Russia Makes a Fool of Kerry (Again)

by Jonathan S. Tobin


The report this morning on the front page of the New York Times that Russia is sending a new batch of advanced arms to Syria is very bad news for those who hoped international isolation would lead to the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime. Despite constant predictions over the past two years from President Obama and others in the West that it was only a matter of time before this evil dictator would be forced out, Assad is holding his own. The rebels have not only failed to push him out of Damascus but, if recent accounts of the fighting there are true, they have lost ground as the regime has rolled back the tide of unrest all across the country. Though the rebellion may have fractured the country, as a separate front-page story in the Times testifies, with Iran and its Hezbollah auxiliaries doubling down on their backing for Assad on the ground and emboldened by Russia’s diplomatic support as well as its efforts to resupply the regime’s military, it’s hard to see why anyone would think the dictator is going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

But the implications of Russia’s move, coming as it does only a week after Secretary of State John Kerry visited Moscow to plead for restraint on their part, is a devastating blow to American diplomacy. It’s not just that the Russians are flouting the will of the international community as well as a sticking a finger in the eye of President Obama. Such mischief making is the hallmark of Russian foreign policy under Vladimir Putin since creating the illusion that Moscow is returning to the status of a major world power is integral to his own regime’s legitimacy. But the spectacle of Kerry playing the supplicant to Putin and then being humiliated in this fashion marks a new low for the administration’s prestige. It calls into question not just the direction of the American approach to both Russia and Syria but highlights the secretary’s blind belief in his own diplomatic skill despite abundant evidence to the contrary.


Kerry came into office determined to flex his muscles as a diplomat with an ambitious Middle East agenda both in terms of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the civil war in Syria. That his hopes were based in hubris rather than a reasonable assessment of reality almost goes without saying since there is no reason to believe the time is ripe for a diplomatic solution on either front.

But whereas his predecessor Hillary Clinton was known for racking up frequent flyer miles, she rarely put herself in a position to be embarrassed in such a degrading manner as Kerry has done. Just as the Turks stiffed him when he was there in the last month asking them to be helpful with the Palestinians, so, too, the Russians saw no reason to treat the secretary of state with any deference.

There will be those who will argue that Russia’s determination to save its client is one more sign that should warn Americans to avoid further entanglement in the Syrian mess. Doing so would be a mistake, since backing away from Syria in this manner would constitute a crucial victory for Iran. Nor should the United States view the prospect of the Russians being emboldened to continue to make more mischief in the Middle East with equanimity.

With Assad in possession of new missiles that would make it much harder for the West to enforce a no-fly zone or to resupply the rebels the way the Russians and the Iranians are backing up the regime, the immediate prospects for change in Syria are indeed dim. But it is also hard to escape the conclusion that one of the main hindrances to America’s efforts to influence the situation is a secretary of state who is hopelessly out of touch with reality and viewed with contempt by our adversaries. Though Clinton was something of a cipher during her four years at State, it must be admitted that she never flopped as badly as Kerry has done. That may not ruffle Kerry’s seemingly indomitable belief in his own ability, but the consequences of his incompetence for the Syrian people may be considerable.





Jonathan S. Tobin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/05/17/russia-makes-a-fool-of-kerry-again-syria-arms-sales/

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Boise Man Arrested on Terrorism and WMD Charges

by Abha Shankar


A 30-year-old Uzbekistan national living in Boise, Idaho, was arrested Thursday morning as part of a wide scale federal terrorism investigation.

Fazliddin Kurbanov is charged in separate indictments in Idaho and Utah for conspiring to support the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and distributing information related to the manufacture and use of an explosive or weapon of mass destruction.

Kurbanov had a combination of parts to make a bomb, including a hollow hand grenade, hobby fuse, aluminum powder, potassium nitrate, and sulfur, a three-count indictment filed in Boise said. Kurbanov is charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists knowing that the support was to be used for carrying out an attack involving a weapon of mass destruction, and possession of an unregistered destructive device.

A second indictment filed in Salt Lake City charged Kurbanov with distributing information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction. Kurbamov allegedly "showed internet videos, conducted instructional shopping trips, provided written recipes and gave verbal instructions on where to obtain the necessary components to construct and use improvised explosive devices." The indictment further alleged that Kurbanov sought to use the explosive devices to bomb public places, transportation, and other infrastructural facilities.

"Today's arrest and these indictments underscore our commitment to aggressively and thoroughly investigate those who conspire to engage in unlawful terrorist activities," Wendy J. Olson, U.S. Attorney for the District of Idaho, said is a Department of Justice press release announcing the charges.

A detention motion filed in the case described Kubarnov as a serious flight risk. Kurbanov faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted on the Idaho charges. The Utah charge carries a longer prison sentence of 20 years.

Abha Shankar

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/4023/boise-man-arrested-on-terrorism-and-wmd-charges

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

A Country Without Muslims

Editor's note: The veracity of the content of this article has been challenged. The article will be restored if and when its content can be verified.

It Depends on what the Meaning of 'Islam' is

by Andrew Bostom

Has there been a bizarre "harmonic convergence" on Islam between Daniel Pipes, the historian, and unabashed Zionist, and the late Israel-negating, Palestinian polemicist, Edward Said?


Daniel Pipes' 5/13/13 essay in The Washington Times derides "those who focus on Islam itself as the problem" -- identifying Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, and Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders by name.



Most of his essay re-affirms (but never establishes by dint of hard doctrinal and historical facts) the same glib, tired arguments Pipes has discussed before: Islam's prophet Muhammad was not an "Islamist," and was not responsible for "Islamism," which is a "modern extremist variant" of Islam; an "unbearable" discordance between "pre-modern accomplishment and modern failure" caused the (mass?) "psychic trauma" which engendered "Islamism" in the 1920s; and a mere 10-15% of Muslims support what Pipes terms "Islamism."


Pipes concludes his latest iteration of "Islam Versus Islamism" by attacking those (such as Ali, Sultan, and Wilders) who reject its premises for their ostensibly uninformed "succumbing" to what he terms "a simplistic and essentialist illusion" of the Muslim creed. Ironically, Pipes' latter claim of "essentialism" re-packages the post-modern incoherence of Edward Said, as demonstrated brilliantly by Philosophy Professor Irfan Khawaja. As Khawaja observed in 2007:

If Said thinks that Islam is different from other abstract nouns, he needs to tell us why... And yet, as we have seen, he often treats abstract nouns in an essentialist fashion. So it should follow that Islam can be treated the same way. And yet that is precisely what he takes to be the cardinal sin.

Adding insult to irony, Said (a Pipes nemesis, as Said's comments, extracted here, reveal) accused Pipes himself of "essentialism," largely, one assumes, for frank comments by the latter on Islam -- not "Islamism -- as an inherently, even "immutably" political ideology!  

Circa 1983, in his In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power, Pipes noted, "[T]he press and scholarship too often...ignore Islam's role in politics." He warned, Approaching Islam in politics with the Christian experience in mind is misleading. Because the community of Christians shares almost no political traits, there is a mistaken predisposition to assume Muslims do not.

Elaborating on this yawning gap between Islam and Christianity, Pipes highlights, appropriately, the unique impact of  Islam's religio-political "law, " the Sharia:

Islam, unlike Christianity, contains a complete program for ordering society...Islam specifies exact goals for all Muslims to follow as well as the rules by which to enforce them...Along with faith in Allah comes a sacred law to guide Muslims, in all times and places. That law, called the Sharia, establishes the context of Islam as a political force...Adjusting realities to the Sharia is the key to Islam's role in human relations...Mainstream Muslims (that is, Muslims whose faith is acknowledged as valid by a majority of other Muslims) follow legal tenets so similar to each other that their differences can be ignored

Never invoking "Islamism," Pipes concludes, with this pellucid assessment of how Islam, since its advent, has been a creed imbued, singularly, with politics:

[I]n Islam, where, in Max Weber's view, "an essentially political character marked all the chief ordinances,"...[the] connection to politics has been immutably deep from the very inception of the religion

Great Western Orientalist scholarship, dating from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, supports Pipes' 1983 understandings of Islam as indissolubly linking religion and politics. Moreover, these seminal analyses and contemporary polling data debunk his now oft repeated, glib formulations. As elaborated in detail elsewhere:

• Muhammad really was a jihadist -- or in Pipes' current terminology, an "Islamist"
• Great Western Orientalist scholars long ago established the inherently political nature of Islam, and also made plain that the modern era Islamic "revival" was evident at least four decades before "the 1920s" advent claimed by Pipes.
• The religio-political totalitarianism of the Sharia is well-characterized
• Contemporary polling data demonstrate the overwhelming appeal of Sharia supremacist states to ordinary Muslims debunking Pipes glib assertion that only "10-15%" of Muslims are "Islamists"

One must ask, "What Went Wrong" with Daniel Pipes who now sprays (Edward) Saidian charges of "essentialism" at brave Muslim freethinkers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan, as well as the stalwart Dutch politician Geert Wilders, for simply rejecting his self-contradictory mantras on "Islamism".

Andrew Bostom

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/it_depends_on_what_the_meaning_of_islam_is.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Boston Reservoir Tests Safe after Seven Muslims Caught Trespassing there after Midnight

by Robert Spencer


Pakistanis and Saudis caught in a no-trespass zone after midnight at a water reservoir for a major city that has just been the site of an Islamic jihad attack. And Islamic jihadists have often spoken about poisoning water supplies -- most recently in the Canada/New York jihad plot. So even if the water tests safe, it is still exceedingly suspicious that they were there at all. 

An update on this story. "Boston reservoir tests safe after late-night trespassers nabbed," by Perry Chiaramonte for FoxNews.com, May 15 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Massachusetts State Police beefed up patrols around the reservoir that supplies Boston's drinking water after seven foreign students were caught trespassing in the area late at night. With the city still jittery after the April 15 terror attack at the Boston Marathon, word that two women and five men, reportedly from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Singapore, had been found in the restricted area around the Quabbin Reservoir caused concerns. The reservoir serves Boston and some 40 other communities in the area.
“As an extra precaution, water quality samples were analyzed at MWRA’s lab yesterday and all came back normal," Ria Convery, of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, told the Boston Herald. “There is no evidence of any water quality issues at the Quabbin Reservoir following the trespassing incident.”
It was after midnight on Tuesday morning when a state trooper on patrol at the reservoir spotted two cars parked on the grass near one of Quabbin’s entrances. The cop investigated and found a group of seven people, five men and two women walking from the water back to their cars. When the police officer asked why they were trespassing, members of the group replied that they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates who had an educational interest in the reservoir, according to police.
The group was briefly held at the scene while background and warrant check were conducted but let go after their records turned up clean.
“There was no evidence that the seven were committing any crime beyond the trespassing,” Massachusetts State police spokesman David Procopio told FoxNews.com, adding that officers on the scene checked the vehicles and the park area and did not locate any items out of place or of a criminal nature.
Procopio also said that a preliminary investigation determined the individuals were originally from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore. The Springfield field office of the FBI was contacted by the State Police and is assisting in an investigation.
“Further investigation is being undertaken because of the late hour when they were observed, their explanation for why they wanted to see the reservoir, and the fact that they were in an area marked no trespassing,” Procopio said....

Robert Spencer

Source: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/05/boston-reservoir-tests-safe-after-seven-muslims-caught-trespassing-there-after-midnight.html

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UN Pressures Germany to Bow to ‘Hate Speech’ Hysteria

by Andrew Harrod & Sam Nunberg



 

A recent decision by the United Nation’s (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) foreshadows an ominous future for free societies should Muslim entities like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) achieve their goal of having “Islamophobia” defined internationally as a form of prejudice.

Former German central bank board member Thilo Sarrazin has got himself in trouble with the UN, as the Turkish Union in Berlin-Brandenburg (Türkischer Bund in Berlin-Brandenburg or TBB) stated with satisfaction in an April 18, 2013, German-language press release.  The spokesman of this German-Turkish interest group, Hilmi Kaya Turan, praised a February 26, 2013, “historic decision” by the CERD condemning Germany for not having prosecuted Sarrazin’s criticism of Arab and Turkish immigrants.

Sarrazin, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD), produced a storm of controversy with his August 2010 book Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab: Wie Wir Unser Land aufs Spiel Setzen (“Germany Abolishes Itself:  How We Are Risking Our Country”).  In the context of this controversy, CERD’s detailed 19-page decision extensively excerpted in English translation a fall 2009 interview with Sarrazin.  In the interview, the Berlin magazine Lettre International discussed some of the upcoming book’s themes.

CERD complained that “[i]n this interview, Mr. Sarrazin expressed himself in a derogatory and discriminatory way about social ‘lower classes’, which are not productive’ and would have to ‘disappear over time’ in order to create a city of the ‘elite’.”  Sarrazin specified that about 20% of Berlin’s population depended on welfare payments, which he wanted to cut, “above all to the lower class.”

Berlin’s indigent included within the immigrant population a “large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose numbers have grown through erroneous policies, have no productive function, except for the fruit and vegetable trade.” Compounding the problem for Sarrazin was a birthrate among Arabs and Turks about three times their percentage of the population.  Sarrazin thereby saw “Turks…conquering Germany just like the Kosovars conquered Kosovo: through a higher birth rate.”  Sarrazin “wouldn’t mind if” these immigrants “were East European Jews with about a 15% higher IQ than the one of Germans.”  Central to Sarrazin’s thesis was the assumption that “human ability is to some extent socially contingent and to some extent hereditary.” Sarrazin’s “solution to this problem” was “to generally prohibit influx, except for highly qualified individuals and not provide social welfare for immigrants anymore.”

As noted by CERD, Sarrazin’s interview comments prompted on October 23, 2009, a criminal complaint by the TBB under the German Criminal Code’s Article 130 against “Incitement to Hatred” (Volksverhetzung).  Yet upon review, German prosecutors suspended their investigations on November 23, 2009, deciding that Sarrazin’s views fell under the protection of free speech contained within Article 5 of Germany’s Basic Law (Grundgesetz).  Prosecutors quoted by CERD had judged Sarrazin’s statements as a “contribution to the intellectual debate in a question…very significant for the public.”

Following this domestic defeat, the TBB turned in 2010 to Article 14 of CERD’s governing convention (Article 14), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.  Article 14 provides that the CERD may “consider communications from individuals or groups of individuals within” a consenting State Party’s “jurisdiction claiming to be victims of a violation by that State Party of any of the rights set forth in this Convention.”  In response, CERD agreed with TBB that Sarrazin had made discriminatory comments and that the German “State party failed to provide protection against such discrimination.”  CERD thus wanted the “State party” to “review its policy and procedures…to give wide publicity to the Committee’s Opinion,” and to deliver “within 90 days, information from the State party about the measures taken.”

CERD’s decision did not involve Islam directly, for Sarrazin had referenced the ethnicity of Arabs and Turks, not their majority-Muslim faith.  Yet CERD’s decision noted various party submissions according to which in Germany the “labels ‘Turks’ or ‘Arabs’ are applied as synonyms for Muslims.”  Citing various evidence examples, CERD agreed with one submission that “Mr. Sarrazin’s statements led to public vilification and debasement of Turks and Muslims in general.”

Any such foreign judgment of a country raises sensitive questions of national sovereignty, particularly when involving limitations of free speech.  Sarrazin’s case was no exception, especially in light of CERD members mocked by the German conservative website Politically Incorrect as “torches of democracy and human rights.” Analyzing this roster, Germans might well wonder what they could learn in equality under the law from members hailing from Algeria, Burkina Faso, China, Niger, Pakistan, Russia, Togo, and Turkey, among other countries.

The Sarrazin case exemplifies how international law and its institutional developments can impact domestic matters.  Observers of the OIC, an international organization of 57 majority-Muslim nation-states (including “Palestine”), would be well advised to keep Sarrazin in mind when considering the OIC’s longstanding campaign against “Islamophobia.” This campaign would only too willingly extrapolate from Sarrazin’s comments about Arab and Turk immigrants, however controversial, to a condemnation of criticizing Islamic ideas as well.

Defenders of free speech should beware.  The transnationalist, multiculturalists and OIC have a new mechanism to override domestic legal hate speech decisions.  Precedent is slowly but surely being set.

This article was sponsored by the Legal Project, an activity of the Middle East Forum.


Andrew Harrod & Sam Nunberg

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod-and-sam-nunberg/un-pressures-germany-to-bow-to-hate-speech-hysteria/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Former Jordanian PM Explains Arab Politicians' Doubletalk Regarding the U.S.

by MEMRI

Following are excerpts from an interview with former Jordanian prime minister Abdelraouf Al-Rawabdeh, which aired on the Al-Jazeera network on April 1, 2013:

Click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV

Abdelraouf Al-Rawabdeh: "The preacher speaking from the pulpit, the philosopher, the politician, the university professor, the school teacher – they are all attuned to the conscience of the nation. Listen carefully to what I am saying. They are attuned to the conscience of the nation, and they are true to what they believe in, but they are not responsible for its implementation.

"A preacher steps up to the pulpit and declares: 'We must confront America, the spearhead of heresy.' Fine. What does he want us to do about it? He doesn’t say? Along comes the politician, whose job it is to understand the local, regional, and international balance of power, and he talks only about what he can accomplish.



"Once, when I was running for office, someone tried to give me a hard time. He approached me and asked: 'What do you think about America?' I asked him: 'Are you asking me as a politician or as a candidate' He said he was asking me as a candidate, so I said: 'America is an enemy state, which provides weapons to Israel, kills our Palestinian people, controls our Arab countries, expropriates our oil, and destroys our economy.' So he was pleased, but then he said: 'And as a politician?' I said: 'America is our friend. It stands by us and provides us with aid.'

"He said: 'Don’t you see that as a moral contradiction?' 'No,' I said. 'I say that America is an enemy in order to appease you, and I say it is a friend in order to get you food. You tell me which you prefer.'" […]

MEMRI

Source: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3818.htm

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Women of Benghazigate

by Frank Gaffney, Jr.

 Suddenly, it seems we have broken through the most effective executive branch cover-up and complicit media blackout in memory.  Among the many recent revelations is one that has gone unnoted:  The prominent role played by women in the Obama administration’s: policy-making that led up to the jihadist attack in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012; its handling of the crisis; and its subsequent, scandalous damage-control operation.

Since, as they say, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, here’s a short guide to the Women of Benghazigate, whose contributions to one aspect or another of this affair have become public knowledge – thanks, in particular, to testimony from three whistleblowers before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week:

• First, there is Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time. We now know she was personally responsible for at least some of the decisions that left personnel in the “special mission compound” in Benghazi highly vulnerable to attack.  Her whereabouts and activities are unaccounted for – like those of President Obama – during most of the seven-plus hours in which jihadists systematically assaulted first that facility and then a nearby CIA “annex.”  And then, the next day, she knowingly deceived the public about what precipitated the attack, blaming an internet video.
• The poster child for the Benghazigate cover-up is UN Ambassador Susan Rice.  She was chosen to make the rounds of all five network Sunday morning news programs on September 16, 2012.  She reinforced the false narrative that Mrs. Clinton first pushed out publicly four days before in a joint Rose Garden appearance with President Obama.
• State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was evidently among those involved in massaging twelve different versions of “talking points” upon which intelligence officials drew to misleadingly brief the Congress.  Amb. Rice also used such guidance to justify the fraud that YouTube, not jihad, was responsible for the violence in Benghazi.
• Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, was formerly in charge of managing so-called “bimbo eruptions” during Bill Clinton’s 1992 run for the White House and administration.  According to one of last week’s witnesses, Gregory Hicks – who became the Chief of Mission in Libya after his boss, Ambassador Chris Stevens, was murdered on that fateful night, Ms. Mills has lately been suppressing equally unwanted eruptions concerning Benghazigate.  She upbraided the diplomat for challenging the party line about what happened then and thereafter.  She also reportedly sought to interfere with a congressional investigation into the matter.
•  Mr. Hicks testified that the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, Beth Jones, delivered her own, “blistering critique” of his management style after he asked “why the ambassador said there was a demonstration when the embassy reported there was an attack?”  Mr. Hicks believes he was demoted in retaliation for posing such unwelcome questions.

Curiously, the truth that has finally begun to emerge has yet to shed light on the involvement of two other women who almost certainly were players before, during and after the Benghazi attacks.

The first is Valerie Jarrett.  She is President Obama’s longtime consigliere.  Such is her relationship with him and the First Lady that she is permitted to involve herself in virtually all portfolios, including the most sensitive foreign affairs and national security ones.
That would surely be the case in this instance in light of Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan’s insightful observation:

“The Obama White House sees every event as a political event….Because of that, it could not tolerate the idea that the armed assault on the Benghazi consulate was a premeditated act of Islamist terrorism. That would carry a whole world of unhappy political implications, and demand certain actions. And the American presidential election was only eight weeks away. They wanted this problem to go away, or at least to bleed the meaning from it.”

To paraphrase Senator Howard Baker’s famous questions from an earlier congressional investigation of a presidential cover-up called Watergate: What did Ms. Jarrett do, and when did she do it?

Then, there’s Mrs. Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin.  It strains credulity that Ms. Abedin would not be involved in this crisis, given the important role she has played in Mrs. Clinton’s world for over twelve years. As the Washington Post observed in 2007 – long before Hillary became America’s top diplomat: “Abedin…is one of Clinton’s most-trusted advisers on the Middle East….When Clinton hosts meetings on the region, Abedin’s advice is always sought.”

What was Huma Abedin’s advice when her boss responded to the proverbial “3 o’clock call” on the evening of September 11, 2012?  For that matter, in light of Huma’s longstanding and well-documented ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, we need to know what advice Ms. Abedin had been giving the Secretary of State about helping the Brotherhood and its fellow Islamists topple relatively friendly regimes throughout the Mideast and North Africa, including Muammar Qaddafi’s in Libya.

Of course, there are plenty of men implicated in the run-up to, events of and efforts to conceal the Benghazi scandal, starting with the President himself.  Their contributions to this debacle require thorough investigation.  But so do those of the Women of Benghazigate, including those peculiarly unimplicated to date: Valerie Jarrett and Huma Abedin.

Frank Gaffney, Jr. is the Founder and President of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. Under Mr. Gaffney's leadership, the Center has been nationally and internationally recognized as a resource for timely, informed and penetrating analyses of foreign and defense policy matters.

Source: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/05/13/the-women-of-benghazigate/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Desperate Holder Throws Underlings Under the Bus

by Arnold Ahlert

[To order the Freedom Center's pamphlet "Ten Reasons to Impeach Eric Holder," written by Department of Justice whistleblower J. Christian Adams, click here.]

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder reinforced the notion that he is unfit to remain in office. Although he was grilled about many of the scandals afflicting the Obama administration, the seizure of phone records from the Associated Press (AP) remained the major concern for both Republicans and Democrats. Holder made it clear they were wasting their time trying to get answers about the investigation from him. “I was not the person involved in that decision,” he insisted. “I was recused in that matter as I described in a press conference held yesterday. The decision to issue this subpoena was made by the people presently involved in the case.”

Holder said he recused himself from the probe because ”I am a possessor of information eventually leaked.” He expressed faith in the ability of those looking into the leaking of top-secret information to the AP. the leak revealed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that undermined an al Qaeda plot to get an underwear bomber on a jetliner. “I have faith in the people who actually were responsible for this case, that they were aware of the rules and that they followed them,” Holder said. “But I don’t have a factual basis to answer the questions that you have asked, because I was recused.”

That was an understatement. Holder wasn’t even able to answer the most basic questions about the investigation. He couldn’t say why the DOJ didn’t follow the standard practice of negotiating with the AP before issuing the subpoenas. “That I don’t know,” he responded to the question posed by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI). ”There are exceptions if the integrity of the investigation would be impacted. I don’t know why that didn’t happen.” Sensenbrenner asked him who authorized the subpoena, “because the code of federal regulations is pretty specific that this is supposed to go as close to the top as possible.” Holder was noncommittal, claiming he was “probably 95 percent, 99 percent certain the deputy attorney general acting in my stead was the one who authorizes the subpoena.” After being handed a note, he confirmed that ”the (Deputy Attorney General James Cole) was the one who authorized the subpoena.” Sensenbrenner expressed frustration regarding Holder’s evasiveness, suggesting administration officials travel to the Harry Truman Presidential Library and take a photo of the famous sign, “the buck stops here.”

The Congressman then explained why. ”There doesn’t appear to be any acceptance of responsibility for things that have gone wrong,” he said.

Holder couldn’t even say for certain when he recused himself. “I’m not sure, I think it was towards the beginning of the matter. I don’t know exactly when, but it was towards the beginning of the matter,” he told Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL).  Despite this complete lack of knowledge, Holder remains supportive of the seizure of two months of phone records via a secretly issued subpoena, because the aforementioned story involved “a very serious leak, a very grave leak.”

What Holder leaves out is the reality that this leak, as well as the ones regarding the president’s “kill list” of terror suspects, the Stuxnet virus used to foil Iranian nuclear ambitions, and the leaking of classified information about SEAL Team 6 to Hollywood producers by Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers were remarkably consistent in one respect: they all accrued to Barack Obama’s efforts to appear “tough on terror” leading up to the 2012 election. Thus, it would stand to reason someone in the Obama administration was the source of the leaks for which AP phone records were secretly subpoenaed. It would be useful to know who has been subpoenaed on the other side of this equation–or who hasn’t, making the seizure of AP phone records necessary.

Democrats were willing to offer Holder cover on the issue. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) was delighted that Republicans were now interested in media protection, considering a shield law died in the Senate in 2009. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) criticized the “hue and cry” raised by the same Republicans who, last year, “wanted reporters subpoenaed, put in front of grand juries” in an effort to stop leaks. Apparently Conyers forgot that Democrats have controlled the Senate since 2006, and Nadler is unable to fathom the difference between overt and covert subpoenas, as well as the difference between grand jury testimony and a secret DOJ investigation.

Holder was grilled on the additional scandals surrounding the administration, including the potential lapses in intelligence sharing prior to the Boston Marathon bombings, and the IRS’s targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny.

With regard to the Boston bombings, Holder asserted that the DOJ’s investigation had been “thorough.” Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, disagreed, contending there was “troubling information” leading to the conclusion that the federal agencies involved in the investigation “failed to connect the dots.” “It does not appear that all of the information was received by all the pertinent parties, particularly the FBI,” the congressman said. When Goodlatte asked what the DOJ is doing about procedure regarding hits in terror databases, Holder  sidestepped the question, saying only that there is an ongoing inspector general investigation.

Holder was further challenged by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), who wondered what the FBI did, or didn’t, pursue after receiving Russian intelligence indicating Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become radicalized. “A lot of people are concerned about profiling, but there are a lot more people concerned about getting blown up by a terrorist,” Gomert contended.

Holder responded angrily to Gomert’s assertion. “Unless somebody has done something inappropriate, you don’t have access to the FBI files, you don’t know what the FBI did,” Holder said. “You simply do not know.”

Neither does anyone else at this point, and given the DOJ’s track record regarding other administration investigations, such as the one over Fast and Furious, it is more than likely any revelations about who knew what and when will be stonewalled.

Holder was equally vague regarding the IRS scandal. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) inquired if the investigation would be far reaching, “including Washington, D.C.,” if necessary. Holder promised to go “wherever the facts take us.” On the other hand, he said it would take time to determine if there was “criminal” wrongdoing.

Late yesterday afternoon, it appeared that timeline would get even longer. Around 6 p.m. EDT, the president announced that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had accepted the resignation of acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller. Obama characterized the “misconduct” detailed in the just-released Inspector General report about the IRS’s handling of conservative tax exempt applications as “inexcusable.” It remains to be a seen if Miller will be part of Holder’s investigation into IRS malfeasance, or simply be allowed to fade into oblivion.

The progressive media have already begun circling the wagons around the Attorney General. Media Matters insisted the secret seizure of AP phone records was a necessity. “If the press compromised active counter-terror operations for a story that only tipped off the terrorists, that sounds like it should be investigated,” they contended.

So should Media Matters’ relationship with the DOJ. Internal DOJ emails obtained in 2012 by the Daily Caller revealed the leftist advocacy group regularly collaborated with the DOJ to attack reporters who covered DOJ scandals. Tracy Schmaler, Office of Public Affairs Director for the Justice Department, worked with Media Matters staffers to attack a number of prominent journalists, including Townhall Magazine’s Katie Pavlich, Breitbart.com writers Joel Pollak and Ken Klukowski, Fox News’s  William LaJeunesse, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Martha MacCallum, Bill Hemmer, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy. Former DOJ Civil Rights Division attorneys J. Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky were also attacked.

The Daily Caller obtained the emails after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was fulfilled long after the 20-business-day limit required by law.

Moreover, the Office of Public Affairs has no business conducting a political operation. Its function is to keep the public informed about what the DOJ is doing to enforce the laws. That it was more than willing to violate its mandate is a good indication of how deep the rot at the DOJ goes.

Yesterday, Eric Holder did what he does best whenever he appears before a Congressional Committee: provide as little information as possible, become indignant when anyone suggests he has acted improperly, and fob responsibility for every possible impropriety conducted by his department onto someone else–when he’s not busy stonewalling scandals. Even a contempt of Congress citation for his refusal to provide critical information in the Fast and Furious gunrunning debacle that resulted in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, along with hundreds of Mexican nationals, including children, has failed to chasten his contempt for the rule of law, or his determination to maintain the most ideologically-compromised Department of Justice in modern history.

Holder can only serve as long as he maintains the support of President Barack Obama. That he still does, speaks volumes–about both men.


Arnold Ahlert

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/desperate-holder-throws-underlings-under-the-bus/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Painting for Understanding Modern Jewish History; The Israeli Debate over Syria

by Barry Rubin


The painting below is Moritz Oppenheim’s “The Return of the Volunteer from the Wars of Liberation to His Family Still Living in Accordance with Old Customs.” It was the painting I wanted to have on the cover of my book, Assimilation and its Discontents, but was overruled by the publisher in favor of a post-modernist monstrosity.

[Assimilation and its Discontents, a history of Jewish assimilation and identity debates, can be found here.  For downloading instructions see the end of this article.]

The painting shows a Jewish soldier who had fought for Prussia against Napoleon. Now the war was won, the land liberated, and he returned home to his family, presumably in 1814.

He is the center of attention for, presumably, his loving parents, two older sisters, and younger brother. The second brother is examining something else. I’m also surprised to see, in this Orthodox Jewish family, a cat emerging from under the table.

So even if they still follow the “old customs,” that is a pious Judaism, they have modernized already to some extent. Notice the clothing which is quite contemporary and the furnishings. This is a German middle class family very much attuned to the surrounding society which is also an Orthodox Jewish family.



Thus it is not quite true that Oppenheim, one of the greatest German painters, sees them as fully traditional. Of course, by saying the “old customs,” he is implying that they are outdated customs. The theme of the painting is the contrast between the two role models, the two paths that Jews could take: complete modernization, secularization, and German patriotism versus a traditional Jewish life, built around religion and keeping some distance from the surrounding society.

Yet Oppenheim thought it possible to combine the two. He was highly honored by both the existing German elite, during a time when antisemitism was at a relative low, and the intellectual leaders of Jewry.

Oppenheim was born in Hanau in 1800 and died in Frankfurt in 1882. In his own life, he balanced out the Jewish and German worlds. At the time, the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement which sought to study Judaism with scholarly methods to both preserve and modernize it. While those involved didn’t know it, by rethinking Jews as being a people with secular aspects, too, they were forerunners of Zionism.

The New York Jewish Museum’s description of the painting points out two significant factors.

First, he has been wounded in the defense of his country, thus having shed his blood for his country.  And he is wearing the Iron Cross, a German medal but also as a cross a symbol of the conflict between his Jewishness and the Christianity of the state he has served.

Second, he has just arrived home by travelling on the Sabbath, thus breaking a major tenet of Jewish law. His family, delighted to have him back alive, doesn’t seem to care about that point.

The painting was made in 1834, at a time when anti-Jewish forces were beginning to rise again and seeking to restrict Jewish rights as citizens. It was intended as a pointed reminder of Jewish services and loyalty to Germany, of attempts to assimilate without necessarily losing their distinctive characteristics. It was not making a case for Multiculturalism but rather for pluralism.

At any rate, the project of German Jewish assimilation failed, in part because it was too successful, and German Jewish sacrifices in World War One did not avail them two decades later. Indeed, Adolf Hitler’s lieutenant during the war was a Jew, who the Nazi dictator later did spare.

There are, however, two additional ironies related to the painting’s story. Napoleon was, in fact, the liberator of the Jews and Prussia was the oppressor. The soldier proved his patriotism while fighting against his real interests.  As soon as the Prussians had won, they began restoring discrimination against the Jews.

The second is a story that fascinates me and I think should be emblematic for these issues. It concerns a young man who was the real-life contemporary of the soldier in the painting, Moritz Itzig.

One day in 1811, Itzig’s aunt, Sarah Levy, a highly cultured woman with many connections among Christians, held a concert in her home. One of the guests was the wife of Ludwig Achim von Arnim, a 30-year-old Prussian writer. Von Arnim came to pick up his wife and insulted several Jewish guests with antisemitic slurs.

Itzig, then 24 years old, wrote a letter challenging von Arnim to a duel. The aristocrat rejected the challenge, responding with a bunch of signed statements from his peers that since a Jew had no honor he could not be engaged in a duel and adding additional insults.

One afternoon, Itzig came up to von Arnim and beat the larger man with his cane. Von Arnim, who whined for help rather than defending himself, turned over the matter to a court, which ruled that since Itzig had been provoked he was not guilty of any crime. Itzig’s family even persuaded some of those who had provided von Arnim with letters to retract them.

When war with Napoleon restarted, Itzig volunteered to fight for Prussia and was killed in 1813. Von Arnim stayed on his estate and did not fight at all. He lived until 1831.

The irony of the patriotic Jew and the cowardly poser who hypocritically impugned the former’s noble nature and love of country has been repeated many times. In fact, I can think of some good contemporary examples in another country across the seas from Germany.


Barry Rubin

Source: http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/05/14/the-ultimate-painting-for-understanding-modern-jewish-history/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.