Saturday, June 25, 2011
Analysis: Lebanon's Hezbollah may fight Israel to relieve Syria
By Mariam Karouny
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group is preparing for a possible war with Israel to relieve perceived Western pressure to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, its guardian ally, sources close to the movement say.
The radical Shi'ite group, which has a powerful militia armed by Damascus and Iran, is watching the unrest in neighboring Syria with alarm and is determined to prevent the West from exploiting popular protests to bring down Assad.
Hezbollah supported pro-democracy movements that toppled Western-backed leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, but officials say it will not stand idly by as international pressure mounts on Assad to yield to protesters.
It is committed to do whatever it takes politically to help deflect what it sees as a foreign campaign against Damascus, but it is also readying for a possible war with Israel if Assad is weakened.
"Hezbollah will never intervene in Syria. This is an internal issue for President Bashar to tackle. But when it sees the West gearing up to bring him down, it will not just watch," a Lebanese official close to the group's thinking told Reuters.
"This is a battle for existence for the group and it is time to return the favor (of Syria's support). It will do that by fending off some of the international pressure," he added.
The militant group, established nearly 30 years ago to confront Israel's occupation of south Lebanon, fought an inconclusive 34-day war with Israel in 2006.
Hezbollah and Syria have both denied that the group has sent fighters to support a military crackdown on the wave of protests against Assad's rule.
read more: http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE75L3S320110622
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group is preparing for a possible war with Israel to relieve perceived Western pressure to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, its guardian ally, sources close to the movement say.
The radical Shi'ite group, which has a powerful militia armed by Damascus and Iran, is watching the unrest in neighboring Syria with alarm and is determined to prevent the West from exploiting popular protests to bring down Assad.
Hezbollah supported pro-democracy movements that toppled Western-backed leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, but officials say it will not stand idly by as international pressure mounts on Assad to yield to protesters.
It is committed to do whatever it takes politically to help deflect what it sees as a foreign campaign against Damascus, but it is also readying for a possible war with Israel if Assad is weakened.
"Hezbollah will never intervene in Syria. This is an internal issue for President Bashar to tackle. But when it sees the West gearing up to bring him down, it will not just watch," a Lebanese official close to the group's thinking told Reuters.
"This is a battle for existence for the group and it is time to return the favor (of Syria's support). It will do that by fending off some of the international pressure," he added.
The militant group, established nearly 30 years ago to confront Israel's occupation of south Lebanon, fought an inconclusive 34-day war with Israel in 2006.
Hezbollah and Syria have both denied that the group has sent fighters to support a military crackdown on the wave of protests against Assad's rule.
read more: http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE75L3S320110622
Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project
The Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project (IRDP) focuses on a systematic and empirical approach to the study of Islamophobia and its impact on the American Muslim community. Today, Muslims in the U.S., parts of Europe, and around the world have been transformed into a demonized and feared global "other," subjected to legal, social, and political discrimination. Even at the highest levels of political discourse, the 2008 U.S. Presidential elections, Islamophobia took center stage as a sizeable number of Americans expressed fear that Barack Obama, the first African American president, is somehow a closet Muslim. Newspaper articles, tv shows, books, popular movies, political debates, and cultural conflicts over immigration and security produce ample evidence of the stigmatization of Islam within dominant culture.
The challenge for understanding the current cultural and political period centers on providing a more workable and encompassing definition for the Islamophobia phenomenon, a theoretical framework to anchor present and future research, and a centralized mechanism to document and analyze diverse data sets from around the U.S. and in comparison with other areas around the world.
PROJECT GOALS
The Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project has the following goals:
- Support graduate and undergraduate research and documentation focused on issues of Islamophobia through mentorship and intellectual exchange
- Establish an advisory group of a diverse community of faculty working on issues related to Islamophobia
- Provide seed funding for specific research projects on Islamophobia
- Publish an annual report documenting the status of Islamophobia within the United States
- Publish a bi-annual peer reviewed academic periodical focusing on emerging research on Islamophobia
- Host an annual conference to discuss and analyze research outcomes
from: http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia
Thursday, June 23, 2011
California: Slaves to Allah Schooled to Manipulate Government and Media
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) which just recently held a conference on Capitol Hill to speak out against anti-Sharia legislation, has teamed up with the Islamic Center of San Gabriel Valley in Southern California. They have put forth a combined effort to train Muslims to manipulate our government and media.
Last week, MPAC Senior Adviser Dr. Maher Hathout and Director of Policy & Programming Edina Lekovic conducted a powerful workshop called “Truth Over Fear: Countering Islamophobia” for more than 75 members of the Islamic Center of San Gabriel Valley in Southern California.
“Truth Over Fear” is a workshop and training session developed by MPAC to empower local communities with crucial tools to counter Islamophobia in a proactive and constructive manner. These hands-on training sessions are composed of two primary components: education and hands-on empowerment.
Participants learn how media propaganda produced by a cottage industry of self-proclaimed terrorism experts fuels Islamophobia and dehumanization, and they gain practical tools for addressing the irrational fear of Islam and Muslims that nearly half of Americans admit to having.
They also learned how to effectively engage their elected officials and government representatives, as well as with local and national media outlets.Actually, not speaking out against Islam is a danger to non-Muslim Americans. The training sessions were meant to teach Muslims how to get Islam accepted into America. If the hate and bigotry that stems from Islam is left unchecked, it will erode the very foundations of our democratic institutions. That’s the truth! As I have been saying, we are in the middle of a massive information war. PLEASE do your part!
Through this national campaign, MPAC seeks to inform our country on the dangers that Islamophobia presents to all Americans. The training sessions are meant to raise a proactive voice to counter hate and bigotry, which if left unchecked, can erode the very foundations of our democratic institutions.
Link to Article
CAIR Loses IRS Status
IPT News | InvestigativeProject.org
Donations to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) no longer are tax deductible after the organization was among 275,000 tax-exempt organizations purged earlier this month by the Internal Revenue Service.
The groups failed to file required annual reports, known as form 990s, detailing their revenues and expenses, for three consecutive years. CAIR had been a non-profit on its own, but in 2007, the IRS approved a separate tax-exempt CAIR Foundation. The foundation never filed any subsequent reports. Both the foundation and CAIR national are on the purge list.
CAIR has 30 state chapters throughout the country, many of which have their own non-profit designations which remain active.
While the IRS believes most of the organizations stripped of status have shut down, those still operating can apply for reinstatement. Meanwhile, CAIR's web site continues to solicit donations by touting them as tax deductible two weeks after the IRS issued the list and notifications were sent to all 275,000 purged groups.
Donors still could deduct the money on their tax returns if CAIR is reinstated between now and April 15. All the purged organizations have 15 months to seek reinstatement. But it is unclear whether CAIR will file the required papers or whether their explanation about past reporting failures will be enough to satisfy the IRS.
"This listing should have little, if any, impact on donors who previously made deductible contributions to auto-revoked organizations because donations made prior to the publication of an organization's name on the list remain tax-deductible," an IRS statement said. "Going forward, however, organizations that are on the auto-revocation list that do not receive reinstatement are no longer eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions, and any income they receive may be taxable."
To regain its exempt status, CAIR must file the missing three annual reports, along with a new application for exempt status. Finally, it must explain why it failed to file the 990s for three consecutive years and explain any new procedures which will ensure future compliance.
The annual reports include financial information on donations and other sources of income, operating expenses and names and payments given to directors and key staff members.
The CAIR Foundation won exempt status in 2007 and then never filed any annual reports. That year, the Washington Times reported that CAIR's membership plummeted by 90 percent, from a high of 29,000 people in 2000 to less than 1,700 in 2006. CAIR vehemently denied the report when it was issued. But a year later, when the organization sought to have its name removed from a list of unindicted co-conspirators in a Hamas-financing prosecution, CAIR attorneys tied the diminishing support to the 2007 co-conspirator list.
"Furthermore, the amount of donations that they have been receiving has dwindled well below their monthly budget, and as their associational activity necessarily relies upon donations from the public, the government's labeling of them as an unindicted co-conspirator has chilled their associational activity."
Anecdotal information indicates the group increasingly has turned to foreign donors for operating revenue. In 2006, State Department records obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism show, CAIR sent delegations to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates seeking millions of dollars in support.
The delegation included CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, then-board chairman Parvez Ahmed, and current chairman Larry Shaw.
In 2009, Awad solicited Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi to help underwrite a program to distribute 1 million copies of the Quran to government officials and the general public in America and to help start up a new foundation Awad was trying to launch.
When it applied for exempt status, the CAIR Foundation told the IRS that it would solicit "nationwide, although it is expected that the largest support will come from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, where CAIR-Foundation's visibility is most prominent to potential donors."
Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2990/cair-loses-irs-status
Donations to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) no longer are tax deductible after the organization was among 275,000 tax-exempt organizations purged earlier this month by the Internal Revenue Service.The groups failed to file required annual reports, known as form 990s, detailing their revenues and expenses, for three consecutive years. CAIR had been a non-profit on its own, but in 2007, the IRS approved a separate tax-exempt CAIR Foundation. The foundation never filed any subsequent reports. Both the foundation and CAIR national are on the purge list.
CAIR has 30 state chapters throughout the country, many of which have their own non-profit designations which remain active.
While the IRS believes most of the organizations stripped of status have shut down, those still operating can apply for reinstatement. Meanwhile, CAIR's web site continues to solicit donations by touting them as tax deductible two weeks after the IRS issued the list and notifications were sent to all 275,000 purged groups.
Donors still could deduct the money on their tax returns if CAIR is reinstated between now and April 15. All the purged organizations have 15 months to seek reinstatement. But it is unclear whether CAIR will file the required papers or whether their explanation about past reporting failures will be enough to satisfy the IRS.
"This listing should have little, if any, impact on donors who previously made deductible contributions to auto-revoked organizations because donations made prior to the publication of an organization's name on the list remain tax-deductible," an IRS statement said. "Going forward, however, organizations that are on the auto-revocation list that do not receive reinstatement are no longer eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions, and any income they receive may be taxable."
To regain its exempt status, CAIR must file the missing three annual reports, along with a new application for exempt status. Finally, it must explain why it failed to file the 990s for three consecutive years and explain any new procedures which will ensure future compliance.
The annual reports include financial information on donations and other sources of income, operating expenses and names and payments given to directors and key staff members.
The CAIR Foundation won exempt status in 2007 and then never filed any annual reports. That year, the Washington Times reported that CAIR's membership plummeted by 90 percent, from a high of 29,000 people in 2000 to less than 1,700 in 2006. CAIR vehemently denied the report when it was issued. But a year later, when the organization sought to have its name removed from a list of unindicted co-conspirators in a Hamas-financing prosecution, CAIR attorneys tied the diminishing support to the 2007 co-conspirator list.
"Furthermore, the amount of donations that they have been receiving has dwindled well below their monthly budget, and as their associational activity necessarily relies upon donations from the public, the government's labeling of them as an unindicted co-conspirator has chilled their associational activity."
Anecdotal information indicates the group increasingly has turned to foreign donors for operating revenue. In 2006, State Department records obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism show, CAIR sent delegations to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates seeking millions of dollars in support.
The delegation included CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, then-board chairman Parvez Ahmed, and current chairman Larry Shaw.
In 2009, Awad solicited Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi to help underwrite a program to distribute 1 million copies of the Quran to government officials and the general public in America and to help start up a new foundation Awad was trying to launch.
When it applied for exempt status, the CAIR Foundation told the IRS that it would solicit "nationwide, although it is expected that the largest support will come from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, where CAIR-Foundation's visibility is most prominent to potential donors."
Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2990/cair-loses-irs-status
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Determined disinterest in our own destruction
Center for Security Policy
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.
During the Cold War, America faced an implacable enemy, driven by a supremacist ideology that called for, among other things, the use of an array of covert front groups, stealthy techniques and subversive activities to achieve our destruction. For many years, our effort to defeat Soviet Communism featured a concerted counter-intelligence (CI) effort aimed at ferreting out and defeating such sedition.
Unfortunately, America now faces once again an implacable enemy, driven by a supremacist ideology that calls for, among other things, the use of an array of covert front groups, stealthy techniques and subversive activities to achieve our destruction. In the place of the Soviet Union and the influence operations run by its intelligence service, the KGB, and the Communist International (Comintern), we confront the Islamic doctrine known as shariah and the Muslim Brotherhood, which serves as the principal engine for extending its reach.
It seems, however, that we have no counter-intelligence effort comparable to that of the Cold War or remotely commensurate with today's threat. Indeed, based on the evidence of successful penetration and influence operations being run by the Muslim Brotherhood these days, one would be tempted to conclude that counter-intelligence has effectively ceased to be part of our toolkit in keeping America safe and free.
Consider just a few of many worrying examples:
When President Obama engaged in his latest "outreach to the Muslim world" at the State Department last month, seated in the front row next to the Secretary of State was Imam Mohammed Magid. Magid happens to be the president of the largest Muslim Brotherhood organization in the country, the Islamic Society of North America. As with the White House's insistence that MB representatives be included in the audience during the President's Cairo 2009 address, the message could not be any clearer: Far from perceiving the Brotherhood as what it is - an organization determined to destroy the United States and the rest of the Free World - Team Obama sees them as reliable partners.
That message was being reinforced at this writing when, on Monday, senior U.S. government officials sat down with an assortment of Muslim Brotherhood operatives and groups under the auspices of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Bin Talal - a major benefactor of Brotherhood causes and enabler of its own and similar Islamist influence operations - endowed his center at Georgetown University with a gift of $20 million. The investment is paying handsome dividends as it affords the MB a vehicle for using "interfaith dialogue" as a means of legitimating and promoting its personnel and agendas.
In 2009, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) - an organization counter-terror expert Patrick Poole describes as the "political lobbying arm of the U.S. Brotherhood" - boasted that it was "consulted" by Los Angeles Mayor Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa about his choice of police chief. Such political stroke may have something to do with the MB threat being downplayed by LAPD's current Deputy Chief Michael Downey, who testified last week before Rep. Pete King's House Homeland Security Committee about Islamist "radicalization" in the U.S. prison system.
Besides the cyber-sexploits of Rep. Anthony Weiner, the most astonishing revelation to come out of his public meltdown was the fact that his wife, Huma Abedin, a member of a prominent Muslim Brotherhood family in Egypt, happens to be Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff. (For more on the Abedins, see Arnold Ahlert's damning report.) Secretary Clinton told an Egyptian audience last Tuesday that the job held by the Saudi-reared Ms. Abedin's job was an "important and sensitive position."
Meanwhile, part of the job of performing background checks for U.S. security clearances has been contracted out to companies incentivized to help clean up a serious backlog. According to employees, they are given quotas of cases to process with one company requiring as many as twenty per day. Does anyone seriously believe that this is a formula for properly vetting personnel?
Meanwhile, there is an issue requiring serious vetting whose problems date back to the bad old Cold War days. The United States Senate is poised to confirm as the next Secretary of Defense a man who, back during Angleton's days, would have been considered a security threat.
Thanks to intrepid reporting by Cliff Kincaid and Trevor Loudon, we now know that during his days as a California Congressman, Leon Panetta, had close personal ties to Communist agents and spies. At no point has he disavowed such relationships or expressed remorse for any help he may have provided them. Neither has any senator indicated concern about the problematic judgment or security risks that might be associated with such a Pentagon chief.
The question occurs: Can we possibly hope to survive our time's ideologically-driven subversion - let alone prevail over it - if we systematically disregard the threat its adherents pose here at home? We need to reconstitute the sort of serious counter-intelligence capability and practice that we have employed to greateffect in the past. Continuing to do otherwise is to invite, if not assure, our destruction.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.
from: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p18748.xml
Unfortunately, America now faces once again an implacable enemy, driven by a supremacist ideology that calls for, among other things, the use of an array of covert front groups, stealthy techniques and subversive activities to achieve our destruction. In the place of the Soviet Union and the influence operations run by its intelligence service, the KGB, and the Communist International (Comintern), we confront the Islamic doctrine known as shariah and the Muslim Brotherhood, which serves as the principal engine for extending its reach.
It seems, however, that we have no counter-intelligence effort comparable to that of the Cold War or remotely commensurate with today's threat. Indeed, based on the evidence of successful penetration and influence operations being run by the Muslim Brotherhood these days, one would be tempted to conclude that counter-intelligence has effectively ceased to be part of our toolkit in keeping America safe and free.
Consider just a few of many worrying examples:
When President Obama engaged in his latest "outreach to the Muslim world" at the State Department last month, seated in the front row next to the Secretary of State was Imam Mohammed Magid. Magid happens to be the president of the largest Muslim Brotherhood organization in the country, the Islamic Society of North America. As with the White House's insistence that MB representatives be included in the audience during the President's Cairo 2009 address, the message could not be any clearer: Far from perceiving the Brotherhood as what it is - an organization determined to destroy the United States and the rest of the Free World - Team Obama sees them as reliable partners.
That message was being reinforced at this writing when, on Monday, senior U.S. government officials sat down with an assortment of Muslim Brotherhood operatives and groups under the auspices of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Bin Talal - a major benefactor of Brotherhood causes and enabler of its own and similar Islamist influence operations - endowed his center at Georgetown University with a gift of $20 million. The investment is paying handsome dividends as it affords the MB a vehicle for using "interfaith dialogue" as a means of legitimating and promoting its personnel and agendas.
In 2009, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) - an organization counter-terror expert Patrick Poole describes as the "political lobbying arm of the U.S. Brotherhood" - boasted that it was "consulted" by Los Angeles Mayor Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa about his choice of police chief. Such political stroke may have something to do with the MB threat being downplayed by LAPD's current Deputy Chief Michael Downey, who testified last week before Rep. Pete King's House Homeland Security Committee about Islamist "radicalization" in the U.S. prison system.
Besides the cyber-sexploits of Rep. Anthony Weiner, the most astonishing revelation to come out of his public meltdown was the fact that his wife, Huma Abedin, a member of a prominent Muslim Brotherhood family in Egypt, happens to be Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff. (For more on the Abedins, see Arnold Ahlert's damning report.) Secretary Clinton told an Egyptian audience last Tuesday that the job held by the Saudi-reared Ms. Abedin's job was an "important and sensitive position."
Meanwhile, part of the job of performing background checks for U.S. security clearances has been contracted out to companies incentivized to help clean up a serious backlog. According to employees, they are given quotas of cases to process with one company requiring as many as twenty per day. Does anyone seriously believe that this is a formula for properly vetting personnel?
Meanwhile, there is an issue requiring serious vetting whose problems date back to the bad old Cold War days. The United States Senate is poised to confirm as the next Secretary of Defense a man who, back during Angleton's days, would have been considered a security threat.
Thanks to intrepid reporting by Cliff Kincaid and Trevor Loudon, we now know that during his days as a California Congressman, Leon Panetta, had close personal ties to Communist agents and spies. At no point has he disavowed such relationships or expressed remorse for any help he may have provided them. Neither has any senator indicated concern about the problematic judgment or security risks that might be associated with such a Pentagon chief.
The question occurs: Can we possibly hope to survive our time's ideologically-driven subversion - let alone prevail over it - if we systematically disregard the threat its adherents pose here at home? We need to reconstitute the sort of serious counter-intelligence capability and practice that we have employed to greateffect in the past. Continuing to do otherwise is to invite, if not assure, our destruction.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.
from: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p18748.xml
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