The dynamic of democratic, nationalist and class struggles throughout the Muslim world has set in motion a new constellation of alliances between the imperial West (US and European Union) and Islamist parties, leaders and regimes, dubbed "moderate" by US officials, propagandists and academics.

This essay analyzes the changing contemporary context of imperial domination, especially the demise of longstanding client regimes. It then examines the previous significant ties between western imperial powers and Islamist movements and regimes and the basis of 'historical collaboration'.

The third part of the paper will outline the political circumstances in which the imperial powers embrace "moderate" Islamists in government and utilize "armed fundamentalists" in opposition to secular regimes. We will critically analyze how "moderate" Islam is defined by the Western imperialist powers. Is this a tactical or strategic alliance? What are the political "trade-offs"? What do imperialism's neo-liberal clients and their new 'moderate' Muslim allies have in common and how do they differ?

In conclusion we will evaluate the viability of this alliance and its capacity to contain and deflect the popular democratic movements and repress the burgeoning class and national struggles, especially in regard to the 'obstacles' posed by the Israel-US-Zionist ties and the continued IMF policies which promise to worsen the crises in the Muslim countries.

The Transition from Neo-Liberal Client Rulers to Power-Sharing with Moderate Islamists

The key motivation in Washington's and the European imperial troika's (England, France and Germany) embrace of what their press and officialdom hail as "moderate" Islamist parties has been the collapse or weakening of their long-term client rulers. Faced with the ouster of Mubarak, in Egypt, Ali in Tunisia and Saleh in Yemen, mass protests in Morocco and Algeria, the US-EU turned to conservative Muslim leaders who were willing to work within the existing state institutional framework (including the army and state police), uphold the capitalist order and align with the empire against anti-imperial movements and states. In Egypt, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) (the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood), in Tunisia the Renaissance Party, in Morocco the Justice and Development Party have all indicated their willingness to serve as reliable partners in blocking the pro-democracy movements that challenge the socio-economic status quo and the long-standing military-imperial linkages.

The Islamist collaborators are called "moderate and respectable" because they agree to participate in elections within the boundaries of the established political and economic order; they have dropped any criticism of imperial and colonial treaties and trade agreements signed by the previous client regions - including ones which collaborate with Israel's colonization of Palestine.

Equally important "moderate" means supporting imperial wars against nationalist and secular Arab republics, such as Syria and Libya, and isolating and/or repressing class based trade unions and secular-left parties.

"Moderate" Islamists have become the Empire's 'contraceptive of choice' against any chance the massive Arab peoples' revolt might give birth to substantive egalitarian social changes and bring those brutal pro- western officials, responsible for so many crimes against humanity, to justice.

The West and their client officials in the military and police have agreed to a kind of "power-sharing' with the moderate/respectable (read 'reactionary') Islamist parties. The Islamists would be responsible for imposing orthodox economic policies and re-establishing 'order' (i.e. bolstering the existing one) in partnership with pro-multinational bank economists and pro US-EU generals and security officials. In exchange the Islamists could take certain ministries, appoint their members, finance electoral clientele among the poor and push their 'moderate' religious, social and cultural agenda. Basically, the elected Islamists would replace the old corrupt dictatorial regimes in running the state and signing off on more free trade agreements with the EU. Their role would keep the leftists, nationalists and populists out of power and from gaining mass support. Their job would substitute spiritual solace and "inner worth" via Islam in place of redistributing land, income and power from the elite, including the foreign multi-nationals to the peasants, workers, unemployed and exploited low-paid employees.

Why the Empire Arms Fundamentalist Anti-Secular Muslims

While the US and EU have backed respectable "moderate Islam" in heading off a popular upheaval of the young and unemployed, in other contexts they have enlisted violent, fundamentalist Islamic terrorists to overthrow secular independent anti-imperialists regimes - like Libya, Syria - just as they had done earlier in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. The US, Qatar and the European troika financed and armed Libyan fundamentalist militias and then engaged in a murderous eight months air and sea assault to ensure their client's 'victory' over the secular Gaddafi regime. Fresh from NATO's success, the US, the European 'Troika' and Turkey, with the backing of the League of Arab collaborator princes and emirs, have financed a violent Muslim Brotherhood insurrection in Syria, intent on destroying the nationalist economy and modern secular state.

The US and EU have openly unleashed their fundamentalists allies in order to destroy independent adversaries in the name of "democracy" and 'humanitarian intervention', a laughable claim in light of decade long colonial wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. All target regimes have one crime in common: Using their national resources to develop modern secular states - independent of imperial dictates.

NATO implements its campaigns through conservative 'moderate' or armed fundamentalist Islamist movements depending on the specific needs, circumstances and range of options in any given target nation. With the fall of pro-Empire 'secular dictatorships' in Egypt and Tunisia, pliable conservative Islamist leaders are the fall back "lesser evil". When the opportunity to overthrow an independent secular or nationalist regime arises, armed and violent fundamentalist mercenaries become the political vehicle of choice.

As with European empires in the past, the modern Western imperial countries have relied on retrograde religious parties and leaders to collaborate and serve their economic and military interests and to provide mercenaries for imperial armies to savage any anti-imperialist social revolutionaries. In that sense US and European rulers are neither 'pro nor anti' Islam, it all depends on their national and class position. Islamists who collaborate with Empire are "moderate" allies and if they attack an anti-imperialist regime, they become 'freedom fighters'. On the other hand, they become "terrorists" or "fundamentalists" when they oppose imperial occupation, pillage or colonial settlements.

Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Collaboration

The historical record of western imperial expansion reveals many instances of collaboration and cooptation as well as conflict with Islamist regimes, movements and parties. In the early 1960's the CIA backed a brutal military coup against the secular Indonesian nationalist regime of Sukarno, and encouraged their puppet dictator General Suharto to unleash Muslim militia in a veritable "holy war" exterminating nearly one million leftist trade unionists, school teachers, students, farmers, communists or suspected sympathizers and their family members. The horrific 'Jakarta Option' became a model for CIA operations elsewhere. In Yugoslavia the US and Europe promoted and financed fundamentalists Muslims in Bosnia, importing mujahedeen who would later form part of Al Qaida, and then backed the Kosovo Liberation Army, a known terrorist organization, in order to completely break-up and ethnically 'cleanse' a modern secular multi-national state - going so far as to have Americans and NATO bomb Belgrade for the first time since the Nazis in the Second World War.

During President Carter's administration, the CIA joined with Saudi Arabia's ruling royalty, providing billions of dollars in arms and military supplies to Afghan Muslim fundamentalists in their brutal but successful Jihad overthrowing a modern, secular nationalist regime backed by the USSR. The murderous fate of school teachers and educated women in the aftermath was quickly covered up.

Needless to say, wherever US imperialism faces leftists or secular, modernizing anti-imperialist regimes, Washington turns to retrograde Islamic leaders willing and able to destroy the progressive regime in return for imperialist support. Such coalitions are built mainly around fundamentalist and moderate Islamist opposition to secular, class- based politics allied with the Empire's hostility to any anti-imperialist challenge to its domination..

The same 'coalition' of Islamists and the Empire has been glaringly obvious during the NATO assault on Libya and continues against Syria: The Muslims provide the shock troops on the ground; NATO provides the aerial bombing, funds, arms, sanctions, embargoes and propaganda.

These Islamist-Imperialist coalitions are usually temporary, based on a common secular or nationalist enemy and not on any common strategic interest. After the defeat of a secular anti-imperialist regime, militant Muslims may find themselves attacked by the colonial neo-liberal regime most favored by the imperial west. This happened in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the overseas Islamist fighters (Afghan Arabs) returned to their own neo-colonized, collaborating home countries, like Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt and elsewhere.

Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Conflict

The relation between Islamist regimes and imperialism is complex, changing and full of examples of bloody conflict.

The US backed the "modernizing" free market dictatorship of the Shah in Iran, overthrowing the nationalist Mosaddegh regime. They provided arms and intelligence for the Savak, the Shah's monstrous secret police as it hunted down and murdered tens of thousands of nationalist-Islamists and leftist resistance fighters and critics in Iran and abroad. The rise to power of the fundamentalist-anti-imperialist Khomeini regime fueled US armed attacks and provoked retaliatory moves: Iran backed and financed anti-colonial Islamist groups in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (the Shia parties).

Subsequent to 9/11 the US invaded and overthrew the Islamist Taliban regime, re-colonized the country, establishing a puppet regime under US-European auspices. The Taliban and allied Islamist and nationalist resistance fighters organized and established a mass guerrilla army which has engaged in a decade long war with armed support from Pakistani Islamist forces responding to US military incursions.

In Palestine, Washington, under the overweening control of Israel's Zionist fifth column, has armed and financed Israel's war against the popularly elected Palestinian Islamist Hamas government in Gaza. Washington's total commitment to the Jewish state and its colonial expansion and usurpation of Palestinian (Muslim and Christian) lands and property in Jerusalem and elsewhere reflects the profound and pervasive influence of the Zionist power configuration throughout the US political system .They secure 90% votes in Congress, pledges of allegiance from the White House, and senior appointments in Treasury, State Department and the Pentagon.

What determines whether the US Empire will have a collaborative or conflict-ridden relation with Islam depends on the specific political context. The US allies with Islamists when faced with nationalist, leftist and secular democratic regimes and movements, especially where their optimal choice, a military-neo-liberal alternative is relatively weak. However, faced with a nationalist, anti-colonial Islamist regime (as is the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran), Washington will side with pro-western liberals, dissident Muslim clerics, pliable tribal chiefs, separatist ethnic minorities and pro-Western generals.

The key to US-Islamist relations from the White House perspective is based on the Islamists' attitude toward empire, class politics, NATO and the "free market" (private foreign investment).

Today's 'moderate' Islamist parties in Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco (and elsewhere), which have offered their support to NATO and its wars against Libya and Syria, uphold 'private property' (i.e. foreign and imperialist client control of key industries) and repress independent working class and anti-imperialist parties: They are the Empire's "new partners" in the pillage of the resource-rich Middle East and North Africa.

The US-brokered counter-revolutionary alliance among moderate Islamists, the previous military rulers and Washington is fraught with tensions. The military demands total impunity and a continuation of its economic privileges; this includes a veto on any legislation addressing the previous regime's brutal crimes against its own people. On the other hand, the Islamist parties uphold their electoral victories and demand majority rule. Washington insists the alliance adhere to its policy toward Israel and abandon their support for the Palestinian national struggle. As these tensions and conflicts deepen, the alliance could collapse ushering in a new phase of conflict and instability.

Emblematic of "moderate Islamiist" collaboration with US-EU imperialism is the role of Qatar, home to the 'respectable' Arabic media giant, Al-Jazeera, and the demagogic Qatari "spiritual guide" Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi. Sheik Youssef quotes the Koran and Islamic moral principles in defense of NATO's 8-month aerial bombing of Libya, which killed over 50,000 pro-regime Libyans (themselves Muslims). He calls for armed imperial intervention in Syria to overthrow the secular Assad regime, a position he shares comfortably with the state of Israel. He urges the "moderate Islamists" in Egypt and Tunisia to cease any criticism of the existing economic order, ( see "Spiritual guide steers Arabs to moderation", Financial Times, December 9, 2011 - p5). In a word, this respectable Muslim cleric is NATO's perfect Koran-quoting "moderate Islamist" partner - a dream come true.

The Strategic Utility of "Moderate" Islamist Parties

Islamist parties are approached by the Empire's policy elites only when they have a mass following and can therefore weaken any popular, nationalist insurgency. Mass-based Islamist parties serve the empire by providing "legitimacy", by winning elections and by giving a veneer of respectability to the pro-imperial military and police apparatus retained in place from the overthrown client state dictatorships.

The Islamist parties compete at the "grass roots" with the leftists. They build up a clientele of supporters among the poor in the countryside and urban slums through organized charity and basic social services administered at the mosques and humanitarian religious foundations. Because they reject class struggle and are intensely hostile to the left (with its secular, pro-feminist and working-class agenda), they have been 'half-tolerated' by the dictatorship, while the leftist activists are routinely murdered. Subsequently, with the overthrow of the dictatorship, the Islamists emerge intact with the strongest national organizational network as the country's 'natural leaders' from the religious-bazaar merchant political elite. Their leaders offer to serve the empire and its traditional native military collaborators in exchange for a 'slice of power', especially over morality, culture, religion and households (women), in other words, the "micro-society".

For their part, they offer to marginalize and undermine the left, anti-imperialist secular democrats in the streets. In the face of mass popular rebellion calling into question the imperial order, a 'moderate' Islamist-imperial partnership is a 'heavenly deal' praised in Washington, Paris or London (as well as Riyadh and Tel Aviv).

Conclusion: How Viable is the Imperial-Islamic Coalition?

Those who thought that the spontaneous pro-democracy movements spelled the end of the imperial order left out the role of organized "moderate" Islamist electoral parties as able collaborators of Empire. The brutally repressed mass mobilization of unemployed youth was no match for the well-funded grass roots community organization of the moderate Islamists. This is especially true when politics shifted from the street to the ballot box, a process that the Islamist parties facilitated. In the absence of a mass revolutionary party, seeking state power, the existing military-police state was able to work around the mass protesters and put together a power sharing agreement at least in the short-run.

In the November 2011 elections, the radical Egyptian Islamist party, Nour, gathered one-quarter of the vote in Cairo and Alexandria. Their showing was even higher among the urban poor districts, which promises even greater support among poor rural constituencies in the coming elections. Essentially a Salafist Islamist party, Nour, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, combined denunciations of class abuses and elite corruption with mass appeals to a return to a mythic harmonious life. They used effective grass roots organizing around basic services in order to gain a greater proportion of the working class vote than all the leftist parties combined. Nour's message of "class retribution against the ...abuses of Egypt's elite fueled Nour's new found popularity", (Financial Times December 10, 2011 p6).

Despite the successes of the Islamist-Imperial partnership, the world economic crises and especially the growing unemployment and misery in the Arab countries will make it difficult for the 'respectable moderate' Islamists to stabilize their societies. They are inextricably constrained by their alliances to function within the confines of the 'orthodox neo-liberal framework' imposed by the Empire. For that reason, the "moderate" Islamists will try to co-opt some secular liberals, social democrats and even a few leftists as 'minority partners', so that they won't be held solely responsible for dashing the expectations of the poor in their countries.

The fact of the matter is that the pro-imperial Islamist parties have absolutely no answer to the current crises: Charities delivered from the mosque during the dictatorship won them mass support; now more austerity programs imposed from their ministerial posts will certainly alienate and infuriate their mass base. What will follow depends on who is best organized: Liberals are limited to media campaigns and tied to economic orthodoxy; the leftists have to advance from protest movements in the downtown squares to organized political units operating in popular neighborhoods, workplaces, markets, villages and slums. Otherwise radical fundamentalist, like the Salafists, will exploit the people's outrage with moderate Islamist betrayals and promote their own version of a closed clerical society, opposing the West while repressing the Left.

The US and EU may have 'temporarily' avoided revolution by accommodating electoral reforms and adapting to alliances with "moderate" Islamists, but their ongoing military interventions and their own growing economic crisis will simply postpone a more decisive conflict in the near future.

* James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals. Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

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Fordson High School is a secondary school in Dearborn, Michigan. At times Dearborn has been a victim of hostility toward its Muslim community. The city has the largest concentration of Arabs outside of the Middle East.

The school and its football (American football) team is the setting for the new film "Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football".

In recent years, Fordson's team faced a range of challenges, from racial slurs hurled at them while playing to being falsely accused of being terrorists.

The film, about Faith (Islam), Fasting (Muslims during Ramadan) and Football (the film's setting), premiered on September 9th, two days before the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

The team had to train during Ramadan, and in order to fast for the month, they set their practice times from 11 pm to 4 am.

Paul Brunick, reviewing the film for the New York Times, notes that "...sound bites of unidentified but recognizable talk radio and cable news mainstays are the kind of provocations regularly criticized by media watchdogs."

A narrator in the film says, "We've been called many names: an Islamic School, an Arabic School, a Hezbollah High School, camel jockeys, damn Arabs, towel heads, sand niggers."

One of the students comments, "It's real hate; you can feel it." But they're young, they're football players and they want to win, not just on the football field but as Arab Americans.

Says the narrator, "But when all of this hatemongering is mashed together with a sweeping orchestral march, the individual instances of bigotry are transformed into something larger: a glimpse of how monstrous our post-9/11 hysteria may appear to future students of American history."

In the film, residents of Dearborn react to the events of 9/11. One man says, "Please God, don't let them be Arabs" about those who flew the planes into the twin towers.

Another reflects, "We were hit twice; once by Osama bin Laden and second by those who associated us with Osama bin Laden."

Very few films or TV programmes portray Arabs in a favourable light. Those that do need to counter the negative images reflected in the bigotry of a century in Hollywood.

Films like Oscar nominated "Syriana" and "Kingdom of Heaven," which display Arabs and Muslims as people rather than stereotypes, can help break down the image that has been built up for years.

As Professor Emeritus Jack Shaheen made clear in his landmark study Reel Bad Arabs and his documentary based on the book, Hollywood has a long and reprehensible record of vilifying Arabs.

In a 2008 interview for Lebanon's Daily Star, Jim Quilty noted that "Regarded as a sort of 'Orientalism' for film junkies, Shaheen's book inspired 'Planet of the Arabs,' Jackie Salloum's 2003 video that stitches together nine minutes of reprehensible Arab representations like a feature-film trailer. In 2006, the book generated Sut Jhall's documentary 'Reel Bad Arabs'."

In the same year as his documentary appeared, Shaheen released his new book, "Guilty: Hollywood's verdict on Arabs after 9/11." In it, he reveals that instead of an improved image of Arabs, their portrayal has worsened following 9/11.

A review in Publishers Weekly points out that "In an index of more than 100 post-9/11 films, the book depicts and debunks the most prevalent stereotypes of reel Arabs—exotic camel-riding nomad, oppressed maiden, corrupt sheikh, terrorist. Dehumanizing portrayals of Arabs have real consequences..."

The road to deserved improvement of the Arab image in the west will be paved with films that portray Arabs as they really are.

It's time to put ignorant stereotypes to rest by countering the propaganda with reality as in the Fordson film.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

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By Spencer Ackerman

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that "main stream" [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a "cult leader"; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a "funding mechanism for combat."

At the Bureau's training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more "devout" a Muslim, the more likely he is to be "violent." Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: "Any war against non-believers is justified" under Muslim law; a "moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah."

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.

"There may not be a 'radical' threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology," one FBI presentation notes. "The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream."

The FBI isn't just treading on thin legal ice by portraying ordinary, observant Americans as terrorists-in-waiting, former counterterrorism agents say. It's also playing into al-Qaida's hands.

Focusing on the religious behavior of American citizens instead of proven indicators of criminal activity like stockpiling guns or using shady financing makes it more likely that the FBI will miss the real warning signs of terrorism. And depicting Islam as inseparable from political violence is exactly the narrative al-Qaida spins - as is the related idea that America and Islam are necessarily in conflict. That's why FBI whistleblowers provided Danger Room with these materials.

Over the past few years, American Muslim civil rights groups have raised alarm about increased FBI and police presence in Islamic community centers and mosques, fearing that their lawful behavior is being targeted under the broad brush of counterterrorism. The documents may help explain the heavy scrutiny.

They certainly aren't the first time the FBI has portrayed Muslims in a negative light during Bureau training sessions. As Danger Room reported in July, the FBI's Training Division has included anti-Islam books, and materials that claim Islam "transforms [a] country's culture into 7th-century Arabian ways." When Danger Room confronted the FBI with that material, an official statement issued to us claimed, "The presentation in question was a rudimentary version used for a limited time that has since been replaced."

But these documents aren't relics from an earlier era. One of these briefings, titled "Strategic Themes and Drivers in Islamic Law," took place on March 21.

The Islam briefings are elective, not mandatory. "A disclaimer accompanied the presentation stating that the views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. government," FBI spokesman Christopher Allen tells Danger Room.

"The training materials in question were delivered as Stage Two training to counterterrorism-designated agents," Allen adds. "This training was largely derived from a variety of open source publications and includes the opinion of the analyst that developed the lesson block."

Not all counterterrorism veterans consider the briefings so benign. "Teaching counterterrorism operatives about obscure aspects of Islam," says Robert McFadden, who recently retired as one of the Navy Criminal Investigative Service's al-Qaida-hunters, "without context, without objectivity, and without covering other non-religious drivers of dangerous behavior is no way to stop actual terrorists."

Still, at Quantico, the alleged connection between Islam and violence isn't just stipulated. It's literally graphed.

An FBI presentation titled "Militancy Considerations" measures the relationship between piety and violence among the texts of the three Abrahamic faiths. As time goes on, the followers of the Torah and the Bible move from "violent" to "non-violent." Not so for devotees of the Koran, whose "moderating process has not happened." The line representing violent behavior from devout Muslims flatlines and continues outward, from 610 A.D. to 2010. In other words, religious Muslims have been and always will be agents of aggression.

Training at Quantico isn't designed for intellectual bull sessions or abstract theory, according to FBI veterans. The FBI conducts its training so that both seasoned agents and new recruits can sharpen their investigative skills.

In this case, the FBI's Allen says, the counterterrorism agents who received these briefings have "spent two to three years on the job." The briefings are written accordingly. The stated purpose of one, about allegedly religious-sanctioned lying, is to "identify the elements of verbal deception in Islam and their impacts on Law Enforcement." Not "terrorism." Not even "Islamist extremism." Islam.

What's more, the Islamic "insurgency" is all-encompassing and insidious. In addition to outright combat, its "techniques" include "immigration" and "law suits." So if a Muslim wishes to become an American or sues the FBI for harassment, it's all just part of the jihad.

On Tuesday, the leaders of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), warned that law enforcement lacks "meaningful standards" to prevent anti-Islam material from seeping into counterterrorism training. Some FBI veterans suspect the increased pressure on American Muslims has a lot to do with the kind of training that Quantico offers.

"Seeing the materials FBI agents are being trained with certainly helps explain why we've seen so many inappropriate FBI surveillance operations broadly targeting the Muslim-American community, from infiltrating mosques with agents provocateur to racial- and ethnic-mapping programs," Mike German, a former FBI agent now with the American Civil Liberties Union, tells Danger Room after being shown the documents. "Biased police training can only result in biased policing." (Full disclosure: This reporter's wife works for the ACLU.)

The chief of the Training Division, Assistant FBI Director Thomas Browne, came into his current job in January. His official biography lists no terrorism expertise beyond serving as a coordinator for a bureau "Domestic Terrorism Program" in Tennessee sometime in the last decade.

It is unclear what vetting process the FBI used to approve these briefings; if any Muslim scholars contributed to them; and what criteria Quantico uses to determine Islamic expertise. "The development of effective training is a constantly evolving process," says FBI spokesman Allen. "Sometimes the training is adapted for long-term use. This particular training segment was delivered a single time and not used since."

Several of these briefings were the work of a single author: an FBI intelligence analyst named William Gawthrop. In 2006, before he joined the Bureau, he gave an interview to the website WorldNetDaily, and discussed some of the themes that made it into his briefings, years later. The Prophet "Muhammad's mindset is a source for terrorism," Gawthrop told the website, which would later distinguish itself as a leader of the "birther" movement, a conspiracy theory that denies President Obama's American citizenship.

At the time, Gawthrop's major suggestion for waging the war on terrorism was to attack what he called "soft spots" in Islamic faith that might "induce a deteriorating cascade effect upon the target." That is, to discredit Islam itself and cause Muslims to abandon their religion. "Critical vulnerabilities of the Koran, for example, are that it was uttered by a mortal," he said. Alas, he lamented, he faced the bureaucratic obstacle of official Washington's "political taboo of linking Islamic violence to the religion of Islam," according to the website.

* Spencer Ackerman: Brooklyn-raised, DC-based defense nerd. Reported from Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay a couple times.

Source: Wired

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By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

In an earlier article I noted that evangelic preacher Pat Robertson, David Gaubatz, Paul Sperry and Daniel Pipes are Islamophobic cult leaders who take every opportunity they can to vilify Islam and Muslims.

They were all particularly vindictive following the shooting at Fort Hood by the psychopath Nidal Malik Hassan who also happened to be Muslim.

The fact that he was Muslim had nothing to do with his maniacal action. It was no more related to the teachings of Islam than the paedophilia of a few priests is connected with Catholicism or the acts committed by Rabbi Meir Kahane of the Anti-Defamation League were related to Judaism.

Reports of a number of incidents in the past year or so strongly reveal a spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes.

In May 2010, for instance, a bomb exploded at an Islamic centre in Jacksonville, Florida. In August, a man slashed the neck and face of a New York taxi driver after finding out he was Muslim.

Four days later, someone set fire to construction equipment at the future site of an Islamic centre in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This March, a radical Christian pastor burned a Quran in Gainesville, Florida, leading to deadly riots in Afghanistan that left at least 20 people dead.

A few days ago, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) published a benchmark report on Islamophobia in America.

Islamophobia is close-minded prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims. An Islamophobe is an individual who holds a closed-minded view of Islam and promotes prejudice against or hatred of Muslims.

CAIR identifies a number of individuals and groups who have rallied against Islamophobia as well as a number who can be identified as Islamophobes.

Those who CAIR says

deserve recognition for their outstanding contributions to pushing back against Islamophobic trends during the period include: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Loonwatch.com; Congressional Tri-Caucus; Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN); Jon Stewart, Aasif Mandvi and "The Daily Show"; Keith Olbermann and Countdown; Stephen Colbert and "The Colbert Report"; Media Matters for America; interfaith leaders; and Rachel Maddow and "The Rachel Maddow Show."

Many are available on TV in Bahrain.

Some individuals, institutions and groups were at the centre of pushing Islamophobia in America during the period covered by the report:

Pamela Geller and Stop the Islamization of America; Robert Spencer and Jihad Watch; Brigitte Gabriel and Act! for America; Frank Gaffney and the Centre for Security Policy; Steven Emerson and the Investigative Project on Terrorism; Newt Gingrich; the four members of Congress who called for an investigation of Muslim Capitol Hill interns; Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and other violent extremists; and Daniel Pipes.

According to those interviewed for the CAIR report, on a scale from 1 (best situation for Muslims) to 10 (worst possible situation for Muslims) Islamophobia in America stands at 6.4. Interviews were conducted in September and October of 2010.

The public's favourable rating of Islam sank from 40 per cent in November 2001 to 30 per cent in August 2010, according to the Pew Research Centre. In late November 2010, the Public Research Institute found that 45 per cent of Americans agree that Islam is at odds with American values.

"Sources of Islamophobia are those individuals and institutions that produce and package materials, ideas or rhetoric about Islam in order to promote a skewed view of the faith and to induce fear, hate or prejudice in those who receive the materials," says CAIR.

Islamophobic behaviour is being repeated in Europe and elsewhere. The much-needed CAIR report details its nature. The report can be accessed and downloaded [.PDF] from the internet.

CAIR's work on Islamophobia has been a long time coming; too long, as the disease grows and spreads. Zionists scream "anti-Semitism" to silence critics of Israel. Long overdue has been the more honest label "Islamophobia" for those who wrongly vilify Islam and Muslims.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

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By Tim Murphy * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

American TV personality and evangelical Christian leader Pat Robertson, backed by an Israeli flag, delivers a speech on a pilgrimage to Israel. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

Robertson: I was thinking, you know, if you oppose Muslims, what is said? Well, you're a bigot, right? Terrible bigotry. I wonder what were people who opposed the Nazis. Were they bigots?

Co-host: Well, in that day I think they were looked down upon and frowned upon.

Robertson: Why can't we speak out against an institution that is intent on dominating us and imposing Sharia law and making us all part of a universal caliphate? That's the goal of some of these people. Why is that bigoted? Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don't want to live under Nazi Germany?

Watch:

Video link: http://youtu.be/mQOujxM585w

Not to nitpick here, but people who opposed the Nazis were not "looked down upon and frowned upon" as bigots. This was a few decades ago, so it's understandably a little obscure, but the United States actually went to war with Nazi Germany. There was a movie about it and everything.

As you'd probably guess, this is hardly the first time Robertson has compared a large and diverse group of people to Nazis:

Here's Robertson in 1995:

"Since the advent of the head of the Justice Department, Janet Reno, things have gotten out of control. Something is going on that is just very unwholesome in this nation....this is a shocking abuse of federal power. It is reminiscent of the Nazis. Something has got to be done."

And in 1993:

"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians."

Also in 1993:

"When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together."

And in 1990:

"[T]he liberal media and the screenwriters...are the spiritual descendants of Goebbels and the Nazis. They're not just talking about kikes and Jews; they're not talking about, quote, 'n-----s.' They're talking about Christians now."

And in 1984:

"The state is steadily attempting to do something that a few states other than the Soviets and the Nazis have attempted to do, namely, to take the children away from the parents and educate them in a philosophy that is amoral, anti-Christian and humanistic and to show them a collectivist philosophy that will ultimately lead to Marxism, socialism, and a communistic type of ideology."

So as you can see, Muslims are the new gays are the new Clinton Justice Department are the new gays (again) are the new screenwriters are the new public schools are the new Nazis; it's worse than we thought.

* Tim Murphy is a reporter at Mother Jones. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com.

Source: Mother Jones

Related posts:

• Video: UK Jewish MP – Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza
• How Muslims Are Treated In USA? (2nd round)
• With Blair-Bush Lies, Muslims Died

Muslims, slightly more than 1% of Americans, are currently the target of nearly 15% of all hate crimes.

By Franklin Lamb * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Whatever becomes of the truly pathetic "Pastor" Terry Jones and his plans to appear later this month at the largest Mosque in Michigan to condemn Islam and to generate some media attention while provoking all decent Americans and people of good will everywhere with his hate speech, will not be of much lasting import to Muslim and American relations.

Even as Jones prepares to act as grand inquisitor and plans to prosecute the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) for various imagined crimes, it reminds us that when it comes to intolerance, nothing is new under the sun in our land that beckons with its Statue of Liberty near Ellis Island in New York harbor:

"Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/ The wretched refuse from your teeming shore/ Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed to me/ I lift my lamp before the Golden Door."

Muslims and Arabs who began arriving in America in the middle of the 19th century have in many ways embodied the intended fulfillment of the American dream promised in the above words of Emma Lazarus. The reasons that Muslims are often described as being "As American as apple pie" includes exactly their qualities that every Westerner observes and often comments on if they are fortunate enough to live among Muslims abroad or have Muslims as neighbors in their communities in the USA.

These Muslim qualities, the product of Islamic culture and Koranic teachings, including the five pillars of Islam, result in strong law abiding families with respect for their elders, comprised of fun loving and hardworking individuals who sacrifice for their children, have respect for education, compassion for humanity and who perform acts of unsolicited charity for the less fortunate, and exhibit tolerance of the views of others.

Muslims make up slightly more than 1% of the 308 million Americans, but according to recent FBI statistics, since 9/11 and the seemingly eternal US government War on (of) Terror, Muslims in America are currently the target of nearly 15% of all hate crimes.

Robert Kennedy used to say during US Congressional hearings on hate crimes that approximately 20% of the American public is unfortunately quite capable and indeed ready for believing just about anything and acting violently toward their neighbors while being easily influenced toward racism, xenophobia, and hate of " the other."

It appears that not much has changed since the violence of the 1960's in America when some of our best leaders were assassinated. Sociologists claim that the American penchant for irrationally fearing different cultures has been true since the founding of America and our history is replete with examples that belie the passages in our schoolbooks that claim that our country is a unique example of a grand melting pot. Rather, the current trend in America appears, according to a range of observers from left leaning Noam Chomsky to fairly hard right Pat Buchanan, to be an increasing fracturing along ethno-nationalist cleavages.

When Americans are incessantly exposed to US wars in the Middle East and the ranting of fellow Americans who support and seek political advantage from those wars, including the Christian Zionists and pro-Israel lobby, American society becomes vulnerable to hate speech and crimes.

While the US political establishment and American society at large has mounted a significant chorus condemning the views of Terry Jones, Daniel Pipes, Bridgette Gabriel and hundreds like them who seek political and cash profit from sowing domestic discord, much more must be done by every citizen to support real American values of tolerance and good neighborliness.

On Friday, March 4, 2011, the Zionist Middle East Forum launched another Israel backed anti-Muslim campaign to try to wedge the "Pastor Terry Jones" hate campaign against Islam and Muslims.

The current US Zionist lobby, with a reported budget of five million dollars includes the following 'talking points' with which the lobby intends to saturate the US public:

• "The Koran burning by Florida pastor Terry Jones has created hysteria in the Muslim world. In Afghanistan alone, some twenty people, including U.N. workers, have been killed and beheaded to screams of "Allahu Akbar!" Western leaders around the globe-including Obama and members of Congress-have unequivocally condemned Jones' actions (without bothering to point out that freedom of expression is a prized American liberty)

• Western leaders rush to profess their abhorrence at what one American did to one inanimate book, what about what Muslims are doing to living and breathing Christians around the Islamic world-to virtually no media coverage or Western condemnation.

• We should also mention the jihadist attack on a Baghdad church, killing 52 Christians; the New Year's eve Coptic church explosion, killing 21; Muslim rampages that destroyed several churches in Indonesia, Nigeria, and the Philippines; Iran's "round up" of some 70 home-worshipping Christians; and Kuwait's-a nation that owes its very existence to U.S. war sacrifices-rejection to build a church.

• Such is the surreal and increasingly irrational world we live in, where irate Muslims and groveling Westerners obsess over the destruction of one book while ignoring the destruction of many human lives; where a guaranteed and hard-earned American right-freedom of expression-receives a lot of condemnatory huffing and puffing from those charged with protecting it, while murderous and barbarous-in a word, evil-behavior is devoutly ignored.

With carefully organized and well-funded hate campaigns as illustrated above, America does, in a sense have a "Muslim problem" but it can be remedied by every American working in her or his community exposing profoundly un-American effort to sew religious and cultural discord.

* Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book. He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

Related posts:

• America’s True Believers and the Great Muslim Scare
• Mass Assassinations Lie at the Heart of America’s Military Strategy in the Muslim World
• America’s Holy Crusade against the Muslim World

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

By Mantiq al-Tayr * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1. Something else bothered Orlich. Yee mentioned he had studied in Damascus. Orlich wondered about a man who would go to Syria - a state sponsor of terrorism - to find God.

Maj. Jason Orlich

Why not put together a huge bullshit-filled KKK-like anti-Muslim briefing up on the internet? Oh, and make sure to put your name and military rank on it so that the whole world will know, as I demonstrated last week in my most recent post, that the US government is rife with anti-Muslim bigots. (Go here for the downloadable power point presentation and go here to see it in html format.)

You can read about this guy's antics in the links below, but for your amusement, I have also drawn a few quotes from the relevant articles:

Of course the quality of language work at Guantamo was always superb as we can see from this article on how totally fucked up the government's case was:

Another accusation, that he distributed radical literature to the detainees, was based on an erroneous translation of an Islamic symbol in Ottoman-style calligraphy.

Later on in the same expose of government malfeasance we read of more great language work being done:

Airman Al Halabi's lawyers also made a charge of misconduct after a government translator contacted them to say that one of the prosecutors, Capt. Dennis Kaw, had discouraged her from alerting the court when she found a mistake in her translation of the Syrian government's letter. Captain Kaw had insisted, rather improbably, that the Syrian government had given Airman Al Halabi permission in the letter to travel not only to Syria but also to Qatar; instead, the relevant word meant "the homeland."

And read this:

As recently as a week ago, reports suggested that at least 17 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have been subjected to the program. But Maj. Jason Orlich, a creator of Guantánamo Bay's "incentives" program that uses long-term sleep deprivation as a punishment for those who misbehave or fail to cooperate, testified that nearly all of the 350 to 400 prisoners held in two Guantánamo Bay prison camps were subject to the program, which entails waking the prisoners, shackling them, and moving them to a different cell along with all their belongings. Maj. Orlich was reluctant to specify the frequency of the moves, but testified that three-hour intervals "would not be abnormal."

Maj. Orlich also revealed that the Frequent Flyer Program was Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), although it did not appear in writing in the SOPs of that time-begging the question of what other detainee treatment policies were omitted from the written records. According to Maj. Orlich, Guantánamo Bay leadership was aware that the Frequent Flyer Program was in use, and the program was a routine included in what the military calls its "daily synchronization matrix." Maj. Orlich also said that the Frequent Flyer Program was ongoing at the time of his departure from Guantánamo Bay in April 2005, and he had never heard of any order to stop the program. This is despite previous government claims that the program had been discontinued in March 2004.

And here are some excerpts from the extremely bigoted and ignorant slide show this guy has put up on the web apparently subsequent to his tour in Guantanomo. I wonder if he gives this briefing to other people in the military and the US government. On the first slide of his presentation he mentions his PACOM affiliation. Maybe you all investigative journalists out there could ask PACOM if this means that they endorse his presentation.

You know it's gonna be good when it starts off with a quote from the fraud Walid Shoebat which I will spare you. Note to Shas Party members: the headlines in bold are mine, not from the presentation by Maj. Jason Orlich – though I can understand why people could get that confused. The quotes from the slide show are in italics.

Also, the author of the presentation states:

This brief is based upon Extensive Research, Islamic texts, history, and lessons learned at JTF GTMO

So let's take a look at some of the fruits of this extensive foray into Islamic texts.

Yahweh be good, Allah be bad:

Yahweh = Allah

* Yahweh is a loving Father, who, along with the Son and the Holy Spirit, is One God.

* To Muslims, the concept of a triune God is a blasphemy.

"They do blaspheme who say God is one of three...,for there is no God except one God." Surah 5:73

. . .

God." Surah 8:30 * Allah of Islam is frightening.

"It is God whom ye should more justly fear, if you believe." Surah 9:13

Muslims are Moonies:

2 Different Spiritual Worlds

Yahweh and Allah

* Before Islam came into existence, the Sabbeans in Arabia worshipped the moon-god Allah who was married to the sun-goddess.

* Common practice to use the name of the moon-god in personal names in Muhammad's tribe.

* Allah was a pagan deity in pre-Islamic times.

* An Allah idol was set up at the Kabah along with all the other idols of the time.

* The pagans prayed towards Mecca and the Kabah because that is where their gods were stationed.

* The idol of their moon god, Allah, was at Mecca, they prayed towards Mecca.

* The worship of the moon-god extended far beyond Allah-worship in Arabia. The entire fertile crescent was involved in moon-worship.

* The early success Islam had amongst Arab groups that had traditionally worshipped Allah, the moon-god.

* The use of the crescent moon as the symbol of Islam, and which appears on dozens of flags of Islamic nations in Asia and Africa, and surmounts minerets and mosque roofs, is a throwback to the days when Allah was worshipped as the moon-god in Mecca.

Moohammad he a bad man and Khadijah, she be a bad girl getting her daddy drunk and all.

Genesis of the Islamic Faith

570 C.E. Muhammad born in Mecca

– Both parents died before Muhammad was 6

Abandoned by Mother, Amina, and passed around, rejected and possibly abused by 2 men (Ishaq 71, 72)

– Muhammad was raised by his Grandfather Abd al-Muttalib who almost

Sacrificed Muhammad's Father Abd-Allah in the Ka'aba while praying to Allah and

Practicing divination. (Tab VI 2,5)

– He also liked to constantly stroke/pet Muhammad. After his Grandfather's death, his Uncle Abu Talib raised him. (Ishaq 73)

-Muhammad became a trade agent for a rich female merchant named Khadijah who was 40 years old.

Khadijah who was 15 years his senior invited Muhammad and his uncles to her home. She got her father so drunk that he married them. Her Father later regretted marrying them. His sons, Al-Qasim, Al-Tayyib and Al-Tahir died in infancy; He had Fatima (wife of Ali) and 2 other daughters. (Tab VI 49)

Mongol invaders good, resistance to them very very bad and Ibn Taymiyya is a hadith.

Ibn Taymiya and NO TOLERANCE

PRINCIPLE: MUSLIMS SHOULD RESIST, FIGHT AND OVERTURN ANY ISLAMIC GOVERNMENT THAT DOESN'T GOVERN THE LAND ACCORDING TO THE ISLAMIC LAW ONLY!

PRINCIPLE: MUSLIMS SHOULD ENFORCE JIHAD ON ANYBODY WHOSE BELIEFS DIFFER FROM ISLAM, ESPECIALLY JEWS AND CHRISTIANS.

1263 A.D. – Born in Syrian town of Haran

Fought Mongolian invaders of Syria (1299-1303) and taught that Mongolians

were not true Muslims and that fellow countrymen should not submit to their authority.

Declared that anyone who submitted to Mongolians, helped them or dealt with
them was an infidel.

Taymiya acted as if he were a military leader, declaring the Muslims to be
infidels and attacking them.

Taymiya established the mind-set of NO TOLERANCE and refinforced principles that were practiced centuries earlier in the times of Muhammad.

REMEMBER: Today's terrorism is a result of this mindset and Taymiya is one of most widely read Hadiths.

2. Yes, it's already video time. Now the first video below is one that I found on Rick B's site http://ww3zionism.blogspot.com/ Check his site out.

And no doubt many of you have seen it. But I'm linking to it because:

A. It is very well done. I take my hat off to the people at the Onion. They are superb.

B. Listen to the little girl's Arabic at near the end of the video. Shows you what happens when David Gaubatz types are teaching people Arabic.

C. It is short, so Shas Party and Tea Party members can follow it.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CqpEacxdS0

And now for some serious study of the gifts that Yahweh er, Allah, has bestowed upon us. Kind of makes you all want to shout out in unison الحمد لله doesn’t it?

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mezDRxqI7x0

As we all know from Peter King’s (Asshole, New York) inquisition, Shakira law made it to Nashville. Maybe that’s not so bad after all.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTdV6dn_3_0

نشكر الله

* Mantiq al-Tayr is a blogger who is attempting to wake up other American citizens to the true dangers and challenges which face their country and is devoted to justice for the Palestinian people. Truth is his objective, satire is his tool. He also enjoys reading the Qur'an from time to time. See his website.

No related posts.

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

By Mantiq al-Tayr * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1. Today I just want to do a couple of things quickly. First of all, Skulz Fontaine has been sending me some great stuff and I've been a bit remiss in not sharing some of these with you. I like this one.

But of course the land theft continues, as does the killing – killing Palestinians being the Israeli national pass time. Plus it just seems that attacking, harrasing and shooting at Palestinians is as Israeli as assaulting the USS Liberty.

2. But I want to address something else as the main topic today. What some people like to call Islamophobia – I call it what it is – Anti-Muslim Bigotry – in the United States is getting out of hand. Our country is sick and we need to understand the source of this sickness and do something about it. One good place for you to go as you begin searching for the source is an article I've linked to before by Max Blumenthal. It is here. And here's another real interesting one. And you should read all about David Horowitz – who pays Robert Spencer something like 132k a year to write his bullshit. I strongly recommend you go to Loonwatch and do a search on David Horowitz. Oh hell, I'll do it for you.

And this brings me to:

3. But I also want to draw your attention to something else. Islamphobia is being actively supported by local, state and federal governments and law enforcement. Anti-Muslim hatemongers routinely train local, state and federal officials to hate Islam and Muslims and it looks like they get good money for it. I tell you, I am in the wrong business, but I digress.

It is very possible that these hate mongers have trained people in your community and your state and for sure some of them have been saying some real interesting bullshit to people in the federal government. I mean real wackos like Nonie Darwish and Walid Phares and Steve Coughlin.

I can hear you know, "Okay, Mantiq, prove this. How come you haven't provided one single link under this topic whereas you are always linking everything to everything else and we can't even finish your goddamn posts because we are running of all over hell's half acre reading your links?

Never, fear. Your link is here. It is to a new 80-page study of this phenomenon done by Thomas Cincotta of Political Research Associates. It is entitled:

Manufacturing the Muslim Menace: Private Firms, Public Servants and the Threat to Rights and Security. It's a nice PDF file and you can download the whole thing for free.

Here is an excerpt from the preface to the report about how effectively your public officials are being trained:

"Kill them, including the children."

That's how to solve the threat of violent militant Muslims?

The above quote is from what one official involved in homeland security said was how she understood the underlying theme of a speech by Walid Shoebat at an anti-terrorism training in Las Vegas in October 2010. Our investigator had turned around after Shoebat's speech and asked the woman seated one row back what she thought was the solution offered by Shoebat.

The report focuses on three private training outfits and the loons who work for them. They are:

A. the International Counter-Terrorism Officers Association (ICTOA)
B. Security Solutions International, LLC (SSI)
C. The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI Centre)

I like how the CI Centre (where Walid Phares plies his trade) spells centre the British way. Makes them look cool.

And the report has a section on each of the following people who work for one of the three firms mentioned above:

Mark A. Gabriel – ICTOA guest speaker
David Gaubatz – SSI guest speaker
Walid Phares – CI Centre Faculty
Clare M. Lopez – CI Centre Faculty
Tawfik Hamid – CI Centre Faculty
Stephen Coughlin – CI Centre Faculty
Nonie Darwish – CI Centre Faculty
Detective Ebrahim Ashabi – SSI Expert
Walid Shoebat – ICTOA Guest Speaker

This report is a must read and it is free. Send it to your congressmen and your state representatives and demand that your state, local and federal governments stop funding these modern-day equivalents of the Ku Klux Klan.

4. There are five million decoy Muslims in the US. They are here to trick you and then to kill you.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drQETQ2iprU
(I bet Shas Party members won't get this.)

5. Shakira law spreads to MUST (Missouri University for Science and Technology)

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=626Z2wmieUo

* Mantiq al-Tayr is a blogger who is attempting to wake up other American citizens to the true dangers and challenges which face their country and is devoted to justice for the Palestinian people. Truth is his objective, satire is his tool. He also enjoys reading the Qur'an from time to time. See his website.

Related posts:

• Hollywood-inspired anti-Muslim prejudices
• Updated-2 | In the Wake of “Obsession” Hate-DVDs: Muslim Children Gassed in Ohio Mosque
• America’s True Believers and the Great Muslim Scare

By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

There's a sick mentality in the world that demands scapegoats and feeds witch hunts.

"Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame. A scapegoat may be a child, employee, peer, ethnic or religious group, or country," reports Wikipedia.

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, one of the most famous short stories ever written, reveals the evils of village scapegoating.

The village has an annual lottery resulting in the winner being stoned to death. Explaining what she hoped the story would convey, Shirley Jackson said:

"I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."

Pointless violence and general inhumanity still reign supreme in tribes, villages, countries and the world.

They function in part on established ritual. Often, the only thing required to enshrine a new scapegoat is a compulsive need for someone to despise.

It doesn't matter who wins the lottery; and it makes no difference what happens to the winner. The winner is always the loser.

If it happens that the chosen scapegoat has multiple numbers, the next step can become a witch hunt.

The term "witch-hunt" since the 1930s has been used as a metaphor to refer to moral panics in general (frantic persecution of perceived enemies).

Wikipedia points out that "This usage is especially associated with the Second Red Scare of the 1950s (the McCarthyist persecution of communists in the United States)."

That brings us to the present and US Congressman Peter King. As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, King is holding hearings to investigate the domestic threat of what he calls the "radicalization of the American Muslim community."

King apparently decided that Islam is to be the scapegoat for America's ills; and he is now on a witch hunt for Muslims to burn. King's anti-Islamic bias discredits him as a bigot.

According to the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, "King once complained that 'we have too many mosques in this country' (USA), and on another occasion offered the ludicrous opinion that '80 to 85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists.' His claim to be free of anti-Muslim bias lacks credibility."

That's putting it mildly. Adding to his statement about 85 percent of the mosques in the US being controlled by Muslim extremists, King told Sean Hannity of Fox News, that they make up "an enemy living amongst us."

Not only have mosques coloured King's bigotry. He complained that "There are too many people sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully and finding out how we can infiltrate them."

King has accused Muslims of failing to help expose terrorist plots in America. This is patently untrue, as Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina terrorist expert reveals:

"...in exposing alleged terrorist plots, the largest single source of initial information (48 of 120 cases) involved tips from the Muslim American community."

If King had a serious concern about a lack of Muslim cooperation with authorities, he would have invited Muslim leaders to his hearings. He has invited only one.

He should have invited law enforcement officials to corroborate or correct the biased figures he has been spouting. He did not.

Witch hunts like King's do nothing to increase security. They feed fear and breed hatred. According to a Time magazine poll, 43 percent of Americans view Muslims negatively.

Scapegoating and witch hunts have always been pointless, inhumane activities.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

Related posts:

• British Girl, 8, ‘was tortured for being witch’
• A Closer Look At The Attacks
• Who shall protest the Saudi government’s plans to tear down Prophet Muhammad’s house in Mecca?

By Mamoon Alabbasi * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Millions of Egyptian kneel to pray Friday in Cairo's Tahrir Square, where demonstrations were billed as a "Day of Victory and Continuation." (Hussein Malla)

It is easy to see that these protestors come from diverse backgrounds, have different political views and do not necessary share the exact same list of grievances. Not if your view of the region is influenced by an unhealthy negative obsession with Islam. In such case, so called analysts put on their binary world view glasses and see only 'Islamists' or 'the rest' – not that they have an accurate definition for each of those categories. They ignorantly put Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran in one bag, and like to think that everyone else that remains falls into what they claim is a liberal category.

With this in mind, western observers who were against the uprising in Egypt were quick to warn that this was (or will be) an 'Islamist' revolution, while those who backed it went to great lengths to stress that the Muslim Brotherhood was an insignificant part of it. They cannot see Egyptians outside this two-dimensional view. That's all that matters: not the humanity and suffering of 80 million Egyptians but how powerful will the Brothers emerge in a democratic Egypt. And if the revolution is going to be a success story then they mustn't appear as having played any part in it.

Of course religious Egyptian protestors who are not officially part of the Brotherhood would automatically be calculated as part of 'the rest', even though many of them may hold views that are more conservative. Demonstrators who complained from the former regime's restriction on religious freedoms or its foreign policy (especially with regards to the US, Israel and Palestine) are also conveniently ignored if they are not members of the Brotherhood. Following this logic you'd be forgiven for thinking that being a cyber activist and a devout Muslim are mutually exclusive.

The fact is this was a revolution of the whole of the Egyptian people, including the Brotherhood (and of course Christians too). But the Brothers did not catch up with the revolution late in the day; it was the masses that finally joined their struggle against the regime. Their activists had long been tortured or routinely detained in the regime's jails decades before the 2011 uprising. Every time there was an election, their campaigners were the first usual suspects to be rounded up.

They played a very positive part in the demonstrations and even their former critics commended their role in protecting protestors when they were attacked. They also never sought to hijack the revolution or claim it as their own. In fact they tried to stay out of the limelight to avoid US animosity towards the uprising. They insist that they do not want a 'religious state' and called for democratic reforms (although they too need to reform). They are a part of Egypt, so who stands to gain from dividing Egyptians? Why do outsiders push for hatred instead of free and fair polls?

In a truly democratic Egypt, political parties will have a place, the strength of which would be determined by the ballot box. The Brotherhood may not be the perfect party (despite improvements over the years) for everyone, but the unwarranted demonising of the group by non-Egyptians is a great disservice to the whole of Egypt. We have witnessed great solidarity between Christians and Muslims during the anti-Mubarak protests, which shows that Egyptians – if left to their own devices – can live together without serious sectarian tensions. There were rare scenes of people holding up copies of the Koran and crucifixes shoulder to shoulder. These people included ultra-conservative Muslims; men with long beards, women with niqabs – all of whom expressing sentiments of unity with their fellow Christian citizens.

This inspiring sense of compassion between Egyptians must not be lost. It is even a greater gain than the fall of Mubarak, because united Egyptians can topple any future dictator. Those who have failed to suppress the Egyptian revolution now seek to derail it or rebrand it to keep the status quo of division and mistrust among the people. But Egyptians of all walks of life need to remember their moments of unity in Tahrir Square and across Egypt: do they want this spirit to continue or will they let their ill-wishers divide (and rule) them once more?

* Mamoon Alabbasi (M.A. in applied linguistics) is a news editor and translator based in London. His op-eds, reports, poetry, and reviews have appeared in a number of media outlets.

Related posts:

• Egypt’s Revolution: Obama Backing Regime Change?
• Winners and Losers in a Post-Mubarak Arab World
• As Tahrir Square goes so goes the Middle East?

Al Qaeda Ink Cartridge Bomb

By Maidhc Ó Cathail * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

While Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) may have claimed responsibility for the parcel bomb plot, it's worth considering how this latest Yemen-linked terror scare has been a gift to their avowed enemies.

A mere two weeks before the discovery of mail bombs addressed to "two places of Jewish worship in Chicago", Rupert Murdoch sounded prescient as he received an award from the Anti-Defamation League for his support of Israel. "The terrorists continue to target Jews across the world," declared the media mogul in his acceptance speech. "But they have not succeeded in bringing down the Israeli government - and they have not weakened Israeli resolve." Equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, the Fox News owner smeared the growing worldwide condemnation of Israel's rogue behaviour as an "ongoing war against the Jews".

Binyamin Netanyahu, a frequent London house guest of Murdoch and a likely recipient of his political contributions, was quick to make hay of the foiled plot. Briefing the cabinet on his impending address to the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, the Israeli prime minister told them that it would be "held against the background of reports about the attempt to attack the Jewish community in Chicago".

Linking the parcel bomb plot to some of the most iconic terrorist attacks of the post-9/11 era, Netanyahu said that "it does not matter if the target was a synagogue in Chicago or a railway station in Madrid, London, Mumbai or Bali". Deftly associating his increasingly isolated government with the victims of those attacks, the Israeli prime minister proclaimed: "We are facing a growing wave of terrorism by extremist Islam."

Netanyahu, never one prone to understatement, offered this analysis of the unsuccessful attempt to use desktop printers as terror weapons: "It is growing in the scope and brazen gall of its attacks, in the weapons with which it is arming itself, and in the sweeping objectives of the leaders of global terrorism."

He then assured his colleagues that "one of the main issues" he would be addressing in New Orleans with American Jewish leaders was "the steps that the civilized and free world must take in order to stop this wave that threatens us all."

Needless to say, those "steps" are unlikely to include an end to the 43-year occupation and colonization of the West Bank or a lifting of the four-year blockade of Gaza.

An American apologist for Israel's self-appointed guardian of "the civilized and free world" took a similar line. Joel Pollak, a Republican candidate in the mid-term elections, released a statement condemning the attempted terror attack, saying he would be spending the Jewish sabbath in West Rogers Park "in solidarity with the people of the ninth congressional district who were the direct targets of Al Qaeda terror". Sounding a lot like Netanyahu, Pollak attempted to rally his constituents by telling them, "We must not stop fighting to eradicate the twin evils of terror and hatred."

Again, we can take it as read that the "terror and hatred" Americans are being urged to combat only applies to Israel's enemies (PDF).

The Israeli news website DEBKA-Net-Weekly, which describes itself as "the leading geopolitical newsletter", has even attempted to implicate Israel's current enemy number one, Iran. The next issue, for subscribers only, promises to reveal "how the Al-Qaeda air package plot fit [sic] into the selective partnership between Tehran and Al-Qaeda and homes in on the areas where their schemes dovetail".

But how trustworthy is this "leading newsletter"?

"Debka is prepared mostly by former Mossad operatives. A reliable stream of information," Martin Peretz, the Islamophobic editor-in-chief of the staunchly pro-Israel New Republic assures us.

Ever since an Israeli firm let the Christmas Day crotch bomber "slip through" security at Schiphol Airport without a passport, a few influential voices with close ties to Israel have been instrumental in making Yemen "the new buzzword".

Appearing on Fox News two days later, the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress, Senator Joe Lieberman, announced: "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war."

Within a week, Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Saban Center in the Brookings Institution, had an op-ed in the Daily Beast titled "The menace of Yemen". Touting the botched Christmas Day plot as evidence of "the growing ambition of Al-Qaeda's Yemen franchise," Riedel called for "significant American support to defeat AQAP".

Riedel's employer, the Saban Center, is named after Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media mogul, who in 2002 pledged 13 million dollars to found the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Two years later, Saban admitted to the New York Times: "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel."

"The US may be walking into a bit of a trap," warns Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert and doctoral candidate at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies.

That "trap" has been best described by a former CIA officer. "America's misguided war on terror", Philip Giraldi pointed out in a recent article, "is in fact a complete adoption of Israeli security paradigms without any regard for the actual threats that confront the US, making Israel's many enemies also the foes of Washington".

Israel must be very grateful indeed for this latest terror scare. If Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula did not exist, they might have to invent it.

* Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan.

Related posts:

• Israel’s War With Itself
• In Motion: The Plot To Destroy The United States
• Against ‘Pro-Israel’

By Paul J. Balles* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Christiane Amanpour

This week's talk show by Christiane Amanpour's spent the better part of two hours discussing Islam and how people are reacting to Islam as a source of fanaticism publicised in the press.

The Western public has been seduced into believing that reactions of "extremists" have something to do with Islam. Extremist reprisals have nothing to do with religion. They are expressions of revenge. Anti-American reactions have been what Reverend Jeremiah Wright called "bringing the chickens home to roost."

How can the West expect a placid reaction to their own actions when they have massacred more than 1,300,000 Iraqis, let alone the Afghans and the support given to Israel for their vicious savagery in Lebanon and Gaza?

How can we expect anything but calls for retribution when the agonizing stories of innocent victims of military atrocities get told and retold?

Just this week, the New York Times published the unusual report of a grotesque story from a small village in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan.

A woman told how American military men took her husband, a local mullah in Maiwand, out of their house, forced him to the ground, put a grenade under his body and blew him up.

The mullah was the third victim of soldiers who killed Afghan civilians for no apparent reason. Is this the kind of activity that's supposed to endear people around the world to America?

According to the New York Times, "Local elders estimate that in the past eight months at least 42 civilians have been killed in Maiwand during American operations."

Expand that relatively small area to the much larger scope of American military action in the Middle East and the incentives for revenge multiply.

One Afghan elder reportedly said, "The Americans have killed many people who did not support the Taliban, which is painful for us and actually creates hatred toward Americans."

In another incident reported by the New York Times this week, five soldiers are facing potential courts-martial on charges that they killed Afghan civilians for sport.

The report says they were "planting weapons near them (Afghans) to fake combat situations, collecting their body parts and taking photographs posing with their corpses."

Also this week, a chicken that came home to roost was tried in New York. Pakistani born Faisal Shahzad, who planted a car bomb in Times Square, New York on May 1st, was sentenced to life in prison.

MSNBC reported that Shahzad came to court to tell Americans he felt no remorse about his May 1 bombing attempt. "Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun," said Shahzad.

It's a great anomaly that Americans expect the extremists to feel remorse for their acts of revenge when most Americans express no remorse over our mindless murder and maiming of innocents abroad.

Moderate and peace loving, as all but the very few extremists like Shahzad are, Muslims are innocent victims of hate and hate crimes.

Writing in the Princetonian, Adam Bradlow observed "Intolerance toward Muslims has become part of the new norm."

Anti mosque rallies have broken out in at least four states, including the recent protests against the "ground zero" Community Centre in New York.

Speaking out against the Centre, past speaker of the US Congress Newt Gingrich called it "an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization."

Elizabeth Madrid, editor of the Tennessee Journal, reminds her readers, and hopefully Gingrich, that "A handful of extremists cannot rightly represent the entire Muslim faith."

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

Related posts:

• Iran and The International Bureau of Double Standards [Video]
• Veritas in Harvard: No, Just Double Standards, Injustice, and Fear
• Gaza Over & Over..

By Maidhc Ó Cathail* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Is bin Laden’s concern for flood victims a ruse to destabilise Pakistan?

We seek him here, we seek him there,

Those Yankees seek him everywhere.

Is he in heaven?—Is he in hell?

That damned, elusive bin Laden

If we are to believe the Associated Press, that demmed elusive Osama bin Laden has spoken again.

According to the world’s oldest and largest newsgathering organization, the fugitive al-Qaeda leader, who some intelligence experts believe has been dead since December 2001, has just released an audiotape in which he calls for the creation of a new relief body to help Muslims affected by this summer’s devastating floods in Pakistan. Bin Laden, AP suggests, is “seeking to exploit discontent … by depicting the region’s governments as uncaring.”

Seemingly unfazed by news of the CIA’s 3,000-strong Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams hot on its trail, al-Qaeda has, in recent weeks, according to the AP report, put out three messages, including the one featuring bin Laden, concerning the massive floods that affected around 20 million people in Pakistan, “signaling a concentrated campaign by the terror group to tap into anger over the flooding to rally support.”

AP’s sole source for the 11-minute tape, with the oddly contemplative title “Reflections on the Method of Relief Work,” is SITE Intelligence Group. The U.S.-based group, which purportedly “monitors jihadi forums,” provided AP with a copy of the message that it claims was posted on unnamed “Islamic militant websites.”

There are questions, however, about whether SITE Intelligence is the most objective source of information about terrorism.

SITE co-founder Rita Katz, an Israeli Defense Forces veteran, is an Iraqi-born Jew, whose father was publicly hanged in Iraq after the 1967 Six-Day War as an Israeli spy. Considering Tel Aviv’s obvious interest in having the world’s only superpower fight a “global war on terror” against the Jewish state’s Muslim neighbours, it somehow never occurred to Associated Press, or other mainstream media outlets, to ask the question, Like father, like daughter?

Moreover, there are reasonable grounds for suspicion about al-Qaeda’s other pronouncements on the floods in Pakistan.

In a recent video, presumably also found online by Rita Katz’s SITE, al-Qaeda’s California-born spokesman, Adam Gadahn, castigated Islamabad for its “sluggish and halfhearted” response to the floods, and called on Muslims in Pakistan to join the Islamist militants fighting the government.

Gadahn, who has since 2001 run al-Qaeda’s media wing, As-Sahab, found his way to the Islamic Society of Orange County while living with his grandfather, Carl Pearlman, a board member of the Anti-Defamation League. Ostensibly a civil rights organization set up to fight anti-Semitism, the ADL is a de facto adjunct of the Israeli government which, significantly, has been caught spying on American critics of Israel. Like grandpa, like grandson?

In a previous video, Ayman al-Zawahiri, said to be al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, also incited Pakistanis to rise up against their government due to its “failure” to provide relief to flood victims.

But when Neal Krawetz, a researcher and computer security consultant, analysed a 2006 video of al-Zawahiri for alterations and enhancements, he discovered that the logos of As-Sahab and IntelCenter (the other group supposedly tracking terrorists online) had been added at the same time.

IntelCenter is run by Ben Venzke, former director of intelligence at iDefense, a VeriSign company. VeriSign is a partner of Verint, formerly known as Comverse Infosys, which was founded by former Israeli intelligence officer Jacob “Kobi” Alexander. In 2006, Alexander fled to Namibia after the U.S. Department of Justice indicted him on multiple counts of fraud. Comverse/Verint, one of a number of Israeli eavesdropping and surveillance companies created by veterans of Unit 8200, the technology intel unit of the Israeli Defense Forces Intelligence Corps, has been widely suspected of spying on Americans.

If, as seems likely, the al-Qaeda messages concerning this summer’s floods in Pakistan are fakes, they would seem to provide further evidence of an Israeli-inspired campaign to destabilise the world’s only Islamic nuclear power.

The question then becomes, what, if anything, Islamabad will do to counter such efforts before it too goes the way of Afghanistan and Iraq.

* Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan. To read more of his writing, go to Maidhc Ó Cathail: Writing and Analysis.

Related posts:

• Bin Laden is Dead; Long Live “Bin Laden” – By Maidhc Ó Cathail
• Israel: Please, No More Bin Laden Tapes, Nobody Is Buying It!
• How Ehud Barak Pulled Off 9-11

THE PHONY PRESS, SEX, SIN AND WAR

By Gordon Duff* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

President Ahmadinejad of Iran has asked for a UN investigation of 9/11. For this, he has been branded a "wingnut" and "evildoer" by the American press. However, the 9/11 Commission itself asked for a criminal investigation, saying it uncovered a conspiracy and was prevented from getting the truth. They were quickly silenced. 9 years later, top scientists from around the world, supported by engineers, architects, military and intelligence officials agree on one thing. What thing is that? We will never know. Reporting that "one thing" would be the last thing any member of the press would ever do. A day later, they would become unpaid bloggers and have their name on the "no fly" list. Do things like this happen? How long did CNN's Rick Sanchez last after pointing out that Jon Stewart's fanatic pro-Israel bias is a form of "bigotry?"

Let's take a second to look at Ahmadinejad. Nearly daily stories hit newspapers around the world, "Iran is 15 minutes from being a nuclear power." Ahmadinejad threatens to "wipe Israel off the map." "Ahmadinejad supports a new holocaust."

The press, of course, continually reviles Ahmadinejad as a terrorist and mass murderer. What he isn't, however, is a liar. Every time it comes down to checking on who is telling the truth, Ahmadinejad or the press, it turns out Ahmadinejad is telling the truth. How can this be possible?

Well, a couple of things come into play. First of all, the press purposefully distorts what is said. The press lies, lies consistently. There is no nuclear program in Iran, not a weapons program. There is no credible information that varies from this fact, yet the press continually takes a line here and a statement there, out of context, and tries to build a case for war. Why is the press doing this? The answer is simply, Israelis control the American press and want the United States to destroy Iran, not because it is a military threat. It is technically impossible for Iran to attack Israel, every military expert in the world knows that and all have said it.

That will never be reported either.

Why is Ahmadinejad reviled with such venom? The answer is simple. He is being made an example. Anyone who speaks up, disagrees with reality as defined by the media, not any government, mind you, but the media that tells those in every government what they can and can't say or think, risks destruction. There is a clear methodology here. Let's look at some issues the press doesn't like very much, starting with our favorite, the villain of all time, Mr. Adolf Hitler.

Hitler got his start, speaking up much like Ahmadinejad. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles opened up Germany for abuse by financial criminals. However, it even started before that. Germany tried to quit the war in 1916 when it was winning. Britain and France refused, not on their own, but because the Rothschilds cut financial deals with them and promised to bring the United States into the war. 5 million more Europeans died along with nearly 200,000 Americans.

The Rothschilds got the Balfour Declaration, giving them a base to control Middle East oil, the Suez Canal and India, the things that the wars nearly a century later are being manipulated to bring about.

Communism took over Russia. Nearly every communist leader was Jewish and Zionist. Even today, every Russian "oligarch" is a Jew and Zionist. Hitler said that "communism' was the real Jewish religion. He believes he saved Germany from communism when he was elected chancellor. The country he took over had been economically destroyed through currency manipulation. A loaf of bread cost billions of Marks at one point. The currency was devalued by the Rothschilds supported by France and Britain, by force. Cash smuggled out of the country by the ton and reimbursed at full value, at gunpoint, stripping Germany clean, starvation, humiliation and, eventually, that nasty "right wing" government the world had so much trouble with, the Third Reich.

During the 1920s, when the French and British, really the Rothschilds, were destroying Germany, 80% of the property was foreclosed on and bought by, well, do we say it? Jews? Bought for pennies. This is the "billions" in property the Nazi's seized. Not a simple story when you get to hear all of it. An excuse, Auschwitz, Gaza, are there excuses for inhumanity?

This is all true. This is history. This will never be reported. Not only will this be kept secret but the fact that the Zionist groups that wanted Palestine settled by Jews supported Hitler and worked closely with him, not just in 1927 but as late as 1945. This is also historical fact, not conjecture.

So, lets go back to Ahmadinejad. Why would he have a "Holocaust Conference" in Tehran? Serious students of history that don't have to live off a university paycheck, telling the same myths and lies term after term all know what Ahmadinejad knows. They also know that there are some nasty secrets about the holocaust. The real reason, however, is to anger Israel. Why? Israel pretty much hates everyone, is arrogant, obnoxious and predatory.

Since Israel controls, not only the press but the world banking system, all major banks being "children" of the original Rothschilds banks, including and especially the Federal Reserve which controls the American economy, the idea that Israel may have "fictionalized" the holocaust in collusion with Josef Stalin of Russia, a mass murderer well beyond anything Hitler ever imagined, interested Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad never said there wasn't a holocaust. He simply asked for an honest and accurate historical assessment of the facts.

Israel went into a total panic. Israel was hiding a terrible secret about the holocaust. They still are. We don't know what it is, I won't even hazard a guess. We do know that millions were spent, tens of millions in bribe money to have laws passed suppressing any study of the holocaust. In 11 western nations, questioning the Israeli version, one that changes hourly it seems, is a crime.

So, what was Ahmadinejad's game? He was simply telling Israel that "he knew." Knew "what?" We don't know and may never find out but it is something horribly discrediting to Israel, so threatening that they would stage a nuclear attack to keep it secret. We all agree there were camps. We all agree the Nazis were bad. What could it be? It is something that Iran uses to blackmail Israel, that and the fact that China, a major military power, a massive nuclear power, quietly stands behind Iran. Nobody is supposed to know it. We all know it.

WHY SOME REALLY NEED TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT WWJD, WHAT JESUS WOULD REALLY DO...

Let's broaden things a bit. How do you tell if a Christian is a total phony or not? There is a standard question:

"Who was Mary Magdalene?"

If the answer you get uses the word "whore," you know you are dealing with someone whose religious education came from urban legends and comic books. If you are told she was an associate of Jesus cured of "demons" you have a student of the canon gospels. If you get a complex story of priest schools, a possible marriage of Jesus and Magdalene, Magdalene's own gospel, her sainthood and death in France, you may have a religious scholar on your hands.

Yet today, you can turn on your radio and hear dozens if not hundreds of radio stations, all blaring the same tune, "nuclear Armageddon...Obama the Muslim....Ground Zero Mosque.......family values....and how Magdalene was the "whore of Babylon."

The experts are all the same. Their name starts with Doctor." They have a degree in "Divinity Studies" from a college that can't be found on a satellite survey. What their 8 years of religious education and decades of bible study, some claim over 12 hours a day, they continue to harp on about Magdalene and her sins. Where did they get their ideas? From a Mel Gibson movie perhaps? Perhaps we could refer to the King James Version of the Bible as a reference:

Mt 27:56 Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children.
Mt 27:61 And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.
Mt 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
Mr 15:40 There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome;
Mr 15:47 And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he was laid.
Mr 16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.
Mr 16:9 Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.
Lu 8:2 And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils,
Lu 24:10 It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.
Joh 19:25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.
Joh 20:1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
Joh 20:18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.

This is every biblical reference to Mary Magdalene, quoting the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. What do we prove? Do we prove that the religious education of most Americans is based on Hollywood films? Dozens of films have depicted Mary Magdalene as a whore. Why would the film industry do this? Who runs the film industry? If I answer my own question, will I lose my job?

Christian Zionism: The Tragedy & The Turning, Part 1 from WHTT on Vimeo.

This week, dozens of stories of 9 year old brides in Yemen hit the papers. In fact, stories of the sexual abuses of Islam fill the papers in Western Europe and America. Sex sells papers and there is nothing that the same ethnic group that owns both Hollywood and America's newspapers loves more than sex and that's money. Are we being unfair, perhaps even bigoted? Yes, perhaps we might be with some exceptions. One of these is that the other group constantly attacked is Christians. Hardly a day goes by without the poor old German pope's photo next to a headline describing child rape.

Do we see those same headlines in the same papers as stories about Israeli organ theft rings? Oh, you mean you don't know that Israel has a huge industry tied to the theft and trade of human organs? Perhaps you might think this was an urban legend, you might think that, had you ever seen it reported.

Has anyone ever seen a news story about Jewish law and how it applies to pedophiles? Nothing? Curious. One of the few to speak up is Reverend Ted Pike. Here is some of what he has to say:

This year, top Israeli Rabbi Moti Elon was indicted by police for sex crimes against minors. "Far from being the rabbi of an obscure Hasidic sect, the charismatic Elon is a high-profile leader, educator and media personality, representing the more mainstream religious Zionists and former head of the renowned HaKotel (Western Wall) Yeshiva. He comes from a family of high achievers in law, politics and academia that has drawn comparisons with the Kennedy clan."

In 2006, Elon was restricted by an organization of rabbis in his contact with students, after confessing to sexual relationships with male students. Yet he continued to act as the president of a Talmudic academy in Jerusalem and did not fully honor the agreement. One Ha'aretz commentary says Elon "managed to turn himself into almost a kind of saint" –a fate certainly to be envied by American religious figures turned pedophiles.

Dr. Aviad Hacohen, dean of the Sha'arei Mishpat College, in 2007 reported that "95% of sexual offenses in Jerusalem were performed by the religious and haredi." "Several years ago, I began looking into the issue on a data-based level," said Hacohen. "It turned out that the law enforcement authorities, both the police and the prosecutor's office, were aware of the data but refused to expose it based on sectorial affiliation in order to avoid branding a certain group in the population..."

Since the following article was written in 2006, cases of Jewish leadership figures in Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism being involved in homosexuality or pedophilia scandals continue to mount not only in Israel, but in New York, where Ultra-Orthodox are strongest. The reason is simple: some of the very greatest rabbis who wrote the Talmud were pedophiles.

So, after a busy day reading the news, 9 year old brides in Yemen, women being stoned in Iran or the unending perfidies of the Catholic Church with its list of priest rape victims at 2 million and counting, reported much as though it were a sign counting "burgers sold" at a fast food restaurant, I find nothing in the "news" about such problems in the Jewish community, even though, as we read above, the scandals are real, pervasive and very noteworthy. I would think the arrest of Israel's top Rabbi for sex crimes would be reported.

It wasn't.

We are told daily, nearly hourly, the the Koran supports sex crimes and is unique among religious works for its "impurity." News networks in America actually encourage Koran burning, networks owned by Israeli's we admit, but American in some ways, at least some of the personnel are American citizens, still, at least. So, is there a problem in the Talmud that is being covered up, a problem that has driven the media to continually attack Islam while failing to look closer to home? Let's take a look:

R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. (Sanh. 55b)

A girl who is three years of age and one day may be betrothed by cohabitation. . . .(Yeb. 57b)

A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabited with her she becomes his. (Sanh. 69a, 69b, also discussed in Yeb. 60b)

It was taught: R. Simeon b. Yohai stated: A proselyte who is under the age of three years and one day is permitted to marry a priest, for it is said, But all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves, and Phineas (who was priest, the footnote says) surely was with them. (Yeb. 60b)

[The Talmud says such three year and a day old girls are] . . . fit for cohabitation. . . But all women children, that have not known man by lying with him, it must be concluded that Scripture speaks of one who is fit for cohabitation. (Footnote to Yeb. 60b)

Where, in our news, do we read that a 9 year old girl would be considered an "old maid" in the Talmud? Have we proven bias and bigotry? When is the last time Jon Stewart talked about sex with three year olds? His audience would love hearing about it and I am sure he has some good "one liners" he could use. Can you see his smirk as he describes the physiological aspects alone? You are saying it would be in bad taste, something he would never do. Have you really seen his show?

Let's imagine Jon Stewart, "How about those rabbi's, can't you just picture it? A 3 year old? Like King Kong with a yamaka putting a move on Barbie."

How about Howard Stern? He has hour after hour attacking the sexual ills of Islam. Can you imagine how popular he will be when he starts pulling in callers screaming about the Talmud and sex with three year olds or the sex crimes of the rabbis, even higher by percentage than priests.

Imagine where Howard Stern would go with this. I'd rather not. "What did the rabbi say to the kindergartener?"

Is an Islamophobe a bigot? Is a Jew who rants about the sins of sex and Islam not only a bigot but a hypocrite as well? Am I going to be fired for saying this?

It isn't just that members of the press, our congress and 95% of our military are corrupt, moderate to severe, along with being functionally delusional. They believe everyone else is even dumber. When 300 billion goes missing in Iraq, they don't think we know who got it and that they all got a piece of the action? How could this much money disappear, news stories covering it, GAO accounting docs proving it but nobody notices that there are no hearings, no grand jury, no indictments.

The new rule in Washington, "if you steal it, you keep it."

Years ago, congress was attacked for passing the Patriot Acts, laws filled with unconstitutional provisions, some already overturned even by our Hitleresque Supreme Court. Here we sit, a new broom in the White House, freedoms restored, or are they? Government police from unspecified agencies whose powers and mandates are clearly outside the scope of any law, can arrest and detain anyone and do, not only disregarding color, race or ethnicity but guilt or innocence also. Anyone can be arrested, detained, shipped anywhere in the world, tortured, raped, murdered. It is done every day.

Ask the press. You say they don't care?

Remember when we learned that Stan McChrystal and Dick Cheney were running death squads under something called the JSOC? Now, years later, we find that our death squads are still out there, some official, some simply making it up as they go along. If you want to throw a hand grenade under a school bus, go ahead. If you want to open fire on civilians from your helicopter, simply mouth a few military sounding phrases, hit the button and sent a few hundred pounds of depleted uranium into a residential neighborhood.

Then again, you can fly into Pakistan and kill a few of their troops at a border checkpoint like was done last week, seemingly on a whim. Who needs Pakistan anyway? Isn't Peru still with us, part of the remains of the old Bush/Cheney coalition of the willing, the blackmailed, the bought and paid for?

Now no more gasoline for trucking the opium crop to the heroin processing facilities south of Kandahar or to the airfields in Balochistan for shipment to Western Europe or North America. As the press about this? Oh, you are saying they know, have written stories about this but were told they won't be "embedded" anymore unless they tone down the "self righteousness."

Remember the torture controversy? How about this one, did you know that 95% of the "terrorists" arrested during the Bush administration were found "innocent?" How about Pat Tillman, the former football player who joined the Army but became disenchanted with what he was seeing in Afghanistan. The press said nothing when he died a "war hero." Then he suddenly became a victim of an innocent and childish accident, not at all dissimilar to the accidents the Kennedy brothers suffered back in the 1960s.

The press is still buying the "accident' story even though the closely grouped head shots that killed Tillman were a "one in 10 billion" accident.

Before the Army is done, Tillman will have shot himself in the head 4 times and then, as usual, disposed of the weapon. You don't want to know how many accidents like this the Army has. You don't have to worry, you'll never find out about it anyway.

The press is still falling all over themselves for eventually figuring out that Tillman wasn't killed by the Taliban. All they had to do was read the coroners report, you know the one, it said "murder" on it.

What is the news? Anymore, we might as well get press releases sent directly to our I-Phones and cut out the jokers in the middle. Can you imagine, millions of Americans have Islam explained to them by a former Mossad public relations officer named Wolf Blitzer. (Jerusalem Press/CNN)

I wouldn't trust Blitzer doing a weather report, certainly not sports scores.

Remember a week ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, former furniture salesman now running Israel, the "American hating" extremist, demanded that we release spy Jonathan Pollard?

Remember that Congressman Barney Frank immediately ran to his side?

The press reports that Pollard was jailed for life because he "gave Israel information on PLO locations, information America failed to share."

Not one word of this is true. OK, one word, there is a person named Jonathan Pollard. Thus far, this is the only thing the press reported properly.

Pollard never gave anyone anything, he sold it. Nothing went TO Israel, Pollard and the State of Israel were spying FOR the Soviet Union AGAINST the United States.

The information was: (this has been confirmed)

• The identities of all CIA agents and the full NOC list, agents of "non official cover" (A movie was made about this, Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible)
• Full NATO defense plans in case of Soviet Attack
• Full information including strategic vulnerability assessments on what would be needed to defeat the United States in a nuclear war
• Design specifics on all American nuclear weapons and delivery systems
• America's military and diplomatic codes

This information was sold by Pollard to controllers in Israel who then sold it to the Soviet Union. We have learned that because of this information a couple of things happened:

• The Soviet Union came close to a nuclear "first strike" on the United States
• Over 100 CIA agents were executed after extensive torture
• Over 1500 "intelligence assets" were rounded up, tortured and interrogated, then killed behind the Iron Curtain
• America lost all ability to use intelligence to defend itself from the Soviet Union
• America's strategic capabilities were diminished by over 50%, with many ‘capabilities' totally unviable
• 15 years of weapons research was lost
• Several weapons systems were totally compromised including our stealth aircraft and nuclear submarines

However, when Barney Frank and his furniture salesman buddy, the one who continually brags about how stupid Americans are and how he can get them to do anything he wants, publicly demanded this monster, Pollard, be set free, the press was silent. The furniture salesman was right, about the press anyway, he can get them to do anything he wants.

Netanyahu wasn't serious about Pollard, he simply brings it up, from time to time, when he has a need to humiliate the United States, reminding them how naive and gullible they are as a people and how corrupt their military and government are.

There are no worries about the press. In fact, even though military and intelligence sources have leaked, for years, how serious the Pollard disaster really was for America, the press loves telling the same old Israeli yarn, the poor country of holocaust victims trying to protect themselves from uncaring America, their "bestest friend" and ally that they have to keep on a "short leash."

Can we think of something else the press has overlooked? Back in 2007, the American economy imploded. Prior to that, America ran up trillions of dollars of secret debt. We call it secret because no news ever reported it or its consequences. Debt is the clearest indicator of economic health. The levels of debt during the Bush years, a president who took office with a budget surplus, reached beyond epidemic proportions yet nothing was ever reported, not in such a way as to make the public aware the nation was going bankrupt.

In 2007, America hit full default, totally broke, dead, gone, bankrupt. Savings disappeared, retirement systems collapsed, markets plummeted and "blue chip" stocks became worthless. How did the news respond? They claimed that a small non-profit called ACORN, a group that worked registering voters, had caused the collapse. Proving this, we were told, a Republican party operative trained at an Israeli intelligence school, had "debunked" the entire crisis.

ACORN did it. According to America's right wing, fronting for the pan-Israeli banking cartel, a few dozen $30,000 dollar home loans managed to run up $3,000,000,000,000 in debt. Maybe it was extra fees or ‘handling charges?'

Then we learned that none of this happened and that trillions of dollars were stolen by a series of "banks" tied to the Rothschilds, run by Israeli Americans and long involved in massive criminal fraud in full collusion with the Bush administration, coordinating wars, defense fraud, bilking the economy and suspending constitutional rights, in a concerted effort, Bush, Cheney, Israel, the Rothschilds and their creature, the Federal Reserve System, permanently sinking America in a "Pearl Harbor" that made 9/11 tame in comparison.

So, where are these people, the "coalition of corruption," the "banksters" and the corrupt politicians? How many are in jail? Thousands? Bernie Madoff only?

What did the American press have to say? Anything? A story here, one there.

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

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These are the words that we wish all non-Muslims brothers and sister to hear and learn about Islam.

First Community Church, Columbus, OH
Preaching on Sunday, August 29, worship service with Rev Deborah C Lindsay:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxMdhLBTxLE

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