Jerry Vines, former head of the Southern Baptist Convention, has described the Prophet Mohammed as a "demon-obsessed paedophile". Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and the head of Samaritan's Purse, a big donor to Iraq, has described Islam as a "very evil and wicked religion".

The missionaries pose a dilemma for President George W Bush. He has reached out to Muslims since September 11, shrugging off criticism from evangelicals to describe Islam as "peaceful". But Christian conservatives are also a key Bush constituency: Franklin Graham delivered the invocation prayer at his presidential inauguration.

The US Agency for International Development has said that the government cannot rein in private charities. "Imagine what the US Congress would say to us," said a spokesman in April.

Jon Hanna, an evangelical from Ohio who has recently returned from Iraq, applied for a new passport to travel there, describing himself as a humanitarian worker. "I was worried the US authorities might try to stop us, might be worried we were going to start a riot with our Bibles."

In Baghdad last month Mr Hanna met two other American missionary teams. One, from Indiana, had shipped in 1.3 million Christian tracts. "A US passport is all you need to get in, until the new Iraqi government takes over. What we thought was a two-year window, originally, has narrowed down to a six month window," said Mr Hanna, an evangelical minister and editor of Connection Magazine, a Christian newspaper in Ohio.

He describes Islam as "false". He cited St John's Gospel, saying: "Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist."

Mr Hanna concluded: "The Muslim religion is an antichrist religion." Later Mr Hanna asked to retract that choice of words. "Without the reader hearing my voice and looking into my eyes as I made that statement, it would be easy for certain readers to feel personally attacked and be offended," Mr Hanna wrote by email. "That would be unfruitful."

He rejected the suggestion that aid work was a "cover" for missionary work, preferring to call it a "conduit for sharing the gospel of Jesus. Christians are commanded to minister to the hungry, but also to the hunger of the spirit. It can't be separated," he said.

In public, the largest groups put the emphasis on their delivery of food parcels and their medical work. However, their internal fund-raising materials emphasise mission work. One IMB bulletin reported aid workers handing out copies of the New Testament and praying with Muslim recipients. Another bulletin said Iraqis understood "who was bringing the food . . . it was the Christians from America."

Southern Baptists from North Carolina visited Iraq in October to help hand out 45,000 boxes of donated food. One of the team, Jim Walker, told IMB's Urgent News bulletin that he met village children "starved of attention and I could tell some of them have not eaten well. But their biggest need is to know the love of Christ."

Mr Hanna said he encountered friendly curiosity, with noisy crowds gathering to take his group's tracts. "Maybe 10 per cent were hostile." He was one of 21 on his mission including Jackie Cone, 72, a Pentecostalist grandmother from Ohio who said God had told her to join a second mission planned for next year. "I sensed Him telling me to come back in January," she said.

Mrs Cone is confident she made converts in Baghdad. In her hotel she met a Muslim woman on crutches with a leg operation due that day. Mrs Cone knelt on the lobby floor and prayed that surgery would not be required.

"I saw her that evening and she said God had healed her, and she hadn't needed the surgery. She didn't say Allah, she pointed to Heaven and gave God the glory," she said.

Mrs Cone led the Kurdish woman and her brother in prayer, asking Jesus into their hearts. "I'd given them a Bible and a Jesus video in Arabic. I think they think of themselves as Christians now," she said. "They have the Bible and I hope they will grow in grace."

Muslims are hard converts, American missionaries admit. The large organisations have experts trained in refuting Muslim teachings that Jesus is just another prophet.

Before going to Iraq, Mr Hanna studied Christian training manuals and attended a seminar for missionaries to the Arab world.

Mr Hanna concedes his new Iraqi friends were possibly drawn by the novelty of meeting Americans. "But you don't discount that, you use it as an opportunity to tell them about Jesus. Last time we only took 8,000 Arabic Bibles to Iraq. In future missions the goal is one million."


Reprinted from The London Daily Telegraph:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?
xml=/news/2003/12/27/wirq27.xml&
sSheet=/news/2003/12/27/ixhome.html

[Moses]

Dec 30,2003
billmon.org/archives/000924.html

But now the neocons have a political power base of their own. Or, to be more accurate: They've acquired a new set of patrons on the populist right -- supremely ignorant men like Tom Delay and even (God help us) Rush Limbaugh, who need a foreign policy world view to go with their crude notions of American supremacy, their loathing of Islam, and their bible-based support for Israel.

Providing ideological world views to the ignorant is how the neocons have made their way in the world. And their new customers are the modern center of gravity of the Republican Party. They're the leaders of The Base -- that mystical block of true believers the Bush II administration feels it cannot afford to offend in any way.

Which suggests to me the neocons won't remain in the twilight for long. The realists are the ones who don't seem to have much of a future in the GOP. Who knows? Maybe in time they'll defect to the Democratic Party, to become the intellectual mentors to a rising generation of moderately hawkish Democrats, in search of a world view.

After all, it's happened before.

[Moses]

12-30-03

Dear reader:

Some people on this site really piss me off. I’m a Solider. I’m a solider currently in Baghdad. I’ve been here since mid April. I read some of the things posted here and become completely irate. Some of you have feelings and issues with real meaning, with sincere intentions and post them to read. Yet as soon as they are posted some @$$hole comes along to degrade what was just said. You really piss me off.

As far as soldiers go in Iraq:
I myself knew before coming to Baghdad that something was fundamentally wrong with the current state of events and actions of our GOVERNment and being a hungry head I did the best I could to learn more about the situation at hand.
Most soldiers have no idea the REAL reason why we are here. I don’t really know but I do know it’s not about WMD. We came here with the understanding that we would be protecting America from people who would do us (Americans) harm. Yet as the story unfolded those of us who are not totally mind*#%$ed began to see more of what was really happening.

I know that is was about 3,000 people who died in the WTC attacks. I also know that during the first phase of the invasion of Iraq that 6,000 innocent Iraqis were slaughtered. I know that just about every day I hear HUGE explosions all around me (car bombs, grenades, R.P.G.s, homemade explosives). I know that someone is on the receiving end of those explosion and they are not Iraqis. I know that just about everyday an American soldier loses his or her life here. I know that I have survived an R.P.G. attack and recieved a Purple Hart. I know that if I would have died that day it would have been for naught... we were "protecting" a burned out, looted building. I know I’ve been lied to about the real intentions of this operation. I know that many soldiers feel the same way I do. I know that Saddam was no REAL threat to any of you (Americans).

When we first got here we were ready to take on these Saddam Loyalist, these “Terrorist”. The media pumped us full of “Islam sees America as the Great Satan”. Come to find out as soon as we hit the outskirts of Baghdad we saw a totally different picture. These men, women and children were celebrating our arrival. “Good mista, mista! Good mista, mista!” It was the first time in my life I actually felt kinda like a hero. It was nothing like the preconceived notion that I got from the news.

After establishing a base (smack dab in the middle of Baghdad) we began our daily patrols. As we soon learned most of the people were happy for us to be here (80%). About 10% were not sure what they thought and the other 10% were after our blood. We were actively seeking those WMD. Of course we never found any.
Many of us know that Bush does not rightly belong in the White House. Even so, we have sworn to take orders from the Commander and Chief. We felt a patriotic duty at first but began to wonder what Iraq really had to do with being patriotic or defending our way of life or protecting the constitution. So as time wore on some of us began to see more of the picture.

I began to despise this d**n uniform I’m wearing now but then realized that it was probably the uniform that despised me. Thousands of men and women have died for the rights you say you hold dear. They fought for freedom, they died for freedom. So I ask myself, how do I protect my freedoms in Baghdad?
We are now foreign invaders. This is a hostile take over. There were no WMD. No wonder many call us the Great Satan, we lie, cheat and steal our way into any country for any reason. Saddam has been caught and we are still here and will be for a long time. We have to clean up our mess. We must secure the oil. It is now a double edged sword. Hostile invasion / Humanitarian Aide. But the second part was a long time in coming and that was not the intention of the actual operation. The “war” was declared over yet the attacks have increased… we have "given" Iraqis our idea of what freedom is. Seems many of them don't want it. Sure we have taken out bad people but this fight has only begun.

We are torn. America is in the nuts hole. Every person in the Army has sworn to protect the Constitution of the United States, that’s over one million people; yet it seems no one is aware of her current state.

Have you ever noticed what the root word of patriot is? Riot. That’s what I want to do. I want to yell and scream and break stuff. I want to start fires and steal and cause chaos in the system. I want revolution. But I just sit here quietly and steam my anger through the keyboard. Like a good conformist, I am passive. If THEY knew I was writing this I would get in trouble. Did you know that? So much for 1st amendment.

Get this: I started talking about the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II around here. Out of the 80+ soldiers in my Battery, NOT ONE person knew what it was. There are over 600 people in this Unit and I bet I would be lucky to find a hand full who has even heard of it. So since I truly feel like a patRIOT, I wrote and printed out flyers explaining what it is and what it means. I put up about 10 around the base. By the next day ONLY ONE was left. Somebody doesn’t like activist around here but the sad thing is they have a duty to know and a responsibility to take action.

I have decided to become the silent rebel.

I can’t speak about it without adverse action on my military career, so I will write. I can get away with that, at least for now. Flyers are my WMD against ignorance. My pen will be mightier than the sword. But there are still problems. The root word of ignorance? Ignore. Not only that: most of these guys won’t read anything unless there are naked women on the page. And even if they read it they just shrug and walk away without a second thought. And to think that this is happening at a NATIONAL LEVEL? My God.

We just had another memorial service for a fallen soldier yesterday and one of the things that was most repeated was that “He gave the ultimate sacrifice, his life, for the principles which Americans hold so dear, Freedom.” Yeah, while I’m busy freeing Iraq, my own country is becoming a police state. How tragically ironic. The Army has sworn to protect the United? States and it's constitution but most can't even tell you the first 5 amendments. I swore to "protect the constitution from eneimes foreign and domestic" The real terrorist are domestic not foreign. So what am I doing half way around the world? Really?

I’m really mad. But my hands are tied. I would be more vocal but I do not want to be “branded”, I do not want to ruin any benefits I MAY get from the military, I do not want to make things any harder for my wife or my family. But if I, if YOU don’t do something things will get worse. I must follow orders: that was my promise to you. But you; You don’t have to follow orders, You can be vocal.

So stop patronizing these guys and gals who put out their opinions and thoughts. For they are the ingredients of change. I’m fighting everyday to stay alive in a war that YOUR President has deemed necessary. So do me a favor and fight a war against ignorance in the homeland and stop putting people down when we should be brining each other up. This “war” is total BS so start learning and spreading the news because the media will not. Maybe we can prevent more innocent lives on both sides from being lost.

This site was a real inspiration to me. It made me feel that people are working together to find truth and solutions. But sometimes I read what is here and realize that the same attitude is brought here that is brought to golbalization - ingnorance, greed, disinformation, arrogance and counter-productive attitudes. Look past other peoples preceptions and look for the root of the message. Something is terriblly wrong with our society, our government, our WORLD.

Sincerely,

Spc. “Bhang”<br>
"If ignorance is bliss, then knock the smile of my face."
-Zack De La Rocha

www.chemtrailcentral.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/001711-3.html

[Moses]

Why is this obvious truth so rarely put forward in the media?


www.sltrib.com/2004/Jan/01052004/commenta/commenta.asp

MONDAY January 05, 2004

Dyer: Private agendas provide distraction from world's real priorities



Gwynne Dyer
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

    History normally runs on rails, with one development following another in fairly obvious succession. Colorful personalities and dramatic events abound, and it may seem like a roller-coaster ride at times, but 20 years later the outcome is just about what you would have expected at the start. Once in a while, however, history goes right off the rails -- and this may be one of those times. We'll probably know for certain by the end of this year. Two years ago we were being told that 9-11 had changed everything, but that was just media hype. In reality 9-11 changed nothing except Americans' mistaken belief that they were invulnerable to foreign threats, and normally the "terrorist threat" would have faded into the background in a year or so, to be replaced in the headlines by some trendy new problem. But a hijack has occurred[/red], and the course of history really may have changed. That would be very bad.
    Americans are still largely invulnerable to foreign threats, but a tiny chink labeled "terrorism" has opened up in their armor, and both the U.S. government and the Islamist terrorists who planned 9-11 are working overtime to make that the central issue in global affairs. They are pursuing their own private agendas, of course, but the combination of huge American power and extreme Islamist violence has persuaded far too many people that the "war on terror" is what global politics is really about in the early 21st century.

    The "war on terror" is a huge distraction from the real priorities that face the world. The human population of this planet has tripled in the past 60 years. Even if it never doubles again, that puts enormous pressure on both resources and the environment. The pressure is mounting even faster because many of those who have been poor (including most Asians) are rapidly industrializing and raising their consumption levels.

    Meanwhile, those who are left out of the prosperity, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, become ever more desperate and resentful. The tightly interconnected wealth-producing machine that is the globalized economy is tremendously vulnerable to environmental catastrophes, political shocks or even financial mismanagement. There is a full agenda that needs our undivided attention if we are to get through the next half-century without a really big blow-up.

    Until recently, things were looking pretty hopeful, because the biggest obstacles to global action on these issues had been removed one after another. The Cold War ended and the great powers began to cooperate. Democracy spread around the world by non-violent means and, with the help of globalized mass media, something that you could call world public opinion began to emerge. Complex multilateral deals were made on difficult issues like trade and climate change.

    During the '90s, the way the world worked was changing fast enough that we seemed to have a chance of making it through the first half of the 21st century without a big smash and a massive die-back of the human population. Bad things happened in small, out-of-the-way places like Bosnia and Rwanda, but the broad trend was reassuring. It still is, but broad trends have been dislocated by relatively local events in the past.

    China was not doomed to go into centuries of isolation and stagnation in the early 15th century just as its immense wealth, technological prowess and ocean-going fleets had positioned it to dominate the entire planet. Europe didn't have to throw away a century of relative peace and rapidly rising prosperity in the needless cataclysm of World War I. If the emperor Zhu Di's favourite concubine had not been killed by the lightning strike that burned down the Forbidden City in 1421, or if Gavrilo Princip had gone home after failing to assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on his first try in Sarajevo in 1914, everything might have been very different.

    Things would certainly be very different now if the al-Qaeda hijackers had been caught before they carried out 9-11, or if George W. Bush had not been awarded victory by the U.S. Supreme Court after the 2000 election. What we are living with now is a runaway fluke.

    A small band of Islamist fanatics is trying to provoke a global confrontation between the West and Islam as a way of levering themselves into power in Muslim countries, and a U.S.
administration dominated by neo-conservative ideologues is using this threat to justify their own project for global American hegemony through military power. Neither is likely to succeed, but between them they could wreck both the institutions and the spirit of multilateral cooperation that were going to ease our way through the real crises that are coming.

    For every fluke that actually derails the train of history, hundreds do not. Both the United Nations and the NATO alliance are already in a potentially terminal crisis, but it is still too early to say whether this one will change our future for the worse. It could all be over by next year.

    By this time next year, we will know whether the Bush administration's adventure in Iraq has succeeded or failed, and whether Bush himself has been re-elected or defeated. Without the neo-conservatives in Washington to inflate their importance, the Islamist terrorists would dwindle to a minor policy problem, and normal service would be resumed on all the important global issues. Decisive years are generally something you would prefer to avoid, but this is going to be one.
   -----
    Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
   
   
   

[Moses]

"The Family":

All in the Neocon Family

Jim Lobe, AlterNet
March 26, 2003
Viewed on May 16, 2004

What do William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Elliot Abrams, and Robert Kagan[/red] have in common? Yes, they are all die-hard hawks who have gained control of U.S. foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks. But they are also part of one big neoconservative family -- an extended clan of spouses, children, and friends who have known each other for generations.

Neoconservatives are former liberals (which explains the "neo" prefix) who advocate an aggressive unilateralist vision of U.S. global supremacy, which includes a close strategic alliance with Israel. Let's start with one of the founding fathers of the extended neocon clan: Irving Kristol. His extensive resume includes waging culture wars for the CIA against the Soviet Union in the early years of the Cold War and calling for an American "imperial" role during the Vietnam War. Papa Kristol, who has been credited with defining the major themes of neoconservative thought, is married to Gertrude Himmelfarb, a neoconservative powerhouse on her own. Her studies of the Victorian era in Britain helped inspire the men who sold Bush on the idea of "compassionate conservatism."
The son of this proud couple is none other that William Kristol, the crown prince of the neoconservative clique and editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. In 1997, he founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a front group which cemented the powerful alliance between right-wing Republicans like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, Christian and Catholic Right leaders like Gary Bauer and William Bennett, and the neocons behind a platform of global U.S. military dominance.


Irving Kristol's most prominent disciple is Richard Perle, who was until Thursday the Defense Policy Board chairman, is also a "resident scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute, which is housed in the same building as PNAC. Perle himself married into neocon royalty when he wed the daughter of his professor at the University of Chicago, the late Alfred Wohlstetter -- the man who helped both his son-in-law and his fellow student Paul Wolfowitz get their start in Washington more than 30 years ago.


Perle's own protege is Douglas Feith, who is now Wolfowitz's deputy for policy and is widely known for his right-wing Likud position. And why not? His father, Philadelphia businessman and philanthropist Dalck Feith, was once a follower of the great revisionist Zionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky, in his native Poland back in the 1930s. The two Feiths were honored together in 1997 by the right-wing Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).

The AEI has long been a major nexus for such inter-familial relationships. A long-time collaborator with Perle, Michael Ledeen is married to Barbara Ledeen, a founder and director of the anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum (IWF), who is currently a major player in the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and another neo-con power couple -- David and Meyrav Wurmser -- co-authored a 1996 memorandum for Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu outlining how to break the Oslo peace process and invade Iraq as the first step to transforming the Middle East.


Though she doesn't focus much on foreign-policy issues, Lynne Cheney also hangs her hat at AEI. Her husband Dick Cheney recently chose Victoria Nuland to become his next deputy national security adviser. Nuland, as it turns out, is married to Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol's main comrade-in-arms and the co-founder of PNAC.


Bob's father, Donald Kagan, is a Yale historian who converted from a liberal Democrat to a staunch neocon in the 1970s. On the eve of the 2000 presidential elections, Donald and his other son, Frederick, published "While America Sleeps," a clarion call to increase defense spending. Since then, the three Kagan men have written reams of columns warning that the currently ballooning Pentagon budget is simply not enough to fund the much-desired vision of U.S. global supremacy.

And which infamous ex-Reaganite do the Kagans and another leading neocon family have in common? None other than Iran-contra veteran Elliott Abrams.


Now the director of Near Eastern Affairs in Bush's National Security Council, Abrams worked closely with Bob Kagan back in the Reagan era. He is also the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, long-time editor of the influential conservative Jewish publication Commentary, and his wife, Midge Decter, a fearsome polemicist in her own right.


Podhoretz, like Kristol Sr., helped invent neo-conservatism in the late 1960s. He and Decter created a formidable political team as leaders of the Committee on the Present Danger in 1980, when they worked with Donald Rumsfeld to pound the last nail into the coffin of detente and promote the rise of Ronald Reagan. In addition to being Abrams' father-in-law, Norman Podhoretz is also the father of John Podhoretz, a columnist for the Murdoch-owned New York Post and frequent guest on the Murdoch-owned Fox News channel.


As editor of Commentary, Norman offered writing space to rising stars of the neocon movement for more than 30 years. His proteges include former U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and Richard Pipes, who was Ronald Reagan's top advisor on the "Evil Empire," as the president liked to call the Soviet Union. His son, Daniel Pipes, has also made a career out of battling "evil," which in his case is Islam. And to tie it all up neatly, in 2002, Podhoretz received the highest honor bestowed by the AEI: the Irving Kristol award.


This list of intricate, overlapping connections is hardly exhaustive or perhaps even surprising. But it helps reveal an important fact. Contrary to appearances, the neocons do not constitute a powerful mass political movement. They are instead a small, tighly-knit clan whose incestuous familial and personal connections, both within and outside the Bush administration, have allowed them grab control of the future of American foreign policy.

www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=15481

[Moses]

Richard Perle's book - January, 2004

Comments on Islam and Islamic Organizations

Militant Islamic groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR]... (pg 75)

People who live next door to a storefront mosque in Brooklyn, New York, will almost certainly observe more things of interest to counterterrorism officials than will people who live next door to a Christian Science church in Brookline, Massachusetts. (pg 79)

The lax multiculturalism that urges Americans to accept the unacceptable from their fellow citizens is one of this nation's greatest vulnerabilities in the war on terror. (pg 93)

The administration's solicitude for Muslim sensitivities might well have been interpreted by many Muslims as a vindication of bin Laden's methods. (pg 149)

...clerics whose own minds contain nothing but medieval theology and a smattering of third world nationalist self-pity. (pg 161)

... the social and sexual frustrations of unemployment may explain much of the fury that Muslim radicals direct toward women who dress too temptingly - and it may also explain the eagerness with which they seize on emotionally intense distractions, like terrorism. (pg 177)

The CIA is blinded, too, by the squeamishness that many liberal-minded people feel about noticing the dark side of third world cultures. (pg 201)

The CIA's reports on the Middle East today are colored by similar ideological biases - exacerbated by poor understanding of the region's culture and a politically correct disinclination to acknowledge unflattering facts about non-Western peoples. (pg 204)

Saudi-funded religious schools drill boys to memorize the Koran in its original Arabic language, a language few of them will ever understand. They learn no trade or skills, no math, no science, no Western language - only deadening rituals and murderous prejudice. [...] By the time they "graduate," they are unemployable, deformed personalities. Meanwhile, in city slums and unelectrified villages, Saudi-funded imams preach jealousy and rage to populations baffled by their country's backward slide and repeated military defeats. (pg 259-260)

A full analysis of this book, "An End to Evil" is available here: www.why-war.com/commentary/2004/01/anendtoevil.html