With
unemployment in the United States at a 26 year high of 9.8% and the UK not far
behind, a sector of the economy in both nations is booming—extremism.
Conspiracy theories and hate have flooded the mainstream from the fringe, so
duck and cover.
Last week
was quite busy for two of the world’s most odious Islamophobes. In Britain
right-wing Dutch Parliamentarian hatemonger and filmmaker Geert Wilders, made a
semi-triumphant return to London, after a previous ban was lifted. There he addressed an audience near
Parliament, after being physically blocked by protesters from appearing at his
planned venue.
Wilders who
is speaking in Philadelphia this week, has called
Muslims and the Koran an extreme threat to society. At a recent Florida
lecture he allegedly said Europe was on "the verge of collapsing" due
to Muslims. He also smears "Islam is not a religion...Islam is a
totalitarian ideology." Comparing the Koran to Mein Kampf, he reportedly
told an audience: "The Koran is a book that calls for hatred, violence,
murder, terrorism, war and submission" and urged a forced assimilation
contract, a ban on new mosques and a closure of
Muslim schools. The radical
Muslim counter protestors didn’t score any points for tolerance either, waving
signs saying “Islam Will Dominate the World” and calling for Wilder’s death.
Another
raving Islamaphobe making news this month is San Francisco Bay Area hate radio yapper Michael
Savage. Despite his ban to the UK being lifted, his invitation to debate at
Cambridge University was rescinded. Savage has proposed “an outright ban on Muslim immigration” and a moratorium
on “mosque construction.” His interfaith olive branch to Muslims is “take your religion and shove it up
your behind” because "I’m sick of you." Savage implored his radio
audience to stay out of restaurants
that hired undocumented workers due to a
possible H1N1 al Qaeda plot. His boycott call relates to infected unhygienic
Latino restaurant workers possibly becoming biological weapons. After all he
says they put their hands down their pants at work without subsequently washing
their hands.
On the
other side of the pond in America, the continued mainstreaming of wacky
conspiracies was also underway. Orange County, California birther conspiracist,
lawyer-dentist Orly Taitz made the news, yet again. She has floated a theory
popular among some militia groups that the government has set up concentration
camps for dissidents, a “FEMA Gulag”, and even suggested another tale concocted
by a drug addict that President Obama possibly killed a gay lover. But it is
her full throttled pursuit of the contention that President Obama was born in
Kenya and is therefore ineligible to serve as President that cost her twenty
grand and a good portion of what’s left of her tattered legal reputation. She
points to an “authentic” Kenyan birth certificate as proof. Let’s not forget that the there were
birth announcements in the two main Honolulu papers for President Obama and the
state of Hawaii (led by a Republican McCain supporter) has affirmed the
validity of a computer generated one.
Taitz, who
has filed no less than five cases in federal courts in California, Texas, and
Georgia to pursue her cause, found out the hard way that the requirements of
the federal bench are a bit more rigorous than cyberspace or talk radio. As
Judge Clay Land explained: “Although
the First Amendment may allow Plaintiff's counsel to make these wild
accusations on her blog or in her press conferences, the federal courts are
reserved for hearing genuine legal disputes and not as a platform for political
rhetoric that is disconnected from any legitimate legal cause of action.”
That lesson
may have been missed during her intensive studies at Taft Law School, a non bar
accredited correspondence institution.
In imposing his twenty thousand dollar fine the “corrupt” (Orly’s words
not mine, your Honor) Bush appointed federal district court judge called
Taitz’s actions “breathtaking in its arrogance and borders on delusional” in a
scathing 43 page order. Her other
court actions probably didn’t help matters:
a)
she
called the judge a “traitor” in open court,
b) she accused him of being improperly
politically and economically aligned with Obama for allegedly owning Microsoft
and Comcast stock
c)
she
filed an affadavit alleging that the judge conferred with Attorney General Holder at a Columbus, Georgia coffee shop
on July 16 despite press reports and photos of him in California.
Even her own client fired her and packed
her bags for service in Iraq.
In her
California case another client no longer seeking her counsel is Orange County
Pastor and 2008 Vice Presidential candidate Wiley Drake. He’s that nice
preacher who told Alan Colmes’ radio audience that he prays for the death of
the “usurper that is in the White House…B. Hussein Obama.” Before you point
fingers at the good pastor for being a racist let me remind you that he was the
Vice Presidential partner (in California only) to yet, another Taitz birther
client- Alan Keyes.
Keyes
shares much in common with our nation’s first African-American president. Like
President Obama, Alan Keyes has a graduate degree from Harvard, and not just a
vocational degree like a JD, but a real PhD! Like, our Commander-in-Chief he
too, dreamed of the day that America would finally elect an African-American
president with an embarrassing preacher friend—except he wanted it to be—Alan
Keyes. Like the
President, he ran for the nation’s highest office against the frontrunner in
his party. Unlike the President, however, who amassed 52.92% of the vote in the
2008 elections, Keyes came in 7 with only 0.04%. Still, it was a resounding victory over
another presidential conspiracist Cynthia McKinney, who accused Bush of prior
knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and similarly sought his removal from office.
Keyes,
along with “anti-illegal immigration” advocate Tom Trancredo, Islamophobes Ann
Coulter and Michael Savage, is a columnist for the ultra-conservative
conspiracy oriented World Net Daily (WND), whose publisher frequently focuses
on Muslims, the Obama eligibility issue, and the alleged body count of dead
people connected to the Clintons. Among their other listed columnists is Obama
conspiracist Jerome Corsi. He’s the author of two best-selling conspiracy
books, the swift boating “Unfit for Command,” with co-author John O’Neill,
targeting John Kerry in 2004 and 2008’s “Obama Nation.”
Last week,
WND published an Acorn style hit piece on an embattled self proclaimed “civil
rights” group, the Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR) called Muslim
Mafia. The book is based on an undercover intern’s “research” as well as
disturbing material that became public about CAIR during last year’s Holy Land
Foundation terrorism funding trial, where CAIR was named as an unindicted
coconspirator and a Texas state chapter cofounder was found guilty and
sentenced to decades in prison.
Ironically,
one of the main charges that Congressional supporters of the book trotted out
in a Capitol Hill presser is the organization’s alleged use of its interns to
gather information from congressional assignments, not exactly an unusual
beltway occurrence. Owing to other unresolved questions about CAIR, however,
the FBI broke off formal ties with the group last year.
Additionally,
despite CAIR’s careful branding of itself as a mainstream group it has featured
its own collection of incredibly bizarre and disturbing speakers at major
functions over the last decade without ever repudiating them:
1.
Neo-Nazi
William Baker who held a high level position with the Holocaust Museum
shooter’s old employer- an anti-Semitic publishing and political empire founded
by uber-bigot Willis Carto,
2.
Abdel
Malik Ali, a homophobic and anti-Semitic suicide bomb proponent who contends the Shepard Hate
Crime Act is a Jewish plot, seeks the dismantling of the United States into an
Islamic state, and who also contends Zionist Jews, the Federal government and
the Saudi Royal Family orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, and
3.
Yvonne
Ridley, a British Muslim convert, now with Iranian PressTV, who effusively praised the Taliban,
called al Qaeda terrorist Zarkawi “brother” and complimented Abu Hamza al Masri
, a cleric notorious for his celebrations of the 9/11 attacks, which she
allegedly suggests could have been allowed to happen by the Bush administration
as a cover.
4. Imam Musa, an anti-Semitic cleric who wants an Islamic state in the U.S., says US did 9/11, shared a stage with CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad in 2002 by a Hezbolah flag,
For those of us who seek to eradicate both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, and who believe in President Obama's vision for peace in the Middle East, the mainstreaming of intolerance is not only sad, but unacceptable. It's time for the adults to stand up and reject the extremes of all stripes, particuarly when it gets a foothold in the mainstream. Let’s just
say on this last one, like Wilders and some of his counter-protesters, nobody
exactly enters this dance looking above reproach, like Ceaser’s wife.
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